#Dreamwithme

My daughter started a blog, art-in-prayer.blogspot.com a while back and has posted some of her beautiful videos, designed, written and performed by the little lady, herself. She challenged the rest of us 7.whoknows billion to hashtagDREAMWITHME with a picture or video of ourselves doing that which drives our heart and fills our dreams. A video of myself writing seemed kinda boring so I thought I would post a bit of some of my work and leave the door open for further requests for additional chapters...

…in the beginning

by

Jack Palau 

© 2011 Jack Palau

            In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, but it was what happened before this that authored the horrific visions of Charles Xander McGibbons.

            Charlie awoke as he did every other morning, the stench of terror dripping from his pores while his white knuckled grip tore his browned sheets from his mattress. He sat up, tersely gasping for breath like he had just broken the surface of oppressing waters, and swung his feet to the floor. Scraping the pitted concrete with spasmed toes, he semi-consciously reached for anchoring, something solid to offer him a desperately sought tether to reality. As usual, he had no fluid recollection of what his dream had been as only the resonant echo of fear remained, peppered with translucent imagery of darkness and anger. The physical reminder of narrow escape pounded in his chest as his sensibilities sluggishly returned. As the weak light from his basement window infiltrated his twisted brain, he began to recognize that yet another hauntingly painful night had finally concluded.

            Stumbling across the cold water flat, he coerced his beleaguered body to the calcified kitchenette sink and filled his glass with orange tap water. Staring into the bubbling liquid, he felt his mind slipping backward into darkness but captured it quickly as the cup ran over onto his tight grip. He swirled the glass and poured its rusty contents down the drain, reaching for the preferred a.m. libation.

            Drinking back his morning self-prescription, he screwed the top back onto the bottle and turned to look at the crumpled mess he had recently left behind. His sheets were twisted into knots, exposing the sweat-stained mattress of his cot. A sudden shudder rose up his spine. The effects of his morning “coffee” began to quell the rumbling, however, and he enjoyed a deep sigh of relief. He had at least sixteen hours before he would succumb to the next diseased leg of his illusory journey.

            Out on the street, Charlie wandered about and observed the masses, attempting to remain as isolated and anonymous as he could while faceless travelers whisked by him on their way to wherever normal people went each day. He never did find his passions or the predicted skills that had been promised to him as a boy prodigy, so this so-called normalcy and healthy ambition had equally eluded him. Spending most of his young adulthood waiting for a grand moment of clarity of purpose, he idly watched from life’s proverbial sidelines as opportunity and invitation had continually passed him by until he was ultimately left alone with ample stores of regret and bitterness. Sadness was the only friend he knew and the loneliness of shadows, his sanctuary. Rarely speaking, his expressions were isolated to his canvas and his imagination, the only two confidants he could still trust. These were his confessors to whom he could rationalize his failures and his self-diagnosed madness.

            Charlie was not a failure in the common sense, though. For, he esteemed, to be a true failure, one must make a whole-hearted, intentional attempt at something. He was, more accurately and even more pitiably, a failure at that simple task, itself. His only veiled attempt in life came long ago when he pursued a PhD in abnormal psychology. He did not count the preceding degrees and quite accidentally achieved honors as any valid success because it was all in prelude to his dissertation which was summarily mocked and rejected. His work was ridiculed as fabrication and archaic farce by his mentors and, inevitably, he was drummed out of several prestigious circles until he fell into academic obscurity and irrelevance. From this he would never recover. Not only due to his unfulfilled agenda to seek peer understanding of the subject which he wrote of, but, in pointed fact, because his main subject of study was, of course, himself.

            Charlie arrived at the blighted building where he gained employ soon after his rapid descent. He had stumbled across the decommissioned factory several years ago and convinced the absentee super to allow him a small space in exchange for menial janitorial work. Lou greedily accepted and gave him the basement janitorial room so that the repugnant, little man could escape his own responsibilities and spend his days and paychecks at the adjacent OTB. In fact, Charlie had hardly seen Lou since those early days, so even while completing his chores, he remained happily alone. Ironically, it was quite conveniently as close to conventional life participation that Charlie would dare or care to venture towards.

            There were several other occupants in the small, stale building. A filthy combination of artists, hopelessly aspiring bands and transient junkies would amble past him in the dank hallways late at night, but no one regarded him as anything more than worthless trash who scrubbed their scum off the toilets. This assignment of unapproachable derelict rested fine upon Charlie because it both fed his need to be left alone and kept him from facing the incredulous condescension of yet another skeptic.           

            Unlocking the chain from the roll-up door to his asylum, Charlie nervously looked down the corridor for signs of intrusion into his reclusive environment. They were extremely rare, but it was a vulnerable moment, nonetheless. Even the slightest glimpse into his sanctum by the most nonchalant passerby would have put him into a dreaded arrhythmia that might crack his glass armor, exposing a part of himself that no one had been allowed to view in its entirety since early childhood. Wounds still festered upon his repressed ego and the thought of even the cursory critique of a stranger rendered him emotionally impotent.

The unlikely sound of distant footsteps approaching immediately sent him into a panic. Charlie quickly entered and threw the roll-up door crashing down.

            Holding his breath, he listened as the steps continued toward his space and came to a sudden stop just the other side of his steel door. Desperately waiting for their continued patter to carry the unwelcomed nuisance down the hall, he pressed his soiled ear gently against the cool of the corrugated barricade. Suddenly, a loud banging repelled him awkwardly backwards, awaiting attack.

            In a state of confusion and helplessness, Charlie surveyed his scattered work and felt the heat of urine begin to trickle down the inseam of his black denim trouser. He had been doing his nightly cleaning work diligently and had no friends or acquaintances to drop by for useless chatter, so the unexplained presence of this trespasser riddled his timid heart with anxiety.

            Frantic, he began to cover his paintings and kick reams of papers under tables when he heard something quite alarming. An unfamiliar, but instantly engaging sound that had not touched his ear in countless years floated through his cold entry. Once again, his panicking mind froze, though, notably, without the former, accompanying fear.

            “Excuse me. Are you in there?” she asked with a soft, captivating voice that unexpectedly enraptured his senses. Though it wasn’t a violent tone, it flashed his mind back into the dark hazy world of his night. However, he felt no threat. In fact, it possessed an invitingly passive, encouraging quality that opened a window to his obscured nightmares and filled his mind with the oddly familiar, flickering images of peace within a storm. Charlie glanced at the cloaked painting in the center of his space and began to breathe more freely. She spoke again.

            “Hello? Are you the maintenance guy?” Charlie dared not approach, despite unmistakable desire to look out the peephole he had installed to view the hall before exiting his cloister daily. He heard the demure sigh of her frustrations as she apparently had given up and he slowly approached the roll-up, enticed by her sweet, breathy surrender. When he approached what he assumed to be her abandoned post, he peeked through his antique spyglass. A distorted glimpse of her silhouette remained in view, as she appeared to be taping something to his door.

            Noticing that the light had vacated the peephole, she hesitated momentarily in her activity but thoughtfully continued to affix her note to the janitor’s door. Pretending not to be aware of his presence, she pursed her lips in cynical amusement.

            “I guess I will have to wait for him to come back before I can get my toilet working. In the meantime, I suppose that I will just have to pee in my garbage can.” Her eyes flickered over to the peephole which was now fully lit up again. She began to walk back down the hall toward the stairwell.

“Freak,” she muttered angrily under her breath, still amazed at the level of paranoid absurdity with which the inhabitants of this, her new city, entombed themselves.

