The Jiminy part 12

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.

The Jiminy part 11

Dead. I’m dead. No more work. No more beer nights. No waking up with Kimm….“Kimmy!” He looked at the wall from the floor, his face an agonized mask of loss. “Kimmy’s okay, right?” ‘She will be. Right now she is dealing with your death, and all the paperwork that you left for her,’ the wall printed in tall, light grey letters. “Can I see her?” Please, just let me see her so I know she’s okay. She stood by me when I needed it, and I just took it for granted. I am so sorry Kimmy. ‘You may not. You’re dead. She’s alive. She has a life to build over. You have a job to get to, Jiminy,’ the wall replied in soft, fuzzy looking blue letters.

Travis started to protest, but the feeling of the grey started to ripple along his skin, or whatever he thought of as his skin. The clammy sensation had him bolting to his feet, choking back a terrified scream.’I think you’ve wasted enough time, Jiminy. Get up on the platform and I will run you through the basics of your job for the boss.’ The mysterious printer, (Not sign. Travis he finally decided it was some guy on a computer controlling the screens, like that old movie with the man behind the curtain.)

In truth, he was kind of shocked that he was so calm after finding out he was dead and Kimmy was in pain from his dying. I still feel things, but it’s like it doesn’t feel real. Kimmy’s there, not here, I’m dead, and it’s like another day at the job. Am I losing it? It doesn’t make sense. Why am I not crying more over Kimmy. She needs me and I’d be frantic to see her. But now all I feel is regret, and a little sadness, but it’s fuzzy, like it ain’t real. And now I gotta go see a new boss, a girl boss? I’d be pitching a screaming fit I think if I was still alive. This all seems so distant.

Travis gave a resigned shrug and looked at the raised center of the room. “I go there, right. Fine.” he stepped onto the platform and put his hands around the ski-pole things and braced himself. Nothing happened. “Do I gotta turn it on?” ‘Wait for it,’ came the answer in a mischievous sky-blue lettering with a pink background. Okay, now that just sounded weird. Is this a practical joke or something? ‘Or something’ came the written reply slowly across the grey wall in tall green letters.

The Jiminy part 10

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 Jiminy part 9

Once he got some overflow into the red-black gunk, he flipped the switch again, unplugged the body, and pushed it to a corner of the room, then trundled Travis’s body to the machine. Travis started feeling sick as he watched his nude body treated like so much dead meat. The embalmer picked up the X-acto knife and pushed Travis’ legs open. He seemed to mumble something and laughed, then cut deep into both femoral arteries in the upper thigh. Travis felt a twinge of sympathetic pain in his legs as the man sneered down at his lifeless body and stabbed the de-sanguinators deep into the open wounds. The man finally turned to face Travis, and he stared back at the familiar sneer. Harry Deeney. Travis had known Harry since primary school, and neither of them liked each other at all. Harry and Travis were the two biggest kids in primary, and Harry started pushing Travis around and in general bullying him. Harry had the advantage in mass, so he invariably won the fights when Travis tried to fight back.

Travis had a growth spurt in middle school and Harry went from being the bully to the bullied. Travis wasted no opportunity. He’d gotten sick of being bullied and it felt so good to put it to Harry. He’d pushed Harry the same way he’d been pushed. It felt so good, being on top that he’d started pushing others around too. It was fun, and big as he was, it was easy. Then, when he felt he had the world by the short hairs, he blew out his knee in the last game of the season. The college scouts that had come to see him play left without a word, and he was left, another casualty of fortune. He’d gotten to asking for the pain pills after the surgery to repair it, and started washing down the pills with beer, and later, hard liquor when the pain got really bad.

