press “recirculate” to avoid fallout

I was with Rahul and Serena. I had lost Serena in a mall and when I saw her, I ran up and hugged her, but accidentally stepped on her toe. “Are you OK?” I asked her. “No!” she said, and showed me how her little toe was now sideways and bleeding.

“OK, this is going to hurt–hold on,” said Rahul and gripped her toe to pull it straight.  I couldn’t watch.

Serena and CHT and I were in a car and driving fast down a road in late evening. The government was getting ready to test a nuclear bomb, and we had to get away. I pressed the button to change the air to “recirculate” instead of “fresh air,” hoping this would save us from fallout. We could feel a weird tingling in the air, the electric feeling before a thunderstorm, something you could feel aching in your fillings.

Rahul told me that in college, before he met me, he had purchased the services of a prostitute. I was very surprised and wondered why he’d never told me before, why he’d lied about his experiences to me.

painted walls

I was in a game with some teammates and to win, we had to estimate how much paint we would need to cover the walls of a particular house. We walked into our assigned house–a seaside cabin–and I thought, “this will be easy!” The house was plain and square, with no hidden rooms or trickiness.

We were talking to the owner, a youngish redneck white guy, and he said “These are the names of the people I’ve already killed, who came before you.” He fanned out a bunch of slips of paper. Two of them had my name on them.