by Bruce Jones
Big metallic sigh from the Maze. “Oh, jeez,” in perfect Archie Bunker, “more perverted sex with Laurie’s teenage hot bod while something sniffs at the door?”
“Even more nightmarish than that. And a hell of a lot more real. Incredibly vivid.”
There was surprising silence on Maser’s end.
A silence that—for Richard—grew quickly discomforting. “Maze?”
“’Vivid’ how?”
“I just told you, ‘incredibly.’”
“In color?”
“Color?” Richard thought a second. “Yeah, as a matter of fact it was a color dream. But dark. Very. Couldn’t see much. But I remember his eyes, his red eyes...”
“Whose?”
“The creature’s.”
“Describe it.”
Richard considered a moment, glancing at the living room wall clock, not wanting Allie to come waltzing in from work all of a sudden, asking how his day had been, even if it had, in fact, been a pretty good day for a change. “It was…I couldn’t see it that well, like I said, but it was some kind of, I dunno, monster or something. It smelled like… like unbelievably bad.”
“Bad like what?”
“Bad. It reeked.”
“Like what? Spoiled food? Oranges, maybe?”
A light went on in Richard’s head; a long delayed one.
He nodded silently at the receiver in his hand, almost smiling, almost rueful. “I see. I get it. A light dawns! Suddenly you’ve got time away from your gallstones and scraped knees…”
“Describe the smell to me, Rich.”
Richard clenched his teeth unconsciously. “It was not the smell of oranges or copper or any of those other things you smell when you’re getting a brain tumor and beginning to hallucinate, and fuck you, Maze. I’ve got a hell of a toothache!”
“Got the wrong doctor, me lad.”
“And my fruggin’ head itches! Oh, and did I mention the cancer?”
“I want to see you at Topeka General, Rich...”
“The hell you do.”
“I mean it. Tomorrow.”
“What for? Why? I mean, even if I—look, knowing isn’t going to make me live any longer, Maze.”
He could hear Maser shuffling papers on the other end, sense his ignoring him. “I’ve got some time around two...”
“Good for you. Have fun.”
“Meet me here at my office first. Say, one.”
“You just said ‘two’.”
“Two o’clock for the CAT scan, one to hear your story.”
“Oh, great! Now you wanna hear the story too!”
“And try not being a bigger asshole than usual. If that’s possible. Don’t eat anything else between now and then. Drink lots of water.”
Richard shuddered despite himself. “Come on, man! Not more of that camera-hose up the ass shit!”
“Just shut-up and do like I say.”
Richard started to say something but Maser had hung up.
* * *
He thought seriously the next morning about canceling on Maser, old friend or not. He was sick of tests, had vowed—at least to himself—he would endure no more, no matter how dire the prognosis. There were worse things than death, had to be.
He was sick of death as well. Sick of hearing about it and thinking about it; he wanted to spend whatever time he had left thinking about living.
Besides, his head itched and his tooth or gum or whatever the hell it was hurt worse than ever. He’d have to make a dental appointment. Jesus. Was there really any point to any of this?
But Richard started out around eleven that morning anyway—early because he’d decided to walk. He had no idea why, really, other than that he didn’t feel like sitting inside a car just then (steel coffin syndrome?) and it wasn’t too hot out today and he wanted to feel the breeze—if any--on his face.
…and you need the exercise…
He smiled at himself, turning left on Cherokee Street and heading down Marshall toward Maser’s medical building twelve blocks away. No, screw the exercise. He just wanted to be at one with the world. The outside world. It was nice to walk, to take his time and not have to make excuses about not working, just bob along and dig the barking dogs and familiar houses and the mostly unchanged cityscape off to the east. It wasn’t until he was halfway to Maser’s building that he realized he could have saved a lot of time and not sweated the pits out of a good shirt by cutting through the woods that bordered what used to be old man Janson’s north pasture and now was the parking lot end of a K-Mart. Strange he hadn’t thought of that. Strange he’d walked all over the old neighborhood and much of the downtown and never even thought of the woods behind Janson’s old field, not even remembered it, really, until just this mo—
“--Fuck!”
