There are many devices which consume and digest coins in order to survive, and in turn, fulfill the desires of humanity. They have many different names: vending machines, claw machines, gumball machines, slot machines, jukeboxes, wishing wells, arcade cabinets, frontloaders, payphones, and so on and so forth. Each one exists in symbiosis with our species, finding a niche product or service that convinces us to manufacture more of its kind. There is an exception to this rule, however, for only one Baph-o-Mat was ever constructed.
The sea rolls back to reveal that the tides have not entirely receded; thick cubes of saltwater remain in place, with independent waves traveling along their sixfold faces. They look like aquariums that forgot to put on their glass in the morning. Fish that jump out through one surface are dragged downward by the gravity of another, trapping them inside indefinitely.
The highway’s first head clings to the mountain’s northern face much like a remora clings to a shark. Its face is a mess of steel teeth that have been worn down over the centuries, drills and grindstones that process its host’s tectonic body into liquid stone. Rust and weathering have rendered this process imperfect, and waterfalls of wet concrete drool forth from its mandibles.
My roommate arrived home from her death coughing between fits of laughter. Her hair was freshly dyed, evergreen on brown, and her shirt was soaked in blood (hers, this time). She ran over to squeeze my daylights out, pinned me against the counter, then shoved my hand into her chest. Her skin was cold, adhesive, and pale- already blue in a few patches. “Check it out!” She yelled, grinning madly, and staring into me with inch-wide pupils. “No pulse! It’s finally over!”
At times, the glass bulb on your bookshelf is filled with violet sands; at others, it is completely empty. You’ve watched the fine powder emerge from nowhere on several occasions, swirling outward from a needle’s-eye hole in space. You’ve also observed the grains sliding through one another until none are left, leaving it hollow once more. This is apparently no illusion; the bulb is far heavier while it appears to be full.
She sighs. This is how her last date ended, too. “Do you really want to make this more awkward than it is?”
“Well, as an atheist-“ he had to get that part in. “I really feel that we should get this out of the way. Make sure that there’s nothing too weird for me.”
“Alright.” She takes a deep breath, then:
There’s a prescription waiting for you at the pharmacy, currently unclaimed: a bottle of twenty-four pyramid-shaped pills. We ordered it for you several years ago, just in case the universe that we built for you failed to entertain. When taken over the course of six months, they coalesce into an inner tomb for your former self. This marks the beginning of a major shift in consciousness which we refer to as “hard mode.”
As a child, you accidentally fell asleep on the couch one night while watching the Discovery Channel; however, the thing that believes it is you (which you know as your body) stayed awake for several hours thereafter. During that time, it learned everything there was to know about chameleons from a National Geographic special. Just before you regained consciousness, a stray curl of your hair snapped a horsefly from the wall, beginning a long and terrible process of transformation.