Fallow awoke lying facedown in the alley. The dustpan, beer, and disk of grey breakfast firmly expunged from his body and mind. As he swam his way back to consciousness, Fallow tried to distinguish his immediate reality from fantasy.
It stunk.
That was pretty realistic.
His pants were soaking wet, smelled like vomit and were sticking to his legs.
Also quite plausible.
His head was full of glistening white ponies that frolicked and cavorted on a field of driven snow. They were throwing shiny white snowballs at each other as they danced amoung the snowdrifts of his mind.
That one was a little strange to be real.
Fallow blinked away the white ponies with a groan and tried to focus his eyes. Now, instead of pure white ponies in his vision, he saw red snakes.
His vision was full of red snakes.
“This can’t be real either.” He groaned to himself
Now, the snakes were talking to him.
“Are you ok?”
What kind of talking snakes were these? Fallow thought. He tried as hard as he could to blink them away. And why was there cabbage leaves in amoung the red snakes? And why do these snakes have only two eyes for all of them? Do they share them? What did they do at holidays when the whole family came over?
Fallow blinked a couple of more times. He finally came to the realization that the snakes were not snakes. There was a girl with red hair in front of him. He poked her with a finger to test out his “Girl with hair” theory.
“Ow! What did you do that for?”
Aha! Fallow thought with a certain sense of satisfaction. My theory about the snakes was sound and thus I have proven without a doubt that this is in fact a girl in front of me.
“You are obviously not a snake! It’s a scientific fact!”
The red haired girl pulled Fallow groggily to his feet. She tried to help him remain standing as he blearily swayed in place.
“The dustpan stole my breakfast disk, and then there was this really pretty girl, and an ugly blue shirt and, she had really nice eyes. Like reaaaaly nice eyes. Like pure blue, like an ice cube of blue water. And she was gettin-“
Fallow suddenly blinked his way into the present. He surveyed the scene around him in confusion. He saw the two men still sprawled out in the garbage. He saw the crowd at the end of the alley. He tried not to see the furry brown smelly thing that was eating what looked like a shoe. He turned back to the red haired girl with a growing look of apprehension.
He looked at her for a moment in silence.
“First of all, who the hell are those two? What the hell happened? And last but probably most important; do you see a small furry thing over there eating a shoe?”
The red haired girl eyed him suspiciously. Maybe he’d taken a much harder hit than she’d thought. Or maybe his head was much softer than she thought. Or both.
“You saved me from those two.” She said pointing at the thugs. “I think they wanted to kidnap me. And yes, there is a small furry thing eating a shoe.”
Fallow whistled softly. “I saved you?”
She nodded.
“Yeah, you vanquished those two, it was a little untypical methods, but the results speak for themselves. I thought that you were going to just leave me here with those tw-
