Travis felt more than heard the answer. “No, I ain’t getting you any J, or nothin’.” He could feel her fear, and her rapidly failing determination. She wanted to stay out of the drug trade. She didn’t want to be here at all. She was scared. The girl looked big enough to hurt her, and the other two behind her, bookend twins if Travis was right, looked as if they’d done time. Their eyes were, to him, empty of any emotion. Their faces didn’t twitch even a little when they smiled. The big woman looked hard at the ‘boss’, her smile thinning as her eyes hardened.

The two behind the big girl caught the change and leaned forward almost imperceptibly, like attack dogs straining at the leash. “That was the wrong answer, meat. TC, Mar, make her understand ‘no’.”

The girls stepped forward past the big girl, and moved towards Travis’ point of view. Oh man, we’re gonna get our ass beat. Okay, can we run, no I’m too f…can she run? No, not here. There’s no place to go, we gotta fight. How would I handle this? Fake a charge at one, then hit the other one. If they’re mean as they look, a hard kick to the knee’d be best. As he watched, the two closed in. “Come on girl, step at the one on the right, then kick the knee of the one on the left.” He’d hoped that she’d listen. I don’t know how this works, but the first time it was like she heard me. The perspective changed as his view lunged at the right girl, who took a step to the side. The screen whirled as the view turned at the other girl. The view jumped as a foot lashed out from the low corner of the screen and caught the girl on the side of the knee, dropping her. The view started to turn again when the screen rocked sideways and the whole room lurched.

Travis hung on to the poles for dear life as both he and the screen toppled sideways. the view showed dry earth on the left side as a foot at the end of an orange leg roared into view then passed low. The room lurched again. The foot retreated, then came forward again, and again, and again. A second foot joined the first, then a larger, third foot. There was a fuzzy screaming sound and women in blue jackets, holding spray cans that were directed at the girls looming over her. The lurching was constant as the blue pushed the orange-clothed girls away. The screen faded as one of the corrections officers kneeled close in the screen.

‘That didn’t go like you thought, did it?’ scrolled in bright blue letters across the now grey screen.

“I was trying to get out of it. You heard her. She didn’t want to have anything to do with smuggling marijuana into those bitches!”

The sky was cloudless and blue. The open yard stretched away some distance before grey walls, with row upon row of barbed wire, loomed up. To Travis, the walls looked twice a person’s height without the barbed wire. This place ain’t one that lets you leave, it’s a prison. He looked around slowly. The screen turned with him, showing all sorts of young women in shapeless orange or grey shirts and pants that reminded Travis of hospital scrubs. There were no shoes or socks for anyone, just a pull-on slipper. If this is a prison, why such a nice room and a t-shirt sleeper? His thoughts were interrupted as, from his perspective, a taller dark skinned woman approached.

She was about a head taller, travis estimated, and likely heavier than him. She was about as wide as she was tall, hair braided flat in cornrows along her skull. The orange jumpsuit barely seemed to fit as she got closer. Travis felt nervous at her hard-eyed approach. The sneer on her lips, and on the two smaller girls behind her had Travis suddenly very concerned. I wouldn’t want to take her on at all, she must weigh as much as a beer truck. He shook his head. Her. I’m in her. I’m just a rider.

‘You’re a Jiminy, Juminy.’ Suddenly, Travis, had had enough. All the confusion, anguish, and anger he’d been holding in since learning he’d died came roaring out. He turned around and screamed at the blank wall.

“Listen you lousy excuse for a television. I ain’t no Jiminy! I ain’t no cracker, or whitebread, or anything! So quit calling me that! I don’t even know what that means!” Everything seemed to stop, and Travis clenched his hands and jutted his head forward aggressively. “Come on, you got a bone to pick, asshat, bring it! I’ll shove your teeth so far down your throat, you’ll have to sit on something to eat it!” The silence was so complete that not even an echo from his tirade came back to him. It was like sound was just swallowed up. Travis’ anger passed slowly as the moment stretched to a minute, then two. It was a feeling like he was under a microscope, being totally laid bare, inside and out. He rubbed his arms, feeling chilled.

‘Okay, maybe that wasn’t a good choice. but seriously, you’ve never seen Pinocchio?’ The words scrolled in pink and yellow across the rounded wall. Travis thought he could feel a sense of amazement, and a little chagrin. How does the guy do that? I’ve read a few books and no one could make me feel words like this guy. ‘That’s because it’s not writing, exactly. You feel it like I was speaking to you.’ Travis thought about it for a moment.

