The Secret North

by Ka Newborrn

  He called out her name until his voice was hoarse and bleeding. He crawled past the bar to the edge of the dance floor, tears falling freely. A young bartender with a low-slung ammo belt and a large, fluffy afro saw him crawling towards the dance floor. “Are you okay?” she screamed above the music. Her forehead wrinkled with concern. “Are you sick? Do you need a doctor?”

  He curled his knees into his chest and lay in fetal position at the edge of the dance floor. A barrage of people stepped over his body as he piteously clutched the paper rag to his face. A man with his hands full of drinks lost his footing as he tripped over Calvin’s purple velvet crown. He kicked it angrily across the floor before kicking Calvin squarely in the back. The bartender picked up the in-house phone to alert security.

  At the opposite end of the bar, Ester waved to the blonde girl, who was being tugged away by a tall man with a concise haircut and a camouflage jacket. She finished her glass of club soda and started across the room in search of Calvin.

  Securing her purple velvet crown, she walked past the coat check and up the front staircase to the balcony. She forced her way through the crowd at the upper-level bar and down through the lines for the bathrooms.

  A security guard tried to hoist Calvin off of the floor. He lashed out at him with balled fists, crying bitterly despite himself. Vomit stained the front of his t-shirt. “I don’t wanna go home! I’m not going home! Not my home!” he shrieked.

  “Let’s just get you some air. Okay, man?”

  A crowd surrounded the edge of the dance floor, backlit by the rapturous thunder of George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars and the frenetic oblivion of concertgoers dancing a few yards ahead. Ester spotted the security guard and weaved her way through the crowd to kneel down beside Calvin’s head. The bartender took a damp rag and blotted away the majority of vomit from Calvin’s lips and shirt. Ester draped her arms around his shoulders and gently urged him to an upright position.

  Calvin’s surroundings vanished into a blanket of white clouds. When the blanket parted, the stage was lit up with blue. George Clinton and Bootsy Collins stood on either side of the stage, dressed in diapers. Ester sat center stage next to a harpsichord, strumming with a delicate precision. She threw her head back and closed her eyes, backlit by the simulated moons of tech lighting. Buds poked their way through the wooden floorboards of the stage as she played and sprouted into vines clustered with fragrant, white blossoms. Mesmerized by the subtle rhythm, they wavered back and forth and filled the theater with an ethereal scent of lily and jasmine.

  Ester stepped forward and paused Calvin’s heartbeat with the intensity of her gaze. The vines throbbed in a stylized, rhythmic trance, and the white blossoms shriveled up and withered to the ground. The moonstone hummingbird glowed with an unearthly, lurid light. Clutching it in her fingers, she spun, disappearing into a silver funnel that disappeared in a clap of earth-shattering thunder, cleaving the stage in two.

  An incarnation from Calvin’s deepest nightmares emerged as lava flowed from the chasm. She twisted her shoulders to the beat of the vines, rocking from side to side in rhythm. She rested her hands on her knees, shook her dimpled buttocks in his direction, and blew kisses at him between cloven hooves.

  H.B’s diamond grin sparkled as he watched from the balcony with outstretched fists, arthritic hips wriggling to the drum beat. “Get it, Erzuli,” he preached. Calvin urinated.

  Calvin could smell her warm, acrid breath as she winked at him and smiled, lava dripping from the corners of her mouth, down her jowls and onto the floor, burning holes into the wood. She licked his left ear teasingly, forked tongue lagging provocatively, stinging what she chose to caress.

  Calvin defecated.

  The dimensions shifted, transforming her teeth into the bars of a prison cell. Ester gripped the brown, calculus-pasted bars and banged against them with her fists, crying futilely. Calvin sprang up to rescue his beloved, but unseen hands clenched his shoulders.

  White clouds reappeared and blanketed the crimson panorama as the security guard and bartender cleared the area. The paramedics came and lifted Calvin onto a stretcher. He resisted.

  “Can we get some water over here?” the paramedic asked the bartender. "I’m really thirsty.”

  Ester placed a cool hand against Calvin’s cheek and kissed his forehead repeatedly, comforting him as the paramedics picked up the stretcher and loaded him into an ambulance.

