Dreams

by Wesley McBride

  He didn’t know how long he laid there, afraid to move in the darkness, curled, frozen, when his mind started racing again. He opened his eyes, straining to see in the darkness that surrounded him. He could make out shapes, a bit of light coming through the window above the table above the green bottles. He crawled, silently, cautious to not make any sound should…what was that? The television was on but the program that was coming through was dimly lit he didn’t recognize. He made his way along the wall to the living room, springing himself up to the light switches by the door and flicking them on. Still, he surveyed the living room, moving only his eyes. The room was the same. The same as he had it left it in the morning with the addition of the ash. It was still dark outside. He could see his phone near his bedroom door, but waited for something to happen, anything. He was shaking now. Run. He got to the doorway to the bedroom, reaching inside to turn on the light, immediately dropping to his knees to retrieve the phone, pressing the button to reveal it was 12:00am. He saw the woman under his bed briefly he thought, twitched backward and then seeing only the box in the corner. Was I hallucinating, he thought. Pushing the phone into his pocket, he remembered the gun and looked back towards the door where he had dropped it to find only ash and carpet. Scrambling on hands and knees, he glanced into his closet before pushing himself under the bed and grabbing the box. He could feel the weight of the pistol as he pulled and lifted the box from under the bed, hitting his head on the bedframe in his haste, running back to the couch, flipping the box open as he did, lid falling to the floor. I was hallucinating. Past the book and the photos and the gold. He pulled the gun out of the box and opened the cylinder, revealing the brass and steel contents of its guts. Closing it, he held it in front of him and made his way to the kitchen. There were no figures standing. No masses on the floor. He turned the light on anyway. Back to the door now. It was closed firmly, and staring out of the window, he saw nothing. Nothing but perhaps the homeless man smoking a cigarette in the alley. He walked back to the couch and lit his own, taking a drink out of the bottle. He thought of ergot poisoning. He had watched a documentary about a month ago but now couldn’t remember where he had heard about it. That can cause hallucinations. Maybe I’m just tired. He held the gun, resting it on his right knee and smoked with his left. No ashtray in sight, he left the butt standing upright in the bit of ash he had missed earlier on the table and picked up the bottle, drinking again then returning it to the table.

  When he was a child he had thought his grandparents’ house was haunted. He could remember a time with his grandfather when he was young. They had been eating breakfast at the table. It was toast. He couldn’t remember where his grandmother or his sister were, but he could remember a very old cartoon on tape featuring a yellow faced rabbit was playing on a tiny black and white TV He could hear a beeping coming from the hallway, a dial tone giving way to the slow, purposeful tones signalling that you had missed your opportunity. He had hung the receiver back onto the pale yellow rotary phone on the wall and returned to his toast and the cartoon. Again, a short time later, he could hear the noise coming from down the hall. He got up to place the phone back on the wall when his grandfather had told him not to bother, and then explained to him the story of the ghost that lived with him. He wasn’t a scary ghost he told him, but he likes to play tricks. He’ll keep taking the phone off the hook if you keep putting it back. He hadn’t reacted to this news except with excitement. He could remember being a little older and playing in an upstairs bedroom with his cousins when the door slowly opened a few inches, creaking loudly as it did, opening with intent too unnatural to be a breeze. One of his cousins slowly crept to the door thinking it was a scheme to scare them, all the others watching him, pulled the door open and yelled ‘Grandma!’ only to find no one on the other side. That he could remember. At least that’s what his memory told him, but time has a way of distorting the truth behind your memories, he thought. Maybe I’m being haunted.

  Time had gone by. He thought he had fallen asleep for a while but wasn’t sure. Dim twilight had just started flooding the sky a dark blue/grey. The gun was still in his hand. He laid it across his lap as he struggled with his pocket, eventually grabbing the gun with his left and standing, pulling the phone out of his pocket. It read 6:30. He had slept. He went to the texts from the night before. None. No messages from his son’s number. No texts from anyone saying those things. He placed the phone back down. I couldn’t have been dreaming. That was real. Maybe I actually was hallucinating. He stood up and went to the bathroom, taking the gun with him as he did, detouring briefly to grab two large glasses from the kitchen.

  He held the glasses under the shower head and filled them both as the water heated unusually fast, then grabbed the small one he had left on the counter the day before and filled that one as well, holding the glass so the that the head of the tap was inside of it so as not to burn himself, but burning himself anyway when he pulled the glass away. Instinctively, he turned the cold tap on at the sink but pulled his hand away before burning himself further. The shower had been too hot to enter but he had instead held his towel under the water for a while and rang it out a little bit in the sink before plopping it down. He studied himself in the broken mirror. He was filthy. His hair was matted and powdered grey instead of its usual brown. He had streaks of ash across his face and clothes and but noticed that the ash had almost covered the deep scratch on his cheek perfectly. He must have thrashed about violently the previous night he thought. He thought about his parents again and quickly removed his phone from his pocket.

