All I Ever Dreamed

by Michael Blumlein

  “They think you’re a whale.”

  “Someone’s gonna harpoon your ass.”

  Raucous laughter. Violet was incensed, but Shep merely chuckled, and tipped his hat. When they’d gone, he turned to her.

  “I make some people nervous.”

  Was he kidding? He was making her nervous.

  “Don’t let it bother you,” he said.

  “Don’t lecture me, okay?” Her choices seemed to be dwindling. Either that, or mushrooming into some unseeable, uncomfortable, possibly infinite, amount.

  “One day? That’s it?”

  He raised a finger.

  I’m making a mistake, she told herself. “Then you’ll leave me alone?”

  “I’ll do whatever you say.”

  ROSE

  Poison came in many forms. Powder, liquid, leaf, needle, shell, bark, flake. It could be baked, brewed, stewed, distilled, and extracted. It existed in every culture. It existed in every land. If you cared enough and had the right eyes, you could find it in virtually any corner of the globe.

  Rose had excellent eyes. She also had an encyclopedic memory. She had studied plants and ecology for two semesters at a JC before dropping out. Between semesters she’d wangled her way onto a field trip to peninsular India. For two weeks she studied the decline of various local plant populations and the spread of non-native weeds. For another two weeks she concentrated on a single species, nannari kommulu, a native shrub being threatened with extinction by the usual culprits. It was during this time that she had a conversion experience. The young son of the family she was staying with had fallen ill. One day he was feverish; the next, barely able to lift his head. His parents did what they could with what they had. They gave him sips of water. They crushed and fed him aspirin. They cooled him with wet rags.

  His condition steadily worsened. It seemed he would die. Then early in the morning of the fifth day an Ayurvedic practitioner appeared at the door. With the parents hovering anxiously over their semi-comatose son, the woman forced a reddish liquid down the boy’s throat. She left a vial with instructions to continue the remedy. Two days later, he opened his eyes, and by the end of the week he was playing with friends.

  Rose was deeply affected by this. After returning to school, she changed her career path, from the study and cataloguing of plants to the use of plants and anything else that could help people in need. She took a class in herbal medicine. She thought of becoming a nurse, or a pharmacist.

  Then one day she got a call. Marl wanted to see her again. She couldn’t believe her ears. He swore things would be different. She said, “Good. Be different with somebody else.” But he kept at her, until eventually he wore her down and got what he was after.

  She dropped out of school, because Marl had a thing about school. He found her an apartment, which he visited as often as he said he could. It was a cheap apartment, ruled by cockroaches and mildew. She cleaned it up as much as possible. With money from him she bought curtains and a second-hand bed. Neither of them was happy to find bedbugs in the mattress. She wasn’t surprised when he tore it off the bed in a fit of rage, shoved it out the window, doused it with gasoline, and set it on fire. He was a man of action.

  He liked to put roaches in a stovetop friendly jar and watch as they suffocated and burst into flame. He taught her the answer to the riddle of how a match could burn twice. But mostly he was nice.

  Things started to unravel when she got a job. He was all for it at first. Someone needed to pay the bills. But he didn’t like it when he came by and she wasn’t around. He didn’t like having to wait for her. Didn’t like how she dressed sometimes for work.

  One night he locked her in the bathroom and wouldn’t let her out until she’d shaved all her pubic hair. He gave her a used and wrinkled camisole meant for someone two-thirds her size. She might as well have been a twelve-year-old again. When she protested, he washed her mouth out with a bar of soap. When that didn’t stop her, he flicked on his torch lighter and asked how she liked her tongue, braised, baked, or fried?

  She started staying late at work, avoiding him. When he got wind of this, he took her phone and locked her in the apartment. He let her out after two days, hungry, demoralized, and without a job.

  Things spiraled down. She started drinking. The sex, which was never fun, got rougher. She had learned how to distance herself from the act early on, and now, day and night, with or without him, she was estranged from her body, anesthetized, a mere shell of herself.

