by Glen Krisch
Running away from sleep had been one thing. All he had to do was avoid that inevitable pull to close his eyes, to shut his mind from the waking world. Running away from a beast like Mr. Freakshow was fear on a whole new level.
His shoes striking the pavement seemed incredibly loud as he ran down the street. He was a block from his grandma's house and already gasping for breath. Slow down, slow down, or you won't last an hour on your own.
He took a deep breath and eased into a trot as he approached the baseball field. With the moonlight obscured by clouds, the chain link backstop looked even more like a giant set of ribs half buried in the infield. He stepped through the entrance to the infield and went over to home plate, his face burning from fear and sweat. For the first time since he woke little more than five minutes ago, he wondered what time it was. He sat cross-legged on home plate, trying to collect his thoughts. His mind kept drifting to the other day when he was playing ball at this very field. It seemed so long ago. Everyone had been happy.
"You seem stressed out," a familiar voice called out from the darkness near the aluminum bleachers.
Kevin jumped to his feet, ready to run in a split second.
"Chill out." The voice was familiar, but his mind was such a mess he couldn't place it. "Hope you didn't piss yourself." Reid stepped into a small patch of moonlight, a cigarette dangling from his peach-fuzzed lip.
"I didn't see you," Kevin said, catching his breath.
"Things are fucked up." Reid came closer. He had a swollen lip seeping blood. "You know."
Seeing Reid's face looking like a raw steak pulled Kevin away from his own thoughts. He couldn't take his eyes from Reid's battered face.
"Hey man, take a picture."
"What happened?"
Reid took an awkward drag on his cigarette, and then did his best to hold the butt on his swollen lip as he spoke. "Sometimes people get mad. Not like angry mad; I mean mad mad. Just… crazy, like some kind of monster."
Kevin thought he knew what he meant. He did his best not to stare, tried instead to act like this meeting was the most casual thing to ever happen.
"You want one of these? I swiped them from my step mom."
"Yeah, sure." He didn't really want one, but didn't want to look like a chump in front of Reid.
Reid floated him the cigarette, and Kevin put it to his lip. When Reid struck a wooden match, Kevin saw his friend's left eye had taken some damage, too. Luckily, the lit cigarette in his mouth was enough to distract him from Reid's face.
"So where you off to?" Reid asked, giving Kevin's backpack a small kick.
"Not sure yet." Kevin felt a strange surge of confidence, as if he were an adult. Then he took a drag on the cigarette, and all the false bravado left him just as fast as the smoke expelled from his lungs.
"Take it easy. Not so much," Reid said with a chuckle.
"Where you going?" Kevin imagined the two of them running away from their problems together, tramping the countryside like Tom and Huck.
"Back home."
"But what about…"
"This?" Reid said, pointing to his face. "This is nothing. This is two hundred dollars and missing the first week of school."
"He gives you money for that?"
"If I don't tell my mom. It's not like he drinks or nothing. He just goes mad every once in a while. Once he calms down, he's an all right guy."
"That sucks."
"It could be worse. Now this," Reid said as he lifted up his shirt. Even in the obscured moonlight a section of his ribs jutted out, almost like he was carrying a chunk of rock under his skin. "This got me almost the whole summer with no hassles. I played ball all summer, went to the pool day or night, had as much spending money as I wanted. I guess my luck ran out."
"Haven't you told anyone?"
"And ruin a good thing?" Reid said. They were quiet for a couple of minutes. Not even a bird's chirp broke the silence. "You'll keep it quiet, right? You've got your shit to deal with, too, right? I don't see any marks on you, so I'm guessing what they do to you is much worse than I get. But that doesn't mean you go off and tell anyone."
"Yeah, no problem." Kevin had puffed on his cigarette until it was down to the filter, keeping the smoke from entering his lungs. He was shocked that Reid would think someone abused him. Once and for all, he wanted to set him straight. He wanted to tell him that a monster was coming for him, and that it wanted to kill him.