He’d gone through the next year in a haze of alcohol and pain medication. He felt drained, and surrounded by a soft fuzz that dulled every sense. Kimmy found him then. She was tending bar at the ‘Lazy Horse’ bar across from the truck stop out west. He was a frequent customer, and they’d started talking. Talk in the bar led to talk outside the bar, and to talk at home, and to other, ‘adult’ things. It was Kim that told him to quit the pills. She didn’t mind if he drank, but the drugs were out if he wanted her to stick around. She was three months pregnant when they married, and a month later, she lost the baby, they both started drinking hard.

Travis hit the bottle so hard it scared Kimmy. He passed out one night and she called the Goldsboro Rescue Squad. Her instincts were correct, and Travis barely pulled through alcohol poisoning. That seemed to give him a wake up call, as he got off the bottle and was sober until he started working for Hillaney Air Conditioning. The company built air conditioners, and Travis was desperate to get back on his feet and take care of Kimmy. The first six months were okay, but then a new manager, Mr. Robert Zillis, was hired.

The Jiminy part 8

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.

The Jiminy part 7

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?

The Jiminy part 6

That was me? Travis tried to deny it, to convince himself that it was just a dream, but something in him remembered the slip, and the fall catching his head full force as he lunged forward drunkenly to avoid a fall. The stumble turned into a full dive and his head hit so hard he saw flashes. He remembered standing up, and seeing Kimmy’s face as her eyes opened wide and her hands covered her mouth just before it all went dark again. He dimly remembered falling a second time. “That…was me?” He didn’t want to believe it. ‘Sadly, yes, that is you. That’s your last memory.’ The sign seemed brusque, impatient. ‘Now, are you convinced? If not, you can still jump out the window.’ Travis shivered, and stayed on the floor, looking down at his rotund figure in red, satin pants. “What is this place?” ‘This is, for you, your new place, Jiminy,’ the sign spelled impatiently. ‘This will be your home for a long while.’ “What?” The words didn’t make sense to Travis.

I’m stuck here? In this big bedroom where a word would conjure clothes out of thin air like a dream, and a stupid sign that disses me every chance it gets. ‘I heard that,’ the sign scrolled irritably. ‘You’re not stuck in the room. Your office is right through the doors below me.’ the sing spelled out helpfully, then added a downward pointing arrow to emphasize the doors with the odd silver scroll work on them. “I have an office?” ‘Yes, an office. Why don’t you go see where you’re going to work from now on.’ The writing had that ‘I know something you don’t ‘ vibe again. If it’s another thing like … me in that ambulance, maybe I don’t want to go look. It might be one of those creepy haunted house surprise things that scared the crap out of Kimmy when we went back in high school.

Travis stayed put, still naked on the blue-green marble floor. ‘It’s not a jump out and scare you thing’, the sign printed slowly. It actually seemed to be trying to act sympathetic. Yeah right, be my buddy until you can push me into the scare. Nuh-uh. Not this old boy. I’ve seen that, well, done that a few times and I know how it works. ‘Sure you do. I promise, it is not a jump out and scare thing.’ The sign displayed in soft lettering. Really, promise huh? “I got to have clothes first. How about givin’ me my work clothes?” There was a swirl of air, and he felt just like always.

The pants fit like he remembered. The coarse threads scratched a little, and the shirt was a little loose since he’d lost some weight, but they were HIS clothes, and he took a moment in the small triumph of his dream control. ‘It’s not a dr…oh why bother, you won’t believe anything until you face it head on.’ The sign was back to the irritable, exasperated printing as the sentences flashed in sharp lettering across its face. Travis patted the clothes to make certain they were his, then did it again just to be certain. He’d had a few days when he’d been so hung over that it took a half-hour just to make sense of which way to put the clothes on and get to work. I wonder if this is the DT’s and I’m hallucinating drunk. That could be why I ain’t in control. The sign printed ‘……………..’ as if giving up trying to explain or convince Travis of the error of his ways.

