Dreamland Crocotta
by
Karl Pfeiffer
Published by Karl Pfeiffer at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Karl Pfeiffer
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Dreamland Crocotta
1.
Dark green foliage attempts to overtake the peeling fence that runs alongside the cracked sidewalk, the vines painting a shadow across the barrier between the forest and the neighborhood. It is dark within the trees. The canopy of leaves protect the wild from the light. Thick trunks litter the forest and branches overlap and intertwine. Bushes and shrubbery form a dense tangle that spreads from the base of the trees.
A coffee machine burbles inside the Terrence house on the far side of the street. The house is clean and white and fall flowers dangle on their stalks in the front yard. An alarm clock shrieks. A dog yawns.
The sky is a red aura around the nearer house that silhouettes the rising sun. The forest seems to envelop this house, pressing against the edge of the backyard. The high grass in the yard rustles in the breeze. The summer had been long, the early fall, wet. The mower hasn’t moved from its place in the garage in some time. Brown spots litter the far corner of the yard where the grass dies due to a slow-attacking fungus.
The blinds aren’t drawn across the back windows. A man named Mitch sits at the kitchen table, slowly drawing spirals in the dust as he has done for most of the night.
He hasn’t slept in three weeks.
Inside, the sun slides down the wall and the house grows brighter. In the forest, a shadow moves against a branch, behind a bush. A twig snaps below a shifting weight and a low murmur issues from the undergrowth.
2.
The thwap of the newspaper drifting into the door sounded in a way the clock on the wall did not. Mrs. Terrence was yelling at her dog to shut up across the street, breaking in mid-sentence to let float friendly ‘good mornings’ to a troop of children going to school. The sun peeked above the window sill and into my eyes.
It must have been almost quarter to eight.
I broke my gaze from the doodles in the dust and stared at the wine bottle where it had come to rest a few days before against the back of the couch. The sun glanced off the curve of the dark red glass, spraying sparkles across the living room wall.
The cork was still wedged tight in the neck, unopened.
On the other end of the table, her mug of espresso had long since evaporated, a crusty residue creeping along the inside. Her slip lay on the back of the couch like some deflated ghost. The financial times still spoke of the recession, little more than a busted record in time that whines and whines and whines and whines.
The sound of the chair creaking from my rising and my footsteps stumbling along behind it seemed to take too long to reach my ears. The delay made my head swim. Ice water from the kitchen sink was cold on my face but the shock didn’t bring the world to any further clarity.
From somewhere in time, I remembered my brother telling me that I should get outside, water the plants, wash my car, use my hands to clear my mind. Raking my fingers through my damn-near slimy hair, I peered at my reflection in the window over the sink. Above the bustling white-picket fence and baby-blue house next door, a transparent ghoul looked back into my eyes.
No, I decided. No, I wouldn’t go outside today. The neighbors wouldn’t like what they’d see.
Shoving myself away from the window, my hip collided with the trashcan, sending it spinning in a slow circle before finally falling onto the beige tile. Crumpled white paper, two boxes half-full of fried rice, and a single polluted strip of wax paper skated across the floor. Black banana peels lurched in dramatic tumbles toward the edge of the kitchen. The crimson necktie didn’t unroll as I expected it would, but rather slid out in a wrinkled twist like a string of seaweed vomited up from the ocean.
The purple stain seemed to leap from the face of the tie at me, grinning.
Sunrise reached its plateau somewhere around eleven. The rays scorched the floor in swaying, tilting, twisting shapes only vaguely reminiscent of the windows binding them.
Dropping onto the floor behind the couch, I picked up the wine bottle and held it close to my face, studying the label as if it was the first time seeing it. I sighed.
Sometime around twelve thirty, I found my cell phone where it had crawled back to the charger. It lit up when I flipped it open.
I said, “Hello?” It surprised me to hear his voice from the earpiece because I didn’t remember dialing his number. “David?”
There was a silence on the other end of the phone. I looked at the screen and fancied I could see through to the other end where Dave was pinching his nose and breathing through his mouth.
“Yeah, Mitch. What can I do for you?”
I laughed, dropping back onto the floor behind the couch. “Can’t a man just call his brother? Shoot the shit, argue about politics, tell stories about their families?”