And another thing, I created this monster in my own head.
It was easier letting Reid think what he wanted.
"Old man's probably as cool as a cucumber now. If things settle down for you, I guess I'll see you when school starts next Monday, that is, if this shit's cleared up," Reid said, pointing to his face. "Otherwise, it's been…"
"Yeah, I know. Later."
Reid nodded goodbye and left the brief halo of moonlight. Kevin was once again alone, but now more scared than when he left his grandma's house. Inside were people who loved him and would never do anything to harm him. But he also knew he could never go back, not as long as Mr. Freakshow was coming for him. He watched Reid disappear into the night, and for a fleeting moment, Kevin thought his friend was brave for going back home. Knowing that his dad was probably going to beat the crap out of him again, and then to simply take it like it was just another nuisance of life… if only life could be that simple.
Kevin hefted his backpack squarely between his shoulders, and headed for the thin row of trees beyond the baseball field. His mom told him she once built tree houses there. Maybe he would find an old tree house--one possibly built by his mom when she was a kid--and hide out long enough for Mr. Freakshow to forget about him.
Chapter 15
Maury regained consciousness covered in blood. For a moment, he wondered where he was and what had happened, but then an image flashed through his head--Mr. Freakshow's broad forearm flying into him, sending him crashing into a wall. Maury's head cleared, and he picked himself off the floor. He checked his body for injuries, but only noticed a few scrapes and bruises, nothing fatal, no broken bones. He took in his surroundings and realized he was still in Mr. Freakshow's enclosure. Bloody pools dotted the floor and walls. He touched his face and felt a patch of dried blood from a shallow gash on his cheekbone.
The floor had shallow grooves dug into it. They were widely spaced and didn't make sense. Maury spread his fingers over some of them and suddenly understood that they were from the claws of one of the dreams. He shuddered as he pulled back his hand and looked at his surroundings in a new light.
At some point during his unconsciousness, the glass wall had been shattered. Glass he and Gage thought would never break. So much for state of the art. An odor permeated the air. Soured milk? Or something far worse? Most likely something he didn't want to consider. With the door to Mr. Freakshow's enclosure thrown wide and the glass wall shattered, anything could have happened when he was unconscious. He approached the shattered glass clinging to the frame of the enclosure. He didn't want to look outside the room, but he had no other choice. Careful not to cut himself, he braced himself and slowly leaned his head through the opening.
At the far end of the hall, a squat creature the size of a German Sheppard sat on four spidery legs. It was tugging at the remains of what once could have been a person. The lighting was too dim to tell from this distance exactly what the nightmare was toying with.
Just outside the door, something had pulled up floor tiles and tooled sharp chunks of concrete from underneath, making the hallway look like a potholed street in a sketchy neighborhood. The overhead fluorescent lights hung lopsided, and their ballasts gave off an occasional dying flicker. Maury stuck to the shadows near the wall as he left the enclosure. Judging by the condition of the hallway, he had to get to a phone as soon as possible. Mr. Freakshow had obviously set the dreams free. He couldn't imagine all the chaos they would cause once free of Lucidity's walls.
When he was close enough to see the sparse green hair on spider-cr
eature's legs, Maury could also see that it was tearing apart Peter. Of course, Peter-what's-his-name. The concessions' manager. Maury had never really met the guy. He was just someone who ran a cash register and little more.
"Peter…" Maury whispered. He still couldn't remember his last name. He approached the spider-creature cautiously, the scientist in him curious about the natural mechanisms of this dream. One of Peter's arms was missing and the other was a stunted stub just above the elbow that continued to stubbornly shake with life like a deflating balloon. One eye was bruised shut, while the other remained stationary. His pupil was a distorted cloud shape. His legs were intact, but the dreams had attacked his groin area, and a good deal of it was gone, making it appear as if his legs were literally as high as his ribs.