The Jiminy part 5

‘How about jumping out the window?’ the sign spelled out in green letters. The way the letters appeared had Travis wondering what the sign was up to now. “You jump out the window first, then I’ll try it, ya darn idjit.” Hah, now if it’s a dream it’ll go sailing though those curtains. ‘I can’t, I’m just a sign.’ it spelled out in white once more. “Oh come on, it’s my dream, you’re supposed to do what I wantcha to.” He pointed at the window, a stern look on his face. “Go on, jump.” The sign flickered an annoying set of colors, then scrolled amongst them, ‘I already told you I can’t. For one, I’m a sign, and for two, this isn’t a dream.’ “The hell it isn’t. I ain’t at home, I ain’t in my reg’lar clothes, and I ain’t had a beer. Ain’t no way this isn’t a dream! I am gonna wake up, get a shower and get dressed for work. I gotta shift to pull. I ain’t wastin’ no more time with a stupid dream!” He crossed his arms stubbornly and dared the sign to do something.

It did, but not what he expected. It started scrolling images. They started blurry, but as Travis concentrated, then became clearer. There was a light, but it seemed distant. There were three men in dark blue jumpsuits, a white and red patch on the left bicep. It was a green cross inside a gold circle with the letters ‘Goldsboro’ over the top of the cross, and ‘Rescue Squad’ on the bottom. Two men were kneeling in his kitchen next to him. There was vomit on the tan linoleum floor near his head, and a puddle of bloo under it. He could see his wife, Kimmy, talking to a police officer and pointing at a chunk of the white formica counter lying next to his head. Travis winced internally as he felt the impact when he’d slipped after throwing up. Wait, slipped? What the hell? His mind ran away on him as he watched the Rescue Squad members wrap his head with gauze, then slide a flat, yellow board with holes for handles on the sides under him. Three officers moved next to the three medical techs, then bent over, slowly lifting him up.

Then they shuffled out of his kitchen, and into the cold December night. The WHite van with the red stripe had it’s lights flashing next to the boxy white ambulance. Headlights illuminated the blue striping on the sides, and the tan police cruisers just beyond it. He watched as one Med Tech unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it open. He grabbed the stethoscope from around his neck, then stuck the disc to his chest. The tech was a young kid with a thin face, and leaned body. His wisp of a beard made him look like one of those skateboarding punks that were over at the park on the weekends. The tech raised his hand and shouted at the others, while making made a circling motion. The team jumped into action, pushing him in the back with his shirt still open. The ambulance spun it’s rear wheel in the dirt then dug in and the ambulance rolled away, red lights flashing. He saw it go down Drumhill Street, and turn west onto 119th avenue, and out of sight.

The Jiminy – part 4

“OW! Miserable, moth**8&%@& **&^)()(**!!.” He was cut off in pained mid-rant when the room shifted again throwing him away from the wall and rolling him back across the floor and halfway to the bed. What is going on?! Did that freaking sign have something to do with all this?! He looked over to the sign, the bottom edge lit up and the bluish light moved up and down looking like two hills growing then receding. It reminded Travis of a shrug somehow. ‘I had nothing to do with it, Jiminy.’ “Jiminy?” Was this some kind of insult or put down? The only Jiminy that came to mind was the little cricket in that animated movie about some wooden puppet. ‘Got it in one’, the sign scrolled. Travis swore that somehow it had a smug edge to the letters.

A slight breeze reminded him he was still butt-naked. “How the heck do I get some clothes around here?!”

‘I told you, ask for them’, the sign replied with a smug flourish of letters. “Okay genius, how do I ask for them?” Travis thought the sign suddenly looked, well, impatient. ‘You ask by saying what you want.’ The sign scrolled the letters very, very slow, and big, covering the whole height of it top to bottom. It felt like it was trying to yell louder and slower, which made Travis more frustrated. ‘Remember the thong bikini.’

