Nemonymous Night

by Lewis, D. F.

  *

  Reflection (talking to itself with alternating prurient relish and prim properness in a now empty pub):

  It is hard to reconcile the earlier characters of Mike, Susan, Sudra, Amy and Arthur with their later madness in undertaking such a downward search. Mike had soon faced this conundrum even more starkly by investigating the so-called crumply mound of ‘carpet’ only to discover it was a pile of discarded clothes. All of them had indeed needed to take off their clothes to be able to slide with greater ease through the hedge-filled tunnel as the spikes would have otherwise snagged on the teased and worried material of even underwear. Therefore, they spent their first sleep-stop completely naked (it couldn’t be called ‘spending the night’ as the thin effulgence that seeped through the tunnel was uniform, thus making it impossible to differentiate between seasons of time), but they had managed by then to re-establish their personalities, inhibitions and vulnerability to fear—just like the real people that they had been when first walking through the city zoo, certain then what was dream and what was not dream. This hedgy drop was another area—as with the zoo—where one could be oneself without fear of becoming other than oneself. Not confusing what was real and what was not real. What was and what was not.

  Ogdon (returning out of the blue to his position opposite the mirror, cigarette glowing redly):

  But don’t forget when they were in the zoo, someone, for whatever reason, left quite unreported one of the sights they saw in a cage just before leaving the zoo!

  Reflection nodded sagely.

  *

  Amy finished carpet-sweeping, turned over the Ewbank and emptied what it contained. Not only flies from a cabbage fell out.

  Greg inside the Drill, just before its ‘launch’ and its now famous daylight firework-display, had dreamed of Amy in various inexplicable roles—which was a bit surprising as he didn’t know Amy at all well. Amy was more Mike’s acquaintance than Greg’s. Yet, Greg had also dreamed that he, Greg, was not Beth’s husband and equally Beth’s husband was not Greg. A further dream, or rather, nightmare, made him live through an existence where he and Mike were the same person—which belied their quite distinct characters as men of the world. Perhaps Greg’s dream had reflected that they—he and Mike—may indeed have been distinct characters, but also that nobody (other than Greg and Mike themselves) could distinguish one from the other. In another dream, Greg felt as if trapped within an outlandishly huge trunk of a Canterbury Oak—unable to budge up or down. He heard voices, familiar voices, but from within the nightmare he sensed that they were quite unfamiliar voices and that he failed to grasp that it was a Canterbury Oak at all—because in the dream he was simply trapped in a vertical body-hugging coffin.

  He woke in a sweat—only to feel the Drill around him starting to throb, as its pilot made a few playful testing twirls of the bit-tip before making the final teasing approach towards earth encounter.

  Beth, already up, having creamed her face with beauty unguents, was standing at their cabin window, eager for the start of their trip. Indeed, it was ironic that the best view of the trip would be the one currently from this window, because soon the window would be immersed or covered with earth’s own crumbly curtains for the duration. Inner earth itself was—like the city zoo—a discrete dream-territory and any dreams they dreamed once they’d entered the earth would be clear-cut dreams, unconfused with waking life—so they would need to acclimatise in due course with the new conditions. Meanwhile, they could enjoy (if that was the correct word) the blurring of reality and dreams as a thought-provoking accompaniment to the start of their journey—against which backdrop they would soon be able to enjoy dreams for dreams’ sake rather than the enforced dream-curdling of the rest of their waking life which prevailed above ground, in most places, other than designated areas such as the city zoo. Speaking of which, the city zoo had a lot to answer for, because it was too high-profile, too often trumpeted as the only discrete dream zone, a fact which created a situation where most people forgot that being underground was a better way of sorting dreams from non-dreams. There was far more underground available to explore and where to spend one’s time than upon the finite surface of the overground.

  Greg got up from the bed and joined Beth at the window. It was yet a few minutes before the final ‘lift-off’ and he knew there was to be a firework display as accompaniment—a display which had apparently now started. But it was a pretty pathetic affair—a few spluttering Roman Candles, a Catherine Wheel that refused to spin on its nail, a number of bangers that farted in a spinsterly fashion. One of the fireworks, however, wasn’t too bad inasmuch as it quite successfully depicted a peacock with a fan of rainbow fire, pluming smoke in grey sculptures that reminded Greg of maps in the making. The traditional bonfire was ignited but spluttered to a dead heap since it was not doused enough in petrol... but the Drill’s bit-tip at last struck the beachy terrain with a teeth-on-edge grinding... as the Drill began to delve towards its journey’s path. The firework display thus soon became an irrelevancy.