Maury didn't know how Peter was still alive. There was no reason for it. The remains of his limbs twitched randomly, the last vestiges of life spastically leaving him. The spider-creature growled at Maury, and it hunkered down on its thin legs, burying its velvet fangs into its prey.
Peter was beyond help. Maury needed to get to a phone. He left the Nightmare Wing, but stopped at the hand-carved railing that encircled the marble stairs. The foyer was in shambles below. Smoke swirled from small fires. The concessions stand was in tatters. He ran down the steps, and when he picked up the phone, it didn't have a dial tone. If only he had his cell phone with him. The wooden front doors were open--one hung at an odd angle on its bent hinge--and sunlight lit the opening like a waiting mouth. The museum of dreams was destroyed. Empty.
He could hear sirens in the distance, and people screaming. Shocked voices, pained voices, violent grunts mixed with languid laughter; it was all one jumbled mess. Somehow, his mother of all fuck-ups kept getting worse. He was lamenting his inability to make one good decision in his life, when it dawned on him. When he thought about it, the situation worsened yet again.
Juliet.
The one person he thought he could love. She was somewhere out in that craziness. With the stupidity that allowed him to open the Freak's enclosure in the first place, Maury Bennett charged blindly into the waiting mouth of the open door, one word subverting all other thoughts: Juliet.
Mr. Freakshow found solace during his night's escape among the shadows. Hiding never crossed his mind; his arrogance was far too great for that. He had no fear of humans. No one would dare hunt him like an animal, and if they did, he would snuff out their lives like cigarette ash. If he rendered Kevin nearly catatonic before the extraction, the boy would just about drop dead if he saw him now in the flesh, unimpeded by shackles or walls or panes of shatter-proof glass. The nightmare's hatred had only grown after the extraction and it had sharpened his focus and left him a more prudent creature. There was no sense in making a lavish, attention-grabbing foray down major streets. He would never find the boy if he took such a path. He stayed in the shadows in an attempt at anonymity.
He tried to rein in his form to one more suited to human eyes. His hatred tempered his ability to completely change his form into something gentler. He fashioned a boring ensemble from what he'd seen a human wear outside his enclosure. Changing his clothes didn't change his hulking size, so he slumped down as far as possible to conceal his height. A single set of headlights blazed through his path of semi-darkness. A rush of brightness lit his way, allowing him to stare into the bleary whites of the obviously drunk driver. So close, he thought, so close, but it's still too early. He wouldn't risk his immortality for a little fun of feeding on an unaware human. The car snailed down the block, lucky to hold the curb as it turned the corner.
Mr. Freakshow was on the edge of the city, walking by houses shielded behind wrought iron bars. Even after visiting the boy during his paralyzed semi-sleep state, Mr. Freakshow only had a vague idea of his home's location. Since the boy didn't know the city's layout, Mr. Freakshow's knowledge was just as limited. He started in the direction his instincts told him was correct. By first light tomorrow, Mr. Freakshow would have his freedom.
The wish-fulfillment dream, Johnny Flower, walked in his oh-so-cool manner, swaying his flared jeans like it was as natural as the clouds in the star-studded sky. He was an amalgam of his dreamer, an unemployed cyber geek, and the outward persona of John Lennon. The dream's tight fitting paisley shirt was unbuttoned down to his breastbone and the shirt cuffs flared out similarly to his jeans. It was the deadest time of night and Johnny Flower still wore his rose-colored granny glasses. His thin lips highlighted his oval face, and his long, center-parted hair was a shade lighter than chocolate. The residential neighborhood he wandered through was a real bore. He looked at the horizon and could see lights like a halo over the city. That's where he needed to be. That's where he would find people of his ilk and acumen. After his inhumane and utterly barbaric imprisonment, Johnny was craving a lively conversation. Politics, the War, artwork--the topic didn't matter, just as long as the person he was interacting with had a well thought-out idea to offer.
