CEX SUB CON

I'm in a small car driving down a long bridge over a huge body of water. Water in every direction. We're going to some town that's like Las Vegas but smaller. For a long time, the highway is just this four-lane bridge over water for as far as the eye can see.

When we get there, it's like one basic, overdeveloped road surrounded by sand. There are huge signs crowding the road-- big neon signs, and gawdy advertisements for restaurants and stuff. The car breaks down by the side of the road so we go into an arcade. There are arcades up and down the street, tricked out in bright lights and decorated very tastefully inside. Patrick Quinn is playing a game where you have to shoot baskets. I try to play skee-ball but there's a plastic covering over the top of the lane where you roll the ball, and the only opening to the lane is facing upwards. I try and lift up the plastic a little bit so I can get a little bit of oomph on the ball, tossing it with wrist awkwardly bent to get it into the lane. Some girls are watching and they think I suck.

They have 6 or 7 different versions of Street Fighter, all in a row. At first I don't think I can find any versions I haven't seen before but then I realize about half of them are totally new to me.

I go outside and there are lots of people walking around.. tourists and students. An old man whose legs and feet are severely disfigured is hopping around, kind of like how I think a retarded satyr might walk, but he's not magical looking or anything, just disfigured. He tells me that his feet are actually really good for walking up steep piles of snow. I follow the big crowds of people who just seem to be walking in the same general direction. I walk for a long time without getting a good idea of where we're going.

As night falls, some kids my age and I go back behind the arcade into the parking lot, in order to throw our trash away in the dumpsters back there. There's an argument because most of the kids think we should pack up all the trash in the two dumpsters and take it out, deep into the woods. I don't remember there being any woods nearby but I imagine things might be different at night. I still don't understand why would we take it upon ourselves to take the trash to the woods --- "Let's just throw our trash in these dumpsters and leave, and somebody who works here or works for the city will take it all to the woods when they're supposed to." I'm the only person who thinks this.