  The day he hit her, she was brought abruptly back to her senses. She was too stunned to speak, but not too stunned to think. It was like waking from a coma. She waited until he was gone, gathered her things in a daypack, and left.

  He came looking for her, but she managed to stay one step ahead of him, until he stopped. After that, her life was no bed of roses. But it didn’t include Marl, at least not in the flesh. So how in fuck did she end up marooned on an island with him? It was too ironic.

  Yet here she was, with a chance to make things right, trying her damnedest, and not getting any help, thank you very much. The current hadn’t swept him away. The sharks had merely driven him back to shore. It was as if Mother Nature had better things to do than deal with such a scumbag. Would She mind a helping hand to lighten Her load? An eager acolyte to handle this particular piece of dirty work? Rose thought not.

  She was excited to get underway. Also a little nervous, which she often felt when facing a challenge. Nervousness seemed necessary for her to rise to the occasion, and for this reason she welcomed it, for it was a sure sign that rise she would.

  She already had a step up, knowing plants as she did. She loved their beauty, their diversity, their role in replenishing the atmosphere, their use as food and also as medicine. She had studied their medicinal uses, not extensively, but enough to know something about toxicity. The line between helpful and harmful was often blurry. What made a plant poisonous was a matter of degree. It depended on dose, mode of delivery, timing of delivery, and, of course, plant composition. A poisoning could occur in many different ways. Some of these were slow, some quick, some painless, some excruciating. If there’d been a hospital nearby, or even a local pharmacy, Rose could have had her pick of methods. Instead, what she had was an island paradise, lush with vegetation. A Garden of Eden really, with Marl in the peculiar role of Eve, and she as . . . who? Not serpent: she didn’t slink or speak with forked tongue, like he did. Not temptress: the thought made her sick. Devil? No, not that; she was not an evil person. Not that she was some kind of saint. She had her faults, heaven knew. What she was was a facilitator, a helper, a restorer of balance, like the healer who had cured the young boy. She cared for people, felt for them deeply, which made her, in any universe, a force for good.

  DAISY

  She fell. Face up, limbs flailing, through cool air and thickening darkness. The longer she tumbled, the less she could deny the outcome. She was going to die; there seemed no point in pretending otherwise. Right before she hit bottom, with a sickening thud and a terrible bone-crunching crack, she had a vision of Death. He was standing beside her, looking surprised, as though not expecting her arrival. Being a gallows humor kind of gal, she grinned.

  Then it was over. She hit the ground hard, and life flew out of her.

  A short time later, miraculously, it flew back in. For the following two days she lay in a heap, unconscious.

  When she came to, she was cold and stiff. There was a sharp pain in her left shoulder. Her mouth felt like cotton. She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.

  She remembered hiking up a hill, finding a cave, and taking a step inside, but nothing after that. Now, it appeared, she was in another cave, or a deeper part of the same cave. She was hungry, she was thirsty, every bone in her body hurt, and the shoulder, something was seriously wrong, and the back of her head was the size of a grapefruit and matted with blood. The list went on; that was the bad news. The good: she was alive.

  She tried to sit up. A pai
n unlike any she’d ever experienced slapped her down. She located its source and tried again, this time keeping her left arm pressed against her side, moving it as little as possible. This was better, and she waited for the lightness in her head to pass, then tried standing up. She staggered and reflexively reached out to steady herself, which only made her stagger more, as there was nothing to grab but thin air. And her arm wasn’t happy with this jolting motion. Not happy at all.

  She cursed. The words echoed back to her, then died, like a door closing on life. But the echo stirred the memory of the hole in the floor of the cave, and also the memory of having fallen. There was some kind of passage—a tube or a tunnel or a shaft— that had swallowed her, and since it wasn’t likely to spit her back up, she would have to climb out.

