She wants to pay as much attention to the world on the way down as she did going up, but her body seems to have woken up and all she can focus on now is how she hurts, how to describe it. It feels as though there's a fire in her stomach -- no, more like knives caught there, trying to force their way out with every breath, trying to air out her innards. She wraps her arms around her middle, to keep her breathing shallow, and walks as fast as she can manage down the trail.\n\nMallory counts back the landmarks to the parking lot: the narrow turn, the dinosaur rock, the rows of barbecue grills wasting away into rust. If only she could stop and look at any of this it would all feel so much more malleable. No. The other word that starts with an M... there's no time to think of it.\n\nWhen her feet touch parliament, she breaks into a scurry for her car, a dumb little parody of a little girl rushing to the bathroom after a movie. She can't even walk that fast, her joints won't allow it. It is absurd, the idea of driving now. But it was just as [[absurd]] coming up here, and she managed that. She feels proud, inexplicably, when she hears [[the engine turn over]].
When the house was broken into four days later, Peter was sure the visitors were real after all. He had found the house with his mother; she drove him home from day care and found the front door hanging loosely from its hinges. They went to a neighbor's and called the police but when they came, there was no one inside, and stranger-- nothing had been taken. People used all kinds of words to describe it but Peter alone knew what had happened.\n\nHis parents had washed the symbol he had drawn from the wall as best they could, but if you looked at it from the right angle, the light would catch where it had been. Peter could see it anytime he wanted.\n\nHe reaches a small stream that turns like a sleepless child across the hillside. It's too wide to jump and there are no rocks to step over, so he takes off his socks and shoes and wades across. The water comes up perhaps halfway up his calves and little plumes of mud come up as he walks, like he's a giant wrecking cities with every step. He begins walking barefoot on [[the other side]], doesn't mind at all.
Other things going wrong with me today, more serious than just words. My daughter told me to write about it, but I don't want to, so I'm just -- just putting things down so that she thinks I am doing what she says. She is in the other room finding us a telephone show to watch together. I am having trouble seeing today but if she turns up the volume I can follow along enough. It comes and goes. If I wait long enough, it will come back.\n\n<<back 'Click'>> [[Next »|elevated]]
I can't allow this to happen. I simply can't. ==I can't kill myself.== My daughter is nearby all the time. She can tell where I am. I mean in my head, what I am thinking about. She doesn't know what to do but love me. She won't let me do this.\n\nBut... think of it this way. Every day can be a little step. Multiply by two.\n\nThe television is very loud. \n\n<<back 'Click'>> [[Next »|fifteen]]
His parents took him to church every week, and he dutifully went through all the Sunday school classes they had him take. And though Peter never disagreed aloud with the stories they were taught, he never had the faith in book stories that his parents wished for him.\n\n<<back>>
She doesn't know where she is like you would with a map. She knows she's //here// and there's //there//, and she needs to turn left now, then eventually another left. But there aren't street names, or even towns. In truth, she thinks, you don't really need these things to get where you're going. Why did she make things harder for herself?\n\n<<back>>
"Baby, you don't know how to let things go."\n\nHe was midtown when they had this conversation, driving a businessman to the harbor. \n\n"It's important," was all he could say. They were fighting about Anthony but he can't remember what it was about. Whatever it was it must not have been that important. They never fought over anything important.\n\n<<back>>
He left the phone in the back room. Glanced down at it and saw "1 Missed Call."\n\n<<back>>
He picked the guy up at the train station. Funny thing was the guy walked out by himself. Usually there's a cloud of passengers all getting out at the same time so you've got to fight for a fare, but this guy was all alone. Probably rode some train from Columbus or some other nowhere.\n\n<<back>>
Today we had a diagnosis. My daughter took me to lunch afterwards at an outdoors cafe that would have made for great peoplewatching if I could have focused on it. She tries very hard to do normal things with me now. Sometimes I think this is maybe the only way to handle this. Other times it feels absurd, over and over again.\n\nSo -- we had expensive sandwiches on ciabatta bread (I love the difference in how you spell and say the word) and I have a degenerative brain disease. I don't want to write its name down yet. We need a second opinion anyway. But if it's happening, it could go quickly or it could go slowly. No one knows and there is no way to tell except by waiting a couple months and measuring what I lose. We had iced tea that was blood-red and tasted like citrus, and somehow that detail seemed to calm my mind, so that I could regard the world as a hummingbird might. The doctor told me that regardless of how fast it happens, someday I'll lose everything. I might wake up one morning colorblind or unable to see at all. It might go after my speech center first. There was someone playing music at the cafe, someone singing and strumming on a guitar, but although I could hear the melody, I couldn't remember what song it was.\n\n<<back 'Click'>> [[Next »|fin]]
My daughter took off work this week and we went to Cape May, where we used to go on vacations every year before the kids grew up. We didn't talk about why we went. We were just glad to be there again. She just dropped me off after a eight-hour drive. There's lots to tell about the trip but I'm very tired. After I get some sleep I'll be able to collect my threads.\n\n<<back 'Click'>> [[Next »|severe]]
!!Home Again\n!!!by <<pop chris 'Chris Klimas'>>\n\nNo matter how it ends, this story begins at a red light at the corner of Pine and Berkeley, in the taxi behind a dark blue minivan. In one of the cupholders a cell phone is buzzing and playing a steady bass drum beat. The screen reads: [[Hurricane Tami]]. The ringtone is a warning. The driver glances up at the rear view but the [[guy in the back]] is staring out the window, so he taps the bluetooth in his ear and takes a deep breath he hopes she won't hear over the phone.\n\nTami doesn't bother with hellos. Instead she launches into the same argument she's been having with herself all month long. She states her case and doesn't even pause to let him say anything, just says the things she thinks he'd say back to her. He would never say the things she puts in his mouth but that isn't really relevant. The light turns green and he turns left, towards the highway. Traffic is light tonight and it's a nice early spring evening, so he has his window open. He feels in tune with things. Tami's voice in his ear is like the ocean, [[eternal and meaningless]].
