I had to leave Zerostrata.
But first I had to wait for the piss to stop.
Chapter Twenty-one
Standing at the Gates of Hell
Gretel’s house was burning. A bad feeling vomited down my spine. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get to her house as quickly as I wanted to.
I ran as fast as I could, wishing I had spent all the years running Gretel had. Suddenly, all the doom I had ever felt in my life washed over me, threatening to slow my step and drag me down completely. I tried not to think about it. I tried not to think of any possible way this could turn out bad. The only thing I could do at the moment was run and that was exactly what I did.
Now in the center of the neighborhood, I charged through the empty playground. The smell of the burning house hung around me and it was only a matter of seconds before I reached it.
The fire had started down near the bottom, it looked like. The flames were raging. It was an old house, mostly made of wood. I knew it wouldn’t take that long for the flames to consume it.
But I wasn’t going to stand there and wait for that to happen.
That was when I knew I had been to Hell before. That was exactly what the burning house reminded me of. The heat coming from it was tremendous but not nearly as tremendous as the heat I had felt while in Hell. The flames did not frighten me either. Somewhere along the line I was sure I had been charred badly. Whatever skin I had on my body was merely covering the burn scars below it.
I looked up toward the second story, where I was almost sure Gretel’s bedroom would be. I even picked out a window I thought had to be hers.
I didn’t think about who had started the fire. I simply took a deep breath and charged up the porch steps, erupting through the burning front door.
The smoke did not hurt my lungs. It felt refreshing. It was like remembering a summer day and there was something vaguely sinful about that lungful of smoke.
This was an old environment I knew very well. But I didn’t think Gretel could handle the smoke and the fire in exactly the same way I could. Of course, it was entirely possible she had already imagined herself away, gone to the moon or somewhere even further into outer space.
I charged up the large spiral staircase, the railings burning around me. When I reached the top, the bottom of the staircase fell away from the wall and crumbled on the floor. I didn’t have long until the whole first story of the house collapsed. I had to find her before that happened.
Once on the second floor I turned to my right, going toward the bedroom furthest down the hall.
An explosion came from somewhere below and the house shifted. For a moment, I thought it would topple. I ran harder, sucking the smoke like it was oxygen, feeling the outrageous heat claw at my skin. Fire had come up through the middle of the hallway and I leaped over it, continuing to charge.
I reached the end of the hallway and turned right.
It was Gretel’s room, just like I knew it had to be. She was curled up under the window. At first I thought she was passed out but, as I drew closer, I realized she was sleeping. I picked her up. Her body was hot and sweaty. A wheezing came from deep within her smokefilled lungs.
I looked out the window and was not surprised to see the bright orange trampoline there. The same one that had saved me from the fall through Dr. Blast’s office window. I took a very tight hold of Gretel and, together, we jumped out of the window. We landed on the trampoline and bounced very high up in the air. I wanted to get her away from the house before the whole thing toppled. I wanted to get her away from the house to get her out of the heat, if anything, but the trampoline wanted to keep us on. We bounced higher and higher.
That wasn’t supposed to happen. The bounces were supposed to get smaller unless you were trying to make them larger by applying some kind of opposing force, bending your legs and then springing up again. But I wasn’t doing that. I kept my legs stiff, hoping the energy of the trampoline would decrease, but it didn’t.
Soon we were bouncing over the trees, over the neighborhood, over the whole town of Grayson.
Gretel was still asleep. I didn’t know what it would take to wake her up.
We bounded up again and as soon as we shot off the trampoline, I heard the whole house crumble.
Well, I thought, that was it for the trampoline. I didn’t know where we would descend.
I didn’t really think we might not descend at all. But we didn’t. On the final bounce, we just kept rising until we reached the clouds and, reaching the clouds, I clawed my hand out to try and grab hold of one of them.
It was like reaching into a pile of cool cotton. I pulled Gretel up onto the top of the thick, fluffy white cloud and laid her down.
There was a man up there. He kind of looked like the cloud, with his white hair and long beard and flowing robe.
He looked startled we had taken his cloud but, after he spoke, I got the feeling this kind of thing happened to him all the time. He seemed resigned to the fact.
“Pardon me,” he said. “I’ll just give you guys a little bit of privacy.” And then he leapt off.
Maybe he landed on a cloud a little closer to the ground. Maybe he landed in a giant pond. Maybe he landed on a trampoline. Or maybe he just landed on the ground, turned into a watermelon, and got eaten by a pack of hungry wildebeests. Who could really say?
I nudged the sleeping girl beside me.
“Gretel, wake up.”
“What?” she mumbled.
“Wake up.”
“Tape.”
“Wake... up.”
“Where are we?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Why are you here? Is it nighttime already?”
