by Mike Miller
The woman could not stop adjusting her spectacles when she spoke. “Next, I want brown tabby every other Thursday, but sandpaper calico on the third Thursday of each month, meaning I won’t be a brown tabby on that day. Actually, perhaps I could do half of each, down the line? So every other third Thursday?”
Mr. Carver realized he needed to respond to her question. As he readied his salesman shine to answer the latest inane inquiry, the door burst open by a very huffy Mr. Bowlings. Mr. Carver’s assistant Crispin followed quickly behind the intruder.
The young man apologized, “I’m sorry, sir, I tried to stop him--”
“We need to talk. Now.“ Shoving past the cat lady, Mr. Bowlings charged up to the foot of the desk.
Yesterday, this customer was meek. Aging, bald and fat. But today, he was possessed with a bygone vigor, a rage of youth. It made Mr. Carver smile.
“All right,” he said in a careful and calm voice. His hand was raised like a shield to Mr. Bowlings’ onslaught. Turning to the woman, “Would you please excuse us all for a moment?”
The woman had yet to recover from the violent commotion as Crispin escorted her from the room in a shell-shocked shuffle.
“Now…” said Mr. Carver, casually leaning back in his chair, “how can I help you, Mr. Bowlings?”
“That dream you sold me was horrible. A damned nightmare, actually.” His voice stammered with feverish anger.
“Well, what was wrong with it?” Despite the outrage, Mr. Carver still beamed with merry confidence.
Mr. Bowlings clammed up with shame, frightened to recall the event in detail. He stared down in silent disgrace, his cowardice exposed like the hindquarters of a quailing ostrich.
So Mr. Carver took the initiative. “Was your wife not in the dream?”
“No,” spoke Mr. Bowlings softly. “She was.”
Mr. Carver noted that Mr. Bowlings’ newfound reluctance to speak contrasted the wild fury with which he had entered.
“But…” Mr. Bowlings huffed, pained to say it aloud though he knew he must. “She was-- She was dead,” he stammered. “Cold, decaying…” His voice trailed off as the monstrous vision become clearer in his memory. The gruesome visage of the ghoul grew in his mind with every passing second.
He shook off the thought. “And that’s not what I signed up for!” he shouted with rediscovered rage.
“Wow,” Mr. Carver confessed with sympathy, “I sure hope you didn’t make love to her.”
“You’re damn lucky I didn’t,” Mr. Bowlings quickly cried, but then he processed the grotesqueness of the remark. The repulsive thought further pumped his fists with bloodlust. He was ready to kill this arrogant jerk, but was still rational enough to know that any fisticuffs would only lead to his own self-destruction.
Mr. Carver scoffed, relaxed his arms from behind his head, leaned forward in the leather chair that bristled like an autumn wind through fallen leaves.
“Well, Mr. Bowlings, I am definitely sorry about that.” Still smiling, selling, reassuring. “Let’s take a look at a few things back in the lab. With a few minor adjustments, I’m sure our techs can make everything perfect.” Mr. Carver rose, rolled his arm around Mr. Bowlings’ shoulder and began to guide him to the exit.
“Or my money back, right?” Mr. Bowlings abruptly interjected.
“Quite frankly,” Mr. Carver said, lovingly patting his customer’s shoulder, “if we can’t fix the problem, ‘your money back’ won’t help a thing.”
Mr. Bowlings skeptically pondered Mr. Carver’s shockingly frank response.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Bowlings. I promise that you’ll soon be making love to your wife as guaranteed in our extensive warrantee on all the dreams we sell.”
* * *
Mr. Bowlings entered his house and shuddered. The cold memory of the night before drenched the surroundings in a different shade of color. The home was so familiar to him, but as he glanced up at the bedroom, the dwelling was now a tainted crypt to house this hellish experience. Despite the reassurance of Mr. Carver that the problem had been remedied, Mr. Bowlings did not feel safe.
He changed his clothes, ordered some food, didn’t tip the delivery boy, only barely smirked at the antics of the zaniest television show he could find.
