Cryptopolis and other st.., p.32
Cryptopolis and Other Stories, page 32
After an eternity, or maybe twenty minutes (who knows?), the handsome young doctor strolls out of the room and tells me I can go back in with Lauren. He places his hand on my shoulder and squeezes. Hard. “She’ll be okay,” he says. “I’m giving her a prescription for _________.” I don’t remember the exact name of the drug. Risperdal? “Make sure she takes it, per the directions. Understand? And then tomorrow you need to make sure she sees her normal physician about further treatment… if you really care about her. It’s hard work taking care of people like this. You do understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”
I nod. “Yes, sir, doctor,” I say. He pats me on the shoulder twice, hard, as if this gesture is meant as a warning.
That’s it? That’s what we’ve come all this way for? I’m almost disappointed that she really isn’t dying.
I go back into the room and sit in a metal chair beside Lauren’s table. I’m trying so hard not to get annoyed. “Lauren,” I say.
“Yes?” She stares at me innocently.
“Why… why did you look at me that way just now?”
“What way?” All innocent.
“Like you were afraid of me.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
If not for her insanity, I would have to conclude that she’s playing some kind of sick game with me. But she is crazy, and she didn’t act like this at all before the breakdown, so I don’t know what to think—about anything. All previous reference points are useless in this relationship.
“What did you tell the doctor about me?” I ask.
“Nothing.” She grins like an evil version of the Cheshire Cat. “I feel better now. I just want to go home.” She gets up off the table, opens the door, walks into the hallway, then begins strolling back toward the Emergency Room.
“Wait a minute,” I say, “we have to wait for the prescription.”
“Oh, I don’t want it.” Casual as can be. As if she’s refusing a bottle of Pepsi offered to her at a picnic.
“But… that’s why we came here, isn’t it?”
“No. I’m not dying now. Let’s just go home.” She walks through the middle of the Emergency Room and out into the early morning darkness. I don’t know what time it is, but it’s so black I know the sun will be rising soon.
“I can’t fuckin’ believe this,” I say to her on the sidewalk outside. “You dragged me all the way here for nothing, so you could just turn right around and go home?”
She stares at me as if I’m insane. “I didn’t ask you to come along.”
“Let’s at least call a cab then.”
“No. I’d rather walk.”
I slam my fist into a metal stop sign standing on the street corner. “What the fuck? Are you trying to drive me fuckin’ crazy?”
She laughs, still walking, me trailing behind her. Like always. “No,” she says, “you’re driving yourself crazy.”
I plead with her for several minutes to let me call a cab for the two of us. She tells me I can call a cab for myself if I want, but she feels like walking. Of course, I can’t let her take that route all by herself. So, I follow her every step of the way. Fortunately, the wolf pack on 29th has already dispersed by the time we pass that corner again. Even they aren’t mad enough to be out this early.
And as we walk, we watch the sun rise. Under other circumstances, it would’ve been a beautiful sight.
It must be almost six o’clock in the morning by the time we reach her apartment. We re-enter through the sliding glass door. Appearing to be genuinely puzzled, she asks why I didn’t lock it. I explain there wasn’t enough time.
“Besides,” I say, “if I’d locked it we never would’ve been able to get back in.”
“Oh,” she says.
We sit at her kitchen table at dawn and eat a bowl of cereal. Gorilla Munch. Realistic illustrations of hairy primates adorn the brightly colored box. She tells me the DNA of a gorilla is 98% identical to that of a human being (she read that somewhere once). She also tells me she’s on a diet and doesn’t want to consume anything too sugary. Hence the Gorilla Munch. And yet she’s just a little over 100 pounds. She’s so willowy, like a phantom impression of Lauren. Only briefly now do I catch a glimpse of the laughing little sprite I fell in love with last February.
Lauren’s roommate, Rebecca, wakes up to get ready for work. She sees Lauren in her gown and asks, “Are you guys just getting up or going to bed?”
