by Glen Krisch
With the museum set to open the following Friday, Maury Bennett now spent most of his time here. More befitting the excitement surrounding the opening of an amusement park, Lucidity would open on the Friday night before Labor Day. There would be a write up in the Chicago Tribune's Weekend section, and Nolan Gage had mentioned renting giant lights to pan the sky like at an old-time movie premier.
As Maury headed for the elevator at the far side of the foyer, he caught a glimpse of a red light splashed across the floor leading into the Serenity Wing. He was about to investigate when the memory popped into his head. Rocky. He always imagined the dream cat would come for him. Not long after his brother's burial, Maury had heard the first murmurings. Rumors. Gossip. On the news or in three column inch stories hidden at the center of the newspaper. People would see a burning cat near their home. A little girl would come across a cat covered in flames stalking a field mouse.
Feeling foolish, Maury ducked into the Serenity Wing, and felt even more foolish for the cause. He had been scared by an illuminated exit sign.
He chuckled to himself as he walked back to the elevator. As he pressed the down button, the memory of his brother became his focal point. Dale, his constant shadow growing up. The little pest could get on his nerves in a split second or bring out Maury's sensitive side with his unrelenting devotion. He missed his brother.
Dale pulled the tent flap closed, carrying yet another blanket from their mother just in case a blizzard might chase away the Indian Summer warmth of late September. It was closer to winter than the boys wanted to admit. It was the dying days for everything: the sun's warmth, the trees holding onto the last of their withered leaves, the last peaceful days for their family.
"They're drinking wine," Dale said. He had brought enough equipment for a week of camping down by the river, instead of a night in their backyard. There wasn't a single square inch free in the three-person tent.
"So, what's wrong with that?"
"They never drink wine. It's like they don't want us in the house. They're celebrating."
"You're crazy. Gimme your canteen."
"Told you you'd be thirsty," Dale said with his bunched up I told you so face. He tossed him the canteen anyway.
"Aw, I'm not thirsty. I just need to take a wiz." Maury put the canteen between his legs and pretended to unzip his fly.
Dale lunged for his canteen, but Maury held it at arm's length.
"Gimme it back."
"It's mine now." Maury let the canteen fall within easy reach of Dale's hand and then yanked it away. He sat on the canteen, grabbed Dale by the arm and peppered his shoulder with punches.
Dale squealed in pain, but after years of roughhousing, Maury knew his brother's pain threshold.
"Say uncle, little boy. Say it." Maury increased the force of his punches, focusing his knuckles at just the right pressure point.
Dale weaseled from Maury's grip and jumped onto Maury's left side. His little brother had never turned the tables on him, and thus had no idea of the rules for administering a beating.
"Ah ha! You say uncle, you little prick." Dale began pounding Maury's left arm without holding back anything.
Maury screamed himself hoarse as he felt pain tear through his permanently damaged left arm. Dormant scar tissue sprung to life. Frayed nerve endings showered his arm and torso with jarring impulses of electrical current. Dale didn't know that he had stepped beyond their game. He was finally pounding on his brother and didn't seem to want to stop.
"Uncle, damn it, uncle! Lay off," Maury whined through gritting teeth.
Dale let loose with one more roundhouse into the bony area near Maury's shoulder blade. He was panting and wearing a goofy grin as he leaned back against a mountain of blankets.
Maury slumped over and cradled his arm. He closed his eyes and it was all he could do to try to make the flashing pain in his arm disappear.
"I didn't hit you that hard," Dale said defensively after Maury hadn't moved or said anything for over a minute. Dale's breathing slowed, but sweat dripped from his face and his cheeks were flushed. He pulled the canteen from under Maury by its strap and took a long, victorious drink.
Through his blanket of pain, Maury heard the sliding door at the back of their house creep open. "Hey, keep it down out there, or the neighbors are going to think someone's getting murdered," their mother said. She shut the door before they could answer.
"I never knew you were such a wimp."
"That's my bad arm, asshole." Maury sat up, cradling his arm, but the pain had begun to subside.
"Oh, poor Maury," Dale said mockingly, but his face revealed that he truly was sorry. Maury guessed it was the closest thing he was going to get to an apology.
Maury dug through the blankets and duffle bags next to him until he uncovered a wrinkled brown paper lunch bag. He pulled out a package of pop rocks and tossed it to his brother. "Take this. I was going to keep them as a surprise, but you always seem to ruin all the fun anyway. Eat'em up, but don't talk to me," Maury said.
Dale tore off the top of the black packet and tossed a few of the tiny pebbles into his mouth. They snapped and bit into his tongue, but Dale looked about as sad as a kid could look.
"I'm sorry, Maury. I forgot about your arm. You've been better for so long, I don't even, you know, see the scars no more. It's like there weren't no fire."
Maury held a packet of pop rocks in his hand, but hadn't opened it. In his mind he replayed what his brother had just said, and was instantly sorry for getting so pissed off. It was the first time since the fire that he could remember someone treating him like a normal person. At school he felt like an alien fallen to earth. At the playground, kids would walk the other way when he approached. In the grocery store, parents would embarrassingly whisper to their kids to stop pointing at him.
