34.0simulation.asec
Location Unknown
XYLER DASCHUND
The blowpipe man was insipid in his attack. Molly screamed to the side of the river and then jumped in, bubbles rising to the top and steam crawling to the night sky. Suddenly I felt an expansion in my mind. It was a click that widened the horizons - my capabilities to generate. This blowpipe man was another figment of my imagination - an imaginary supervillain I had created in my middle school years with the old pen and paper and some coloured pencils I had found under the desk - and yet I couldn't control him or make him disappear.
It had taken reams of paper back when I was living in a brownstone with my parents, to perfect the blowpipe man.
Adding extra gear and armour until I realised he wasn't strong enough to carry and wear everything. So I gave him some frayed rope around his waist and dense body paint to make him a lightweight fighter with ranged offence.
I spent so much time on it, inspiring my group of friends to draw their ideas and battle them against my creation. We became the beatniks of our generation, with such a strange shared hobby to spend our treehouse time on. It later helped me with character design when developing games.
The expansion of my mind allowed me the ability to turn into a dragon again.
During the development of Lucid, I remember staying up all night to mirror the feel of the dragon.
I wanted players to really immerse themselves through what I felt each time I transformed into the mythical beast. The heavy steps, the vibration of the roar and fire, the weight of the wings, the distorted perspective from up high.
Now, the playable was completed. I put that figurative VR headset back on and I felt myself grow bigger, the ground trembling underneath my enormous clawed feet. The blowpipe man looked up at me with a blank face and walked back into the hut with the banquet inside.
I peeped my head into the hut, jutting my long neck out. A portcullis at the entrance of the hut fell down onto my nape.
It was hefty and pointy at the ends, pricking daggers into the skin. I breathed out bursts of fire but the blowpipe man was hiding behind the table, loading a dart inside his weapon.
The portcullis was pliant with enough power from my craning head upwards, ripping the roof off as well. Straw fell to the earth in thin bales. Some bales caught fire from the burning table of food. It lit the night, wavering in intensity across the dirt. The blowpipe man backed away from the table and blew a dart straight into my massive jugular.
I felt dizzy instantaneously and fell on top of the burning table and the blowpipe man...
The egg yolk sun awaited entrance into my eyes. The sight was still in the clutches of the sudden glue. I had no dreams I wanted to rub away. No visions in sleep that came and went in waves. My dreams were out here, in the real world where dreams shouldn't be real.
Someone applied a wet leaf on my human forehead. It was Molly with rags wrapped around her head and covering her scorched ear. The rags were made from her shirt sleeves.
She was missing clumps of hair around her ear. Only one side of her hair fell long over her face.
There were shadows around her eyes from not sleeping and having to tolerate the pain of her melted hearing organ. She was swirling leaves in a clay bowl of water.
"Is he dead?" I asked.
"Yes," she replied. "You flattened him."
"Does it hurt? The ear?" She slapped another leaf on my head. Cool water ran down my hair. I had lost my cap. The hut was destroyed and the table inside was a charred mess. But there was no sign of the blowpipe man's body. He had faded away, just like that Neo-Nazi.
"What do you think?" I heard faint sounds of a woman moaning in one of the huts at the end of the dirt track. Must have been the love hut with all the flowers around it.
"What is that?" I asked. Molly didn't take her eyes off the bowl of water and the spinning leaves inside.
"Two people of opposite genders are fornicating inside that hut."
"Fornicating? What do you mean?"
"Means they're not married and they're having intercourse. I met them before you woke up. They're rather cloying."
"But who are they?"
"I don't know. Maybe you know. They're your people." I felt at the small holes in the back of my neck where the portcullis had landed and the front where the dart had stuck into. "Probably hit you with a sleeping dart," Molly said. "Who knew it could bring down dragons?"
"Who knew? I knew! I created him!"
"Who knew other than you. Stop being such a curmudgeon or I'll stop helping you."
"Huh. I only know one instance in which that word was used. It was a long time ago."
"What word?"
"Cur-mud-ji-un."
"When?"
"I was a wee boy with my pals, and we went to this comic book bodega near my house after school. It was where we went every day after school because we were so taut from learning, you see. The old man who sold the comic books wanted us to pay before we even opened them. One of my smartass buddies called him a curmudgeon under his breath after paying for a graphic novel. The old man must have heard him and understood the meaning of that word, because I sure didn't. He took back that comic book and we were banned from the shop. My friend who had gotten us into trouble was too afraid to explain the meaning of that word to any of us. I went home and I looked through every dictionary in the house, but I couldn't find the meaning. I was too afraid to set foot into that bodega and ask the old man as well. I still don't know the meaning of that word. What does it mean?"
"It just means a bad-tempered person, especially an old one."
"You calling me old?"
"No, I'm calling you bad-tempered."
"I was gonna say. You're much older than me." I grabbed her hand away from the bowl, splashing water on myself. "Let us leave this place. It has caused too much suffering."
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