--Richard cried out in terror as the beast leapt at his throat, screaming like a demented banshee…
…only it wasn’t a banshee nor really even screaming. It was barking, loudly but probably harmlessly considering the size of breed of the dog, a fuzzy Pomeranian, Richard thought. At the other end of whose leash was a plump, very humiliated middle-aged woman in a bad rouge colored dress and a worse rouge–colored hat and did not go at all well with the rouge on her chubby, pale marshmallow textured cheeks.
“—really uncalled for!” she was saying, hardly audible over the strident yap-yapping of the tenacious little bug-eyed Pom, the woman’s plump fingers dragging at the dog’s rouge colored leash as if reeling in a prize mackerel. Something about her voice…
“—scare a person to death coming around a corner like that! Scare ten years off—shut up, Muppet!—scare ten years off a person’s—“ she broke off, staring quizzically at Richard.
Richard stared quizzically back; thought finally he maybe had it. “Lindsey…?” he mouthed incredulously.
The rouged faced froze, mouth still open in mid-babble, and for that instant the over-colored cheeks seemed to blend with the white flesh around them which in turn—maybe a trick of the light—seemed more youthfully elastic than doughy-aged.
Richard smiled. “Lindsey Stalling.”
And now the startled birdie eyes blinked above the still gaping mouth, and began to widen in recognition, commanding the rouged lips to curl up at the edges into a trademark smile that made Richard positive he’d been right, he’d nailed her, it was her.
“Richard? Richard Denning?”
Richard returned the smile and held out his hand. “Hi, Lindsey—long time no—“
And the Pom launched immediately at the extended hand with an audible snap that might have cost Richard a couple of digits if Lindsey Stalling, the skinny kid in Mrs. Olinger’s 9th grade English class who’d always favored dresses the color of rouge, hadn’t yanked back hard, practically strangling the little dog in mid-lunge.
“Richard Denning! My God! How long has it—shut up, Muppet!—long has it been?”
Richard shrugged, shaking his head, already regretting this, already feeling himself being pulled away by invisible forces toward Maser’s medical building, glad now he had the ready-made excuse of it. “Long time, Lindsey.” He shook his head smiling, despite himself. “Lindsey Stalling. Wow. How are you?”
“Not Lindsey—Muppet, goddamnit!” and she jerked the leash so hard this time the Pom nearly flew into the store window behind her, and did not move again for the rest of the conversation, just glared balefully at Richard from behind the plump lady’s plump ankle—“not Lindsey Stalling anymore for one! It’s Lindsey Cooper now! I married Joel Cooper from Highland Grove. You remember Joel…head of the Boswell Debating Team?”
“Of course,” Richard nodded, not remembering at all, grin frozen to his face, throbbing gum threatening to twist itself into a headache.
“Oh yes,” Lindsey Stalling-Cooper sighed, a film of self-pity clouding her eyes as if on cue, “we got hitched right after high school. I was so impulsive in those days, as I’m sure you remember,” (Richard recalled groping moments with a skinny, flat-c
hested blonde in the back seat of his father’s Impala), “and I insisted that if Joel was serious about…” she shrugged rouge-colored shoulders, made a flat-lipped grimace and tossed her head indifferently, “oh hell, why bullshit you…everybody knows anyway—I got knocked up.”
Richard didn’t know what to say. But “Luck of the draw,” popped out, and he winced inwardly immediately.
Lindsey Stalling-Cooper didn’t seem to mind his faux pas, though, nodding agreement and heaving a sigh that left her ample bosom swaying an inch. She noticed Richard noticing it and looked down at her breasts with another tight-lipped shrug. “Silicone,” she sighed, to Richard’s horror, “fake. Like our marriage…”
The ensuing silence started the Pom on another growling jag and Lindsey stooped with a grunt to pick the little dog up and hold it against her chest like a separate purse. She stroked its fluff-bomb head like she was stroking a child.
Richard cleared his throat nervously. He had all he could do not to scratch the crown of his head, terrified of pulling an unintentional Stan Laurel or Simple Simon here in the middle of downtown Topeka.
