Dead Lines

by John Skipp; Craig Spector

  And my eyes snap open. And they lock on yours. And I see the same conflict that must show in my eyes; see them mirror my shock at recognition; smile, as we simultaneously reach the same conclusion.

  It’s true.

  My God, it’s truel

  IT’S TRUE! I let out a howl of lunatic joy and leap into the air, knocking my chair over and not caring the tiniest damn bit. You are here, you are here, I can’t fucking believe it! I watch as the chair goes ka-boom behind me, turn to see you suddenly giggling.

  As if on cue, the world grinds back into action. It’s like opening time at Robot World: everyone jerks to life in ultra-slow-motion, while the Great Soundtrack rumbles ponderously into our ears from all directions and steadily accelerates. I spot one old geek who’s had his finger in his nose this whole time, withdrawing the dirty digit and examining it verrrrrrrry slowwwwwwwwly; that’s the end of the line, boy. I lose it entirely.

  Suddenly I am running in mock slow motion, arms outstretched, toward you. You get it instantly, break into matching hysteria. But this ain’t Hollywood, and you can’t quite bring yourself to sink that low. Besides, you’re helpless. I, too, only manage another three or four steps before I’m forced to stagger the rest of the way, clutching my belly and blinded by tears. I stagger, chest flooded with joy, and then we are in each other’s arms.

  We are in each other’s arms, laughing and hugging, while the universe stabilizes. Everything is back to normal, except…you are here. I squeeze you as tight as I can, indescribably happy, wanting to kiss but afraid that we’d bit off our tongues. We gasp for breath, pressed-tight chests pounding.

  I love you, I think/feel in one massive burst of internal fireworks, but no words will come. I manage a quick, noisy kiss to the side of your head instead. Suddenly you bury your face in my shoulder, desperation appearing in your embrace; and it is only a moment before I realize that you are no longer laughing, though you shudder more ferociously than before.

  Instantly, one of my hands is up to stroke your hair. Wordlessly consoling, my mind fishes for the right words nonetheless. I drop my line into the vast unreason; I cast about in the confusion wrought by your abrupt turnaround. I look for something that will help, put things in perspective. I hear my mind whisper why are you crying? and it seems like as good a place as any to start.

  But before I can articulate my thought, you bring your lips to my ear; and in a quivering voice both husky and tender, you very quietly exclaim, “I thought I’d never find you …” and then break into loud, irrepressible sobbing.

  “I know,” I murmur, pouring every bit of empathy I have into you, painfully aware of every little scar that the long cold years have lain on me and knowing that each of them has found its counterpart in you. My mind races through the past, flashes on a billion distinct moments of loneliness, futility, and despair; I reexperience the anguish in tidal waves of feeling that wash us overunderthru.

  And my mind cuts loose from my body somehow to run down the corridors of your mind. To see the billion split-second agonies of your parallel quest. To see the forms that your pain and joy have taken.

  I see them all. They’re all there.

  And, omigod, how good it feels to have someone to share it with! Someone who understands completely!

  It is only a moment before I realize that I am crying, too.

  The ride home is one unspeakably beautiful kiss. It is something from beyond my wildest dreams; it is exactly the way I always knew it would be. Two mouths that were made to engage at the lips, a pair of telepathic tongues. Two souls that have been starving for the taste of each other, now able to feast in boundless abundance. The cabbie may be heading to my place by way of Australia; we’ll never know. This is a covenant, written in spit and swirling motion. This is most holy communion. This is… more important.

  Similarly, the walk through the front door and up the steps fades from memory almost before it happens. Almost as if it doesn’t happen; as though ghosts have slipped in from the void to inform us subliminally of the occurrence.

  Then we are at the door, laughing again, while I fumble with the keys to my apartment. I think (not remembering, even now) that I never do find the right one, but we kinda just float through the door anyway. I think that’s what happens, but I’m not exactly sure.