  Greg now sensed one of the helicopter vanes from the Drill’s back flashing by their cabin window like a camera shutter strobing or a dose of rarefied migraine or a foreign flicker at the screen’s edge as an old film was projected upon it.

  *

  Earlier, upon their first arrival in the Drill, Greg and Beth had met two unexpected additional paying-passengers on board. These were dowager ladies by the names of Edith and Clare—and nobody knew from the way they acted, whether they were just good friends, blood sisters or more than just good friends. If they were sisters, the family likeness was quite remarkable. The Drill’s Captain seemed to know these two ladies already—but he retained a professional approach to any passengers and had promised them all to show and comment upon the various sights through the window of ‘The Hawler’ during the coming trip.

  The two ladies were avid readers in the Drill’s library, being particular fans of Marcel Proust’s Du Côté De Chez Swann—and there was also much promise of them sharing their reading passions with Greg and Beth, should there be periods during the trip when there would be time for all of them to kill…

  *

  Ogdon held his head in his hands after he had looked round his empty pub. The headlines of the newspaper in his hands spoke of the mysteries of Angevin which had taken away most of his customers—and even those who remained in the city stayed in their houses these days dreaming of drinking Angel Wine... or even drinking it for real.

  Nevertheless, there was still activity in the city and, in the distance, he could hear the sound of serious clanking—so hugely riveting—so vastly ear-splitting and ground-grinding—he guessed it was another huge broken ship or liner being forcibly dragged for mending to the Dry Dock nearby. A gigantic contingent of shift-workers and trained apes were involved in its transport to this its temporary berth... and no doubt many of this contingent would be visiting Ogdon’s pub later... but with no bar staff left, he may as well lock the doors now.

  However, before Ogdon could do so, he spotted a face in the bar mirror opposite, a face that wasn’t his own. There were tears running liberally down its cheeks. The face spoke:

  “Help me, I’m Greg. Please don’t let me be Mike. I know it’s easy to confuse us but I’m the one who’s on board the Drill. I once worked in waste management as a lorry-driver. Mike was the office worker. I’m desperate to be real, but only if I can be me, me, Greg. Because I am Greg.”

  Ogdon’s own eyes were also filling up, feeling helpless to help. There were too many people who needed to become their real selves. It was difficult enough for Ogdon to hold his own mind together.

  “I’m Greg,” continued the face opposite. “Help me, I’m Greg. Help me to be Greg. And not Mike.”

  It was a ghostly chant or intonation. And Ogdon threw his glass across the bar and it smashed itself before it smashed the mirror and all the mirror’s contents.

  But he still heard the plaintive, haunting voice:

/>   “I’m Greg. Please don’t let me be Mike.”

  And now the face was scratched and freshly scarred as if it had been dragged through a hedge backwards.

  *

  Crazy Lope was settled in front of his drink of Angel Wine, surrounded by the customary sticks of furniture that populated the top flat of an inner city block. He had just switched off his wireless because, he guessed, the news was full of lies. His cape hung on the door-hook like a giant bird-of-prey at rest. He stared at the Angel Wine before daring to take a sip. It was sold like milk in the city these days, without fear or favour, to rich and poor, young and old, sane and insane alike. In fact, it looked like milk, but even whiter, creamier. The supplies had been freed up to prevent a black market emerging for it—yet a lot of money was still being made by those who were supplying it. From whatever source, nobody knew. Its original tradename was Angevin, but most customers in the city could only get their mouths round the English tongue—and soon Angel Wine (a very evocative name, as it turned out to be, from the mouth of whoever coined it) took over and now it was on all tongues.