Lindsey stared somewhere past him, into the past, perhaps. “The sex was never that great to begin with. After Chelsea—our little girl—after Chelsea Joel just seemed to lose interest. I thought it was because of that one time I remarked about his not being circumcised…a perfectly harmless little remark, really, I didn’t even care that much! Anyway, things went south pretty fast after the baby. I’d find the stacks of Playboys and stroke books in his closet…some with the pages stuck together…”
Richard felt his insides caving.
“…not that I cared, I knew I wasn’t—I mean who can compete with a nineteen year old with airbrushed tits?” Another big sigh that caused her own bosom to squash the Pom temporarily between the swell of her right breast and her shoulder. “Anyway, I shouldn’t be telling you all this—I’m boring you…”
“Not at all,” Richard assured her, inner voice screaming, get me outta here!
“So…” Lindsey looked down at the now contentedly panting Pom as she scratched its ridiculous fluff of head behind its ridiculous rouge bow, “I thought what the hell…last ditch effort, you know? Maybe this is what he wants! So, I got these…”
And Richard realized she looked down not at the dog but at her breasts. She was cocking her head at them appraisingly now and Richard began to feel this whole street corner moment sliding into the surreal.
“Not a bad job, really,” Lindsey Stalling-Cooper intoned with wan optimism, “considering how long ago I had the surgery. Still firm. Still remarkable real looking.” And she stepped, without looking up at him, a foot closer to Richard as if this were the real medical appointment of the day, not the one he had with Maser. “Go ahead,” Lindsey Stalling-Cooper said above her lowered double-chin, “--feel. It’s just like the real thing.”
Richard’s entire body screamed to step back, even it meant off the curb and into traffic, but he didn’t know how to do it without appearing insulting and he was way past embarrassment as it was. “Really, Lindsey, I—“
“No, go ahead! It’s okay, we’re old friends, who the hell cares? Not Joel, for sure!” And she lifted her head and looked both ways down the long and unfortunately empty sidewalk. “Give ‘em a squeeze, nobody else does.”
Richard raised a hand—only to wipe the itchy sweat from his eye—and the Pom went into instant hysterics. Lindsey stepped back and slapped it so hard on the nose it squeaked like a pull toy. “Shut-UP, Muppet! Goddamn little bitch!”
I’ve really got to pee, Richard thought helplessly, and the jack hammer in my jaw will reach my frontal lobe soon...
Lindsey was making another in what was apparently were now her trademark shrugs, smiling with limp nostalgia at Richard. “Anyway, so wouldn’t you know it, the same week—practically the same day—Joel gets a circumcision. I mean, it was unreal. I had no idea he was even trying anymore! I mean, can you imagine my surprise? It was really sweet, I thought, trimming his little pee-pee that way, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” Richard swallowed, “I do.”
…look at your watch, stupid—that’s what’s it there for: to show yourself and others the fruggin’ time…!
Lindsey, still rolling, cast ironic eyes at the sky. “Anyway, it didn’t help. Turns out my nipples and his talleywhacker were too tender to touch for almost three months, if you can believe it. Fucking doctors. And by that time the marriage was pretty much officially in the potty.”
Richard nodded stupidly.
Lindsey burst into a sudden ear-to-ear smile and squinted at him with sly little birdie eyes. “But you, Mr. Richard Denning! Don’t have to guess who you grew up and married! Cute little Laurie Seasons, am I right? Huh, am I?”
Richard suddenly realized it was his only way out of this.
He wagged a playfully scolding finger at doughy Lindsey Stalling-Cooper and really did glance at his watch this time. “You, Lindsey Cooper, are the sharpest kid in Mrs. Olinger’s entire English class!”
Lindsey squealed delight. He’d just made her day, probably her week. The Pomeranian started a low growl as if suddenly squeezed too tight; Richard thought its eyes bulged a moment even more than normal. He winked Lindsey a smile, holding up the watch hand in clear view of the birdie eyes. “And I really gotta scoot. Just great seeing you again, Lindsey, just really great!” And started moving before she could speak again.
