It shouldn’t have snapped. I don’t know why it snapped. Well, I don’t know why it snapped right there at that moment. I’m fairly certain as to why it snapped, and I think that the rest of what I’m telling you right now is intended to be an explanation as to why it sapped – and, hopefully, through that explanation I’ll come to some sort of epiphany as to why it snapped where it did at the moment it did specifically. You see it in movies, there’s always something that leads to something snapping in somebody’s brain, there’s always a moment that pushes them over the edge, and it always makes sense, like they might flash back to a point in time in history where they first encounter whatever it is that makes it snap, childhood, adolescence, some time in early adulthood, and then they cut back to the person and the audience is like “Oh, yeah, that makes sense, that’s why whatever snapped in his brain snapped the way it did.”
And we use the word “snap”, too, don’t we? And everyone knows what I mean by that? What a perfect word. I wish I was more eloquent so I could figure out a word better than “snap” to describe what happened in my brain in the Westfield Mall GameStop last Thursday afternoon, but it was a snap. It was very plainly a snap.
What a benign sentence that preceded the snap, and what a horrible scene in a movie this would be, because it didn’t make sense. You can’t go back in time and flash back to a scene in my life that would accurately set up Luke from the Westfield GameStop in his red Callaway polo and lanyard with those bottle caps from Fallout 3 pinned on it saying the very benign sentence of “Would you be interested in pre-ordering Mario Golf: Super Rush?” Because that’s when it snapped.
If you were, like, outside of the confines of the store, like if you were in the Food Court, you probably couldn’t tell that that was the moment it snapped, but everybody within could tell, apparently. Four people in there, not including myself, could tell at that exact moment. I had to collect outside testimonials because after that sentence there’s like a solid eight hours of TV static before the next memory of looking at the TV at my buddy Gregg’s apartment. The Tulane Green Wave have the ball at the 34 yard line, down by one to the Tulsa Golden Hurricane with fifteen seconds left in the game, it’s fourth and eight. They’re lined up to kick the field goal. The kicker kicks the ball. It turns end over end to towards the goalposts. It’s hooking, hooking, hooking… But it goes through. Tulane wins. Tulane advances to 2-6 on the season, Tulsa falls to 3-7.
“I always thought that was bullshit,” I say to Gregg, who I instinctively knew was in his computer chair to the left of me. “Tulane and Tulsa shouldn’t be in the same conference. That’s too confusing. And they shouldn’t have almost the same name, like a color and then like a phenomenon of ocean water? Ridiculous. It should be on Tulsa to make the change, though. That’s the middle of Oklahoma. You ever been to Oklahoma? Not a single fucking hurricane goes through that state. Impossible. Tulane shouldn’t pick that name up, either, given that city’s history with Hurricanes, but Tulsa shouldn’t be the school to have “Hurricanes”. And “Golden Hurricanes,” if that isn’t enough, as if that’s something, as if we all know what a Golden Hurricane is.
Well, I know what a Golden Hurricane is, I saw a German porno video once entitled “Golden Hurricane” but it was just a woman surrounded by like six German guys who each give her a golden shower while sort of shuffling in a circle. I don’t think the University of Tulsa wants to be associated with that. I don’t think that’s technically the name of that clip, either, I saw in the comments it was originally called “Der Pissenwickeln” but whoever reuploaded it to that site, XHamster I think, called it “The Golden Hurricane.” Regardless, this is SMU’s title to lose in the American.”
I looked to Gregg, whose jaw was very, very slack, whose eyes were about as wide as his mouth, he looked like that panel from Tails Gets Trolled, you know what I’m talking about? After the first time that Tails gets trolled, in the narrative. That face.
“Collin.” He said. “That’s what you choose to say?” Immediately as he finished the sentence, his face returned to the jaw-dropped bug-eyed face I mentioned earlier. Really, look up that panel, it’s accurate to the face he made. “You’ve been in like a fucking fugue state since we were at the mall earlier today. That’s the first thing I’ve heard you say that wasn’t a constant repeated muttering of ‘clay fighter, clay clay fighter, come on fight them if you dare, ooh, clay fighter, clay clay fighter, hit em smack em they don’t care,’ the fucking theme song from Clay Fighter for Super Nintendo, and you kept repeating it, under your breath, to yourself, the whole time we were at the mall. At the food court, I was trying to order Subway for both of us, and I was trying to get you to tell me what you wanted, and I just fucking guessed on an Italian BMT untoasted on Herbs and Cheese, and I think I was right, you ate the sandwich, all twelve inches of it, but you kept just muttering that – ‘Clay Fighter, Clay Clay Fighter,’ the whole time, all day, you freaked out everybody at GameStop, and ever since, you’ve just been in that fugue, ‘Clay Fighter, Clay Clay Fighter’ all FUCKING AFTERNOON. And you snap out of it for what? For your fucking stand-up Tight Five on the naming conventions of the American Athletic Conference’s consistent cellar dwellers?”
I have to imagine that my face resembled the aforementioned face from Tails Gets Trolled in that moment. I didn’t respond, I couldn’t respond, I don’t know what I could say other than respond in the affirmative that I had been workshopping that for a stand-up Tight Five. I don’t think it would work out because both of those schools are relatively small in scale, but I think I could get something out of it, you know.
“What do you remember about the past six hours, Collin? Do you remember any of that?”