  Lope slowly raised the glass to his lips and allowed them to sip slowly, then sup noisily, lapping with a relish... not at all like milk to the tongue’s feel or taste, but more a slimy consistency with a fabricated flavour of aniseed which could not really conceal its insipid chemical quality: he sensed a deeper undertaste or aftertaste even more insipid. He was savouring not so much the taste or drinkability for a deadened thirst but more the mental effects that sped to his brain in a direct socket-to-socket fashion from the tongue, or so it seemed. The relishing experience prevented him from spotting that he had accidentally spilled some of the Angel Wine—in a slow motion of the liquid’s sluggish specific gravity—to his flat’s carpet.

  *

  Somewhere, in a clouded mirror, appeared a wide face—wider even than the mirror itself so that one could not see the face’s edges, howsoever they stretched beyond the mirror’s frame. Slowly, but as quickly as the time passed, the wide face grew cloudier and yellowier—and a beak emerged as part of a narrow face from within the original wide one that faded from around the second face, with a pecking and sharp-nodding combined.

  “I’m me. Please don’t let me be other than me…”

  And tears runnelled down the face like Angel Wine.

  The words spoken, however, weren’t from an English tongue.

  *

  Sudra squatted with her young nude body upon a narrow ledge in the thin effulgence of the hedgy tunnel. Her companions snored nearby—in equally precarious sleeping perches—no doubt dreaming. They had just undergone a long but relatively easy descent so far—and it didn’t seem to matter that none of them truly appreciated the real purpose of their quest. A quest for a quest was the nearest they could come to it. In times of trial, solutions presented themselves in odd disguises and even created thoughts they would never have dreamt of thinking as thoughts in more ordinary times.

  The hedge itself had almost helped their descent of passage: a far cry from hindering it as they originally expected—but woe betide if they should need to climb back up through it, whereupon it would surely turn upon them with a vengeance. The only real problem was the soot-like substance that clung to the hedge’s twigs and branches, a damp consistency that Arthur seemed to recognise (but he kept his cards close to his chest) and that dampness tended to get down their chests causing coughs which they prayed were nothing to do with the more general sicknesses they’d heard rumoured in the city before embarking on this journey. The stickness (not sickness or even stickiness) of the two pursued creatures, suspected as substitutes for Amy and Arthur, was simply more than a dream away—despite their often hearing these creatures crackling (if not cackling) further down in the hedge towards even lower regions than anyone could imagine approaching without feeling the traditionally believed molten heat of earth’s Core.

  Soon enough, Sudra herself dozed off on her ledge and dreamed. She dreamed of being a small girl again and of the Christmas when she was due to receive a pair of new shoes as a present. She knew it was a real dream because she was dreaming it far beneath the surface of the earth—and it mattered little that the events in the dream took place above ground and in the past and upon her old bedroom carpet. She simply knew instinctively within (and, later, from outside) the dream that it was a real dream and not real life—although the dream was about real life, a real life from the past, filtered by both her dreaming and waking minds—so it was uncertain whether the dream was exactly how the real events once were—but they were surely close enough to reality to be called a reflection of reality in the future of the past, Sudra’s past.

  Those promised new shoes had been important to her as a very young girl that Christmas: more important than anything else before or since. Even the flies in the cabbage were forgotten when she turned her mind towards the prospect of the new shoes that she had been promised. The flies in the cabbage had been originally important because she’d been instructed to clean the cabbage ready for supper and the task had now taken on a frightful dimension when she discovered a nest of black stringy flies at its heart. All she needed to do, however, was to think of the new shoes (which she imagined as supple yellow leather with blue laces)—and then all the troubles that beset her young mind seemed to be assuaged, healed, removed to a new dimension where she did not exist and if she did not exist there why should she worry about anything that happened in that dimension? This was not exactly an out-of-body experience but more a projection of a troubled ghost from her body into areas where that ghost could be left to cope with problems by paradoxically escaping the same problems otherwise besetting her real self—here—today.

  She dreamed about all that in the future but once upon a time she had lived through it all for real, indeed lived through all such thoughts as real thoughts. She tried not to recall who had told her to clean the cabbage. It was probably her late father (whose name she had since blotted from her mind). He had been a nasty man. She hated him and pitied her mother. She was later pleased when he died and Susan eventually remarried, and Mike became her stepfather. But in those old days Sudra pitied Susan having to live with such a nasty man as her real father. It had been Susan who had promised Sudra the new shoes—and, as the words ‘new shoes’ returned to Sudra’s mind, the thoughts of her father, then and now, dispersed into forgotten memories, yet memories that lurked and silently threatened to return should she lower her guard. So as to prevent this eventuality, she kept repeating the words, ‘New shoes, new shoes’, time and time again, until the words ‘New shoes’—more and more quickly said—took on a new meaning, almost a new sound, a new single word: ‘Newshoes’ and she could not even visualise its spelling, least of all fathom its meaning.