On the other end of the line, Dave let out a spoken breath, like a word clipped off before it slipped out, as if he decided that speaking it might have been a bad idea. “’Course you can. You always do.”
“So tell me about life? How’s work treating you?”
“The same as it was treating me yesterday, the same as the day before that.”
I smiled. “I know there has to be something fresh in the life of Dave.”
“No. No, there’s really not. You worked once, Mitch. You know how these things go.”
I looked for clouds in the sky beyond my window.
“How about you talk to me, Mitch. Have you done anything to help yourself lately? Have you taken any of my advice? Have you picked yourself off the floor yet?”
“I had to get the phone, didn’t – ”
“You know what I mean.”
The smell of something rotting drifted from the spilled trashcan. It was the kind of smell that attaches itself to you and teases your nostrils when you most wish for peace. “Sonofabitch.”
“Mitch – ”
“Dave, we never talk anymore.”
“We talk every day when you call me. Every single day.”
I squinted against the fresh afternoon sun hitting my spot on the back of the couch. “Just want to chat. Pretend like everything’s alright.”
“You’ve been pretending now for weeks. How about actually trying to make some improvements for yourself?”
“You think I’m enjoying this?”
“I think you’re ignoring this. I think you’re reveling in this. It’s what you do.”
“I didn’t call you so that you could scold me, Dave.”
“I’m not trying to scold you! I’m trying to help you! I’ve given you steps to take! I visited you two weeks ago! You know what you can do.”
Through clenched teeth I mumbled something about how I actually did appreciate his effort. Of course he was right. I’m just too damn stubborn. Too damn whiny. It’s like I don’t even want to pull myself out –
“Mitch?”
I sang a ditty into the phone over his voice. He sighed. I imagined that he probably checked his watch.
“You at work?” I asked.
“Yes, I’m at work.”
“Lunch break?”
“You know I don’t like to eat lunch.”
“How’s the wife?”
Finally his voice softened by a degree. “You know, she’s good. She’s doing really good.”
I scratched at the cork in the wine bottle. Dave said, “Hey, bro, look, I – ”
But I slapped the phone shut and then watched it sail across the room into the wall above the trash. The battery cover spun to a stop against the tie and the battery lodged into the banana peel. Tada!
I’d worry about whether or not it was finally broken later tonight.
I rolled away from the window but the sun still kept me awake. Not surprising, there was always something keeping me awake, something keeping me from that easy, effortless nothing.
3.
I said hello and it didn’t surprise me when the darkness answered back.
The night breeze was crisp like a rubber band snapping the underside of an arm. A cricket laid down a back-beat staccato in the moonlight. The wet dew oozed in a funny tandem against my crusty socks. The trash now reeked from the rusty plastic can next to my porch steps. I replaced the metal lid and wandered across the backyard to the tree line.
The bark was sticky against my hand. The trees didn’t crisscross into the distance as usual, but instead a blackness seemed to press against the edge of the yard, crouched just out of sight.
“Mitch.”
Cold blood shot through my arms and a shiver chased the sensation. My muscles trembled and I didn’t breathe.
I said, “Yes?”
I heard a rustle, the ever-so-gentle movement of a breeze within the treetops, a sigh, and then, “Nice to meet you.” Words barely distinguishable, like a voice speaking while sucking in air.
For a moment, I wanted to reach out. The sound was coming from just in front of me, just beyond, within the darkness, and I wanted to touch it. If I couldn’t see what spoke, perhaps, maybe, if I could just reach out, a fingertip, to feel that there might be something there, something that wasn’t just a voice in the darkness...
It said, “Mmmmm.” And the sound hummed along with the groaning of the tree branches in the wind before moving deeper along its throat. The purr became a croak, the croak a growl.
A cry scraped from my mouth and I was running. Behind me the back door slammed and the chair was hard below me and I saw my own reflection in the wine bottle and the second-hand ticked into the two o’clock hour, chimes echoing through the house every sixty minutes, reminding me of sleep that never came.
* * *
The second night, it didn’t speak, but I saw shadows flicker from bush to shrub, shrub to bush.
* * *
I stretched out to watch the night air and savor the taste of the stars on the third night. The stars tasted like cheap wine, and the night air reeked like perfume.