“No, it’s the middle of the day.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your house, it was burning. I pulled you out of it. Don’t you remember any of that?”
“No, I was still asleep.”
“What about your grandmother? Was she in the house?”
Then a look of realization cleared the fog from her eyes. She shook her head.
“She wasn’t in the house?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s good because, truthfully, I kind of forgot all about her. I would have felt really bad if I knew I just left her in there to burn.”
“No. You shouldn’t have felt bad at all. I’m pretty sure she was the one who started the fire.”
“Why would she do a thing like that?”
“Because she’s evil.”
Things had been going along so well in my own life I had forgotten all about the evil lurking out there in the world. It was easy to convince myself no one was truly evil but here now was a woman who had attempted to burn her own granddaughter alive in the house.
“She could have been more evil. I mean, I think she woke me up to tell me she was going to Texas and I should get out of the house, but I really can’t remember. I had already decided I was going to stop listening to her.”
“Why would she try to burn down the house?”
“To eliminate all traces, I guess. Maybe to collect on the insurance money. She’s probably left behind a legacy of evil and didn’t want anybody to be able to track her down.”
“Still doesn’t make any sense.”
“We’re on a cloud, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. What do we do now?”
Chapter Twenty-two
Raindrop Conversation
“What is that?”
“What?”
“I feel weird.”
“I think it’s starting to rain.”
“It feels like I’m disintegrating.”
“I think we have become the cloud and the cloud has become a raincloud.”
“What happens now?”
“I don’t know. I think we have to wait and find out.”
“I don’t like to wait for things.”
“Me either.”
“Maybe we’ll end up in a puddle somewhere.”
&n
bsp; “I hope it’s not a mud puddle. Somebody might step on us.”
“That wouldn’t feel very good.”
“Definitely not.”
“Do you think we’re falling yet?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think a drop of rain feels itself fall?”
“I don’t know.”
“You say that a lot.”
“I think it’s a good answer.”
“Yeah, it is a good answer.”
“You know, it was raining the first time I saw you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I hardly even knew what it was I saw but I knew I wanted it.”
“Really?”
“Definitely. And it was raining the first time we made love.”
“But was it really making love if I didn’t even know you.”
“It was if you felt the same way about me I felt about you.”
“Love at first sight.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t just physical love. I loved the whole idea of you.”
“So I’m an idea?”
“No. Not at all. But I created this whole image of you in my head and every time we’re around each other, little bits and pieces of that image keep coming true.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“What about me? How did you feel about me?”
“I already told you. I knew you were the one.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I can’t believe you’re still asking that question after everything that has happened.”
“Yeah, I guess old habits are hard to break.”
“I guess so.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“That sounds very strange, coming from a raindrop.”
“Can you see?”
“No, not really.”
“How do you see yourself in the future?”
“I don’t know. The future is only a hope.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, the me of the future will probably depend on whether or not you’re there.”
“I think we both know I’ll be there.”
“You have to be there. That’s what I think.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because you are a part of me. I think you have always been a part of me and I have just now absorbed you and you have absorbed me.”
“So how do you see yourself in the future? How do you see us in the future?”
“I don’t know. Any future with you is good.”
“Yeah, but everyone has some vision of themselves in the future. They have to. It gives them something to live for. Something to aspire to.”
“I aspire to you.”
“But you already have me.”
“Okay. So maybe someday we will have a house. It doesn’t have to be a huge house but I want it to be an airy house with a lot of windows and wood and plants everywhere. The main thing is that the house is filled with sunlight and happiness. Laughter. I couldn’t live in a house that didn’t have laughter.”
“But you don’t laugh.”
“I’m working on it. You’ll have to teach me how to laugh. I’m not very good at laughter. It makes my face hurt.”
“Okay. So what else?”
“And, I don’t know, I think I like routine. We will live together and we’ll find out this routine and it will be a perfect routine because it will ensure each of us feels nothing but bliss at all times. And you will always be there and I will always be there and even if we are not together we will still know the other one is right there. Maybe I will get back to writing and you can do whatever it is that makes you happy. We will have fabulous sex and even if we don’t have sex it will be okay because we can just lie in bed and I can hold you in my arms and feel your skin and smell your hair and look into your eyes and know this is just as good as sex. And on the weekends we can have family and friends over and there will be food and laughter and conversation. Oh, and music, there has to be music. Good music. The house has to be filled with music. I think all of those things would make me a very happy person.”
“Me too.”
“I’ll be happy just as long as I’m around you.”
“And you won’t grow to hate me?”
“That’s not possible.”
“But it happens.”
“It won’t happen. If I hated you then I would have to hate myself and I’m over that now.”
“Good.”
