The Floppy Hat

The strange and quizzical floppiness of the hat upon our character’s head sickened him as he played with its many layers in the mirror. Why, he asked himself, had he ever thought it would look good upon his handsome head, he would never know. The hat was overpriced, for a start, not that the price ultimately mattered since our character had stolen it about thirty minutes before, but the matter remained. It was overpriced, over floppy, and the most hideous shade of greenish-blue, not unlike a diseased frog, probably a dumpy tree frog, but also not that shade of color at all. The color itself existed in a state of superposition, and therefore both like and unlike this diseased tree frog in question, only greener. And bluer. It was Schrödinger’s diseased, greenish-blue dumpy tree frog.

Our character spun the hat around, and around again, debating where the front of the hat actually was, or rather the backside of it. There ultimately was no difference as the hat was perfectly symmetrical, and the argument of either direction could only be debated by the universe’s top philosophers. He was so wrapped up in the debate of frontside versus backside, and the superposition of diseased tree frogs, that he didn’t notice the hat salivate at the overt plumpness of our character’s beer belly that he so arrogantly, and with upmost delusion, ignored.

His name was Bob, or rather that was the name that he fancied at the moment. He liked how it sounded when he said it out loud, and if he said it enough times, it sounded even funnier.

“Bob.” He said, out loud for himself, smiling in the mirror. “Bob.”

He liked it quite a lot, unlike the horrible hat that he frequently adjusted upon his head. Looking down at his belly, as it peeked out from behind his lazily closed blood-red velour robe, Bob frowned. The hat didn’t match his robe in the slightest, and it matched his fuzzy, bunny-eared slippers even less. Bob was a horrible mess of splashing colors and unattractiveness that translated into a precise and unhealthy body image inside Bob’s pathetic little mind. To Bob, he was very attractive. In fact, he was just as attractive as his name, as he said it out loud yet again.

“Bob.” He said, smiling.

In Bob’s mind, he resembled the exact image of what a Bob is, yet of course, in Bob’s simple mind, Bob thought of various objects that would bob in and out of water if pulled deep enough. Probably very similar to a low-density rubber ball, or a buoy, though those images could not appear in Bob’s mind. When Bob thought ‘Bob’, he saw the word ‘Bob’ in all caps, ‘BOB’, almost like he was always screaming in his head, which, in fact, he did. Bob’s inner speech was loud and usually blocked out most auditory stimuli that he probably should have been very aware of. One example of this would be the horrible, dripping environment that Bob currently stood in. Of course, his simple mind did not process it in this way, nor did he process the hat as its truly despicable form, but Bob was special. He saw what he wanted to see and thought what he wanted to think. He was a man. A man’s man. He was Bob.

“Bob.” He said yet again, only now with an exaggerated pose. The pose did nothing to improve the hat’s horrible design or its overt floppiness, but it did help to secure a fraction of self-confidence in Bob’s mind that told him:

 Yes, I am attractive. I am an attractive male, with attractive features.

Bob felt good. He scratched at his overgrown happy trail that twisted its hairy way from beer belly down to his mysterious crotch area. Mysterious only in the sense that there could be indigenous peoples living deep in the jungles of Bob’s crotch, never having seen the light of day, and mysterious in the sense that there could be ancient structures from civilizations long past hidden under eons of unshaved pubic hair. Bob did not get much action nowadays, and the only action he could remember was far too spidery than he would like to admit.

Bob gave himself a questioning look in the mirror. It wasn’t very ‘Bob’ of him to think of spiders sexually. There wasn’t a specific moment that he could recall where he fawned over anything with more than four legs, so eight was a bit of a stretch. The memory, as he understood it, was nothing more than an amalgam of innate sexual desires, and very unlike his only two memories: That one time his ice cream slipped off the cone and onto his beer belly, followed by his complete lack of self-respect as he continued to scoop it from each hair with his greasy hands as it melted its way into his overgrown happy trail, and the other was when he found his way into a cosmically frightening, dripping, wet cavern, filled with various webs and venoms naturally designed to sway and coerce various peoples into accepting their fate, and promptly being devoured.

Bob frowned again. That was a rather odd and miserable memory to have.

