In the middle of it, it should have been perfectly fine. But it wasn't. Oh, she was having a great time, filling my ears with stimuli. But the truth was, I laid there and wished I was anywhere but here. I floated. And I pushed on. And that's the thing. I wondered if I have become like someone else. That people have ceased being people and just objects. I try and keep the ones I care about people. But everything else is just a waste of time. Even this. And I keep doing it. And she keeps happy. Really happy. But don't fall for me. I'm not all that nice. And I'm not really here. You are meeting the robot. You are meeting the automatic me. The real me is somewhere else and I think he coughed so hard that his head split and the pieces of him floated into the universe and he didn't want to collect them any more so he let them scatter and to keep up Don Knotts being Brian Epstein appearances, they left this one behind. And he's here with you now. Don't turn him over, you'll see where the batteries that power him are. That isn't a heartbeat you feel when you put your ear to his chest. That's fluids swirling around inside him that make it sound like he's living and breathing and a real boy. This is as much as you are going to get out of him. He'll be polite but he'll be a ghost.

Photo - N
Words - S