  Hey, I stopped by yesterday and the place was a mess. Let me know if you are okay.

  He thought about yesterday as he removed his clothes, revealing pale skin. He could explain his job and his parents’ home. He had to have read his phone wrong in the morning. His parents had to have left the door open somehow, letting the ash in. Who knows, maybe they left their phones at home. His mother had been forgetful lately, since his sister had gotten sick again, though he suspected that perhaps she was experiencing something worse, something more permanent than stress induced memory loss. The ash that blew in front of him, he reasoned, simply resembled a face. You are tired. It’s windy. That fuckin fire has been raging for weeks now. You are tired. Maybe you were hallucinating in the mirror. Maybe you were last night as well. Maybe it was a dream after all. Stress induced nightmares and somnambulism as his doctor had called it when he was a child and he made a point of remembering. Some people get violent when they sleepwalk, have night terrors. As he peeled back the double layer of socks, he cringed. His foot looked like it might be infected he thought. The area around the cut was a deep red now, and redness had groped its way up the top of his foot another inch or so surrounding the wound. He remembered something he should have days ago. He had polysporin in his nightstand drawer he thought. He stood and took the towel out of the sink and placed it on the counter. He stuck his finger into one of the tall glasses. Warm, but not hot. He hung his head over the sink and carefully rained the water onto himself scratching at his hair and scalp as he did. He took the second glass and drank from it before attempting to wash his hair with it again. He scrubbed furiously at his hair with the towel before turning it on the rest of his body, slowly spreading the ash farther before it faded and wiped away entirely. He thought that he should have grabbed clean clothes before coming to the bathroom, or at least a towel, so he didn’t have to walk across the carpet wet. He thought that, deeply, he didn’t really believe his explanation of the previous day’s events. He wanted to.

  He had grabbed his shoes on his way to the bedroom and had brought the wet towel with him so as to be able to clean his feet again before putting his shoes on. He left dark teardrops of wet ash behind him as he did, flecking the ground with droplets from his hair as he combed it painfully in an attempt to work out the rest of the dirt and the ash. He didn’t care. Not this morning. The more he thought of the night before, of the more he just wanted to get out of the house.
He dressed himself and applied a thick layer of the polysporin to his cut before sliding on his socks again, two layers. It burned. He turned to the phone again and searched. It said that the fire that had been raging outside of the city was still far away, 55 miles, and no real way to make the leap to the city from the forest, what was left of it. He went to the kitchen and was struck by the smell of dishes that hadn’t been done in a while. He searched the drawers above the cabinets below the countertop. Silverware. One filled with other utensils, spatulas, knives. One with towels. One stuffed with grocery bags. One with odds and ends, batteries, some coins, a small picture hanging kit, a keychain that doubled as a lighter that had long since retired itself, nicotine gum and a small screwdriver set with two of the replaceable ends missing from their home. He thought for a while before walking towards his bedroom, spinning around on his heel, grinding ash as he did, and returning to the kitchen and the drawer that held the forks and spoons and butter knives. Reaching behind the white plastic divider in the drawer, his fingers rested on a loop and he pulled out another set of keys that he couldn’t remember his reasoning for stuffing behind there now. He grabbed his cigarettes and lighter off of the table and counted his pockets. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. He studied the bottle on the table, thought of the one still in the kitchen. He wanted to drink some. He had a headache from days of sleeplessness and nightmares and hangovers and he knew it would help. No. He returned to the bathroom and drank the third glass of water, filled all three with again with the steaming tap water, afraid they would crack from the heat, and left, slamming the door closed as he did and, unusual for him, locking it.

  It was a blizzard. The wind was strong this morning and tunnelled its way through the narrow alley towards him. His garbage from four days previous was still on the ground to the left of the dumpster he noticed. He briefly thought of driving this morning but had changed his mind. For some reason, he did not want to enter the garage. Besides, the walk will you do you good. He turned himself against the wind and walked backwards down the cracked pavement to shield himself from the choking ash. Still, the ash swirled around him with the wind changing direction periodically, tides drawing the ash and the heat away from his face before waves charged back towards him, broke, crashed, before flowing away again. An ocean devoid, unsuitable for life to flourish, poisoned and made stale due to garbage and ash, neglect and indifference. He could feel the fine grit between his teeth, grinding it and spit mottled grey into the ash, the impact lost to the storm.