Why did I steal this damned hat? Bob asked himself in his head.

Because it’s pretty. His mind replied.

Bob cocked his head to one side and scratched the untended happy trail again, half expecting to find melted ice cream mixed into it like a jungle cocktail.

That was very odd that my mind replied to itself. Bob thought.

Yes, it was rather strange. His mind thought back. Best not to dwell on it, though.

“Well, wait a minute,” Bob said aloud. “I didn’t think that.”

Yes, you did. Bob’s mind thought back. It just happened.

Bob was stumped. Surely, something bizarre and quite unordinary was happening in his quiet little existence of two memories. His brain ached as if it had a piercing instrument being driven into it. Bob needed to sit down as the room spun around him, though with his complete lack of memories, he couldn’t remember ever getting a chair for his one-room apartment. He turned to see the sofa chair he had gotten two summers ago at a garage sale from his brother Mark, who had one blue eye and a twisted leg.

“Ah,” Bob said aloud, grateful at his forgetful memory. He threw himself into the sofa chair with as little effort physically possible and leaned back in relaxation.

“Bob.” He repeated with another smile.

Yes, he thought it was a rather good name. Simple and straight to the point. You can always rely on a Bob, as well as you always know just how much to rely on a Bob. You can’t rely too much on a Bob because they can be fairly inadequate, but you can rely on a Bob just enough to feel completely neutral. And that was it. Bob felt he was perfectly neutral. He had a neutral name, with a neutral life, in his neutral one-room apartment. There was nothing odd going on and therefore he didn’t have to look deeper into the fine details of his life. Everything here was normal except for his newfound floppy hat with a horrible color. Bob felt something had to be done about it. There was something that just felt off, even as his mind told him everything is fine. It felt like he was forgetting something very important. Something right in front of him. Something horrible and life threatening. It wasn’t necessarily the saliva that dripped from the hat’s sweatband, nor the very large and mangled teeth that lined its brim, but that might have had something to do with it.

As Bob stared at himself in the mirror, sitting in the sofa chair with a ridiculously floppy hat on his head and a velour robe lazily revealing his nakedness, he simply felt off. He should be pulling off the hat. Even if the colors clashed, Bob looked good. And then there was the matter of remembered arachnephilia. No, something was not adding up in Bob’s life right about now.

In a spur of the moment thinking, Bob decided to remove the floppy hat from his head, immediately reeling in horror as it snarled and groaned horrible obscenities at him. Bob’s one-room apartment became a nightmare fuel of cosmic horror and arachnophobia. Humanoid bodies lay at Bob’s feet, their skulls each caved in and drained of all sustenance. Webs as big as window shades dripped with moist humidity, falling like weighted pellets upon Bob’s face. The reddish-brown cavern writhed and contorted with organic shudders and utterly unlike any rock formation Bob had ever seen before. Bob’s eyes widened as they finally fell back onto the quite hungry space arachnid that wriggled in his grasp. It shouted in his mind.

You fat whore! You ugly, sick, fat, balding, sack of unrelenting sorrow filled with the most unattractive and inelegant meat that ever graced to exist in this corner of the universe!

Bob stared at it writhe and wiggle, desperately trying to get free and supplant itself back upon his inadequate head. Finally, his memories began to return. His name was not Bob, and frankly, he wasn’t sure why he was so fixated on the idea of it.

He was Captain Spaceman, of the Spaceman’s Delight, the fastest ship in the Under Sector. He had come here looking to score some dream spider venom when one of them must have jumped upon his head and started feeding. At the moment though, it wasn’t the horrible scenery that he found himself in, nor was it the venomous and very malicious dream spider that desperately wanted his brain waves, that confused Spaceman. No, it was the fact that he was still wearing the blood-red velour robe and bunny slippers. After all, a seasoned space adventurer such as himself would never walk into an extremely dangerous situation without the protection of a Spaceman brand spacesuit.

“Hey, why didn’t my clothes change too?” He said rather upset. He knew dream spiders were known for creating amazing fantasies, and unfortunately, this fantasy had a bitter taste of reality.

