Aberrations of Reality

by Aaron J. French

  He was laughing but refused to look at me. “Face it, man, there was no passion between the two of you. That’s how you were able to make it work for so long: with concordant boredom. Hell, I’ll bet you never had good sex. Cathy and I were so much more; she was so much more. She was everything…”

  He finally turned to look at me. The fuzzy lights of the café made his sweat-glistened face almost waxy.

  “You’re a real bastard sometimes, you know that?” I said, grabbing my coat and making for the exit. “No wonder Cathy left you.”

  He smirked, then called after me. “No sense getting offended, David.”

  “Up yours!”

  Customers turned to gawk as I slammed the glass door, got in my Volvo, and drove away.

  But his words haunted me for the rest of the day. They kept flitting through my brain as I sat in the cubicle at my office. During the drive home in the afternoon traffic, his spiteful phrases replayed like a broken record.

  “What an asshole,” I said, striking my palm against the steering wheel.

  I unlocked the door to my high-rise apartment and went inside, taking my shoes off. It was empty; I hadn’t lived with anyone since the divorce. Hadn’t had a girlfriend. Hadn’t even had a date.

  I’ll bet you never had good sex with Beth…

  Little four-eyed bastard, I thought. What does he know about passion and good sex? Fuck, he lived with his mother till a few years ago.

  I was downright pissed. And now, coming home to my empty apartment with the sterile kitchen and the dust-free floors, I began feeling more pissed. Here I was totally alone in my life, giving Jeff’s words full license to harass me.

  I fixed myself a drink and sat on the leather sofa overlooking the Manhattan skyline. My two cats, Harry and Meow, emerged from their darkened crevices to weave between my feet. It felt nice to sit and relax. I soon forget about Jeff’s inflammatory statements.

  Suddenly the TV kicked on. Nothing but silent white noise. Thinking that I had sat on the remote somehow, I muttered a curse and went questing through the cushions for it. However then I noticed it resting harmlessly on the oak entertainment center.

  “What the devil?” I set my drink down and rose to my feet, scattering the cats. But after I depressed the power button a few times, nothing happened. It would not shut off.

  The final straw came when I unplugged it from the wall and the buzzing white noise remained.

  I must be working too hard, I thought.

  I sat back on the sofa, kicked my feet up, and returned to my drink. The war between the blacks and the whites raged continuously on the TV screen. I stared at it with a dazed expression, sipping my whiskey and Coke.

  I didn’t respond much to anything after that. I felt drugged, then stoned, then extremely exhausted. My eyelids drooped. My head nodded. I wasn’t sure when I was asleep and when I was awake.

  The white noise parted like a theater curtain, swinging to either side of the screen to reveal blackness. The glass appeared to waver like a desert mirage. The rest of the entertainment center appeared to be melting. I tried to focus, but I felt drunk.

  That’s when she approached the other side of the glass.

  She was naked—but that was her; that was my ex-wife. Beth looked the way I remembered her: the short brown hair I always liked; her full figure with the small, perky breasts and wide hips.

  She peered out of the TV screen, glancing about my apartment. When she spotted me, she stopped, moved a few paces closer, and got right up to the glass.

  “That you, David?” she said, knocking twice on the screen. The clunk-clunk sound of her knuckles shook me wide awake.

  “What the hell, you can’t be in there,” I said. I downed the rest of my drink with gusto, slamming it on the coffee table.

  Beth was smiling. “Why it is you. Poor old dear David, how I’ve missed you. What do you say we make love right there on that sofa—just for old time’s sake? Got a bone to pick with your friend over here. He says he thinks you and I never had good sex. Can you believe it? You want to show him a thing or two?”

  I swallowed a lump in my throat. It had been years since my last sexual experience, which, unfortunately, had been with Beth before we separated. Now she was here talking about sex—and she was speaking through my goddamn television screen!

  “Which friend?” I found myself asking. But I already knew the answer.

