LJ Archive - 05/01/2005: "the baby still sleeps"

(Postscript: this is an original work of fiction, adapted immediately following a dream with minimal post-REM embellishment. I haven't read it again until now... there are a few interesting parallels that have transpired in real life well AFTER I dreamed this).

The screen door on the side of the clapboard house bursts open, barely misses the bumper of the Jeep pulling into the weed-ridden driveway, and slaps the side with a sharp crack. A woman of middle age charges down the stairs, fiddling with her wire glasses and cigarette at the same time. She shakes her head in disgust when she sees the Jeep.

“Couldn’t you get the hell out of here before that damn harlot showed up? Christ! I’m going to the garden now so leave me alone.”

Ah - she must be my mother. To be honest, I’m not sure why this makes sense, but whom else could she be?

She squeezes between the jeep and the siding, and storms off around the front of the house. As she does so the weary spring finally wins its struggle to pull the door shut, and it smacks the house again.

For some reason I know this will be the last glimpse of my mother I ever see.

Another woman gracefully exits the jeep, as if grace and jeeps could coexist, and walks toward me. She suddenly has a sleeping baby in her right arm and her left arm is outstretched in hello… her smile is genuinely warm. She beams.

I would say she must be my wife, but for some reason that is less clear. I can hear my mother tending the garden in the bright midday heat of this late spring afternoon.

“I came by to make dinner for tonight, I hope you don’t mind. What’s wrong with your mother?”

Oh. I guess I was right about my mother, but this one must not be my wife - she’s popping in for a dinner date? So where did the baby come from, I wonder.

“She’ll be fine. I don’t think we’ll have to worry about her. Listen, uh, I was just about to go into town and enjoy the day, do you want to go with?”

“No, but since you’re going, make sure to stop by John’s and thank him for the truck. Make sure he hasn’t killed all that beer yet. And maybe you can pick something up for dinner then? Me and the baby will be fine”.

Hmm… the baby doesn’t have a name. And the woman talks like Daisy Duke. How do I know her? She seems to like me well enough, and I do know John, so I agree to tack the errands on - I didn’t have anything better to do.

I get in an old white Ford pickup parked behind the house, facing the jeep that now blocks the driveway. I can back it up and go around the house, there’s nothing back here anymore anyway. Seems like a drought or something killed everything off, but we salvage and coax just enough to get by.

I start it up and curse myself for not knowing a stick shift better. Oh well, it apparently only cost me a few cases of beer, so I’ll learn. But the truck seems to be flying uncontrollably in reverse; I see the homestead shrinking, the clapboard siding and jeep and dusty hills and tired garden and weeds and farmland all merging into one… my pulse races… I struggle to get the truck into gear, to stop without killing the engine as everything around me fades and POW… it stops. I have my foot on the clutch and in the rearview I see the homestead. Everything as it was, with Daisy climbing the steps and opening the door. I’m still in the driveway, facing out, with the jeep behind me this time. What the hell just happened?

Must have been a panic attack. But I’m still here, silly me. Ha-ha!

I slam the truck into gear without a problem in this time, and take off down the road. The same moviescreened image of the homestead briefly plays in the rearview mirror again, before swirling dusty entrails erupting from the road in the truck’s wake obscure it. I traverse a long, gently sweeping arc of wornout blacktop and gravel. This place I think I call home is a forgotten plot of time; foundational ruins poke up from the land, reclaimed by ivy to the left, barren as Stonehenge on the right. Either side devoid of inspiration; if you could suck out the color, the image would be complete.

John’s place, if you want to call it that, is at the end of this road: the last-chance barrier between this existence and the small city on the outskirts. How ironic that Daisy asked me to stop for a visit, because there really is no choice. In fact, the road doesn’t go by John’s place, so much as it goes through it. And not just in that road-through-the-cornfield sense, either.

I see it approaching in the windshield: a deceptively unassuming structure, similar to what I just left, only with addition upon addition upon addition tacked on. The structure looks like a quaint house that’s been eaten by tumors of window, door, alcove, and gable. It’s situated so that you don’t realize this until it’s too late: it’s just another normal house on the side of the road up ahead, until you round the last corner and BAM: there it is, huge and terrible, and you have to go through it.

