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Hugh came into the caf'e, eager to scrutinize the day's selection of food hiding behind protective glass. The hot food on offer for the day was quite banal—mashed potatoes, fried steaks, green beans, soups, some malformed looking chicken, and other assortments of dishes. None of these pricked nor tickled Hugh's interest too much and some choices even gave Hugh premonitions of future indigestion. In the end, he chose a prepacked sandwich to go along with a coffee.

Hugh made his way to the window and even before he had a chance to sip his coffee and unpack his sandwich two women occupied the seats at the table right next to his own. Hugh peered around the caf'e and could see open tables and chairs from corner to corner. The table which these women had chosen was so close to Hugh's own that if anyone walked into the caf'e and observed them, they would have thought that Hugh and the two women were dinning together.

Hugh let out a few coughs without covering his mouth with the hope that his lack of social etiquette would cause them to change tables. The women didn't even pass Hugh a glimpse. He blew his nose into a napkin, but even this they didn't notice at all.

Hugh was of the mind to scoop up his coffee and sandwich and relocate to the other side of the caf'e but he found himself not the master of his own body and was unable to will himself to stand up. The women's conversation had a hold on him and was pulling on his attention like gravity to a rock tumbling down hill.

They were discussing the news and Hugh knew what was sure to come. He inhaled, took a sip of his coffee, and waited for it all to unravel.

The first woman, with curly blonde hair that bounced around her smooth and doll-like face, was stating her position that some young man who had been arrested shouldn't be held accountable for his actions.

“The police are obviously vile and hideous creatures! They simply want to exert their power over everyone!” She tossed her hair back away from her eyes, as if this added weight to her statement. “I've watched the news and seen the clips, the man was doing nothing. The police just grabbed him and threw him to the floor. They branded him a criminal on sight!”

The second woman was a polar opposite to the first. Her face was neither round nor smooth. Her nose, chin, cheeks, forehead and even her lips were all made up of sharp lines and angles. It was like looking at a representation of a fractal in human form. While the first woman had curly blonde hair that bobbed around as she talked, the second had close cropped hair that would only see movement after a few months of growth.

The second woman moved to retort.

“You watch all these clips on TV, but they never show you the full story! This man, who you are making out to be an innocent baby sheep, robbed someone at gunpoint beforehand. People who were there took videos and posted them online. It clearly shows he was being a hooligan beforehand. The police were acting correctly in light of the man's criminal actions.”

“You know what,” the doll faced woman leaned forward with her elbows on the table and raised an eyebrow to her interlocutor and said, “I think you are teensy-weensy bit of a police state loving fascist.”

The second woman sat up straighter, pricked by her counterpart's comment.

“What does that have to do with anything?” The second woman questioned. “I'm talking about how you can't just believe what the TV shows you and that you have to dig deeper —"

Without any warning the doll faced woman's head exploded with the force of a hand grenade detonation.

Her torso smacked against the table and the stump that was her neck oozed and seeped not blood and gore, but a green liquid and scaly skin. The trickling of reptilian flesh and green fluid across the table didn't last for more than a few heartbeats, for reality rewound itself. The explosion played itself in reverse and all the fleshy matter and boney bits flowing across the table and dripping onto the floor returned to their point of origin – to the doll woman's face. Upon returning to the past, the doll face woman was alive and well, but her head had been replaced with that of a dragon.

Hugh turned his attention to the fractal faced woman only to see that she had undergone a change of her own. She had transformed in prickly porcupine with hundreds upon hundreds of needles dangling from forehead to shoulders.

Hugh was used to these sorts of situations because he had been having hallucinations since his late childhood. In his adulthood he would sit back and observe his hallucinations like an anthropologist who had been stationed on an alien planet to do research on indigenous customs. Other times the hallucinations wouldn't involve being a mere spectator. Quite often the constructs of his mind would engage him in conversations and partake in activities with him. One time Hugh had hallucinated an elephant that fancied playing badminton and demanded a peanut for every point it had scored.

Luckily, the dragon and porcupine had no interest in playing games with Hugh.

The dragon raked her talons across the table and left wide fissures in the tabletop. She bellowed gray puffy plumes through her nose that filled the air above their heads with curls of dirty smoke. She brandished hungry carnivorous teeth and roared at the porcupine who had been sitting there and watching her interlocutor with a concentrated and pinpoint stare.

The dragon spat out a final column of smoke, tapped her talons on the table, and waited for the porcupine's reply.

The porcupine responded with neither shrieks nor squeaks but with a silent dance of hip swaying, head bobbing, torso gyrating, and shoulder shuffling. Each movement was precisely performed to send just the right amount of vibration through her needles. Hugh could see that the dragon's pupils were oscillating at high speeds back and forth to follow the messages sent not from the dance moves themselves, but from the vibrations of the needles.

The porcupine gave a final shake of her spines and turned her dark bulging and beady eyes towards Hugh.

“What in the world are you staring at?” The porcupine asked and sent her needles into a gesticulating frenzy.

Hugh felt himself a timed mouse because in the blink of an eye the dragon and porcupine were no more. In their place, staring back at him with bewildered looks, were the doll faced and fractal faced women.

“I apologize,” Hugh muttered and threw his sight on his coffee and sandwich, “I was just lost in thought.”

After a few raised eyebrows and a huff from the doll faced woman, the women shrugged and dug back into their food.

Hugh kept his gaze on his food, wanting to avoid any curious glances from the former dragon and porcupine, and realized that he had yet to touch his sandwich. He gripped the edges of the plastic wrapper, readying to tear it open, but put the sandwich down instantly after reading the label. It was a chicken sandwich.

He recalled Dr. I's baby chick framework and was overcome with pity for the chicken in the sandwich, a chicken who probably had been riding along a conveyer belt at one time. Hugh imagined the chicken chirping and flapping its wings alongside avian acquaintances, not knowing that it was on a ride that would transport it in slices to Hugh's hands.