After an hour or so, Johnny found himself in a shady-looking neighborhood. Trash littered the street and graffiti covered the buildings. Half the streetlights looked shot out. He was going to push on to the next neighborhood, but Johnny could hear music--beautiful blues guitar and throaty lyrics pumping through cheap amplifiers. The shanty bar on the corner was like a magnet to Johnny. The name, Pop's, was styled in fancy curlicues on the small neon sign in the barred window. Pop's was the only part of the block not boarded up.
Johnny entered the building and realized he once played his own style of music in small dive bars like this. It was before he grew his hair long. Before the hysteria and drugs. Before he found his true calling: Peace. Johnny hid in a dark corner of the bar, the atmosphere leavening his mood. He let the blues pour through his body like a soul enriching lifeblood. No one took note of his presence. When a down on her heel waitress came over to ask for his order, he mumbled for a glass of water, saying little more the rest of the night. He closed his eyes, and remembered a time when people could make a difference by just voicing the truth.
Esmeralda was a beautiful young lady. Her hair was cut to a short bob, but it only made her high cheekbones seem more pronounced and revealed her slender neck to full advantage. Her almond-shaped eyes were exotic and dark. She was also completely aware of her surroundings, not like most of the other dreams set free by Mr. Freakshow. Her only problem was the fact that she was naked. Naked, unless an ever-flowing mantel of beady-eyed rats covering her body was considered clothing. Yes, she was naked, excluding the fabric of furry rodents covering her womanly charms. They didn't bite her; they simply annoyed her, wiping her with an errant tail or squeaking loud enough to blot out her hearing as they scurried about her body. Esmeralda had tried any number of ways to make the rats disappear, but with no luck. After waiting for the other dreams to take their chaos outside, she had made her escape as well. She didn't want to be swept up in the tide of violence and depravity unleashed by the Freak, so she had waited. She wasn't that sort of dream. Esmeralda thought of herself as normal as any human.
She just had her one little problem.
She walked down a flight of concrete steps after exiting a vacant alley. When she reached the bottom, she realized she had entered a subway. The booth was empty and she hopped over a metal railing. The triple pairs of rails arched around a curve, and the concrete benches around the subway stop were empty. She could see a couple of people in the distance, but no one was close enough to see her little problem.
The roaring of an approaching train shook the ground before the lights appeared from around the corner. Esmeralda didn't know what to do. She stepped behind a concrete pillar. She was thinking about an escape route when the train pulled up with screeching brakes and a rumbling growl. A handful of bleary-eyed travelers disembarked from the train, and most appeared to be sleepwalking through the subway as if they had walked through the dark cavern a million times.
She felt a bond with these city people. Maybe they would accept her into their
society. But they seemed to act like watched prey, quite aware of the danger of hidden predators. Esmeralda, feeling a strange surge of panic, waited for the unsuspecting humans to discover her.
When the small pack of people rounded the pillar, Esmeralda was the first to scream. The humans quickly joined her, mixing with the chorus of squealing dream-rats. Everyone screamed a long, seemingly cathartic scream, but after Esmeralda ran out of sight around the curve of the subway, she didn't feel better for it, and she assumed no else did either.
At the water cooler tomorrow, the first rumors of a Queen of the Rats would start. The rumors would become myth, then become legend. People would write stories with her as the subject. Eventually someone would create a comic book starring the Queen of the Rats and the curse of her ever-flowing mantle of vermin. But her end would come soon enough. Once the police figured out how to contain the situation, Esmeralda would be one of the first dreams recaptured.
Juliet stood in the parking lot in front of Lucidity, wondering where Maury was, and if he was still alive. If Mr. Freakshow got his hands on him, there might not be anything left of him. She felt a strange, nearly overpowering sensation deep within her chest. It didn't make her exactly forget her desire to place a gun to her chin and blow her brains out, but it was a distraction from it. The sensation was a throbbing need. When she thought of Maury, and his penetrating eyes, the gentle touch of his fingers, it only intensified this sensation. She left the parking lot, searching out with all her senses for the man that made her feel so… feel so real.