Dreaming of Dreaming

Dreaming of Dreaming 

or

The Legitimate Dangers of Sifting Through the Madness of Poetics and Happenstance  

a short story by

 Palmer Hennessey Cole

     Propped against the back of my shower I look like the abortion of some stain’s kiddie-porn fueled, meth addled, post-masturbatory, shame-induced suicide. Battered and bleak, the black where my eyes used to be, don’t even blink when my bloodied and delirious effigy stares calmly back at me through hysteria. I drop the pill bottle to the ground and turn on the water, setting it to hot.  I slump to the floor and let the slick-wet wrap my body in a deliciously sensuous blanket of water. This time reveling in the warm all-embracing womb of unconsciousness, I think of the day this began, I can almost feel my hand on the steering wheel and that cool breeze. It feels good. I close my eyes and let myself slip.

     It’s a seemingly perfect fall day, the kind where the leaves are just beginning to turn and the suffocation of summer loosens its grip, letting the brisk breeze of change breathe cool life into the world. The night before, I pulled an all-nighter and I’m running on four hours of sleep and have been conscious for forty-eight. I roll the windows down and accelerate past the ‘Slow Deaf Child’ sign. My neighborhood is small and rarely has more than one car, let alone those people milling about on sidewalks, whom our government seems to think will either inexplicably leap into oncoming traffic or sit idly by while a death-dealing half-ton SUV careens from the pavement and pummels their lethargic flesh. My skin flirts with the cool breeze that lifts the hair from my scalp. It feels good and I close my eyes for just a moment to give the wind the attention it deserves.

     My eyes snap open a few seconds later to the sharp crack of something meeting my vehicle, then deciding to bow down underneath it.  The panic of being startled awake after dozing off is multiplied by the soccer ball I see in my rearview mirror. I mash my brakes with such alacrity that my head puts a small fracture in the windshield. Now at a stop, I turn my car off and hesitate to look behind me. I know what I will see, but my baffled brain seems to think that not looking will leave this from existence. Trembling, I tweak my neck far enough to see small legs and a red sweatshirt splayed across the pavement. It’s strange how the boy appears to be napping, how the calm silence of the street frames the chaos that just occurred like a picture of a picture. Almost as if this didn’t happen for real, I’m only watching this happen on some antiquated tube television.

     I quietly get out of my car and begin to walk over to where the boy lay. The bottom of this reality drops out, taking me with it as I realize the boy’s sweatshirt was actually gray and that its fabric held the former contents of his head like a morbid dye. My head begins to pound as my heart attempts to beat its way from my chest and find a new host who hasn’t just killed a child. It only succeeds in causing a roar in my ears and making my forehead throb with such significance that my vision goes blurry. On my quick trip to the pavement I don’t notice the boy’s cochlear implant, or the mother shrieking from her yard, or even the throbbing anymore. I just feel the chilling breeze begging me to the dark.

Monstrous

It’s my birthday. Another year ticked off the list of time left. Another revolution of the sun. Another night to crash and burn. I hate birthdays. I hate how bluntly they point out my distance from childhood. Right there in my face, a wax and flame score card. No wonder people blow them out. I hate the ice cream and presents, bribing minds away from the fact that you’re four seasons closer to the casket. I hate how my aunt sends me a card every year telling me to try and enjoy it and not to think about the accident. Oh and they miss me at home. On my actual birth day the first present I receive is a sharp slap from the doctor to start living. Maybe this year someone will give me a reason to keep wanting to. 

PANIC

He took you as you were walking through the dark parking lot. You looked beautiful. Wearing your one-size-too-small blouse spilling your cleavage into the night air. You did this to catch the attention of the cute boy you worked with. You know the one. You remember how the boy made you laugh. How the boy subconsciously made you wear revealing clothing. A mating ritual spurred by physical attraction, awakening what was left of your ancient bestial instincts. I wouldn’t worry about that boy anymore.

Is your heart rate increasing?