  With her good arm in front of her she took a step forward, sliding rather than lifting her foot, careful to keep it in contact with the floor. Then she raised the same arm above her head, feeling for a roof or a ceiling. There was nothing but air above her, and eventually she came to a wall, which curved sharply. She traced its circumference, which led to the discovery of another tunnel, or maybe the continuation of the one she’d fallen down. Also the discovery of just how wide the chamber she was in was, so that by the time she finished her circumnavigation, she’d given up any hope of being able to wedge herself into the shaft above it, soles against one wall, back against the other, pressing her body outward like a spring and shimmying up. If she wanted out, she’d have to use her hands and feet and climb.

  She was fully prepared to do this. Overcoming adversity was, in a manner of speaking, her life’s work. The problem was the rock. It was too smooth to get a good grip on. And the walls weren’t perpendicular: top to bottom they angled out, putting her at the wrong end of a funnel. Then there was her shoulder, which had its own opinion about her suitability as a climber, and was announcing it nonstop.

  She tried anyway. The first two times she slipped and fell and landed on her feet; the third time, on her feet and one good hand. The brief stab of pain she felt in that wrist was nothing compared to the one in her bad shoulder, but it led to a light bulb moment: she couldn’t afford to lose the use of the other arm. A cheap lesson, quickly learned. The third try was her last.

  She was panting a little now, from the pain and from the effort. Her heart threw itself against her chest. The adrenaline rush from trying to escape was quickly wearing off, leaving her feeling jittery, depleted, even a little confused, the telltale signs of bottoming out.

  She could easily have panicked. All the cards were lined up. But she wasn’t a panicker. She was a thinker, a doer, and a bouncer back. She asked herself what she hadn’t tried. What options were left to a woman of resource and intelligence, a woman who took care of business, who prided herself on not needing others, who liked others well enough, but didn’t need them, didn’t want to need them.

  Cupping her hands, she shouted for help.

  Her throat felt like sandpaper. Her voice was weak because she was weak from lack of food and water, and it cracked like a twig underfoot. The rebounding echo sounded tentative and unconvincing. Briefly, she thought of Richard, who would doubtlessly be looking for her. The odds of his hearing her were vanishingly small, but those were the odds: in an up and down life, she’d both survived and triumphed over worse. Summoning every ounce of energy left, marshaling it into her lungs and throat, she shouted again. And again. She yelled until exhaustion took her voice.

  She knew what desperation was, how it felt and what it led to. She had taught herself to guard against despair. She was out of options at this point, but that could change. She didn’t know how, only that what she needed now was rest. Shivering with fatigue, she eased herself down to the floor, gingerly turned on her side, curled into a ball, and slept.

  She dreamed of imprisonment, of being crushed beneath a weight, robbed of freedom, and she dreamed of escape. When she woke, she knew if she didn’t find water, she would die of thirst. Struggling to her feet, she located the opening in the wall. It was round and low-ceilinged. She imagined a mouth, which, like the hole, would swallow her. It certainly swallowed her voice, which died as soon as it left her lips. The ensuing silence gave her the creeps—she had no idea what lay ahead—but all things considered, moving forward was better than staying where she was, stranded with nothing but a useless echo of herself.

  Stooping, she entered the tunnel, edging carefully ahead. The floor had a gradual downward slope, and she sensed the tunnel gently curving, though without sight it was impossible to be sure. But nature favored curves. In certain situations it also favored curvy ways of thinking, with logic mingling freely with hope and intuition, which could lead to great leaps forward but also illusions and dead ends.

  Daisy was no stranger to the power of illusion. Fantasy was a fact of life for which she had no use. She took great care to avoid it, which meant she took care of her feelings, not endangering herself by getting carried away. This explained why she didn’t get overly excited when, after hours of creeping slowly ahead, first on foot, then on her knees and one good arm, the other never ceasing to complain, she felt a breath of air in her face. Or when the smell in the tunnel subtly changed from dusty and dry to earthy and damp. She’d been dreaming of nothing but water—glasses of water, tubs of it, springs, ponds, streams, lakes—so no wonder she smelled it. If it weren’t so utterly dark, and she not so utterly opposed to self-deception, she might have treated herself to a mirage and seen it as well. A nice, palm-lined oasis, shimmering in the sunlight. With the freshest water she had ever tasted. And a tree growing beside it, covered with fruit. And a lover in the tree, tossing the fruit down to her. This kind of thinking did no good, so in that sense it was a plus she couldn’t see.

