Better day today. Can't hang around and talk about it. I think the problem was that I was reading too much nonfiction. Just read a little fiction and got reminded how this stuff works. Although that probably leads to imitation. Long long pointless story.
Charles felt his body shaking loose in the real world and his ludcidity began to fade. He reached out for the banister, stretching a hand across the increasing divide. Grabbing it and pulling himself forward he now felt like he was hanging at a ninety degree angle downward. The red man stood at the door of the house, uneffected. There was a pile of dirt covering a mound of freshly dug dirt on the lawn.
The leering gaze of the red robed man found its way through the door and up the stairs. It struck Charles directly on the back, sending him reeling up the stairs. He climbed up to his feet, stroking his back. The floor was completely level but felt like it was turning, Charles checked it with his hand and it wasn’t shifting.
The hallway went on for a length, there were three doors, each one closed. A giant pot full of blue carnations rumbled in a semicircle around the hall and then fell down the stairs. A picture of a sailboat jumped on the wall.
I need to get out of here, he thought. I need to take more responsibility in the real world, figure out what’s going on. The whole surreal scene made him feel like a cartoon character He was operating without a modus operandi, simply surviving. He remembered reading once that survival was man’s only true desire, outside of reproduction.
He pulled each knob on the doors down the hallway and pushed each open, watching himself push the second and third open like a trick played with mirrors. The first room was a bathroom, the next used for storage, and the third was the older man’s bedroom.
The red robed man cackled from the front door and slammed it shut. Charles could hear him turning the locks, the stomp of his boots on the rug, and the clatter of a shovel on the wood floor.
He searched the bathroom for means to escape; there were bars on the windows. He wondered if they had been there just a minute earlier. He pulled the mirror behind the sink open, nothing but toothbrushes and assorted bottles of medicine. The old man hadn’t had an old lady. He popped two aspirin into his mouth after removing the childproof cover easily, and drank water straight out of the sink.
“Ah, taking some pills!” The red robed man said, casually as ever. “The purples think you’ve been here too long, don’t know how to get you to come back. You understand, I don’t like to boss anyone around. Just didn’t want you to get the bright idea that you could stay up here.”
Charles groaned, a deep sigh heavy with air. The man stood with his hand on the bathroom door, in between the two rooms. His face was a paper mache mask of a smile, his body a shabby facsimile of what he thought was human.
“What did you have to kill him for, though?” Charles asked, walking toward the red robed man who moved aside in the hallway.
The man was noncommital, it was hard to tell whether or not words made it through the gaunt rock of a head. “The name’s Dave.” He offered his hand. Once they reached the bottom of the stairs he said:
“I didn’t kill him exactly, he was just waiting to be buried. He knew I was coming, didn’t he? He could have ran away, got a new place, changed his face. Wasn’t completely right.”
Charles removed the key from his neck jerk that broke it from its chain. He dropped it into his front pocket when the man walked slightly ahead.
They reached the front lawn and Dave reached his hands up over his head, and his nostrils heaved with abstract intensity. He wiped his face with the back of his pteradactyl arms, and waved at the crowd of religious zealots passing on the opposite side of the street. They called back, a loud group “Daaaaave”, which seemingly evaporated into the air like hot butter on toast.
Charles charged back into the house, slamming the door. Dave laughed and shook his head before he began to walk slowly with his hand in his pocket up the stoop. “No point in trying to run away, Charles my boy.” His voice vaccilated, temporarily becoming harsh and incredulous.
The lock on the front door wouldn’t turn, it had been broken before. Two by fours with nails in them sat on each side of the door, a decent weapon, Charles thought. Charles ran back out of the back gate and down the fire escape, perilously close to tripping and falling into the drink. He yanked at the chain on the door, it creaked the thick brrrrrrrmp as he leaned backwards pulling on it with his foot in the door.
“You know you can’t choose not to come with me.” Dave called from the top of the stairs. “You either come with me or I bring you back. It leaves little wiggle space.”
He was quickly closing the space between them, the sun dimming around him as he approached. Charles dropped the chains and made a running jump toward the side of the suspension bridge, every impulse attempting to prevent him from jumping. He stuck a toe over like a kid wearing water wings testing the temperature of the pool.