            Charlie, though away from his voyeur’s perch, had heard the all-too-familiar character assignment and sunk back into his normal state of pitiful self-loathing. As he listened to her steps travel out of earshot, he uncovered his painting and looked into the obscured face of his subject.

She was a vague figure from within his childish imagination that seemed intimately familiar but without clear relationship or identity. He rationalized the figure to be some archetypal form of “mother” by the way he felt secure in its presence but innately rejected the assignment once he held the calm demeanor in mental composition against his very real, very unstable matron.

            Backing away from the portrait, Charlie rested on the top of his desk, instinctively reaching for his pill bottle. Inside was a psychotropic cocktail of various labels which he had amassed from local pharmacists, both professional and amateur.

He had stolen a prescription pad from a former, over-zealous psychiatrist who had offered to make a case study of him, which Charlie had silently declined before disappearing into the human fog of the metropolis. Before he did, though, he managed to fill a dozen or more scripts for Lithium, Xanax, and Prozac, supplementing it with a collection of street pharmacology he had read about in collected medical journals and police blotters. Each form of medication, in itself, had proved unsuccessful in quieting his terrors, but meticulously self-tested combinations had granted him coveted refuge from the increasingly pervasive intrusions of his darkest nightmares into, otherwise, predictably innocuous routines.

Replaying the unknown woman’s voice in his head, he mercurially decided to take the day off. After imbibing a favored assortment of pharmaceutical tic-tacs from his aging, orange bottle, he washed down his expertly concocted breakfast with a chase of gin and wiped his mouth on his stained sleeve. Finally cognizant of his wet pants, Charlie changed quickly before slipping out his basement window, making sure that the latch did not catch so he could return unnoticed after his early-morning sojourn.

Heading over to the local respite of thugs, drug dealers and child peddlers, a.k.a the neighborhood park, he threw on his dark sunglasses and pulled the hood of his black sweatshirt over the top of his eyes as he negotiated his way down the dank alley. Sidestepping rat infested piles of refuse, he kicked at some rotted heads of cabbage from the adjacent grocer’s with his high laced boots, leaving gelatinous green blobs on his toe as well as spattered across the crumbling, graffitied brick wall.

Scraping the dried rot from his boot against the rusted frame of his favorite bench, he looked about at the world as his dosage of contrived happiness began to unwind in his blood. He never quite knew what to expect from the mixture, just that it would be different than every yesterday and better than any sober day. Colors began to swirl in his mind and laughter filled his thoughts as he began his ritual of observation. He felt his mouth quickly dry and knew that the Lithium that had made its way down his throat and into his veins was beginning the dance. The ensuing goosebumps and slight physical euphoria also suggested that the MDMA, with a gourmet’s dash of low-grade mescaline, was knocking on the door to his perverting mind. Whatever the progression, he was starting to feel normal again, or, what he imagined it to feel like.

Bike couriers began to whisk by at a high rate of speed leaving behind trails of light for the grinning transient to enjoy. School busses also stopped and picked up chirping flocks of fuzzily clad pink and purple midgets on their way to public indoctrination. Charlie laughed at their doom. His systematic stupor began before that portion of his life ended so he was still sensitively aware of those misspent moments behind Formica desktops. Labeled quite early as either genius or mentally ill, boy Charlie began experimenting with marijuana and alcohol from the age of eight. He often skipped school with the excuse of migraines so he could lazily recline in a warm bath with a tall, plastic cup full of anything he found in his father’s locked liquor cabinet. As his visions grew stronger and more frequent, so did his choice of self-prescribed defenses.

Charlie looked over at the bus after the innocent wave of young sponges hopped on and watched as a large woodland creature stepped off and offered him a ride. Startled, he reminded his teetering mind that it was just a hallucination, quelling his immediate desire to either accept the offer into further madness or flee.

Self-imposed hallucinations were easy in that they were easy to recognize and control. However, when they overpowered him and brought him to sobering and paralyzing depths, he knew he was in the midst of something far greater, far darker, and much more real. That was when it was time for more medicine. But the furry critter got back on the bus and drove off, followed by a flock of amorously singing bluebirds. His muscles eased, as did his mind. Today was going to be alright.

Alighting from his perch, he made his way around the perimeter of the small city park. He nodded sarcastically to the ever present Jamaicans, who regularly filled his less formal scripts, and to the circling undercover narcotics agents who, remarkably, never seemed to dissuade the former group from their work. Continuing around the square, he slowed his gait. He spotted Gus standing up on his milk-crate assaulting the ears of scampering pedestrians with his bullhorn polemic on ‘lost sheep’ and ‘blind goats’. Charlie assumed his membership was to the latter, less admirable club.

Strangely, Charlie loved to listen to Gus speak, but he had to do so from an obscured distance. For unintelligible reason, any time that Gus spotted him, he would drop his megaphone and simply stare back at him. Charlie would smile at the statuesque figure, clad in tattered suits and misshapen, unwashed hair, and remark privately that Gus would probably make a good living in Times Square if he painted himself silver and scare the passing Japanese tourists. But, instead, he was here each day preaching his doom and gloom mantra over and over.

Once, many months back, Charlie had approached him, particularly ripe on a binge of MDMA and Ketamine hydrochloride to tell him about his thoughts of the slight career change, but Gus only stood and stared blankly at him. After some probably imperceptible words uttered on his part, Gus handed him a well-worn, leather-bound copy of the King James Bible without response. It got shelved in Charlie’s bookcase back at the Atwater Building where he worked, but he never bothered to open it. One lunatic reaching out to another, Charlie supposed.

Today, Gus was mixing his messages. He was blaring out a diatribe about 2012 as a metaphor for Armageddon. It was a comparison of Hollywood versions of catastrophe versus the real deal. Charlie clapped at the intuitive intelligence of the speaker.

“You tell ‘em, Gus!” Charlie laughed out loud. The man turned slowly as if he was expecting to see a gun or the second coming itself as he looked over at Charlie. Gus wasn’t actually his real name; it was just a random selection by Charlie from some distant stereotype trapped in his twisting mind. But that wasn’t what caused the stoppage in the man’s recitation. Gus looked at Charlie like he was seeing a phantom, or some sort of sign of this dubious apocalypse he was always droning on about with such tremendous fervor.

The cocktail must be hitting my dopamine centers awkwardly today, he thought. Gus’ normally harmless eyes seemed to burrow into his head, causing him to feel more vulnerable than usual at this stage of mental retreat.

Charlie reached into his pocket and popped open his pill cache, acutely aware of police eyes, and selected a small pill from the spill. A more specific choice of Thorazine would surely quiet this uninvited mental intrusion, but physical retreat was also prescribed while he was chewing it so it would take effect more quickly. He was nearly a hundred yards away when he heard the loudspeaker occupy the airwaves again.

“Don’t run from Him, son. He has chosen you for a special message in a special time. We all wait for you to share your visions with the world,” Gus barked out.

At first, Charlie had thought his words were a bit odd, even for Gus, but the word ‘vision’ caught a hold of his spine and ran ice water through his veins. Adrenaline immediately seized him and ruined his high as momentary sobriety rained over his mind like pure spring water washing away caked mud. Spinning on his heels, he whipped around to look at Gus, but he was not there anymore.

The cacophony of city sound, once comfortingly blanketed away from his perception by a mile thick wall of gooey, drug laden defenses, began to winnow his lucid thoughts from metabolized fantasy. His defenses crumbling, he turned again to find exit from the park and return to the safety of his studio when he saw Gus again. He was standing across the park from his previous and predictable perch, blocking egress from the rapidly debilitating mental quicksand Charlie found himself struggling against. Suddenly, a hand landed squarely on his right shoulder. Turning, he saw no one. No one except Gus, standing atop his street podium, once again addressing the disinterested streams of well-dressed chattel in the distance.

