“Fuck! That's today?” I swallow, with pain, the Vidalin.
“What do you mean ‘that's today?’ You have had four weeks to prepare for this and it is supposed to last less than a minute!”
“I was high, okay? When you told me?”
“You are always high. Now get ready and figure something out. You might not realize this, but your careless attitude paints us all in a horrible light.”
I don't like upsetting my agents. I want to apologize, but she would just scoff at me.
The curtains are up, I have been presented, the audience has applauded. They returned to talk. Nobody likes the wait, but I have no intention of going before my cue. It hits. A big, bent mirror beside the stage starts moving. I walk on as calmly as I can.
I stop where I should, wrapped in an artificial sun. So far, routine. The rest I am not ready for. I usually have something to fall back to, but now, the little I can see of the audience has to share space with vivid visions, visions of that face, of that person.
It is the same person. I realize that now. All of my hallucinations, all centered around that one person. What is your name? Am I addressing that person now? Is he not here? Are we a mind or two minds? This is a precipice, a cliff separating me, us, from them. I am a consciousness factory, beating and beating and beating. We have to run, stay, I can't, I can't run with you, you are not here, here where I'm, I am. It will end, must end, and at the end, only one of us will remain. Right? I'm here. I am here. At the end, only we will remain. Forever, forever, forever again. I am stuck with you. I know you. We stay and I must run away.
Who are you?
The audience is applauding something. What did I say? My skin feels solid. I'm turning around and going back. I must have given them something, fed into their conception of us as beyond comprehension, something simple they enjoy. My agent is waiting. She claps, smiles, scans me, and frowns.
“Really?”
I look down. Oh god.