Cliff’s Info Dump

Cliff’s Info Dump

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Cliff’s Info Dump
Cliff’s Info Dump
So Long

So Long

A short story first published in Mirrormaze (2020)

Cliff Jones Jr.
Apr 25, 2023
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Cliff’s Info Dump
Cliff’s Info Dump
So Long
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I’ve been stuck in this dream for so long. I keep thinking I’ve woken up, but there’s always another layer. I got a dream journal for my birthday. Who was that from? I keep thinking that I’m writing in it. I’ll be on a roll, remembering absurd little details and making some mind-blowing connections, but then just when I’ve finally got something good scribbled down, I wake up again. Ha.

So I start all over, scrambling to remember what I’ve just finished writing. The most interesting threads become memories of memories, so far removed from my actual experience that they may as well be fiction. As well, or better even. Can I even trust my memories inside of a dream? Maybe I only think I’ve been waking and writing, waking and writing, waking and writing . . .

Acorns the size of chicken eggs lie scattered all around the front yard of my childhood home. I crack one open to get to the fruit inside, something between a blackberry and a lychee. It tastes exactly as I imagined it would—which makes perfect sense because actually, I am imagining all of this. Right? At least, some part of me is.

But what does that even mean if it’s a part of me that I can’t control, can’t experience directly . . . It may as well be somebody else. It may as well be you.

I open up a second acorn, but this one looks like it’s been partly eaten. No. It’s being eaten right now. Some invisible worm works its way through the fleshy fruit as I look on in horror. I can see little bits of lychee-blackberry meat being pulled away from the rest of the fruit and quickly dissolving into nothing.

I should just drop the thing, but I can’t move a muscle. I’m frozen in place staring at this fruit in my hand as it’s slowly devoured. Somehow, I know that when only the shell remains, my hand will be next.

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