“Going to bed,” I say, so exhausted I can barely even think.
Rebecca nods and retreats into the shower, not interested in knowing any further details.
After we’re done eating, Lauren asks me if I’m ready to go to sleep.
“I think so,” I say.
We draw the curtains tight. I pull off all my clothes and climb beneath the covers. Lauren’s ghost throws off her gown and slips into bed behind me, but not before retrieving an object from a cluttered bottom drawer in her dresser. She carefully places the small object on the nightstand beside my head. It’s an unopened bottle of psych meds—a prescription from many weeks before, judging by the date on the label. I realize then that Lauren never even needed to go to the hospital. So why dig out these meds now? As insurance? Just in case? Is she using them to mock me?
I don’t bother to ask.
She presses her warm body against my spine, wraps her arms around me, kisses me on the back of the neck and whispers, “Good night, babe.”
“Good night,” I say. As if we’re an old married couple on a mundane summer evening. Two figures in a Rockwell painting from a 1950s Saturday Evening Post cover.
Jesus, I think, what the fuck am I doing here? I pat the warm hand that lies on my stomach. I wonder if my hands are freezing. Hers feel so feverish and hot. She falls asleep within seconds.
Her words echo inside my head: You’re driving yourself crazy.
Maybe she’s right. I am driving myself crazy.
On purpose?
Because I think somehow everything’s going to return to normal with the help of a magic bottle?
I wish I could walk to a hospital and get that question answered from a young professional in a white lab coat. You do understand what I’m saying, don’t you? Yes, doctor, I do. I understand. I’m an international terrorist and a CIA agent and a Satanist. I drove my girlfriend into madness with the evil, psychokinetic powers buried deep within my mind. All the pain in the world is my fault and mine alone. I admit it. I assaulted my girlfriend—or so she’ll tell me tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. I understand everything, doc. I’m just as crazy as she is. Yes, better to have the diagnosis confirmed by a medical expert such as yourself than this slow, confusing disintegration into complete numbness. I can’t think or feel anything anymore. And I don’t want to. Is that wrong of me, doc?
Is it?
I just stare at that little plastic bottle on the nightstand for a very long time as the room grows brighter and brighter. The sunlight makes the amber bottle glow slightly, as if something magical is stored within.
But I’ll never know for certain because she’ll never open the bottle.
And Lauren’s ghost will grow fainter and fainter. And sooner or later I’ll fade away along with her.
I climb out of bed quietly, throw on my clothes, and leave through the sliding glass door. I lock it because I tell myself I’m never coming back.
I leave Lauren’s sleeping ghost behind me.
I walk.
Tierra de los Muertos
in the forbidden city
The wolf emerged from the ground like a plant, skull spine ribcage rising out of moist, rain-soaked soil, flesh accruing around the bones like fungus on a mushroom; the wolf appeared to be lodged waist-high into bright green grass, but was in fact rising, rising, flesh sprouting bristly dark hair in high-speed motion, rearing up onto two legs, plucking its feet from the mud, lifting its head high and roaring at the darkened clouds obscuring the full moon…
At sundown, just outside the walled-in city, the Matadors took to the streets armed with knives and semi-automatic rifles, intent on wiping out the homeless blighting the doorstep of this sunny suburban paradise. They had been contracted by the crème de la crème of the city’s substantial business community to sweep away the problem with a brief parabolic arc of explosive lead projectiles. Neatly. Efficiently. And as secretly as possible.
