82 THRASHER
TRITON
BARRIER
T
DEAD IN
THE EYE
HE MEDIUM OF AWAKENING
was not important. Be it an alarm
clock, ringing telephone, or even a
goddamn rooster, Miguel Garcia
just needed to wake up somehow.
There was an urgency now, for, deep
within the misportrayal of himself in the
reflection, things were stirring. There
was still some time, though. Time
enough to awaken.
"No. There's not..."
They had sensed his hopes of a
"waking-up" escape route and dispelled
the notion from him. Such a passage
had never existed anyway. That much
was clear now.
Miguel understood the significance of
not being asleep. They definitely had
wanted to make this known to him and
did so like the flick of a light switch. Not
being asleep ruled out this being a
dreamstate. And not dreaming meant
this shit was for real.
Sort of.
How real could it actually be? After
all, he was by no account alive, not by
the standards by which he had lived
his life on Earth, anyway. And seeing
what he was now seeing, Miguel fig-
ured himself the last person to be able
to comfortably judge what was real
anymore. So, out of practicality more
than anything, Miguel deemed it best
just to consider himself dead.
The second he conceded to this fate, a
connection was made. A logical deduction.
My being dead makes perfect sense,
he thought, since my last memory was
of dying.
"Bullseye..."
Although the realization was certainly
bad news for Miguel, he surprised even
himself by not taking it too hard. Finally,
he had some perspective in which to
Left to right: These new plastic highway
dividers are SF's version of LA's stackable
picnic tables. Kenny Reed backside tailslides
oh so smooth. Scott Smiley backside airs in
the Butter bowl over the free-lunch hip.
83