Sisyphus

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As always, the boulder rolled down the hill and once more, after a short reprieve, Sisyphus descended and attempted to roll the stone to the top again. He no longer wept when the inevitable came.

It was hot. His clothes had all withered away thousands of years before and so he was naked, and still it was so hot. It felt as though his flesh was on fire and yet, as he looked around he saw that the hill he pushed the boulder up was covered in lush tall grass and nestled in endless spring. There were purple and red flowers in bloom, swaying in a gentle breeze. He felt no breeze, and could smell nothing. He was drenched in sweat and his hands were more blisters than flesh.

Every time he pushed the massive boulder upward, slow step by slower step, he thought over his life. Things done and things left undone. Things which would have been better left undone. He wished he could remember the good things and that which brought him pleasure and joy. More than once he tried to steer his thoughts, to reminisce of childhood or his first love or even a sunset but succeeded only briefly. The focal point of his thoughts seemed to dwell around the negative acts he had committed and the virtuous ones he had not. No other thoughts were permitted. His memory was his tormentor, his apt mind his foe.

About a third of the way up, he hit a moist patch and lost his footing. The boulder rolled back slightly and when he attempted to push it, the sweat caused his palms to slip on the stone and the boulder almost rolled over him. Dropping to one knee he forced his shoulder into the rolling stone, halting its descent. He resembled Atlas, his broad shoulders alone supporting the weight of the world. Slowly, with great strain and care, he stood back up and after catching his breath, continued pushing the boulder up the hill.

As always, the memories came in droves, like a swarm of angry bees, and they stung. The pain was a familiar one, and yet each scar was opened anew and with each laceration he swore he had never experienced such agony.

Once, an eternity ago, he passed a beggar in the marketplace whose face looked familiar to him and even as the man called out his brother’s name, Sisyphus did not turn. Instead he quickened his pace and went on through the crowd until he came to a dark alley shielded from the light, where he fell to his knees and wept. The tears darkened the earth beneath him.

When his first wife lay dying of a painful illness, the thought came to him more than once to hasten her end. Not as a mercy, but in order that he may at last be rid of her and be free to welcome his mistress into the house. He saw his wife die a thousand gasping deaths on that hill, and each time was the first time.

Every time he at last moved beyond the image of his wife’s face, the visage of his first-mistress-turned-second-wife appeared. With a cruel clarity he saw her cold body dangling, with dripping wrists and broken neck, swaying from the rafters. Beside her his new mistress, their cook, who she had murdered. One of his second wife’s sandals had fallen to the floor to rest alongside his new mistress’ bare feet. He took both of them, before taking them both and burying them in secret atop a grassy hill. His shame was such a weight, that it seemed a second hunk of granite bound to his neck.

The boulder’s weight increased exponentially as he pushed it closer and closer to the top. To the end. Time was not an issue and all questions were ripped from his mind before he had time to understand their query. There were still many jagged edges upon the massive rock which had refused to be smoothed over by the wheel of time. As Sisyphus pushed ever upward, his palms raw, the points dug in hard and would pop the blisters. He kept on, leaving wet splotches of white and red on the grey stone. His shoulders howled for him to stop and his arms and legs had already begun to shake, much earlier than normal.

More than anger and less than hope welled in him and a fire was sparked. Instead of stepping aside and letting the stone roll away as he had done countless times before, he felt a new sense of determination and struggled on. Though Sisyphus had long ago abandoned his naïve hopes for redemption, he was possessed by a strange certainty that this was it. Then and there he knew he would not give in, no matter the pain or duress or if it broke all that he was. He was already a splintered man and was amazed to think that despite the outcome, this could be the last time.

I cannot say he did it without flinching, but nonetheless he faced the memories which came next with his head up and his feet firmly on the ground.

There was a child, a girl, with the first mistress, the second wife. He never cared for children but decided to do right by the wife he wronged and, as he saw it, killed. For seven months he raised the girl, stumbling along but managing to make his way, pushing on, convincing himself that what he felt for her was love. However, his inexperience was his undoing.

One day while fetching water he placed the child in the shallow basin to play and turned his attention from her, for only the briefest of moments he swore to all who would listen, and louder to those who would not. The briefest moment was enough time to snuff out the child’s fragile flame.

Awful as all this was, far worse was that not a week after he’d buried the girl, beside her mother atop the grassy hill, he found himself glad she was gone. He remembered this sickening realization over and over with a concentrated disdain. Each time he recalled cradling his wet, still warm yet still dead daughter, he felt the same helplessness, the pang of guilt and sorrow. Then he remembered how he refused to speak her name and turned her into ‘the dead girl’, then later just ‘the girl’ and then even later, dismissed as nothing, less than a whisper.

The rage he felt with himself helped muster the strength to push the weight of eternity on and on, and as sweat streamed from every pore he wept and screamed and went on. That fury fueled his ancient quivering muscles. For a brief stretch he felt like a god, and somehow managed to get almost to a slow walk when the boulder struck something and came to a dead stop.

At first, poor Sisyphus dreamed that somehow he’d finally reached the end of his torment, his justice. That the top had been crested and that the rock had come to a rest, but as he removed his hand the stone still rolled back towards him. Now that the rush of adrenaline had passed, the great burden nearly crushed him. When they hit each other like sumo wrestlers he stumbled back a few steps, surprised at how much heavier it was, and then dug his toes deep into the soft earth and attempted to hold the weight back with his outstretched arms.

The rock’s momentum, small though it was, was enough to get past his weakened limbs, but not quite enough to knock him over. He again dropped down upon the grass, but not on his knees. Instead he leaned so far forward that he was almost lying on his belly in the grass. He pushed off hard, digging in and kicking mounds of wet earth aside and then rammed his shoulder against the stone, leaving nasty gashes where several of the small points dug in and rubbed the faded flesh raw.

Sweating, crying and bleeding, Sisyphus pushed on.

When he struck the object which stopped him before, he grunted, held his breath, and then shoved harder and harder, reclaiming his upright position in slight degrees, he forced the boulder up over the small obstacle. Something gave beneath the weight of the massive rock and he heard a crunch. Looking down, he saw white pieces of bone scattered through the grass and knew it was the skull of a small animal. He knew what kind of animal it was too, but that memory was far below him now and he would not dwell upon it any longer. He faced it before he faced his wife, before his mistress and the mistress after, before the terrible atrocities he’d committed during his young adulthood, but after the minor misdeeds of his youth. That was where that skull belonged, that was its place and he had moved beyond it. Part of the skull fragments pierced his bare feet, and instead of flinch or attempt to extract them he pressed his foot down harder. Compared to the memories the pain was a relief.

Upward, ever upward, more and more weight piled on with each step, and still he kept on.

The hill gets steeper nearer to the top, and finally he sensed the ground’s angle begin to shift under him until it felt like he was pushing the rock up a wall. A desperate shadow of a smile crossed his face as he pleaded that this time, he may get there, and rest. More than that, he hoped he could just reach the top without reaching the memory he knew awaited him before it.

He never reached the memory before. The stone always rolled back down before then. Still, he knew.

A vile defeating thought infected his mind. Letting go was still an option. There was still the chance to just back away from the weight and give up. Yet he knew better, knew that even as it rested at the bottom of the hill he still felt the boulder’s crushing weight. Sisyphus, with skin raw and shredded, with blistered hands sticky with blood and puss, having stared into eternity for twice as long, pushed beyond anywhere he had dared before and weary as he was, continued upward.

When it hit him, it was worse than all the others put together and the torture was indescribable. Physical pain was but a mercy. He would have much rather been flayed and made to push a boulder ten times larger and covered in needles and broken glass, and been grateful for it. If only to avoid facing the thing he had buried away even from himself. It lay in a hollow mute cesspool flooded with impenetrable darkness, where all light is devoured and all sound is drowned.

He was a monster staring into the abyss, and the abyss also stared into him.

His eyes closed and for the first time, he remembered.

Their father told the boys that she was making them leave. He told Sisyphus and his younger brother that the only way for them to keep their home and their friends and indeed their lives, was for her to lose hers.

She was in the field, tied to a tree atop a hill where their father had left her. While the children saw to his wife, the father went into town to be seen, and to guarantee as many as possible saw him, he was in his cups. When the boys reached her and she saw their eyes and the object her oldest held, she began to weep and plead and curse their father. She rambled on about what the boys assumed was nonsense regarding their father’s affairs and her plan of taking them away to be safe from him. Something was said about him touching them and Sisyphus couldn’t stand anymore and so, filled with the rage and recklessness of youth he struck her hard with the club and what had been her jaw went slack and crooked.

The shock of seeing what he did, what he was capable of doing, left him frozen him in place and as his mother howled and bled he remained still, and silent. He wanted to take it back, he believed her, loved her, and needed her. He failed her, but he did not kill her.

After his yelling did nothing, his brother grabbed the hardwood club from his loose grip and did what Sisyphus could not. Still, he’d struck the first blow, the one that sealed her fate, and theirs.

Bawling like a baby and feeling as though he were moving Mt Olympus itself, Sisyphus summoned all that was left in him. The entirety of all that he was and had ever been, every ounce of love, hate, sweat, blood, memories, regrets, fears and fantasies. Screaming to the stars, he channeled it all and gave a final mighty shove, releasing everything he had, everything he was. The boulder rolled from his fingers, over one final hump, then it was still.

He let go of the weight. It did not fall back upon him.

He kept his hand hovering, shaking, over the face of the stone for a time, certain the second he believed it was truly motionless it would roll again. His legs gave out and he fell to the ground shaking. Sisyphus crawled around the stone to see what waited, half expecting there to be another hill atop this one or some other cruel joke. There atop the grassy hill, were several graves marked only with worn sticks surrounded by various sized piles of white stones. One grave, marked with a short pristine stick had only a small pile of pebbles. He knew his three lovers rested below, beside his daughter and mother. Beside their graves was a twisted and splintered branch stuck at the head of a place open for him, marked now with the great boulder.

Sisyphus pulled himself toward the end. Despite his weariness, it was not so hard to do. There was no weight to drag along through the grass that now felt cool on his skin. He felt the soft breeze too, and carried on the wind was the scent of flowers. He smiled.

Rest came, at long last.

Joel Allyn2,000 words  February 2012

The Gardener

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The tree stumps were well worn and smooth to the touch. They were arranged in a rough circular configuration and upon them sat several anxious individuals. They spoke amongst themselves and one of them, a bald chubby man, poked and fed the fire which danced at the center of the circle. All of the stumps were occupied save for one, a smaller seat than the rest. As they spoke to one another they stole glances at the empty place and the excitement in their eyes was electric. She would be their soon, they knew, and with her, through her, a new story.

In a small unassuming house which rested in a tree, the storyteller paced back and forth before the writing desk where the quillpen and blank page invited and taunted her. Beside the desk on either side lay crumpled white balls like a garden of paper roses. The stories always came to her and she did not question how or from where, only did her best to craft them into the finest specimens she was able before sharing them. Once they were told the stories no longer belonged to her, if they ever had to begin with.

Every day she wrote, even if on that day she was able to write nothing more than mundane lists, still she wrote. After enough time with the pen pressed to the page she would find there was a story there, or at least the seed of a story. So she nurtured it and it grew strong. Some took off like weeds while others withered and died. Yet she felt no feelings of defeat, not really, only a stronger sense of achievement with the seeds that flourished. Sometimes it was as if they were growing all on their own.

No story had come yet.

This had never happened to the storyteller before, and it had been going on for some time now. She ran her slender fingers through her soft dark hair as she paced. She stopped mid-step before the desk and turned, there was a shift in her gaze. A flash of light danced across her vision and she seized the pen and…but it was gone, the same torturous routine which had repeated for two months now. The curses flew and the pen followed, she hurled the bottle of ink at the wall where it exploded and splattered ink everywhere. She collapsed with her back against the wall beneath the dark dripping liquid and began to weep.

There was a time, not long before this, when a man might have placed a hand upon her shoulder or caressed her cheek and whispered that everything would be okay, and she might even have believed him. But that time was done.

She rose, in time. Still though, no story came. Some of the storytellers before her kept notes of plot ideas to draw from when their natural wellsprings of inspiration ran dry. She did not do this. Her philosophy on the matter was that when you didn’t write down every idea that popped into your head a sort of Darwinian approach takes place, where the good ideas stick around and survive, while the crap which would have otherwise been immortalized on paper falls by the wayside, where it belongs. So with no new idea, no seed to harvest, she had nothing.

Storytellers are vital figures and can’t simply call in sick. The last tale spinner who failed to use their gift in a timely manner foolishly tried to explain his reasons for his tardiness, and was eviscerated by the disappointed crowd after daring to seek an extension on the deadline. As he found, it was not named in jest.

Truth be told she’d written nothing new for some time now, had just always been so prolific that she’d managed to  skate by for quite a while on extra stories penned and then shelved for such a rainy day as this. One rainy day followed another however and they had not let up since. Outside, where the storm did not seem to reach, the sun began to dip below the mountains. Her time was almost done and still, no story came.

After a rough start, the fire was going strong. The things awaiting the storyteller were growing impatient and the drink had started to take hold, so much so that some became disgruntled and their whispers raised to angry grunts, muttering curses and half-cocked plans. They would be entertained, they said, one way or the other. A few even boasted of visiting the storyteller’s house and dragging the story from her. As if they could.

The chubby bald man carefully positioned another sizeable log over the flames and then began to finally show signs himself of unrest. This caused the mutterings, threats and empty boasts to cease and for a few moments at least, all but the growing fire was still again.

It was her house in the tree, she had decided. Of course it was what else could it be? So she had fled. Gone off to walk through the towering trees, where the only paths were made of places where the scattered light intersected. It was beautiful in the woods at twilight. There is something magical in the places men have not shortened with axes or built up high and in a moment of peace there was a flash of excitement in her eyes again. Sadly it was there but an instant and then it was gone from her reach, carried off on the gentle breeze without so much as a fare thee well. So even there, in the ancient untainted pocket, no story came.

