Sheep and Wolves

by Jeremy C. Shipp

  She unscrews the top, and dumps a heap of blue pills onto the floor.

  Now she does start crying.

  No, that’s not her.

  The sound’s coming from under the bed.

  I step closer to the young woman. “Are you alright?”

  A head slides out from under the bed and the crying consumes the room. Her body continues to wriggle across the floor until she’s lying right beside me. The middle-aged woman runs a razor blade down the middle of her face.

  The young sitting woman swallows the pills, handful after handful.

  “Stop!” I say.

  Watching isn’t enough. I need to do something.

  I reach down to grab the young woman’s arm, and then I’m remembering a pink bedroom and a man named Uncle Daniel and—

  I race for the door. It closes. Fast.

  As soon as I turn around, another woman vomits on the floor right by my feet. I step over the mess, and face the wall. The orange sheet of paper in my pocket soon gives me Valerie Trum’s cell phone number, and I call.

  “What’s going on here?” I say.

  “You don’t have to talk so loud,” she says.

  “What’s going on here, Valerie?” I say, even louder.

  “I honestly don’t know,” she says. “All I know is that she wanted a man. I hope you survive. You seem like a nice enough guy.” With that, she hangs up. By the time I think of calling Snow, I’ve already thrown my phone against the wall and broken the damn thing in two.

  The room roars with the chaos of women squirming, struggling, crying.

  They’re everywhere.

  Cutting themselves, killing themselves.

  Again and again and again.

  The window slips open, and a flock of magazines fly inside. They cover the floor. They cover the walls. Maybe the ceiling, but I don’t look up. They show me models and actresses and they’re all screaming, tearing at their pages with bloody fingers. Trapped.

  The women in the room don’t stop suffering. No matter the fierceness of my commands. No matter how much they die.

  Every time one of them passes through me, I feel them inside. Mind, body, heart and soul. I scramble around, jumping and spinning, trying to keep from being touched. From being violated. But it doesn’t do any good.

  I remember.

  I remember the animals I saw in the popcorn ceiling above my bed and wishing that they would come alive and save me or eat me, and I remember how it felt when he ravaged my hymen and called me his sweet princess, and I remember the agony I felt every time my husband used me because they circumcised me as a baby, and I remember more and more until I collapse.

  Everyone bends and funnels into the bird cage.

  Silence again.

  I try to stand, and by the third try I get to my feet.

  I approach the cage.

  The rag doll’s standing on the perch, arms at her sides. She’s trembling, and I’m sure this has nothing to do with weakness.

  She’s giving me that look.

  She’s waiting.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  She shudders even more. Obviously she’s not looking for an apology.

  I consider walking away right now and spending the rest of my life trying to forget this ever happened. But the truth is, Snow was right. I do care about my clients.

  This world, this system we live in, it doesn’t treat my clients very well, and watching isn’t enough.

  Even after what this doll put me through, I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman. She does. She’s charged with the energy of pain that I see oozing out my clients every day, in their blood, their semen, their shit.

  The doll’s charged up, and I think she’s willing to do something about it.

  If she’s going to assassinate those who abuse power or lead a peaceful revolution, I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. She can’t sit back and watch these tragedies go on anymore. Anyway, the lock’s already disappeared.

  I open the cage.

  Nightmare Man

  They call it postdormital paralysis with hypnopompic hallucinations.

  I call it hell.

  You open your eyes, and you think you’re awake. But the room wheezes. A chthonic force seizes you, squeezing your chest, while a stark sonorous voice says, “You are doomed.”

  You are doomed.

  Fear splatters against your skin and wiggles deep inside your gaping pores. Go ahead, toss and turn. Scream all you want. Until the presence absconds from your room, you’re helpless. No one’s going to save you.

  The clock on the wall may say only 30 seconds have passed, but you know better.

  Some moments last an eternity.

  When this one ends, I’m free again. Free of the presence at least. I feel so much better than I did only seconds before, I should be celebrating. Dancing for joy.

  Instead, I pop another pill. And another. This is my pathetic attempt at revenge.

  “Take that,” I think.

  But deep down, I know he’s laughing at me. He’s saying, “You think you can harrow hell? I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  He will.

  Years ago, he only came once every few months. Then every few weeks. Days. Now, a night doesn’t go by without an assault.

  Yeah, I hate it. I hate him. But don’t get me wrong. If the medication actually worked, I’d have never stopped taking it.

  There are so many ways.

  Sex, drugs, food.

  Work, relationships, TV.

  Talking, bathing, drawing the curtains and looking out the window.

  When people say, “Get a life,” what they usually mean is, “Drown out the screaming of your heart like I do, then we can be friends.”

  I refuse.

  So I’m in my room, lying on my cot with my arms at my sides. Shapes coalesce in the popcorn ceiling. The trick isn’t to stop seeing them. It’s to ignore them without looking away.

  My phone rings. For the first time in a very long while.

  Sure, I could have disconnected the line years ago, but knowing that I’m not receiving any calls is just as important as the silence itself.

  “Hello?” I say, barely.

