Complete Atopia Chronicles

She just made things that much worse, and was practically engulfed by her now gargantuanly distended mammary glands as she slowly dragged her expanding bottom through the sand.

“It’s the blob!” screeched Vicious, pointing with eyes wide in mock fear. “Run! Run away now!”

To make his point, Vicious ran helter-skelter into the jungle behind the bar.

I doubled over, howling with laughter and just not caring. The swollen, rolling subject of our consideration had now turned sharply on her heel, and was slugging off through the sand away from us, apparently not needing a drink anymore. As she retreated, she slowly returned to normal proportions.

“Oh,” I gasped, rubbing the tears from my eyes, giggling, “we should do this more often.”

“We do this every day, son. What you mean is, you should do this more often,” pointed out Vicious, peering out carefully from the bushes at our retreating victim. He was right.

Vicious returned to the bar, now that the coast was clear. He sat back down on his stool in his punkish best, with his black jeans rolled up to his knobby knees, sporting a ripped t–shirt, his eternally spiked black hair contrasting nicely with his pasty white complexion. The rest of us comfortably lounged in our swim shorts. Sid eyed me merrily, and then spat the remainder of a mouthful of beer onto me and laughed.

We all laughed.

“William!” someone screeched into my emergency audio channel.

Wally popped in beside me. “You’d better take this right away, she’s pissed.”

He took control of my body, and I detached quickly to respond to Brigitte.

“Yes my splinter winky?” I answered, my face radiating innocence as I dropped into my workspace to take the call. She stood scowling in front of me.

“William, I am working late finishing some interviews, and all of a sudden, my interviewee’s breasts start swelling and spilling out onto the table, which is totally distracting and embarrassing.”

Oh shoot, I had forgotten we were sharing realities.

“Ah geez, sorry about that, I was just having a little fun with the boys…” I started to say.

“You’re drunk,” she stated incriminatingly, “and you guys are pigs.”

“…come on…”

“Cochon!” she added, shaking her head.

“Brigitte, please,” I said defensively, “I’m only sharing realities because you asked. This isn’t a big deal…”

“William,” she cut in, “Willy…”

She paused, looking sadly at the floor. I waited.

“You know, I have barely seen you in weeks, months even,” she continued, “and you can’t even take the time to have breakfast with me, and here you are off with…ah…ca fait rien.”

I switched off my end of the shared reality, frustrated.

I hadn’t seen the boys in weeks, and I’d been doing my best to spend any spare time I had with Brigitte. It wasn’t my fault I needed to focus more and more on my moonlighting work. My early gains had quickly been gobbled up after Nancy had restricted my splinter limit, and my bank account was now fast turning into a blank account.

I felt trapped.

We fell into a mutually accusatory silence.

“Willy, I think we need to talk,” she said after studying me.

“I think so too,” was all I replied.

§

While Brigitte finished up with work, I flitted back to the boys. My mood was ruined, however, so I begged off and tried going back to work for a bit to lose myself.

Soon enough, Brigitte pinged me and appeared briefly in my workspace. Taking a resigned look around at what had replaced her, she took my hand and flittered us off to a quiet corner of the beach for our talk.

The day had settled into a heartbreakingly beautiful evening, and a crescent moonrise was casting a sparkling carpet over inky seas. Waves gently caressed the shore, and she held my hand tightly in hers, walking me through the wet sand at the water’s edge. We slowly left a trail of footprints behind us.

“Willy,” she pleaded, “my heart is breaking, Willy. I love you, but I can’t do this anymore. Please, let’s sit down and fix this. Just tell me what you need.”

“Brigitte, I love you too, but… I just don’t feel like we share the same goals anymore,” I replied. “I need to focus on my business right now.”

And then the pause, that hurtful space of silence between words that shifted worlds.

“Look, I don’t want to hurt you. I think the best thing could be for us to separate for a while so I can figure this out.”

She looked into my eyes while the tears welled in hers. Her feet left the ground, and she floated in front of me as I walked, holding both my hands now. Cast in the soft monochromatic moonlight, she hovered like a ghost before me.

“Willy,” she sobbed, “you want me to leave you?”

I can’t believe that I did it, but I slowly started to nod, looking steadily into her eyes.

Catching her breath sharply, she looked away, her body convulsing as she tried to stop the coming sobs. She let go of my hands. Brigitte floated up and away from me and into the starry sky. Perhaps not like a ghost, but more like an angel.

My footsteps continued alone in the sand awhile before being washed away by the waves. It was as if we had never been there at all.