Disconnected Ramblings

Part 14: Dream of Many

(I don't remember writing this.)

I'm not alone here

Every seat is taken

But no one else is here

Everyone at the table is me

No one speaks

I eat in silence, drink our tea in forced ignorance

Finished, I push our seats out, gather our things

Walk out

Fail to rationalize, hope to forget

I thought it was just a dream.

I walk out the door of the quantum dining room, and I'm still not alone.

That silence of refusal to acknowledge reality carries through. In my bed now, I'm surrounded by... me.

None of them look like me, though, not this time. They're hardly so plain. So thin, so... careless with themselves.

I try to rub my eyes. One of them does it instead. I try to gasp. Another gasps for me. I try to look around, but I can already see with their eyes. I see the whole room from my bed. I see myself. I look shaken.

Over a dozen women wandered into my room while I was in bed asleep, and all they did was become my mindslaves. This isn't what manga taught me would happen.

I try to speak to them. "Please," says one. "Leave," says another.

"M-my," I finally manage to sputter, in my own voice. "My room."

Nothing.

I try to shuffle out of the room with everyone else, leaving the withered-looking excuse for a teenaged girl in the bed by herself.

They do.

I can see outside my room.

I put my head – yes, this head is mine - into my hands – mine also – and close my eyes, and still see through tens of others.

Why.