For the first time in a long time, she was afraid. Not afraid for what would happen to her body when she approached them with no tale to tell, but what if she never again felt the joy of crafting a new tale and that sense of astonishing satisfaction and accomplishment after she was able to write The End. She missed it all so much, just being surprised by how they turned out was one of her favorite parts. She yearned, ached, for a new story. Beyond a junkie needing a fix, the feeling was that of starving in a dark room, where you can smell the sweet scents of your favorite food but no matter how extensively you search with your hands you find no meal. You’re belly moans and your mouth waters, and you are only taunted more by the knowledge that at some unknown time the light above will flicker to life and there, before you in plain sight will be a four course meal.

No light came on, no story materialized. The forest was dark now. She went on.

Whispers rolled through the trees and the birds drew silent. Something was out there with her, something calling her forth with a muted plea. A cry for help, a call to arms, an invitation to rest? No matter. Deeper into the dark she went, following the whispers into the abyss.

The flames were hungry and the light dimmed more by the minute. Yet the chubby bald man refused to move to feed the fire, he just sat staring into the glowing embers. The things around the diminishing light grew restless and afraid. Each looking from one to the other hoping one would have the answer they all sought. For the fire was tradition, and the fire was warm, but it served another more important function. In those woods where few feet tread there are things that dwell in moving shadows, stalking the borders of the dark, waiting for the light to recede enough that they may come forth and feast.

The idea of another attempting to do so much as fan the smoke of the pyre was absurd and unheard of. There was only one fire tamer left just as there was but one storyteller remaining and they were linked in their fates. The story kept the fires alive and the fires kept the dark at bay, and that eternal hunger within. Without the stories, there would be no light.

One of those sitting around the dwindling fire succumbed to desperation and sealed his fate by darting to toss just one of the tiniest logs on the fading bed of amber. The fire keeper flung the poker with a flick of the wrist and the log fell to the ground along with the thing whose ankle was now shattered, but that was not the end of it. The bald man rose, retrieved the smoldering poker. Then with no visible emotion or strain showing on his face he stepped on the poor thing’s chest and slowly, oh so slowly, twisted the glowing end of the poker through its eye with a sickening sizzle and pop. There were no more attempts to assist or challenge the keeping of the fire. The rest all watched the embers dying and waited to see what would enter the circle first, the storyteller, or the creeping dark.

Light and dark devour one another in an infinite cycle like some cosmic embodiment of Ouroboros. A dance which began yesterday and forever ago in some void where they were strangers embracing one another.

The storyteller slid along through the moonless night, no longer afraid, only anticipating what she may find out in the unspoiled shadows. Tale spinners navigate the abyss well but she was taken off guard by the tree which appeared in her path.

The old tree was a new tree. Never before had she felt such bark or twisting limbs, some thicker than your waist, some gnarled, skinny things. Yet when the storyteller’s hand fell upon the dried limbs they awoke and seemed to breathe her in. The tree was warm to the touch and seemed to pulsate beneath her fingertips. It made her feel sick and wonderful at the same time. She imagined the roots were either incredibly short or reached into the heart of the world.

There beneath her gaze a single four petal flower bloomed from the tree. It glowed with the faintest of light. She bent forward into that soft glow and breathed deep. It smelled like childhood, and home, and eternity. Tastes, scents of memory flooded her – fresh cut grass, baking pies, a salty breeze – and she raised her hand to wipe away a tear. As her palm lifted from the tree the flower wilted, dried to a crisp and then fell away, blowing into the wind as ash, leaving behind no evidence a beauty of its kind ever existed there at all, in that dark.

From somewhere nearby she heard the faint rumblings of the excited things stationed uncomfortably on the comfortable stumps around the fire and she started toward them, surprised to find herself there. The whispered scream came then, from the tree figure. It was almost whining, the sound of a great wind through a hollow and a terrible high-pitched squeal like twisting metal. That was only for a moment though, and then the taste of ashes faded and she tasted fresh summer strawberries and heard only silence.

Storytellers belong in the circle sharing tales and they waited there for her, hungry for her. They were hungry, but the thing resembling a tree was hungrier. And she went to it, turning her back on the circle, just a short distance away. As she placed her palm against the odd bark the warm pulse of it sped up and she felt a sense of giving up come over her, and it was wonderful. When the flower bloomed this time there was no faint glimmer but a radiant shine. The girl who had been a storyteller leaned into the glow, inhaled deep of the small flower, and became indecipherable from it. Glowing beauty, a fragile thing locked in place.

Dark rested in the circle. The tree stumps were empty and wet. The flames were extinguished.

The End

For Bridgette Singleton, my friend and fellow storyteller

2,000 words

Joel Allyn

Breathing Shadows

Joel Allyn

12,000 words

January 2012

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This is the first story I have ever gotten so close to, I can’t figure out if it’s any good or not.

1

I was four years old when my brother Aaron was hospitalized. He was close to eight at the time, and in perfect health. What I put down here will be a mosaic of what I remember, what I gathered in the years since, and some other things I just had to guess at. What I do know is enough to excuse what I don’t, but I’ll have to be content landing somewhere between dramatization and memoir.

From what I’ve been able to put together, the…well I suppose first I need to decide what to call them. I’ve heard it said that Aaron was having hallucinations or waking dreams, while others called them visions, or even demons, I think I’ll settle on something else entirely. When I got the call they’d found Aaron next to our father’s body, covered in blood and rocking back and forth, I finally came back to Springfield. When I got to see him, ‘breathing shadows’ was how my brother explained them to me, just before he slit his wrists. We’ll just use that for now and move on.

There was no detailed explanation given at the time, I just recall one day going to a building in the city and coming home without Aaron. I know now that the shadows were breathing for some time before a stay in a mental health facility was recommended. At the time however, the explanation provided by our mother was that my brother had horrible nightmares and had started to see things which weren’t real. I saw things that weren’t real all the time, and it was then and there I decided to never ever share with my parents anything that scared me. I certainly wasn’t going to risk getting sent away for a few scary dreams or because of the monster that might be lurking in a closet or under my bed. When I started seeing the shadows come to life and what came out of them, I never said a word. Though, I barely spoke at all when Aaron was away, I simply clung to my mother’s leg like a little koala bear and hid my face in my hands. I don’t remember that myself, I just remember being terrified and alone, fearing that if whatever Aaron had seen was real, then perhaps it was upset my brother was out of reach and had come back for me. Strange, looking back now, how close that was to the truth.

 

The place they sent Aaron to was called 5J. It was located downtown, on the fifth floor of a building tall enough that birds went around it instead of over. We made the trip in our’84 blue and white Astro van, filled with suitcases and silence. As we entered the city, I recognized the spiral lollipops which dotted the top of the baseball stadium. Our father took Aaron and I there a few times, and during the night games when the White Sox would hit a homerun those lollipops – one for each color of the rainbow – would light up and spin, shooting sparks everywhere. As I looked at those wondrous things sitting there dull and motionless under the harsh afternoon sun, I thought, they sure are ugly in the light. I tried to show Aaron but I don’t think he heard me. He just kept staring out the other window.

We exited what I then called ‘the fast way’ shortly after passing the stadium, a short while later we were hauling Aaron’s bags into 5J. After getting visitor badges from the front desk we took an elevator to the fifth floor. We traversed a long carpeted corridor, bordered by floor-to-ceiling windows on the left side which let in the afternoon light, and a gift shop and cafeteria on the right. At the end was a set of locked double doors with an electronic number panel beside them. We hit the call button and waited. I don’t know what I thought was going on but I still hadn’t really grasped what was happening and it wasn’t until much later, when only three of us left, that it finally hit home. When we did leave, without my brother, I spent most of the ride back staring at the empty seat beside me where Aaron always rode, where he belonged, crying as quietly as I could.

As we were shown around I noticed the walls in the hallway were painted with huge, thick stick figures. They looked like the featureless MEN and WOMEN on bathroom doors at play. Painted all different colors, they were frozen at play with one another or tossing balls around with blank empty faced dogs. The vague figures had no discernible faces, but all the same you could tell they were supposed to be having a good time. They were supposed to be happy.

Aside from a few offshoot rooms, the inside of 5J consisted of two parallel hallways lined with doors, with a shared TV area in the middle acting as the joiner in the letter H. I have no idea what was behind most of those doors, but I discovered behind one of them waited the room where my brother would be living on and off for the next four years.

Even after years on a steady diet of anti-psychotic cocktails, using Aaron as a guinea pig for every new wonder drug, they were unable to stop the shadows from breathing while the boy was at home. The treatment was for worse than the symptoms. They inflicted far more damage on him than any amount of scary images ever could, especially if, as they claimed, they were just hallucinations. Unfortunately there are few creatures as desperate as a parent with a sick child, so when someone offers a lifeline they seize it without hesitation. But what is the antidote for the cure that fails? Why, another cure of course. What then, if the next one fails as well? Well, have no fear of that, for as long as there was money for treatment, cure after cure after cure kept coming down the pipeline, showing no signs of stopping and each new remedy promising success where its predecessors failed.

We visited 5J twice a week on Wednesdays and then on Sundays when dad would come along. We drove the forty-five minute route countless times, and though I hated the long car ride I always looked forward to those excursions. During those brief retreats Aaron was with us again, I had my big brother back and for a little while, we were once more a complete family. Back at home we spoke of Aaron as often as some families do about a deceased child. The pictures of him around the house and his empty lower bunk were the only evidence of his existence. Our folks only mentioned him when I asked them – and I quickly learned not to – when my brother was coming home for good.

I missed him of course, but that was not the sole reason I asked. You see I could only tell Aaron about what had started happening, that’d I’d started seeing things forming in the shadows,   things that weren’t there.

2

The first time we brought Aaron home was six months after we’d first dropped him off, and it lasted a little longer than a week. I was ecstatic as we fell back into our old habits. We rode bikes together, swung on the tire swing in the backyard, tied robe belts around our heads and played karate, shot across the slip-n-slide, watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Pete’s Dragon and Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker a few million times each. We even attempted to dig a hole to China, taking occasional breaks only when commanded to by mom, who was insistent that growing boys needed food and sleep. It was during this cruelly short reprieve that my father first attacked Aaron.

We had spent the day raising the usual amount of hell, and then after dinner played for a while before hopping into bed. We lay there in the bunks making each other laugh – not much of a challenge back then – until the space between crude jokes and fart noises grew ever wider, and at last we fell asleep.

I woke to a sudden thunderclap. After the door slammed, I heard our father stumbling through the door, long after his shift had ended. I’m still not sure if he found a mess or possibly just tripped on something, but whatever it was it threw him into a fury, and he stormed straight for our room. I had one foot back in a dream when dad burst through the door and ripped Aaron from his bed, dragging him screaming into the hallway. Dad remained silent. I don’t think it was what he did that frightened me – he always went after Aaron because he was older – but the silence with which he did it. That silence drowned out my brother’s weeping. Aside from the smacking noises the only sound was our mother yelling, running to the rescue just as she would for years to come. Ever the intermediary, and just-too-late guardian angel.

The reasons were later explained to me, numerous times in fact, why our father went after Aaron like that, there were several excuses provided, but I think the fact that I don’t recall them speaks volumes to how I perceive that, and all subsequent beatings. Even if there was a reason, there was no reason.

I thought I’d never get back to sleep; I laid there staring around at the sparsely decorated room, looking over all the trinkets we’d brought back from walks through the forest and the old shoes which lay untied and dirty next to pair of clean laced converse. Everything was illuminated under the soft glow of our Ninja Turtles nightlight. I kept wondering if dad would be back for me, which sometimes happened, but the next thing I knew we were waking up for breakfast. Nobody mentioned what had happened the night before and the way we all ate in comfortable silence made me think perhaps it had all just been some terrible nightmare. I had put all the things I’d seen and wanted to tell Aaron about out of my head, I was just glad my brother was with me again, safe at home.

Later that week, after three sleepless nights in a row full of breathing shadows, Aaron was shipped back to 5J. This torturous cycle repeated so often over the years I can’t recall now if it was dozens or hundreds of times. I only remember my naïve hope that each time would be the one that stuck, and then the disillusionment which followed every time it didn’t.

For years all of this was gone from my mind, or at least buried under enough clutter that I didn’t notice it and that was just fine. But sometimes, late at night as I pace around or lay staring into the abyss, I can still recall in detail what I saw some nights when our Ninja Turtles nightlight flickered out.

 

One day, as the summer sun hung above us and the humidity still slept, Aaron and I swung side by side on a creaky playground. Resting in that comfortable eternity between the previous school year and the next one, I took in the sweet sounds and smells of a world in bloom and decided it was time to get it all out in the open. Still though, I wondered if maybe I was just crazy, or had somehow made myself see what I thought my brother saw. So before I shared what I’d seen, I needed to know exactly what it was that Aaron saw. I needed to be sure. Show me your insanity and I’ll show you mine. Besides confessing to our mother in terror, he shared the visions only once that I knew of – confiding in his best friend and getting made fun of and called crazy for his troubles – so his reluctance was understandable. Even after applying my secret failsafe weapon – which was saying ‘please, Aaron’ over and over again – he still wouldn’t budge. I realized I’d have to give a little to get a little.

“I saw something too,” I said.

I expected him to hit me, yell at me for making fun of him, or just walk away. Instead, his swings pendulum motion stopped and his gaze darted up from his shoes. Then, after a few seconds, something changed in those green pools and I saw cracks spread throughout the dam, I knew it was coming.

“What did you see?” He asked.

“Y-you first,” I said into my chest. I doubted he’d honor my request, but my slight stammer earned me enough pity for a pass and he went on.