The angel crashed to earth well within the limits of the city, impacting in a duck-filled pool of water located in the center of a scenic park. The second the wingless being’s scarred, blackened flesh broke the surface of the water, the pool began to churn and hiss and boil…
Like water, the wolf flowed down the cracked sidewalk, melting into the gutter, eyeballs teeth ribs seeping between the soiled sewer grating and down into darkness with the rest of the city’s discarded waste, a final wounded howl echoing between the subterranean walls far longer than would be thought possible, forever lingering beneath the city like a ghost, haunting the memories of the dead and the not-yet-born…
A mound of dead flesh threatened to dwarf the towering iron gates embedded in the high wall that surrounded the city. Near the base of the wall the last of the Matadors sank to his knees in the wet earth, pleading for his life as he tried to squirm out of the thin black cords binding his wrists. The General, who had been voted leader of the nomadic war veterans after the Matadors’ pogrom, was expected to deliver the final kill shot with one of the Matador’s own rifles. The General didn’t mind; he believed none of them deserved any mercy. After all, these soft young assassins hadn’t bothered to research the background of their quarries. They were far too important, far too gung-ho. This’ll teach you to respect your elders, the General thought with an oblique smile, delivering the kill shot to the back of the kid’s shaved head. He saluted the corpse, then led the first assault against the bloodstained wall, the wall that had kept him and his friends outside the city for far too long…
The naked angel shook the King’s hand, then stepped up to the wooden stage and thanked the people for overlooking his questionable pedigree. “Though not all of us can be perfect,” he intoned, “each one of us can do everything within our power to rise above our past transgressions. I believe my mistakes make me uniquely qualified to oversee this most contentious of city-states. To paraphrase a very wise philosopher who was once an acquaintance—” The blackened, scarred creature never finished his speech. The assassin’s bullet hit him right between the eyes. The angel sank to his bare knees, uttering a long, drawn-out hiss, then collapsed onto the wooden platform, motionless. The perpetrator was apprehended only minutes later. Typically, he was a shy loner who insisted he was God-like and perfect, capable of bringing souls back from the dead with the merest touch of his smooth, youthful hands—the souls of reptiles, insects, and the mentally disturbed. Everything and anyone but the sane, the godly, the angelic. This city, he claimed, was filled with more than enough such creatures already.
The Sheet
1. Carter leaped out of bed,
grabbed his perspiration-stained sheet and dashed into the hall fully naked. Gray, diffuse sunlight filled the hallway. It was probably about six o’clock in the morning. Everybody in the building would be waking soon.
He swung open the bathroom door and proceeded to stuff the sheet down the toilet. It was his favorite with which to cover up. He liked the way it felt, the way it looked: beige, the color of faded memory, or cream in coffee. The word “sleep” could be seen on every inch of the cotton fabric, microscopically, almost subliminally.
Somehow, by pushing the fabric downward inch by inch, and with repeated flushings, he was able to expunge almost half the sheet before the rumbling began.
2. The entire apartment began to slide—
no, not slide, but roll. Yes, it rolled right out into the middle of the street. From his living room window (he was on the second floor) he could see a horde of cars swerving to avoid a collision with the mobile building.
He could see so clearly at that moment: the expressions of fear and surprise on the faces of the drivers down below as they attempted to swerve their vehicles out of the way. One driver stood out: a long-haired gentleman wearing sunglasses and stylish clothes with a cell phone pressed to his ear. He seemed like the type of person in desperate need of a good scare.
Sudden life-threatening accidents can have profound effects on the right personality types, thought Carter. Perhaps this is why the universe goes a little crazy sometimes—for the benefit of the inmates. He thought of his favorite Fortean quote: “If there is a universal mind, must it be sane?”
Carter was very pleased with himself, despite the fact that he’d had very little to do with the building having gone berserk. He hadn’t intended on this result. He hadn’t intended on any results at all. He’d simply felt the urge to stuff his sheet down the toilet, that’s all.
3. The building didn’t kill anyone,
not outright. It destroyed a lot of private property, of course. He saw white picket fences and gingerbread houses and cats and dogs and entertainment systems tossed aside like wet cardboard under the brunt of the on-rushing domicile. The true danger arose when they hit the freeway. He didn’t know how they managed to maneuver through the tight curves of the on-ramp, but maneuver through them they did. Judging from the landmarks whizzing by, he soon ascertained that they were heading north on the 405 in the general direction of Santa Monica. Toward the sea.