Charlie’s mind raced as he fought against the hallucination, but it didn’t quell. Unlike the mild mannered character who had offered him a ride previously, the sense of aimed targeting remained. Imagining that he may have taken an improper dose of one thing or another, he sought to focus his mind and walk away from the situation internally. Seeking his private inner-room, he was startled back to attention when he heard the continued speech of his bemusing clown which now seemed to radiate from the clouds.

“It’s time to stop running, Herald. It is time to take hold of the gift given you and seek the truth. It will be revealed to you and you must answer its call or face eternal judgment.” While these vagaries seemed more in line with Gus’ typical speech than moments earlier, Charlie could not help but still feel himself to be their object as an illuminated darkness seemed to hover over the entire park. Looking up at previously clear skies, a sudden cloud of lightning shone through the growing shadow and reached down to him. Struck hard by its descending force, he felt his body thrown down to the ground, face first. A perceptibly large, powerful creature loomed over him and he sensed that someone stood above him.

Lifted to his feet like a feather, he looked upon a strange face. It had the resemblance of a woman, but there was no expression and her skin was colored in random swatches unlike anything he had ever seen before, both in design and spectrum.

“Wake up, Charlie,” the voice said to him as if it were filtered through waves of water. “Wake up,” it repeated, but with less softness. Charlie felt himself being shaken by the shoulders as the voice, now harsh and gruff, reiterated its command.

“Wake up, ya bum!” Charlie opened his eyes and looked into the weathered mug of one of the local undercover cops who normally stood watch over the Rasta contingency. “There’s no sleeping in the park,” he demanded. “Go on, get out of here before I run you in, you scumbag loser!”

Charlie alerted himself of his surroundings. He was being pulled from the grass by the strong hands of an angered officer who grimaced menacingly toward him. Looking well past him, Charlie could see Gus staring over toward him with a blank look on his face, as per usual when he was spotted. Charlie brushed himself off and began to run back to his basement hideaway.

“Hey, I want to see some ID!” the plain clothed nark yelled after him, but Charlie was in no mood for conversation or confession. He kept running until he found himself in his alleyway, outside the Atwater. Catching his breath and mind, he looked back as if to see a rational explanation following behind. Seeing nothing worthwhile, he slipped back through his propped window and out of daylight.

Stepping back from his revisited canvas, Charlie wiped away a bead of rolling sweat and replaced it with a streak of multi-colored acrylic. His eyes gaped open as they ingested the narrowing vision of his lady of comfort resting glisteningly flat upon the easel before him. The face he saw in the park now enhanced the appearance of the hazy figure, and she began to take on greater definition and familiarity. As he stared at her, she seemed to lift from the flat surface and look back at him. The representation was close, but he had not been able to capture her visage fully due to the unnamable colors she bore. He had neither mental ability nor conceivable pallet to recreate them precisely.

            This was what struck him the deepest. Had this been a mere hallucination brought on by the now waning effects of his drug therapy, he imagined that the details of the image would have fallen within the scope of his consciousness, from within his earthly confined recollection of known or observed datum. But this was obviously a moment of initial recognition. Like a baby imprinting a tree for the first time into its conscious memory, it was both a brand new experience and also a remembrance, somehow. It was as if he had seen it before but, recognizably, not within a conscious context but more like a distant, buried existence beyond normal, rational experience.

            As he continued to lock in on the emotionless eyes of the mysterious woman, he began to passively recall static cells of his nightmares. Quickly fleeting glimpses of unimaginable horrors mixed, noxiously, with violated flesh riddled his mind like stray bullets. Dank odors filled his nostrils, burning his sinuses with their stench. His body began to convulse as if spewing disease from his core and he dropped painfully to his knee, eyes rolled back so far he thought they would tear from their sockets. Violently, he felt his own rotting corpse spewing pools of bile and acid without cessation.

Seeking release from his mental torture, Charlie vainly struggled to turn away but was halted by the first vision of a full, specific picture. He looked into the massive, black eyes of a heavily chained beast who railed at him with the soul-deafening screech of a thousand screaming, brutally ravaged captives.

            Charlie screamed back in horrified terror as he knew he had become lost to his paranoia. He understood that none of this could be real, yet the hot breath of his fellow inmates blistered his skin, painfully yielding his mind to the delusional unfolding. But, as soon as he believed that there was no hope for his mental return, he felt the intimate touch of his muse lift him from his physical position and mental torture. He was summarily suspended above the scene, though he remained within its grasp. He could see the environment surrounding him but only watched as a non-performing observer. The sudden elevation, vicariously watching through spectator’s eyes and not experiencing any of it personally, created a resonant sense of peace and wholeness that he had never felt before. It was so transcendent, that, in that moment, he could not even imagine what pain felt like or even that it existed outside of imagined hypothesis. Turning his head slowly, he watched as his mystery woman beckoned him.

            Unable to step toward her, he fought to discover alternative methods to follow. She continued on her path, urging him forward, but his suddenly recognizable feet felt like they were running in place. He continued to stare at her as she withdrew, all the while calling him without word. Panic began to bead upon his brow as his racing emotions returned and he felt himself physically sinking. Not wanting to descend back to the tortuous depths, he turned his falling frame just in time to catch the cold, cement floor of his studio.

            Resting momentarily, fighting to find denial for his obvious mental machination, he sighed a cynical breath and looked up at his canvas. Her eyes were cast down at him as he lay beneath her. Alarmed, he stood. Her eyes followed. Charlie paced frantically, rubbing feverishly at his scalp, trying to rationalize his splintering mind back toward a degree of sanity. As his hands drifted across his skull, he felt a series of soft bumps on the back of his neck.

            His fingers followed the collection of painful lumps down the center of his back, under his sweat shrunk t-shirt. Ripping it from his torso, Charlie recoiled as he saw clusters of weeping blisters clumped all over his body. His eyes snapped back at the eyes of his portrait, which stared emptily out from the flat canvas as it had when he painted it.

Startled by this unanticipated nuance of reality, Charlie’s fingers searched his skin again but found no abnormality. Obviously, one last kick in the brain from the mescaline, he half-heartedly reasoned as his gaze hung on the painting, his fingers ever swirling on the smooth, unblemished skin on his sternum.

            Before leaving his cage to begin his nightly routine, he drained his nearly full bottle in order to numb his jarred thoughts. Falling comfortably sheltered within his protective defenses, Charlie felt normal again and smiled at the broken mirror on his wall.

            Exiting, he pulled his door down and locked it. A thick chain, hung across the entrance, guarded his secrets. Confident, he stepped back, nearly falling to the floor as his feet became entangled in a plastic bubble set by his door. Acrid liquid spilled across the hall and over his legs as he fought to control his wild tumble. Kicking the sopping, black balloon free of his boot, droplets of burning moisture ricocheted back into his eyes causing sharp, stinging tears to flow.

Resting against the opposite wall, Charlie smelled his wet sleeve. Ammonia, he wondered, as his stupor blinded his pain substantially. Regaining clarity, he saw the note previously taped next to his door. Unfolding the pink paper with bubbly heart header he read:

‘My name is Clara.

I just rented unit 212.

The toilet will not flush.

Please fix it before I have to call Louis.’

            “Louis,” he chuckled. The thought of that diseased pig having any resemblance to anything formal or respectable struck him with drunken, ironic absurdity.

