This Book Does Not Exist

by Schneider, Mike

  I ran into a fire that Naomi set, to try to see her, to try to save her, to try to reach her and get her back, and I failed. Blinded by desire, I made a tragic mistake. This will be the last thing I think of when I die.

  I am in more agony than ever before and what hurts most is that I am certain I will never see her again.

  It feels like I’m starting to melt.

  I don’t regret going after her. I convince myself of this while I still have time. There was pain before the Door. Not like this. Different, slower and less intense, but it also felt as if it would never end. This, I know, will end. And it will end without Naomi.

  My ear drips off the side of my head. It is hard for me to think. My brain must be burning up.

  THE AFTER-LIFE

  Something nearly pulls the shirt off my back. My thigh, my knee, both elbows, scrape against the ground. I’m dropped. My jaw cracks the pavement. I open my eyes and start to put the story of my life back together.

  It’s gloomy and grey but not dark. This looks like Cleveland. I’m on a sidewalk. I think this is West 6th, but it’s vacant.

  I thought I was dead.

  Is this how the after-life begins, in an alternate version of wherever you were when your heart stopped?

  “I saved you.”

  I chase the words off the sidewalk to the street, where Geppetto is standing up against the curb.

  “I heard you screaming that you made a mistake, that you shouldn’t have gone in after her. That’s how I managed to find you in time to get you out.”

  I stand and put my hands over my face. I don’t remember yelling that. My skin is warm, but the texture is smooth. It doesn’t seem to be burned. I grab for my hair – it’s still there. Somehow I’m okay even though I felt myself burning to death.

  I tell this to Geppetto.

  “Your imagination was a little bit ahead of you,” he says.

  I ask what happened to Naomi.

  “I doubt she was in the club for long. You came to the same conclusion, I thought. She set a trap. She wasn’t going to wait around and let it kill her, too.”

  “You think she wants me dead?” I exclaim, raising my voice, incredulous. “I don’t believe that.”

  “Maybe she knows about Dave, the pilot? Or, you remember the scenario I presented to you in The JFK Incident, don’t you? I suppose she could have just been trying to send you a message, figuring you wouldn’t bother going in after her. That’s possible. But frankly she should have known you would.”

  “Are you positive it was really her?”

  He nods. “I saw her leaving with the other world. She went back inside the Door.”

  “She wants to stay in your world?”

  “Hey, some people like it there. In fact, this little pocket I found is about to scuttle off, and I don’t want to be stranded. I better get going.”

  He pats me on the back and disappears down an open manhole.

  The rest of the Warehouse District looks how it usually does after last call but before dawn, when the patrons have gone back to the suburbs and the workers are beginning to lock up, while the waste of the night clings to the street and begs to be cleansed. Behind me, Spy Bar is untouched, as if it never was on fire.

  Naomi doesn’t want to be with me anymore.

  I don’t understand what went wrong, but the possibility I have lost the only girl that ever loved me is very real.

  I text the new number that allegedly belongs to her:

  Naomi

  Jul 27 7:35 PM

  Why are you doing this to

  me? Why did you set the

  club on fire?

  I walk to the parking lot and retrieve my car.

  CLOSE THE DOOR

  I am driving over the Detroit-Superior Bridge. Underneath it, the Cuyahoga River – which was once so littered with sludge and trash that it caught on fire – looks black. Too black. I realize I’m checking my mirrors more than I’m watching the road. I can’t predict when or where the other world will manufacture another incident. I perceive abnormalities in everything.

  I am heading to East Cleveland to close the Door.

  After what happened in the Warehouse District, I can’t take any more chances.

  I didn’t expect to hear from Naomi, and I haven’t.

  I hate this. I hate the other world. I hate what it’s putting me through.

  I turn off Superior and onto West 25th Street, plotting a circuitous route east. I don’t know why. I curse myself. I need to make it to Geppetto’s before the Door unleashes something else.

  The speed limit here is twenty-five. I get up to fifty.

  I recognize these dilapidated storefronts belonging to now out-of-business Verizon, Starbucks, and Blockbuster franchises. I’m within a couple minutes of Geppetto’s. The stores were probably once mom and pop places, colorful, albeit decaying, homegrown check cashing and secondhand clothing shops. The presence of the newly abandoned corporate storefronts gives me the impression someone tried to rebuild East Cleveland and failed. I never made this connection before. I thought the city was simply abandoned while money and jobs and innovation chased the Information Age to other states and countries. In actuality, there was a breath of progress before death. Advancement then decay, or solely decay, I wonder – which is better or worse – when the light at the intersection turns green, and I let off the brake.

  A minute passes. I think I’m less than a mile away from Geppetto’s when a sudden outburst of noise pulls my eyes away from the junkyard of homes on the side of the road and straight ahead, where I see precisely what I thought I was hearing – a massive construction site.

