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.

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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?"