  ✽✽✽

  It was nearly four a.m. when Russell and Jana hurried through the lobby decorated with modern art and plastic green plants and approached the nurses’ station at Hahnemann University Hospital. Jana wore sweatpants, slippers and a pair of oversized sunglasses that hid her tearstained face. Russell wore a scowl.

  Russell shook his fists at the nurses when they told him that visiting hours began promptly at eight. He proceeded to remind them who he was, threatened to bring down the entire establishment if he was not permitted to see his son immediately and clutched his Motorola 3200 cellular phone, cursing. The head nurse called the hospital staff director, who apologized profusely to Russell and granted an exception. Russell stormed ahead to the elevator while Jana trailed behind and extended her gratitude to the head nurse on her husband’s behalf.

  When they entered the hospital room Calvin was awake, albeit stunned by the stomach pump and other treatments administered for his blood alcohol poisoning and paranoia-induced delusions. He weakly acknowledged his parents and managed a slight smile.

  Jana kissed him fervently and praised God for keeping him alive and safe. Russell paced back and forth in front of the window and was not quite as understanding.

  "He can’t make any constructive decisions on his own!” Russell raged when he and Jana left the room to stop at the cafeteria for coffee. “I’ve been far too lenient with him! All of his freedoms are what got him here in the first place. When I was his age I didn’t have any choice but to do the right thing. And what’s so bad about listening to me? I came from dirt floors, and I still make a high six figure salary. You’re missing the point. This is not about some goddamned medication withdrawal. He’s hiding behind that. Boy just wants to be sick. I guess this is the thanks I get, putting my name and reputation on the line to get him a position with one of the most powerful brothers on the planet. Gonna turn his nose up to the meat when we had to struggle to put square meals on the table. Gonna throw some mess about fluoride and not seeing a dentist but drink enough liquor to fill up a goddamn steed. Gonna throw away his Andover diploma, skip college and focus on his music. Jimi Hendrix, my ass!”

  Calvin was released from the hospital the following afternoon. Jana offered a few brave attempts at conversation during the car ride home. Calvin stared out the window at a gaggle of geese flying in V formation. Russell kept his eyes on the road and maintained a steely silence.

  At dinnertime, Calvin took his medication from Jana’s fingers and swallowed it as she watched him closely. He thanked her in earnest for the barbequed seitan and macaroni and soy cheese dishes she had prepared and forced down as much as his weakened stomach would allow. Aunt Alice chatted obliviously and ravenously attacked a platter of turnip greens. Russell picked at his food and avoided eye contact with everyone.

  “I found Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? and Dear Dead Delilah on VHS the other day, Cal.” Jana broke the silence. “I remembered that they were two of your old favorites. Why don’t you head to the projection room, and I’ll make some organic popcorn with soy margarine and sea salt? Everybody game? Russell? Aunt Alice?”

  “Count me in,” Aunt Alice said. She shifted her body upwards in her wheelchair. “Calvin, roll me in there, would you? And Jana thanks for the turnip greens. They were delicious.”

  Jana kissed Aunt Alice on the cheek and wrapped her in a tight hug before Calvin rolled her away from the table and towards the projection room. Breathing a sigh of relief, she finished her glass of wine. She proceeded to clear the dishes from the table. “Russell?” she began, “Why don�
��t you go ahead and join them? I can manage these dishes by myself.”

  “I’ve got work to do,” Russell answered curtly. He stood up from the table and disappeared into the library.

  Calvin and Jana carefully lifted Aunt Alice from her wheelchair, placed her onto the couch, and wrapped her in a blanket. Calvin smiled a bit too broadly and forced himself to eat some of the popcorn that Jana had prepared. Jana emptied the remainder of the bottle of Chardonnay into her wine glass and excused herself to go back down to the wine cellar. Aunt Alice thrust handful after handful of popcorn into her mouth and gleefully outlined her favorite scenes of the movie.

  “Ooh, she’s a crook!” she giggled. “Shelley Winters gonna tell that lie to the orphanage that Katy and Christopher are hiding when she kidnapped those babies. That Katy’s a dumb assed child, gonna send her brother back in the fire to risk his life to get that ole stuffed bear William. Just get a new bear! Shit.”