It was early on a Saturday morning and the traffic was sparse. Most of the cars were able to pull off to the side, to safety, long before the building was anywhere near them. However, Carter soon became aware of the sound of rotary blades close overhead and sirens on his tail. He sat down in front of the TV and flipped through the channels until he hit a local news station. To his surprise, he was treated to a bird’s-eye-view of his own apartment building as it raced down the 405 pursued by a flotilla of L.A.’s finest. The anchor, a distinguished-looking gray-haired gentleman named Abe Fischman, told the audience that this was the strangest police pursuit he’d seen in all his years of broadcasting. His co-anchor, an attractive young Latina, began thinking out loud, questioning the validity of airing such escapist fare. Fischman turned on her and sniped, “What’re you talking about? This is in the interest of public safety!” “Public safety?” the woman said, laughing. “The only people in danger are on the freeway. You think they’re watching TV?” Before Fischman could reply, the scene cut away to a close-up shot of Carter’s own rooftop. He saw an old man standing on the edge. The old man flung his metal walker aside, then held his arms out like an orchestra conductor, like a man about to fly.
“Oh, shit,” Carter muttered beneath his breath. It was Grossinger from #8. A sweet old fellow, a veteran of the Vietnam War. Carter had often brought him food from the deli he worked at part-time. The two of them would sit around, drink beer (though Grossinger’s doctor insisted he shouldn’t have any alcohol) and listen to the old radio shows Carter recorded off KNX sometimes. Grossinger’s favorite was X-Minus One. Carter liked The Shadow. Grossinger remembered hearing some of them when they were first broadcast. Sometimes Carter wished he could go back to that era. It seemed innocent somehow, untainted.
Grossinger often talked about going back to those times too, though usually in the context of death. He was suicidal, had been since the passing of his wife three years before. From what the cameras were showing Carter, he’d decided at long last to join her on the Other Side.
4. Carter shot up from his chair,
slipped on a pair of tattered Levis and flip-flop sandals, and burst out the front door, hoping he wasn’t already too late to save his friend. He passed two of his neighbors on the open-air deck outside—the obese couple in #3, the freakazoids who liked to play their porno flicks far too loud for Carter’s taste. They wanted to stop and discuss the how’s and why’s of the building’s abrupt mobility, but Carter just waved them away and told them, “Another time.” Couldn’t they see he had more important things to do?
The only way up onto the roof was the handyman’s ladder. Grossinger must have pulled it out of the storage room, for it still stood against the edge of the roof right in front of the door to Apt. #6. Mr. and Mrs. Arbuckle (who knew their real names?) stared at Carter, sloe-eyed and confused, as he scuttled up the rickety wooden steps with the speed of a panicked monkey. The roof was covered with gravel that crunched beneath his sandals as he ran toward Grossinger. The poor old man’s arms were held out in a cruciform, and the blades of a distant police copter seemed—for an instant—like a halo surrounding his seventy-seven-year-old head.
“Please, God, my Lord and Saviour, take me back to Martha!” Grossinger yelled as his whole body tensed.
“Don’t do it!” Carter screamed, knowing he could not reach the man in time.
“If you say so,” Grossinger said, stepping down from the ledge. He breathed a sigh of relief. “Man, I thought you’d never come.”
Carter bent over at the waist, resting his hands on his knees, and tried to catch his breath. “You mean you never meant to—?”
“No,” Grossinger said, lowering himself to the rooftop. “No one wants me anymore. I’m a burden to everyone… most importantly, myself. I don’t know what’s going to happen, I just know I ruined everything. I thought I might have a chance to live a full life, but now I don’t know.”
“Oh, c’mon. You’ve lived a full life.”
Grossinger rose to his feet once more. “I know there is something else out there way more important than this fucked-up country on a fucked planet and I will find it because that is where I belong. Not here!” Suddenly, he attempted to fling himself over the roof.