  “Tomas,” he says. “It’s Nabelung.”

  “Nabe,” I say, and a hunk of slime leaps out of my throat onto my bare leg. It oozes toward my sheets.

  “I’m sorry we haven’t kept in touch, Tomas. You were always a good friend.”

  “No I wasn’t.”

  He laughs a little, though I’m sure he knows I’m not joking. Then his voice gets serious. “Richard gave me your number. He told me what happened. I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you,” I say, and barely mean it.

  He’s silent for a while. “This is going to sound strange. Well…it is strange. I know that. Especially coming from me. I was always such a skeptic.”

  “I never thought of you that way.” My deep-seated spittle gently touches the fabric. “You believe in God.”

  “Yes, but in a regimented sort of way. That’s not the point here, Tomas. I have a message for you. From a woman named Jade. She’s been trying to contact you, but she can’t get through.”

  The thought of a mysterious woman thinking about me makes me want to vomit. And her name, it almost brings me to tears. “I don’t know anyone named Jade.”

  “You don’t know her. She knows you. She says she wants you as her…well…she uses the word servant. I don’t like the connotations of that word.”

  “What?”

  “She told me if I didn’t act as your invitation, she’d never stop bothering me. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize.”

  “She says in order to see her, you need to eat a peanut.”

  “Salted or unsalted?” This is more of a knee-jerk reaction than anything. I used to joke around about everything, before I had nothing.

  “She didn’t specify that,” he says. “But it has to look like a human face. Someone you know. She says you’ll know it
when you see it.”

  We’re both silent for a while, he and I. It’s very loud.

  “That’s about all I know,” he says. “You can do with this what you want. I’ve done my part, so it’s over for me now. Thank you for listening.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It was good speaking with you again, Tomas. I hope everything works out for the best. Goodbye.”

  He hangs up before I have the chance to speak. Before I can say something that I’ll regret. He does this out of courtesy to me.

  *

  “Goodbye,” I say.

  They call them peanuts.

  I call them indehiscent legumes that can fix atmospheric nitrogen and reduce the risk of heart disease.

  Vitamin E, fiber, protein.

  Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat.

  Zinc, niacin, thiamin, manganese, folic acid, copper, phosphorous.

  It used to be my job to know all this.

  Now, the information buzzes in my mind and I swat it away. Unsalted peanuts are a part of my daily dinner plan. This one looks a little like standup comic Jim Gaffigan. He was one of my favorites back when I watched television and went to comedy clubs and combed my hair.

  Years ago, I would have laughed. I would have shown it around like a trophy or a scar.

  Now, I eat it. I crunch the miracle a few times, then swallow. Not because I want to see Jade. But because I refuse to believe in the power of a single peanut.

  The old me would have believed. Or at least he would’ve wanted to. The old me believed that flax seed could cure cancer and that AIDS wasn’t caused by a virus. He slid pamphlets under the doorways of unsuspecting strangers. He even hosted parties where he helped people to bend spoons with the power of their mind.

  This was me.

  Now he’s gone.

  The smiling peanut face is nothing but an acid-drenched memory.

  *

  Marshmallow peeps squirm in a massive cocoon-shaped heap on the tile floor. They move like desperate fingers, and I may be wrong about this, but I think some of them are. Little fingers. At first I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here. Then I see the cats.

  Oh, they’re beyond hungry. They’re dead, and they’re out for blood. Piebald patches of black and white fur cling to their decaying flesh. I know they used to be good, sweet kittens who only tortured insects because they had no awareness of the bug’s pain. But now, now they’re in the know. They’re pissed off at humanity because they would’ve loved us forever if we just hadn’t thrown them away.

  They charge not at me, but at the marshmallow cocoon. They know what it means to me even before I do.

  “Stay away from them!” I say.

  I kick the cats, one after another after another. They tumble on the floor and leave a trail of blood and fur and flesh in their wake. There are too many of them, and I’m not hindering the ones I’m punting away.

  Soon, they’re everywhere. They scratch and bite at the cocoon. Geysers of green blood spray out of the marshmallow chickens. I attempt to plug the holes with my fingers and toes, like some cartoon character trying to save a sinking ship. The cats, meanwhile, are purring like crazy. But whatever makes them purr is broken now. Now the purring sounds like a bean in a tin can being shaken by someone without any rhythm. There are a thousand beans and a thousand cans. I can taste the green blood in my mouth. More than that, I can taste the peanut.

  The chickens and cats and carnage disappear to wherever they came from, and I’m alone.

  I’m dreaming and I’m alone in a plain white room. More alone than I’ve ever been.

  Oh, I’m beyond terrified.

  I wish for the nightmare to return.

  I even wish for the presence.

  Instead, flecks of green light flitter in through cracks in the wall that I didn’t notice before, and rally together into a blurry woman. She lacks details, but I can see that her hair is green and she’s wearing a red dress. I think of Christmas for a moment. Then I don’t.

  “Tomas,” she says.

