Thirteen: Stories of Transformation

by Mark Teppo

"That can be remedied." She pushed him back into the bedstead. "Hand me the pillow, Pier."

Damn. Frieda knows how to TCB.

"Ma’am," the man said, "I’m listening."

R-E-S-P-E-C-T For some reason, I think Danny Trejo would be great in this.

"Don’t talk like a stupid Inca! You sure wouldn’t want to live in Tuwantinsuya. Now take a handful of those wrigglers and spread the creepy-crawlers."

There are living communities of indigenous Nahua (Aztec), Mayan, and Incan people living today. The Nahua of Mexico number 1.5 million people, and a small percentage still speak Nahuatl.

I was surprised he didn’t see the kid beside me. Then I looked, and the kid wasn’t there.

This kid's brain hit that sweet spot where neural pathways get to choose schizophrenia or not-schizophrenia. His brain chose schizophrenia.

You said junk killed pain you didn’t even know you had.

Alcohol did this for me. Until it didn't. When the booze stopped working, the pain got bad.

Except this time I don’t have the paranoid fear, which often came with acid, that I’m a giant lizard.

Embrace your inner Lizard King, my friends!

Sappho. Lesbia. She might not have had words for her feelings if not for the priest’s dire warnings.

She rubbed her chest. "It must be awful not to have a soul."

I think that stories like this, and the 'Deadly Snail Pursuit' thought puzzle work very well as allegories for depression. Depression has been referred to a Black Dog that's always on a person's heels. The exhaustion of that chase is unbelievable. But hey, humans are supposed to be endurance runners, right?

"You’re not a very curious creature, are you Worth?" "Not until recently."

developed a rash across her chest following a bad piercing.

People can be allergic to titanium - never trust a body piercer who says otherwise. It's rare, but it does occur.

prangs

British/NZ/Aus slang for a minor vehicular accident.

a mouse moving about behind the walls,

"There are some huge rats in the walls, by the sound of it..." - Jerusalem's Lot by Stephen King (a far less racist homage to H. P. Lovecraft's *The Rats in the Walls)*

The alcohol in his system assumed full responsibility.

When tequila assumes the executive function part of the brain.

madeleine moment

Involuntary memory, aka Proustian moment, Proustian-Madeleine moment

His sense of smell was quite keen, especially when it came to beer: he could tell a Belgian Abbey ale from an American microbrew knockoff with a single sniff. His taste buds were highly trained. If he had become a professional taste-tester, he wondered, would his consciousness have migrated down to his tongue?

Being a taste-tester is truly this man's professional destiny. Some make serious bank.

"She doesn’t like Thai food."

That is so platonic. "Want to go see a movie?" "But what about your wife?!" "She hates Star Wars" :(

The doctor wasn’t a psychiatrist, as he’d feared, or a neurologist, but a family practice MD who’d written a book about alternate states of consciousness.

Damn, Judith! Way to turn it around!

"Your hand is up in the air again," Judith said. And then to the doctor she said, "He does that whenever he feels defensive."

She can read him. But a lot of people do this when defensive, so eh.

"You’re not interested in what I’m looking for?" "I’m sure it’ll be fascinating, but I’m busy with more important things." "Such as?" "Staying sane."

"You didn’t reboot the whole system?" "We would have loved to, but our sponsors wouldn’t let us. They thought this was the coolest thing possible, and told us to let it go on unhindered.

I am getting the vibe that this is the origin of *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*. Alex's attempt to look something up is much like Arthur Dent trying to get the Sens-o-matic to make tea.

"Time is flexible?" Throbbing lessens. "Time is not?" A satiated feeling in her stomach.

Time is distance. Distance is time.

"Basically, you are a one-in-a-kazillion shot in an environment that allows only a few of those shots; while we are a one-in-a-kazillion shot in an environment that continually generates a kazillion kazillion of such shots." "My God," Alex gasps. "No god necessary." Tanaka quips, deadpan.

The stock, the doctor knew from previous visits to the city, was the basis of the establishment’s fish tea. Each place prided itself on a different savor, a different mystery of spices, additives and arcane practices to guarantee a taste unrealizable anywhere else. If the stock truly had soured, it would have to be thrown out despite the fact that it might have been simmering in the same kettle, being added to, taken from, for years. Disaster.

Ok, so this is a thing. GRAS in most cases.

Sour berries, no bigger than a sparrow’s eye and green as olives, had surrounded it.

Capers.