sometime in 1996 . . .
castle, church, and cat
I was at church, roaming the halls. my foot was injured, so I only had one shoe on. I was limping through the building, talking to various people.
at the same time I was at home, lying on the floor under the table, talking to our cat, Deideis.
she was describing an adventure that I was having, exploring a dark maze-like castle made of blue brick.
as she described it, it was really happening.
simultaneously, I was playing a computer game of the same adventure, but the focus was on the real one.
various monsters were walking around, and would attack me. when they did, I defeated them easily.
whenever I engaged in combat, the scene changed from reality to my being behind a desk playing the game on the computer.
when I killed something, I'd go back to actually being there.
I was still at church, and late for a class that I was supposed to be teaching. I had originally been going straight toward it, but one of the kids had to go to the bathroom, so I was showing him where it was.
I also got interested in the cat's story, so I stayed on the living room floor instead of getting up and teaching my class. A friend of mine was there at the church, I'm not sure who, and went into my class to let them know I'd be late.
the cat was suddenly distracted by something and walked away, so I got up off the floor and limped outside. instead of being outside the house, I was outside the church.
someone I knew was out there, and we talked for a minute, then I went back into the church and back into the living room.
Deideis was back, so I laid back down on the floor and asked her to continue. I noticed just then that she spoke without opening her mouth, yet aloud.
she began talking and her voice faded out as the scene took me back into the castle.
there were several other people with me. I was getting impatient, since I was so late for my class, so I ran towards the nearest door.
I opened it, and quietly stepped into a corridor. suddenly, a huge insectlike creature with pincers about 20 feet long grabbed me and shoved me into its mouth before I could react.
I was then behind the computer screen again, pressing the arrow keys, trying to get out of its mouth, but it was futile, and I died. on the screen I watched as every few seconds the monster would shake my limp body in its mouth.
one of the people in my exploration group in the game warned me that I can't rush into a room, or that sort of thing will happen.
the image on the screen melted away, and I started my next video game life. we came upon a solid wall, and we somehow knew we had to get through it. there was some kind of secret way to pass, and we were trying to discover it.
someone noticed that characters were written on several of the bricks, and we pushed one of the bricks out of place, revealing the way through. when we solved the puzzle, all of the monsters in the castle disappeared. we split up and ran down various corridors.
there were glass vials lying around, which had healed us before, but now gave us a large bonus score.
I left the castle and the game a little before everyone else, and went to my class.
my friend was there, and told me that they were all ready to answer any questions I had for them. I looked at a clock on the wall, and saw that I had only 10 minutes left of class.
the kids looked at me, puzzled.
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