(Page 1 of 12) The Latent Short Fiction of Sebastian Briglia by Sebouh GemdjianSUMMARY: This is a tale of BDSM and time travel that explains the answer to the question: What happens when insanity is chained and locked to reality by steel logic? That answer, of course, being "Life."Stephen felt the wind at the corner of his mouth, blowing on a wet spot. The first thing he realized when he opened his eyes was that he had been drooling in his sleep. Then came the familiar feeling of being tied to a tree in a field, in the dark, the twisted strands of a steel rope digging into the latex covering his flabby chest.
Then, he realized he was frightened. There is nothing more frightening than a familiar feeling that is familiar for no reason. He had no idea where he was or who had tied him there. At first he figured it was just a nightmare. Then lightning flashed and he saw his surroundings in their entirety.
A colonial house in the middle distance, a hill behind it, covered with woods interrupted by some sort of guard rail. Empty field in front of him and four people, sitting. They all sat in half lotus facing him, ten feet away, and seemed to be meditating. Two guys, a girl, and someone who was almost invisible. One guy had jet black hair and looked slightly Asiatic, the other one was blond and bearded. Next to the bearded one sat a girl with a noticeable chest and cute blond curls. The almost invisible one was almost invisible because her appendages and torso were so skinny, the lightning flash almost whitewashed them. He could tell she was a girl by the long black hair, which seemed to begin with a bald spot in the middle of her head, because her blond roots were showing. The four were just sitting there. Eyes closed and ominously motionless.
"Hey..." he shouted as the rain began to poor. "Hey! Who the hell are you people?"
A hiss of rain and silence filled the dark. The next flash revealed the blond one's eyes suddenly wide open.
"What am I doing here?" asked Stephen.
"People are going to call you The Awakened One," the blond one, whose name was Boris, shouted back. "You're here helping us to resolve something," he said in a fast Brooklyn-Russian way. "The question is:" he continued, "How did a fast-food chain restaurant end up right outside a community of ascetics in northeast India in 500 BC."
Stephen tried to pry himself away while Boris was talking, but the wires just dug deeper into his chest. He had to get out of there, he thought, and immediately felt more comfortable. At least now he had some kind of an idea of who he was, something he could hold on to, unlike the anachronistic nonsense the crazy blond man was blabbering about. He was "the guy who has to free himself from being tied to this tree." Only there seemed to be no way.
His hands were free from the elbows down, but the only break in the steel rope he could find within their reach was some kind of a football shaped combination lock. He could think of a password he used for everything, and would have tried it just in case, but he could see nothing in the dark.
"Do you people have flashlights?" he screamed.
"Come on," Boris interrupted a little before 'flashlights', adjusting his volume as if speaking to a child who was easily distracted, "you remember..."
These people did seem familiar to Stephen.
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