Glitches

Glitches - Chapter 4

I was still a glitching juvenile when I had my first square off.  What’s funny is that I didn’t even know what was happening until it was already too late.  And by the time I realized I had barely enough time to save my life.

Auntie’s formal dinning room table had to be something like 40 feet long.  When I first saw it a year before I couldn’t imagine how that behemoth could possibly be used for anything that resembles anything human.  It was something more accustomed to being in the hall of the gods not in rooms manifested by people.  And yet, here we were.  Almost fifty of us, buffed and shined to a polish that was almost unreal.  And even still there was enough room for another 10 or 15 more around this gigantic table.  

And the silverware.  Heavens almighty.  Just the spoons alone would have paid for a masters degree.  I didn’t even know what half of them were for.  I planned on watching Yolanda religiously for the queues on the order and usage that she was sure to give me without fail.  Right now, deep underneath her smiling veneer, she was scared witless I’d do something incredibly stupid in front of God and everyone.  It was obvious.  She’d been fussing about this yearly fund raiser for so long I wondered if it wasn’t wiser for me to over-glitch myself into a puking mess instead of attending.  But she made it clear that if I was planning on not attending I should be missing my head.  Anything less would have been a faux pas of enormous proportions.

The entire group was standing behind their chairs before sitting down.  How did everyone know to do this?  I was so confused.  I wasn’t even aware where half of these rituals even came from.  Was there a book somewhere?  A manual?  The rules of dress.  The rules of conversation.  The rules for etiquette.  Just piles and piles of rules. It made my head swim really. 

And that was when I felt a weird glitch pull and then a push.  I had never been on the receiving end of glitch before so I was more than a little bit confused. I guess my powers of perception were increasing as I even immediately knew the source of time shift.  Immediately one individual glowed in my mind like a branding iron.  

He was blonde.  Not like sandy brown blonde.  More like albino beach blonde, blonde.  And his hair was dishelved in a sort of ‘I know it’s a mess, I meant to do that’ sort of a way.  But the thing that caught me completely off guard was his suit and his cravat.  He wore the most outlandishly bizarre looking cravat and handkerchief combo I’d ever seen.  Not that I’d seen many.  My entire corpus of knowledge in this space had occurred in the past month planning for this fundraiser.  The cravat on this fellow seemed to have been plugged in it was so puffed up.  And it was polka-dotted of all things.  Navy and orange. But somehow the oaf pulled it off.  I had to give him that.

I whispered over to Yolanda and tried to get her attention as we stood behind our chairs and waited for some as yet unknown clue.  “Psssst.  Yolanda?  Who’s the dandy in the polka dot cravat??”  

She looked at me with one steely-eyed glance and then looked away.  I guess I was on my own trying to figure this guy out.  

And then time slowed.  It didn’t stop completely because I saw him coming.  Somehow I was able to use my own powers to watch him as he sauntered my direction. Everyone else was completely concrete in their postures – he was the only one moving.  Even I was locked the way I was standing behind my chair when the glitch started… save for my eyes.  

It actually makes me shutter thinking back to this first attack.  I knew so very little about this world and the possibilities, it almost didn’t seem fair.  Now that I think about it, I would never in a million years consider attacking a juvenile today.  Wouldn’t even consider it.  But there were other forces at work in my experience and so I think I understand why he came.  But it doesn’t make it an easier lesson to learn at the time.  And it was a lesson that almost ended my life.