Ever since the night of the arrival of the Dapper Skeleton, @
Terrahoot has kind of lost it. And the accident with the Reality Machine afterwords sure didn't help. Practicing the same movement over and over again--like opening and closing the refrigerator, or stepping onto a bus--had a certain "crazy artist" charm to it before. But now there's a different tone to @
Terrahoot's obsession. He's so focused he won't speak, and he's gone without bathing or changing his clothes for almost two weeks.
We lost most of our members following the incidents, but there's a core group of us left who are still studying the Catalog of Body Movements. Maybe it's an inherently dangerous work. First its creator, @
Nick Gleason, disappeared, and now it's broken @
Terrahoot's mind. The rest of us continue to unpack the catalog from its boxes, looking at the filmstrips and the stereoscopic images and playing the records, but instead of practicing the individual movements, we watch for them in the wild. It's true that every moment you make is in the catalog, and when you see us in the hallways or the cafeteria furiously tapping on our tablets, we're keeping track of what all of you are doing. Using Labanotation, we're mapping the movements of the entire student body, including faculty. Perhaps there's something in the larger patterns that will tell us something.
Doing the Catalog of Body Movements at the Halloween dance was not what I expected. Now I have some combination of Repetitive Strain Injury and PTSD.
It was fun at first. Like line dancing! Have you ever done that? Or Square Dancing at Dark 4-H mixes in elementary school. You get into a groove when everybody's doing it and you get swept up in something bigger than yourself and it's effortless and you just go with the flow?
We were doing 11b, The Upright Vacuum, and then the caller changed it to 92e, Opening the Window, which we did for awhile and then it was 46c, Putting Dishes in the Dishwasher. We were all in sync and it was feeling really good. Then the caller called 14d, Opening the Door.
We transitioned smoothly into our pairs. "After you!" "Why thank you." "No problem!" It's in four, with the silent beat following the "No Problem!" which gives you a moment to reset before starting again. And we did it again. And again, and again, finding that "magic in the moment" like @
Terrahoot says.
That's when the Dapper One erupted from the floor. Some people screamed, but it was all planned, right? Except it was quickly clear something had gone wrong. They could tell. @
Big Jim and all the chaperone teachers. Something wasn't right.
They told us to stop, but we couldn't stop. We kept on opening the door. And holding the door, until the Dapper One was REALLY here--not just some holographic reflection. "After you!" "Why thank you." "No problem!" It laughed at us before it walked away into the night.
Eventually Doctor Ankh from the infirmary was able to stop us from endlessly looping 14d, Opening the Door, but she kept us under observation till today.
I sure hope they find it. The Dapper One, that is. Is it really @
Fullphantomblaze? And if it is, what then?
I can't go into any room with a door now without counting backward from 100 and controlling my breathing. I'm a wreck.
Who's excited for the Freaky Dancing Contest? It's at the Halloween party, so we still have time to prepare, and I wondered if the Body Movement Club was participating, @
Terrahoot? I see you guys walking around campus with your elbows out and your hands doing weird shapes and your knees all chickened out and thought you had some sweet moves. Are you accepting members? Because me and some of the other new students like @
Erudeity and @
Espiritismo and @
Laura Camila would love to "bring it." Also @
Sarah201220 and @
DiegoDeLarge from the Green Cat Club too I'm sure.
I have a sad story about my brother's head transplant. The head he picked rejected him so he had to give it back. But somebody else had already taken his old one and there were no take backs. Then he waited too long to pick a new one and healed over. Now he can't get any new head. He's just a body.
He gets along ok though. It's mostly just sentimental. And there are lots of companies that prefer people with no heads. I'm sure it will work out ok.