“Fine, but you can’t tell anybody, ever. Okay?” I nodded my head. “I’m serious. Promise, Eric.” I did. His eyes scanned for any eavesdroppers, then fell back on me. They told me he wanted to tell me, to tell anybody, I saw that but I still saw doubt in them as well.

“I swear,” I said again.

After another quick survey of our grassy surroundings, he licked his lips, seemed to contemplate exactly what to say or maybe just how to start, how to communicate the impossible. He decided the best way to start was slow, but as he let it spill out his speech quickened and he grew more and more excited. By the time he finished, he sounded frantic and kept looking around as he spoke in clipped whispers, as though he expected men in white coats to drop from the sky and haul him away in a butterfly net.

“I…I saw something…there’s things in the shadows, or they are the shadows, made up of shadows, I’m not sure. I don’t know if it’s aliens or what. But the shadows are alive.”

He looked at me with a silent plea. What he saw in my eyes must have comforted him, because once it was clear that I accepted this most basic foundation, he let the floodgates burst.

“At first they would just move a little, when the nightlight started messing up. Then they started turning into stuff. Hands, then arms, but not monsters, I’m not dumb and I would have known that was just my imagination, like mom always says. But then I started to see a boy. That scared me real bad, but what scared me most was when I finally made myself get up and I turned on the lights and…and…”

“And he wasn’t gone,” I finished.

Aaron’s eyes shot open even wider, which I wouldn’t have thought possible. He looked manic, “Yeah, but how-”

“Because he didn’t go away for me either, not until I called for mom. Then he went back into the wall, I guess,” I said.

“Yeah! He always stays until I scream! He moves his mouth sometimes too but I can’t really hear him right. God this is great, we gotta go tell mom I’m not crazy”

It was great, it all lined up, it all felt right and it was time for me to know for sure if what we saw had truly been the same or not.

“Aaron, what did the boy look like?”

He looked away again, the excitement draining from his face, “I don’t really know,” he lied.

I knew then we must’ve seen the same thing. He was still worried I’d think he was crazy, that I could buy a boy stepping from the shadows and back through a wall, but not this last bit.

“He looked just like me, didn’t he?” I said, perhaps a little too confidently.

My question was not met with the expected reaction. There was a deep surprise on his face, and not one of joy at finding a kindred spirit, but one of a new confusion and perhaps even disappointment, almost a hurt look.

“No,” he said, and then almost whispered something else.

“What?”

“I said no. He looked like me.”

We sat there on stilled swings with a heavy silence unbroken between us, and then without saying anything we got up and rode home for dinner. I often wonder how different things may have played out had we ever talked more about the shadows and what might lie beyond them. Had I dared to go to our parents, to tell them the truth and explain that Aaron couldn’t be crazy, not if I saw the things that weren’t real too. But I never did, for fear they’d just send me away too. Within a few days of that conversation I was alone in our room again, and the shadows were once more alive.

My brother and I never spoke of it to each other again, not until over twenty years later, when he was arrested for killing our father.

3

No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t seem to reconcile the sedated man before me with the boy who’d sat swinging and whispering secrets with me all those years ago. Yet my denials were dismissed by the name clearly printed on the plastic bracelet bound to the man’s wrist. Maybe they just mixed up my brother’s id bracelet, I thought. Or perhaps they’d just arrested the man they found rocking beside my dead father and assumed he was Aaron, or maybe he even claimed to be. But certainly the broken wiry thing before me, which looked as though it were some famished junkyard dog who had long ago gone mad from a life of constant fear and severe beatings, was not my big brother.

They held him in some strange hospital-prison combo where everything, including any furniture, seemed to be carved from a solid granite block, and from the front desk to the solitary cells, the place held an ephemeral but ever present air of urine over it, like a rotten halo. The path I walked to where they had him was an unfamiliar and yet all too familiar one. For though it was the first time I had been to that room, I had been to that room countless times before. Where in another room once there was a bed and a dresser and even a writing desk for the boy, there was now only a toilet, a sink with a mirror over it and a stretcher for the unconscious man bound in dreamless sleep.

Some time after the doctor had explained all the rules and the guard left us alone, I called this stranger my brother’s name.

“Aaron,” I said, but he didn’t stir. I broke one of the many rules and took his hand in mine, and then broke another as I leaned so close my lips nearly touched his ear. I tried again. “Aaron, it’s me, it’s -”

Before I was able to even get my name out, he tightened his grip. I jumped a little but smiled, and as my cheeks curved upward, to my astonishment I tasted salt, “It’s okay, man. I’m here.”

 

I’m not easily moved, and never really felt any regrets about leaving my family behind me and not checking in the rear view mirror as I raced away. Eighteen years had been more than long enough in their company, and I had all my elegant looking but hollow reasons which crumbled over time. But I truly believed if they all just vanished that perhaps they’d take all the memories with them. As though by ignoring a bull in a china shop I expected it not to break anything and just tip toe away peacefully. As that single tear slid down my cheek I realized that even memories you’ve neglected for years can be in pristine conditions when they rear their heads again.

My big brother grasped my hand, just another scared grown up boy like me. Aaron’s eyes opened halfway and glanced around until they fixed on me, then he tightened his mouth in what was either an ugly smile or a cringe of pain from the stab wounds, they were deep and the doctor said Dad nicked an artery in the struggle. If this were a play or movie or a mystery novel, he would have whispered some cryptic remark, some message from beyond the boundaries of sanity. Instead, he just looked around with empty eyes and it broke my heart. Then his eyes closed and his grip slackened again.

 

During the years Aaron was shipped back and forth, I spent a lot of time alone in our room. Of all the things I did to keep myself busy, one activity sticks out now more than any other, a little game I developed called push through.

Mom never missed an episode of Oprah, which since we only had one TV, meant I never missed one either. Once, while fretting over a pile of bills, she had an episode on where they were discussing something that caught my attention, so I ate my Mac and cheese and I listened. What I took away from the conversation with the physicist that was on was that none of us are truly solid, but are in fact made up of billions of things called ‘Adams’. I figured they had named the things after the guy from the Bible story, which made perfect sense at the time. And not only us, but everything was made of these Adams, from animals, houses and cars, to pop bottles and skyscrapers, things that are long dead to things that have yet to be. The Earth, Moon and even the Sun were but a collection of small pieces held together. Nothing was one solid piece, he explained, not even light, or shadows. The man on the screen also said that one day we may learn enough about manipulating them to simply focus hard enough and walk through walls. This last idea excited me and though I wasn’t sure how, I knew it would help to explain the breathing shadows.

Of course having a child’s logic at the time didn’t help much. On one of Aaron’s home visits, we got to go see Back to the Future and after that I’d become convinced that the boy I’d seen, which was apparently not the one Aaron had seen, must have been me from the future. This idea – like the one that preceded it, which involved body snatchers – dominated my every thought for the next week. Until, one day in the shower, I realized if it was a time traveler, we wouldn’t be the same age. It also didn’t explain why my twin from the shadows had black hair instead of blonde. I groaned so loud at the realization that mom popped in to make sure I wasn’t hurt.

So, after ruling out time travelers and pod people and armed now with this new knowledge that neither I nor the shadows, or the wall the boy crept through, were solid, I took up a new hobby. The approach – based around the entirely legitimate scientific methods of ‘that-guy-on-Oprah’ – which I worked out for push through, would look like this in a simple three step instruction card:

1. Stand roughly one to three feet from wall with your feet together. (Adjust depending on height)

2. Extend arms straight out with palms parallel to wall, then lean forward and place one or both palms flat against wall.

3. Close your eyes, or focus upon the space where your hand(s) is against the wall, then focus only on your breathing and visualize passing through the wall, to the other side.

Repeat daily, for hours on end.

It’s an odd way for a kid to pass the time, I know, and certainly not the most complex or effective method for separating yourself at the quantum level, but I thought it was pretty clever at the time. And with enough practice, patience and perseverance I saw no reason why it wouldn’t work. Later, after leaving home, I would catch myself sometimes with all my weight leaning against a wall and I’d jerk my hand back as if I’d been burned with no idea why I’d done it. But back then it was cathartic. And it even worked a couple of times.

The more time passed, the less Aaron seemed like himself. I never stopped being excited for the visits to 5J, my loathing of the drive and the place paled in comparison to the love for my big brother. Each time we returned though, he seemed to look more and more like he fit in with the other patients, more comfortable. I don’t recall any names from inside 5J except for the unforgettable walking cliché, Big Mike. A behemoth, Big Mike was a bald ‘nurse’s assistant’ who towered over everybody, pure intimidation, and looked like he couldn’t have ever possibly been little Mike. Mike never scared me though; nothing in that place ever really scared me. It was only my brother’s eyes that frightened me – they looked different, dimmed somehow, like a candle flame on its way out. Back then I couldn’t comprehend what the difference was and just thought they were slowly driving him crazy. I think now that it was with all likelihood the spark of hope that he would leave that place, first diminishing and then dying out completely. Of course he did come home eventually, just much worse for wear.

Aaron just got worse over the years, and the cost of treatment kept increasing. Mom raised money with a few homegrown fundraisers, but the time came when my parents just couldn’t afford the rent at 5J anymore. They brought him home, and it stuck, but they left a part of my brother in that place. Or maybe he really was just crazy all along and I was too young to know any better. Maybe I’m crazy too, and maybe none of what we saw was real. I wonder sometimes, I know what any psychologist would say and their assessment might be correct. Perhaps it was just our way of dealing with our abusive father, just being too imaginative coupled with a desire for escape, or a million other possibilities before our shadows begin respiration. I’ve considered and entertained an infinite number of possibilities. But then I always end up thinking about the tuft of somebody’s hair our father held in his death grip, black hair.

4

“Dad killed mom.”

I was daydreaming, far away from the cell when Aaron’s voice snapped me back. He was looking at me with wide eyes, though there was finally some recognition and a hint of sanity in them. The room was cool but he was sweating and kept licking his lips. Just a terrified boy whispering secrets on a swing set again. I asked what he meant about mom, but he ignored the question and kept going.

“It is you right? It’s been so fucking long. I actually thought it was you before. Thought you’d dyed your hair, it was all black.” He grabbed my hand hard, but was smiling now. “It came back, the breathing shadow. He saved me.”

“Yeah, it’s alright, it’s me. How are you doing, can you tell me what happened?” I said.

He pushed his head off the hospital bed, looked around the cell and then his eyes fixed again on me.

“I finally understand, Eric. I get it now. I’m not crazy, and neither are you. You said you saw you, I remember that, thought maybe you were a pod person or clone or something but you said it, you remember?”

“I remember, but I think -”

“And I thought you were lying but you weren’t. I saw you too,” he dropped his voice down to a whisper, but only for the next few words, “You killed dad. You must have come through the shadows, through the wall. Dad was going to send me away so I told him I knew that he killed her and I was calling the cops to tell em. I’d dialed already when he came at me, so I dropped the phone and grabbed the knife, but he got it from me and he was gonna kill me. He got me down and was choking me and the knife was right above my eye and I was passing out. But then you were there and you yanked him off of me. I saw you two wrestling, and before I went out dad ripped out a fistful of your hair and then you stabbed him, over and over again.”

I did my best to stay collected. They’d told me about what he’d been on about, “Okay, that’s enough Aaron. I’m sorry for whatever happened, but I wasn’t even in the state until yesterday. I am here to help you, and I can afford the best lawyer, but it’s looking pretty bad right now. You alone in the house with dad’s body, no forced entry, a missing murder weapon, and nothing else to go on but some hair clenched in dad’s fist. So you need to tell me the truth. What happened, who else was there, and where is the knife?”

“I told you, you stabbed dad and then you took the knife and-”

“I wasn’t there!”

“No you weren’t, I’m sorry. I know that, I’m not that crazy, Eric. It was you though, your shadow. Mines been gone for years, but yours still visits me. You don’t get it – I didn’t either until I talked to him. He’s not a monster, but he’s not a boy anymore either. They aren’t made of shadows like I thought, they’re like us. The shadows are just the doorway they use, but I think only they can use it. I tried following you, the other you, to escape through the wall but I guess only they can go back and forth.” You’re wrong about that, I thought. “It was your shadow from next door that first showed up when mom died, and told me dad shoved her. I think it’s like in Peter Pan, when his shadow gets away and he’s got to sew it back on, but these are more than just silhouettes copying us, they’re like breathing shadows, with their own lives. I know how it sounds, and I know what they think. You gotta believe me though.”

“I do.” I said. I was as surprised as him to hear the words come out, but knew at once that they were true.

“So it is real?” He said.

“I think so.”

He smiled at that but there was something in that smile that made me uneasy, something off. Despite my efforts to help, to comfort him, it wasn’t enough. He was convinced that he’d be locked away no matter what, that even if he was innocent – and I believed he was – they’d put him in a padded cell or worse and throw away the key for sure. He figured with his history and all the stuff he’d been saying about doppelgangers coming through the wall they’d have no choice. Even the mention of being sent away again so affected Aaron that our father had adapted it as a disciplinary tool whenever his son didn’t do as he was told – it was this extreme method that finally drove my brother to threaten turning my father in. No matter how many times the cruel trick was used, the threat never felt empty to my brother, each promise of imprisonment left him crushed under the weight of his terror. It was like threatening to bury someone with crippling arachnophobia in a bathtub of spiders.

That night, when I went out to get us some burgers, he smashed the mirror over the sink and used a shard to slit his wrists. When the guards entered the room, they saw he’d drawn a large rectangle in his own blood, a complete crimson doorframe with a little circle in the middle. He was screaming and pulling at the small circle, shouting the same thing over and over again.

“It won’t open! It won’t open!”