He remembered her coming to the door earlier and fixated on her voice as he stared at her writing. He could care less about the message, but noticed the innocent, shapely form of her penmanship. He smelled her letter gently as he replayed her voice in his cavernous head. Eventually, his mental replay came to her statement about pissing in her trash can and laughed at her feistiness, wiping his drooling mouth with the back of his wet hand. Suddenly, the sight of the torn trash bag across the hall entered his delayed thoughts as he realized what he was covered in.

Retching, he vomited all of his stomach’s contents forcefully. A flash of déjà vu washed over him and he began to laugh manically. The bittersweet mixture of his expulsions, her urine and the alcohol supported hilarity of the moment landed him on his backside in the pool of fluids. He shook away any irrational correlations and stumbled to his cleaning closet to find his coveralls and his toolbox. Two could play at this sick game.

            After mopping up the nose bending stench, Charlie made his way to number 212 with a devious prank in mind. He planned to “fix” her toilet.

“Just right,” he chuckled to himself. He would arrange for it to appear to be in fine order, but with a single flush, create a geyser of filthy waste water for her to enjoy. She would learn, as the others had, to leave him alone.

His master key scraped circles around the deadbolt, stabbing at the flaking paint with the errant piece of brass. Closing one eye for balance, he managed to sink it into its target and turned the lock. Once inside, he began to slap at the walls for a switch to light the small cubicle until he remembered that these upper units had key-lights hanging from the center of the room. Tripping over boxes and out-of-place, heavy objects, he swung his hand in the darkness attempting to locate a chain. More than slightly self-amused, Charlie sang a childish play-by-play as his palm found the dangling on-switch and pulled.

            As the light burst on, Charlie found himself faced, again, with the chained beast. He pulled the light back off instantly, searching for internal balance as his mind had certainly fallen off-center momentarily. A rush of desire to flee the room swelled in his heart. Then, a large, foreign hand wrapped around his own, clung to the chain, and pulled again, relighting the scene.

Charlie screamed into the face of the daunting creature and instinctively swung at it in a fit of self-preservation. His fist caved in the side of its head as he felt the crackling of papier-mâché give way to his blow. Still screaming with every rapidly decreasing gasp, his mind slowly settled as the truth began to take hold of his outpouring.

The monster was actually a life sized sculpture wrapped in some sort of stained burlap and straw. As he withdrew his hand, a trickle of blood dripped across the twisted figure and down its form. Charlie quickly shoved his torn finger into his mouth and smeared the droplets into the object as he feebly tried to disguise his error in judgment.

            Staring into the sunken eyes of the phantom, he laughed pathetically as chance had replaced his intended practical joke with one of its own. He staved off the surfacing question about the hand that covered his, but, once again, vanquished it with the refuge of, albeit impaired, reason. Turning to the bathroom to complete his quest, he froze in disbelief as his eyes focused on her. It was his woman.

            Looking into her glossy, bright eyes, he questioned how she could have followed him here. He snapped his head around to be sure of his whereabouts but it was clear that he was neither in his own dungeon nor was he perceptibly hallucinating. She was indeed here, resting on the floor and leaning back onto the wall. It was obvious to him, even in his enhanced condition that it was a different representation of her, but it was definitely her. Her appearance was more stylized and somewhat cubist, and her coloring was rudimentarily simple, but her eyes could not be mistaken.

            Charlie noted that her body was more complete than his portrayal, but in a literal sense that defied his version. She was of beautiful, earthly form and wore the wings of a Rubenesque angel. He scoffed at this banal assignment and stepped closer to look into her eyes. Clara had most certainly captured them well, he puzzled. He had no explanation as to how, but she had painted his mystery woman.

Lost in thought, he hovered over the painting for several moments, slightly bemused, before giving up his new search for reason. Giving himself over to regained, untouched stupor, he set back to his task.

            Before he left, he looked into the eyes of the ridiculous angel one last time. He eventually broke his fixed stare and spun about to turn off the light. He honestly felt ashamed for injuring her work but spent little time dwelling on his feelings as he chalked it up to amusing anecdote. He hoped she would see the same humor. She did see the same hallucinations, after all, he thought as he turned off the light and slipped out the door, locking it behind him.

            On his way home that night, Charlie wandered the dark alleys and side streets on his usual amble through his neighborhood’s shadows. Enjoying the still darkness, he would momentarily stall behind rotting dumpsters or in recessed doorways while watching interactions between junkies and johns. He was fascinated by the dance of selfish depravities wrestling between themselves in battles of witlessness, each side compromising their remaining souls to drain the other of their coveted offerings. Typically, both parties involved in such struggles left the exchange worse than when they originally engaged. Charlie found delight in knowing he was better off than some, at least in some manner.

            He did make one nightly foray into the more travelled paths of common man in order to pick up a stomach full of Lo Mein from his favorite spot on Mott Street. Otherwise, his interactions were kept to carefully maintained minimums. It wasn’t that he had any fear of fellow travelers, but he did not appreciate the imageries their presence inspired in his susceptible imagination. At least, on his pill cruises in the early mornings, he could justify or ignore the often disturbing mental pictures.

            Reclining back onto his freshly smoothed mattress, Charlie stared at the fattening spider which resided in the corner of his ceiling. He willfully sought to not think about the painting in Clara’s loft. However, denying it only increased the allure.

His thoughts meandered about the central object by recounting various pieces of his day. He slurped his feast from his filthy fingers and chugged his chaser as pictures of Gus, the cop, the piss-balloon and the vandalized burlap-man circled his sloshing brain. He paused, noodles dangling languidly from his hard, chapped mouth, when the replay of his vandalism caught up to his consciousness. He averted the linked sensation of the strong hand which had grasped his by diving further into his angst over destroying the expressions of another victim of insanity.

            He decided to save the remains of his take-out for the morning. Some food in his gut may balance the effects of tomorrow’s medical salad. Swallowing his ration of booze for the evening, he lit a pre-rolled joint and lay back on his flat pillow. Staring up into the void between his eyes and the cracked ceiling, he inhaled deeply, hoping to hit just the right degree of intoxication that would blacken his dreams beyond recognition or awareness.

            The smoke dissipated into a heaving fog in the space above him. Eyes growing heavy and mind deepening in dullness, he watched as the smoke began to collect and swirl in a pulsing cyclone. The cherry glowed unquenchably hot above his pursed lips and his heart began to beat louder in his ear like approaching war drums being carried to his bed. A final exhale of thick, white smoke bellowed from his hard, calloused lips and penetrated the twister growing in thickness and intensity above. The quiet innocence ceased, giving way to the thunder of a thousand trains and the screams of lost children. Charlie’s eyes fell as dead as the disbelieving glares of roadside tragedy. His eyes shut, but they had just begun to see.

             Charlie walked through a gently rolling green field. The smell of the land was rich and fertile. His lime green polyester blend shirt lay unbuttoned over a soiled wife-beater. He felt the soft fabric of a torn dress in his left hand and a tragic sense of emptiness in his right. A lump swelled in his throat as he felt his lungs expel volumes of strained air at the monster. It lumbered across the darkening fields with the vengeful fury of unleashed chaos, bleeding electricity from between twisted currents.

            He observed the twister from behind cyan glasses, unable to engage or direct his own response to it. Chunks of houses and broken bodies orbited the face of the beast before being swallowed into surging darkness. Fence posts tied together by barbed wire flew past, slicing his numb cheek before joining the swirling cloud of sky and earth. He could feel the raging elements move his position and was copiously aware of injury, but completely anaesthetized to its resulting pain. He watched the dismembering wood and steel sail up into the torrent, and then he saw a distant figure.