“Really. So why the explanation now and not about,” he waved his hand irritably at the raised platform in the middle of the room, “all that.”

‘Ah, that. You see, any input on my part will influence how you act and react. Therefore, I can’t tell you. you have to figure it out and do the job, which by the way you’re not doing at the moment.’

Travis jaw clenched so hard he thought he might crush a molar. “I gotta fly blind in a place I don’t understand with a job no one can tell me about using a machine that no one will show me how to operate.”

‘That’s it in a nutshell.’ The letters spelled out on the wall in vivid yellow.

The view suddenly started jerking a little as the movement accelerated. the view leaped and hopped the counter, grabbing a plastic dispenser that had scratch and win tickets. This was smashed on the ground, the plastic shrapnel scattering far and wide as a slim hand in a black windbreaker scooped the tickets up and out of sight. The view spun and blurred, then sharpened as two figures with a heavy chain wrapped it around an ATM machine. The view spun back as cartons of cigarettes were grabbed and thrown towards the smashed door. The ATM suddenly disappeared, being dragged through the smashed door,and taking part of the frame with it on the way out. It appeared to ricochet off the cement posts in front of the door and was gone into the dark. Red lights flashed then turned left, followed by a shower of sparks. The view turned back again and two more cartons of cigarettes were ripped from storage behind the counter, and stuffed away into the windbreaker.

Then all action stopped. Bright lights flashed and the figure was backlit, the shadow had it’s hands on it’s head as a larger, and stockier figure moved in the background. The shadow shrunk and sharpened as it moved, then the other’s hands were pulled down, one at a time, and the view shook slightly as this happened. The view flashed forward to a courtroom made of green-gray linoleum floors, a raised floor with a metal desk with a thick wooden top, and brownish folding chairs all over the floor. There were six figures in orange jumpsuits, each with chains and a pair of officers flanking them. The view shifted up and there was moments of up and down motion, then the judge slapped the wooden mallet down. Fast forward again to ‘Dallas County Juvenile Detention’ in silver letters mounted on red brick. A fast forward once more to the room that the view started in, back at the exact moment the pullover tee-shirt nighty dropped onto the bed.

“So? What do I gotta do?” ‘……..’ sped across the screen. Travis felt like it was wiping a hand down a face, like he had no clue. Well, dammit, he didn’t have a clue. ‘After all this, you still haven’t got a clue, Jiminy?’ “Hell no, all I got is this weird ride through a screw-up’s life, and all this peepin’ on her doesn’t set well with me. Do I gotta watch her pee and take a shower too?” ‘No, you don’t.’ The view dimmed to the former flat grey wall. The wall stayed grey for a long time as Travis waited for an explanation. After what seemed like hours, the screen brightened. The scene in front of him wasn’t the bedroom any more.

Travis clamped his hands tight on the ski pole things as the room shifted. There was a sense of rolling over, and some kind of annoying pressure that rhythmically warbled along his skin. “The hell is that? Some kind of alarm?” ‘Got it in one, Jiminy. Are you certain you haven’t done this before?’ The lighthearted tone after all the agony of finding out about his death grated on Travis. It was kind of a minor thing, though as if the reaction was part of someone else’s life, or perhaps a memory of what he might have done, if he was still alive. Travis almost lost his grip on the poles as the lurching increased then the grey faded out as a new panorama presented itself. After the unrelenting grey, the bright light and colors came as a shock. There was a large, light blue box on the wall screen. It took a moment for Travis to realize he was looking at a low dresser. The white box on top of the dresser was an alarm. Its green numbers blinked off and on as the warbling sensation continued.

“Turn it off!” The shout was like an instinctive push against the sensation. to Travis surprise, a slim, brown arm reached out unsteadily and swatted clumsily at the alarm. He watched the fingers graze the alarm, half turning it, but not stopping the irritating sensation. There was another lurching sensation as the perspective changed. He was looking down now at the dresser. At the bottom of the screen’s display was a thin pink cloth laying atop a pair of tanned legs. The view shifted again as the screen narrowed focus to the alarm and slapped the top. The rhythmic pulse quit, and Travis breathed a sigh of relief. “So, now that happened, what’s next?” ‘You, Jiminy, get to figure that out on your own. Anything else would be coercion. It all has to be free choice.’ The letters were in black as they slid left to right across the view of a pink see-through nightie landing on a bed with white sheets and a pink blanket. Just past the low dresser was another bed, also with white sheets and a pink blanket. The lump under the covers moved slowly, then the sheets were pushed up and back.