  Beth moved to the side and I saw Jeff emerge from the darkness. He wasn’t nude like Beth, but seeing him there put a strange feeling into my heart. I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t know if it was fear or rage.

  “How’s it goin’, bud?” he said. Then he pointed at Beth. “You see just how hot your ex-wife is looking? You ready to show her who’s boss, because if you ain’t gonna go for it, man… I got dibs.”

  It was definitely anger. Who the hell did he think he was, claiming dibs on my wife? Little whippersnapper. It was time I sent him the message that he needed to respect me.

  “You gonna let him talk about me like that?” Beth said, stepping back up to the glass. Her curves and her full breasts seemed to explode through the screen. I was getting aroused.

  “Hell no,” I said. “If anyone’s gonna make love to you, it’s gonna be me.”

  She smirked. “That’s what I like to hear.”

  Suddenly she was coming out of the glass. She squeezed her body through the black frame and emerged into the room, standing tall and beautiful before me. My knees went weak.

  My god, has it been so long?

  Snickering, Jeff came through the glass on her heels and stood off to one side. Beth came forward, reached down to undo my belt and zipper, then straddled me. My body tingled with delight. She was real—she was actually fucking real.

  “This is what I’m talking about,” Jeff said. I was so overjoyed about Beth being on top of me that I didn’t care if he watched.

  She pulled me out of my pants and boxers, inserting my tip into her inner depths; then she slid herself down on top of me. For ten minutes we made passionate love in the silent room.

  When we had finished, she climbed off and walked to the sliding glass door that led to the balcony. She stood there naked for a moment, her body glowing from the sex—a vision—then opened the door and stepped outside.

  A cold breeze entered the room, along with the sound of wind and traffic. I clothed myself and zipped my zipper, watching as Jeff stalked past me on his way outside. “Now comes the crazy part,” he said.

  I stood up and followed.

  The three of us met on the balcony. Beth and Jeff, linking their hands, clambered up onto the railing and stood fully upright.

  My heart thundered in my chest. “Are you crazy, what the hell are you doing?”

  I tried to pull them back down, but when I reached out, my hands passed through flesh like they were ghosts.

  “Don’t you get it?” Jeff said. “You never experienced real love with Beth, man. You only experienced illusions. Sex is the trigger that sets all games in motion. Until you learn how to feel what’s going on inside you, it’s impossible to love. You’ll have another couple of Beths and then you’ll die. Maybe you’re dead already. So au revoir, old friend. See you in your dreams.”

  With that the two of them, hand-in-hand, swan-dived off the balcony. I screamed, rushing after them, but as I glanced over the edge I saw something very strange—I saw myself twirling like a lifeless ragdoll toward the streets and cars down below. Then my body vanished and there was only the wind and the silence.

  I sat down in one of the patio chairs and gazed toward the Manhattan skyline; the sun was setting and a reddish-orange hue swept over the bay. It was the most beautiful sight I could remember seeing.

  Slowly, I began to cry.

  PHASE 2: RECOVERING THE SOUL-LIFE

  Only the two of us, but he was much older, much wiser. I thought of him as a teacher, but I never knew how he thought of me. We were always together; we never met anyone else.

 
We went from place to place, idling here and there, never moving on too fast lest we miss some bristling wonder or enchantment. We perched above flowers, smelling; stood beneath trees, admiring; laid in the grass, relaxing.

  Sometimes the scenery was so breathtaking that we were unable to do much of anything; we would stand quietly apart from each other, meditating.

  Most of what we appreciated was the heart of nature. Greenery in all its finer forms. The sparkling gem-like leaves, adorning branches thick as arms. Long rolling hills of grass, which, at a distance, appeared to undulate like waves on the ocean. Different kinds of shrubs, of thistles and creeping vines; round knotty trunks, ferns in full bloom, even weeds that were not dead or sickly, but rather bountiful and redolent.