She was small and gripped in its unrelenting fury. Charlie thought she looked like a simple red balloon floating away on a breeze into the forever night, but he could taste the truth in the bloody screams that flew from his mouth into the face of the heartless giant. Without investment or affect, Charlie looked into the distance and saw its brothers following his trail, devastating every blade of life in sight. Their wake was scorned earth, fire and dense smoke and they lumbered on, mercilessly.

            As the leader progressed closer to his position, Charlie looked to its peak and saw a pillar of black smoke dart out of its upward mouth, high up into the air and finally bending in tremendous girth toward the ground, unmoved by the tidal streams below. It was beautifully hypnotic in its movement as it snaked its way closer. But as it did descend, it became apparent that there was no smoke.

The winding serpent was a swarm of small, flying beasts that came forth to devour everything in their path, including Charlie. He felt flesh being torn from bone but, as before, through a filter and only as unemotional audience.

            Freed from physicality, Charlie felt himself elevate to a higher vantage and looked out over the horizon. From nearly every direction, he viewed these torments scourging the countryside and annihilating the face of the earth. He could smell blood and fear rising up to him as communal anger gripped his senses. He searched for signs of relief but found none until he saw a clean, clear brilliance piercing the darkness from far above.

            Feeling a demand within himself to reach the specter, he swam toward it through the death he was rapidly drowning in. He raced above to see even more distant destruction, as if the entire planet was under similar attack, building into larger, unceasing funnels below him. Finally reaching the pure illumination, he reached forward in panicked desperation to take hold of it but his hand was rejected with powerful refusal.

Momentarily stagnant, Charlie began to become aware of the terrible scene with greater clarity and physical sensitivities. The formerly protective numbness subsided as the prick of wounds began to penetrate his flesh. Choking fumes filled his lungs, and his spine cracked from the fight against suffocation. He began to fall.

Like a meteor raging to the plane of the earth, Charlie sunk through the heart of the monster and witnessed its driving, hidden source. A mammoth creature of insidious character hovered at the core of the ravenous tornado, gnashing its prey with countless mouths, each filled with a thousand jagged razors clogged with torn flesh. Its engorged belly housed suffering, screaming hearts, completely abandoned by the assumed relief of death. Flesh shredded and torn away, remnants of gored lives remained, drenched in nauseating fear and violent pain without respite.

They swiped at him as he fell and passed through their putrid state, but he continued to fall. He turned to see anticipated ground as it should have rushed toward him, but there was none. He saw only the pit of a massive, molten cauldron stewing the compatriots of those writhing in the bellies of monsters above them. He fell like dead weight into this bubbling lake.

Splashing down, his flesh began to melt away from his mind with alacrity and bemused agony. Charlie released a scream from his evaporated bowels and looked up for any sign of hope but found only pervasive isolation and terror.

            Sitting up in his bed, Charlie looked at his arms as every fiber of muscle contracted in complete spasm. His jaw was strained open and his tongue sucked back into his throat, corking any sound from escaping. He swung his twisted legs over the side of his bed onto the floor and fought within his accelerated mind to find his rational voice, which eventually encouraged him to focus on silent emptiness. His tongue dropped to the floor of his relenting jaw and swallowed breath began to relieve his mangled sinews’ painful struggle against the dense rigidity of his bones. Stumbling to his feet, he made his way over to the sink to wash away the developing scars of his cloaked night.

            As he looked back to the scene of his nightmares, he mocked their hold on him and reminded himself that he had escaped once again to live his life for another sixteen hours. A new day had arrived, but unlike the others, this one came with memories.

            Charlie steered clear of the Atwater due to an early commotion. Two police cruisers were parked out front and a loyal vagrant had told him in passing that the new girl had some damage done to her stuff overnight. Vaguely remembering his fist inside of something and looking at his torn finger, he thought it might be best to get a bagel and wait for the cops to vacate the premises before he checked in.

            Sitting on a bench on Third Avenue, Charlie chomped on his ‘Everything with Nova and onions’ while he watched the pigeons battle for position in front of him. He reached over and grabbed his Styrofoam cup and slurped his ‘coffee’. The empty pint bottle lay in the trash a block back, next to his puddle of molten caffeine. He never could understand how anyone could drink that garbage. Pure poison, he thought.

            The gin tasted great with a mouthful of salmon and red onion, not to mention the welcome effect in his wrenching blood. He was overdue his daily dose and hoped that by the time he sucked all of the salt from his mustache and poppy seeds from his teeth, he would find his building as dark and neglected as usual. For now, though, he would enjoy watching the street chicken unfold their best rendition of the human condition.

            The birds all jockeyed for placement in the pecking order at what was an anticipated reward for vain efforts. Even though Charlie had no ambition to reward their clamber, he did tease them with the cruel waving of their esteemed prize as he scarfed down each tiny crumb from his fingers and the wax wrapper. Dropping the paper to the ground, he shook his head at the thoughtless calamity of the ensuing melee each bird engaged in, fighting for inconsequential portions of illusory fortunes that ultimately were devoured by someone bigger, while perfectly adequate sustenance could be shared by the entire brood just yards away at the feet of an old codger spreading stale crusts. The parallels to Charlie’s own species were profound and sickening.

            Sneaking into the bottom level, Charlie surreptitiously maneuvered his way to his door, undetected. When he arrived he found a familiar looking paper taped next to his entry. His face twisted a bit as he hesitated to peel it from the wall. Once he unfolded it, he noted that the previously feminine pen strokes had been replaced with still girlish, but hasher, block letters. The note read:

‘I know it was you.

I couldn’t figure out how someone

broke in without breaking the window

but after the police left, I realized

that my toilet works. Come upstairs.’

The entire note was underlined several times. In fact, she had done so with enough force to tear through the thick paper. Charlie tapped his forehead against the door a few times, deciding whether to medicate first, if he even went at all.

            Standing outside of 212, he gulped his last bit of “coffee” and knocked almost imperceptibly. Almost immediately turning away, the door swung open with great speed. Charlie sheepishly peered over his shades to offer his pathetic apology when he was struck by her. His glasses went flying across the hall and came to rest against the brick wall opposite. The sting of her penetrated nails on his cheek threw his mind open to the past night’s portent. It didn’t open the gate fully but he suddenly remembered razor wire opening his cheek and heard himself screaming the name Mona.

            Charlie fell back into the adjacent wall as waves of emotion began to overtake him. He searched the corridor frantically, not fully understanding but beginning to realize that his nightmare was attempting to free itself from its well-structured confine, and he fled. He barely heard her screaming behind him as he escaped, but the pitch of her voice did seep into his memory and unlock the soundtrack to the cyclone and Mona’s terrible pleas as it dined on her.

            His sole internal directive was to get to his script bottle, so he had not even noticed her walk in through the open bay door behind his hunched position. He decided to forego the street fare today due to yesterday’s confusions, but had managed to chew up a mix of government-approved mind-altering agents with usual chaser by the time she entered. She was carrying his sunglasses and softened greatly when she was met by his obvious vulnerability.

            “I am so sorry,” she said plainly. “I shouldn’t have hit you. I was so mad about you hitting a stupid sculpture that I was ready to have you locked up and then I go and hit you. A real person,” she self-scolded.

Being careful not to scare him any more than she already had, she laid the specs down on his desk and turned to leave quietly. About to speak, her eyes shifted around the space, expecting to find signs of delusional madness scattered about in the form of mountains of empty dog food cans and tinfoil hats, but, instead, she saw the portrait. Continued words of reassurance and forgiveness froze in her throat and melted away at once as she struggled to understand the circumstance of this painting.