Because you’re an ugly, undeserving, piece of rotten… The arachnid went on in Spaceman’s mind. It was unfortunate for the arachnid that Captain Spaceman had the biggest inflated ego in the entire Under Sector. Its very carefully planned insults would never cut deep into Spaceman, simply because he could do no wrong in his mind. Spaceman was the unstoppable hero that crossed the galaxy to score some illicit drugs. Frankly, Spaceman was happier with the realization that he wasn’t attracted to spiders and that was the arachnid’s mind-breaking venom that it had projected into Spaceman’s mind, in a way to slowly dissolve his brain matter and eventually slurp up the remaining liquid through his special twisty straw… and you’ll never amount to anything! No woman, no man, no love! You fat, ugly…

As Spaceman considered the malicious act upon his psyche, he considered how life-like the hallucination experience had been and how he had fundamentally believed he was some worthless beast named Bob. He had heard rumors back on Rumor Four, the rumored planet of rumors, about how intense the venom of a dream spider was, but he thought they were only rumors. Now, after having the experience himself, he could see they were no mere rumors, which dampened the whole point of Rumor Four… and that’s why no one likes you!

“Hey!” Shouted Spaceman at the wriggling arachnid. “A lot of people like me.”

This is it. The arachnid thought. My key to his mind.

“I can hear you.” Spaceman said to it. “You’re thinking in my head!” The arachnid considered this. Perhaps it needed to take a different angle.

Okay, hear me out a second, okay?

“What is it?”

Okay, okay. What if you… The arachnid eyed Spaceman, who wasn’t paying attention. Are you listening?

“Yes! Sheesh.” Spaceman said with a wave-off.

Okay, what if you just let me eat your brain—

“I’m not doing that.”

You didn’t let me finish. I was going to say brain—

“Nah.” Spaceman shrugged off nonchalantly.

Waves! Brain waves!

There was a long pause as Spaceman stared at the arachnid without blinking.

“Under no circumstance would I ever do that.”

Ok, but like… what if you did?

“Can we just get through this bit already?” Spaceman sighed, exhausted with boredom.

Fine! The arachnid lunged in eternal hunger at Spaceman’s head. With a quick karate chop, Spaceman knocked back the arachnid dramatically.

“That’s it! I’m tired of this place!” Spaceman shouted. He quickly pulled out his trusty Spaceman brand microwave pistol and fired it wildly at the arachnid. Unfortunately, the pistol not only didn’t fire in the microwave spectrum, rather the radio wave spectrum, but even if it did, the amount of time it would take for the electromagnetic waves to harm the spider would be equal to the amount of psychological counseling Spaceman would need to get over the many various drug addictions he has.

Ow, that stings slightly. The arachnid rubbed at its head with one of its many moist legs.

“Yeah, and there’s more where that came from!” Spaceman said kicking the arachnid away from him. With a glance around, Spaceman found his space helmet that he knew he never should have taken off and started to run towards it.

No, don’t go. I’m so lonely. The arachnid said as it flew through the air with its legs outstretched into a spider hug.

“I’m not falling for that again!” Spaceman yelled back as he ran. With an elegant turn, and not so elegant summersault, Spaceman twisted on his space helmet and jumped towards the cavern’s exit, blindly firing his horrendously unlethal radio waves back at the arachnid. The arachnid recoiled and shot itself towards Spaceman, only missing because of Spaceman’s miscalculation of the distance to the entrance of the cavern and subsequently his sudden tumble to the ground. He rolled to his feet and ran past the arachnid.

No! I’ll get you, you fat sack of shit! Snarled the arachnid in Spaceman’s mind. It primed itself for another lunge.

“You were much nicer as a hat!” Spaceman shouted as he blindly fired behind him. He was so preoccupied with trying to hit the snarling arachnid that chased him from behind, that he was blind-sighted by the strategically placed moist webs.

The arachnid had worried just two months before that it was not getting the sustenance it required for survival. For some reason, everyone that wandered into its quaint little den drifting across the outer reaches of space, were able to escape. No more said the arachnid, and it decided to place new webs across the entrance. Since then, our telepathic dream spider friend had caught dozens of meals. The arachnid didn’t know what it was about humans, but they sure liked to run without looking where they were going.