“Uh…” I really did try to recall anything that happened during that time frame. I promise, I tried. I got nothing. TV Static. I wonder if, maybe if I had been born like ten years later, like in 2001 instead of 1991, that I wouldn’t have the TV Static, maybe I’d have that blue screen that all the new TVs have in the place of the classic snowy TV Static nowadays. Maybe like that youtube loading circle? Or if I were born in 1891 instead of 1991, what would that have been like? I don’t know what their equivalent of TV Static was. Maybe like a guy struggling to get on top of a horse? Or a campfire? Did they have radio then? I don’t know. I don’t know what their equivalent of Clay Fighter for Super Nintendo is, either. Maybe like that “put a-nother nickel in, to the nickelodeon, all I want to hear is music, music, music” song. Camptown Races, maybe. Take Me Out To The Ballgame… I digress, I apologize.
Oh, Rhapsody in Blue. That would’ve been it. I heard that on a United Airlines safety instructions video recently, that would have been my favorite song back then. I guess the Clay Fighter theme isn’t my favorite song now, though. My favorite song now is “The Last Huzzah.”
“No, nothing, man.” I responded to Gregg. “Last I remember, I was talking to that guy Luis from the GameStop. I was buying a backup charger for my Vita, and he asked me if I wanted to pre-order that new Mario Golf. I thought that was weird, I don’t own a Switch, I guess I don’t know why he would know that. But I was buying a Vita charger, he should tell me about new Vita games to pre-order.”
“They don’t make new Vita games, Collin.”
“Oh, sorry. Anyway, that’s it. It’s like him saying that sentence, then a sort of snap somewhere in the back right part of my brain, then TV Static, and then Tulane hit that field goal to win the game.”
“Shit, Washington-Oregon is on, I just turned to that during a commercial,” said Gregg. The ESPNU feed had already flipped to a rerun of the College Basketball Live preseason prediction show. They think Duke’s going to be good this year. Gregg changed the channel. Washington had an eight-point lead, the fourth quarter had just started, Oregon with the ball. Top-15 matchup, in Seattle. I have nearly no material about either Oregon or Washington, the only thing coming close is asking who “Eugene Oregon” was. If this game had been on TV, I probably wouldn’t have done that long monologue earlier. But I did. That’s serendipity for you. That’s what it’s all about, baby.
“What do you remember me doing these past few hours?” I asked Gregg.
“Primarily the Clay Fighter thing… uh…” He put the remote down and stared at the ground for a second. “Okay, you go into the fugue right as the card machine accepts your card, so you manage to put it back into your wallet as you’re muttering the Clay Fighter theme. I could tell immediately as I looked at your face that something had happened. The look in your eyes, man… Just nothing was going on in them. No light. No movement, just straight forward. You had the eyes of one of those creepy CGI kids movies from the late 2000s. You know, Monster House, or Mars Needs Moms, like before they could get the eyes of CGI characters right and they just looked dead, completely uncanny? That’s what your eyes looked like. It was fucked, man. I still see them. Seared into my mind. You spooked the other clerk, that girl Katie, she took one look at you and went into the back room and started crying. She said she knew you from college and had never seen you like that before. It was fucking creepy, man.
“Wait, Katie Martinez was there?” I responded, something falling in the pit of my stomach. “Oh no… I took Chem lab with her back when we were in college… I had a crush on her back then, still kind of do, I made her cry?”
“Well… not intentionally, but yes, you made her cry. I assume not intentionally. You didn’t go into an eight-hour fugue state on purpose, I assume?”
“No, I don’t think so.” I don’t remember my mindset as the TV Static started. It’s possible that, accepting the concept that the version of me during the fugue state was operating under a fugue-state sense of intentionality, like a different part of my brain had taken over that I couldn’t control and it had some level of intentionality, in that sense there I did more or less mean to make her cry, like if it were an evil part of my brain that had taken over and it wanted to make people cry, then in that sense I meant to. But I don’t think it was an evil part of my brain. An evil part of my brain would’ve done evil things, I just repeated the Clay Fighter theme from Super Nintendo constantly, so Gregg says. I think it was… Well, I don’t know. I’ll have to talk to a neurobiologist about it.
“Okay, just checking. After that, we left the GameStop. Well, I guess before we left the GameStop, the other guy in there asked if we needed him to call an ambulance or something, I told him I didn’t think so. After that, we leave the GameStop, we go to the Subway at the mall food court, I order you the Italian BMT I mentioned earlier, you eat the whole thing – Fucked up thing is that you handed me, in exact change, what you owed me for the sandwich. Like I paid with my credit card and even as you’re intermittently muttering ‘Clay Fighter, Clay Clay Fighter,’ you pulled out, exact change, taking tax into consideration, what you owed me for the sandwich. Inexplicable. That probably spooked me more than the eyes did.”
I pulled out my phone and opened Facebook. I hadn’t checked Facebook in months, I wasn’t sure if I’d added Katie as a friend back in like 2012 or whenever that was but I wanted to apologize. Secretly also I was hoping that me messaging her to apologize about my fugue state eyes affecting her emotionally might open her up to my caring and compassionate manner, how I care about people, perhaps it resparks something that first sparked long ago… Of course I get nothing searching her name, either she’s not on Facebook or I didn’t add her as a friend. I’ll have to go back to the GameStop at some point and apologize.
More of this will come later! I am really quite bad at titling my writings, specifically works of fiction like this, so I don't imagine this will remain the title of the story.