Changing Things...

When someone says, “I see things,” automatically people either want to hear what they have to say or pretend they didn’t hear that and mosey on out of there. Those that listen, they don’t believe what would be said, not at first, but feeding them enough credible information would make them wonder. That’s how conspiracy theories start.

I see things and I had no explanation to give on what I regularly saw. When I asked if anyone else saw the things I did, they either thought I had an active imagination or expected me to have a punchline to my joke. It was frustrating and I’d had enough… so I stopped talking about it and watched these things as they appeared.

Some of the things I’d seen were the colors of vehicles warping into a new shade, or even better, a different model or brand. Nothing too outlandish, maybe a Volkswagen mystery mobile puffing out into a longer and larger Greyhound bus, but not like extending into a bullet train or, I don’t know, a dinosaur or something. Nothing fantastical or out of place at all. More so, the greatest thing I’d seen happen was an apartment building being completely remodeled into an office building. All the occupants that lived in their apartments had suddenly become cubicle employees.

No one else acknowledged what I had seen. They’d look at what had happened and simply state what was there had always been there. The people who had a history living in or around these changes now had a new background they could rely on answering any questions I may have had about these things. It was really annoying when something like that happened during a movie. I was quite honestly confused as Hell when the main characters had their actors switched around halfway through the film. A good example of that was when I was a kid, I watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the main villain, Judge Doom who was played by Tim Curry, had changed into the actor Christopher Lloyd. I was waiting for the next half of the movie for the original villain to reappear until I realized what had happened. Things like that happened in books too. And I didn’t want to know how much of my own history had been altered, because that would have driven me insane.

During my years at school, it was a nightmare. I’d walk into classes where I apparently didn’t belong to anymore. Homework that I had was no longer assigned, or I had projects due that hadn’t existed until recently. I mistook some teachers for substitutes until I worked out who they once were. Then there classmates who had completely changed, not just attitude adjustments either, but full on transformations from the solitary cooped up loner in their corner to an assertive all-star football jock or ridiculously shy computer geeks to incredibly outstanding party animals, and believe me, that right there caused me to remain a virgin all throughout school in fear of what kind of person I might wake up next to. And fuck college, like I would risk investing into that money pit and discover the next day the location was now a shopping mall. I was being fucked with, but I wasn’t sure if these things were intentionally aimed at me. Maybe, maybe not. I didn’t know because there were no explanations for what was happening.

Worst possible school experience I had was when my name changed without me knowing it. Had a rough morning with everybody greeting me with a new name, “Daniel,” instead of my original name, “Victor.” It was absolutely infuriating when the homeroom teacher had to prove it to me. At home, the worst experience was when that thing happened to my parents. Happening during the night, I had to sit up on my bed and stay awake in my locked room in complete fear of a house invasion. After my changed parents convinced me of who they were, I chalked it up as having a nightmare. If only they knew how real my nightmare was seeing these things...

When I tried to figure this thing out, I first thought of the Matrix and that I was experiencing some world-wide glitches in the system. Thing was, I doubted that to be the case because of a few things. The first was that the things I saw had made more sense being there after the changes. The apartment building was once almost filled with single people, bachelors and bachelorettes, and now they were all associates. The movie I’d been watching, the lead guy wasn’t bad, but the one who replaced him had filled the role perfectly -- after my confusion had been resolved.

To me, these weren’t glitches, but corrections. Not a Matrix-vibe at all because in that flick, the changes were designed to screw with everyone’s lives or end them. I had never seen anyone hurt by these things I saw. Even people who really needed to be taught a lesson, they’d never experienced a bit of pain during the transformation or took a single misstep as their bodies changed size and shape. No one was worse off by these things.

So I went with corrections. But the question was: who or what was making these things happen?

Back when I was in school, I had thought that God had seen some errors made by us and decided to poke around a bit to fix the issue. As I matured, that didn’t feel right either. The big honcho in the clouds was the sort of being who would fix things by starting over with a clean slate and judging us if we got everything right during the revision. Just in case if these things were from God, I prayed that our native language would remain the same for as long as I lived.

These things happened, I saw them, and I didn’t know what to say or do about them. I couldn’t ignore these things. They’d start off with some little warping, like a flimsy film or mirage surrounded it or them. Then the warp would fade and whatever was in it would gradually change in seconds. Fast, just like that, and the people around it, or that very person, wouldn’t notice.

People didn’t simply assume that new buildings had always been there or that changed people had always been that way; they knew. Not a guess, or belief, but sure knowledge. These people would bring up their history with someone who had recently transformed.

I didn’t! I was clueless about what was happening or why. These were not things I could ignore and I was alone in this crazy world. My reality was being adrift out at sea and waiting for something solid to appear for me to settle down on.

I needed a lifeline... instead of these things being content with their changes, the thing happened to me, but something went wrong.

Squeezing my eyes shut further, I tried to smother myself with my pillow as the morning alarm went off. The damn thing was beeping and I was waiting for the snooze to kick in… it didn’t. That was a sign my clock had changed.

Tearing and throwing the pillow off of me and the bed, I rolled over onto my side to openly stare at whatever new device I had to rely on in my mornings. On my nightstand was a flat, brown, and kinda retro-looking radio. Not a clock at all, but apparently it had an added function to act like one.