  After my name is spoken, I’m no longer looking down on the scene. I’m looking at the woman like I’m seeing with eyes. She’s not only detailed, but exceedingly so. Every strand of her hair blares at me, the same as the cracks on the wall, and the intricate flower designs on the tile floor. I see these things like I’m staring inches from each of them, studying them with all my might. But I’m not.

  “I’m Jade,” she says. “But you already knew that.”

  She’s right.

  After sitting cross-legged, she pats the floor in front of her.

  I take a step forward, though I don’t sit down.

  “You’re afraid of me,” she says. “Good. I’m glad you’re not stupid.”

  “Yes I am,” I say, almost rebelliously. Now I know I’m in trouble. The only time I talk back like this is when I’m feeling threatened beyond my ability to cope.

  She waves away the thought. “You have no idea how hard it was to get in here. I was even considering contacting you in the waking time, but that never works. And when I say never, I mean it. No one’s ever been open-minded enough to really hear me in the daylight. It’s good that we can speak here. I’ll have to thank Nabelung with some wonderful nightmares. The peanut worked.”

  “You’re telling me this is happening because of some magical peanut?”

  “In a sense. I know that human beings see human faces in anything and everything. All I had to do was get the idea planted in your mind by someone you respect. You did the rest. A very small part of you believed that the peanut might be magic and might allow me to speak with you. I squeezed myself through that crack.”

  Her explanation makes so much sense to me that it scares me. I want to wake up.

  “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” she says. “If you awoke, I’d be at your mercy, and we can’t have that. I’m much too important.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  She grins. “I’m sure Nabelung already told you. That was part of the deal.”

  “You want me to be your servant.”

  “I want you to be and I need you to be. In the waking, I’m 93 years old. I don’t remember who I am most of the time.”

  “You want me to take care of you?”

  “Basically.”

  “I used to be a nutritionist, not a nurse. I wouldn’t know how to—”

  “No, here. I want you to take care of me here.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’re a very unique man, Tomas. Most people hide from their pain. But you. You bathe in it like it’s a hot spring. Not that you enjoy it like you would a hot spring. Sorry, I’m not very good at metaphors.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “What I’m trying to say is that your nightmares are beautiful, and I need your suffering much more than you do.”

  “No,” I say. I’m still scared of her alright, but I’m more frightened of the prospect of giving away my pain.

  It’s who I am.

  “The problem for you, Tomas, is that while I’m here I can control…well, next to everything. And, I know what you’re afraid of.”

  I laugh so hard the room shakes. “I’m living my fears every day of my life. You couldn’t make it any worse.”

  She shakes her head, and light dances on her gliding hair. “I can see how you’d think that. I used to be a lot like you before my brain gave out and I lost the connection with my past. But you’re wrong.”

  “I find that very hard to believe.”

  “You’re not the first.” She disappears.

  *

  It was, of course, all just a dream. Now I’m back home in the wild where I belong.

  That’s right. I live in the jungle and forage for berries and nuts and hunt wild boar with my trusty spear named Sir Stabs-a-lot. The smells and the waterfalls of these parts are to die for. The caves are just deadly.

  If you saw me praying over this bloody bunny rabbit I just bludgeoned to death with a river stone, yo
u might assume I was an eccentric before abandoning my old life. You might guess it was my life-long dream to live this kind of life.

  You’d be wrong.

  Some desires are beyond simple dreaming. Sometimes you don’t know what you really want until you have it.

  Sometimes you survive a plane crash and before the rescuers show up, you realize the thunderbird that flew into the engine was actually a blessing in a feathery disguise.

  So you stay.

  I’m chomping on raw bunny organs when a photograph falls from the sky and hits the ground in front of me with a bellowing thud. I see them there, in that frozen smidgen of time. She’s wearing a t-shirt that says “I LOVE MY BABY” and his says “I LOVE MY MOMMY.” I made those shirts on some strange whim the night before Mother’s Day. I burned my thumb on the iron and sucked it like a baby. This made me laugh amidst the pain.

  The memory flashes in my mind for an instant, like I flipped on a light bulb that reveals so much and then burns out.

  A horrible feeling attacks me. It’s a feeling with claws and teeth and a sharp tail and breath of fire. I imagine the beast in the cave that I know is there but’ve never seen.

  Here I am, living this life, and they’re not. BABY and MOMMY.

  If I sucked my thumb now, I wouldn’t laugh or smile. I’d curl up in a fetal position on the jungle floor and cry myself to sleep.

  The photograph catches fire.

  And me with it.

  *

  It was, of course, all just a dream. Now I’m back home in the wild where I belong.

  I may be wrong about this, but I think I dreamt of the cave. I think I wandered too close to the darkness and the beast dragged me inside by my right foot. He towed me through tunnels. He showed me glowing petroglyphs on the walls created a long time ago.

  Created by me.

  I look down at my feet, and a green stem snakes up from the forest floor. A red flower explodes into bloom. I feel like shielding my eyes, but I can’t move.

  Shapes begin to form in the petals. A woman and a boy.

  The trick isn’t to stop seeing them. It’s to ignore them without looking away.

  But I can’t.

  I remember.

  *

  It was, of course, all just a dream. Now I’m back home in the wild where I belong.