  There was much meandering hither and thither without much concern lent to any one thing—save for the meandering itself. This had an annulling influence on time. My teacher had often told me of the illusion of time: that it only existed in people’s minds. For a while I was suspicious. It wasn’t until we began this interminable searching and admiring after beauty that I noticed time slowing down. Slower and slower, like molasses pouring out, until eventually it ceased being significant.

  Immense blocks of what I once considered as time passed by unnoticed. Years and years and years. However we didn’t age. This was due to the fact that we existed in a dream. But also because we stopped acknowledging time as an authority. It was no longer a law. Thus it had no power.

  We grew accustomed to the wooded landscape as we rambled over the hills, noticing the same ones, commenting on them. Certain trees became holy to us; certain sites as well. Rocks and very specific flowers became deities.

  One day we discovered a vast crystal lake tucked away in some trees. It was shaped like a teardrop, a mirror surface reflecting the blue sky and patchwork clouds. Trees and grass clustered along its banks; several patches of murky reeds grew. Toward the center the water was a pristine blue, blue as sky, with no wind to stir its surface, the whole thing still—eerily still.

  After we stood for a long time admiring it, I said, “This could be the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.”

  My teacher grunted. “It is certainly more beautiful than anything we have witnessed so far. But again, everything we have witnessed so far surpasses it in everything save beauty.”

  I nodded, not understanding. There was no need to say anything further. We had spent so many days together in that dreamland that most of our thoughts were communicated through vibes. Actual speech was seldom needed to achieve communication. Whenever we did speak, it was mostly done out of fun; there was never anything important riding on it.

  He knew I desired to have a closer look, and he granted his consent. I made my way down through the rocks and grass to the shoreline. Just once I looked back and saw he’d decided to stay atop the hill. The sun loomed behind him, casting his front in shadow: his big straw hat; his arms akimbo.

  I reached the water and stooped to admire it. My eyes traced the curve of the crystal blue lake: the brown disappearing dirt; the wet rocks poking up; the shaggy trees reaching branches over the surface, dropping needles into the water. A lone duck flapped from one end to the other.

  A splash caught my attention. Looking across the motionless surface, I saw ripples in the center, fanning out like sunbeams. Between the concentric rings, a dark shape was rising, and soaking wet, inch by inch, it heaved itself into the glimmering daylight.

  I squinted trying to make it out. Whatever it was, it was darker than everything else in the area. The whole of nature seemed to radiate with oneness and life, but this single emerging thing expressed a separateness, as well as a complete absence of the beauty my teacher and I had come to appreciate. This thing—this horrible, dripping, menacing thing—was about to destroy reality.

  Panicked, I glanced over my shoulder to hail my teacher. But when I looked, he wasn’t on the hilltop. Worse, where he had stood, now a single erected stick shot out of the ground—like a marker.

  When I looked back, the black thing had completed its emersion from the lake.

  It was wrought of the blackest wood, like a sturdy tree trunk, but it wasn’t water-rotted or rain-soaked; the sun cast tracing rays upon its surface, illuminating this and that, describing all its wonder and terror in infinite detail. It entranced me.

  I recognized it as the carven idol of a woman. The trunk had been shaved, cut to form her voluptuous body. The curve of hips and buttocks, the swell of breasts, the hollow of her neck, the roundness of her face, the thick sections of her hair. Two gouged out holes for eyes, with bits of underwater soil and vegetation stuffed into them. Her mouth was luscious and wide, parted in an emotionless grin.

  I grew certain she was looking at me.

  Now that she had gained the surface, she turned a number of degrees and began to move, gliding over the water, propelled by some unseen force. Perfectly still, perfectly inanimate. And yet coming.

  The woman split through the water, through the rocks and reeds, coming to a gliding halt just before me. I remained unmoving, frozen by wonder and terror. She was a full foot taller than me, her body almost a foot wider.

  Those stuffed pockets meant to represent her eyes regarded me inquisitively.

  “What… what do you want?” I muttered.