  Five hundred feet in front of me the road is blocked off and peppered with construction equipment – a bulldozer, a giant crane, a flatbed truck loaded with wood paneling. The loudest noise comes from the crane as it aches to re-position itself. The entire site is flanked with skyscraper tall, alien-looking lights. A large consortium of people scuttle amidst the machinery. Some move frantically, others loiter. The workers aren’t exemplary of a typical construction crew – there are far too many women for one thing, and they’re dressed too fashionably – but otherwise the site reminds me of a project that had been going on across the street from my apartment in LA.

  I slow down. I have to cross this roadblock in order to get to Geppetto’s and close the Door.

  The crane stops. Someone yells something I can’t make out. A preternatural quiet follows.

  I speed back up, searching for a path or a side street that will allow me to circumvent the construction site, as a kid with a walkie-talkie runs out in front of my car and throws up both his hands. I stomp on the brake, jerk the wheel. The car screeches sideways and stops without hitting him.

  The kid hurries to my window. As I examine him – his cargo shorts, his walkie, a badge hanging from a cord around his neck – I realize what he wants to protect.

  This is a movie set.

  THE MOVIE SET

  I’ve already started to lower my window when the Production Assistant knocks on it.

  “Sorry, sir, you have to turn around.”

  The kid looks like he may still be in high school, or at the oldest, his first or second year of college. Aside from being nervous, he is acting normally, unlike anyone I’ve encountered in the other world. My first thought was that the movie set was the centerpiece of another incident. Now I’m not so sure. The Avengers shot in Cleveland; this could just be piss poor luck on my part.

  “Actually,” I tell the PA, “I need to get somewhere on the other side.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. We’re shooting a feature film in this area. We can’t let anyone through.”

  “I’m not going to drive across the set with the cameras rolling.”

  “What I mean is that it’s impossible for you to pass, sir. Physically impossible. The set covers the entire road. We built a crater.”

  “What about on foot? There are people walking all over the place.”

  “It’
s a closed set, sir. It covers an entire half-mile radius. Again, I’m sorry.”

  He’s getting antsy because I haven’t agreed to turn around yet. I attempt to soften him by asking what they’re filming.

  “A post-apocalyptic drama,” he says like a consumer products pitchman. “This part of the city is the perfect location for it. Other than the crater, it’s all natural. It looks amazing.”

  I ask the kid about the director and the actors. He says, “I’m sorry, sir” – his precursor to everything apparently – “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  The PA’s walkie-talkie crackles. He puts a finger to his mouth – shhh – and then through his radio I hear the sort of chatter that precedes the rolling of cameras, followed clearly by “action!”

  The giant crane tilts. I hear gunshots, a violent mangled argument, more bullet blasts, and an explosion. A sheet of blinding multicolored light leaps into the sky above where I assume the manmade crater is located. Red and blue and white and green and yellow and orange all messily compound, transforming the night into a kaleidoscope.

  I hear a loud “cut!” over the radio, followed by slow, appreciative clapping that soundtracks the gradual evaporation of the colors in the sky. The PA harbors a look of astonishment, so enamored is he by the effects of movie magic. He becomes agitated, however, when we make eye contact.

  “You weren’t supposed to see that,” he says.

  I lie and say I’m going to leave.

  “Is there a detour? Some other way for me to get around the set?”

  “No, sir. I’m sorry. There isn’t. Our producers determined a detour wasn’t necessary because no one lives behind the set. Can I ask where you’re trying to go?”

  “How long are you shooting here for?”

  “We strike the set tomorrow morning, sir. Twenty-four hours after we arrived. Do you think you can turn around before the director does another take, please?”

  I could drive past this kid, dump the car and run across the set. Someone else will try to stop me, but…

  “Sir, really. Please. It would make my job so much easier.”

  He doesn’t grasp that this isn’t about making anything easier.

  I throw open my door.

  RUSH

  My door clips the PA, jolting him sideways, and I’m already out of the car and racing towards the heart of the set when he raises his voice, saying “sir” and “stop” over and over and over without taking any additional action. A group of people lingering in front of a row of black cargo vans looks at me stunned. The kid shouts at them to grab me. Instead of listening to him they just yell, passing his instructions on to the rest of the crew deeper on set.

  I ignore them, continuing to charge ahead as the idea that maybe no one is stopping me because they are all from the other world and the other world doesn’t want them to stop me because it has something lethal planned enters my mind. If this is true, I tell myself, you cannot be afraid. The other world hasn’t beaten you yet – and it won’t beat you now. If you can just get to the other side of the set, you should have a clear pathway to the Door.

  I cut in front of monitors, producers, assistants, and hanger-ons. I hear chatter about “the guy running” and “the man who broke onto the set,” but nobody comes after me – they just prattle on through walkie-talkies and bullhorns as I face down the crater that’s as big as a house. I push my legs harder, ignoring exhaustion and the lingering tendrils of one traumatic experience after another while I race around the crater and break past the camera, where the actors and the director are preparing for the next take.