5

For years I had been able to dismiss what I’d experienced as boy, to file it away as just some vivid waking dream. Without my family around, most of the memories really did just fade away – the stubborn ones that stuck around were buried. But just driving back through my home town did something to my defenses, and as I listened to my brother that day all of the solid walls and barriers I had carefully constructed over the years dissolved like wet newspaper. I remembered Aaron being dragged from the room and beaten, which I hadn’t thought of in forever. I remembered another instance when I had jumped on our father’s back to try and stop him from choking Aaron with soap, after he’d cursed during a beating. Everything terrible and terrifying came flooding back. I felt a sting in my right hand as I recalled when my father had broken a plastic spatula over it. How he had held it out of sight under the table until I was sitting, then brought it down in a red blur, how it snapped in half over my hand. I even saw the spatula itself again in detail, a faded red plastic with dried egg flakes on the tip. It all came back, everything I’d managed to put in deep storage was trudged out and unpacked, until I was face to face with the memory I’d buried the deepest – the time my game had worked, the time I had pushed through.

The night it happened my twinner, for lack of better term, had appeared again that night. Same process as always, first the nightlight going haywire, the shadows flickering as if in candlelight, then the shape of an arm coming out of the void. More and more of it seeping into our world until my breathing shadow was standing there in the room, less than three feet from the solid (though not really solid) wall where he’d just come through. I’d made up my mind to try and speak to him, but before I could he turned around as if he’d heard a noise behind the wall, then rushed back through it. I tried to follow, but at first it was like Aaron had said and I couldn’t, but the wall felt different to me somehow, softer. I kept my palm pressed against the plaster and started focusing. I stood there, imagining the Adams that made up the wall parting, pictured myself pushing my hand through them as easily as I would through a concentration of air bubbles underwater. I felt the barrier start to open.

My hand pushed further into the wall as it began giving little by little. I felt a tremendous excitement but did my best to stay focused. I kept my eyes shut, felt the fingers of my right hand passing through something as hard as a marshmallow, and as solid as wet sand. I pushed my arm in all the way up to the shoulder, hesitated before putting my head through, but only briefly. I wasn’t worried, Alice had always been one of my favorites and I was anxious to see the other side in all its strange wonder. I took a deep breath and followed my white rabbit through the looking glass.

The actual wall itself couldn’t have been more than two feet wide, but I must have pushed through at least five feet of thick mush before I felt my hand come out the other side. It was like being pushed through a tube of toothpaste, and as I passed through fireworks must have been going off, as I saw small bursts of electric light dance over my eyelids. When I got all the way through, my ears popped and I saw I was back in my room, or a mirror image of it anyway. Though after a brief survey, a few of the differences were clear. There was only one bed instead of bunks, a shuttle poster instead of a Michael Jackson one, but the most obvious giveaway was the boy staring at me with his mouth open. I did not see him as he usually appeared, as a vague form cloaked in darkness, my candlelight silhouette. I saw him then as a fully formed boy, and wondered for a moment how I appeared to him, if perhaps I was his shadow instead of the other way around. We were almost identical, if it weren’t for his black hair, we’d be twins.

I tried to say something but my voice sounded muffled in my own ears. My twinner couldn’t seem to hear me either, so the two of us just continued staring at one another. I didn’t know what I had expected to accomplish, but all at once the sheer terror of the entire reality shook me to the core. I lost my nerve and wanted only to be back in my bed, safe under the covers. Everybody knows nothing can get you under there. It’s one of those ancient unwritten laws of childhood, passed down wordlessly from one generation to the next. As I fled back through the barrier wall I heard his muffled voice calling out from behind me, but I never looked back. Once I was in my room I wanted to turn on the light but had been ‘corrected’ enough times to know what I’d get if I did. So I just hopped into bed, pulled the blanket over my head, held it there in a vice grip and closed my eyes as tight as I could. My heart pounded in my chest, my throat and both of my temples, and I wished over and over for everything to go away, to stop and let me forget it. After a little while, it did.

 

Aaron was home for good a couple of weeks after that. Between then and when I moved out a decade later I never played push through again and I started sleeping with earplugs and a blindfold on. If what I saw wasn’t real, then I didn’t ever want to see it again, or I feared the terror would overwhelm my better judgment and I’d run to my parents. If it was real, I wanted no part of whatever that meant, it was too much for me to try and comprehend. Something tells me my double was as scared as I was that I managed to follow him through and I doubt if he messed around much with the doorway after that. If the shadows kept breathing after that, I never knew about it. All the other worlds I escaped into after that were in books, and they got me through everything. My love of stories and escapism would later earn me a career.

I buried my head in the sand and in books and saved every penny from every allowance and summer job I managed to get. Every time I was tempted to spend my savings something happened at home which reminded me what I was saving for, escape. On the day I turned eighteen I kissed my crying mother goodbye, gave Aaron a hug as he watched Looney Tunes, and then I got as far away from all of it as I could. Over time I’ve kept myself busy and after enough time and distractions I was blessed to forget almost everything. One thing stuck with me though, and it always nagged at me. I feared I knew the answer already but I couldn’t help myself. It’s like a sore in the mouth that would heal, but you just can’t stop yourself from tonguing it. Why had there been only one bed on the other side? Aaron said he had seen his twinner, and enough times to almost drive him mad. So what ever happened to him? Did he die, or just get locked away somewhere for good? I needed to know what became of his Aaron.

6

My Aaron didn’t die, but his foolish, misguided attempt to open some escape portal paid for in blood didn’t help matters much. They said that I’d upset him, and that even though he had asked for me nonstop since regaining consciousness, my visiting privileges were temporarily revoked. Even knowing I was doing him no good being there, I felt awful leaving him alone in that place, but I had an idea where I had to go and what I had to do.

Before I left I let them take all the samples needed to disqualify me as a suspect. They said it was all formalities and that they had good reason to believe there was a third person involved, just needed to find that damn knife. The blood they found belonged to a member of our family, they said, but the blood type was O negative. Both Aaron and I are A-negative and Dad was B-positive. The bloody fingerprints they’d found on the wall weren’t any of ours either. They inquired over any missing siblings, or perhaps a twin and I had to smile a little when I said no, not in this world.

I realize only now as I write this that my father’s body was in a morgue somewhere during all of this, but I never even thought to ask to see him and besides the details of his murder Aaron and I didn’t mention him. We cremated the remains sometime after I got Aaron out and we scattered the ashes. That was that.

 

I drove around for a while, telling myself I wasn’t sure of how to get back to our old house. In truth I considered more than once just hopping on the fast way and getting the hell out of town, but as much as I wanted to bolt I couldn’t bear the thought of abandoning Aaron to fend on his own again. When I got to the house I’d once escaped I stood for a while on the sidewalk, allowing my eyes to fall over every foreign familiar detail. The yellow and red leaves from the oak trees were scattered everywhere, and the recent storm had left them pressed against one another. The gutters were overflowing with wet leaves, some had been there so long they’d turned black and I remember having the absurd thought that I would have to help dad clean that up on the weekend. The family house had a large window facing the street leading into the living room, but now instead of the white lace curtains mom had made, the window was blocked with a large piece of cardboard, duct taped in place.

I walked up the long gravel driveway, which if you followed it straight back led to the garage behind the house. I wondered if the tire-swing dad had put up for us was still there. I took the left gravel path that led up to the one story red brick house and when I reached the old red door with its chipped and peeling paint I took the keys from my pocket and saw my hand was shaking. I made it farther than I expected I was going to before I retreated.

Sitting there on the back of the car I’d rented, I had a cigarette while I finished my black coffee. I’d quit a few years before around the same time I switched to tea, but after everything with Aaron and going back there I felt like I deserved a little slack, a treat if you will. I sat for a while refusing to even acknowledge the rundown house. When I did finally look again, I stared for a long time. I noticed there was a piece of yellow caution tape blowing around by the front door, a tattered remnant adrift in the breeze.

Why here, I wondered. Cursed Indian graveyard, some grisly murder, some odd warp in reality? I had never even bothered to question that before, never tried to figure out any explanation for the breathing shadows portal, or whatever it was. You typically don’t waste too much time or energy attempting to decipher the mechanics of things you don’t believe to be real – especially not if you fear they might be, and have gone to great lengths to forget about them. I thought about it long and hard and couldn’t come up with anything better than some strange sci-fi clichés. All I knew was that my brother’s breathing shadows never followed him to 5J; he only saw them when he returned home. And whether he was there or not, I saw they still stopped in on occasion.

A pain in my finger brought me back this time, I muttered a curse and dropped the butt, it had burned down between my fingers. I stomped it out and tossed the rest of the coffee away in the small metal can by the street, on my way back up the driveway. The steady rhythm of my feet crunching on the gravel made me think of a soldier marching to war. When I got to the door, before taking the keys out of my pocket, I fluttered my fingers and then made and released three fists in quick succession. This was a nervous tick I hadn’t suffered in years. I took a deep breath, held it, then in one swift motion pulled the keys from my pocket, inserted them into the lock and turned it, freeing the bolt. They hadn’t changed the locks, and at the time I attributed that to the neglect that showed everywhere on the house, but I wonder now if my mom kept them the same in case I ever came back. Our door is always open, was how she signed the few correspondences we ever shared. Without giving myself time to think about what I was doing I turned the knob, opened the door and stepped inside.

It had been just over three years since mom died – or was killed – but dad had done a wonderful job in that brief period of erasing her careful upkeep of the place. The thought crossed my mind that it was possible that my mother had just stopped fighting the tide of dad’s filth and let the current take her away, allowing the place to fall into disarray, but I don’t believe it. Her house was her home and she took great pride in maintaining one of the few things she had control over. While cleaning up their own mess, the police made sure not to overstep their duties. The place had been cleared of blood and caution tape and any small numbered evidence cards, but not so much as one ashtray had been emptied otherwise. The rank of stale beer filled the air, and once inside I saw that it wasn’t just the front window which had cardboard over it, every window in the house was the same, blocking all but a faint rim of sunlight outlining the dark obstruction. The chemicals they must have used to clean up the blood left a stinging scent, which when mixed with the beer and stale smoke made me feel nauseous. It reeked like a port-o-potty at a country western concert. I thought maybe I still smelled blood, but of course I don’t have the slightest idea what blood smells like.

After removing the first obstruction I went around and pulled the cardboard from all the windows, allowing the daylight to touch everything in god knows how long. As I walked from the living room into the kitchen I tripped over something. I turned around and saw my dad’s work boots, one lying on its side, both with the laces untied. I don’t know why, but that was the only time I cried for my father. If I’m honest though I think it was really just everything. I was crying for my mom, who I hadn’t really accepted had died until seeing her house in such a state. I was crying for the brother I lost as a boy and for what was left of him, sitting with bandaged wrists under suicide watch across town. I’ve spent almost every day of my life lost in worlds either storytellers or I created, first in my head as a boy then on the page as a man, and spent enough time at it to make a decent living. And that worked out well because the more time I spent in the worlds I created, the less time I was stuck in the one which had birthed me. Only as I toured the ruins of my childhood I knew there was no escaping from any of it anymore. No way out, except to quit crying on the kitchen floor like a child and go get what I needed, so this could all be over.

 

Pulling the cardboard from every window in the house gave me a little more time before I had to enter our old room. When I removed  the strip from the kitchen window I saw that the tire swing had been cut down, it was still laying against the back fence where it had most likely fallen when the string had either rotted all the way through or been severed. Cast aside like the used tire it was when we salvaged it, returned to its original destiny, but after a brief reprieve. There was sunlight radiating throughout the house but it was still dark in there, it was as if the place sucked up the illuminating glow and absorbed almost all that it touched. My tour of the old place was sickeningly nostalgic, I even sat at my mom’s old piano, surprised dad hadn’t sold it already. Once I was out of distractions, I went to my old room.

The door was closed, I opened it.

The silence was broken by a quiet squeak as the door swung on its hinges. Our room looked so much bigger than I remembered it, which I thought odd since things from childhood usually appear as ludicrously small as the desks we sat in at school. When it was Aaron and I, the bunks and a desk filled it up and it felt no bigger than a closet I needed to escape, but when I looked upon its emptiness containing nothing more now than one twin bed, it seemed so vast. The last room of the house cloaked in shadows, I feared I could get lost in there – it was a crazy thought, but not insane.

I saw the bed wasn’t the only thing in the room after all. The Ninja Turtles nightlight was still plugged in, and why not, I’m sure Aaron doesn’t like the dark anymore now than he did when he was a boy, I sure as hell don’t. I bent and flicked the switch and the small bulb illuminated the room just enough to make me feel safe again, if just for a moment. I went straight to the wall, placed my palm against it, and closed my eyes.

 

7

            Perhaps it was because I somehow knew it would work, or maybe the barrier had just grown more porous in the years I’d been away, but after just a few moments of stringent concentration my hand began pushing through. I opened my eyes this time and watched the wall devour first my hand, then my elbow, to the shoulder and beyond. I didn’t hold my breath this time either, I knew it wasn’t necessary. I went through at a pace that had the wall been solid I would have broken my nose, but instead hit only a slight resistance as I pushed through the shadows. My expectations of a wondrous show of lights inside the passageway were dashed. It was pure untainted darkness in there, no light at all. Yet when I closed my eyes for a moment I saw the same sparks I’d observed my first time through. The air was thin and tasted of ozone, like breathing atop a desert mountain after a lightning storm. I put my hand out again and after a few more steps squeezed out the other side.

As I stepped into the room that was not mine, my ears popped again. I saw first that I was alone, there was nobody gaping at me this time. The objects looked as if they’d fallen into disuse but the room had still been maintained, the feeling was similar to being in a closed museum. The old shuttle poster was frayed at the edges and scotch tape had been used to repair a rip, leaving a lightning scar in the middle. Below the poster there were several pictures of Einstein and Newton over a desk, the two gentlemen were in such fine company as H.P. Lovecraft (beside his creation Cthulhu), H.G. Wells, Poe, Robert Heinlein, Philip K. Dick and Stephen King.