But John doesn’t say much as I pull into the living room.

He doesn’t even seem to recognize me at first, and then a new flash of panic briefly sears my mind: Do I know him myself?

Of course I do, because he is smiling, and extracting himself from the couch, knocking over a Coleman cooler as he tries to navigate the mess of ancient artifacts in here. Obelisks and totems and tablets, the whole cryptic lot.

I think I ran over a cooler when I first drove through the wall, come to think of it…

“Hey! Good to see ya! How’s that wreck doin'? I heard you back there, you know. Still not shifting when you’re supposed to.”

He means it in jest. “Well, seeing as how it looks like you only wanted cans of beer for it, I’m not holding my breath. But it runs.” I'm having to rebuild my memory as I speak, to convince myself of what I'm not sure is true.

John lets out a hearty laugh. “Best damn deal that’s been made here in ages! That truck was worth more than the 300 cans I asked you for. You tell Angie to show you to drive it right, or it’ll cost you another 100 beercans next time you go through here.”

Angie! Daisy’s name is Angie! I feel better. Now, about the other one…

“Aren't you going to ask me about the baby?”

“What, you mean little Mark?" He snorts, "Of course not! Angie already told me all about him when they came through here on their way to see you. You’re quite the father figure you know.” Damn… "father figure"… doesn’t really tell me what I actually am now… “Which raises me up a good question: if they came to see you, what in the hell are you doing here, anyway? You can’t trade the truck back - I already drank half the beer!”

“I’m just on my way in.” You come out of this shithole… you go in to town. The few people down here don’t ask you why, they just know… you need to get out.

“Well hell, suit yourself boy. Don’t look like much of a day to me, but what do I know? I got a grill full of fish upstairs by the way. Help yourself when you come back”

There’s an equal possibility that it’s a grill full of charcoal and scaled fish to be cooked, as it might be a grill filled with water and goldfish. Neither would surprise me. I’d rather not know.

I say my cordial goodbyes, fire up the truck again, and drive out through the kitchen, scraping the mirror against the fridge accidentally (John must have moved it since last time in order to install the giant gumball machine next to the stone column). I make a right turn around the backside of the house, and just like that, I’m on the road to the city.

It’s sunny as I drive up the steep mountainous ascent toward the plateau where the city was built, but something is wrong. I see the blue sky and puffs of cotton thrusting a blade of clarity into the fuzzy open ground ahead of me, but to my right, where time’s wasted homeland fades ever further below me, the sky is a sinister patchwork quilt of blacks, grays, greens. It shimmers and ripples. I stare at it for too long until I hear a two-tone blast and hurriedly jerk the wheel back into my lane, narrowly missing the oncoming car. Dammit. And when I glance up again, the sky is back to normal. Where did that car go?

But the clouds do look darker on the right.

I enter the city. This isn’t my first time, but it seems different. The city is only such by comparison to what I just left; for all appearances it’s a small town on steroids. Vast expanses of sky and prairie fill the voids between apartment buildings. Towering forests stand firm between gas stations. There are no skyscrapers here, only squat strip malls and watering holes. And it changes every time I come here.

I suddenly realize that bastard John didn’t offer to refill the gastank like I just remembered he’d promised. Dammit, three hundred cans of beer, and I get a tank full of fumes. I hate stopping for gas.

But when I pull into the same station I always come to, it’s no longer serving gas - it’s an ice cream and pizza parlor. The kind that gets mobbed after little-league games. And for some reason, I can drive right in. Sonuva…! This must be a trick, John didn’t tell me he was franchising the city. Interesting…

I drive through a converted automobile repair bay that is now some sort of indoor patio area. Fathers and sons queued up for cones and sundaes smile at me as I try to navigate without hitting anything. They must be used to dazed people driving theirs cars though in a vain quest for gasoline. It feels like driving a VW Beetle through a riot - a riot of stoned, slow-moving happy people. One of them hands me an ice cream cone. “It’s our grand opening, sir, so everybody gets a free sample!” Wonderful! I can’t help feeling ironic that I’m newly encumbered with an ice-cream cone as I try to avoid running over someone’s kid and not stall out the truck.