And then he yawned. The excitement was tempered by dread as he ascended the staircase. As he brushed his teeth, his eyes never left the mirror’s reflection of the empty bed behind him. The half of the bed where hopefully his wife would appear was ready and made. He prayed she would be lovely, beautiful and alive, just as he had paid for.
Resting under the billowing layers of the bed’s blankets and sheets, Mr. Bowlings caressed his wife’s nightgown with frail hope.
He reached over to the nightstand and grabbed a nicely framed portrait of her from her prime youth. Her gorgeous smile and pretty features gazed slightly off to the side of the camera in a classic pose. He smiled, wiped a nascent tear from his eye, turned off the light and fell asleep.
He was downstairs in the living room. There was no candlelight now, as the darkness was fractured by scattered patches of light from the windows. Through the skylight above, a ripe moon beamed between thick gray clouds. As the clouds slowly rolled past, the lunar shadows shifted throughout his home.
Mr. Bowlings soon turned his attention to the bedroom above. But while the door stood slightly ajar as the night before, there was now a soft warm glow that radiated from the opening.
She called to him. “Herman…” The word sailed hauntingly down through the empty house, echoing gently in his ears. “Herman, where are you?” There was nothing but sweet lust in her speech.
Mr. Bowlings climbed the stairs, studying the flickering firelight that danced above him. Behind him the room grew dark as the moon hid in the night. The fire above seemed to proportionately grow with intensity. He paused in hesitation and uncertainty.
“Herman…” she summoned, pleaded. So Mr. Bowlings continued up the stairs.
Through the doorway, he could see a lone flame on a bookshelf by the window. Its wick burned bright atop crimson wax. The sudden source of direct light made Mr. Bowlings wince, having become accustomed to the darkness.
“Honey?” he asked timidly as he opened the door.
The room was warm and cast in a golden glow from the candle. Atop the bed, his wife sat in her fresh, white nightgown, composed and still. Her back was to him again while she faced out the window. The same as the last nightmare.
Mr. Bowlings approached cautiously. While she sat rigid and motionless, her silhouette playfully danced on the walls from the flickering flame.
“Herman…” The voice startled him. She said it with a quiet and silky purr, but it was also much louder now than the distance between the two would indicate. Mr. Bowlings had advanced to a few feet from the bed, but her voice had whispered right into his ear.
While he approached, he busily scanned her for signs of life. No soft heave of breath. No twitch or murmur of body movement.
Her long black hair lay flat and stationary against her back, though it still cascaded magnificently and vibrantly from her scalp.
Mr. Bowlings sat on the bed around the corner from what he hoped was his wife. He had not the courage to get within sight of her face. He waited for something to happen, afraid to somehow provoke things with any gesture, noise or action. His wife remained perfectly still no matter how much time passed.
Growing impatient, he found his voice also choking with fright when he spoke. He stammered, then silenced, finally deciding to slowly extend his hand to touch her. He wondered what sort of temperature would greet his fingers.
And then out of the corner of his eye, he caught a reflection in the window. Mr. Bowlings peered intently to discern the details of his wife’s face from the murky and faint reflection in the glass.
Dark, malformed blotches dotted her forehead and cheeks. Stringy and wet hair scrawled chaotically across her face. Black, hollow eyesockets stared directly into his.
“Herman…” she cooed.
Mr. Bowlings was stunned to see that she was beautiful. Perfect. Alive and filled with love as her warm hands enveloped his.
He embraced her with a laugh, crushing her torso viciously into his own with joy. He pulled her head back away again to bask in her reborn glory.
Her dark brown eyes beamed back and forth between his. Mr. Bowlings ran his fingers through her lush hair, which smoothly flowed through his hand like the fine threads of gossamer. “You’re majestic,” he sighed.
She giggled from the intense and awkward adulation her husband heaped upon her.
He kissed her with building levels of vigor as the two tumbled to the bed, his wife atop him. Mr. Bowlings’ hands busily worked her body where the gentle downy lace of her nightgown offered a tender accomplice to her supple flesh.