You didn’t see him coming. You didn’t hear his vastus laterallis muscle engaging his peroneus longus muscle as his soft-souled shoes stabbed the asphalt. You didn’t smell his excited sweat rife with adrenaline and urea. No, poor helpless you, you lost those animalistic traits through millennia of evolution. The traits that would have saved your life. Being human is overrated, a birth defect.  These traits won’t help you tonight. You remember the can of mace in your purse, a gift from your father. Because ‘you never know’ your father said. You remember this two seconds too late. Two seconds is an eternity to a rabbit fleeing from a wolf. Two seconds was all the wolf needed for you. Helpless, he grabs you.

Are you sweating yet?

His fingers ice cold clamped over your mouth. Frozen strength stifling your pathetic screams, more like whimpers. His other hand a band of steel around your ribcage. Digging into your solar plexus crushing the air from your lungs. Don’t worry, you won’t need it after tonight. Pulling you into the shadows he deftly moves his hand from your mouth to your throat; his fingers crush your cricothyroid muscle in your larynx, skillfully cutting off your oxygen flow. Perfection. Instinctual.

Can you feel this?

Every cell in your pathetic body knows this feeling. Knew this before it knew anything. This feeling was hardwired into every nucleus. Fear. Your whole body drunk with it. This is when your sluggish brain starts to panic. Acetylcholine released from preganglionic sympathetic nerves triggers your ‘Flight or Fight’ response. Your hypothalamus chooses to fight. He likes this. Sending epinephrine through your body, piloerection is the first to kick in making your hair stand on end like a scared cat. Even with the adrenaline screaming through your body the embargo his fingers put on your oxygen supply renders you helpless. Meekly you kick and wiggle and fidget. He thinks of this as a dance, a mating ritual. He delights in it.

Are you panicking?

Had he held your larynx any longer you would have died then. You realize he did this not to kill, but to incapacitate, to make you more manageable, to save you for later.  You think of this as your vision goes blurry. Tiny black dots swimming, drowning your field of view. You think of this as his panting shrinks from your ear, replaced by white noise. You think of this as you feel his erection pressed to your back, corpulent with blood. You think of this as your zygomaticus major muscles relax, turning your twisted dread-filled face smooth and expressionless, morbidly angelic. You looked beautiful. You think of this as everything goes black, to save you for later.

 To save you for later.

Like an Old Record

I remember the day I found it in that old steamer trunk. Well I say ‘day’ like it means anything now. I guess the best way to say it, is to reference remembered places, faces, and events. I used to say things like: day, time, hurry up, better not be late, is there enough time. Time, hah, what a joke. Things were a lot different back then.

You see the problem with using time related references is that you wind up saying things like “I visited yesterday today and I’ll probably go back there tomorrow.” Now that just sounds ridiculous, even to me, and I’ve seen a lot. I’ve been everywhere. I’ve watched Caesar stabbed, witnessed JFK’s shooting. Most won’t believe me but there really wasn’t anyone on the grassy knoll, save for me. That’s how my excursion into time travel started. I would go back to great historical events and see them first hand. Marie Antoinette wasn’t as pretty as you’d think. Now, Cleopatra she was a beauty. Anyhow, that’s what I’d do; after running out of events from my high school history class. I started randomly hopping in an out of eras searching for great triumphs. The kind they don’t tell you about in school. The place I saw 6-year-old Ricky Johnson, on a rainy day in Seattle, get his first bike. The elation in his face, now that stuck with me. Or Suzie Pekinzy’s first kiss, the day before the Nazi’s invaded Poland. Her happiness, her lust; those feelings would die that night. She’d only experience it once. I got to witness it whenever I wanted.

Naturally, watching other’s lives led me to my own. I reopened all my presents from Christmases past. Climbed a tree with a bag of popcorn and watched my first romance like a movie.  Stood in the crowd and cheered myself on in my first fistfight. Once the glamorous parts of my life lost their glitz, I started revisiting tragedies. The pain, the loss, the betrayal; those things carried weight. At first I started small. Like when I found out Santa wasn’t real. I stepped it up a bit and watched the argument that led to my parents divorce. It was weird seeing them like that. Hearing their secrets thrown at each other like missiles. My mother, the nicest person in the world, had acid in her mouth, her retorts like poison daggers. My father, a proud man, looked like a ghost. One moment a chainsaw the next a coke bottle filled with shame.  I felt deep pain from seeing them like that but, the masochist in me couldn’t stop.