  He returned to his room after the movies, got into bed and closed his eyes. Stars twinkled in the distance. Chopin’s Nocturnes wrapped an arm around his waist and rested its head on his chest. Calvin basked in the warmth of the rare and peaceful moment.

  He had almost drifted off to sleep when a locust rapped at his eardrum to inform him that his medication was useless and the infiltration process was still in full effect.

  His x-ray vision extended vertically from his cerebrum down his spinal column and branched outward. He was shocked and amazed by what he saw.

  They frolicked about in tree-lined parks and sipped from bottles between frisbee games. A son fell off his bicycle and twitched as his knee began to ooze. His father crawled to his side and told him to keep going. His sister admired her bias cut dress and twirled in the grass, beaming with pride.

  Calvin peered beyond the banner of aluminum reflecting the surface of his mercury fillings and studied the path to Titan for future infiltrators. To his horror, the glowing substance had replaced the blood in his feet and ankles, and inched slowly up the length of his legs.

  Tiptoeing down to the kitchen, he scooped up a bowl of ice chips from the freezer and chewed furiously until his throat felt quite frozen. “What do you want?” he moaned. His hair bristled at the back of his head. He had not really expected an answer.

  A locust crawled to the base of his eardrum. “Your blood,” it answered, sending reverberations along the length of Calvin’s spinal column. Calvin picked up the Rejuvenique mask, strapped it to his face, and turned it up to the highest setting.

  ✽✽✽

  He resolved that he would replace the blood and started by turning to Jesus. He wandered from church to church, listening to services and hanging around for communion, eagerly awaiting the consecration of wine. When the day was over, he returned to his room with a cheap bottle of red and dutifully continued with consecrations of his own.

  He felt confident that his blood levels were stabilizing and began to feel a bit better, but when his x-ray vision revealed that the purple mercurial matter had nearly extended itself to his knees, he sat in the projection room in the middle of the night, armed with a bowl of ice chips and the Rejuvenique mask, and reassessed his strategy.

  The following afternoon, he walked to SuperFresh and purchased a small steak. He placed it raw onto the makeshift altar in his bedroom that he had constructed from cinderblocks, plywood, and an ancient white bed sheet. Hoisting a steak knife in his right hand and uttering a prayer for the soul of the cow, he cut off a small piece and chewed furiously. Overwhelmed by the intensity of both the flavor and the moment, he followed the bite with a large drink of wine and genuflected with fervor. “I’m sorry,” he apologized to the steak atop the altar. “It’s about survival.”

  Nausea occurred in rolling waves. He finished the rest of the steak and the entire bottle of wine. He passed out and slept dreamlessly, a consistent stream of drool saturating his pillow. The midnight air teased his chest. The dryness of his throat woke him up.

  He took a long drink from the bottle of distilled water on his nightstand. He wiped his nose with his fingers, and they came away spotted with blood. He swung his legs to the edge of the bed. His x-ray vision had extended to 365 degrees. The purple mercurial substance had completely replaced the blood in his knees and inched towards the base of his navel.

  He felt at the side of his bed for the mask and coated its probes with gel, ignoring the violent shaking of his hands and the irritated, amphibious quality that his skin had assumed from chronic overuse. Curling into fetal position, he wept, floating in and out of consciousness.

  He awoke to the sound of an album skipping, followed by screams.

  The spotted owl clutched a star in its beak, screaming as a shard of glass held by an invisible hand stabbed its bloodstained feathers. It dropped the star at its feet. The star burst into flames that enveloped its body.

  Calvin lurched forward to rescue it, but he was locked in a state of catalepsy. “No! No! Stop it! You’ll kill it! You’re killing it! Please!”

  A frenzy of panic was met with a smothering of violet hugs. Ester held him close and fought to gain control of the forces competing within him for her attention. “It’s okay... It’s okay… It’s okay,” she repeated. Tears mingled with the sweat at his temples until her voice had been sufficiently amplified.

  A sober, watery response caught the voices off guard, leaking a stream of tentative drool. “Okay?” he whispered.