Until her skin grew stiff. Warmth faded. Mr. Bowlings whimpered with clenched tight eyes. He squirmed to escape from underneath the unearthly squishiness of her body, but she had pinned him down.
“No...” Mr. Bowlings moaned. Curiosity finally pried his eyelids open.
His wife no longer appeared as one who was recently deceased. Whereas before her body was thin, bruised and blue, her shape had now become a half-decayed corpse. Thick chunks of flesh hung from her bones. Large gaping wounds cut through her musculature. One eye stared into his as the other was missing. Stray sinew dribbled from its empty socket. Strange pockets of missing skin dotted her face, exposing squalid wounds festering with black boils of clotted blood.
And her mouth was a scrambled mess of loosely connected skin and clumps of what used to be lips. The mess jaggedly framed a set of gray, grinning teeth.
“Herman…” she cooed. Her rotting face approached his. “Herman, I love you.”
Her frigid fingers affectionately rubbed his sweaty cheek. Her dry skin scratched his, though he also felt a cold, wet clump smear across his face.
Then the thing snarled angrily. “But why am I like this?”
Mr. Bowlings awoke with a scream. The dark room was barely lit from the sky outside. He furtively scanned the surroundings for any sign of the creature, his scattered vision riled from the nightmare.
He saw his wife’s gown atop him. He flung the garment across the room. Halfway through its arc, the cloth stopped to float lightly to the ground.
He looked at his wife’s portrait on his nightstand and smashed it. Shards of glass flew to the walls and cut his face, but he did not care.
Mr. Bowlings buried his head in his hands and sobbed uncontrollably until his palms were covered with salty tears and gooey mucous.
Upon finally gaining composure of himself, he ran downstairs and found the number for Mr. Carver’s office. In the twilight hours of early morning, Mr. Bowlings did not bother to listen to the outgoing message, and was quite eager to leave a very long and rambling plea for help, one which alternated in tone from despair to anger.
Next, Mr. Bowlings’ began brewing the first of many pots of coffee.
* * *
At about 9 in the morning, Mr. Bowlings knew that Mr. Carver’s office had to have reopened already for the day, so he called once again.
“Hello,” Mr. Carver said.
“Carver, you damned--“ Mr. Bowlings yelled.
“Our office is now closed and will reopen after the weekend,” the recorded voice cheerfully explained. “Please leave your name, number, and your concerns, and we’ll be happy--“
The telephone rattled to the marble tile floor. Mr. Bowlings himself soon following afterward as he withered in defeat. He hoped that someone in the office might get his message and reply. The calls had to be monitored somehow.
Still, the old man called repeatedly with the same results. And nobody ever called back.
He carefully reread all of his literature from the sale for any sort of emergency support.
At around 11 in the morning, Mr. Bowlings gave up on any help. Considering the resounding failure of his dream’s first repairs, he figured that the numbskulls might be of no use anyway.
Besides, it was just a dream. It could not really harm him.
As he tried to dismiss the silliness of his situation, he could not help but cringe nonetheless.
So Mr. Bowlings knew what he had to do: He would simply stay awake for the next 48 hours. This was a feat he had often accomplished in his hard-working youth, at even longer durations. So the older man had little doubt he could still accomplish the task even now.
First, he took care of some weekend errands, busying his mind with the most relentless string of tasks he could muster. This series of tasks occupied him into the early evening.
He did not return home though, opting to stay out into the late hours. He cavorted in wild nightclubs that he hadn’t been to in decades. Never touching a drink to keep his wits, he instead entertained himself by laughing at the stupidity of youth. The morons were everywhere.
Once all the nightlife had closed down for the evening, he returned home and began showering every forty minutes. First hot, then cold. He set alarms all about him in every room of the house. Except the bedroom.
Mr. Bowlings only went to the bedroom once when he realized that he needed fresh clothes, toiletries and another alarm clock. He quickly gathered these essentials without ever setting an eye on the cursed bed that he and his wife should have been dreaming on together.
