> Dan in Plureality 5

The sun's going down of the Aran Islands off the coast of Ireland. We're sitting on the rocks of a beach, our backpacks propped beside us. Nowhere to go. He rolls two cigarettes and passes me one. I take out one of our enchanted matchbooks, fashioned during the six hour ritual that we began this trip with. The sigil inside is for shelter. I strike the match and we light our cigarettes. Before we've finished smoking them a woman has walked up to us from over a hill and invited us to spend the night in her cottage.
*

She turns to him. “Now Dr. James. Surely there's something of merit going on here?” 

Dr. James frowns. Suddenly he drops his file folder on the desk and marches towards the door to the room. Daniel startles slightly when he enters and Ms. Amita frowns. Dr. Hannah follows him in, looking apologetic. And They keep watching. 

“Daniel,” Dr. James says. “In attempting to delineate the effects of your addiction you have so far done little more than show me that you have a penchant for telling stories. I ask you, what is the point of them?”

*


I'm visiting with a friend from the small town I lived in during the summer of the year 2000 and I take the chance and tell her about what happened to me that week in August.

About how I starred in a this reality-tv show called 'Spygame'. It was a lot like that show 'The Mole', but this was before that came out. I was clear with her: I explained how I was aware that my biology spent the week laying in bed, walking along the river listening to a walkman. But I can remember everything that happened on the show. I can remember guesting on Letterman after it was over, with the other three finalists. I remember talking with her afterwards about being on the show, only she doesn't. I even told her about the time in my apartment, once the summer was over, when a song from the 'Spygame' soundtrack came on the radio and I cried and cried, I missed the other people from the show that badly. 

I was so nervous telling her. I even became insistent, almost shouting at her even though she was listening quietly. And then she smiled and nodded and said that she understood. And she told me a beautiful, sad story about being haunted by the first horse she had to put down when she was younger. 

It was like sex, like tantric sex where orgasm isn't the point.

*


Dr. James shouts, “Then what is the point?” 

“You tell me,” I say.

***

In Like Flint

Wraith moved in the night like a song from a radio, drifting out into the dark where words cannot be seen. She was dressed in black, her black hair tied into a ponytail and a mask over her face.

She came up to a fence and leaped over the 14 foot high barrier like a leaf in the wind. She landed on her feet on the other side and continued to move, paying no heed to the sentries on patrol because she was part of the night and moved right before them in plain sight. They did not blink or acknowledge that she had gone past.

She came up to the outside security doors and her fingers danced over the console, and the doors majestically opened. She slipped inside, just a blur to the security cameras. The watchmen on duty didn't even register the fact that the doors were breached. Wraith's fingers danced open another door and she was in. A smile cracked her serious face since she knew that she had still had the magic, the power, the moves.

She stepped into the hallway and moved off to one side. "I'm in," she spoke softly into the throat mic. "Time me."

The Pursuit of a Trivial Matter

Frank made the leap across the street; the 60 foot gap was what he needed to distance himself from his pursuers. He landed on the roof of the other building, rolled and came up with both guns blazing. He was firing in the direction he had came from.

The bullets hitting their mark, catching two of his pursuers in mid air, and sending them straight down to where the street below. A third one was hit as well, sending him from his safe trajectory. And then he bolted once again.

Two down. Three more to go, Frank thought.

A Spin of a Coin

The coin spun on the table, twirling around, spinning itself into a three dimensional ball. It moved around the table before it began to slow down and the coin, still full of inertia, kept spinning but it was a mad wobble now.

"Any bets?" Goner asked.

"Heads," Frank replied not looking up from his paper.

Goner watched the coin spin like a lunatic in a madhouse. Angst was sitting across from him; she was sipping away at her soda. Frank was beside her, a paper folded up to the crosswords section and using a pen he was figuring out the clues. While Aqua sat on the stool at the counter, eating fries and sipping a malt.

Goner's coin finally rested on heads.

"That's five in a row you called it," Goner says. "Maybe we should be doing some downtime in Vegas?"

"I love Vegas," Angst chimed in. "So alive and full of colour."

"That's a thought," Frank said. "Maybe if we get the signal."

Goner looked at Frank and smiled, "Well, we could wait for the signal in Vegas."

"Don't count on it," Angst interjected, she looked up at Frank and gave him a wink.

"We're here for a reason," Frank said in a leadership sort of tone; he wished something would happen shortly as well. They'd been hanging around for several days now, waiting for a sign.

Goner picked it up and he spun the coin again asking, "Any bets?"

"Heads," Frank replied.