On the ceiling above the solitary bed, in the space typically reserved for swimsuit or lingerie models, was an illustrated poster that rapt my attention. The drawing was of a door with a rounded top standing on a beach like a lone sentinel. It appeared to be made of an ancient gnarled wood, from the ghost of a tree rather than a live one. Light from behind the door burned through the keyhole and formed a glowing outline around the ghost wood. Etched into the middle of the door itself was a simple sigul, comprised of a triangle with a circle behind it and an infinity sign below it. Suspended in front of the door were two silver six shooters that looked ancient as Excalibur, their barrels crossing to form an x over  a red and pink rose with a glowing golden center. Almost the entire rest of the space was randomly dotted with beautiful pictures of the cosmos.

There was a sudden tickle in my nose. I covered my mouth in time but all it seemed to do was amplify the sneeze. I heard someone coming down the hallway and just hoped that it was who I was looking for.

When he rushed around the corner and into the room I wasn’t sure it was really him at first, the last time I’d seen him was decades prior and we’d looked so much alike as boys. We were not the same man. Where I now dressed in khakis, long sleeved button ups (usually flannel) that I tucked in, and had grown a little chubby, he had a muscular build, and was clad in converse, Levi’s and a plain t-shirt all as black as his hair. My hair, perhaps to rebel against the rest of me, had grown thin, his dark hair appeared to have been recently buzzed but I could still see it was receding just a little. He had a small square bandage on his scalp. He saw me, and smiled.

He moved his mouth, but it sounded like a grownup from Charlie Brown. I touched my right hand to my ear and shook my head. He closed his eyes for a moment and nodded, the smile on his face growing a little wider as he motioned for me to come closer.

I wish I could say I wasn’t scared and that I felt an overriding feeling of determination, that as an adult I no longer felt the terror which had crippled me and sent me running for my blankey as a boy. But just like the last time I crossed into that world, I just wanted to turn and flee back under my covers and wish it all away. There was no herculean task before me. All the worst was over already and I knew it, but still I just couldn’t bear entering all the way into his world, because by doing so I’d have to admit that everything was real. That would mean that Aaron wasn’t crazy and that I’d left my only brother alone with dad and run like a coward for my own selfish reasons. I took a step forward, and then I took another, the one I took after that brought me into a world of smells and sounds I had previously been oblivious to.

As I stepped out of the strange intermediary bubble between our worlds, it was like stepping from a silent train onto a busy city terminal. My ears cleared and I heard the unmistakable Miles Davis coming from the direction of the kitchen. I smelled garlic, pungent spices, and simmering beef that made my mouth start to water. Under all of that were the often intertwined aromas of coffee and cigarettes. There was a dog barking outside somewhere and a garbage truck was beeping out front. He wiped some food off on his jeans then reached out his hand. I recoiled a little on pure instinct, I couldn’t help it.

“Are we even allowed to do that?”

He seemed to find my reaction quite funny, I saw, “I think we’ll be fine, this isn’t some crazy time travel thing. I’m sure of at least that much,” he said.

“Alright, sorry it’s just…”

“It’s just fucking weird! It’s okay man, I get it.”

“Yeah.” We laughed a little together, and I noticed we had the same laugh, “I’m Eric, so, I guess you are too?”

“No, why would we have the same name?” He said.

I shook my head and opened one of my hands like I was asking for change, and couldn’t help but smile. I was a lot newer to all of it than he was.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” he said. “I still haven’t figured out why A is different but B and C is the same. Pretty sure it’s all just random. Anyway, good to meet you Eric, names Henry.”

We held our hands inches apart for the briefest moment of hesitation, then shook.

“Henry?”

“Yeah, I was named after mom’s dad.”

“But grandpa’s name was Herb.”

“That’s how it goes,” he said. “For real though man, it really is great to finally meet you. Here, come out to the kitchen, I’m cooking some chili. You want a beer or something?”

“You got anything stronger?”

We let out another identical little laugh, “Johnnie Walker Black?”

“My favorite writing companion,” I said.

We got acquainted over drinks and some pretty decent chili, it appeared neither of us were master chefs. The kitchen was a mess but not grimy. There were just random parts of electronics and newspapers all over the table we ate at. On the counter was a plethora of spices, surrounding a massive wood cutting board covered in a rainbow of chopped vegetables. Henry switched the record on the turntable to Otis Redding (still alive over there!), then a Beatles record from the 80’s which was awful, some Dylan (died in ‘66 motorcycle crash) and even a little Zeppelin. I felt so comfortable so quick, it was eerie. We played the ‘what’s not the same’ game, like a couple of kids trying to circle the differences in two seemingly identical pictures. Of course it didn’t take long before the not so fun parts came up.

“So where is everybody, you stay here alone?”

His face changed and he asked, “Are you sure you want to get into all that?”

“Not really, no, but I think we probably should.” It was true, I didn’t want to know anything, but I felt like I had to ask. It was a compulsion.

“Yeah, I stay here alone. Dad’s long dead, and mom’s gone,” he said.

“I’m sorry. How’d she die?”

“No, she’s still alive, she’s just gone. I think it has something to do with losing one of your doubles from such a close proximity. She went catatonic when your mom was killed.”

“She fell down the stairs, she wasn’t -”

“Oh yeah, were you there?”

“No, but-”

“Cause I was. I came through one night and heard her screaming at him for hitting you two. Then I saw that piece of shit throw her down the stairs. He was laughing at her.”

“Then why didn’t you stop him, why didn’t you do anything?!”

He looked ashamed and didn’t answer for a moment. When he saw I meant to press the issue, he retorted, “Why weren’t you there?” and the answer to both our questions hung there between us. I had forgotten a lot, but not how scary dad could be.

“Sorry. So what about your broth-”

“Did you want any more chili?”

“No, I’m full. It’s just that I noticed-”

“How about another drink then?”

“Um yeah, sure,” I said, “One for the road.”

He looked up from the glasses he was filling with ice, “The road?”

“Yeah, they’re holding Aaron and he’s freaking out. I really only came for one thing.”

“And that is?” he resumed filling the glasses with a dark amber liquid.

“The knife you killed him with. They’re holding my brother, so-” I started to explain.

“Holy shit, of course. I don’t even know why I took it with me, I wasn’t really thinking. But yeah, good luck tracing these prints right?” He held up his right hand and wiggled his fingers.

“Yeah, exactly,” I said. He came over with the two clear glasses, spilling a little whiskey on the linoleum. He sat back down at the cluttered table; we tilted our drinks to one another and drank. I knew he wanted me to leave it be, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t be back and the answer was right there available to me, I had to know, “What happened to him, Henry?”

He took a long slow drink, draining half the glass in a single swallow, “Okay.” He took his left hand and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, then grinded his palm over his left eye.

“We don’t have to-”

“No,” he clapped his hands once, it startled me a little. “Let’s do it. Okay, so when your mom got killed I came back and found my mom had started losing her mind, and I mean right away. Within a week she was completely lost, and has been since. I’ve got her up at Georgia Pines. Like I said it’s something about the sudden severing of a double next door, I think if it had been a double that was six or seven worlds away then she probably wouldn’t be affect-”

“Six or seven worlds?”

“It’s just a theory, you want me to finish? Anyway a similar thing happened when we were younger. From my brother’s notes I’ve figured out that things happen basically the same here and there, but for some reason we are a few hours behind you. See, we were both blessed with the same type of father. So when I was young and crossed over and saw your mom taking a terrible beating – that one Aaron said she ended up in the hospital over – I ran back here and convinced my mom that I had a concussion, and to take me to the hospital. My brother stayed behind to tell dad what was going on, and I thought I had saved the day.’

He topped off our glasses and lit two cigarettes, handing me one without asking, “So after I was done faking dizziness and nausea and headaches and all that, we went back home. I was so proud, until we walked in the front door to find dad face down on the ground, dead of what we later found out was a massive heart attack.’

“When we found my brother I first thought our father had killed a burglar, because I didn’t even recognize him. Both of his arms were broken, his collar bone was shattered, his fucking spine was broken in two places and what was left of the face hanging on his broken neck had been turned into a god damn Rothko painting, varying only between shades of red, pink and white.” His voice dropped and he almost muttered the last words, “I was just trying to help, but instead of putting mom in the hospital for a week, I killed my brother.’

Crying was what I expected next, but he was more like me than I thought. He took another drink and then went on, “And I’m so sorry. When my dad died, yours got worse, and when my brother died, your brother lost something. I noticed when I crossed over, like my brother had shown me. After he was gone I kept going, just to be able to look at him, to see my brother again. After I saw you in my room I stopped doing it for a long time and had only risked crossing over again the last few years. But when I saw that drunken piece of shit attack him this time, I’d had enough. I was there, I had a second chance, and I wasn’t going to let dad kill him again.”

“Jesus, man, but you didn’t kill your brother. I mean you know that it-”

“And you know what the shittiest thing is, he was the one who found it, he was the one who knew how to use it, probably knew what it was too. Maybe created it for all I know. Said it had something to with a uh, soft spot or something. Kid was some kind of savant, I left all his stuff alone and dedicated my whole life to studying and deciphering that shit, and he understood more at ten than I ever will. More than one world was robbed when we lost him.”

We finished our drinks, and went on with some more small talk but all the joy had gone out of the room. I felt bad for pressing it but was glad I had. Henry had buried the knife that would clear Aaron in a plastic bag in his backyard; he said they’d never had a tire swing. We dug it up and then shared one last cigarette together before I headed back. I felt for him, and he felt bad for me I suppose, but I left feeling both lucky and guilty in the knowledge I had gotten the better deal in the end.

He walked me back to the bedroom and as I approached the wall I saw something I hadn’t noticed before. Carved into the space where I would pass through, was the symbol which was etched into the door from the illustration over the bed, the one Henry’s brother drew. Seemingly scarred into the wall was an infinity symbol below a triangle, with the top point of the pyramid cutting out a pie slice in the circle behind it. Henry and I hugged and said our goodbyes. Then I clicked my ruby red heels together three times and said the magic words.

8

The cops of course had plenty of questions, and wanted to know how I stumbled upon the murder weapon all the officers had missed. I knew what they were bound to think, but I explained that they just must not have looked very hard and that I was out back cleaning up and saw some loose earth where our old tire swing used to be, so I dug it up. And though it’s suspicious as hell, what are they going to do? They’re small town cops and the case looked pretty simple, I found out later they hadn’t even canvassed the backyard. A cop later admitted to me after I’d bought him a few that they had ‘just assumed the retard did it’. The blood on the blade is my dad’s and it’s not my prints on the handle, though I’m sure they might be pretty close. Luckily I was prepared for the long series of questions and got through it alright.

 

It’s been a long time since all of that happened, and as far as we’ve heard they’re still off chasing their third man. After a brief stay and extensive evaluation at a private hotel-like hospital – where I gave a generous donation, could visit every day, and where nightlights were allowed – Aaron was found not to be a danger to himself or others and was allowed to come home with me, and it stuck.

Aaron took up drawing and painting and is quite the natural talent, he particularly enjoys doing pieces with freestanding doors in places they shouldn’t be. He did one amazing poster size canvas which I used for the cover of a novel I wrote last year about parallel worlds and fiction becoming reality. There was just something about the image that really grabbed me and though it took some pushing, Aaron let me show it to the world. The image is a couple ancient pistols and a gorgeous rose over a door. There was a strange triangle symbol on the door that looked extremely familiar to me.

Our ending was a much happier one than I’d been expecting when I first got the call from the Springfield Police telling me my father was dead. I was shocked to find I’d inherited the house and Aaron and I still live here together. He kept our old room and I took over the master bed. I considered leveling the place but we’ve made it into a little home and Aaron and I are both happy here.

It wasn’t the house or cursed ground after all that had been the issue, and some of our happiest memories were in that house as well. When we have our nightly tea session and watch the sunset together on the back porch, I often find myself reminiscing about us playing on the tire swing, exploring the woods and racing on our bikes. I fondly revisit the times we camped in the backyard or watched fireworks from the roof with mom and dad. As the sun dips below the horizon and the stars and fireflies come out, I find that I almost never think about beatings or creatures void of form birthed from shadows. It’s not a conscious effort to bury the past or ignore the suffering we endured. It’s just that in that peace, the breeze seems to carry with it only the sweetest of nostalgic songs.

I’m still writing and doing my best to tell stories people can escape into for a while, and I’m still selling more than enough for us to get by. The book with Aaron’s artwork on the cover has turned out to be what my agent calls ‘a sleeper hit’. The wall might give if I wanted it to, if I gave it a real shot, I might still be able to push through. I don’t know for sure though, I haven’t ever tried again. No need to go elsewhere anymore.

The End

 

Blank Stained Page

By Joel Allyn 1,100 words

December 2011  click here to view as PDF

A man has to explain himself  when he claims he can only communicate with a small notepad

It’s funny, whenever I find myself in a rough spot I spend almost as much time contemplating how I got there as I do figuring a way out of it, as though by isolating some instance where I turned left when I should have gone right, I may be able to eliminate the path which followed.  My sweaty palm was gripping the cool chrome door handle when the cop car pulled in the bank parking lot and swung in right behind me, blocking me in. I felt my cheeks start to burn and became keenly aware of my heartbeat, but composed myself best I could as I watched the man in the mirror in the navy blue uniform exit the vehicle and approach the yellow Nova I borrowed from the Wal-Mart parking lot. I won’t say stole, because when you have every intention of returning something you took, that’s called borrowing.

As the officer approached I pushed two of the four objects in my lap onto the floor and kicked them under the seat, leaving the small wallet-sized spiral notebook with a green cover and a silver engraved pen which wrote in blue ink. I flipped through the pages of scribbled notes in block lettering, past the note I’d already written for the teller, and then found a blank page. I hunched over the steering wheel and rushed out a new communication.

