I was walking and thinking about that, and about my general indecision about moving. As I rounded the corner, I went into some sort of flashback mode, remembering why I had left Chicago in the first place, and reliving that event.
A man tried to mug me - grabbing me in a choke hold with one arm and holding up a knife with the other. We struggled and I yelled and kicked; I was not about to give in. As a matter of fact, I kicked so hard that I kicked the man off of the curb and into the street, where he was hit by a car.
The next thing I remember is being back on that same corner. The same man was there, but in a wheelchair, presumably from being hit by that car. I guess he felt he had something to prove, because he tried to mug me again. Again, we struggled, and again, I shoved him out into the street - I suspect this time I rolled him out into the street - where he was run over by a bus. Dead.
I was not wild about the notion of having killed someone, even in self-defense, and this struggle stayed with me.
Then I remember being in a house. There was a party, and I was being handed a 2 liter bottle of Pepsi. I was injured - I think I had lost one of my legs in one of these struggles and was wearing a prosthetic leg. I was also trying to figure out who tried to kill me, but it wasn't the mugger. Then somehow I saw this nondescript man, and he was painting or injecting a big bunch of cocaine onto the lid of this Pepsi bottle so that I would have a heart attack and die. I even managed to get the syringe after he was done. I tried to convince other people that he was the one who had tried to kill me, but no one would believe me - I think everyone thought I had done it to myself. Plus, a lot of people were mad at me for having killed the mugger ... my friends didn't like me anymore because I had killed someone.
So I left the room with the party and then I think I was in an office (sort of). I went to ask a friend of mine a question and she ignored me - just pretended like I wasn't even standing there. Her hand was sitting on the counter, so I started pounding on it as I asked the question again. Still no response. So I grabbed a large safety pin and started jamming it into her hand as I asked the question yet again. Still no response, at which point I threw up my hands and stormed off.
I walked along the row of cubicles and saw a post card on the ground. It was one of the ones I had sent to He Who Shall Remain Nameless, that he said he never received (in reality, I sent two post cards to
khaosinc that never showed up, but that's another story). I'd assumed he was lying because he hated me, just like everyone else, but when I saw the post card lying on the ground, I thought maybe he was telling the truth after all. I picked up the post card and went to this front bedroom, where he was lying in bed, under the covers, in the mostly darkened room. I forget if he had just gotten off of work, or school, or was recovering from an illness, or something, but I remember feeling a prevailing sense that he needed his sleep. I told him I had found the post card and showed it to him. He told me to leave it somewhere, and that I should come back and talk to him later. There was an overwhelming sense of tenderness in this scene, and of quiet. It was a nice little respite from the hatred that I'd felt from everyone else.But I left and let him sleep. I was immediately summoned to the boss' cubicle, where two or three of my higher ups were going to fire me, I believe because I had killed the mugger. This time I got indignant. I was sick of being made to feel bad for killing this man, especially because when he attacked me the first time I didn't kill him; it was only when he came back the second time. I remember I said something about the fact that both of my parents were cops (they're not) and that they had taught me to defend myself, a fact that perhaps this schmuck didn't bank on. What's more, I added, if I had to kill again, I would.
That's all I remember.