  She said nothing, only loomed above me, staring into my soul. As I traced the lines of her full-figured body, touching upon the swollen, impregnated belly, cupping the breasts, even giving a firm hand to her buttocks, I grew aroused. I sensed the presence of a nasty spark, some inherent remnant of unbridled life.

  Destructive life.

  The moment I fancied this, she came roaring to life. The sound of her body twisting in motion was like the toppling of a hundred trees. I screamed as her hard bark hands closed around my waist and hoisted me up. Still screaming, I wriggled in her grasp, a worm on a hook.

  At the last moment, just before her mouth grew fathoms wide with a tremendous crack, I saw again the crystal blueness of the lake. I recalled the tranquility of the water and longed to run my fingers through its silken hair.

  But that chance would never be mine again, for at that instant the horrid tree witch turned me on end and thrust me forth into the hollow cavern of her mouth. I plunged into the darkness, screaming to be allowed back. In the distance I saw the last fading light of the sun as it resigned itself to night… and that was all.

  PHASE 3: HEALING SPIRITUAL REALITY

  I spent lots of time in the park near my apartment. I would sit on one of the old stone benches with my legs crossed, coat slung over my lap, gazing out across the grass. Parks always reminded me of my childhood and of being a kid again. I liked that.

  Sometimes a mother and her children would pass by; sometimes they would smile at me; other times they would give me a mistrustful glare. The children didn’t have the same misgivings as their mothers. They were blissfully ignorant of the world’s evils, which was why so often they became the target of those evils.

  My father died when I was seven. It was Mom and me from there on out. She had dated some after his death, but she never remarried and she never procured a serious partner. When she died of a heart attack three years ago, she’d been alone in her apartment with the TV blaring and a steaming dish of macaroni and cheese on the coffee table. I was one of eight people at her funeral.

  The memories of my father were ghosts, and they haunted me at the park. I even thought I witnessed paranormal activity among the trees, faces in the branches, and lights in the clear blue sky. I was always searching for my dead father in the spaces between this reality and the next.

  He used to take me to the park during my youth—somewhere around the age of five or six—just before his death. I recalled these experiences vividly and found it strange that most of my memories were blurry while others seemed to glimmer. But that was the nature of things.

  These parks my father took me to I remembered through a kind of murky blue veil. I could see myself l
ower to the ground like a child, looking up at his short brown hair, jutting ears, and towering presence. I would be sitting in the swing coasting back and forth, propelled by his hands. Occasionally he stepped before the swing set, regarding me with a comely face and kind eyes.

  Perhaps I came to the park now to sit and reflect, reminiscing on a childhood that was gone forever, that I would never have a chance to re-experience.

  The rest of my time was spent searching for lights and hovering faces in the branches and the cross-sections of the jungle gym bars. On the very last day before I stopped going to the park, one of the children playing approached me. A boy no older than seven, with no parent accompanying him. He sat on the stone bench and looked up.

  “Hello,” he said. “I’m David.”

  I looked at the boy. “That’s funny. David is my name, too.”

  He chuckled. “Yes, I know, that’s why I came over here.”

  “You knew? How could you know? Have we met before?”

  He was grinning. “No, no, no. A little voice inside my head told me. Do you ever hear voices inside your head?”

  I nodded.

  “Isn’t that funny—how there are tiny voices in there? And how about pictures, do you get pictures in your head?”

  “All the time.”

  “Like what?”

  I paused to take a breath. “Well… just now, for instance, I was seeing my father inside my head.”

  A shadow passed across the boy’s face. “Your dad, huh? Why? Is he here?”

  “No. He died a long time ago.”

  “My dad died a while back, too. Mom says he’s an angel now.”

  “That’s what people say of the dead. We sure have a lot in common, don’t we David?”

  “I’ll say.”

  “How about ghosts? Do you believe in ghosts?”

  His face scrunched up into a ball. “Don’t know yet. I’d have to think about it.”

  “Well I believe in them. Sometimes I even see them lurking around the park.”