  “I’ve got him, see? He’s with me."

  Ester was framed in the window, and the spotted owl perched unharmed on her shoulder. Calvin watched as she straddled the ledge and disappeared into the night, owl on shoulder, silver trailing behind them. “Hey, wanderer,” a male voice called from the distance, “You ever seen the dark side of the moon?”

  Calvin watched as the moon turned on its axis and the surface began to ripple with facets as if pounded by an unseen mallet. The facets sparkled like diamonds and illuminated the room. Soft colored, icy rings began to take shape around the sphere.

  There was a knock at the window. Still in a cataleptic state, he watched as H.B. climbed over the ledge escorted by two women, one blonde and the other brunette. They were dressed in half shirts with Saturn’s Disco emblazoned across the front in glittery letters, midriffs exposed. They had large breasts and wore layers of garish makeup. Suntan colored nylon stockings peeked out from underneath their denim hot pants. Feathered, hot-rollered hairstyles framed their faces. Fluffy pink pom-poms adorned their white leather roller skates. Wah-wah pedals resonated through the air as they flanked H.B. and formed a conga line. H.B. laughed from his place in the middle and flashed his diamond teeth.

  “On Titan,” H.B. began dramatically, “we all have mind-following asses.” The brunette woman withdrew a comb from the back pocket of her hot pants and carefully feathered her hair.

  “Who are you?” Calvin managed.

  “You're still trying to pretend like you don’t know me?” H.B. frowned in jest. “I’m in you all the time; why you trying to fight it, baby?”

  “Come aboard baby,” the blonde woman bared her teeth.

  “Why you trying to fight it, baby?” H.B. repeated. He grabbed the buttocks of the brunette as she wriggled in front of him suggestively. “Room enough for you,” he sang, “Room enough for you, indeed.”

  The women laughed and spun on their skates. “Hey, Emmaretta, go fix me a martini, please,” H.B. ordered. The blonde nodded and skated off to the bar that appeared in the north corner of the room.

  “Shaken, honey?” she asked, behind in the air as she searched for a bottle of vodka.

  “Apple.” H.B. adjusted the brim of his feathered fedora and spun gracefully on his skates.

  “Got some spirulina back there too, sugar.” Emmaretta winked at Calvin as she skated to H.B.’s side and handed him the apple martini. “The oversized glasses!” the old man chimed approvingly as he swatted her behind and crossed over to the mirrored grand piano that appeared in the south corner of the room
.

  A contagious melody filled the room as H.B. tickled the ivories. Calvin glanced at his abandoned guitar collecting dust in the east corner of the room. He looked at H.B. and attempted to follow his head along the bends of the melody. H.B. met his gaze and nodded.

  With the nod came an audible pop. Calvin felt his body unlock from the catatonia. He slowly moved his fingertips in front of his eyes and stared at his hands. An electric current rooting at the base of his abdomen and emanated towards his heart as he walked over to his guitar, plugged it into his amplifier, and allowed the song to unfold. Back at the bar, Emmaretta lit candles with a long taper while her brunette partner rattled a martini shaker and strained the contents over a glass before holding it out to Calvin.

  He set his guitar down to accept the glass from her neatly manicured fingers and sipped gratefully at its icy sweetness. H.B. walked over to Calvin and offered his hand. Calvin grasped it. They levitated.

  “Look up, baby,” H.B. said softly. The ceiling wall had disappeared and they were surrounded by constellations. The tip of Copernicus wriggled. Pluto’s heart beat quietly. Andromeda swayed playfully in the distance, high on gas and laughing.

  “Phooey, Octavia, you’re getting that all over me,” Emmaretta whined as the brunette sloshed the contents of her glass before setting her empty glass on the bar.

  “Sorry, Em!” Octavia offered. The two women grasped hands and floated upwards to join Calvin. He sucked in his breath as Octavia snuck behind him and wrapped her arms around his chest.

  “This will never come out,” Emmaretta stared in dismay at the large, green stain spreading down the front of her chest.

  “Oh, well. Guess you’ll just have to take it off,” Octavia sighed. She nestled her bare stomach against the small of Calvin’s back and slid her fingers downward to circle around his navel.