I see the exit… and I need to find gas soon. Another family moves out of the way, I drive for the opening in the wall, and…

…I’m standing on the ground on the other side of the wall outside the dairy-treat station, and my ice cream is melted on the ground. I spin around in the grass, turn around just in time to see the truck sputter and rise, slowly, feather-like, until it disappears with a blip of light and an audible pling.

All it needed was wings and a harp, and I’m sure I would have heard it sing.

Um, well. No matter. These things happen all the time. It’ll be back at John’s for me to pick up this afternoon. In fact, I can just barely see John’s house down in the valley from here, and he’s already built another new addition for it.

The easiest way to get back out from here then, is to walk the street that connects the two mountain plateaus. Funny, I don’t remember that from last time… but there to the east, sure enough… that’s the part of the city I used to go to. And this street has always been here, I used to walk it all the time as a kid, in fact. But the second mountain is not as tall as the one I’m atop right now, in this part of the city, and it will be an easier descent on foot. But given that, it does seem strange that this street connecting them is as flat and level as a tabletop as far as I can see.

Old familiar houses scroll by my peripheral vision, as I eagerly anticipate the landmark pond that signifies the spot where I can diverge onto a dirt path, a shortcut to the side of the mountain, back down and out to the valley. I’ve done this before, I now recall, and I already forgot what I came in to town for in the first place. Suddenly I just want to get out before the sinister sky quilt shows up again. I have to get out. It will come back.

But now I can see a barricade ahead. And as I get closer to it, it seems the houses have now been abandoned. I realize why once I get to the barricade: A large hill has manifested itself, somehow, engulfing streetlamps, cars, bungalows and parks. WTF? I know that wasn’t here before…

…but it must have been, at least long enough for a tunnel to be bored through. In my estimation, the pond should be close on the other side, so I enter the tunnel. It doesn’t seem so much like a tunnel as it does the entrance to a mine.

There’s nothing of interest in the mine tunnel – it is positively barren and plain. Strangely, though, the road is now cobblestone instead of concrete. How quaint! And lo, the exit on the other side is there before me.

I come out and see the pond glistening glasslike on the horizon. But that’s not what holds my attention: the houses that the new hill should have obliterated are here on the other side, vibrant and fresh and full of life. I hear traffic on the backside of the hill from where I came. Suddenly everything makes sense again.

I start jogging now, happily anticipating a dip in the pond, basking in the shade of the great oak trees that surround it. It’s only been ten minutes since I left John’s place, so I have plenty of time. I can smell the sweet pollen, see the dandelions bending in the breeze, the ripples in the pond shimmering and the path that only I know about between two trees. Home never looked so promising.

Suddenly I hear the voice of an unidentified friend crying out, Run, it’s come on the wrong side...

I look up and see the great storm rushing in, from the east, enormous and terrifying. This is no mere sinister quilt of black, gray, and green, although I now wish it were. This is dread manifested in vapor, made solid enough to smash the air.

And it’s coming, and it’s furious, and the sky is parting, and I cannot move.

A pounding rapport of noise sounds in the distance, a funnel starts to form. The horizon beckons deep blue ocean in front of me, but the sky above is ebony hell. At that moment of comparison, I can move again, just as the monstrous swirling knife begins to carve the pure oceanic palette. I turn to flee into the tunnel, and am blinded by a flash – and spun back around.

The funnel erupts into a dissipating cloud of screeching bats. They scatter across the valley, and a huge gaping hole appears where the funnel once took root: a great demonic halo, twisting and pulsing, skating now across the sky like a hollow UFO. As it passes overhead I am reduced to trembling from the sounds that emanate within: the great clamor as Lucifer was cast out of heaven. It passes westward and disappears behind the hill, and the sky follows, sinister beyond comprehension; perhaps Lucifer is not the one being cast out this time. I have to leave. NOW.

I rush back into the tunnel and run smack into an ancient wall of plaster and slatboard. Shit, why did my damn truck have to martyr itself? I start clawing and pounding at it, plaster burrowing under fingernails digging into wood, flakes of dust and embers cascading around me now, my shoulder pounding into the slats, breaking, cracking wood and bone, until light breaks on the other side.

It’s too bright to be just simple spring daylight.

It’s snow.

A fucking blizzard.