“Jesus,” Maser said, ten minutes later, coming though the anteroom door and reaching for a the jar of tongue depressors, “you look like shit, bucko. You run into that creature from your dreams on the way over?”
“Don’t get me started, “ Richard replied without humor.
SIX
“I don’t understand why you can’t describe it,” Dr. Bobby Maser kept saying.
“I told you—because I couldn’t see it,” Richard kept replying, “the dream was dark. You know--dark? As in ‘night’?” He sighed and leaned back in the straight back chair in Maser’s office. “That was the weirdest part of all…”
Maser sat there at his desk behind a hurricane of scattered, very professional looking doctor-type papers and manila folders and a very unprofessional looking Aurora plastic model of the Frankenstein monster—had sat there like that from the beginning with his hands laced patiently atop his desk, not taking note one or even doodling absently. And he wanted to know why again, “Why was it weird?”
Richard, tired of this visit already—especially after the lovely morning moment with Lindsey Stalling-Cooper—grew ever more irritated and impatient; maybe, because that stupid bug-eyed Pom of Lindsey’s kept popping into his mind for no reason. Stupid mutt. “Weird because it was all so real. Like a dream within a dream, you know?”
“No,” Maser said.
Richard rolled his eyes. “Look…I’m lying there in bed asleep, see? Maybe dreaming of—whatever, I really don’t remember. Then I wake up. Right there in my bedroom, in my bed, beside my wife, with all the familiar furnishings and appointments around me. And that’s when it hit me, the smell. Right there in my bedroom, Maze!”
“In your dream.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you! It’s so fruggin’ real—so detailed in every minute way…so real it doesn’t seem like a dream. And when I hear the…the thing coming up the stairs, and I turn and look over at the bedroom door, my heart in my throat, and the thing opens the door and comes in with that…that grin…and starts toward me and I start screaming—“
“Which is when Allie wakes you up—“
“Yes, but that’s just it! When she wakes me up I’m still sitting there in bed, in exactly the same place, staring at exactly the same bedroom door! And it’s open, Maze, the damn door is open!”
Maser didn’t seem to catch on.
Richard held up both hands for emphasis. “It was closed, Maze! The door was closed when I went to bed! You see?”
If he did see, Dr. Robert Maser only frowned b
ack. “Your jaw looks a little swollen—want some ice for that tooth?”
Richard flopped back in his chair again. “You don’t see.”
“I do see, Rich. But are you certain the bedroom door was closed when you went to bed?” And before Richard could blurt an affirmative, Maze added: “Absolutely certain? Think about it a second.”
Richard sighed. “I thought psychiatrists always went with the first impression.”
“I only play one on TV.”
Richard was laughing. He sat forward again in his chair, reached over and plucked the Frankenstein model from the surrounding paper avalanche, sitting back again and turning it over in his hand absently. “Why’d we go for this stuff so much when we were kids? Aurora monsters.”
“Because when we were kids Friday night meant Shock Theater, and those were the greatest Friday nights the planet Earth has ever known.”
Richard snorted. “The Deadenders.” He shook his head, smiling. “You think we were weird, Maze? Geeks?”
“Haven’t you heard, ‘geeks’ are in.”
“Computer geeks with the potential for big earnings, not monster geeks with the potential for nostalgia. Were we weird?
“Very.”
“I’m serious. You think we were…different?”
“Just you,” Maser smiled. Then he looked at Richard. “What’s the matter--?”
Richard had put down the monster model and was staring somewhere past Maser’s shoulder at thin air. “I just remembered something...”
Maser waited, one brow arched.
“It talked to me. The thing talked to me…I’d forgotten that.”
“When it came into your bedroom?”
Richard nodded. “Right there at the foot of my bed. It said something to me.”
Maser waited. “I’m waiting.”
Richard was frowning with concentration, eyes narrowed. “I…I can’t quite…”
“Shut-up, Muppet!”
“…can’t quite remember…”
Maser watched him silently across his desk.