The girl underneath had on a white knee length T-shirt with ‘I hate mornings’ written in block red letters, and a cup of coffee underneath. Her feet had rainbow socks on that were like neon colors next to her pale pink skin. a block object with a blinking green light was around her left ankle. What is that? Some kind of, oh yeah, I remember seeing that on a cop show, it’s an ankle bracelet with a tracker in it. the realization that the girl had one made Travis curious about his, her, it’s a her, not me, leg. ‘The boss has one too’ the screen scrolled in black block letters again. Great, so we’re in prison, or something like one. ‘Something like prison is a good guess’ came the blocky letters again. “So what are, uh, we, doing here?”

The sign waited for a moment before scrolling. ‘The best thing, now that you’re done freaking out, is to show you.’ The letters were rounded and green this time. Why does this feel like those shows when someone says, ‘hey it could be worse’, then it is. The screen greyed out, then cleared. A glass door appeared in the center of the view. His view enlarged as the girl approached the door, then a brick was thrown at the door. Glass cracked and spider-webbed, but didn’t fall, not until the brick was picked up and tossed again at the window, which shattered, the bits of glass falling to the pitted asphalt pavement. The room was dark as the view shifted inside. To the left, a counter with a cash register sat on top of a waist high counter that had a sign for lottery tickets on the front. The dim light from outside showed the top of the counter being yellow, with a red base.

Zillis remembered, and, held a grudge. He’d given Travis every rotten job that his position would allow him. He’d gotten Travis to start drinking again. Kimmy got upset, but Travis never drank at home, and was very conscious of his actions. Zillis was still his boss. Robert had tried to get him fired twice, but after Robert’s boss called him on a writeup, he settled for just making certain Travis got all the deadbeats and castoffs on his shift. No one worked, and those that didn’t got written up and fired. Travis needed the job too much. He hated it to his soul, but needed the money for Kim.

I wonder how Kimmy is? Harry stabbed the two tubes deep into the slashes, then spit on him as he turned on the machine. The blackish red sludge glopped into the tank as Harry turned to stare out the window. When the machine’s light flashed, he flipped the switch and pumped the embalming fluid into him. There was the faintest burning sensation on his skin as he watched this, and then the vision abruptly ended like a light being turned off. The suddenness of the change disoriented him, and Travis dropped to one knee, waiting for his head to clear. This gave him a good look at the inside of his thigh. A long, deep wound ran across the inside. Fear spiked through him as he recalled the vision. I can’t be dead. This is a dream! It’s a dream! I’m going to wake up and Kimmy will be there in bed with me. We’ll eat breakfast and I’ll go to work later! I’ve got to wake up!

‘You are awake, Travis.’ the wall spelled out in dark yellow-brown letters. ‘You died. You’re dead. Either get with the program or someone else will be picked as the Jiminy.’ The last part raised Travis hackles. “Oh yeah! I ain’t dead!” ‘Oh yes you are.’ There wasn’t a warning. The floor of the room disappeared, and he fell. He could feel chains begin to form on him, burning his skin and hooking deep into his body, and onto something more precious. A complete grey fog surrounded him. The sensation was disorienting. No up, no down, no reference of any kind, just a grey emptiness that seemed linked to the chains that got ever heavier and suffocating. It felt like clammy hands all over him. He tried to scream but the grey turned dark and swallowed him.

Just as suddenly, the sensation was gone, and he was back in the grey room, curled in a fetal ball on the floor. What the hell was that?! He didn’t want to think about it. Even as he asked the question, he knew with an absolute certainty what he’d just experienced, and was willing to do anything to avoid it. There was no way he’d ever go back there again. The reality crashed down on him like a breaking wave. he remained on his side, shivering, gasping for breath that didn’t come, and crying tears that never formed. The wall screen remained a deep greyish blue. It didn’t feel smarmy or laced with attitude any more. It felt watchful, concerned. “I…I’m really dead, aren’t I.” The wall flickered through a few dark colors of brown red and blue. ‘Yes, you are. You didn’t survive the trip to the hospital.’