This isn't true, but it's better than saying you don't trust a guy. You can't say things like that. This is business.\n\n<<back>>
The man said this in real life, too, and the only thing that hurt Jameel in a way he hadn't been before was that he recognized the man in an instant. He didn't know his face but he knew that he had to be from [[Tami's office]], so many guys she talked about to him, told so many stories about them they melted into a single long confusing story -- and she always told him he looked stupid when he turned jealous -- \n\n"I hate you," he says, and his hands clench into fists though something tugs at him. He has heard something without knowing it. Anthony, his son, coming behind him, hearing the noise of the door opening but not sure what it means. [[Anthony the sleepless]]. Jameel stops himself. Tami's awake now but silent. He can only see her eyes. The rest of her is gone. Jameel does nothing. He can't now.\n\n(There is one thing:\n\n"Why?"\n\nBut he doesn't think to ask this. And once the moment passes he can't ask.)\n\nHe turns and pushes his way out of the apartment, out of the building. The doors struggle against him this time. They want to trap him. Once he's outside, it takes time for the dream to catch up to him, to remember that there were monsters before. The streets are blank rectangles of asphalt that lead nowhere. The buildings are empty packing crates, with the outlines of doors and window stenciled onto the wood. There. The monsters are here now. Finally. Their jaws are a relief.\n\nTami watches from the window. As they eat him up, she says through the glass, "I'm sorry," and if this weren't a dream he wouldn't be able to hear. But this is one, and now he knows it. He wakes up and the sky is [[full of stars over him]], and he almost cries but catches himself in time.\n\nDid he love her at all? Was he just waiting for this to happen? He knows the answer to this question but he won't speak it, not even to himself.
He sits at the peak of the hill and stares at the dying sunset, [[waiting]].
Tami is a sound sleeper. Nothing wakes her up. She's so stupid that way. There she is. There [[he]] is. He knows this would happen but it still cuts deep. His arm around her waist. His hand descending to where no one can see. The sheets are covered in red airplanes. Jameel is making these details up. Tami was at the door. The guy inside was hiding in the bathroom. She tried to talk Jameel into going to bed straight away. Why is he doing this? He knows it is his dream but he cannot control it.\n\nThe man in bed with Tami opens his eyes and asks, "[[Who the fuck are you?]]"
She knows you're not supposed to go into the woods to meet people, but when she sees him sitting on the rock at the foot of the trail to the ridge, tying his shoes, she can't help but say hello.\n\n"Oh, hi," he says. He's dressed a little oddly for a hike -- looks like he just got off work, but then the weather is really bounded today, mid-seventies with high fluffy clouds like rabbits. Even though it's past six, it feels more like late afternoon than evening. No reason not to get out as soon as you can.\n\n"How are you?" she asks, because she can't think of anything better to say.\n\n"I'm fine and you?"\n\n"I'm doing well considering."\n\nHe doesn't ask about it. On any other day, she would keep moving, count it as just a simple conversation. But she pushes on: "Are you going to the top?"\n\n"No," he says.\n\n"Want to come with me?"\n\nHe smiles, who knows why exactly. "[[Sure.]]"
It takes a minute to jiggle the bathroom doorknob again but then he is walking down the hallway, trying to be quiet as he can. Anthony's got school in the morning. He pushes a matchbox car down the hall away from him with a toe. He's done this fifteen times before and the toys are always in the same places. He's at the bedroom door. It's closed.\n\n"Do you want to go in?" his father asks. Of course it's his father. Everyone talks to their father in their dreams.\n\n"[[Why wouldn't I?]]" Jameel asks. "I'm tired."\n\nHe tries it but it's locked.\n\n"What's going on?" he asks.\n\nHis father hands him [[a key]]. "You had to knock on the door to get her to open it for you. This is different from how it happened. You should do this yourself."\n\nHe opens [[the door]].