  Outside of the alley, the wind calmed a bit. He spun around and began to walk forward. A gust of ash struck him in the face causing him to wince in frustration, before the sidewalk freed itself from the swarm in front of him. He lit a cigarette. 55 miles. He thought that that seemed like a long distance for ash to travel. This much ash, anyway. He wondered whether or not the wind had or would change direction, and if it did whether it would clear the ash away or simply force some that had missed this place before to circle back and strike again. Kamikaze. Should have brought sunglasses. This city, this street, it reminded him of the set of an old Spaghetti Western, sepia tone or a photo of a dust bowl farmer stern and committed to his land, almost proud looking, but probably wishing he could leave that place as soon as possible and never look back but afraid of what others would say and think if he did, just like he did. He had watched all the movies growing up he thought. His father probably still kept his VCR all these years too, to hook up to the old Sylvania boob-tube he knew he had in the basement, just so he could watch his Clint Eastwood tapes. He didn’t know why that came to mind right now. I’m the outlaw Josey Wales. Just don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining, world. Now are you gonna pull those pistols or whistle dixie? As the ash clouded his feet while he walked he threw his finger in a pistol shape, cocked, out in front of him then crossed his left pistol over his arm to aim into the street at his ashy assailant down the alley he had ran through the day before. It was as empty as it had been then. What happened to her? As he continued to walk and stare down the alley, he kept his arms crossed, threatening those who were not there, until the alley folded in on itself and out of his view and his attention was drawn to one of the brick apartments and a woman, once again staring at him. No two, another two windows up and…4 to the left. The first appeared to be wearing her nightgown and the second what appeared to be a red dress, no, formal wear, a jacket and blouse. That’s not a nightgown either. More like an old style of summer dress. Both were old and impossibly wrinkled. Those who watched him. The Watchers. He stopped and stared back at them. Fuck the golden girls, if they want to watch me I will too. Both stared at him in the same unemotional way though he realized now that they didn’t seem angry like before…sad? He dropped his arms now and faced them directly. I’m the outlaw Josey Wales. Draw. His right shooter snapped upward as the hammer fell, directly at the woman in the white dress while, instinctively, the left went up only a fraction later, drawing and firing at the woman in red, both targeted exactly. He kept his arms outstretched for a while. Neither woman reacted. Neither knew that they were shot. Neither knew that they were dead. He lowered his arms. The woman in white finally turned away, closing her grey blinds as she did. The woman in red simply stared. He’d holster these for now. He looked down, hiding his face behind his hand, then his shirt and lit a cigarette. When he looked back up, she was gone too.

  It’s funny, the things we remember, he thought. He couldn’t remember his first kiss. They always show that in the movies. That first. I don’t know. Or what you did on your 18th birthday. The last day of high school. The day you won that big game for the team. The day your grandpa died. What he could remember, he thought, were things you hadn’t need remember in the first place. The combination to the lock he used throughout grades seven to nine on his green locker. The Ninja Turtle figures his grandmother used to keep for them to play with whenever they stayed the week at their place in the summer. What his ex-wife wore on their first date. A thin purple…blouse he would call it that wrapped around her and ended with a wide collar hanging in front, a black coat that stretch down almost to her knees, faded jeans and what she later called shitkickers. He remembered her eyes. Blue as the corona around the sun at sunset, brilliant and enchanting. He never told her that. He always kept that to himself in case she ever asked him if he remembered, like they do in the movies, but it never came to be, he never got the chance to show her he remembered. He could remember the exact spot he left a trap he and a friend had built on the trail they had ploughed through the trees as children to protect the fort they had built from scraps and old railroad ties. A plastic skateboard with screws drilled through like punji sticks. He briefly forgot where he was going but he was walking the right way.

  The ash, the wind, had died down, and for the first time it was thin enough in the air to allow light through that wasn’t grey. It was orange, light brown, almost twilight, the sun just as powerful but casting an aura around itself. Hiding itself. The horizon yellowed. Beautiful in its own way, he thought. The ash still swirled at his feet but only periodically, inviting him to dance. He obliged. Taking her hand, he spun on his heel and, jumping against the concrete wall of a business he didn’t recognize, pushed himself off and landed, legs splayed but upright. He laughed. An actual laugh.

  He had been walking, he was sure, but he hadn’t known for how long. He knew the streets for many blocks around this particular avenue though. Just a few houses away now. He was afraid of what he might find he thought, but he was sure his parents were fine. As he approached, he saw that the car hadn’t moved. It looked more rusted now. Probably ash, he lied to himself, the sun playing itself against the ash. He thought about how his mother would be angry at the fact he was walking across the lawn rather than walking himself over to the path that led to the door. Whatever damage his shoes were going to do though, he thought was already scorched by the ash. At the door. The key still fit perfectly even though he expected otherwise. Still fit. He wondered about his sister. He
knocked and, without waiting for a response, turned the key. He breathed deeply, trying to memorize.