  I sense I’ve gone unencumbered for too long. I anticipate something awful happening as I close in on the talent. And this is when an ex-football player type wearing the uniform of a security guard drifts out in front of me.

  I see him too late to dodge.

  He drives me into the ground. My face smashes to the side, scraping across the dirt. He pins all his weight on top of me. I can’t breathe.

  “What the hell are you trying to do?”

  I can’t answer. I need air. I battle to speak. The actors watch me. I think I recognize Kevin Costner in tattered clothing and dirt-like make-up. The man across from him could be Gene Hackman. A young actress sitting cross-legged looks familiar, but I can’t pinpoint her name. And the director choreographing the scene looks too much like Sofia Coppola to not be her.

  I am on an actual movie set – not a fabrication of the other world.

  I wheeze out broken phrases. I communicate that I need to see someone who lives on the other side of the set.

  “There are no houses there,” he says. “It’s a wasteland.”

  “Just let me go.” My wind is coming back to me. “It’s important. I won’t talk about the movie. I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Do you have a phone? Did you take pictures?” He asks the PA, “Did you see him taking any pictures?” The kid shakes his head no.

  The security guard lifts me off the ground. He must be a foot taller and 150 pounds heavier than me. I have no chance to take him out. With one hand gripped around the back of my neck, he drags me all the way off the set and slams me on top of the hood of my car.

  “Now get out of here and don’t come back.”

  Finally, the security guard lets go of me. The PA poses next to him, miscast in the role of co-enforcer. Aggravated, I say, “He told me you were done shooting tomorrow morning.”

  “Joe, give him the brochure so he’ll go away.”

  The PA hands me a dark red brochure from out of his cargo pocket. I read the front. It says the production finishes shooting tomorrow at 5 AM.

  “You’re both assholes, you know that?” Both the kid and the security guard laugh at me.

  Opening my car, I tell them, “I’ll be here the second you wrap.”

  As I drive away, I check my rearview mirror. They’re still watching me.

  EXPOSING THE DOOR

  I disregard calls and texts from my parents, my brother, and a friend who’s getting married in three months. He wants to know if I need my plus one. I should sleep. I have no idea where to go.

  Out of spite, I start to tweet about the movie set. But as I’m typing in the names of the actors and the director, a thought comes to me – what if I use Twitter to expose the Door to the world? I’ve been afraid to broaden awareness of it in the event that doing so might put others in danger. Now, I view this scenario as less of a possibility. I’m fairly confident the other world only affects people who enter the Door. Yet, I also wonder what, if anything, there is for me to gain by relaying my experiences online, especially at this point.

  Ultimately, what stops me from tweeting about the Door is my desire for secrecy. It could, I realize, be the best concept I’ve ever had for a movie – except I didn’t dream it up, I found it in real life. I can see turning the journal I’ve been keeping into a memoir and then adapting that into a screenplay. The search for Naomi – this thing that’s been so terrible – could be what breaks my writer’s block and launches my career. But if I were to convincingly expose the Door to the public now, before finishing either project, undoubtedly someone else would explore the other world for themselves. Their experiences might be more compelling than mine. Reporters, scientists, and academics would conduct their own studies and take command of the narrative as it’s presented to the masses. If I reveal the existence of the Door before I complete my story, I lose whatever proprietary advantage I have.

  I back out of Twitter. A flush of excitement from this revelation eases my need to sleep. I don’t know how long it will last. Talking to someone would help me stay awake. Kirsten said she wanted me to call her, but I’ve been holding off because I wasn’t sure how to avoid discussing the Door. Within this new framework I’m contemplating, however, there may be a way to talk to about what’s been happening as if it’s a screenplay I’m working on. We’re both writers. I could couch the conversation in terms of wanting her opinion on the characters, the struct
ure, and the premise.

  I call her. After the second ring I almost hang up but then she answers. “Hi,” I say.

  There is silence.

  I stutter through explaining it’s me.

  She laughs.

  “It really is a hilarious name,” I joke.

  This makes her laugh more and then I start laughing too. I wait for us to both quiet down before saying anything else, as my thoughts drift back to the Door. In less than twenty-four hours, the film crew will be gone.

  I hope they don’t find it before they leave.

  THE BROKEN CONVERSATION

  Me: How’s it going?

  Kirsten: Good. I’m laughing! You didn’t give me your number so I didn’t know it was you and I just felt lost. Where are you? It’s so early.

  [I look at the clock. It’s 6:38 AM. I wasn’t paying attention.]

  Me: Shit, I didn’t even- It’s 6:30 in the morning…

  [She laughs.]

  Kirsten: It’s okay! I’m bored. I’m at the airport.

  Me: You’re going back to LA?

  Kirsten: Yeah. And I just found out my flight got pushed. I’m stuck here all day.

  Me: How long is all day?

  Kirsten: They think I can get on the 6:20 flight. They think. I hope. If I have to sleep in the airport…

  Me: Hard to imagine anything worse than that.