The guy in the back still doesn't say anything, even after they hit 54. "Honey, hold on, I gotta call you back," he says. "I gotta get directions." She doesn't seem to hear him so he keeps imploring, "honey, honey, honey." The words don't mean anything to him. He just needs to get her attention. If she thinks he hung up on her, she'll call back. "Honey. Honey. I'll call you back."\n\nShe asks the only question she ever asks: "Are you coming home tonight?"\n\n"No," he says more casually than he means to. He should've paused so she could think that he had to think about it. Or that he was still unsure. He was so good at telling her what she wanted to hear before. [[What did he lose?]] He doesn't know where to begin.
The beginning of [[the trail]] is the steepest part. It arcs up and down the face of a hill, curving around clumps of trees that lean downward like oaks mated with weeping willows. If today weren't today she'd be able to make it up without any trouble -- but it's a special day, is the only way she can think of it. She knows he can go faster than she can, but he keeps his pace even with hers. He's quiet, too, only asks a few polite questions as they ascend. It feels -- what's the word? -- gentlemanly. She imagines herself carrying a [[parasol]].\n\n"I've been trying to think of this word all day," she says. "It starts with an H and it means, um, like, peacefulness, or being cheerful."\n\n"Happiness?"\n\n"No, I mean yes, that works but it's a different one I'm trying to think of."\n\n"I'm sorry, I'm not really good at remembering words."\n\nShe laughs -- perhaps too quickly, revealing too much. But if he takes any more meaning from it than its face value, he shows no sign of it. (Gentlemanly. She fixes the word in her mind as [[the path flattens a bit]]).
Time has never made sense to Peter. The human conception of it, that is -- how there are twenty-four hours in a day, sixty minutes in an hour, thirty-sometimes-thirty-one-rarely-twenty-eight days in a month. Who decided these numbers? Who carved out these spaces? He purchased his watch on a whim one day, nearly six months after his first job out of college. He liked the work there. He made numbers all his own, and they followed patterns he designed in his spreadsheets. \n\n<<back>>
It takes him a minute to find himself again, remember what he was doing. There was a guy he was waiting for but he didn't come back. He must not have. It's way too late. It doesn't matter. The hundred dollar bill. It's in his left pants pocket. He feels it crumpled up in there. Relieved. Okay. He's out of breath but didn't notice it till now. \n\nHe gets back into the taxi. The clock says 10:10 when he turns the engine on and it feels like a sign, but he doesn't know of what. He doesn't normally believe in signs. He goes back into the city, drives a few more fares to round out the night, quits early before the bars close. He can't handle it. The road back to dispatch is hellish. The lights in the buildings he passes on the way back home feel like a carnival and people are screaming. When he can pick out a single voice it sounds happy, but together they're just an angry, hungry howl. He keeps waiting for the dream to click back on but it won't. He wishes he could go back to it now. He cuts down a side street, one he doesn't know, but it's simple enough to find his way and it's also quieter, which he needs.\n\nHe signs out for the night and heads into the back to the cot. It's a favor [[the owner]]'s doing for him. Takes off his shirt and pants and tries to find the way to curl up that makes the cot comfortable. There is a way. He's done it before. The back room is tight, full of old boxes of paperwork, smells like paper, dying paper, and the air is still and just tangibly humid. Sleep. You tell your mind that enough times and it will. Close your eyes. Think about -- think about some other place. Don't dream. People aren't supposed to remember their dreams.\n\n[[Sleep]].
They asked him to draw a complex symbol on his bedroom wall. They guided him line by line, and told him how important it was that everything be symmetrical. The symbol would protect Peter and his family, the male visitor explained. The female one said that bad people were watching his house, and the symbol would keep everyone safe from them. When he finished, the visitors asked him to climb back in bed and close his eyes. They weren't allowed to touch him and they couldn't let him see them leave, either.\n\nOf course his parents were angry the next morning when they saw the drawing all over the wall, and of course he didn't try to explain what had happened. He was not entirely sure that the visitors were real; even though he was only three or four years old, his mind was beginning to divide [[true from false]].\n\nAt the next trail branch he finds, Peter takes off [[his watch]] and wraps it around a branch of a tree. It is nearly dark and the metal of the watch glows as if [[it's on fire]].