Dave reached over at him, fire kindling up in his eyes. He looked giant and majestic, the modern desire for ownership creeping into his long arms which extended further than Charles’s eyes could perceive. Charles pulled his head away from the bulking spectre, and saw across from him a breaker made of shabby wood, floating like an island. A crew of campers cheered him on, some calling him “Chuck.”
“Let’s go, Chuck! You can do it!” A fat kid in bright red swimtrunks called. A kid in blue trunks ran at a cheetah’s pace across the island and flew like an olympic jumper into the vast expanse of unkown. The island disappeared in a poof like a thought bubble, and Charles swung his body around holding onto the black security fence. Only his fingers were preventing his plummet.
The red spectre figure of Dave transformed back into his understanding compassionate version, pleading with wide eyes that Charles not do it. “You’re just making my job harder. There’s no reason we can’t go back together right now, think this over, okay?”
Charles let his grip go and felt an overpowering air clean his nasal passage, galvanize his brain and supercharge his nervous system. It’s ironic how your body functions best when you’re about to die, he thought. But, he didn’t die.
He tumbled endlessly through the air, like falling down a bottomless well. The fresh air stung his eyes, he had to fight to keep them open as if he were underwater. Migrating seagulls looked over at eye level with a disapproving glare. Charles dug through his pockets, his arms moving like they were tied to his body with a bungee chord. He spun over to his back as he fell, the world above disappearing in sections as quick as his beleagured eyes could process. A red shape appeared to constantly grow, a long line behind it protruding endlessly.
Charles lost control of his body and began spinning endlessly. His weight would not even out, and the dizziness seeped into his ears like a black smoke. As he passed through a layer of billowing clouds, the earth below became visible in an immediate moment. A redness swept under him in a thick layer, and the air was forcefully pushed back into his throat. Five fingers behind his head gripped him by the nape of his neck and placed him down onto the prairie field below.
He shook himself free of his coat and attempted to break into a sprint, beginning with strong strides and then slowly collapsing into a heap on the country grass. His trajectory was of a reverse evolution. He was now back to the infantile state.
With much effort he flipped again onto his back, his eyes racing around inside of his head like mice in a snakepit. He tried to stand and the air in his lungs seeped out in a straight line. He fell onto his elbows, head still racing.
A small dog yapped in the distance, the sun reemerging from its cloud prison to rouse Charles. He was able to turn over and lay flat on his back, a smile rising across his lips as he came back into contact with the world around him. He grabbed a handfull of grass with each hand, squeezing the fertile soil into clumps and pulling the grass loose. He sat up, dusting himself off, and climbed to his feet uneasily. Slapping his cheeks and breathing in deeply, it seemed like everything was functioning properly.
The small dog was tied on a long line by an old silo. There was no sign of Dave, the red cloud maybe had used all its energy by saving his life. Or maybe Dave’s just pretending to be the red, he knows that there’s some red angel out there watching over me.
Charles took inventory of his pockets. Keys, wallet, more keys. The key the man in the sky had handed him flashed and glowed as he turned it over in his palm, and off in the distance the roar of 18 wheeler sounded like much more of a roar due to absence of noise. He looked for another cliff to jump off of, the thrill carrying him with coarsing adrenaline.
He suddenly felt the energy gathered inside to go find Anne. She may be just a plain jane, but she’s my girl, he thought. And they took her away from me. Hell, even if she didn’t, I should get her back. That’s what a man would do.
He petted the spaniels fat little skull and wrapped on the door of the adjacent farmhouse. A stranger who looked oddly familiar opened the door, happy to see him.
“You better not have dropped the key.” The same fat man in a bathrobe said. “I’ll show you where to use it.”
He followed him inside, where he led Charles straight to a basement door. The door led into a garage, an old Toyota sat inside looking like it needed to be dusted off. The man removed the keys from a hook hanging from a drywall screw. He opened the front car door, hit a button clinging to the retractable overhead mirror, and the garage door began to slide upwards into its home. He reached across and pushed the passenger seat open and Charles got in.
No comments:
Post a Comment