* * *
On the fourth night, it pretended to be her and called me a coward. I ran to the kitchen and then outside again. The butcher knife I threw landed deep within the trees.
4.
My head pounded because I was upside down, dangling over the back of the couch. My eyeballs were pressed against their sockets, as if trying to free themselves from my skull. It felt pretty much like normal.
Each time I turned on the cell phone, the screen blinked white twice before cutting to black, only a fuzzy purple fractal staining the bottom corner of the screen. But the keys still beeped when I pressed them, and I had Dave’s number committed to memory.
The flashes of blurry white images babbled out in streams from the television in the corner, voices flickering about a building in a city somewhere.
“... Tower, under renovation only since this past August, was earlier today reported as having a ‘glitch’ in the design...”
Dark speckles sometimes swam in front of my eyes. The room stood on my head. The television set drifted in and out of focus, the images on the screen stretching upside down while news anchors wandered the sky, unheeding and precarious.
“... ‘been building under inaccurate specifications for as many as four weeks now, making a bad problem far worse...’”
The cell phone balanced on its antenna, squeezed between my fingers, stretching toward the sky below me.
“... ‘of course we can modify the design, amend with a new addition to the base, and continue with what we have...’”
I dropped the phone and the living room swirled as I searched for it.
“... ‘the more likely and safer alternative will be to demolish and begin again, in which case the whole building will be leveled and construction will begin again...’”
The crux of the couch felt perfect for my head.
“...’digging down to rock bottom. Oh, it won’t be easy or enjoyable for such an extensive project but we do have some great ideas’...”
The call tone continued in my ear.
“...’sometimes you just have to start over.’”
Finally Dave’s voice scratched its way from the speaker.
“Dave,” I sang.
“Mitch.”
“You eating lunch?”
The phone line was silent.
“How are you, bro?”
“Up to my neck in it.”
The cheerful plastic anchor on the television continued on. “...says the architect responsible has been spoken to...”
“That is your firm there on the news isn’t it?”
He sighed. “It’s one of our brother firms. I had nothing to do with the designs or calculations, but I get to help handle the situation.”
“Sounds busy,” I said, rolling off the couch and onto the floor with a thud that reverberated as far away as the kitchen. I felt the blood rushing back out of my face and temples. The black specs threatened a takeover.
“Look, Mitch, are you planning to talk to me about things today, or is it just going to go like usual...”
I studied the ceiling and pretended the fan was moving when I turned my head.
“I’m dealing with a lot on my plate today, but I’ll listen if you’ve decided to talk. I’m here for you, you know.”
I was more awake than he was, and I hadn’t slept in four weeks. “Good luck with the fiasco. Tell Marie I give her my best.”
I closed the phone and threw it at the ceiling. It drifted a slow arc above my head and I flinched when it landed on my stomach. White sparkles twirled after the coffee table hit me on the head when I went to stand up, so I stayed on the floor for a while.
5.
Two nights later, I heard a woman weeping far away among the trees. She sobbed my name over and over again.
I screamed at her to stop.
* * *
I stood in the kitchen with the lights off because I didn’t want to watch my reflection stare me in the eye again. I would rather be able to see through the glass than allow the darkness means to look in.
The water hissed from the faucet but I wasn’t doing the dishes. I can’t say I was expecting – or even hoping – that they would up and clean themselves, but just the same my hands remained at my sides.
Last night, I managed to resist the draw outside, sitting in the far corner of the kitchen, studying streetlamp shadows through the bottle of wine, but at only one thirty tonight, the darkness like a siren wailed and I was failing.
I expected the cold concrete to creak in the same way as the hardwood just a few steps before. It didn’t. The night was quiet.
The air outside was warmer this time. The grass was still wet but didn’t carry the shock that normally shot through my feet. A hiss whispered from the forest, like wind breathing through tall grasses or leaves.
The darkness paused, timeless and realizing, the way a blind man opens his eyes to sight and a thinker to enlightenment, then said, ”It’s two in the morning, Mitchell.”
My heartbeat quickened. “So?”
A breeze snaked around a branch, rustling stems.
“And why so late tonight?”
