2001-10-24 - 1040 pm

Billy had a really bad habit. Every night, he'd go to sleep in his fairly normal but sort of on the fluffy side bed and every morning he'd wake up some place else. You know, like a small shack in rural 17th century China or a world where the French revolutionaries all looked like the Fonz from Happy Days and the Fonz was an oldskool French soldier. Stuff like that. Okay, so it was less like a habit and more like a forced supernnatural occurence but hey, Billy sort of liked his Poppings, certainly as much as a body might like cigarette smoking (or maybe it's just similar to really liking how well-fried bacon smells).

This one time, Billy opened his eyes and found himself in Ivan the Terrible's digs, the kitchentype part of it. Making the best of things, he made a sandwich and ate it. 'Twas a mighty fine sandwich. Billy ought to have been a chef, or at least I think so sometimes. Well, after taking a moment to lick his lips, he blinked for the first time since discovering himself in such a well-stocked room.

Then he regained his self-in-bed.

You see, Billy would return to his original place and time after blinking. After years of fairly hardass training, he could go for hours without taking that first blink. Try it sometime and maybe you'll become a master too.

Upon his return, Billy went through his daily tasks of washing, drying, and feeding himself. Then he went to work and filed papers. He never did talk much to his coworkers; they all thought he was a bit boring. At 5:00, he would take a train and a bus to arrive at his house. He'd listen to a little jazz or watch some gameshows and go to sleep to wake up to Pop and to blink. Wasn't much to it.

One rather particular morning, Billy woke up and found himself lying in a bed much like his own, only a little less soft and a little bit larger to accommodate the warm body next to his. He stared at this sharp face, seeing her softness and admiring her rough spots. She woke up all rumply-haired and Hey'd him with this halfsmile, half-awake.

Bam.

Billy was a fairly wise man. I mean, all his adventures let him experience a near-full spectrum of human nature/values, from quite a number of angles. You just don't stay ignorant after being everyone. So from all this wisdom, Billy knew something real: you do not turn down girls in bed who look at you the way you've always wanted to be looked at.

And it was good. He found himself to be a 1950s Australian cardiologist, which was an exciting time for a cariologist to be in because they just developed the plastic valve and performed the first open-heart surgery. It was April Fool's Day. Business was good because of all the wary people who came in with various symptoms and wanted to be checked out after being scared by their kids, grandkids, neighbor's kids, and the more than occasional adult. Billy did a pretty good job for a guy with no medical background (well, he helped his brother once when a bee stung him, but that was it).

You might be wondering how Billy managed to keep his eyes from blinking. Ingeniously, he harnessed the power of duct tape, succeeding in taping his eyebrows forever upwards. The townspeople knew him to be a harmless fellow with a knack for making heart-healthy sandwiches and noticed his "queer habits" (such as sleeping with his eyes open and constantly twiddling his fingers together) but did not make too much of them.

This went on for quite a number of years, and Bill was finally happy. He'd get up in the morning, make sandwiches for the kids, go to work, come home, listen to some jazz, and go to sleep. Things were chill. Sometimes, he and his wife would discuss his strange habits. But after all the discussion possible, there wasn't really anything to say about it other than "Don't blink."

There was a guy named Vern at the office. Now, Vern was a very smart-alecky fellow who wore a lot of plaid. I don't know if it's a 1950s Australian thing, but there sure were a lot of plaid jerks out there. In fact, a skapunk band called The Plaid Jerks was later formed because of this phenomenon, which people found much more remarkable than Billy's phenomenon. But anyhow, Vern liked to point and laugh at things. So one day, he pointed and laughed at a longhaired fellow named Brad who came to throw out the trash. He pointed, said, "Look! It's Jesus!" and laughed. Billy wasn't too religious of a man, but he looked anyway, as most people are apt to do. Brad really did look quite like Jesus (well, the type of Jesus you see in plastic lawn nativity scenes) and Bill did this tremendous double take, causing him to lose the ninja-esque concentration he had over his blinkdom. So our Billy boy blinked.

Whoops.