Instead of embracing his brother like he wanted to, Maury tore the top off his pop rocks and dumped the whole packet into his mouth. He let the candy foam from his lips and he bugged out his eyes like he was about to die. Dale let out a snort that turned into a giggle. He followed Maury's lead and emptied the rest of his candy into his mouth. Maury could barely contain his laughter, and for the briefest of moments, he was completely happy and had forgotten why he was so mad in the first place.
The tent was filled with the sound of popping rock candy and the last ragged jags of their laughter. Maury suddenly stopped laughing when he noticed a globe of blue light illuminating the tent wall by the zippered exit. He slapped Dale's arm, and his laughter died in his throat.
"Mom and Dad are trying to scare us for making so much noise," Maury whispered, inching closer to the door.
"Don't open it."
The light grew and brightened until the light shining through the thin material of the tent was nearly blinding.
Maury's mind raced, but he opened the zipper anyway. Blue light flooded the tent, throwing spastic shadows over every surface. Heat gushed through the opening like a breath from hell. As Rocky jumped through the slit opening, Maury fell to his back to avoid the cat. Dale began to scream again, and Maury was soon lending his voice to his cries for help.
Their parents were inside polishing off a second bottle of wine and didn't respond to their screams. Their neighbors, however, did end up calling the police. As it turned out, someone was being murdered.
The elevator slowed to a stop as it reached the basement. Maury stepped out and turned on the hall lights as he walked from one snaking hallway to the next. He took a cursory look around to make sure he was alone before entering one of the many doors leading to the rooms storing the dreams.
He had waited until the last of the workers had left and he was sure that he had the museum to himself. Last night he couldn't sleep after thinking up his little experiment, and then he had to wait through an entire day to begin. He felt like a kid waiting for Christmas morning.
When he entered the room, Juliet didn't seem surprised to see him. Rain pattered across her pale skin, plastering he
r auburn hair against her cheeks, nearly hiding her blue eyes. She gently placed the loaded dream-revolver on the park bench and walked barefoot through ankle deep rain puddles to the front of her confinement. Her sheer dress clung to her skin and a thin strap had fallen from her shoulder. He could see her breath condense in the chill air. Gooseflesh covered her arms.
The seemingly natural sunlight shining through the black-tinged clouds was disorienting so far from the surface of the real world. For all of the anticipation and excitement that marked his day, Maury was unsure of himself. He didn't know why he felt this way. Palms sweaty, temples pounding. He always thought of the dream-people as beings as dumb as cattle. They did what they were told. They went where you guided them.
Juliet placed first one hand then the other palm-flat against the enclosure glass. Maury hesitated, but approached the glass, copying her display. Without thinking, he nearly stumbled as he backed away. He felt something he should have expected, that he should have prepared himself for. Warmth. The simple process of energy conversion and the resulting dispersal of heat had made him as jelly-legged as a freshman at his first dance.
Juliet was grinning at Maury as a child would look at a puppy at play. She pursed her lips and lightning tore through the dream clouds above her, small vibrations trembling through the basement walls. She breathed a circle of fog onto the glass and traced her index finger along its surface.
Hi
Thrown off by Juliet's seamless humanity, Maury began to question why he had come down here in the first place. It seemed so childish to him now. So childish and wrong. He had planned to enter her enclosure. He was going to instruct her like the simple-minded thing that she was to strip herself naked, and then he was going to… why he was going to do whatever he damn well pleased. And now, the simple act of feeling warmth through the glass, feeling warmth emanating from this specter of the mind, this embodied psychological enchantment, made him feel something totally foreign to his nervous system. Guilt.
"How are you?" He stepped closer to the glass, feeling slightly less jelly-legged.
He put his palms against the glass and she mirrored his movements. He felt the warmth, expected this time, and when she looked him in the eye, she didn't flinch. When her eyes wandered from his eyes to his cheeks and neck and his burden of marred flesh, she didn't shy away or look sickened by his appearance.
She met his eyes and now he saw pain below the surface. Not the bleak, depressive pain she normally carried, but something different.
"Sorry, poor boy." Her voice was thin and melodic, on the verge of breaking. A bare silver tear, a speck of crystal in the flowing rivulets of rainwater drenching her, filled her eye, fell from her heavy lashes.
He pulled his hands away. Pulled away from the trance she seemed to have on him. He sat on the edge of the battered desk and suddenly hated her, this dream-woman. He didn't want her pity. He wanted to enter her enclosure, tear the clothes from her and mount her like a wild fucking animal.
"Fuck you," he said, mostly to himself, defeat in his voice. "I did this to myself." He touched the familiar brown and pink scars on his cheek, the smooth surface that was his living torture.
Juliet retreated to the park bench and covered her face in her hands. He could hear her sobs through the glass. When the clouds broke and the rain eased, he jumped to his feet.
He had forgotten about the time. He had been in the little room for at least ten minutes. Juliet picked up the gun and placed the barrel against her chin.
