Note on re-write: While my previous posting was stream-of-
consciousness, or "tapped out by distant fingers," as I like to say,
I want to try an experiment. To do that, I will take the material that
"came in" yesterday and re-write it more like I was a journalist, or at
least a patient writing an objective account of the incident. In other
words, while the facts (the facts regarding what I felt, I mean) are
true, I wanted to conduct further experimentation with the form to
see where this leads us as writers. Enjoy.
--------------------------------------------
THE RAPIDLY MULTIPLYING BILL PALMERS
What had happened several weeks ago was occurring again.
During recent days I have been under a great deal of stress
over the fact that someone has been counterfeiting my posts.
I was in the upstairs office when this incident took place.
While I was working at my computer, the words on my screen
seemed to shift, then morph en masse, and the face of man
came into view. He looked like me, but not like a photograph
of me as much as a likeness in the strange form of an ink
drawing by illustrator Virgil Finley.
It was almost as if I were seeing some other self of mine
appearing from a parallel universe. Lines of intersection
seem to have been altered in some eldritch way. The man
on the computer screen felt that too, I suspect, because he
was staring at me in terror and I am sure he saw me staring
back in at him with precisely the same emotion.
To protect my sanity, I stood up and walked over to the open
office window. Below, I could see people going in and out
of rec.arts.prose. The next thing I recall was sitting on the
window ledge, staring into an oval mirror, approximately
one foot wide and one-and-one-half feet high.
Growing dizzy, I dropped the mirror. It never reached the
sidewalk outside of rec.arts.prose, because it shattered into
what looked like ten thousand shards in the air.
The shards of the mirror changed into glittering confetti, and
right then I knew that the confetti, each strand reflecting my
image, was being sprinkled over the internet.
Absolute fear swept through me and I flung myself back from the
ledge to avoid falling. Howling like a wounded timberwolf, I bolted
down the stairs and ran through rec.arts.prose and out into the
street.
Everything, including buildings, utility poles, signs and trees were
tilted at a weird angle.
To my horror, I realized that I was tilted at a weird angle too...
[End of Part One of my re-write of "Rapidly Multiplying Bill Palmers."]
"palmer.william" <palmer.william@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:9l2ob.530$ZK3.376@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> It is happening again. I am in the upstairs office. A man stares in
> shock at a monitor screen. He sees a man staring in back in shock.
> Both are drawn by Virgil Finley. Both are me. It is the littl
retarded
> chap who fell into the net grown large. Suddenly needing to get
away
> from the computer, I get up and go to the window. The old madness
> returns in which I feel my mind morphing again.. I'm sitting on the
> window ledge holding the mirror of my mind, staring at it enraptured.
> Dizziness follows, and I drop the mirror. It shatters into
> ten-thousand
> shards, not on the sidewalk outside rec.arts.prose, but in the air.
The
> shards become grafitti sprinkled over the internet. Terror sweeps
> through me as I howl and flee down the stairs and into the street,
where
> everything, buildings, utility poles, trees are tilted at a weird
angle.
> I realize that I'm tilted at a weird angle too. [...]
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