“Why did you do this?” she asked, turning back. Her stiff finger pointed in the direction of the stolen image.

            Now that the drugs began to settle his chaotic thoughts and recollections, he was in a better place to communicate, but, ironically, was unable to speak cogently. He muttered a brief synopsis of his actual thoughts.

            “It’s mine,” snapped out of his mouth in an aggressive manner. He did not do so intentionally, but words were scarce to Charlie, especially in this condition. It took some concerted effort to force them forward into time and space.

            She sighed deeply, understanding by his tenor that he was obviously deranged and still cognizant of her recent assault on the mentally fragile soul. She walked up to the canvas, intent on taking it to protect her intellectual property when she locked in on the eyes of the subject and saw something new. A captivating realness that almost appeared supernatural.

            “You are very talented. You have captured her eyes beautifully. It looks more like her than my own.” Her words stabbed deep into her own heart. She laughed through her nose before she looked at the cowering throw-away one last time.

            He had heard her words and found ground to finally anchor his mind to. Struggling against the gluey mental grasp of the drugs, he wrote his response on the inside of his eyelids and dutifully read them to her with as much cadence as his atrophied brain would allow.

            “That’s because she belongs to me,” he managed to utter with some difficulty but great satisfaction. He retreated from his self-congratulatory pose once he saw that the response caused her ominous frustrations. Clara bit through her cheek as she sought to find kindly words.

            “What do you mean, ‘she belongs to me?’ Do you think that because you came into my loft and saw my painting, that you somehow possess the right to copy it?”

            Charlie continued his mental climb from the intellectual sewers. He laughed at her and unscrewed his bottle. Taking a swig, he breathed a deep sigh and gathered his thoughts.

            “So are you just a drunk or are you really a mental case?” she asked, embarrassed that she mistook him for a mentally fragile mouse when he was more probably just a drunken junkie.

            “I saw her in your loft, yes,” he stammered with greater clearness, “but I saw her in the park first.” Proud of himself, he punctuated his line of reason with a finger gesture that was not received well.

            “Oh, in the park?” she retorted caustically. “You saw her in the park? And what were you on at the time?” she demanded, crossing her arms defensively.

            Charlie reached cautiously behind his semi-reclining frame to tuck away his pill bottle as he noted her curious defensiveness. He shook his head back at her.

            “Doesn’t matter,” Charlie asserted boldly. “I dreamed her a hundred times before that. I just saw her in the park and got a closer look at her, is all.” He awaited her next volley of incredulity, but was surprisingly met with a red-faced quiver.

            “When?” she asked with a broken voice. “When have you…dreamed her?” A knot began to grow in her throat as she fought back tears. Recognizing her emotional swap, Charlie offered her a chair and a swig. She sat but resisted the dirty libation.

            “I don’t know,” he stuttered slowly. “I guess I always have. I saw her as a kid before…” Pulling back, he shuddered at the concept of bringing a total stranger into his world. After years of ridicule and whispers, he knew better than to open that door.

            “‘Before?’ Before what? Please, tell me” she implored with an insistence that seemed awkwardly out of context. “I’m sorry,” she said in more dulcet tone, “What is your name?”

            He mulled over even this breach into his defenses for several moments. She would find out eventually, anyway, he surmised. He offered an atypical trust to her.

            “Charlie.”

            “Charlie,” she repeated softly. Tears welled in her eyes as she internally warred against her loss of composure. “Please, Charlie, this is important. Tell me when you saw this woman.” Clara turned her attentions back to the questioned portrait.

            Feeling safe in his surroundings, both physically, in his long dwelt studio, and mentally, in his pharmaceutical padding, he relented. Something safe about her, he argued to his suspicious gatekeeper.

            “When I was little, I had dreams,” he began. He paused briefly as a raindrop sized tear escaped her swollen eye, but, as she sat silently beseeching his tale, he continued. “I only saw her from a distance, but she was always there. I try not to see my dreams anymore, but I can still remember her.” He fell off his path again abruptly, imbibing another shot. She grabbed the bottle from him, nearly chipping his tooth.

            “Charlie, please,” she barked. Embarrassed at her outburst, she tipped the bottle back and gulped hard. She wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve, in response to both the sting of the unfamiliar drink and distrust of the unfamiliar mouth that had previously sucked at the glass stem.

            She continued with new meekness. “What about the park? What did you mean when you said that you saw her at the park?”

            Charlie, amused and comfortable with the situation now that she had shared his bottle, bit hard against his nerves and decided to share his vision from the prior day, at least in part.

            “I had an episode yesterday. Sometimes, when I am not careful, my dreams follow me into the day. She came to me yesterday and spoke to me.”

            “What did she say?”

            “Wake up, Charlie.”

            Clara squirmed in her seat. “I don’t understand. You said you were awake. Why would she tell you to wake up?”

            “I don’t know. Maybe Gus knows,” he responded with humor as he took another gulp and offered the bottle back to her. Her stern refusal came as a small affront. Charlie began to isolate himself mentally.

            “Who is Gus?” she asked, but he didn’t respond. She saw his sudden discomfort as he cradled his bottle and withdrew rapidly from her.

“Charlie? Who is Gus?” she said again as she stood, but he just shook his head and fell inwardly. “Charlie?”

            She looked into his eyes and saw the wall had been rebuilt between them. Painfully, Clara decided not to pursue it any further, for now. Wiping her eyes, she looked at the face of the woman one more time and decided to find out for herself. She thanked him quietly, without turning back, and walked out of the room. Charlie remained still and had begun to berate himself, fitfully, when she unexpectedly returned.

            “Thank you for sharing with me, Charlie,” she began, compassionately. “And thanks for fixing my toilet. We’ll forget the rest, OK?” She waited for any sign that he may have returned, but none came.

“Oh, by the way, it wasn’t pee. I just put a bit of ammonia in some lemonade. Hope it didn’t upset you too much.” After a few beats, bereft of any sign of response, she left once again. She had wandered only a few yards down the hall when she heard the roll-up door slam down. Worrying that she had scared him before she could get more answers out of him, her mind raced for thoughts on how she could regain his simple trust when she heard him giggling. Instantly flushed, she bristled at the thought that she may have just been taken for a twisted ride by a deranged creep when she heard a solitary word within his laughter that set her back at ease.

            “Lemonade,” Charlie chuckled, giddily.

Clara looked both ways before crossing the street. Once she made it to the next corner, she turned left and stepped to the curb, waiting for the light to change. No cars drove past her and other pedestrians streamed across the small side street, but the light was red and the crosswalk sign read, ‘Do Not Walk’ so she didn’t.

When she finally did make it to the local park, she skulked around trying to pick up some “Gus-vibes” but had no idea what that actually meant, so she petered out on this notion pretty quickly. Working up her courage, she attempted to speak to a few folks walking past her. This, apparently, wasn’t typical behavior for them, however, as they tended to stray away from her, annoyed by the inconvenient chatter. A frantic man in an expensive suit even fished a dollar from his pocket and dropped in on the ground in front of her.

Clara realized that she was going to have to speak to some of the more awkward types of characters, the ones people wouldn’t normally converse with. Maybe, utilizing this counterintuitive, she would find someone less afraid of her than she was of them. She picked out her immediate favorites and approached them.

            “Excuse me,” she started. “I am looking for Gus?” Forcing a friendly, overtly intimidated smile, she reached out the folded up dollar bill. The pair stared back at her with relaxed disappointment in their bloodshot eyes.