The tiny sliver of moon was for only a second revealed in the shifting of woodland branches. The sight of the luminescence brought a chill to my spine, wandering down my back like some kind of icy creature, a memory leaking along my spinal cord.
“You’re in a bad place right now,” it rasped.
A pressure threatened to move from my stomach to the back of my shoulders, a building frustration.
“You know you’re not supposed to be here. I know you never wanted to be here,” it said. I’m pretty sure the growl that followed from the forest was supposed to have been a chuckle.
“Shit happens,” I said.
“Apparently.”
“I didn’t ask for this to happen.”
“’Course you didn’t. The world isn’t a pretty place, Mitch. It’s overrun, crowded. Industry.”
“If it doesn’t make money, it doesn’t make sense.”
“Funny, Mitchell.”
“Not really.” The night was too warm for my trembles to be shivers.
“It’s like Darwinism. Sometimes you fail Mitch. And sometimes you fail hard.”
“Sometimes you do,” I said.
“And sometimes you’re too big a failure to spring back.”
I flexed my jaw. “Yep.”
“And here we are.”
I ran my hands across my face, pressing my palms against my eyes. I let out a breath. “What do you want?”
“You should let it out.”
“That’s helpful.”
“Yes.”
Gritting my teeth, I looked into the shadows, staring, studying the way the little light that wandered through my back yard might illuminate a face, watching for the glow of a streetlamp to catch on a retina, to give me some indication of –
“Let it out,” it growled.
Forming from my shoulders to my neck, I twisted my head to relieve the tension. All of a sudden the night felt too hot. It was too warm for October. It should be chilly outside, not like this.
“Don’t want to bottle it in, Mitch. Best to just let that anger out. When does it ever hurt to let your true feelings on the table?”
Complete words formed then failed in my mouth.
“It’ll kill you if you don’t get it out, now.”
“Okay. Stop!” I screamed, “Just stop! I’m leaving this!”
“You know I’ll see you again tomorrow.”
* * *
A fungus grew from the evaporated espresso in the mug, climbing the sides toward escape. Freedom. With a thousand tiny insect arms, heaving, bristling.
“You know I’ll see you again tomorrow.”
* * *
The handle of the door almost snapped free in my grasp when I wrenched the back door open, slamming it closed again. It bounced off the frame before another slam latched it.
A demon pressed its face against the glass, screaming. Black streaks ran from his eyes and his mouth exhaled an agonized cry. When I finally ran out of breath, my disturbed reflection stopped screaming too. Through the glass I could hear a groaning, creaking howl echoing through the trees.
I couldn’t hear the howl when I screamed, and so I opened my mouth to scream again. The sound wrapped itself around my head and I grabbed hold, stumbling backwards into the dark, drowning out the world in a black fog, the walls and furniture becoming like sudden passerby in some fever dream.
I stumbled into the kitchen, reaching the sink where the water still ran. I shut off the tap and, grabbing the plates, I threw them into the walls, shattering each in succession. I threw the ceramic against the floor. Knives and forks rebounded, springing through the air in some mad dance. With each plate that trembled into thousands of pieces, I screamed.
“TOMORROW,” I bellowed.
Smash.
“TOMORROW.”
Liquid, warm and slippery, washed over my hand and the pots slipped from my grasp as often as I threw them. The coffeepot struck the corner of the countertop.
“FUCKING TOMORROW!”
I felt something tear in my throat when the final wail broke my voice. I felt plate shards ease into my foot. I felt the counter stab into the fleshy part of my back.
Then I was on the floor. Sometimes sobs cut at my breath. My throat stung and eventually my arms and feet did too.
6.
Apparently the dust particles didn’t like the overcast sky either, because I didn’t see them dancing in front of the window when I finally wandered into the living room. Outside, the neighborhood was gray. Dark slashes arched through the clouds. Rain, I’m sure, was considering the hassle of falling. Mrs. Terrence didn’t have to yell at her dog because he wasn’t even interested in playing.
I thought about stepping outside, to stand on the front step and pretend like I was a normal person. Looking down at the lines of dried blood running like veins along the outside of my arms, I decided it was better not to. Again.
I turned my back to the window. Bloody red splotches froze on the carpet, as if caught advancing for battle.