It was several weeks before the visitors came again, and when they did, they wore the same clothes they had before, and acted as if it had only been a very short time since they had last talked to Peter.\n\n"Are you my real parents?" he asked.\n\nThey looked at each other and sighed, as if he had asked a question he wasn't supposed to. They shook their heads in unison and asked him to get his crayon. This time he would need a piece of paper, too. They had him draw a map of someplace he did not know. They could not touch him, they reminded him, so they modelled the contours of hills and rivers by moving their arms through the air. Then they explained where each town should be labelled: Olla, the emerald city on the west coast, and Attenpound its twin on the opposite shore. Routon, they told him, was the capital of the country, though when he asked what country it was exactly, they spoke a sound he could not understand.\n\nFinally they had him draw a star on the map at a point nowhere in particular -- not near one town or another. "What should I call this?" he asked.\n\n"Home," they said together.\n\n"My real home?"\n\nThey shook their heads again and told him that they could not explain it to him, but if he should ever get into trouble, bigger trouble than his parents could help him with, he should go to the starry point, and they would help him. And then they asked him to climb into bed and close his eyes again. He did, but when he thought they wouldn't be looking, he opened his eyes again. The visitors were outside his window again, looking at him -- and they had the faces of his parents. The moment he saw them, he shut his eyes again tightly, terrified.\n\nThe last thing he loses is his shirt -- a collared one he liked to wear to work. It's a nice shade of green that seems to complement his skin. But he doesn't need it anymore, and perhaps [[he doesn't even want it]], if he were to think about it the way people ought to about clothes. His undershirt clings to his torso -- he's been sweating but hasn't noticed it.
I have to go now, while my daughter is out buying food. Today I think I've done it. I want to see something before I go. I want to go out one last time and then I can rest. Go... stop writing and go.\n\n<<back 'Click'>>
//caramon, cinnamon, allspice, cardamom, ginger, oregano\n\nflour, salt, eggs//\n\nJust writing some things down, standing in the kitchen and looking outside. It's too hot. I am doing an experiment, I guess. I can copy down words fine but all day I have been trying to remember the word for a special shade of red, and I think I'm about to cry over it, crying over a word.\n\n<<back 'Click'>> [[Next »|ten]]
By the time she reaches the final turn the world has collapsed into a tunnel and her whole body is shingling like it's snowing out and she's naked. She can see the road ahead but none of the scenery. The yellow double line is the most vivid thing she has now. She lets go of the gas pedal and lets the car drive itself forward. Mallory's house pulls into view and she searches the ground for the breakfast petal, pushes down firmly. It feels like the car is stopping on its own. The wires have gotten too old; it takes them time to talk. She reaches for the keys but they seem jammed into the ignition. Fine. She goes for the seatbelt but Mallory can't push the button hard enough to release the belt. She's too far. A little line of drool is at her mouth but she doesn't know how that happened.\n\nShe pushes again and it doesn't work and that makes her cry. She wanted to go inside and get into bed and maybe even turn out the lights. She wanted to end today the way she did every other one, like tomorrow she would have another one. She wanted to go shopping the next day, buy some oranges maybe or a cake. She liked oranges best. Even when you got old and couldn't eat a lot you could still eat those. She wanted to dream of all this instead of wishing for it, trapped in a car and she thinks there's someone watching her but she can't tell if it's a kid or a grownup or if it's one or three of them. No, they're cats. Three cats. No. It's only a single pair of eyes -- she can't focus properly.\n\n[[Click]]. The smallest mirror she could have been given. She feels something lifting her into the sail. She finds her legs lengthening under her and begins wavering to the house, slow and steady. To her home, finally.
-- This part did happen. Tami's forgetful about objects but not people. She knows everyone's birthday. She was his reference on that. Friends and everything.\n\n<<back>>
He swings his legs over the railing so that his feet hover over the highway traffic. He stares down at the lights rushing past. He can't tell one car from another. He only sees the motion of the light.\n\nThe milkshake feels like it's a solid block of ice so he lets it go. It splatters across the highway, a pink smear like a genie escaping a bottle. The image freezes in Jameel's mind and then a passing car erases it, turns it into road trash, inexplicable and dirty just like all the rest.\n\nHe drives to Tami's apartment. The keys still [[fit the locks]].
Her husband died of a heart attack ten years ago. He was young, but not so young; there were no signs that it would come when it did, none at all. When it happened, she felt as though there would never be anything to go forward to anymore, only memories stretching backward. She continued on anyway. She had to. And eventually it was not tragic anymore, his passing. It was only inevitable, and the ideas get confused so often. But she always will miss him. He is in her thoughts even now, hidden away at the back of the audience, always there when she thinks to look.\n\n<<back>>
But nothing [[happens]].
