The ATM was suddenly surrounded by walls, and Rondell found himself inside. But it was not a hallucination. It was real.
The two men from the mountain range were there. They looked up and watched a clock slowly tick away the seconds. They said nothing to him. They were just there to signify that it was only a matter of time. To what, Rondell did not know.
And then Rondell found himself outside. The ATM was gone. The Grim Reaper was gone. Everything but him was gone. Everything but him and the film reel rushing past him.
But what happens if film goes too fast? It heats up, and it dissolves. But what if you're part of the film? This is a question only Rondell can answer, because this then happened to him. And when it did, his mind opened up, and everything become clear for a fleeting moment.
And Rondell, as his mind opened up to the universe, felt himself become a new man.
And then he was back in his apartment, in his bathroom, looking in the mirror, his face covered in shaving cream and a razor in his hand. He shaved away a strip of shaving cream, his mind perfectly clear, his hallucinations no longer in his mind, but around him at all times, no longer imaginary.
And he walked outside past the ATM and saw the strip of film tape rushing through the air. He followed it with his eyes for a few seconds, and he looked past it, he looked to the strip of empty white space appearing on a projector. And then he jumped forward, and he flew past the film reel and into the empty space, and he felt himself fall through the air; out of the air; out of the real world and out of his hallucinations.
He felt himself falling past all the images of the ATM and its strange messages. And he fell past his three friends, all of them happily dancing to a song Rondell couldn't hear, not seeing him, not understanding what was happening.
And he fell past a computer keyboard that's letters were not in the normal order—the Y, E, A and H were all next to each other. A finger reached out and pressed all of them in that order.
And he fell and fell, through an almost infinite amount of space—his third encounter with infinity. And he fell and fell until he hit the football field face-first.
The fans in the bleachers held up their signs, forming the words IT'S A LION.
And then the ATM was surrounded by water again, and the finger reached out of the water as the filmstrip rushed by. But Rondell was not there to shiver in the cold water. He flew past it.
Rondell watched this until he found himself at the football field, in the desert, as the ATM, in cartoon like his hallucinations, charged at him in a football helmet over and over.
But he fell from the ATM, inthe real world,and landed in the football field, inhis hallucinations, and these two placesacted as a bridge between the hallucinations and reality, and reality and fantasy experienced a collosal collision.
Rondell was with the two cartoon men at the mountain range when this happened. He jumped up in the air, and so did the two men. And then the Grim Reaper jumped up in the air, and so did the tentacle-skull, and the ATM from all his hallucinations (which he now suspected weren't hallucinations after all), cartoon like all the others, jumped in the air and the real ATM jumped in the air, and the cups of coffee and water at Rondell's house jumped up in the air, and finally, Rondell ran up to the ATM.
And he ran past one of his friends, who was dancing back and forth, repeated the words, "Real smooth moves!"
And Rondell pressed a button on the ATM, aiming to do the one thing he had been trying to do for days—make a simple withdrawel. And he pressed the button, and his credit card was scanned by the ATM, and suddenly, he realised the meaning of all the strange things that had been happening to him up to this point.
There was a single word on the screen of the ATM, learing back at him.
YEAH!
It was whatever was causing...controlling...his hallucinations. They had brought him here, to this ATM.
And then, his money did come, in the form of dozens and dozens of bags of coins, falling from the sky, falling straight on top of him, and Rondell was knocked to the ground, as the bags of money began to block of his air supply, and Rondell felt himself begin to suffocate.
And just as his life slipped away from him, he saw his camcorder fall from the sky like the bags of money, and the camera was already turned on when it fell in front of him, the lens facing forward, the eyepiece right in front of him, recording everything Rondell saw.
And what he saw was the kitchen table, as the image appeared once more, to show no message other than the metaphor of Rondell's true meaning. And Rondell could see the metaphor, as the sun journeyed past the window, and day turned to night, and the plant's flowed bloomed, and shadow of the blueberry muffin finally reached the end of the table, Rondell could see that the day, among other things, had finally come to its end…
And then the camcorder clicked off, nothing left of these events but the tape in the camera. The tape of the Experimental Film.