  But then she could. Or she thought she could. The darkness lifted ever so slightly, the way it did at the very first hint of dawn, when you were never quite sure, except that you knew eventually night would end. She did not know that her night would, and she didn’t immediately trust her senses, until this became an exercise in pointless self-denial, as the light in the tunnel steadily grew. All at once she could see its walls, which were smooth and dark as obsidian. The wet smell grew. She crawled faster, heedless of her aching arm and scraped up knees, beetling then barreling ahead. The tunnel took a sharp left, then a sudden downward turn, sending her head over heels before spilling her out onto a patch of sand. She groaned, rolled, stood, and grinned. Her lips, in protest, cracked and bled, and how little this mattered. There was water, a perfect little pool of it, and she fell to her knees, forced herself to taste it first, found the taste to her liking (more to the point, it didn’t make her gag), and immersed her face.

  VIOLET

  She stood at the window of her room. The sky was enormous. The ocean was immense. The islands seemed lost in it, and she was lost in their goings-on. She didn’t hear the knocking at first. When she did, she was annoyed at the interruption. Then she remembered who it was, and went to the door. But paused before opening it.

  What are you doing? she asked herself. Stop. Don’t let him in.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Shep. We have a date. Am I too early?”

  Too late, she said to herself.

  “I can come back.”

  “No.” The word jumped out of her. She unlocked the door.

  He was wearing another tropical shirt, grinning dolphins this time. Long pants and woven sandals. He loomed in the doorway, like a huge and benevolent bear.

  “Hello,” he said. “I’m glad to see you. I’m happy you’re here.”

  “Where else would I be?”

  “I thought maybe you’d back out,” he confessed.

  “You should have more faith.”

  “I should.”

  “Tell me again why we’re doing this? Why you want to hang out with a suicidal freak.”

  “I like the freak’s company.”

  “You’re weird.”

  “Decidedly.”
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  “Just so we’re clear. This is a one-time deal. That’s the agreement. One night. It ends when I say it ends. After that, we go our separate ways.”

  “Wherever they may take us. That’s the agreement.”

  She fetched her jacket, the only one she owned that wasn’t leather, stepped outside, closed the door, and led him down the stairs. The sun was sinking, the sky deepening in color, the light that was always in it beginning to lengthen and fan out like a peacock’s tail. The street vendors were packing up their wares for the day. He asked if she was hungry.

  “Not so much.”

  They strolled to the water’s edge. His walked with his hands loose at his sides. He wore no rings. Without a hat, his head picked up the colors of the sky, shining like a dull crystal ball. His eyebrows were thick as nests, perched at the bottom of an arrestingly tall forehead.

  He asked how she was feeling.

  “You mean, am I going to run in and drown myself? I doubt you’d let that happen.”

  “On a scale of one to ten.”

  She shuddered. “I hate that.”

  “Numbers?”

  “They use it against you.”

  “Who does?”

  “Where I come from. You’ll do anything to come in first. To get a star by your name.” She dug her toes into the wet sand, then kicked upward, sending a spray of sand and water flying. “That’s what I think of one to ten.”

  “I won’t ask again.”

  “Gray,” she said.

  “Gray?”

  “Yeah. I was black this morning.”

  The admission of progress made her uneasy. What the hell was she doing with this man? Going out with him. Trusting him. She’d worked so hard on this, learning, or relearning, not to trust people but to center her trust inward, solely on herself.

  “This is not a good idea,” she said.

  “How so?”

  “I’ve been down this road before.”

  “We’re pilgrims,” he said. “Every road is different, even the same one. It’s different each time we set foot on it. We’re different each time we step out the door. Pay attention to the details, Violet. Big changes rarely happen all at once. Small ones, constantly.”