Nothing out of the ordinary has happened to him this week. Peter can think of no reason why he chose today to take the day off and hop the Hapta across the state. He just knew when he woke this morning that it was time to find out after two decades. He trusts his impulses; he likes doing things without naming reasons for them. For instace -- he often checks his pulse in the bathroom after he washes his hands, just to make sure.\n\n<<back>>
She had so much energy all the time, even after Anthony was born. It started as a cute nickname, at first just something he kept to himself, because you could never really tell how Tami would take things. But he called it out one night when he was drunk and looking for her in a bar and when she turned around, she had a smile on her face. She liked it. More than liked it, started calling herself that to everyone. Not just him.\n\nProblem is, names have a way of becoming prophecies.\n\n<<back>>
No one Peter has met today has seemed real to him. The taxi driver -- is he really waiting for him back at the road? He can't imagine it so it can't be real.\n\n<<back>>
All in all it's a graceful walk, more graceful than so many she's had before. Her only stumble comes as she climbs over a large fallen log, and somehow in the up-motion her knees lose their strength and she starts to pitch forward -- but his arms are there to steady her. In this moment it starts to feel like [[a date]] to her, a silly date out in a state park between two strangers who won't ever see each other again.\n\n"This was an excellent idea," she says when they reach the top. "Who knew that I would've found an endive like this when I woke up today." \n\n"What?" he says.\n\n"I mean, I didn't really expect to make it up here today. ... I was so busy."\n\n"Yes," he says uncertainly.\n\nShe looks over the ridge to the endless valley. Everything so green, alive, silent.\n\n"Do you want to go all the way to the top?" he asks.\n\n"No. I'm a little too old for that trip."\n\n"You don't look that //that// old," he says. "It's only another ten minutes."\n\n"Thanks, but I shouldn't." She makes it sound airy, polite. "It's very pretty up there, though. I remember it."\n\nHe says, "Well -- have a good day," and she replies, "Thank you."\n* [[Stay with the woman]]\n* [[Follow the man to the top, alone]]
And still he [[waits]].
//abscess, recess, peregrine, trepidation//\n\nI don't know what these words mean, but I remember them.\n\n<<back 'Click'>> [[Next »|thirteen]]
He stands at the doorway watching her sleep. The room is an otherworld. The LED digits of the clock he brought from his own apartment have changed from green to amber. The bookcase in the corner is smaller now and the bed's now directly under the window. Tami keeps the blinds open, so there's a pool of moonlight on the sheets like a flickering spotlight.\n\nJameel sits on the edge of the bed opposite Tami. She doesn't wake, of course. Nothing can wake her when she's not ready. Even so, every move he makes feels as tenuous as safecracking. He keeps going, though, and pulls his legs onto the mattress so he's holding his knees, sitting upright. He can make out the paintings she hung on the wall dimly. The wildflowers caught in vases look like they're dying.\n\nThen he lets go of his knees and lets his head fall into the pillows. He is miles from Tami. He wanted to be here. He just didn't know the way before. He descends into sleep but he [[doesn't dream]].
When it first happened, he thought it was somehow related to his visitors, that his mind had some secret plan that it carried out when it thought no one was looking. But after six months of waking up in bathtubs and on kitchen floors -- it stopped, and for no reason.\n\n<<back>>
It's the one that belonged to his bicycle lock. He remembers it because the end you put into the lock is shaped like a cylinder instead of being flat. He lost it at school and his bike stayed locked to the rack for a week before he asked anyone for help.\n\n<<back>>
The sky turns [[black]] before him.
It took him hours to get Anthony to go to sleep sometimes, just talking about the same things over and over again until he himself was about to nod off. There was no explanation for it. Nothing was wrong in the house. Everything that's retold in this dream was a surprise when it happened. He never thought anything was wrong with Anthony, either, neither his mind nor his body. He's a kid and only a kid.\n\n<<back>>
Mallory watches him go up the switchback, and when he disappears she turns and vomits onto the ground. Her eyes tear over, and she almost cries but she doesn't. She shouldn't. But she needs to get home. She probably has pushed this further than she should have, but she couldn't have known. There are [[no guidelines]] for this sort of thing. She looks down at the puddle of vomit at her feet with a strange curiosity, wishes that she had brought a bottle of water with her. Her throat burns. But home. She should get home.\n\nShe follows the trail back, quickly as she can. Which, in truth, is [[not so fast]].
Peter's first memory is of a pair of people entering through his bedroom window late at night and asking him to find a crayon. The people had purple faces and blue eyes, and they didn't need to open the window, just floated right through the wall like a diver descending into water. They didn't speak English, though that was the only language Peter ever learned; they spoke with a language he immediately understood but could not repeat. He was very young, maybe a year or two old, and couldn't understand his own parents' words. But this pair -- [[one female, one male]] -- asked him to find the crayon that was his favorite color. He wasn't afraid even though they surely were aliens or [[devils]].\n\nPeter goes up the path alone. He hasn't gone this way before, has been to the park once before but just for a picnic with some friends at the other end of things. He knows his way, though. He comes to a large log lying across the trail and jumps over it like he's done it thousands of times before. He turns backward, takes off [[the tie hanging around his neck]] and leaves it on the log, thinking of [[Hansel and Gretel]].