I had to wonder though, and said, “Not bad, but how come it didn’t switch --”

The radio clicked off the alarm and went straight into a Queen song. “...from your lies. You’re so self satisfied I don’t need you. I’ve got to break free. God knows, God knows I want to break --”

And I turned that off immediately. “Okay. What station were you on?” After one look at the radio, I didn’t bother trying to understand when I saw the number dial had apparently two settings now: FM and AM.

Setting the radio back down on my nightstand, I used the stand to, well, roll out of bed and stand up. I searched around my bedroom for anything different, but didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. My bed was still nice and big, a queen size bed and mattress, with white sheets and quilted blanket. Next to that was my wooden stand with a nice shiny finish and a round knitted cloth for what used to be my clock-now-radio to sit on. Next up, right next to the nightstand, a tan wheeled and swiveling computer chair that was soft as velvet tucked under the desk. The desk had my flatscreen one in all computer, always on, but currently blacked out in sleep mode. Further away from the desk, snuggled into the corner of my room, a dresser full of folded clothes.

That was half of my bedroom, but the other half was empty with only a blank wall for me to stare at. I tried to keep very little because I never knew what would end up being swapped in its place. The clothes, I didn’t mind them being changed because I wasn’t in this world to impress anybody and none of my things were valuable. I bought things like I was living in poverty. The cheapest accessories could only go sideways or up in quality and value. A few months ago, my single bed had changed into a queen. Not sure why, but I wasn’t going to complain about the upgrade.

Before I walked away to my bedroom door, I barely managed to catch a difference with my computer’s keyboard. There were no letters, numbers, or symbols on the keys. Just blank. After inspecting it for a few seconds, I realized I had caught the keyboard in mid-transformation. The keys had flattened out and disappeared entirely into one solid mass until the board had changed into a large pad.

“Is that a drawing pad?” I would have to experiment with it before I found out what the pad was for, but not now. Just waking up, I had to get cleaned up and ready for work. At least, I had to work.

No steady job was possible for me for obvious reasons. If I tried to get hired on someplace, I would wind up finding out the position I was hired onto changed or the very occupation I’d invested time in had become something else. Any experience I had would’ve become worthless.

So I invested time in finding scrap and selling it. If what I found started off as junk, all I had to do was wait for it to become worth something and find a quick buyer. Money was still currency, no matter whose face appeared on the dollar.

But before I could get my hands dirty, ironically I had to get cleaned up.

I walked from my bedroom across the vacant hall and into the bathroom, which now had a fashionably floral pattern decorating the walls. “O-okay. I guess it looks pretty?” The bathroom used to be a mint-green color. Nothing else appeared any different, so I went to work on brushing my teeth --

-- and nearly spat out the taste that met my tongue. I took a look at the tube and saw “Peach Flavored” on it. I didn’t like peaches, so this was now a no go for me. While rinsing the bristles of my toothbrush out, I single handedly reached into the counter drawer for another tube of toothpaste.

“Okay, I can live with peppermint,” I said and squirted a dab on my toothbrush just before I resumed brushing again.

As I brushed away, I took a look at myself in the mirror in wonder. The thought on my mind was when would be the day that I might change into a complete stranger and what sort of background I would have. Right now, I adjusted to my rocky life with the little I could scavenge. But this life didn’t treat me well and I could see that.

In these brown eyes, there was a tiresome worry laid thick and rounded like a dark pair of patches. With a brush in my mouth, and kinda foamy lips, I saw the concave definition of my cheeks as I held my mouth open. Just for a second, I closed my mouth and still felt straight faced. On second thought, that could just be my morning grumpy mood giving me that look. On a brighter side, my jaw and chin didn’t look too bad, but then again, not a whole lot of meat grew around there. To save on using shampoo all the time, I kept my dark hair as short as possible, and I thought the look complemented my five-o’clock shadow well.

“That is a good question… to shave, or not to shave?” I spat into the sink and rinsed before finishing the brushing while I thought about shaving. Getting done with my teeth, I spat one more time and grabbed for the mouthwash. “Okay, you still -- nope.” I immediately saw the contents of my mouthwash had changed from being blue to purple. Since that was the case, I had to read what the new mouthwash would do because I preferred not using stuff that supposedly whitened teeth. “...Oh shit,” and that reminded me that I hadn’t inspected the toothpaste for that very thing.

One look at the peppermint tube and I saw the whitener logo on it. Grumbling in frustration, I threw the tube of toothpaste back into its drawer and just gargled the damn purple rinse and spat. I gave my reflection an angry snarl.

Looking myself over in just boxers, I thought about going out for a jog this morning. I had yesterday, and the day before, so that would’ve made today a day of rest, but I didn’t feel like walking around looking for more things that could potentially warp into something of interest. Something in me was eager to break out and get moving.

“I should have breakfast while I’m out.” I said my thoughts aloud to keep my mind occupied.

Looking away from the mirror and down at myself, I didn’t like the sight of how thin I’d become over the years. I didn’t store any consumable provisions for myself because I never knew what they’d turn into. One day, I would be fully stocked with all I needed, and the next would reveal I had two cupboards full of oatmeal and cereal. That wasn’t bad for breakfast, but sometimes I wanted to have what I wanted.

This morning, I wanted to have toast and eggs. I didn’t have them, but I knew where to go and enjoy a bite. Once I finish with my shower, I’d go out running around until I found a location that served meals in the morning. With luck, I wouldn’t have to travel over a mile to get there.

Removing my boxers and tossing those shorts in the clothes hamper, I quickly turned on the shower. On thinking about where to eat and how far I’d have to run, I later said, “One way to find out…”