After a three-day nap, you could do things like that when time did your bidding. I finally worked up the courage to watch our break up.  I sat in her closet and waited. She came in wearing the day’s stresses like a wet coat. She had a new job and was having a hard time adjusting to the boss’s outrageous demands. It was easy to see that now. It was easy to see how hard it must have been for her having two tyrants in her life. I came in after some time. I don’t really know how long, I was lost watching the symphony of her undressing and brushing her long black hair. Those beautiful private moments meant for no one. My enjoyment of how gracefully she had folded her sheets and vacuumed her apartment was bittersweet. For I knew what was coming. I came in all cocky and loud demanding a sandwich.  She had told me no and that I was perfectly capable of making one myself. God I was a jerk back then. I remember how I had been growing irritated with her. How I couldn’t believe she didn’t have time for me.

 Now, I had all the time in the world to think of the things I said. How my child’s anger had overflowed. I wanted to burst from the closet and shake myself, rough me up. Scream “You asshole, offer her a bath or back rub. She isn’t asking for much. Just some comfort.” I knew how to cook; I could have easily made her dinner. I yearned to go back 20 minutes and reason with myself. “Look kid, I’ve seen countless loves. Real loves. Not the kind in Disney movies or Dawson’s Creek. Where everything is perfect. Nothings perfect. You’ll realize that once you witness the things I have, like war and murder.” But the fuzzy laws of time traveling wouldn’t allow it, that and I was too proud back then.  I couldn’t possibly have understood that I was the Judas to my Jesus. Betraying the one shot I had at divine happiness.

So, I went back to that day. The day I first discovered that old steamer trunk. The dusty attic was still reverberating from my first trip. In my initial excitement I hadn’t looked at what else was in the trunk. This time I did. I found a worn leather book filled to the brim with letters.  Each recounting the visions of time travelers. How they had also begun by enjoying history. How they too were drawn into rewitnessing their own lives. How they had gotten trapped in the cycle of wanting to fix past mistakes. Falling victim to the rip tide of regret. After finishing the book of confessions, I noticed the circular pattern that each traveler was in. How each was finally ended with a letter. So, like many before me I wrote my own letter. I described the beautiful images I saw, the secrets I now knew, and the travesties I encountered. How although only a week had passed for any one ordinary I had lived for centuries. I was as old as the sea. I preached of how time should be ephemeral and passing.  The fact that specific memories, events, and feelings only happen once is what gives them their significance. A blooming flower is only superb because it never blooms again. After I finished I signed the letter like every other traveler had:

Sincerely,

You-

Slashed Sheets

We had been together for two years, an eternity when you’re young. She was thinking of nesting, I was thinking of spreading my wings and getting the hell out of that town. We were in a fight at the time. She was suffocating me with comfort, and I was gasping for something new, something unsettling.

My yells bounced off the walls of the break room. Almost loud enough to cause the already chipping puke green paint to sprinkle to the grimy concrete floor. Hanging up the phone on her I sparked a cigarette. That’s when the devil walked out in stilettos. “Sorry you and your girlfriend are having trouble.” The ravishing receptionist had a serpentine smile showing she was anything but sorry. “I don’t know why you put up with a girl like that. A guy like you needs someone fun and open.” She was in her late twenties. I was barely 18. She wasn’t quite a cougar, but she knew the jungle. “ I got a new piercing that might cheer you up.”

Taking a drag off my Marlboro I blew a smoke screen, “Oh yeah, where is it?” Her nails with a fresh French manicure nudged her gaudy belt.

“Somewhere south….somewhere hot.” The edges of her lips curled like demon’s horns. I knew what she was doing and I was having all of it.

“Somewhere private then, huh? Let me see it.” I crushed out my smoke as she took my other hand and led me out into the onyx night.

Between the cars she undid her belt. Lowering her designer pants like a red curtain at show time she showed me her lace. Her fingers dancing around her pelvis pumped up the show. For the feature she gingerly lowered her lust filled garment producing a sinful mockery of the ring for a piercing. Like predator to prey I was on her. “You sure you’re okay wit” I silenced her lips with mine. Like beasts we ravaged each other. Casting off our clothes and inhibitions, she took off my belt with her teeth. On the hood of her Camry we made love. No, I wouldn’t call it that. We made shame; an awkward dance of animalistic hunger.