The side of the bottle said: TAKE 2 PILLS EVERY 4-6 HOURS. She took forty-eight an hour ago, ground up into a peanut butter sandwich. (She's never liked jelly; it's too sugary.) Counted them out precisely, needed to follow [[the pattern]]. It tasted not so bad, actually. There was a sourness of course, but it certainly didn't taste fatal. Maybe she should have made a different sandwich, something savory, something with meat to it.\n\n<<back>>
A deer bounds across their path, racing down the hill into the folklore at its base. The trees are so dense there that they seem a separate, dark kingdom. The deer moves so quickly that at first she thinks she has imagined it, but then he laughs beside her, a gleeful short kind of laugh. (She doesn't even know his name. She should have asked before, but maybe it doesn't matter.)\n\n"I was always told that seeing deer meant good luck," he says.\n\n"Where I grew up we must have been lucky all the time. Deer were everywhere out in the countryside."\n\nTo this [[he doesn't say anything]].
I'm keeping this journal because my daughter asked me to. She thinks I am too stressed out, which she's right about, and this will help me -- who knows about that part. I've tried keeping journals before but they've never lasted more than a month or so. I think it's because I run out of things to write about. But this may be different. They finished my tests today. The doctors' ones, I mean. I was awake for some of them, and then they put me under for others. Just ordinary medical stuff. When they put the electrodes on my forehead it felt a little strange, like I was becoming part of a machine, but the feeling passed after a little. They had me recite nursery rhymes in one of them and I couldn't remember all the words to Three Blind Mice, but then it's been so long since I've thought about it.\n\nMy daughter asked me what the seizure felt like while we were waiting for a nurse to arrive. I think she asked just because she couldn't think of anything else to say and the silence was getting to be too much. I told her I didn't know because I don't remember any of it. It's just a blank space.\n\nShe drove me home and after a little I went grocery shopping and then read a little. I know that's a boring detail but I don't want to talk about just the tests even though I'm worried about them. The day is almost over and I think I can put this behind me tomorrow morning after I've slept a little. Sleep has always been my friend.\n\n<<back 'Click'>> [[Next »|two]]
Jameel doesn't want to have this dream but he forces it on himself anyway. He's walking up to the apartment building at dead o'clock at night. He worked late. He always does. They need the money. He pulls the door shut as he goes into the building -- he can hear [[things out there chittering]], ants or something, and he hates insects. The apartment building is a safehouse. The front door locks itself. He's got [[no keys]] in his pocket.\n\nHe goes up the stairs and the [[door's unlocked]]. Closes the door behind him and locks it with the deadbolt. He can't see anything. His eyes haven't adjusted. It's all by feel. He drags his hand against the living room wall, guiding himself to the bathroom. All of a sudden he has to pee. Door opens in his hands but he shuts that behind him too. It's a snug fit. The place expands in the spring, makes everything fit together. Click. Door locks itself.\n\nHe closes his eyes and turns on the lights, tries to make it hurt as little as possible to open them, but it doesn't really help. He [[did this to himself]].
The driver's never been to Glinnings before. He only knows the county through his fares, so mostly he knows small little residential neighborhoods, places with pretty houses he'll never have. The people there have problems same as he does, he doesn't dispute that -- but their problems and his problems, they just don't touch each other. Money's the only connection.\n\n<<back>>
In college, Peter realized the map he had drawn was of a set of towns on the other side of the state, though the names he had written down didn't match what they were really called. The starred point was at the top of a hill in a place called Glinnings Park.\n\nWhen he first figured this out, he sat staring at the map for a long time, unable to believe it. And then he realized he must have seen the same map a long time ago and had just repeated it. He [[sleepwalked]] as a child and so it wasn't hard to think that he might have had overactive dreams, too. The symbol -- the symbol could be explained as just a coincidence. Even in ten or twenty years, a person sees so many coincidences that they no longer feel special. And yet he always thought of travelling to the starry point, to see what would happen. He has held onto his map for a long time, but now he is actually climbing [[the last few feet]] to the top of the hill. It looks utterly unremarkable from a distance. It's neither beautiful nor ugly.