            “First of all, girl,” the big one said through his gnarly beard, “I have no earthly clue whatcha talkin’ about, now. Is Gus a smoke? Maybe a powdah? Gus might even be for the needle, yah? But more importantly, little lady, we don’t touch the money while Johnny has us on the radar.” He flicked his dreads over his shoulder as his eyes led hers to the well-built homeless guy, wearing new sunglasses and running shoes, picking through a nearby trash can while pretending not to watch them.

            “What?” Clara asked with complete innocence. “Who is that?” she asked while pointing at the undercover with the same dollar bill. The Jamaicans smiled and laughed at the cops as they retreated from their positions, obviously made.

            “You a funny girl, girlie. I tell you what. Clyde,” he said to his partner who opened a long trench revealing a trove of pills, powders and marijuana baggies. “You show me Gus, and I will give him to you free. First time special, al-reet?” he winked.

            Clara stepped back in amazement. She walked away, extremely confused, and rethought her tactic as the Jamaicans laughed and called after her. She looked back at them to be sure they weren’t following her and kept striding out of the park.

            Pacing up and down the street, waiting for some miraculous sign, she stopped at a pretzel cart for a bit of comfort food. She had no clue as to how she had survived for so long without these salty knots of heaven. Licking the dripping mustard from her knuckles, she continued to ponder her unformed strategy.

            Looking down the busy street, she sat down on a bench and tried to refocus her quest when an odd man, standing on a nearby bucket, spoke to her.

            “Don’t give up,” he said. She looked up into his soft eyes and felt an unusual wisdom that seemed out of place in his dumpy, rag covered frame.

            “Excuse me, sir?”

            “He is closer than you think,” the man added. His eyes grew sharper and more intense as he spoke. “You were called to find him and you will. Love surrounds you.” Puzzled by his words, she wondered how he knew she was looking for anyone, let alone a “him.”

            “How did you know?” She knew better than to ask a question like that on these deceitful streets, but it was almost imperative.

            “He has sent me here to help you, sister,” was his final reply as he pointed to the sky and puffed his chest out in great confidence. Clara’s spirit slumped within her as he was obviously another lunatic, but she figured she may as well ask.

            “Well, he, above all, should know where to find him,” she offered as politely as she could. “I don’t suppose you know who Gus is, do you?” The man’s air seemed to come out of him as she posed the question.

He had always wondered why the man in question called him that, but now he was even more perplexed by it, coming from the one who was sent to help the wayward prophet find truth.

            “No,” he flatly replied.

            “Do you think you could ask him,” she quipped, out of character, while meekly pointing at the same spot of sky he had previously referred to. She saw he had become offended at her irreverence.

            “The time of the end is near and the messenger is with us, sent by the very One whom you mock. He will lead those with eyes to see into the arms of the eternal while the fattened minds of this world await their destruction. May God have mercy upon us all.”

            She sat still, unsure of how to respond. Moments ticked by as a crowd of busy foot commuters passed through the pause between them. The hustling foot-train passed.

            “And what is your name, sir,” she asked defensively, calculatedly derailing his further rant.

            “Michael,” he said plainly. Looking into the heavens, he exclaimed, “Michael Matthew Xavier, the second, a lone voice in a sea of doom.” She paused again, briefly, and nodded as her assumptions were entirely proven. She rose to leave.

            “Michael,” she offered softly, “be safe out here, alright?”

            “Always in the safety of His arm,” he glorified, still looking at the sky. Squinting, she looked back up into the clear sky, patronizingly waved a few fingers and left.

There must be other parks in the area, she thought, trying to shake off the sad cruelness which the world heaped upon some of its most broken. As she walked, he continued in his doomsday speech to the disinterested public. She walked quickly to get out of earshot.

            After walking around for a couple more hours, she gave up her search and decided to head back to her workspace. She hesitated on the stairs deciding whether to head down to the basement for another discussion or to just let things settle before going back after him. Realizing that tomorrow would probably serve better, she climbed the two legs to her floor.

            When she pushed the key in, something seemed wrong. She felt the hair on her neck raise as she turned the lock. It almost felt like someone else had been there, but there were no signs to justify the feeling. Opening the door at arm’s length, still slightly heightened by the morning, she peered into the space before entering.

The window remained closed and appeared to be locked. Looking around the corner, she scanned the bathroom area and saw no signs of intruder. Boldly, she entered and felt the same sort of awkward sense that there was someone in her space, but, without physical manifestation, she had no reasonable explanation to continue feeling this way. She simply did.

Clara resisted the cliché movie “Hello” because all that ever produced was a bird flying into your face or an axe wielding maniac shutting the door behind you. Either way, she thought, she could do without the dramatics. The humor of her inner dialogue relaxed her as she set down her keys and flipped on her coffee pot to prepare for work.

            As she turned, she saw her sculpture looking back at her. The previously near complete piece that now had a whole through its head, now, she noted, bizarrely, had a potted flower stuck in it. A note was hanging from its stem which read, “I’m sorry.”

            She smiled and stared at the juxtaposed imagery of the death and distortion she set about to create with the new, colorful, soft petalled life growing out of its temple. In a strange way, it was beautiful. Sort of a memorial to the lost, she thought. She poured a cup of steaming coffee and plopped down onto her futon, pondering the new twist, both within her piece and her first friend in this strange, new city.

            Charlie finished his nightly rounds and set out on his shadowy excursion of anonymity and noodles. He replayed his interaction with Clara in his head numerous times, inevitably to return to the same word, “Lemonade.”

He actually laughed at this all day and felt a strange fondness for her because of it. It wasn’t often that anyone had spoken to him, but to do so in such a funny way had alleviated most of his trepidations about the possibility of opening his carefully constructed fortress, and, perhaps, just enough to peek out at her from behind its safeties.

            He found himself almost skipping down the alleyway behind 17 Mott as he playfully kicked at rats and broken wooden vegetable crates. Turning the final corner to the front of the restaurant, he immediately saw her in the window, eating a bowl of Chow Fun. She hadn’t seen him so he quickly darted backwards into the alley.

            Had she followed him, he wondered. She was evidently there first, but could she have known he was going there and presented herself as a hungry customer to lure him into a feeling of laughable coincidence for some darker purpose? Charlie beat at his temples with his wrists over the tension in the moment.

Surfacing from his substance induced paranoia, he sought reason and determined that these were just chemically created thoughts, reminding himself that she had been the author of “Lemonade.” Once again, his affinity returned and he turned the corner once more and hustled up the three steps to the door.

            Standing over her for several moments, he waited for her to turn so he could engage her, but she was caught up in her dish and sat forward without notice of him. Other patrons grew slightly alarmed at the looming figure and began to pull their purses and food close as they stared at him from under concern covered brows. This, Clara did take note of.

            Looking up from her bowl, she saw three people in front of her nervously darting their eyes up above her with strained faces, An older woman glared at her with the shiny eyes of the proverbial deer and shook her head slowly three times, as if to warn her of danger lurking behind her. Her heart seized and her body tensed like she was expecting to get hit by an Atlantic tidal wave.

            “Charlie, noodle,” said the kindly, old man from behind the counter. Clara whipped her head around and saw her friend looking down at her from under his black hoodie with a wry smile on his lips.

            “Lemonade,” he yelled.

            Nearly choking on a piece of broccoli stored in her throat, she shook her head while swallowing hard and managed to whisper, “No, thank you. Water.”

Charlie was disappointed and befuddled by the response so he said it again accompanied by the mimicry of being splashed by her bag. After a beat of mental connectivity, she realized what he was saying and laughed, cathartically.