That shut Travis up, and he shifted to sit cross legged in the middle of the bright blue-green marble floor. “What I want, huh?” Travis stared at the sign, daring it to print something. The sign obliged, with ‘Exactly’ scrolling across it’s face with what Travis felt was smug satisfaction. He hated smug satisfaction in people, they were always so stuck on themselves. “Okay, I want a set of silk pants and a Hugh Hefner smoking jacket.” His naked rear suddenly felt a sinfully smooth cloth against it, as a comfortable, baby-soft coat settled around him out of thin air. He looked at his now-covered arms. “Burgundy.” ‘Yes, a satin burgundy smoking jacket just like Hugh Hefner’, the sign scrolled with a bored flourish of letters.

Travis glowered and took off the jacket. It his dream, obviously, how else could you explain Hugh Hefner’s smoking jacket? ‘It’s not a dream’, the sign scrolled with a series of contemptuous dots at the end of the letters. Travis started doing a slow burn. If it was his dream, he darn well could get what he wanted, and what he wanted was his regular pair of Dickies slacks, and his blue button-down shirt, his black belt with the Budweiser logo on it, and his Red Wing steel-toed boots. What he really wanted, was to wake up. He’d heard you could wake yourself out of dream by forcing yourself awake. Well, supposedly you could by hurting yourself, but he’d already bit his fingers and didn’t wake up, so what to try next?

The Jiminy Part 3

The sign scrolled cheekily, ‘Get dressed and find out’. “How the hail am I supposed to do that?! Ain’t no clothes here!” ‘Ask for them’, the sign scrolled testily. “Ask for clothes, just like that. Well fine, I want some clothes!” Travis waited, then waited some more. ‘You have to ask for what kind, unless you want to wear a thong bikini?’, the sign scrolled with what seemed a wiggling smirk to Travis. “A thong bikini?” The words had just passed Travis’ lips when the was a sudden swirling rush of air around him. He blinked as the sheets swirled up then settled back down, sliding past the twin white triangles of cloth that now rested on his chest. His nether regions had a sudden funny rubbing feeling. He looked down at the unfamiliar sensation. His eyes went as wide as dinner plates when he saw what was now in place over his chest. Travis screamed and quickly thrashed out of the top and bottom, his face pale and sweating. Oh my gawd, what the hell just happened? That was like some stupid comedy trick, only it ain’t funny! How did they…it…get that on me without noticing?

Suspicious, Travis looked back over at the sign over the door. I swear, it ain’t doing nothing, but I get the feeling that it’d be whistling and smiling like a damn cat that ate a canary. The longer he looked, the more the notion seemed to be fact. “You set me up”, he growled furiously. The sign somehow continued to act innocent, and innocently scrolled, ‘Who, me? How could I set you up? I’m just a sign.’ Travis believed that not for a second. It was a dream, dammit! It was his dream and he should be in charge. ‘You’re not in charge,’ the sign printed slowly, that smug know-it-all attitude oozing from it once more. That really chapped Travis’ ass. If it was a person, I’d smack it up one side and down the other and really show it whose boss. This is a dream! Any moment I’ll wake up and this stupid room will be gone and I won’t have to remember anything, especially that… Travis squeezed his eyes shut hard and compressed his lips into a thin line. He would not mention what just happened a few moments ago, to anyone, especially his best friend Harvey. I’d never hear the end of it, and he’d tell everyone else, and no one would ever let it go.

‘You mean your ex-best friend?’, scrolled the sign. Travis wasn’t certain but the room seemed to suddenly grow a little colder. He pulled up the sheets then lay back down, a cold sweat breaking out on him. ‘Aren’t you going to ask?’, printed the sign slowly. Travis didn’t answer, he had shut his eyes attempting to will himself to wake up and end this strange dream. He’d just started to relax when the whole room shook like an earthquake. The bed was stuck to the floor somehow and never slid or shifted, but the same couldn’t be said for Travis. The sudden tilt to the right nearly spilled him out the side, an the tilt forward threw him up and off the bed like a catapault. He landed on the floor and skidded face-first into the far wall with a loud thud.