Back to current times, Spaceman found himself nearly trapped with the arachnid on quick approach. Unfortunately for the arachnid, Spaceman is a seasoned adventurer and came prepared for this very moment. With quick thinking, Spaceman pulled out his trusty Spaceman’s brand web removing pocketknife marketed across the galaxy. Unfortunately for the Spaceman company, they had an installment plan for the web removing pocketknife that had a clever marketing line that said:

Go out and try it! It will save your life or your money back!

They lost trillions.

Captain Spaceman wildly and quite uselessly hacked away at the webs, desperately trying to escape. The hissing and weird dripping noises of the arachnid had started to creep him out, and frankly, he just wanted to be rid of the arachnid. It crept closer, slowing its approach.

Your brainwaves will be mine, Spaceman! It hissed in his mind.

“No, thanks.” Spaceman replied as he continued to uselessly saw his way through a wet web with a dull blade.

I wasn’t asking!

The arachnid lunged again, unfortunately for it, again, Spaceman had spotted something shiny on the ground and was consumed by his childishness and greed. He quickly slipped down to examine his find just as the arachnid soared over his head. Having landed on a web past Spaceman, the arachnid blinked its eight eyes in confusion. Surely, Spaceman wasn’t stupid enough to completely forget he was in a life-or-death situation and drop everything for the possibility of a shiny object. Or perhaps it wasn’t stupidity, and rather his complete disregard of his own mortality and utter lack of situational observation to even perceive how much danger he was really in, which, to the arachnid, still sounded an awful lot like stupidity.

Captain Spaceman giggled giddily like a schoolgirl upon the horrible pulsating and contorting floor of this organic cavern. He carefully secured his prizes: an administrative Police Corp badge, still blood-stained, a golden marmoset, not living of course, and a Spaceman’s brand tooth cleaner, only twelve made in the entire galaxy.

“Nice!” Spaceman shouted in excitement. “These will fetch a pretty penny!”

The arachnid was so mesmerized by Spaceman’s complete disregard of his own life, that it hesitated to land a killing blow upon its prey. Sure, he was a telepathic dream spider, but he wasn’t a monster. Spaceman, with his simple mind, was no more than a child. A big child that was completely incapable and inept. The arachnid didn’t understand how Spaceman could have even survived up until this point. After all, here he was, in one of the most dangerous places in the galaxy, and all he could think to do was stop and look at the shiny. The arachnid had enough. He couldn’t take Spaceman’s pathetic nature any longer. With a growl and a turn, the arachnid shuddered its many fangs in anticipation, but Spaceman had gone. The arachnid was so wrapped up in Captain Spaceman’s worthlessness, that he let him walk right out of the cavern and into his spaceship.

Finally, alone in the Delight, Spaceman let off the flatulence he had so nobly kept locked away inside his body. It had grown uncomfortable, much more uncomfortable than a literal dream spider gnawing its way into his skull, and now that the gas was released, Spaceman felt spectacular. He felt the freedom of the open road. Alas, the spaceship’s interior was a total mess. Its once pearly white walls have now grown into a sour color resembling mustard with Captain Spaceman’s frequent, and fairly famous, one-man parties. Across the galaxy, Captain Spaceman was known for the most exclusive and sought after-parties that no one was invited to except Spaceman himself, of course, he was the one inviting himself, and of course, he didn’t know any people beyond drug dealers, the Spaceman family, and a few other unsavory, and rather inadequate citizens, very similar to a collection of people named Bob. So, the parties would only have one guest: the host himself.

Captain Spaceman sat back on his depressing couch and reveled in his triumphs. The heroism of Captain Spaceman could not be contained. He wanted to tell everyone how awesome he was, so without a moment's notice, he went to his video communicator and went through his contacts. Unfortunately, he now realized he didn’t want to talk to any of the five contacts saved on his video communicator, three of them being the Spaceman family. Captain turned around and looked at the sty that had become of the Delight, though of course, he did not see it this way. He saw it as a monument to his achievement. Still, he wished he could show someone how awesome it was. At this moment, Spaceman realized how alone he was, though he wouldn’t outright scream it in his mind. The only one who would seemingly enjoy the achievement was his politician, scientist, eco-warrior, part-time president, full-time prime minister, museum curating brother Ace Spaceman, the real token child of the Spaceman name. Captain shook his head, knowing that if he heard the overwhelming positivity of Ace Spaceman right now, he would blow his brains out all over the walls of the Delight, ruining them, and frankly, he loved this ship. He wouldn’t do that to her.