“I think we’re getting ready to hit the ground.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”
“I hope it doesn’t hurt.”
“Wait, we just… Yeah, we’ve stopped.”
“Are we on the ground?”
“I think we’re on a leaf.”
“A leaf. Like in a tree or something?”
“Oh, that could be kind of nice.”
“I feel strange again.”
“I think we’re returning to normal… or as normal as we were.”
“I wonder where we are.”
“I don’t know, clouds travel pretty fast.”
“We could be anywhere.”
“Anywhere at all.”
“Oh, look, it’s a forest. You know what that means?”
“What?”
“Now we just need to find the gingerbread house.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Hansel and Gretel in the Forest
I watched Gretel take form in front of me. I didn’t think the sight of her would ever cease to amaze me. She had a presence and it was invigorating to watch that presence actually form itself from nothing, drawing me even further into it.
First, she was simply a raindrop and I watched her expand, her pale skin painted over the clear water, a simple t-shirt and loose blue jeans forming over her flesh. I didn’t think it would be possible to look at her and not want her. There was something free and wild and absolutely stunning about her.
Her eyes sparkled and she smiled, two dimples forming below the corner of one side of her mouth. I went to her and kissed her because kissing her was breathing in life. It was something I had to have.
“We’re in the forest,” she said.
“That we are.”
Simple observations. Inevitable observations.
We stood on a narrow dirt path in a dense forest. Overhead, what I could see of the sky was a deep and unreal blue. Immense trees towered around us. The trees were something that seemed more fitting in Grimm than in Grayson. The forest was thick with fragrance. It was an old fragrance, reaching back to the beginning of time. A dark woody smell. Maybe some ancient mold or mildew but not entirely displeasing.
“What do we do now?” Gretel asked.
“I guess we walk.”
“To the gingerbread house.”
“You don’t know there has to be a gingerbread house.”
“No, there has to be a gingerbread house and I bet there’s a witch in it too. Probably my grandmother. She’s going to fatten us up and coax us into the oven. Just you wait and see.”
“I don’t think anything like that is going to happen.”
“Which way do we go?”
I turned around and said, “I think we should go this way.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
So we started walking along the trail, getting lost in our conversations again. We walked side by side, holding hands. It was quite pleasant. I didn’t mind having no idea where we were or where we were going. The important thing was that we keep walking. I didn’t know whose dreamland we were in right now. I didn’t think it was mine and I didn’t think it was hers and that was why we kept walking, I think, to find out whose it was.
Eventually, painfully, we stumbled into a nest of bear traps. They snapped up around us, catching our legs and filling us with pain. Except it wasn’t really that painful. It was like dream pain. It was kind of there but it didn’t really hurt. It was mor
e like it filled me with the idea of hurt. I looked down at the two monstrous bear traps on my legs. Stunned. They hadn’t even taken me down to the ground.
“Damn,” I said. “Bear traps.”
“This isn’t good,” Gretel winced, staring in wonder down her legs at the two gleaming steel traps that had seized them. “They’re so heavy. I don’t think I can walk with these things on my legs.”
“Maybe I can get them off.”
I crouched down in front of her and tried to pry the bear trap on her right leg off. It was grisly. The flesh was mangled, blood ran down her feet, but she didn’t seem to be in any pain either, just the discomfort caused by the heaviness of the traps. I quickly realized getting the traps off would be impossible.
“This isn’t working,” I said. “Here, let me give you a piggyback ride.”
“I don’t think you can handle that and the bear traps.”
“No, I’ll be okay.”
“All right.” She hopped onto my back.
This created an unnecessary pall over our quiet day in the woods. This had, by far, been the most uncomfortable day I had spent since being back at home but, with Gretel there, on my back, it didn’t seem that bad at all.
“I bet this is my grandmother’s doing.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Evil,” she hissed. “I told you she was evil.”
“But how would she have the foresight to set out these bear traps on this particular trail when neither you nor I knew we were going to be here? I don’t even have any idea where we are. Do you?”
“No, but I’m thinking it’s one of my grandmother’s dreamlands. Or maybe more like a nightmare land. She was always threatening me with bear traps. She would tell me that, one day, while I was out running, I was going to step in a bear trap.”
“She never liked the running, huh?”
“No, not very much. It disturbed her. It embarrassed her, I think.”
“That’s silly.”
“She’s a silly person.”
I continued walking, carrying her on my back.
Eventually, we came to a house. It didn’t look like it was made of gingerbread but it was a creepy forest cottage, anyway. I knew we should go inside and ask for help but there was something else that scared me about the house. Like maybe there was a witch who lived inside. No, I knew that was ridiculous. Witches didn’t live in spooky cottages in the middle of the forest. That was too clichéd.
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