I break through the wall and exit the tunnel and find myself back at the ice cream station… the street and hill now behind me are vaporized in a furious blast of crystalline ice. Snow and wind are billowing around, and I can barely establish my bearings. This won’t do. I see random traffic in the distance, cigarette pricing signs blowing over, people scurrying inside. But they aren’t running to the ice cream station, where I now realize I’m alone. Hot pizza starts to disappear, poof, and then cash registers and counters and tables, poof. Uh-oh.

I dash outside into a full-scale Nor'easter of a blizzard, but somehow I don’t feel the cold. The sky is a dead slate sheet now; I might say it was befitting were it not for the little detail that, 15 minutes ago, I was standing in this exact spot on a warm sunny day, dodging kids and their parents as they clamored for free samples of… ice, I now have to laugh at the irony.

But that doesn’t matter. My homeward shortcut was cut off by… by something. Something that came from the east. Something that came from time’s wasteland. I need to get back there.

A brilliant idea forms: Steal a car from the ice cream station! I turn around to search but then stop aghast: engulfed in a shimmering, vibrating, throbbing strobe of light, the former ice cream parlor reverts to its former self: signs change, broken down cars reappear in the patio bays, and it is a gas station once more. Then POOF, it too is gone.

It almost seemed to float there, for an instant. Maybe it did. Maybe I would have heard a pling, if it wasn’t for the howling wind.

Goddammit John, what the FUCK did you do?

I start running. Ice and snow are pelting me, but I can’t feel a thing. My shoulder doesn’t even hurt from crashing through the new ancient wall in the hill/ tunnel/ mine that maybe wasn’t even there but I clearly remember.

I run across the street, dodging garbage cans and lawn furniture frantically bounding about like animals. I say I run, but really it’s more like falling standing up, there is so much ice. I skate and stumble to an apartment building, door blown open, windows smashed in - It looked new when I passed it a while ago, but it is now abandoned for all the world.

Or maybe not… somebody still lives in this particular unit, but I peek in the hallway and see every other apartment is vacant, the musty smell of old carpet wafting throughout, hitching rides on the backs of snowflakes that collect and build in the hallway. The air is eerliy still except for those lazy snowflakes. Even with no windows intact, this place somehow maintains a barrier effect to the wind.

If I was thinking about camping out here to ride out the storm, I didn’t realize it, because a man just came bursting in here before I could finish the thought. He’s shimmering.

“Please, please, you’ve got to make it stop!” He stands here, gasping out of breath, panicked beyond normal capacity for cohesive thought, and he is pleading with me about stopping the goddamn weather.

“I’ve seen you here in town before. You know that guy who has that… place… down there off the side of the road... on the way in... Do something, fix this!”

I ask him what it is I’m supposed to do, he shakes his head, looks around fleetingly, then looks at his hands. They shimmer, and fade, but the keys held within remain solid. I look at his face and suddenly recognize him: a dad from the ice cream parlor that no longer exists.

“Take my truck… do it now… there’s no time… we never should have asked…”

He quits talking and looks me in the eye, and holds out his keys. My hands pass through his and the keys pass to mine, but I don't feel a thing.

“There’s no more time.”

He says it matter-of-factly, with remarkable composure. Then, he fades. He doesn’t float, but he’s gone, and I hear pinging.

I run to go back outside, and when I enter the hallway there are glowing holes where the vacant units were. I make it outside and see a few cars now; I check the set of keys in my hand: I need to find another Ford. There, an Expedition… only Ford in the lot.

As I get in, the car next to me, an old Toyota, starts to shimmer. I start the Expedition and am gunning the gas even before I shift out of park; I take off and don’t bother to look back - I already know what's going to happen. When it does, I don't even notice the flicker or the pling.

Charging back out, I can’t think. All I can do is pilot a cannon shot into the depths of hell, barreling down the mountain road I ventured up just a while earlier, blindly sliding on snow-covered asphalt, dodging debris fields of junk and nature, focusing on not rolling the car and killing myself. I might still die, sure. But not now. Not yet…

I glance to out the window to the left. The unmarked turnoff should be close, and I scan the grey wasteland of soil, snow, and sky for a landmark. The sky flickers again, and then I see it: the tornado. Well enough in the distance, but not moving side to side: coming straight at me.