  “Flies in the cabbage” became another expression or mantra which she tried to enchant with her chanting repetition of this phrase’s syllables. “Flies in the cabbage, flies in the cabbage”, trying to weld the words into unbroken letters and unbroken fragments or phonemes or morphemes. Yet, on this occasion, the spell didn’t work and it brought her dead father to the bedroom door, staring at her, beady-eyed and smiling. Sometimes, smiles were evil. Indeed, smiles were always evil. People only smiled if they wanted to get something out of you, achieve something, delude someone. A smile was always a lie. Even her mother’s smile, Susan’s smile, hid something below it. And at that moment, the dream became a nightmare as a swarm of flies flew from her dead father’s mouth and nose.

  She woke with a start. Not from the dream she was dreaming but from the dream she was dreaming about.

  “New shoes, New shoes, New shoes,” she quickly chanted as she found herself in her dark bedroom—at the cusp of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. She smiled to herself as she saw a shadowy figure with a prodding horizontal beard at the place where its chin should have been—with a long cape-like body silhouetted against an even darker backdrop, a backdrop that seemed to ooze the natural darkness into the room. She hope
d she knew who this figure was. She convinced herself she knew the real colour of the cape-enveloped shape, because red wine often did look like black wine when Susan left a bottle of it in a dark corner. The figure placed a package on the bed, with a crinkly paper sound, together with its heavy weight upon her feet that were in the part of the bed where the package had been laid upon it. She sighed and fell asleep with a sense of satisfaction, submitting herself to dreams she was destined not to remember when she woke up on Christmas morning.

  The Christmas bells woke her with a steady tolling—and the sun surprised her with its Winter power as it shafted through the ceiling-light and also surprised her how it had not woken her before the bells had woken her. “New shoes” were the first words she spoke—both an incantation and an expression of truth as she pounced out of bed intent on reaching the package left at the end of the same bed from which she had just pounced. The words doubled up on themselves in unnecessary repetitive patterns as if to delay the time before she opened the package, because, even if she herself didn’t realise what was happening, everything-else-that-could-think thought that she would be devastated by the contents of the package and anyone describing these events needed to spend as much time describing these events as possible to delay the inevitable—describing aspects of the room, its carpet, the sunshine, the bells, all of which were quite untrue—in the increasing desperation of preventing the young girl from reaching the package in which she believed were lovingly wrapped new shoes of supple yellow leather and blue laces that she had been promised for Christmas, new shoes with feminine trimming, small studs on the soles to create sparks on the pavement, vestigial spurs on the heels to allow her to pretend she was an elf or fairy—and toecaps of silver beauty that would spark more naturally than the studs without any sharp friction, sparking in the sunlight that still shafted through the ceiling-light as she finally, inexorably reached the package, eager to unwrap it without caring whether the wrapping-paper was torn in the process because the all-important things were the package’s contents, the new shoes, the new shoes, the new shoes, the new shoes, the new shoes, the new shoes that she would wear all day, that perfect Christmas Day—and Boxing Day, too. And, in the end, she reached the package without much help or hindrance from outside forces and she started to unpeel the various wrappings as if it were a pass-the-parcel game for one person. A cunning game for first thing on a Christmas morning. She could not hear her mother stirring—although she sensed the front room fire was already blazing. And, at last, there they were—the new shoes in all their glory. She whispered “new shoes” through her milk teeth, with awe and wonder and an intoxication beyond any angel’s wine. She was past all possible excitement. This was now a tranquil moment, amid the hubbub of her busy childhood. A moment to cherish forever. If a moment could indeed last forever. The new shoes were no disappointment. Supple yellow leather, indeed, and black laces. Not blue laces, but that didn’t matter. The colour of the laces was only a minor detail. These were perfect shoes. The new shoes to complete a childhood. All else could be forgotten.