Downstairs in the living room, Mr. Bowlings survived to the morning without ever sleeping a wink. His mind was in near delirium from the grueling cycle of the highs of caffeine and adrenaline followed by the inevitable onset of fatigue.
The next day, he went out in the world again, hungry to survive for just another twenty-four hours without visiting the hell that held the creature that his love had become.
He drove across the curviest and busiest streets he could find, where the braying horns of cars now formed a comforting sonata of noise. Mr. Bowlings even invented a little game where he predicted which drivers were most apt to plunge into roadrage when taunting or intimidating them.
One particularly burly gentlemen even smashed the rear window of Mr. Bowlings’ car with a crowbar, which only made the man laugh maniacally. This quickly stopped the other madman’s rampage, who was happy to quickly vacate the scene while mad Mr. Bowlings remained.
He found himself accidentally passing the spot where he had first met his darling wife. It was a quiet park in the middle of the city, usually populated by runners and dogs. His first instinct told him to abandon the place for fear of invoking the grisly details of their recent encounters. But another side told him that perhaps a gentle revisiting of their lighter days would help to conquer the nightmare with fond memories of their love.
He parked his car and stumbled out into the day.
Watching the other few patrons of the park dilly-dallying in the sunlight made Mr. Bowlings smile as he ambled along the gently tilting cement sidewalk. The bright sun and exercise stirred up a sweat on his lumpy body. So he removed his coat and slung it over his shoulder as he strolled.
Suddenly, a sharp ringing blasted out from behind him. He hopped to the side as a bicycle rider whizzed by, nearly colliding with him. Watching the man glide away on his bike as the bell continued its angry jangle, Mr. Bowlings realized that the jolt felt good. It woke him up. The fear was invigorating.
Finally, he reached the exact spot: a park bench to the side of the path. It sat at the foot of a grassy hill, exposed and without shade. It was still next to the same garbage can and lightpost. As Mr. Bowlings approached, a vision of his seated wife materialized on the bench. Young, beautiful and perfect, she sat in her plain work clothes, reading her dense green book.
He was not afraid of her. Not when he was awake and imagining her as he pleased.
He sat down on the bench beside her, a move that felt as bold now as it did when he had first done it so many years ago. He sighed mightily
, supremely content to bask in the pure loveliness of the woman. There were so many years between them back then and even more now. He still vividly recalled all the minor details that had perfected her: her dark auburn hair pulled nicely in a bun, the cheap but elegant necklace she mindlessly fiddled with. Her eyes focused down on the page and darting side-to-side. But then they stopped, rose, and their gorgeous green rings now focused on him.
Mr. Bowlings sighed heavily, knowing that this fond joy should be his to relive every night in the dream he had bought. And if anything, he could be spared from the nightmare it had become.
Mr. Bowlings reached over to caress her face.
His wife smiled, and her jaw fell off. It clattered with a crimson smear across her immaculate blouse. Her brilliant eyes still espoused a pleasant happiness despite the dripping gore from the roof of her mouth.
Her voice asked, “Why am I not alive?”
Gasping in fear, Mr. Bowlings awoke alone on a sunny park bench. He rose to his feet and walked away. Twenty yards later, he dashed madly to his car with tears in his eyes.
The sun now almost set, Mr. Bowlings throttled forward at full speed back towards his home. His eyes focused intensely on the road ahead, Mr. Bowlings watched the headlights of his fellow cars float past him dreamily. In the passenger seat, his wife groaned in anguish, turning to stare the empty chasms of her dead eye sockets at him. Mr. Bowlings drove faster and screamed at the top of his lungs for the duration of the journey.
Inside his house, Mr. Bowlings turned up the volume of his stereo, blasting bombastic rock ‘n’ roll which he normally despised. Every light in the house burned brightly, and the television contributed further fury with a montage of wild gunfights and screeching sportscasters. He consumed caffeine like it was air.