I Don't Seem So Bright in a Well-Lit Room

Chapter Nineteen

Clover tried to eat the loom fruit. She wasn't sure how it would taste, and therefore it had no flavour at all. It only existed in her imagination, so she would have to imagine a flavour if she wanted to taste one. Not knowing how it would taste left out any assignment of flavour.

Quite possibly this was all Potto's imagination and she was merely a visitor and couldn't assign the fruit a flavour. Or perhaps it was a shared fantasy world. She wasn't sure whose imagination she was in anymore. 

Perhaps if she had imagined the fruit to taste like barbecue sauce, it would have. Perhaps though, if it were strictly Potto's imagination she was in, he would mischievously make it taste like raw chicken, or a red bean bun covered in bullet ants, or maybe fanged dangling jessop stew. Perhaps she would then change it back (giving him an "oh, you scamp" look) if they each had control. She had no idea how any of this worked.

Bundle had flown off into the imaginary forest to search for Potto. Clover decided to do a little experiment while she waited. She was very aware that she was under hypnosis, and that none of this was real, and she realized Potto had created it, but she wanted to know if she indeed did have any control over it. 

First, she imagined the loom fruit tasted like popcorn. Within seconds it was as if she were eating a big bowl of delicious hot buttered popcorn in the form of a strange glowing piece of fruit. Check. 

Next, she imagined she were smack-dab in the middle of an orgasm. Within seconds she stumbled, almost falling over as waves of pleasure washed through her entire body. Check. 

Next, once recovered, she imagined Potto was standing right next to her. Nothing happened. 

She imagined she had a communicator watch and he was calling her. Perhaps if she could, at the very least, hear his voice she could ask him to come back. Nothing. Perhaps he would have to imagine he was calling her in the first place. This was all so complicated.

He could be kilometres away. He could be on the other side of the known galaxy. He could be right behind her, always moving into her blind spot when she turned her head. He could be anywhere.

Somehow though, she sensed that he was still very much a part of this visualized, hypno-land. He was certainly not lucid and sitting on the bridge of the Shiv.

Hopefully Bundle would be back soon with Potto, or some Potto news. She could do nothing but wait. And maybe eat some hot buttered loom fruit popcorn, and have the odd orgasm.

~~~

Sometimes disbelief can be hilarious, and sometimes wonderful. It can be the response to a fabulous gift, or it can be a level of complete wonderment. It can also accompany grief and shock. 

Disbelief can be an odd comfort. It can be frustrating and painful, but it can contain a glimmer of hope. That little crack in the china cup of finality.

It can be all of these things.

One may win the lottery (disbelief!) and upon telling one's elderly father the great news, the old man drops dead of a very sudden heart attack right before one's eyes (disbelief!) and then his body is carried off by a giant tadpole (disbelief!) but it's the type of tadpole that only carries off living creatures so he mustn't really be dead after all (disbelief!), though he no doubt will get eaten by the tadpole regardless (disbelief!) and besides, what is a giant tadpole doing in this desert and not in a lake (disbelief!)?

On the bridge of the Shiv, Teeg sat in a state of intense flummoxed disbelief. She sat staring at the empty bit of space that was once a sex circus.