Captain Spaceman cursed and made his way towards the cargo hold of the Delight, knowing the solution was quite obvious, he just hated it.

After a couple of hours of ransacking the storage space that the Spaceman family used for the past half a century, Spaceman left the hold, dragging a velociraptor-sized cage. In fact, it was used to hold a very intelligent, but unfortunate velociraptor that Ace Spaceman had experimented on and improved. The velociraptor in question had been enhanced to understand the meaning of the universe. Unfortunately, in this improvement, the velociraptor could only convey the sought-after information through very precise, coordinated, and highly choreographed dance moves, which were completely foreign and incomprehensible to the scientists that studied him. After dumping the velociraptor onto some planet some years ago, the Spaceman company had left the very expensive cage on the family ship.

After successfully capturing the arachnid from its horrible den, Captain happily dragged the cage back to his ship. The arachnid violently shook inside, remembering the last time it was caged and how wrong it was about believing cages were some form of fetish. Granted, at the time, the arachnid didn’t understand what humans used cages for, so he had a rightful excuse, though odd of course.

Spaceman dragged the cage into the main den area of the Delight and presented his achievement. He stood there proud, expecting the arachnid to congratulate and reward him for his effort. When the arachnid said and did nothing, Spaceman looked to the creature with annoyance.

“Well?” He snidely said aloud.

Well, what? It thought back. Spaceman raised his hands to convey how obvious the answer to that question was, although the arachnid didn’t know human customs that well, beyond the one course it took on human culture back at Berk University, though, that was decades ago and was more centered on human’s fear for spiders and their endless genocide of the early forebears of arachnids since the dawn of humankind.

“You’re kidding right?” Spaceman announced in disgust. “Great. What a trip this has been.”

I’m so confused. Is something supposed to be happening? Is this… how humans’ mate?

“How humans’ mate? What does that have to do with anything?” Spaceman shouted, violently shaking the cage. He knew he would never get through to the arachnid, and after a glance to the door, he didn’t feel like dragging the cage back to that horrible den. With a sigh of disgust, Spaceman threw himself onto the couch.

So… you’re just gonna leave me in this cage?

“Depends.” Spaceman bent down, close to the arachnid’s face. “You’re not going to eat my brain waves, are you?”

Of course not.

“And you’ll give me more hallucinations?” Spaceman pressed. This surprised the arachnid.

You… want the hallucinations?

“Of course!” Spaceman adjusted himself to an even lazier position. “Money can’t buy trips that good.”

Oh, then, sure. Let me out. It took everything in the arachnid’s power to contain his salivation. Spaceman shrugged then opened the hatch. The arachnid crept out and stretched its legs.

  “What do I call you anyway?” Spaceman asked.

            It’s insulting that you don’t remember my name. I mean, we were, and still are telepathically, and therefore mentally, linked.

            “Eh, I’m not good with names. I’m more a face guy.”

            My name is Bob.

Suddenly everything clicked. As the arachnid went on a long-winded, heartfelt, and rather eye awakening speech about his relationship with his father and how difficult it even is to be a telepathic dream spider in today’s political climate, Spaceman realized that he didn’t have any problems, at least not any he could remember. A lie, of course, he told himself in his lifelong ignorance. No, it wasn’t Spaceman with the problem, after all, he was just at the mercy of a telepathic dream spider who so clearly had mental issues to get to this point in its own life that, surely, it was the arachnid with the many MANY issues and not Spaceman. Yes, he rather liked this new frame of thinking. He realized all of his current problems in his life must not be real and all just an illusion blasted into his mind by the telepathic arachnid-like commercial brain waves the Spaceman company ceased production on a year ago after one too many brain explosions.

Spaceman doesn’t have any mental traumas or issues, he accepted permanently in his mind. He was the best he could ever be. He was Captain Spaceman, spacetime entrepreneur, just like his father, and his father’s father. But not his father’s father’s father. That guy was a real asshole.