After the hunt as we buttoned and buckled back into our human skin she said, “You could at least give me a kiss.” I pecked her on the lips like someone flicks ash into an ashtray. Without a word I walked to my car. As the engine turned over the exhaust wailed betrayal. I couldn’t tell you what songs played on the radio, but I do know that they couldn’t compete with the horrid symphony in my head.

Back at my house I sat with only gin and shame to warm me. I slashed the sheets to rid the demon host. The fiend haunted the halls of my mind echoing her siren song. I took a shower to wash off the scent. The soap couldn’t cleanse my insides, couldn’t wash away the black tar in my chest. I stepped out of the shower into my tattered room. She had decided to come over for an impromptu visit. Her eyes were burning a hole into my bedding. I knew she could see straight through me. As clever and intricate as I thought I was I knew she could read me like a Random House children’s book. “What’s wrong with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Iron & Cotton

Frank has a very peculiar job. He’d been working for Securities & Defenses for the past 15 years. S&D’s wages were decent, enough for his family to live a comfortable life. The benefits, though, were a cut above. Medical, dental, company car; all these were great but the real benefit came from the company’s products. Securities & Defenses was a company that had been around for ages, under many different monikers. Its products had always been the same though. S&D specialized in the manufacturing of emotional security devices: security blankets, defensive walls, emotional armor, things of that nature. Surprise is the first reaction, well after disbelief, when Frank tells people what he does. They never gave their emotional security a second thought. “Someone had to make it.” as Frank always tells them.

Frank worked in the blanket-weaving department. He’d been there since he started. He’d gotten, quite exceptional at it. Weaving grandmother’s nightly prayers with Christmas mornings, grilled cheese sandwiches, Saturday morning cartoons, and stitching it up with old bedtime stories. His blankets were the best; providing countless people with a comfort of home and old memories. Not a soul could guide the shuttle as divinely as Frank. Frank was an ambitious man. He knew he had done all he could with the blankets and had aspirations to become a smith in the armory. He would watch them as he’d spool mother’s songs to some father’s wrinkly hands. The smiths would walk by franks loom, black from head to toe with soot. They had a dignified air about them a regal silence, as well as steely grey eyes. Frank knew not what went into the making of armor. Hushed whispers during breaks by the water cooler mentioned horrible things being melted down and processed in production. This intrigued Frank. He had to become a smith.

“You know Frank, you’re the best weaver we have. I’d hate to see what your absence would do to our quality reports.” Said Frank’s boss, a friendly man, who always took his family to the lake on Sundays for picnics.

“George, you have to transfer me. I’ve been here 15 years. I need a change or I’m leaving.” gambled Frank, who had no intentions of leaving. He just couldn’t stand not being at the top with the elite.

“I don’t know Frank.” George sounded weaker this time. All he needed now was a push. One of the perks of working at S&D was understanding what made people tick.

“You owe me George, remember when I made your daughters blanket when she went away for college. I tripled stitched it with boating, music, and your wife’s cookies. You know it’s against policy to give those out.” Frank could see the resolve slipping out of George’s eyes.

“What about a transfer to the Wall department?” Georges last attempt at appeasing Frank. George knew what went into making armor.

“No matter how well those walls are made they always fall. I want to make something lasting, something intricate, something tough. It’s that or bust, George.” With Frank’s last push George had given in.

Frank worked the next 6 years in the armory. His skill apparent he rose to the top. Making works of art from the blast furnaces of despair; Frank learned what went into making armor. The whispers from back then didn’t have a dark enough black to paint what went into these pieces. He once used kittens, old couches, stuffed animals, and back scratches. Now, his tools consisted of horrors; rape, death, loss, heartbreak, and lies, amongst other unmentionables. As Frank left the forge for his break he would pass the looms. Trying to avoid the weavers’ inquisitive stares, he would unfix his gaze and walk silently like the smiths had when he was a weaver. Frank understood now that the steely eyes were instead hollow from not focusing on the visions used in smithing. The soot covering him from head to toe carried with it an acrid black lament. What once appeared to be regal silence was in reality a muteness that sunk deep into bones and silenced even marrow. A voiceless mourning in prayer, asking forgiveness for what he’d seen.