Author: Andrew Dunn

DJ Grim was on the strip of grass separating the track from the high school football field, dolled up like the Reaper itself, and pumping up the crowd with beats while the cheerleaders worked their stuff on the track. I was watching them, and fondling the latch on Anna’s bra through her t-shirt. She liked it, but pretended not to notice. Anna was chatting with her best friend Katelyn as DJ Grim upped the tempo. It was all choreographed so the music stopped, and cheerleaders posed, as fireworks crackled, popped and burned bright overhead.

#

“It’s all in your mind.” The healer said. “You don’t come from Blanton. You went to San Diego State.”

I eyed the dull green walls of his apartment with its posters of old rock bands, printed out media items about climate change, and trinket symbols he’d bought in bodegas.

“I remember it all. Clearer than I do the day I was born.”

#

“Who remembers the day they were born? I do. I awake sweat-soaked with bed sheets in balled fists, remembering the way new light, new air, and new everything first met my breathless form. A rap on my back sent my lungs in motion, drawing in a million unfamiliar flavors.
#

Anna smelled of caramel, because she’d paid two bucks more to have them drizzle that over her popcorn at the concession stand. She always bought her popcorn that way, and I loved it, for the way the flavor somehow waited on her body for my lips.

Katelyn was different. She preferred salt. I knew because I’d tasted that on her skin. As my hand ventured up Anna’s shirt, and she didn’t protest me unlatching her bra, I wondered whether Katelyn noticed and if she did, whether it reminded her of the last time.

#

My healer pranced about his apartment, playing with his man bun’s scrunchie, and peering out through peach-colored drapes at the world beyond. He begged, “You’ve got to understand, there never was a football field, Anna, Katelyn, or any of it.”

#

Anna once invited me and Katelyn into her bed. Without saying a word, me and Katelyn somehow faked that it had been our first time coiled together, naked flesh against naked flesh, making each other moan and sweat. I think Anna bought it. She took pics.

#

“Show me the pics.” My healer demanded.

#

I moved my cursor to the X in the upper right and closed out the session with my healer, griping, “They always want pics.”

Another in the room posted a pic of Colossus Clay and Arach-mo-chine, moving on to the field. The former: two-legged robot made of steel and carbon fiber, with boxing gloves as big as a Prius. The latter, a mechanical monstrosity constructed by the high school’s science club – it was steel and plexiglass, full of hydraulics, and modeled after spiders.

They would battle it out starting at the fifty-yard line. My hand would explore Anna’s back, and if Katelyn noticed, she’d lean in and kiss Anna, except…achiming sound – my alarm clock – interrupted everything.

#

I slid the VR visor off my eyes, up past my forehead. Beau was easing his truck into the driveway. There was dinner to pretend I was making, beers in the fridge for him to get lost in and when he did, I’d go back to Friday night.