The dome lightened as the room shifted and the disembodied voice grunted, sneezed and sighed. The first clear image was of an alarm clock. The time said Six thirty in tall orange letters, and the small letters ‘am’ were next to the bottom right of the zero. A slim hand appeared from the bottom of the view and slapped the alarm, then the light dimmed as it all went back to the dim grey. “What the hell was that?!” ‘That was the boss. She’s the one we work for’ the wall spelled out helpfully. “You have got to be kidding me.” ‘I am not kidding. This is not a dream. This is your new life, Jiminy.’ the sign printed in tight, blocky lettering. It felt like it had finally run out of patience. Travis knew he’d run out of patience with this stupid dream. He wanted to wake up! “Get me out of here! I got a real job waitin’! I got to be on time or I’m gonna get fired! Let me wake up!”

The images from before smashed through his mind like a runaway freight train. He saw them repeat endlessly, his falling, the emergency rescue squad, his being put in the back of the ambulance. Then new images flashed into his mind. He saw a back room with three bodies on metal gurneys. A man cam in with a white coat, a full mask, and latex gloves. He moved the first body on its gurney over to a machine that looked like an industrial-sized upright vacuum. The man slid the body in place, then locked the gurney wheels. He picked up a razor-knife from a small side-tray and pushed the man’s legs open. A couple of deft slashes and the man then grabbed two hoses with what looked like meat injectors on the tips and pushed them into the open wounds.

He turned on the machine which rumbled to life. He flipped a switch and blackish semi-coagulated stuff started plopping into the metal vacuum. The man’s body seemed to shrink a little as the stuff was sucked out of him. A second flip of the switch started a metal column labeled ‘Formaldehyde’. Travis watched the liquid in the column drop as the body was refilled.

Travis ignored the sign as he stood up, noting his feet were still bare. “Can I have my old Red Wing boots?” The breze tickled his toes and abruptly cut off as the shoes formed around his feet in an eyeblink. “Huh, that was slick. I think I’m getting the hang of this.” He looked sharply at the sign, expecting a snide comment to go traipsing across the sign, but for some reason, it remained black. Hah! Got you under control too. I must be sobering up. He shivered as he remembered watching himself being pushed aboard the ambulance, then he straightened his back and glared at the dark door with the weird silver inlay, and at the sign. Sober or not, it’s time to really wake up. I bet it’s been telling me to go through there so I wouldn’t go through there. Well guess what you old flatface, I’m going through them doors.

The sign offered no comment at all as Travis pushed hard on the door, which flew open and stopped just before hitting the wall. The other door followed suit and Travis was looking at a room he’d never call an office in a bazillion years. It looked more like something out of a bad black-and-white space movie. The room was an unrelieved dingy grey all over the floor, walls, and ceiling. The room swept in a smooth arc from the entrance to either side, then joined up again by Travis’ guess a good fifty yards away. This place was huge. The ceiling wasn’t one really. It was more a curve of the walls. The whole room looked like the top half of a globe. Hemisphere. I remember that from high school. Half a sphere. This room is a hemisphere. What the heck kind of office has a hemisphere design and no windows? And what is that contraption in the center, it looks like a raised floor with a microphone and some levers.

Stepping closer Travis saw it was indeed, just what it looked like. The center ten feet of the room was a raised circular floor, with an old-style diamond shaped microphone on a pole, and seven levers arranged in a circle along the ‘front’ half of the raised circle. There were two things near the microphone that looked like ski poles, with big cushiony handles at their tops. Light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, the grey on grey on grey walls, floor, and raised stage all were easy to see, but there was nothing contrasting to really focus on. Well, that thing was right, it ain’t now jump and scare, though it is really creepy looking. Letters in vibrant neon colors flashed from the base of the floor to two thirds up the wall and ceiling. ‘It is not creepy. I should know. I live here. Just like you do now.’

The sudden attack of color had Travis falling back onto his bum and backpedaling like a crab on all fours away from the center of the room. After a second, he pushed himself upright and turned towards the door. A blank curving wall stared back at him. “Where the hail is the door?!” Two sections of the wall opened towards him back into the bedroom, which had been cleaned up and the bed remade and turned down waiting for him. The whole room shifted again and faint words gargled like an explosion of sound. Travis jumped. ‘That is the boss. Time for you to meet her.’ “Her?” First this weird place, and now a lady boss? What kind of weird drunk dream am I having?