By the time the cop tapped his knuckles on the driver’s side window the message was near finished. Without looking up I extended an index finger to the man in blue, who seemed to take a moment to absorb the gesture, then knocked again a little harder. I could feel the vibrations from the glass and thought of how they always said not bang on the tank windows at sea world. I nodded my head as I finished my note and then rolled the window down, and as he was requesting my license and registration I handed the cop the small pad.

The officer jerked back a bit on instinct as I extended my arm, appeared apprehensive for a moment, then took the message. He studied what I’d written, looked up with furrowed brow, I nodded my head and then he returned his gaze once more to the small green-covered tablet. The message I’d scratched out there read ‘Hello, sir. I suffered an injury recently which has left me  a deaf-mute. I have not yet learned sign language and can’t read lips. I ‘m so sorry for the trouble, but can only communicate via this pad.’

In the bright afternoon sun I could read the name on the man’s crisp uniform, Redman. I studied his loose features and saw the sweat already beading on his forehead and around his thick brown mustache. He looked me over in return wondering I’m sure, among other things, why the wiry stubble-faced man before him was wearing a green M65 field jacket in the middle of July. I always wear it though, whether in extreme heat or biting cold I haven’t removed the thing since my discharge, most nights I even sleep in it. Once past adolescence, it is generally frowned upon to carry around a safety blanket but the green jacket serves its purpose well and it draws far less sideways glances than a blanky might. If it kept me safe over there…

The heat slows time down and the silence dragged out, as he shuffled the paper back and forth with his thumb I heard a loud crow’s caw. Redman stole another brief glance at me then etched a reply and handed it back through the Nova’s open window. I took it and saw he’d simply transcribed in hard-to-read cursive his request for I.D. and registration. I thought for a second and then wrote back that I lived just down the road and had left my license there, was only at the bank to cash my veteran’s disability compensation. He seemed rather impatient to me as I scrawled out the lengthy note but perhaps that was just my anxiety. I have to admit I was rather surprised to see a glimmer of what I took to be genuine pity on his face as he read the note and was even more shocked when the man didn’t repeat his request. Instead, the message he passed back read only ‘teller called us, said you’d been hanging around for over 30 min and that you left and came back twice’. There was no question on the pad but there was one clearly written on Redman’s face. I caught the scent of onions and hoped only I could smell my perspiration.

I nodded my head slowly, then stained the blank page with a simple quick retort and handed it back. ‘I get confused sometimes, forget things’.  Now it was Redman’s turn to bob his head up and down. He tucked a thumb into his mock utility belt and studied me carefully. I felt like an insect under some massive probing spotlight and did my best to hide my unease.  The cop just scratched on the small notebook that maybe I should get some rest at home and try again tomorrow, and at the bottom he’d written ‘thank you for your service’. After pretending to consider this I nodded again and gave Redman a weak toothless smile, as though I were embarrassed or accepting some defeat.

After officer Redman exited the bank parking lot heading west I waited a few moments and then drove away in the opposite direction. I stopped at a red light in a lane with two overlapping arrows, offering two available paths to continue down – one pointing straight ahead and the other curved left for turners or those wishing to head back in the direction they’d come. I tossed the notebook and pen on the floor and kicked them under the seat, to rest once more beside the black facemask and gun. I let out a breath I’d been holding since the cop car had pulled in behind me.

“Jesus. I can’t believe that worked,” I said aloud.

I sat there waiting for the light to change, and wondered which way I’d go when it did.

Brian & Andy

by Joel Allyn

2,700 words November 24, 2011

Two identical 12-year-old boys wake in a fallout shelter, both believing the other to be their copy

Brian searches the bookshelf for the perfect book. He’s familiarized himself with the available library during their stay, however long it’s been – the only clock is frozen at 11:23. They are the only company he has here besides Andy. Andy sticks to the movies, says he doesn’t like any of the books they have, but Brian thinks if they had every book ever written it wouldn’t interest Andy any more than the eighty or so at their disposal now. Just another reminder they aren’t completely identical. On the outside they’re almost a mirror image of one another. Both thin boys around twelve, with chestnut hair just below ear length. They are both in jeans but Andy wears a blue, yellow and red striped polo shirt and Brian has on a grey t-shirt.

Brian looks around the small room they share, looks at the stone steps leading up to the metal door, and the light above it which they both silently hope will turn from red to green. He looks over the rest of his windowless white haven. Most of it at the moment is of little interest to him, the shelves lining the wall filled with records and movies where Andy sits before a glowing screen, his back to Brian. The bathroom and washing stations behind the curtain, the extinguisher and the first aid box hanging adjacent on one wall and the large mirror on another, the oversized red area rug trying in vain to warm the place, he passes over all of it without pause. His eyes settle on the wall that houses the bookshelf on one side of their cots and the pantry shelf and fridge on the other, Andy’s side. How long, Brian wonders will all that food and water last? The air filtration systems, or tanks, or whatever the hell keeps pumping air through the vents seems to be fine – though he still worries that any moment toxic gas from outside the door will come seeping through. The rest though, how long will the rest last? It’s enough for a long time sure, but maybe not long enough, and the way Brian figures, it’ll last just about half as long as it would if he were here alone.

He wouldn’t mind sharing if it was his family with him, he’s not greedy, that’s not it, but Andy is just a copy. He isn’t real. There’s not much difference these days, that’s true, but even with blood and living tissue, a perfect copy is still just that, a copy. It’s not a person, it wasn’t born. It was created, and let’s skip the test tube baby point or we’ll be here all day. Brian might feel a little worse about it if he could even remember how the hell he’d ended up in here with Andy in the first place. He can remember everything before getting here and everything since he woke up staring into his own face without the aid of a mirror, but he must have blocked out finding Andy and then the shelter. And he has to be a replica, Brian has a brother and a sister, but no long-lost-twins, last he checked. Before everything was silent and grey, there were folks rallying and demanding rights for the copies, even to charge those who killed them with murder. Brian doubts that trying him will be a top priority in whatever new world comes next. Not just because they’ll be busy either, Brian knows in his heart that the survivors will understand. They say humans can get used to almost anything, but it seems most of us never get used to the idea of dying, and do what we have to survive.

Brian is still before the book shelf, running his fingers over the spines when he hears the familiar squeak of Andy’s chair swiveling around, “Just pick one already, haven’t you read all of them by now anyway?”

“Haven’t you seen that movie?” No response is given, and after another moment the chair squeaks again.

Any correspondence has become short and clipped – and usually derisive – since the fight. Brian had finally lost it, watching Andy enjoying his day’s rations, and grabbed the food away, yelling at him that he was just a copy and didn’t need it, just thought he did, was programmed to. Andy had the nerve to deny it, even going so far as to claim that it was Brian that was the copy of him. The argument went on, got vicious and eventually physical, both drawing blood from the other. They’ve since been forced to dance the awkward ballet of those feuding in tight spaces.

Brian takes War and Peace down off the shelf, passes it from one hand to the other, too heavy, and then puts it back without opening it. He’ll feel when it’s the right book. He’ll know. Just like he knows he is not a copy, he just knows. The thought occurs to him that Andy may feel the same way. This is more troubling to him than he would like to admit. So he asks Andy what he’s been asking himself since the fight.

“How do you know you’re real?”

There is no squeak this time, but after a second there is a reply, “I just know. You can feel it when you’re real.”

“So then how do you know I’m not?” Brian asks.

Another second, then after a small squeak, “I don’t know. Maybe you are – maybe we’re twins or something.”

Brian turns and looks Andy in the eye, “We’re not. You know we’re not.”

“All I know is I’m real.” He says.

Brian pulls The Brothers Karamazov, repeats the hand to hand gesture, too light, and returns Dostoevsky just above Tolstoy.

“Do you remember how we got here?”

“Of course.”

“How?”

“Everything was, well ya know, it was happening, and I got lost. Then I found you, or you were already here when I found the shelter, I don’t really remember. But I woke up and found you lying on the cot next to me, figured you’d got us in here.”

Brian starts to tell himself that must be exactly what happened, that he just blacked out, met Andy and got them both safely inside. Yes, that sounds right. It feels wrong, but it sounds right. He continues perusing the titles with his fingers, and asks something without looking at Andy.        “What else do you remember, from before?”

“Everything,” Andy says.

“Go on. I just want to see if they really give you all my memories.”

“I have a family. My little brother Jimmy, Sandra is my sister, and I have a dog named Ozzy who’s -”

“- a black shepherd your dad named after Asimov, his favorite science fiction author. God, it’s so creepy how they get all the details right.”

“I’m real!”

Brian gave him a thumb up, his eyes still on the books, “Okay, Pinocchio.”

“Kiss my ass, shitbrains,” another squeak.

Brian’s hand drops from the books it’s dancing over and falls to hover by his side. He turns and stares at the back of the chair. That eloquent phrase has been barked at Brian by his sister Sandra since before he could even say her name. It jarred him a little to hear this imposter, this fraud, use it as though it were his. It isn’t his! That face isn’t his, that voice isn’t his, none of it is his! The only things that belong to him are that stupid shirt and his name. He stole the rest. Or not. For just a moment Brian thinks that perhaps it’s true that it’s not Andy’s fault that he was created the way he was. But those words are too personal, they are sacred. It’s silly, he knows, but they mean too much, they are like a hidden talisman helping to shield him against this farce and they have been violated by this vile doppelganger. Something about him using them made Brian finally lose his certainty, his feeling of knowing, and question whether he was really her little brother at all and that can’t be allowed. It crosses a line. Using that phrase and turning his back on Brian sealed his fate.

Brian exhumes IT from among the seven King selections. He tosses it hand to hand, hand to hand, just right, and then holds it tight in both. He feels the heft of it. It feels right. He walks up behind the chair, and as he does he again hears strange muffled noises from behind the mirror. He’s been hearing them but dismissed it as part of the movie. Now looking at the screen he sees that’s not the case. No matter. He walks around the left side of the chair to face Andy, who after ignoring him for a few moments sees the book in Brian’s hands.

“What?! Finally found one you like, freak?”

Brian smiles, and tightens his grip, “Yup, it’s perfect.”

Brian waits until Andy’s attention is drawn back to the film. Once it is he pulls his arms back over his left shoulder, twisting his body tight like a coiled spring. Then he releases. The first shot connects hard to the face with loud thwack, shattering Andy’s nose. We don’t look alike anymore, shitbrains. The sound bounces through the room like the echo from a high dive belly flop. He feels the weight of the object in his grasp, sees the red of the polo shirt turn a dark crimson. Either the movie or the mirror suddenly gets louder. Andy screams and grabs at his face, he tries to get out of the chair but the second shot slams him back hard against the soft leather. The third shot to the face leaves him stunned and he drops his hands away, the fourth knocks him from the chair and his skull hits the rug below without a sound.

Brian is no longer smiling. He kicks Andy onto his back, kneels over him and brings the book down on the other boy’s head again, and again, and again. When he can’t bring it up above his head anymore, he grips both sides of the thick novel in hand like a rock, or a sandwich, and proceeds to smash the book down like a coconut on a white stone. He knows it isn’t the way they’re made anymore but he wants to see metal and bolts and cogs and springs and lights beneath the stripped synthetic skin, but as the skull caves under the force of the blows there is only a dark red pulp. Brian is crying as he continues to erase any semblance of a head, yelling into the mess the same thing repeatedly.

“I’m real! I’m real! I’m REAL!”As the warm blood splashes all over his face, he imagines it is oil and bares his teeth.

The book, now coated in blood, finally slips from his hands and he collapses onto the rug, panting, drenched in sweat and staring at the ceiling with vacant, unseeing eyes. He lays there until he catches his breath, already thinking about what to do with the body. He hadn’t thought that far ahead he realizes, and now pictures a corpse rotting away and filling the small space with its putrid odor. Brian looks at the stone steps leading to the metal door with the red light over it. He sees the yellow suit hanging there and decides he can risk the time it will take to dump Andy outside, it’s not like he’s going to bury him. It’s only a few minutes at most, what’s the worst that could happen? He gets to his feet, grabs Andy’s legs and hauls him towards the door. The spine and skull remnants leave a trail of blood.

Brian hits the button on the door and it slides open. He looks over the landscape and after seeing a drop off that way, decides east is as good a direction as any. He pulls the body by the ankles, fogging up the screen on his suit with his labored breaths. He gets to the drop off and without looking rolls Andy over the side. The noise the body makes when it hits something is not the sound of a body hitting dirt. The sound reminds him of the thick smack of meat hitting a butcher’s block. His gut tells him to just walk away but his curiosity gets the better of him, and Brian looks over the edge. He stares unbelieving for a few moments then starts screaming and turns and runs back towards the shelter, looking behind him as he goes to make sure the things form the pit aren’t coming after him, coming to drag him down with them.

Brian runs in through the door, and after he is decontaminated he paces around the room mumbling to himself. He looks up and sees his reflection in the large mirror. He turns from his reflection only to run into it again over the sink. He smashes the drinking glass beside the sink and is digging the shards into his wrist when a deafening buzzing noise sounds throughout the shelter, the tone of the alarm does something to Brian and he drops the shard of glass and just stands there, motionless.

The red light above the metal door turns green. The lights in the shelter go dim, and only then are the silhouettes of people behind the mirror visible.

There are three of them, a woman in glasses with her auburn hair in a tight bun, an older gentleman with white hair and a beard to match, and the third, who looks how you might picture either Brian or Andy to look like around the age of forty, all of them wearing long white coats.

“I really thought we had it this time,” she says, tossing her pad and pen down on the table.

“I’m lost. They’re as close to perfect as we can get. We can’t possibly alter them to make them any more genuine. They’re indistinguishable from a regular person down to the molecular level.”

