Salvia X Files
Attack Of The Clones
“Wake up, Clones. Wake up to the Truth!”
That’s what the man at the end of the sidewalk was screaming.
“Wake Up, Clones!” he yelled again.
I turned off my Ipod and placed the ear buds in my front shirt pocket. I then walked up to him and looked into his troubled eyes.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
He tilted his head and tried fixing his gaze on me. Through his field of vision, he watched as my body slowly rotated. Not only was my body rotating; he could see everything around me rotating in synchronization with my body. As he continued to gaze in my direction, he watched as the sidewalk rolled across his retinas, along with an attached street lamp and a blue post office box.
The man then brought his hands up to his face and began rubbing his eyes. “Don’t you understand?” he asked. “Don’t you see what’s going on all around us?”
I turned my head and surveyed the downtown area around me. Everything seemed normal for a Monday afternoon. What was I doing even talking to this guy. He was obviously a homeless man, probably a wandering schizophrenic.
I calmly said, “I don’t see anything strange.”
The man then suddenly swooned and fell over onto his side in the middle of the sidewalk. Tears began rolling down his cheeks, and without talking, he raised his arm and pointed a finger at a storefront across the street. To my amazement, I could see a bright, ghost-like figure across the street slowly moving toward us.
I took my eyes off the ghost heading in our direction and looked back down at the disheveled man. A wave of fear immediately surged through me as I saw his body quickly decomposing. Little bug-like creatures resembling robotic maggots were bubbling all over him. His body started to change. The features on his face were changing as were the clothes he was wearing. After what seemed like ten seconds, the homeless man had totally transformed into another human being.
The transformed human was now wearing the clothes of a postal worker. He opened his eyes, smiled up at me and said, “Wow, this heat must have gotten the best of me. Could you help me up?” I put my arms around his upper back and helped him to his feet. Still smiling, he said, “Thank you, sir.” I then watched him walk over to the blue mail box. He inserted a key and opened a door. He then pulled out a white plastic box containing some letters. He grabbed the letters and placed the plastic container back inside the mail box. After relocking the mail box, he gave me a sort of salute and walked away. I stood there with a complete look of amazement and confusion as he rounded a turn and was out of sight.
A frozen moment passed before I was jarred back to reality by some commotion a couple of blocks from my location. Up the street was a small group of people standing in a circle. They seemed to be looking down at something. My heart was already pumping hard, so I decided to work off some adrenaline by jogging up to them.
When I arrived, I could see an anguished woman in her late thirties sitting down on the street curb. She was in the middle of a conversation and wiping her face with a tissue when she said, “They don’t want us talking about them.”
A man in the circle asked, “Who doesn’t want us talking about them?
“The salvia beings.” replied the woman. “They are the ones taking over. They’re taking over our bodies.” The woman then stood up, surveyed the people around her and said, “The salvia beings are turning us into clones. They’re replacing us with human copies, people who look and act like us but are different from us.”
While I was listening to her, I lost my balance and began to stumble. I quickly grabbed hold of the shoulder of a man next to me wearing a Yankees baseball cap. He turned his head in my direction and asked, “Mister, are you OK? Do you need some help?” There was something about his facial expression that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I was starting to feel very dizzy so I decided to crouch down. I tried in vain to grab hold of the ground. It felt like the whole world was rotating around me like a child’s merry go round. The entire downtown area was rotating. I couldn’t believe what was happening. It was like a scene from some futuristic movie. The woman who had been talking looked over at me with a secretive hint of acknowledgement. She held out her hand to me, but it began to stretch like taffy before I could grab it.
I was slowly starting to black out, but I could still hear the woman’s distant audibles echoing over to me. It sounded like she was saying, “Don’t let them cover you over with amnesia. You’ve got to hold on to your sense of self.”
But it was too late. I was already losing it. The whole downtown was rotating like some beastly gyroscope of bent buildings and twisted concrete. My hands were tingling. I could see tiny bug people sprouting all over my arms like bacteria. It then dawned on me what was happening. I was turning into a clone. I was losing my identity. I was losing my life.
I felt my head slam down onto the street’s hard surface. My face felt like it was spreading out into a two dimensional film stretching into infinity. I tried to close my eyes, but it was no use. A clone was already looking through the eyes that were once my own.
.
.