Splatters of Pink
We worked for a consumer electronics store. I hated my job, stocking overpriced cables on perfectly aligned shelves. At least it paid decently. Two co-workers were on their break, wandering the symmetrical aisles in sheer boredom, wishing they could rip off the red polos and tight black pants.
This was all minutes after I left my last world, one of bliss and sensual pleasure.
"Check out these digital cameras," said one co-worker. "They're the cheapest I could find, including clearance. Sixty bucks."
"And they're still pieces of shit," I sighed, taking the camera intending to re-stock them. I hated my job, but that didn't mean I couldn't be diligent. About to put them back, everything goes black, and the three of us are replaced in a strange world.
Confusion, incoherence, displacement, and discoloration. Out of phase.
We shortly find ourselves back in that aisle. A small family browsing the BluRays hears our fall from the abyss, and they peek around the end-cap curious. The shitty digital cameras are still in our hands but unboxed.
"Oh God! We gonna get in big trouble for this!" feared the other co-worker, a quiet, reserved man perpetually scared of corporate.
"No, we're not. Calm down, and see if there are any pictures on your cameras," I said.
Both of their cameras had nothing but what looked like overexposed snaps of sand and earth - white and grainy. Maybe that was the camera's fault...
Disappointed and hopeless, I turn my camera on. Looking through the digital viewfinder, I see something amazing. A world apart from any other. An oasis. Colorful buildings made up a small town on a grassy island isolated on all sides by a vast desert. The frames I took seemed to be of us driving along a highway away from the island.
Eventually metal-roofed covers appeared in the desert landscape, scattered, resembling an oil field. On each aluminum face were splatters of pink paint in unique forms. Outlines of stenciled letters appeared in the middle of these splatters, spelling nothing sensible in any language.
"These are incredible!" I stutter as my co-workers beg to see the pictures. Oh, there's a screen on these things, I remember.
I pass the camera to my co-workers and travel to the next world.