I just happened to pass the turnoff when I saw it.

I slam the brake and throw the truck into a wild fishtail, pumping the pedals and flogging the wheel to maintain control, the huge lumbering vehicle’s suspension groaning to comply with my pleas to break the laws of physics, reverse course and remain upright. Somehow it does, and I once again find myself facing back up the mountain, toward the turnoff now ahead to my right, toward the funnel cloud that is now very clearly taking dead aim for the bastard structure that has been my accursed gateway to civilization for far too long.

Like Hell it is…

And without thinking, I slam the gas, 4-wheel drive engaging into ice, as I rocket off the road and opt for the shortest route, conventions soundly meaningless. The truck lurches and bounds over earth and wind, and funnel looms in the background ahead, not moving side to side, but growing ever bigger, slowly, deliberately.

I might have a minute on it at the most.

Finally I crash through a crumbling stone fence, launch over a pile of two-by-fours, and shut off the ignition in mid-air as I come crashing through a corner wall into a side room, some sort of office, and land amidst a rain of drywall, timbers, and eclectic old relics: forgotten antiques and clay tablets and stone tools.
When I left earlier, the kitchen was here.

Nothing ever made sense in this place.

I open the door and fall out onto the pile.

I can hear the roar, the great beast of quenched fire and manic debris approaching. I whip around, a staircase appears.

“John!” I call out but it’s useless; I can’t even hear my own voice.

The whole place is shouting back with its own strained creaking now. I hear, no, I feel objects slamming into the side of the building. I sense that some are breaking through. Part of the roof collapses behind me, and my beercan-bartered truck lands on top with a crunch.

Have to get upstairs…

I stumble up the vibrating staicase, yanking the handrail out of the wall; I get to the landing and trip right over Angie. She is alive, but unconscious. I shake her and she comes too, briefly, and smiles weakly. She is bleeding, her arm is broken, and through a frantic glance I surmise it’s from the large propane grill that is lying by the gaping hole in the other wall next to a fireplace – and it just happened a moment ago.

I want to ask questions but don’t have much time. There is no time to measure. The roar is getting louder now, and I feel it more than anything. The building is losing this epic struggle, groaning, crashing, collapsing: utterly falling apart.

Not shimmering.

I spin around. It’s becoming difficult to move. For a fleeting instant I consider running back downstairs and then see my truck blocking the way. What a waste of thought... Quickly- this new hallway here. I enter it, trip over more debris, lose my balance as the house lists to one side and I splay out across the floor… I see the details of the whorls and knots in the wood as my head cracks it full force.

I struggle to retain consciousness… instead of the roar I hear a pulsing ringing. My eyes are blurry, I taste iron and copper: I am bleeding.

John appears in the doorway. No, he didn’t just appear… he has been there for a while. He is slumped down, perhaps dead, perhaps not. The baby is in his arms, and appears to be asleep. Dammit I can’t tell for sure. I can’t move. I feel the house starting to crumble, showers of sparks shoot out from another room, and colors begin to fade.

John turns toward me as I barely keep my head raised. He smiles, not sinister, not friendly. He looks defeated, almost relieved. He nods to me, then to the baby.

The baby continues to sleep.

The roar continues to grow. The floorboards shake and throb, now breaking, splinters jabbing up through my skin, walls collapsing around me. Decayed antiquities crush my arms, runed tablets shatter across my back, snow singes my flesh with brutal searing cold I now suddenly feel.

I strive for one last look. John is leaving. I squint and glean… in an instant… the baby stirs, looks toward me… smiles…

I am smitten.

The house rains down: appliances and artifacts, junk and effects, windows and gables and roofs, wood and steel and masonry; all of it imploding unto itself. Outside and inside, what was is no more, as the funnel churns and devours and obliterates, combining all into pure forms, elemental. It scatters all in a fury of wind and snow, dispersing fertile entrails over the wasteland, over the ages, over the lost and the fallen and the never born.

And in a flash that would have blinded me were I still able to see, it is gone.

I know this, because I am there.

And in time, Angie, my mother, and others will pass through the area and never know what once was here. It will be lush and green and beautiful. People will come down from the city just to marvel and bask in the opportunity, the sadness of ruins forever wiped from history.

And the baby continues to sleep peacefully...