Memnemonic implant

[bewareofgeek]

Invent a memory of me and post it in the comments. It can be anything you want, so long as it's something that's never happened. Then, of course, post this to your journal and see what people would like to remember of you, only the universe failed to cooperate in making it happen so they had to make it up instead.

Comments

Impalas, margaritas and senoritas...

[call-me-robert.livejournal.com]

I remember that time, we were heading down to Mexico, going to burn our way through all that e-trading fast cash we'd fumbled our way into. We had your '72 Impala, brush-coated Sears Pine Green, some cheap ass CD player shoved into the dash, shimmed in place with old playing cards, and speakers from your sister's old stereo propped up in the rear deck. Man, that '72 'pala slid down the road like a cloud down a sledding hill...smooth, real smooth. The seats were better than any couch either of us had slept on, and the trunk held everything we owned in the world and a spare tire, to boot.

We were just out to take in some scenery, see some new places, meet some new faces, find whatever there was to be found, at least until the money ran out. We were pretty sure we could make it to the beaches at Cozumel and bake in the sun for a few days before we had to head back, but we weren't in any hurry. We were picking up hitchhikers, taking them as far as they wanted to go, as long as they could keep their end of the conversation up and they didn't stink too bad.

That one bastard, though...I know you said you had a bad feeling about him, but it wasn't until he got in the car that I really picked up what you were talking about. He just looked...wrong. Like he didn't fit, walking shoeless down the side of the highway, holding that expensive looking bag like it was his child or something. Guys with clothes like that don't walk, anywhere, yet here he was, sliding into the backseat like we was a New York taxicab come to take him to the airport or some shit.

Well, you being your usual, cheerful self, you tried making good of a weird situation, tried chatting the fool up...but he wasn't having any of it. Just sat there, clutching that bag, not talking to either one of us. Well, fuck him, we figured, we'd mind our own damned business and be rid of him as soon as we could.

When we stopped for lunch, he wouldn't get out of the car, just elected to sit there and wait for us to come back. He must have figured we were planning to ditch him, leave him sitting there while we took off, because nothing could talk him out of that back seat.

When we got back on the road, I took over the wheel, and I had a mean headache creeping in on me; must have been all those beers I'd had for breakfast, but I was out of patience by then at any rate and I was determined to get a peep out of him. I tried asking him what was in the bag, kinda joking like, seeing as how he clutched it so tightly, but he wouldn't budge. He started getting angry, though, his whole face turning red, and he finally screamed it was "none of your fucking business what's in this bag" and that is when I kinda lost it. I didn't really mean to take my eyes off the road that long, but when I turned around to confront him he made for that bag like he had a gun or something in it.

It was a good thing you were paying attention, because you pinned his arm and kept him from pulling out whatever it was he was reaching for, right as I looked back at the road...just in time to swerve back in our lane and miss that truck coming the other way. I'd overcorrected, though, and started spinning off into the gravel on the shoulder...I was jerking the wheel pretty hard, trying to get us back on solid pavement, and out of the corner of my eye I saw his door open and him go rolling out, down the embankment and to the bottom of wherever that slope ended.

I couldn't believe you'd managed to hang on to that bag, somehow, in all that swerving and slamming back and forth, but there it was, sitting in your lap. It was ours, now, and it was going to Mexico with us! Man, did we ever have a blast down there.

Do you still have that tattoo?

Re: Impalas, margaritas and senoritas...

[mdg1.livejournal.com]

No, I sold him to this smooth operator with a fetish for white suits.

Going native

[jackolantern.livejournal.com]

I looked up at the sky and screamed.

What should have been the moon was almost absurdly larger, an enormous red tumor that hung in the sky, seeming to grow larger, closer with every split-second, as if it were going to fall out of the sky itself and crush us. The air was fetid, disturbingly musky, the odor of a stranger's sweaty crotch whose gender isn't immediately apparent. And the worst part of it? I wasn't actually screaming as I think of it--it was a high-pitched screeching, because some parts of my mouth were missing, and other parts that shouldn't have been there, were. Gradually, I became aware that I was making these sort of grating whistling noises through something that seemed like a... beak, and that it was located around where I thought of as my crotch. I raised a hand to cover my eyes--rub them, perhaps, to rouse myself from the vestiges of a particularly horrible nightmare--and stared blearily at a tentacle. I was aware of more of these ghastly appendages out of the corner of my eye--more than eight, I think--but I concentrated on the closest, trying to will it into a more familiar shape; and, ever so slowly, it seemed to reluctantly flow into the shape of... a hand? Even with too few fingers, I struggled to assert my will over this loathesome flesh, and then--

--I felt contact, and whirled around to see--YOU! You reached out to me, and although your form was a repellant mirror of mine, still I longed for your contact--your slimy flesh sliding along mine felt... good, and as I struggled to make intelligible sounds with the clicking and whistling beak, I felt my surroundings dissolve... and resolve themselves into...

... a hospital room, in which my more familiar human limbs were restrained by padded straps; and there you were--my oldest, childhood friend, with warm, sympathetic eyes. You said, "The nightmare... again?"

"Yes", I murmured, "but stronger." I briefly strained against the straps. "I guess I went into the nuthouse this time, huh?"

You nodded. "It was hard to convince the admitting shrink not to have your brain looked at directly. It was the same doctor as before, and he thinks that you've got some sort of organic syndrome going--he wanted an EEG, MRI, the works. I'm thinking that maybe we should get you out of the city."

"Further than that, I hope." I pulled against the restraints again, and gave you a meaningful look. You sighed, and undid the straps. I rubbed my wrists. "It must have taken some doing for you to get in to see me, huh?"

You sighed. "You have no idea."

I murmured, "Well, frankly, I don't know how much more of this I can take."

You gazed at me for a while, then said, "Well, why don't you get that thing out of you for a while?"

I looked at you. "That's impossible. I mean, I don't know if I can get it back in all the way, the right way."

You laughed. "Not the whole thing, silly, just the top part." You rapped your knuckles on my skull.

I thought about it for a little bit, then put my index and middle fingers into the corners of my mouth, and pulled. There was a little bit of resistance, but only a little. My lips stretched over my teeth, caught on something, then kept stretching: over my chin on the bottom, and the top lip went over the nasal cavity, then past the now-empty eye sockets and over the top of the skull. I let the flesh flop over the back of my skull like a pink sweatshirt hood.

"All better?", you asked.

I extended my eyes on their stalks around the pallid skull. "What do you think?", my voice clacked and whistled, a little muffled by my jeans.

You laughed and said, "You know, sometime we should think about going to some remote island and getting these horrible endoskeletons out of us completely, with enough time to get them back in before we have to resume our posts."

I hesitated a little. "But, if we get back to our real forms..."

You looked at me. "Yes?"

I think I actually blushed. "Well... if I don't have this irritating thing to distract me... and neither did you... I don't know if I could keep from... well, don't be embarrassed, but.. you know... spawning."

You winked. "Well, then... we wouldn't have to pack a lunch that day, would we?"