  What the fuck. I don’t care. We are inside now; inside. That’s all that really matters. We are free now to fully explore each other, without further delay; unencumbered by any physical reality that isn’t thoroughly conducive to our… explorations. We pause to hold each other with our eyes in the hallway, then take hands and slide dreamily inward. Deeper. All the way in to where I live.

  We wander, then, through the trappings of my life, scattered like flotsam on the shore of my sprawling loft apartment. Here, a series of canvases near to completion. Here and there, the components of my massive stereo system. Here, a pile of crumpled sheets and clothing, slopped randomly on a sofa that sits in the spaciousness like an island. We wander like spirits through the huge and emptiness, through the only occasionally brilliant clutter spewed about it.

  We wander, comparing notes on this and that: movies we both love; foods; philosophies. It’s hardly necessary; a relic from that other life, the life that ended about an hour ago. A mere formality, fun on top but a trifle scary below the surface. We do it anyway, not knowing what else to do, until we reach the bed.

  “Seat?” I ask, gesturing with my free hand. You give me a look that says of course, you fool, and we sit. Snuggle. Pause, then, to survey the vastness.

  I am overwhelmed, suddenly, by exactly how empty my life has been up to now. How miniscule my accomplishments: what measly Bic lighters in an infinite dark sea they’ve been, flicking on punily to illuminate solittle! So little! I clench up suddenly, jerking you toward me without meaning to. You have me by the shoulders in an instant, while I grip my face and cower away from the horror of it.

  “What is it?” you ask me, all concern and certainly knowing; entertaining only that fraction of doubt that keeps one from jumping to conclusions (another relic). I pull myself together inwardly, try to put a label on it myself. I fish for the words. They come up from the depths like Godzilla and I am dragged by their force.

  “It’s just so sad,” I say with effort, “to look at what I’ve been. It’s like I’ve been a scrap of a human, picking through the graveyard of my own bones, trying to find the rest of me and rejoicing over every discarded shin I find.” No, that won’t do it. I try again. “Like I’ve caved in on the inside, and everything’s just rubble all over the place.” No. “Like…” and then you shush me, and I am silent.

  “It’s like one-half of you has been missing for all these years,” you say, and the blinders start to slip from my eyes. I blink at you; you are glowing like heaven. I almost cry out, but you are not finished.

  “Listen,” you say. “Nobody can fill up this empty shell for you. You are not this empty shell. We’ll move out, we’ll set up the place where we were meant to live. Okay?”

  I nod.

  “Do you understand what’s going on?” you ask. I struggle for a second, while white light burns the last vestiges away.

  “We are one being,” you say. “We are really, truly, but one being.”

  And the room suddenly goes shimmery-white. Timeless. Motionless.

  And we are on the bed, and I am undressing you And you are undressing me And after I am done, then you undress me And I undress you

  And I am you are running flesh over flesh inna hot pulsing HOO boy your my arms legs wrapped around in me you I’m in o

  ■

  I’ve been waiting. All my life. To meet. Me.

  .............................................................

  .............................................................

  ...............OCTOBER

  8

  SECRETS

  MME, DALY’S LESS-THAN-DAILY DIARRHEA

  OCT. 3

  So much to r
ecount, since last we spoke. The good, the bad, the perverse, the sublime, the tragic, the fantastic, and the merely absurd. From boring busywork to spooky manifestations, from friendly fun to forbidden longings, these last thirty-odd days have had it all. To lodge it firmly in historical context, to whit, toot sweet, and dot dot dot:

  Having successfully navigated a full month in the City of Dreams without crapping out of college, falling in love with a loser, getting ravished by hooligans, or crawling home to Daddy, our heroine pauses to savor sweet victory. The scene: Cafe Degli Artisti. The time: the present (no time quite like it). Her mission: to get it all down on paper, then craftily scheme ahead.

  First, the boring part.