“Maybe that’s the problem. We made them too much like us,” the younger man says, and then walks to the changing room.

The other two follow and without another word, they put on their full-body yellow suits, strip off the boys’ clothes and take Brian out through the metal door. As the door slides open the dark turbulent skies are visible over the scorched earth. They drag the body a hundred yards east of the facility and push it over a drop-off into a large hole. It lands atop a pile of twelve-year-old boys in varied states of decomposition, some with slit throats, others with their wrists opened or stab wounds in the chest, many more with twisted necks and more than a few without a head. They walk back to the shelter and go inside.

“My father was right about all of this. Even after years and years of work, after his success at copying me, he knew it wasn’t the answer. Now all these perversions of my own boy…that’s enough. I can’t watch it anymore”

“You know how you feel after, but we need to keep at it, you know that, it was your idea. Otherwise that’s it. One more and then we toss it in, okay. I know we’ve said that before but we don’t have access to equipment for any other option, and we know you and I can’t — I mean…” she says, looking away from the younger man, her cheeks reddening.

The elder man picks up where she left off, “We’re going to need to take a new sample from your boy, and I’m sorry but that’s all-”

“It’s not worth it. That was it.”

“Please honey, we-”

“We’re done. I’m burying him tomorrow, properly.”

“We need him!”

“He’s done. We’re all done.”

Local Tourist

By Joel Allyn

11/11/2011 1,700 words

A successful man struggling with a childhood trauma revisits all the sites of his hometown, which he has ignored for years.

I’m sitting atop the Ferris wheel Mark, Richie and I used to ride as boys. The view is still the same, the city to my left, the lake to my right. Everything else has changed, but it’s still a pretty good place to die.

I have been sick for some time. I have no proper diagnosis, and you won’t see anything on an x-ray or CAT scan, but I’m just the walking dead at this point. I went around today getting reacquainted with the city of my childhood. Went and visited almost every place I’d hung around with Mark and Richie. All the spots we later abandoned as we got older, realized our haunts were known as tourist traps, and therefore not cool. I’ve walked by several of these places since on an almost daily basis, never sparing a second glance.

Once, Mark and I grabbed a beer right across the street from where it happened, and we didn’t mention Richie at all. Come to think of it, since he was killed I don’t know that we have ever spoken of him. I know that besides giving statements to the cops that day, and later explaining things to our parents, we’ve never talked about Mark’s choice, but it still weighs on me every day. Even now, some twenty odd years later, I still second guess every decision, wondering what Richie would have done in my place. But Richie’s gone, and I’m not, not yet.

Called for an ambulance a few minutes ago – once I see those flashing lights I will finish out this wasted second chance, but at least I’ll go out with a bang. Just have to make sure my aim is true. I am, after all, an organ donor. I have plenty of regrets, but there are two things I know I can say I did right, what I’m about to do and how I spent today.

It wasn’t even the typical ‘last day’ stuff I got to do, like quit my job. It was more about finally abandoning all my fear and absurd reservations and hardened opinions. Finding joy in things I’d dismissed long ago, never bothering to grant them even a second thought.

After coffee and making a call into the office, I stopped over and visited with Mark for a while. He looked like shit, but despite everything he was his typical ever-optimistic self. I pried for details but he was concerned with more important matters – how funny the pudding looked, and whether or not I’d seen the young nurse, the cute one, with the great tits. I hadn’t, but nodded and we laughed together. Then at last, we got on with it. No donors so no chance, but no big deal, he made sure to add. He’d done plenty, most of it good, said I was living proof of that. We didn’t mention the flip side of that coin, but for just a moment Richie hung between us in the silence.

Told Mark the news about Dave Duerson, the former Bear had shot himself the day before. Duerson had been one of Mark’s favorites, and I wanted to tell him first, to gauge his reaction. I explained how he’d shot himself in the abdomen, in order to preserve his brain so it could be donated for research. He wanted it studied for evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. I only remembered the name because brain changes associated with it have been found in over twenty athletes who died relatively young.

Mark’s sadness was clear, but he admitted, “Well that’s pretty damn noble of him. I mean god damn.”

I was relieved that he agreed with my view on the whole idea. We played a few games of scrabble and a couple of games of chess. I went out and snuck him in some real food before leaving. Gave him a big hug, said my goodbyes and started towards the door. Halfway across the room I stopped, turned back and mentioned to Mark that I planned to swing by the Ferris wheel at the pier.

“Jesus, man. I don’t even remember the last time we went down there,” he said.

But he did, we both did. How could he forget, everything from that day is still etched in my memory like stained glass – from breakfast at Lou Mitchell’s Restaurant, to the Ferris wheel, the boat downriver, and the tragic ending.

I knew I’d never get another chance, so I put aside all the fear and guilt that had kept me mum for decades. I let myself blurt out the question which has plagued me for so long. Since the day Mark made the choice which saved my life, my life instead of Richie’s.

“Do you ever regret it, Mark? Ever think you made the wrong choice?” I said.

There, it was out, the worst was over, I thought. I had asked, and no matter what else, I could have some peace after letting that albatross fall away.

Bless him, he looked me square in the face and lied, “No, never.”

After leaving the hospital I headed straight to Gino’s East. I felt guilty, thinking of the grub Mark would be stuck with for a while after his transplant surgery. The day was about indulging guilt free though, and nothing says indulgence like a deep dish pie from Gino’s. Sounds like a commercial slogan. I hadn’t visited our old favorite pizza joint in close to fifteen years, since I’d taken some girl from college who I’d wanted to impress with my local eatery knowledge. I craved it often enough, but never quite enough to deal with the mandatory forty-five minute wait just to place your order, and good luck grabbing just a slice.

After passing through the double glass doors, I was greeted by a woman old enough to be my mother and seated at the bar. I ordered a beer and sat there with a big dumb smile on my face. The place hadn’t changed a bit. Still dark, still filled with graffiti, red booths lining the room, the air filled with garlic and the smell of old beer which has seeped into the wood over the years. It was packed as usual, but I felt like it was all just for me, and I was right at home. The only thing different was the pizza – it was even better than I remembered.

I only made it through three slices, but took the rest to go and gave it to the first homeless guy I came across. He looked at me like I was a god and seemed lost for words. I just smiled and walked on.

I thought I was just walking around at random, but when I found myself standing before the imposing dark tower, I suspected I knew better. As I ascended all one hundred and eight stories I was giddy, no other word for it. On the elevator, I couldn’t even hold still and must have looked like I either really had to pee, or was just mental. I noticed a woman who seemed to be attempting to merge with the corner of the lift.

The view was one I’d seen dozens of times. I knew I’d enjoy it, but hadn’t expected to be quite so overwhelmed. In the midday quiet of the observation level, looking over everything, I held out my arms and cupped my hands, as though I could cradle the entirety of the cityscape below. If ever the full weight of Mark’s choice – and now my own – weighed down on me it was then, as I was far removed, above it all. I actually surprised myself when I felt a tear or two cascade down my cheek. I started laughing. I turned and saw the woman from the lift, hurrying away.

Hours went by without notice. I walked from one glass wall to the next, soaking up every bit of the place that held my birth, my adolescence, my manhood, and soon, my death. It should have been a priority to go there once a month, hell, maybe once a week. The view somehow helps put it all in perspective. It’s all so small from up there. You almost believe you could put it in your pocket and take it with you. Of course, once you’re back on the ground, the feeling first slips and then fades, and then you forget. It’s like a near death experience. You promise that you’ll make the most of every moment of your second chance and you recite carpe diem, and for a while it works, but nobody can really sustain that attitude every day. You forget to remember, and then you lose it.

Today, at least, I managed to hold onto it.

I visited quite a few other places before coming to the Ferris wheel, but time is short, and I think I’ll keep those for myself. Mark will know what they were, I’m sure, and that’s really all that matters. Some places better than they were, some worse, some gone, but they were all great. The trip down river, at sunset, is still the most spiritual experience I’ve ever had.

Mark won’t go on to change the world. I can’t be certain of that, but I don’t see him selling his dad’s bar to go off and cure cancer or anything. He will go on though, and better him than me I feel. I like to think this is what Richie would have done. Though of course, he would have thought of whoever will have to clean the mess off this Ferris wheel, and found a better way. He was always the better of us.

The lights are coming around the corner, that’s my cue. Thank you for everything, Mark. I didn’t deserve any of it, and I wish I’d done more with it. I wonder what Richie would have done?

I Am An Archipelago

I Am An Archipelago

By Joel Allyn

10/29/2011 4,700 words

A man finds himself on an island with a shifting landscape, perfect weather, and the physical embodiment of all his favorite memories just as he recalls them.

No man is an island

I am an archipelago. I would say I am an island but popular opinion states this cannot be so.

Upon further study of the environment I found that though my far-seeing place is removed from everything there are a few other islands, though their connection to my island was not at first apparent to me, or they may not have even been there at all. I am aware that island chains aren’t formed overnight, but time is funny there. One night I shaved my head and when I woke the next day my hair was at least three feet long.

Exactly how long I was there I can’t say – days, or years – but I know it was not forever. I remember knowing that there had been a time before the island – nee archipelago – and while I struggled to remember inane details like the year, age or my occupation, I had not forgotten the face of my father. I walked the place’s coastline countless times, always discovering new things upon each expedition. You see, my island shifts its landscape when my back is turned.

One day I woke to find a pier connected to the beach, on it was an entire carnival. Its manifestation came at a time early on when I had not yet become accustomed to the places fluctuations. I fought the curiosity pulling at me and resisted the urge to explore, until night fell. Once the lights of the giant Ferris wheel lit up and began oscillating they hypnotized me, and I was helpless to resist its allure. The pier groaned under my weight as I walked between the rows of empty booths. The place smelled of popcorn and cigarette smoke. I heard the faint whispers of people all around me, the occasional barker’s yell rising above the murmurs – though besides my creaking footfalls and the great wheel, the place remained motionless.

As I reached the wheel’s peak I realized, looking down on such a wondrous view, that though I heard whispers far away, there were no other people coming. I had not forgotten I was alone there, but I still had absurd expectations folks would’ve come out for the carnival. I found it sad that there was no one else, because they were missing out on this precious viewpoint of paradise, but I was exuberant in the knowledge that it was all for me. On that night at least, alone at the top of that Ferris wheel, I truly was an island.

 

One of the things I love about the place is all the banyan trees and bamboo which are never the same one day to the next, and not just because they grow so damn fast. The ever-shifting landscape lends elasticity to typically fixed vegetation. I walked north through the bamboo and banyan jungle one time for three days straight without stopping. When I exited the jungle on the other side of the island I turned around to find there were no more trees there, they had been replaced by a hundred foot waterfall running from a huge rock wall into an inviting crystal pool. I jumped in without hesitation and the water was perfect, of course it was. I swam for hours, or what felt like hours. I floated on my back with my ears underwater, hearing nothing but my breath. I stayed that way long enough to watch the sun set and the stars come out one by one.

I slept beside the waterfall and woke lying near a pool of lava which had recently hardened. I learned to be careful about where that volcano may move to, sometimes it disappeared entirely. But as long as I was careful I never worried that anything there would hurt me, nothing yet gave me reason to believe otherwise.

 

I wasn’t always alone there, on a few occasions I had visitors. This didn’t surprise me, if I could get there why then couldn’t others? The first one to show up was my sister – we sat on a hill overlooking a stretch of grassy beach and had a picnic. There was an oak tree big enough to give us shade, and we sat there barefoot in the grass eating and getting a little drunk. I couldn’t really understand her, her voice sounded like she was speaking through a pillow, so we mostly sat in silence. We understood each other well enough without words. When I blinked and found myself alone I thought then that her visit may have just been a dream. We’ve always helped each other out and so I feared it was probably just wishful thinking, a comforting mirage of sorts.

The next one I can recall was a girl I’d gone out with in high school, Jasmine or Jackie or something like that. She came out of the surf like something made fresh and new, and though she looked different she still smelled the same. I’ve never forgotten that smell, a strange mix of vanilla and citrus, and smells always take you right back, don’t they. We shared a joint she’d brought–and miraculously kept dry – just as we had when we were kids and would sneak out to meet up. Then we stuck to tradition and made love; first on the beach as the sun set, then later under the moon, and then under the sun again. We talked after and laughed together until nightfall, reminiscing over inside jokes and other forgettable nonsense important to no one else.

It’s funny the way memory works there, I still couldn’t remember the names of my brothers or even  my own middle name, but I could remember that simply biting my lower lip set this girl off and brought out that wonderful laugh I have since forgotten. We each enjoyed a cigarette in silence, and then she went off to ‘water the plants’, kissing me on the forehead as she went. While laying there in the warm sand I drifted off, and when I rose later I was on a grassy hill and it was raining, she was gone.

Both my mother and father showed up as well on separate occasions trying to get me to go with them. I found it strange when I saw my mother swimming to shore, and not just because she couldn’t swim but because she had died years before I ever reached the island. She looked as thin as she had when the cancer had finally taken her, so I scavenged around and fixed her something to eat. I joined her out of politeness but I didn’t eat much. I didn’t have much of an appetite there and ate only when I had a taste for something. When she asked me to play her some of her favorite songs I said I didn’t have a guitar with me, adding that I was sorry. She looked at me with her brows furrowed, the way she had done when I was a boy, telling her the bathrooms were clean when we both knew different. She asked what that was behind me then. I turned to find my first real guitar resting there in the sand as if I’d just laid her down not a moment before.  A beautiful solid top steel string acoustic, furnished by hand from a warm dark cherry wood, still smelling slightly of glue and sawdust as it had the day my mother and I split the damage at Chicago Music. When I picked it up and played ‘Moonlight Sonata’ for her the strings rang out strong, but delicate.  Besides requests for ‘Blackbird’, ‘Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay’, ‘Hotel California’ (which I had to refuse, I wouldn’t play the Eagles if it was her dying wish) and ‘anything by Dylan’ she didn’t say much. What little  she did say was confusing.