Jameel only met the man once, when he interviewed for the cabbie job, and it was all business bullshit. But it's a small shop and everyone knows everything. He found a note taped to his locker. "An offer if you need it, from one man who knows to another."\n\n<<back>>
He used to take girls out here after dates. It's an ugly bridge, noisy too, nothing to recommend it, not even a view of anything but the highway. But he never knew whether he really liked a girl until he heard what she said when he took her here.\n\nTami refused to come here, asked him to take her straight home because she was tired and had work early. Maybe in another life he would have given up on her right then. But he only has his own and he made an exception, that one time.\n\n<<back>>
She has followed this trail many times. It's close to her house and the view is incredible, especially in the fall when you can look across the valley and see the leaves turn color. Peppermint, cauliflower, aspen. They're all so lovely. And it's actually a quick hike -- something you can sneak in whenever you have half an hour to spend.\n\n<<back>>
He could tell their genders by their clothes: one had a prim flower-print dress with a light white sweater, the other dressed in a fine black suit. He remembers their clothes very clearly. Their voices were identical in intonation and their bodies had no bumps to them, nothing else to distinguish them at all.\n\n<<back>>
After maybe after half an hour of misery in five different positions, he grabs a loose set of keys from the dispatcher's rack and drives to McDonald's. He tried this with Anthony when laps around the block didn't help any. Two milkshakes, strawberry for Anthony and chocolate for him. It calmed him down but who could really say whether they actually got him to sleep any faster.\n\n"That's two medium shakes, one chocolate, one strawberry."\n\n"No, just the strawberry one."\n\nAn annoyed pause, then: "Alright, your total is two-sixty, pull forward."\n\nThe teenager working register seems sick, keeps scratching at his uniform shirt like he's got chicken pox or something, and he gives Jameel this look like he's a crazy person. He drops the change into the space [[in front of the cupholder]] and takes the milkshake from the next window without looking whoever it is that hands it to him. Something must look wrong with him.\n\nHe parks a block away from the [[Walton Street bridge]], walks [[the rest of the way]] under streetlights that seem to warp the world around him.
"So where we going, buddy," he asks. They're close to where 54 meets with 401, the main beltway, so they've got to pick a direction.\n\n"Do you know where [[Glinnings Park]] is?"\n\nThe driver smiles. If the guy had said that fifteen minutes ago, he would've had to take the short way -- so this is going to work out to be a big fare, it's a big county fare on his hands. "Yeah, do you live out that way?" he asks.\n\n"No, I just need you to take me there."\n\n"To the park itself?"\n\n"Yeah."\n\nIt's a little strange but whatever, it's money.\n\n"Which entrance do you want me to take?"\n\n"I don't know, I need to go to the south part of the park," the guy in the back says.\n\n"Keldin's probably the way you want to go."\n\n"[[Fine by me]]."
He's barely said a word since he got in the car except to take 54 north, out into the county. That was good enough. It only takes a couple county rides to make a night pay for itself, and one this early in the night is a good sign.\n\nHe wears the aftermath of a business suit, with rolled-up sleeves and a tie loose around his neck. He looks like he hasn't slept right for a while now. Eyes say a lot, everybody knows that, and it means something when you only look out the window. People who do that, they've got something they don't want to share.\n\n<<back>>
When they get there, the meter's at $43.25. Driver goes to click it off.\n\n"Keep it running. I'll be back in a couple minutes."\n\n"What are you doing here, man?"\n\n"I'll be back in ten minutes."\n\n"Nah, man, you don't understand. [[I got ripped off before]]." The driver looks at him in the mirror, tries to hold the guy's gaze.\n\n"Alright," the guy says. "I understand. You can hold onto this." He holds a hundred dollar bill up to the mirror.\n\nMoney solves all problems. "If you want to do this, you can do it," the driver says.\n\n"I do."\n\nThe bill feels dried out, like it was fished out of the ocean. The driver turns off the engine and watches the guy find a trailhead and walk into the woods. Strange motherfucker doesn't even look back. The driver gets out of the car and lies on the roof, stares at the deep orange clouds. It's close to sunset soon. Day'll be over. He closes his eyes. Guy said ten minutes, so he gets ten minutes.\n\nThe driver begins to dream the story of the last night he came home to Tami.\n* [[Follow the man into the woods]]\n* [[Stay with the taxi driver]]
In the dream he has long hair instead of short, a lean face instead of a solid one. And a scar now, on the right side of his face.\n\n<<back>>
No. He has to have his car keys in his pocket at least. -- There they are. They've been there all along.\n\n<<back>>
At a [[red light]], she opens her car door and leans over to vomit again. She feels like it would make her feel better but she only dry heaves. She didn't eat anything real at all today, couldn't decide on anything.\n\nSome car in line behind her honks its horn and she wonders why. Probably Mallory looks disgusting. She remembers the idea though it is fleeting now, of how one thing can be beautiful and the other not. There's a little reply of a bit of food caught under her tongue she hadn't noticed before and she pulls it out of her mouth and stares at it for a minute. Then she looks at the sun almost halfway past the horoscope now. It looks like it's melting into the ground which can't be right.\n\nThe light turns green and she flicks what she was holding out the window, grips the star wheel though it feels like it has [[no weight in her hands]].