  Looking back on it, the first week of school was a tactical nightmare, but our heroine has expected no less. She has braved the crowds of scuttling paper-pushers with grace and aplomb, coming away with: (a) a laminated I.D. card emblazoned with a photo so unflattering that it lacks only a tendril of drool dangling from her lower lip to make the insult complete; and (b) a roster of classes as diverse as they are unchallenging. All smoke and fury, signifying nothing; just the way she wants it.

  She does not move toward any officially sanctioned goal; no piece of paper or cushy job-slot propels her dreams. Far from it. No, our heroine’s path is a subtle, meandering thing, full of mystery and intrigue. She steps from moment to moment as she would cross a rocky mountain stream, scarcely knowing where her next step will take her until she gets there.

  All of which is lost on the mighty educational juggernaut, she knows, as well as on the Beast of Back Bay, who has long since returned to his lair, where he growls often but writes regular checks. No matter. Our heroine uses the routines to keep the Beast at bay. Schedules are established, noses are placed to grindstones, and the juggernaut chugs forth. Our heroine knows the institutional ropes like any good rat knows the corridors of its maze; very quickly she can run them by rote.

  Which leaves her free to explore the City, and the myriad miracles to be found therein. Not the least of which is the book, into which she loses herself at every opportunity.

  And the Keeper. Who is nowhere to be found at all…

  Meryl paused over her journal and stared into the cup of cappuccino, as if to divine some secret in the cinnamon and steamed milk. The coffee shop was darkly warm and inviting, decorated in sooty wood and glass and brick. It smelled of coffee and chocolate, of sugar and spice and clove cigarettes. It was a big favorite of brooding writers, poets, and intelligentsia, an ideal place to wile away the hours lost in thought or pointlessly pointed discourse. Meryl had fallen in love with it instantly. She wondered if J. E had done the same. But if he was the man in the photograph, she hadn’t seen him, and didn’t now. And if he wasn’t, then how the hell would she know? She clearly couldn’t go up to every stranger who looked like he might have a brain and say excuse me, but your name wouldn’t happen to be… ? It was too goddam ridiculous.

  Outside, Greenwich Avenue bustled, drawn entirely in shades of gray. Fall had fallen early this year; the temperature was cool, and the clouds hung like a shroud in what sky you could see if you looked straight up between the buildings. It was perfect weather in which to contemplate mysteries.

  Or better yet, to jot them down…

  With regards to J. E, my mystery man; i’ve been digging around everywhere, from Waldenbooks to B. Dalton to The Mysterious Book Shop and Forbidden Planet, not to mention the college and public libraries, and nobody’s ever heard of Nightmare, New York City or anything else he might have written. Not only that, but his name’s not listed anywhere in the five-borough area, i suppose i could check out Hoboken and such, but somehow i don’t think New Jersey holds the key to the answers i seek. It’s getting to the point where i’m almost tempted to call the Beast and beg for the name of his real estate connection. But not quite. That would tend to take the fun out of it.

  And what fun it is. Dearest Diarrhea, i tell you true: i think i should like to buy that gentleman a drink. He has so completely colored my perceptions of the City… so completely brought to life its hidden corners and shadowed depths… that i often find myself seeing it as if through his eyes. As if he were not only beside me, but inside me (pant pant, more on that later), informing my perspectives with his own experiences both real and fabricated, breaking down the line between and making them mine.

  And it extends beyond the internal (as if that weren’t enough). His book is a walking tour of the City, i visit the sites of his various stories, and they’re just as i had pictured them… no. More precisely: just as he said they would be.

  i walk through the City and every step of the way, i’m haunted by a prescience, a deja vu-like sense of familiarity. It’s an intimate recognition, core-deep and vivid, rendering the sights and smells and tactile sensations as much a part of my personal history as the life i’ve actually led. i feel as though i’m inside his people: living their lives, dying their deaths, i feel as though i’m inside his place.

  i lay awake at night, sometimes, and can hear the City breathing.

  His stories have made an urban empath out of me. And his stories are bringing me closer, with every turn of the page, to a world that exists beyond the paper in my hands. Bringing me closer to him.

