Bliss at the Abyss

Should a physician ever tell me I’ve only months left to live, I’m heading straight for the nearest City Council meeting - for there, time stands still. Take this morning, for instance. It was only thirty minutes or so, but the time I spent trapped in the innermost chamber of my fair burg’s municipal complex felt like something akin to waterboarding. Luckily, I had my imagination there to protect me. That and a well-honed ability to defocus my mind’s until I’m damn near catatonic was all I had to fend off the effects of a backwards traveling second hand. Yes, in the time it took the assembled incumbents to decide what kind of screws to use on the city’s new lampposts, I conjured whole operas out of tabletop dust motes, achieved Enlightenment Level 3 on the yoga scale and at one point, left my body altogether.

What else could I do? My reporter for the day was in the corner pretending to take notes, I already had a dozen shots committed to disc and that creepy dude from the Free Weekly was looking’ at me funny. It was either float up there by the ceiling tiles in some transcendental state or attempt a flying dropkick that would no doubt land me in some manner of incarceration. Thus, I chose to chill, drilling holes in the highly-buffed mahogany tabletop with my eyes while willing my leg not to twitch too much and upset the sheriff’s deputy wedge there in the corner. Yeah, that one - the one mumbling all of Charleton Heston’s lines from Planet of the Apes. You think I’m dangerous. That cat’s got most of a Big Gulp on board and more than a few bullets in his right breast pocket. Drop anything heavier than a briefcase in here and he’ll pop up like that fat kid from Full Metal Jacket.

I’ll be hiding under the Mayor should the SWAT team ask about me.