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Dave Shaw Mar 2011
You remember getting out of the car.

You remember the stooped uphill walk, jacket in hand, across the driveway toward the door.

You remember the deliberate motion of your index finger attempting to jab the 4 digit code into your garage door opener, and the seeming disconnect between your visual perception and your index finger's physical place in reality.

You remember closing one eye and aiming slightly higher than the soft padded buttons on the opener, to compensate for their distorted visual placement.

You remember the deliberate 7 stooped steps you take toward the snowbank, after finally entering the proper 4 digit code and waiting for the large overhead garage door to complete its transition from closed to open.

You remember using your right hand, and scooping up a handful of fresh snow, and launching it in the direction of your mouth.

You remember the feeling of what felt like very cold sand compressed in the cavern formed by the impossibly dry roof of your mouth, and your impossibly dry tongue, slowly melting into liquid and affording you the small mercy of saliva to relax your lips from your teeth as you turn and take 7 very deliberate steps toward the now completely open garage door.

You don't remember pressing the large plastic button that closes the overhead door, nor setting your house alarm, nor the almost terrifying efficiency that you displayed in turning off the outside lights, locking the door, pouring yourself a glass of unfavourably luke-warm tap water and proceeding to down said glass of tap water, nor somehow miraculously keeping yourself upright up the 12 carpeted steps leading to your second floor.

You remember the walk down the hallway, toward your bedroom.

You remember closing the door softly behind you, and thinking to yourself that you really ought to get more water or something but elect instead to strip yourself naked and collapse into your bed.

You remember the blurred lop-sided flash of red that you could identify as your bedside clock.

You remember, in that flash of red, reading the time as 33:81 p.m. but you feel pretty positive in retrospect that this is false.

You remember wishing you could summon the motivation to turn on your record player, which is sitting on the table opposite your bed and well out of arm's reach.

You remember the infinite bulk of every part of your body as you lay in the complete darkness, staring in the presumed direction of your record player, as if you could glare it into operation.

You remember your internal nonsensical monologue that provided unrequested commentary on the quickly diminishing amount of sensory input at your disposal, which now included only the sound of your own breathing, and the impossibly bright flashing LED from your camera battery charger somewhere on the floor below you.

You remember the involuntary twitch of your leg that reminded you that you do, in fact, still have a leg, and are not, as you had somehow began to assume, a disembodied set of eyes, ears, and lungs.

You remember the girl with lip ring, your buddy's crude joke about the black belt, the new number added to your cellphone under the name Tessa, added by girl whom you recall being pretty sure was named Jessica. You estimate the chance that you will ever actually call this number at roughly Zero.

You remember contemplating a time that you could ever feel good about your night by the next day, as your eyelids scrape against the linen surface of your pillow, with a sensation that you could only liken to a very sparse broom being pulled across a concrete floor.

You remember wishing for anything at all to just happen.

And that is it. That is all you had.
Dave Shaw Mar 2011
You were not born this way.

This was a choice.

You made this choice.

You were six years old.

"I want to be a shark" you said.

"Okay" I said.

You were not born this way.

But now you don't sleep.

Now you don't stop moving, ever.

Yesterday was your twenty third birthday.

You spent the entire party walking in tight circles around the kitchen and living room of my apartment as party guests made conversation.

Wikipedia tells us that sharks live somewhere between twenty and thirty years, but I'm still not completely certain on what human traits you retain.

You breathe air, after all.

Wikipedia tells us that humans live somewhere between thirty-nine and eighty-three years, but It seems to depend on what country you're born in.

People think you are stupid.

And they're not wrong.

Choosing to be a shark was a pretty stupid move, man.

People think you are a terrible monster.

I don't know what that has to do with being a shark.

— The End —