  Which brings me to the dreams, and the truly strangest aspect of this phase of my life. To call them beguiling and bewildering is a sizeable understatement. Hot, i think, is a more accurate description. And perplexing as all get-out.

  Because, though i’ve spent the bulk of this past year in self-imposed celibacy—with nary a complaint, i might add—the last two dozen nights or so have been spent in fairly animate sexual abandon. Which is to say that i’ve been lucking my brains out. In my dreams. With the mystery man.

  Now, i know what Daddy’s shrinks would say; and in certain respects, they would probably be right. Twelve months of libidinous inactivity would tend to indicate a motherlode of repressed sexuality, simmering down there beneath the surface, and under a considerable amount of pressure. Enough to turn coal into honey, so to speak.

  Except…

  Except for the way that the dreams have unfolded. In the beginning, they were frankly pretty terrifying. Erotic at the outset, and then flip-flopping suddenly into panic, with an underlying motif of corruption (by which i mean physical decomposition). Yucky stuff, which never failed to wake me up feeling unpleasantly wired and ready for a nerve-balming drink (or three). It went on like that for about a couple of weeks, until i didn’t even want to sleep anymore; i’d just stay up, working on stuff, until i literally collapsed from exhaustion.

  But then the pattern shifted, as if the dream had gotten crafty, i would no longer find myself appearing in the bed, already in motion and ripe for horrific disappointment. Instead, a gradual process of seduction began, maddening in its precision and ultimate inexorable success, i tell you true: if anyone on the physical plane ever wooed me this way, i’d throw it all away, every dream of doing it all solely on my own terms. Shoot, i’d throw myself away, in true zen fashion, giving in to the river and letting it take me away, if anyone were to ever treat me this way in real life. Which is, in itself, a terrifying revelation at best.

  i know what you’re thinking, dearest Diarrhea. A classic case of neurotic transference, i find the stories, i become obsessed, i begin to fantasize, fitting the face from the picture to the man the box reveals. The corruption motif is my fear of involvement, my fear of men period, my undeniable distrust. Maybe even throw Daddy in there: as a symbol of masculinity and corruption hand-in-hand, he certainly can’t be beat.

  Then my mind strives to make the thing palatable, and so concocts the ultimate seduction sequence, geared completely to my needs. Before long, i’m whining to have the damn thing come true. Reading the words down on paper, it’s almost enough to convince me you’re right. It’s so fucking obvious, in fact, that i should probably tear these pages right out of your body and forget i even mentioned it.

  Except…


  Except that there’s more going on here than your simplistic Freudian bullshit. There is more in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy. Because Katie’s dreams are running an interesting (to say the least) parallel to my own.

  Which means that it’s probably time to tell you about her.

  She’s my roommate, as you ought to know. What’s more, and even more surprising, is that she’s my friend, i like Katie so much that it’s kind of unnerving; i’ve never had a close friend like her (like this is news? i’ve never had a close friend, period,) and i certainly wasn’t in the market for one. But Katie’s different—certainly different from most people i know, and about as far from yours truly as two people can get and still be classified as the same species. She’s really beautiful in that disgustingly blonde and built and tan way, and she’s so damned sweet that it’s kinda hard to not like her, which is the last kind of statement i though i’d ever make about a person.

  You know how i feel about sweetness in general. It makes me want to puke, i had enough saccharine sweetness in my father’s idea of heaven to send me all the way to Alpha Centauri, running solely on puke propulsion. Too many preppies from make-nice-money families, always on their best behavior. In public, anyway. The funny thing about phony smiles is that you always notice the teeth first. Go figure.

  But Katie comes from a different world (white trash from Selma, Alabama, to hear her tell it), and i’m surprised she’s managed to survive. She’s extremely sincere: a commodity so impractical that no one has bothered to build an exchange around it. There’s no percentage in it. It begs to get screwed. People see sincerity, and they get out their cutlery. (“Mmmmmm-mmm! This looks good enough to eat!”) No wonder she keeps winding up in horrible relationships with predatory fuckers.