A Savage Life

PLONK! I shoot up ready to spit a mountain of fire and profanity, but I only saw Sabine’s smiling face. At this point, I don’t know whether to hit him, spit on him, cuss him out, or hug him; heck, even kiss him for that matter.

“Hi Josh.” Sabine beams at me cheerfully. He gave me the future’s trademark smile. I clenched my teeth in disgust at him. Sabine remembered my dislike of his smiles, and quickly corrected his mistake with an apology.

“What did you hit me with?” I shout at him.

Sabine answers me by pointing over to the corner to a lone, metallic, seemingly plain bucket and replying, “That’s a teleportation device. Get it and stand in it.

I look at the bucket and back at him. “You want me to stand in a bucket!” I shout.

This is definitely crazy. There’s no way I’m going to find relief in a bucket.

“Yes!” Sabine yells in annoyance.

Well here goes nothing. I walk over to the bucket, which has skittered a few feet from me, and pour out the muck thats in it, and prepare to loose all the dignity I had left. I stand it up, put my feet into it, and look at Sabine. I throw my hands out beside me and look at him.

“Close your eyes and visualize yourself near me!” Sabine calls.

“Oh, I’ll visualize you alright.” I mutter under my breath.

“What?” Sabine calls back.

“Nothing.” I lie.

To tell the truth, I’ve been thinking about throttling him the whole time I’ve been in this rat hole. I close my eyes and feel this sensation of fading out of existence. Clenching my fists, I open up my eyes and find myself looking at Sabine and the future’s trademark smiling face. I look down at myself and checked right behind me. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Nope. I’m still intact, no mutant body parts attached, and bewildered as usual. Well, this is a little better than ’86; I probably would’ve been in that hole till somebody gave a darn and called the fire department, or when Lana called the FBI so that way they can find my mummified corpse.

“Hi.” Sabine sang, as if I had just appeared out of thin air, which basically, I had literally did, and looked at me for my response.

“Uh, what just happened?” was all that I could muster.

“You teleported.” Sabine replied, matter-of-factly. Duh, I know that. Why did I even ask that question? Ugh, where is my brain? I found it when my stomach growled loudly.

“Ooh, somebody’s hungry.” Sabine chimed like I was a little kid.

“Thank you Captain Obvious!” I shouted at him.

Several people looked up at us from tables, and drum roll please, I just now realized that I had fell down the trash pit of the restaurant within punching distance of me. Ah irony, life would be fraught without thou.

I smacked my forehead and look at Sabine, who just stood there smiling at me. I just stared at him.

“You wanna get something to eat, or continue on with your staring match?” he asked, rolling his knuckles against his arm.

I gave him a look, then my stomach growled some more.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Sabine answered for me, and we headed to the diner.