Maury opened the access door to the small hallway leading to the entrance of her enclosure. He fumbled with his keys, finally found the right one, and fumbled with getting it into the keyhole. He threw open the door, splashed through the cold rain puddles and grabbed Juliet's forearm. His actions deflected the gunshot and the bullet sheared through her cheekbone, split her eye socket, exposed a swath of brain matter through her shattered skull.
"Why? Why do you do this?" She slumped into his arms and he cradled her. He could feel her quake as shock settled in. Blood flowed freely onto his shirt and down his pant legs.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Juliet's body fought to hold onto her fleeting life. A seizure gripped her in its fist, and spasms shook her wildly in his arms. Soon, her breathing slowed. Maury held her until she died. Then her wounds began to heal, to disappear altogether. The crimson glow of life crept back into her cheeks, human quality spreading once again throughout her body. Blood soaked, but without a wound to show for it, Juliet opened her eyes. She had changed, somehow through her interaction with Maury, she had broken her cycle of death and life. The clouds reformed and a chilly rain began to fall, washing most of the blood and gore from their bodies.
Maury leaned over, kissed Juliet's forehead.
Maury didn't know about the immortality of dreams until after Rocky killed his brother.
His parents were never religious people, but they were wearing their Sunday best the day they signed over Maury as a ward of the state. He sat in a secretary's office, in an orange vinyl chair that had foam busting through a split seam. The secretary peered over what she was typing, looking at Maury over the fat brown rim of her glasses.
"You want some water? Or some coffee? Ha, who am I kidding? No coffee for you. Too young for that. I can get you some water though. It's kinda rusty from the pipes being old, but that shouldn't do no harm." Her eyes lingered on his face, and she couldn't help but shake her head.
"No thanks."
Maury didn't know why he was in this cramped office on the first Thursday afternoon after they buried Dale. But he had done what his dad had told him to do. He washed up after school, put on a suit his mom had bought for him for Dale's funeral, and he kept his mouth shut. The day they buried his brother, Maury had pleaded to keep his cap as they entered the church, but his mom had taken it from him. He couldn't concentrate during the entire funeral, not with so many eyes investigating his singed, pink scalp.
The dark gray suit didn't really fit, especially when he bent at the elbow. He had been preoccupied with trying not to bend his arms at the funeral, hoping no one would see his scabby wrists. When the priest had told them to kneel and pray for Dale's soul, his dad had nudged Maury with a sharp elbow for not clasping his hands together in prayer. He didn't like the suit in the first place, and now he was wearing it for the second time in a week.
His healing arm still itched as if festering insects were burrowing through his bones. He snuck his right hand up the sleeve and scratched until he felt pain in his skin. It didn't feel good, but at least he felt something in his arm. The doctors had told him he may never feel anything--that he would need to be careful not to put his arm in any danger. They had told him to keep it away from open flame (he told them he had learned that lesson already). They had also recommended keeping it away from extreme cold or prolonged sunlight. That seemed like an awful amount of responsibility for someone who had torched his family's home on a whim. If they had only known.
He didn't know how long his parents were in the office with the frosted glass door with that Mr. Smelzer guy, but it seemed like forever. Twenty minutes ago, he noted the time on a wall clock that looked just like the one from his homeroom at school. A stark white circle with thin black numerals. It seemed like time went by slower if he was ever in the presence of such a clock. He sighed in boredom, but at least boredom kept his mind off his dead brother.
When they had entered the waiting room, his dad had told him to sit quietly and to not touch anything. Not that he wanted to touch anything in the dust and cigarette smoke stained everything of the waiting area. So, an eternity plus twenty minutes equaled forever, at least in Maury's estimation, especially when you're wearing a Sunday best suit that doesn't quite fit.
The secretary, who seemed as uncomfortable as Maury in his suit, wore a brown woolen blazer. She kept looking from Maury to the frosted glass door. He was about to ask if she knew anything about what was going on (and he figured she knew something since
she seemed so twitchy and nervous), when Mr. Smelzer's office door opened. His parents emerged, his dad with a consoling arm around his mom's shoulder while she stared blankly at the floor. They had the door to the hallway open before Maury could even stand. His mom cried into her hands while his dad mumbled something in response as the door shut behind them.
Mr. Smelzer stood in the doorway to his office. He waved for Maury to follow, and when Maury entered the cigarette clouds of his office, he was sitting in a big leather chair.
"Your parents told me that a cat killed your brother?"
Maury still didn't know what was going on, or why his parents were no longer in the office. His theory was that Mr. Smelzer was some kind of counselor. Like the Jung guy he had read about. Counselors seemed so cool.
"Yes. A burning cat. Blue flames, like the ones coming from a kitchen stove."
Mr. Smelzer jotted something in a notebook as Maury spoke.
"And, your house burnt down not that long ago?"
"It was an apartment. We didn't get a house until people felt sorry for us and gave us donations after the apartment fire."
"There have been other instances, is that correct?"
"Instances?"
"Yes. Of fire."
Maury thought back to the time he had set his bedroom on fire. It had been nothing big, just a burn hole in the carpet when he was playing with matches. And that had been so long ago.
"Well, one time. I guess."
Mr. Smelzer looked at the notebook, flipped through a few pages of notes. "And then somehow a burning cat scratched apart your brother's chest."