A millionaire hires a little girl to look after his dog. It's a little sickly thing, needs lots of love and time, neither of which the millionaire possesses. He asks her how much she'd like to be paid. She says: one penny. He laughs and reaches into his pocket but she says: wait. Every week, I want my salary doubled. Millionaire still laughs and agrees to her plan. Six months later he's paying her three million dollars just to love a canine for him.\n\nMallory always liked telling this story to her students, explained the moral as: no one can see how things will end, even when they are as simple as a times table.\n\n<<back>>
She's a secretary at some office somewhere, he has trouble keeping track because she changes every few years. Her work seems fake to him, as if all those documents were invented only so that they can be copied, sorted, mailed. She talks to Jameel about it when he gets home, she talks about everything but she spends so much talking about this guy and that guy, all of them important, well-dressed, imaginary, imaginary.\n\n<<back>>
Of course they hit traffic at the 22 merge so things slow up. The meter's already ticking over $25.\n\n"Hey man, [[where you from]]?" the driver asks.\n\n"What?"\n\n"You from around here?"\n\n"Uh -- yeah," the guy says. "Do you know where Routon is?"\n\n"No, what's that near?"\n\n"It's sort of north of Olla and Attenpound."\n\n"No, I don't know any of those, man."\n\n"It's okay. They don't exist anymore."\n\n"What, development or something?"\n\n"Yeah, [[I guess so]]."
And when his patience finally runs out, there is nothing, nothing at all. As Orion rises overhead, he starts crying. There is nothing here. There are no aliens in it, no escape, no hidden homeland. And there isn't anything waiting for him below. He's had an empty life, more than twenty years of dead air. The story of the visitors is the only one he's ever found worth telling.\n\n//I have to find something else to fill up my life,// he thinks. And then, the thought comes like a knife pressed against the throat: //Something I didn't dream.//\n\nIt takes an uncountable length of time before he is able to go back down the hill. But once he begins -- he spots lights in the distance and hungers for them.\n\nThe map lies in the grass, a secret treasure waiting to be discovered by someone else.\n\n<html><b>∴</b></html>
I remember one year, I caught two of my students passing notes. This happened a lot -- fifth grade, after all -- but instead of gossip or something like that, it was a long list of painful ways to die. You know, the kinds of thing preteen boys dream up. Drowning in your own urine was on the list; I remember that one. They were passing it back and forth, adding on to each other's ideas. It was supposed to be horrifying but instead it was a little quaint. It was a cartoon version of death.\n\n//dignity//\n\n<<back 'Click'>> [[Next »|six]]
He wakes before Tami does, just before dawn. He always has. The light from the window is a lazy deep blue, the kind that asks a man to linger, but he can't stay. He knows this only works because she doesn't know it does. It can't be any other way.\n\nHe rises slowly, steps lightly out of the room, to the hallway where Anthony is waiting for him. Anthony the sleepless. Anthony the silent.\n\nJameel looks at him, makes a promise with his eyes. He doesn't have the words for it.\n\nAnthony nods and takes his hand. Together they walk out of the apartment, down the stairs into the morning.\n\n<html><b>∴</b></html>
My brain may die but my body won't, and it will be like being trapped in a prison. My brain will die. After writing that down again, it feels more real to me. I don't have choices. \n\n<<back 'Click'>> [[Next »|fourteen]]
When she was diagnosed, there was a big family gathering, and between the cake and coffee, one of her nieces found her in the kitchen alone, and asked her what it felt like. She was of that deadly earnest age, first year college student undecided major, wanted to ask what she thought was a hard question but Mallory had a harder answer: it was all funny, not ha-ha funny or sad funny or even weird funny. A new funny that was forced onto you. A kind of funny that made you laugh as much at a cat chasing a fleck of reflected light on a wall as when someone died.\n\n<<back>>
-- This part didn't happen, there were no noises but he can hear them in his dream. Most of what's happening in the dream is true.\n\n<<back>>
I'm losing my words. Looking back at my last entry I know 'threads' isn't the right word but I can't think of what it should be. Look in the //OED// -- that's what I should do. I have an uncanny feeling that I am being watched, but no one is there no matter where I look.\n\n<<back 'Click'>> [[Next »|eight]]
Latin, of course -- 'sol' meaning Sun, and 'para'... 'para'... oh, she'll remember in a minute.\n\n<<back>>
Home Again
The drawl falls open in her hum. She left it unlabeled for herself when she was still able to thistle. She wills in raking for air with her lungs and fades over, maybe beeps some futures in her hands. Knobs over a desk, the papers on it collecting into a pilcrow on top of her. Her [[journal]]--\n\nShe'll die blacksmithed by her journal. She willed it. All hers, how many hours? A deep breath. Seeing knots now. Another deep breath. Last breath now. Her final thought a word she thought she'd lost forever but came back: //halcyon//. And a hand is holding hers.\n\n<html><b>∴</b></html>