I didn’t bother to ask where she came from or how she’d found me, I only wanted to make her comfortable. She said I should go with her, but I told her I didn’t feel like leaving yet, and I especially didn’t want to go swimming into the ocean. Besides death, I had only a vague idea of what waited out there in the endless blue abyss. She said she understood, and that it took her a while to get up the nerve to swim to me in the first place, but it ended up not being so bad. She gave me a big hug and we kissed goodbye. She dived back into the clear water and faded slowly into the waves. I watched her go and as her form disappeared into the dark blue horizon I felt a sadness I had not gone with her into the unknown, but wherever she had come from, I knew I didn’t yet want to go there. I felt terrible, but still felt bad for not feeling worse. Like so many other times in my life I was not crying at a moment when I felt like I should be – like it was expected.

The night she left the stars sped up their movements for the first time, and I watched them grow curved tails above my head. Aurora borealis danced through the sky in a real life time lapse and the moon skittered its way across the heavens in only a couple of hours. In what should have been one night I witnessed two sunsets and three sunrises. I wonder now how I never guessed then what was going on. In retrospect, it seems so obvious.

 

When I woke one day to see father had shown up, I was a bit more concerned. I figured mom had spoken with him somehow and had sent a reinforcement to try to talk some sense into their foolish boy. The firmness I had come to expect was absent however, and when he spoke he was near tears. It was rather shocking to see him this way. I couldn’t really make out the words he was saying, it was as though he were speaking from far, far away. Though I would recognize that voice even as a faint whisper from beyond eternity. I’d like to say something sweet like ‘you never forget the voices that taught you to speak’ but in truth he’d always treated me like a dog, and a dog never forgets its master’s voice.

I got the gist of what he wanted. Like so many times before we didn’t want the same thing for me, and I couldn’t abide to lose this place just to make him happy. I was used to the disappointment that showed on his face when I declined his invitation. He turned from me without speaking. As he walked away down the beach he looked older to me, more fragile now, as if he had suffered some trauma which had aged him at least five, maybe ten years. Then again maybe it was just that place that made it seem that way, time is funny there.

Both of my brothers popped in as well, and we explored the jungle the way we had journeyed through the woods as boys. I heard their voices as whispers from time to time, but when they showed up they only shared stories with me from our youth and never asked a thing of me. I loved them for that. I knew they wanted me to come with them too, but they knew better than to ask.

 

I found a radio buried in the sand on one of my walks. When I tuned it I heard a cacophony of sounds that slowly became more focused, until eventually they formed notes, then melodies until the thing started playing one after another of my favorite songs – and commercial free! This truly is paradise, I thought. Yet I would be a liar if I said I didn’t wonder from time to time if I could leave. That is of course if I wanted to.

Not everything was perfect, exactly. Things were strange and not strange at all, familiar and unfamiliar and I loved that. Yet when I found a movie screen one night and watched a couple of my favorite films they were…off, somehow. Like something was missing. The same thing happened when I found the tablet. I saw a massive tortoise on the beach, and when I moved in to see it up close there was a black tablet sticking six inches straight out of the ground like a miniature 2001 monolith. I picked it up and it reminded me of The Book from that old Douglas Adams Galaxy series. As it lit up in my hands I half expected it to start telling me about a restaurant at the end of the universe, instead it had a list of all the books I love and had dearly missed since being there. Though as I read through Gatsby and Poe’s tales, King’s short stories and and even some childhood cornerstones they all seemed… a bit off. It’s hard to explain, they were all exactly how I remembered them, but that was what was wrong.

I realize now what it was. Whenever you revisit a movie or book you love and cherish, one of the best parts of the experience is not just the rediscovery but always finding that you remembered something wrong, that you missed or forgot some detail which then further enriches your appreciation for it. That was not the case on my island – they were all exactly as I remembered them. I started to worry if I could keep it all straight. I started to fear that if I remembered Moby Dick being blown up by an air tank in his mouth after he swallowed Jonah and Gepetto, then perhaps when I opened The Book it would show me just that. I was already having enough difficulty recalling specifics about my life, how the hell was I supposed to keep the whole of literature, film, and music straight? Luckily, soon after I found The Book, the dog I’d worshipped as a boy showed up. He served as a welcome distraction from my building stress and paranoia.  We had a great time playing together and for a while I was happy again, once again enjoying my private paradise without worry. When night fell he ran into the brush and left me alone there on the beach.

I waited for the next visitor to show up, but none ever came. Once again, for a while, I was an island.

 

Fell asleep one night watching a storm off in the distance, it was the first big one I’d seen there and it was massive. I awoke in the morning to a piercing scream. When I shot up and looked around I was alone but heard my sister’s voice, still part of the whispering chorus but much louder than normal. I struggled to make out what I could, but only got bits and pieces. Over the waves I managed to catch No…he’s…there…wait…time…please…Cyrus… I tuned it out and busied myself chopping up a tree for firewood.

I played the radio while I did this busy work, but the songs started to sound tinny to me and they were repeating far too often now. The original vast catalogue of my favorites had dwindled down to only a few songs I got stuck in my head from time to time. The ‘Lion Sleeps Tonight’ or ‘Bird is the Word’ variety or some other awful pop song that despite your best efforts you could never forget.  When The Eagles ‘Take it Easy’ came on I clicked off the damned thing and pitched it into the ocean. I had my guitar around here somewhere if I needed to hear music.

I saw that the volcano was higher than usual and decided to take the chance to hike up to its summit and see what I could see. Once up there I could observe all the smaller islands dotted around mine that make up the archipelago. From that height I saw that my island was shaped in a rough triangular form, the smaller islands formed a half circle surrounding one tip. The vision reminded me of a sun setting behind a pyramid, the skyward point cutting a pie slice into the massive star. On the opposite side of the island – what would be the base of the pyramid – I saw on what that day was a rocky shore, that there were several large stones jutting out of the water just beyond the beach. The stones, like the smaller islands seemed to form a shape, but instead of a circle they formed what appeared to be a figure eight or the symbol for infinity.  I heard a grinding noise like a jammed car transmission and underneath it a strange beeping noise that was getting louder and louder. I turned and saw the smaller islands started shifting their positions and I felt the still giant beneath my feet start to rumble. It felt like I was suddenly standing atop a massive subwoofer and just as I thought  I should hurry down from here, the shadows all over the island started sweeping from one side to the other.

Looking up I saw the sun had started speeding up its trek across the sky. An absurd image bloomed in my mind of it wearing a number and running a marathon, quickening its stride from a slow walk to a steady jog. As I followed its progress, it sped up faster and faster and it was only then I noticed the great star was moving from west to east. It vanished with blinding quickness, and in the blink of an eye it was gone and the full moon was already a third of its journey across the sky. The speed of the orbiting spheres increased exponentially. I began to feel queasy and looked away. Behind the plethora of noises I heard the sound of my sister’s voice again, somehow both louder and more distant than before, a whisper both far away and right inside my head. Then her voice loud and clear boomed like a shotgun blast in my ear. Please Cyrus! Please.

The ground beneath me shook violently. I observed everywhere below me the trees, bamboo and rocks all fading to nothing, receding like a shrinking tide. Due to the sun’s speed their diminishing shadows whipped back and forth on the ground, resembling windshield wipers blurring side to side, side to side, side to side. It had been so foolish of me to go so high when I knew the impermanent state of my island. I repeated all the useless questions that came to mind. I had all I needed down below, why did I have to take this foolish chance, why did I follow such a careless compulsion?

The sun and shadows sped up their progress and now instead of dialing a dimmer switch somebody was just flicking the lights on and off, on and off, on and off, faster and faster and faster. I closed my eyes, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

I felt the sensation of being pulled in circles, as if I was standing in the middle of a merry-go-round while somebody whipped it around quicker and quicker, my balance being pulled in different directions every moment and my equilibrium starting to fail. My nausea increased and I began to feel a deep pain in my ribs along my left side. It felt like something was trying to rip me off my island, flick me off like some pesky insect. I bent to my knees and gripped the dark rock under my feet, squeezing hard, pleading with it not to leave me, not to vanish while I was so high up. It couldn’t hear me, couldn’t control itself, or was just indifferent. I felt myself being ripped from my island.

Right before the solid rock turned to air I looked out again, not above or below at the sickening shifts but out, and I remember thinking, the storm is back on the horizon again.

As I fell I grabbed at the air, hoping something would appear for me to latch on to, but all I felt was a tightening in my stomach and the pull of gravity’s cruel embrace. When I looked down to see how it would end for me I couldn’t believe my eyes. Since coming to my island I became accustomed to seeing all sorts of peculiar things, impossible things, but after a short adjustment period they never seemed odd to me. I understood you see. What I understood I didn’t exactly know nor did I try to articulate it – words would have cheapened it – but it was always there in the back of my mind reassuring me, and I understood. What made it easier to deal with is that most of the impossibilities occurred gradually, and if not they occurred behind my back, so it was simply like turning the wheel on a huge viewfinder. One image, pull the lever, a new image, a transition but a slow one and that was fine. This rapid pace of shifting scenes was just a sickening blur. I was falling towards a vat of bubbling lava, then a crystal clear pool, the next instant it was a bamboo forest, the next a mountain of sharp rocks, then grass, a tree, sand dunes, water, rocks, lava, a dark pit, a hot spring, a field of flowers, a batch of banyans…my island was fading away. I was losing it. I closed my eyes and waited.

It wouldn’t be like a dream, I knew that somehow. Whatever it was, it was not a dream. I wouldn’t be lucky enough to wake before I smacked into whatever the roulette island landscape landed on at the moment of my impact. I held my eyes closed tight and refused to give in to curiosity. As I descended, the pain in my ribs became unbearable and I felt more and more nauseous. On top of that, my legs now hurt and my left arm felt like it had been shattered. It took forever to finally hit, but of course time is funny there.

Right before I crashed into what ended up being a hard horizontal wall of water I remember two things. First, I had the most inappropriate – or perhaps most appropriate given my predicament – thought that the atoms which made me up were ancient, that I had possibly been a part of some long dead dinosaur, an exploding star, or even a drop of water. We are made of sand and it’s like a sand castle being washed away, the same granules are used the next day to build a new castle. I realized that no matter what, my atoms would go on without me and reform, and be a part of something else. It’s not reincarnation exactly, but I think it’s as close to eternal life as we can hope for. The other thing was hearing my sister’s voice boom again like she was right next to me, yelling in my ear. Wake Up!

I hit the water with a loud smack. I felt it mostly in my cheek.

 

Much later and right away, I opened my eyes again. That annoying beeping I’d heard was clear as a bell now, too clear. The island was gone. My sister was there, so were my brothers, even my father. I couldn’t help thinking and you were there, and you, and you. I tried to smile and a bolt of pain sliced through my head. They all looked at me, shocked. My sister was crying and hugged me so hard I let out a ragged, choked cry. My ribs were throbbing and my cheek was on fire. She pulled back and apologized, then said she was sorry for shaking me, and for smacking me.

The doctor was there and he asked what I remembered. I remembered the island of course, but for how long I wondered. I waved off their questions and asked for a pen and some paper. I had to hurry, I was afraid it would fade away forever like some dream – that perhaps it was already fading – and soon it would be less than a memory. It never did fade though; I can still remember all of it.

When I’d jotted enough of the details down to feel I could finish later I set the pad aside, turned my attention back to my patient audience, and asked how long. More had come back to me. I barely remembered the car hitting me, I just remember leaving the grocery store on my bike and pulling out into the bike lane and then…and then… well, then the island. Drunk driver of course, isn’t it always. They said the coma had only lasted a couple weeks, though they all look as though they’ve aged ten years in that short span. Time must be funny here.

I found out that, per my wishes – the same ones I still have – since I did not want to be left on life support beyond a three week period if it appeared I would not be returning, or not returning mentally intact, that they were on the verge of pulling the plug. My sister, – Marie, now that I can remember her name again – knew better than most what I wanted, but since there had been no severe brain damage in the accident she refused to accept that I was gone. She told me later that she knew I was in there somewhere. She hadn’t seen me in a dream or anything like that, she just knew.

“Had you been a vegetable, I would have been the first one in line to suggest yanking the power and tossing you to the nearest necrophiliac.” She said. “But they showed mental activity, a hell of lot of it. Apparently it was way more than normal. They just tossed around the word anomaly, and they wouldn’t even bother trying to understand or explain it. They all talked about options but nobody would do anything!”

I loved her at that moment more than ever, and she’s the only one I ever told about the island. She is the only one, I think, who would ever believe such a thing. When I jokingly said, “I am an island” it was she who said, “Well from what you’ve d described, technically you’re an archipelago.”

 

It’s taken me a year of physical therapy to get up and walking on my own again, and even now I walk with a cane and a limp, but I can walk and that’s enough. I do miss the island sometimes and wonder if I’ll ever see it again. I think I might but I can’t be sure, I do hope so. Maybe next time I won’t be so scared of the ocean, and I’ll go for a swim.

While I’m around I’ve been enjoying all my favorite things, and they’re sweeter than ever. I am after all a cast away returned to the mainland, and such an event in one’s life allows you to indulge in life’s simple pleasures, and experience the nuances of every small joy. I’ve been listening to music nonstop and in addition to tearing through my ‘to read’ list I am rereading all my favorite books, zooming through The Dark Tower series right now and it’s better than I remember. Recently I checked Moby Dick, and was reassured to find Ishmael still kicking things off and Moby Dick not being taken out like a certain famous great white. Marie and I were lucky enough to catch a matinee showing of one of my favorite old Scorsese films last night and it was better than ever. It really is amazing how much you overlook or just plain forget about.

No matter how many times you’ve seen a thing, there’s always something you missed.