Two weeks passed and it happened again. He was in a seven-eleven this time, punching in some numbers on a tiny computer terminal, when it hit him. His surroundings slowly began to breathe. The walls came alive, gasping for air. Cool, he thought, and his pupils grew, stretching outward.
A smiling set of teeth beeped back at him as he pressed down specific, numbered ones, with an attached pen. Enter. Beep. An all-consuming darkness spread across his iris, color cast aside. This is why he was living in the woods.
The cashier now hands him a receipt and he walks outside to meet his three friends. They are all leaning up against a car. Each one of them has problems. But none of them are sleeping in a Fisher Price tent in the woods. He borrowed the brightly colored green and yellow tent from a friend. Upon seeing it, his friend in sunglasses remarked that it was colored that way so the parents wouldn't lose their kids in the forest. Not that you could get lost in the forest he was living in. He had been living in a forest of leftover space, now used for sewage infrastructure. All of the forgotten shit, mostly literally, was held in pipes not ten feet under the ground where he lay his head. The nearby bodies of water, a large man-made lake and its subsequent creeks, were not "potable," he had told his friends. His life had become a strange sort of semi-survival.
He walks up to his friends and asks if they are going to get going. This disrupts a conversation about how three people could go in one store and come out with three different water bottles, like the packaging matters. The one in the fully reflective sunglasses says the heavy set friend got a woman's bottle. "Why," he asks, "because it has a woman's figure?" The answer is yes. Target marketing. Also, those suck, he says, you have to suckle at it, and you can't get the water you want when you want it. Then, "Are we gonna get going?"
The athletic one of the group is driving. He says, Hold on. In his arms are about five different things. Digital video camera, bag of food and water, a digital camera, his cell phone which he struggles to use, and a set of keys. Things are starting to get complicated. All of his friends are in their own world. So is he. So is everyone. Their own universe. And his is so alive right now that he couldn't be bothered with the little things. Like how he won't be able to digest real food when he finally gets to go back home. Right now, he has what he needs
His diet was suffering. Wake up, go to a fast food joint. Shell out two bucks for some processed meat on a bun. For lunch, well, maybe he'll skip lunch today. Dinner might actually be promising tonight, since this is his last day in the woods. He had decided, he didn't like getting kicked out of his own house. He had gone back to pick up some things, and his keys didn't work. Keys are simple. And so, locks are simple. And changing how they correspond is simple. So, he tries the window. All of them appear to be nailed shut in addition to being locked by those little rotating discs. This definitely wasn't like two weeks ago. It was easier to go home then. And, he thought, maybe if I quit, I can stay home.
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