Messy Manifesto

I walk into a mostly empty parking lot in front of a doctors’ office, where some young kids are playing. I see a severed head lying on the ground. There is a short debate between the kids and myself over whether or not the head is real, when I see a vertebrae it’s official. I go into the doctor’s office where my ex is the receptionist. “I didn’t intend to approach you unawares like this, but there is a severed head in your parking lot,” I tell him. “How have you been?” he asks me. The police get involved.

Cut to some school, not any school I’ve been to. There’s thousands of people on the bleachers outside, and we’re waiting to be served lunch in the cafeteria. Out of the thousands of people my name is called first.  Everyone watches me walk down through the empty playing field and go inside, where a sumptuous buffet awaits and I have first pick. I pass up the salad and sandwiches and go straight to the good stuff: live shrimps swimming in a tank. As I’m fishing one out, more people are lining up to eat and someone has taken my plate. “Someone has taken my plate!” I keep yelling. By the time I get a new plate (much smaller than the first one), there isn’t much food left, and I end up eating salad dressing.

All this time I’m aware of a device in my mouth that looks a bit like a hearing aid, and I have to take it out to eat my food. A bald, grinning man in line that I don’t recognize offers to hold it for me until I’m finished, so I poke a small hole in his head with a knife and pop the device inside. I also stuff some tissue in there. He’s still grinning  as I go off to eat my dressing with my friends, a group of people I also don’t recognize. When I’m done  I have a hard time finding him; the bald, grinning man in the yellow shirt.  My father helps me look for him, and insists I take the man (who I discover is named Brian) to the school nurse, as I’ve surely injured him.

We find Brian (still grinning) and take him to the nurse, who is bored and foreign. She sneers at the pulsing bump on Brian’s head (which has healed shut) and proclaims, “What made you do this? This man needs a doctor!”, to which Brian starts to sob and shake.  I pull at the bit of tissue sticking out of the bump & gross pus comes out.  I’m trying to soothe him in my lap, holding him and petting his head saying “thank you Brian, thank you, I’m sorry”, as he cries and curses me and the wound on his head looks infected.  I wake up feeling ashamed.