            “Lemonade,” she rejoindered, fully relieved. Charlie was pleased and went to the counter to pay for his noodles. She scooted over and sat up, preparing to be joined, but only heard the tiny bells above the door ringing as he left. Grabbing her belongings, she threw the crumpled up dollar down onto the table and ran out the door.

            Catching up to him, halfway down the alley, she grabbed his arm, which he didn’t like. Charlie instantly stumbled over in fear. She watched as he slumped to the ground, eyes rolling into his skull and body twitching.

Clara jumped onto the ground beside him, abandoning her purse, and held his head as it swung around convulsively. She wanted to scream for help but was overtaken with unbreakable focus on Charlie’s face. Her hands felt hot and an emotional sickness filled her belly as she felt as if he was not having a seizure, but, rather, was trapped, somehow.

She leaned into him and whispered, “Lemonade, Charlie. Lemonade.”

His body suddenly calmed and his smile replanted on his hardened, yet handsome, face, which she newly discovered.

“Lemonade,” he said happily. His eyes opened and looked into her hovering eyes. “It’s you. You’re my woman,” he said, softly.

Fevered by embarrassment, she dropped his face and stood. She hoped she did not just create some sort of mentally-ill puppy to crush on her, but she was flattered.

“Are you OK?” she asked, sweetly, caressing his nappy beard.

Charlie flew up to his feet and looked deeply into her eyes, clutching her shoulders firmly, but with a sweetness that loosened her stance a bit. He looked around her mind, scanning her brain for further signs of the connection. Suddenly, he seemed to see something that caused him doubt. His grip relented and she spun on her wobbling feet, fighting for balance.

“Nope, not you,” he said coldly as he continued down the alley into the darkness. She was, on the one hand, relieved that she wouldn’t have to fend off his unwanted advances but, at the same time, felt a prick of humiliation in his words. Scooping up her bag, she chased after him.

As they walked, they spoke casually. She did most of the talking while he smiled and uttered some half-sentences back at her. She told him about her trip to the Big Apple without revealing too much of her own truth. She had no desire to be either laughed at or compatriated by a nut-ball, no matter how interesting he was proving to be. Charlie offered no personal information in return.

When they got to his apartment building, he entered without missing a beat. Clara hesitated slightly. Walking the alley was definitely precarious but she felt safe with Charlie. Going up to his apartment was an entirely different story, though. Looking around at her environment, however, gave her even greater discomfort. She imagined that she could call a cab from his home.

Walking into his den, she was shocked at its sparseness, but gravitated toward the overrun bookcase against the opposite wall. She had escaped much of her childhood in books so the thought of entering into some literary distraction while she waited seemed very enticing.

As she explored his titles, she found everything from psychology and anthropology texts, history books, and advanced mathematics to books on eschatology, the occult and war. Scanning thoroughly, she was relieved to find ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ absent.

Finally, she picked up a pictorial of the stories of Holocaust survivors and ambled around the small room. Incredulously, she read the degrees hanging on the walls from Harvard and Brown and several other institutions with the name “Charles Xavier McGibbons” scrawled across them in calligraphy. She would have thought they were a farce until she saw the watermarks. With amazement hanging at the ready in her slack jaw, she turned and saw him lying on his back smoking a joint, inhaling deeply.

“Charlie, do you have a phone I can use?” she asked, suddenly recognizing just how out of place she was. He shook his head gently.

“Great.” She muttered. She slid the book back onto the shelf, mentally preparing herself to navigate out of the neighborhood when she saw a book that stuck out from the rest. It was bound rather primitively and had no authorship along its spine. It just read, “Case Study X.” Looking over at Charlie, who, judging by his long, slowing tokes, was in his final moments of consciousness, she quietly slid the thin tome off of its shelf.

Sitting in the corner on a makeshift papasan chair, she carefully opened the text and scanned through scribbled notes, which were hard to read. Written in a sort of accelerated shorthand, it was difficult to make out any precise details. She gleaned that a study was being done on a small boy, named “Subject X” who was of great intelligence but deep emotional trauma. Flipping through horrific images of blood and destruction the child had created, she continued to read passages about the beginning and the end of the world.

There were theories of time and space, written in a cadence that was hard to follow but once dissected, seemed strangely plausible. Then she came to a picture of a split image of a great being, almost human, that was half beauty and half wretched, but not in an esoteric, 70’s style TV Hulk homage. It had a fluidity that told a story of decay and transition. The closer she looked, the more detail became apparent. Even the tiniest markings appeared to be built of smaller images supporting them.

Charlie began to shake in his bed. Clara thought for a moment that an earthquake had hit them, but felt no disturbance herself. Looking up at the framed diplomas sitting still on the wall, she understood that Charlie was having another freak episode and swiftly moved over to his bedside.

Standing over him, she watched in panic as his face twitched and contorted and his hands and feet began to grip at the small cot he reclined upon. She bent over his sweating head and whispered her word, but his spell seemed unaffected. She leaned in closer and said it again, now louder, still to no effect. Completely out of her element, she struggled with the next step. She shouldn’t have come, but she also couldn’t leave him that way.

            Reaching down, she pressed her palm into his chest to shake him awake, but instead, his head raced up toward her, eyes ablaze, and she suddenly felt herself falling forward. Landing painfully on the hard, dusty floor, she grabbed her painfully injured hip. Clara reached for the bed to pull herself up, but it was gone. Looking around, she almost ceased to be recognizably conscious as she encountered a sight that broke her rational process into shards.

            Clara scanned her domain and found herself to be in the middle of a confining complex. There were many rooms off the corridor she had come to find herself in and additional hallways leading in every direction. The ceiling was littered with thick cobwebs and only the vaguest of light was discernible.

Standing abruptly, the sting of her hip throbbed through her body. She clutched at the wall to find balance, but context was of greater import at the moment. Limping down her pathway, she reluctantly broke through a cobweb impeding her passage and saw a holographic home-movie begin of a two year old’s birthday party.

            She heard the singing of adoring parents, she smelled the sulfur from the matches which just lit the candles, and she could innately identify all of the guests by name. There was Aunt Ruth and Uncle Rick, who drove in from Connecticut; Grammy, who flew in from Florida; and, of course, the guest of honor, young Charlie, at the center of his doting parents’ attention. Clara was sure she must have either hit her head or fallen asleep reading. With another step, she was back in the dungeonesque cavern. When she approached the next web, she steeled herself for another apparition as she wiped it away.

Suddenly, she was riding a rollercoaster. She wasn’t really on the coaster, as she lacked the sense of imbalance, but she simply travelled with the riders as they swooped and rolled with great laughter. Charlie was a fourteen year old boy accompanied by a sweet, young blonde. He was wearing a jean jacket over a bare, thin chest. He had removed his shirt after it got wet on the waterslides.

How she knew this escaped her imagination. There was no explanation for the details of these hallucinations, but they were full and so real. Once again, she stepped through this portion of her dream and returned to the dank hall.

            Doors opened and led to entire worlds of parks and schools and doctors’ offices. Even though this was just a bizarrely coherent dream, she did not want to violate Charlie’s privacy and decided to avoid entering more memories, as best as she could deem them. She simply continued along her course looking for an exit or way to wake up, repeating the directive with each painful step. As she windingly made her way along the maze of offshoots, she finally came to a door that was unlike the others.

            The previous ones were of different weights and either had some sort of handle for entrance, but this particular slab was built of heavy, dense steel. Flakes of old rust scaled at her touch and thick chains hung across it with massive, un-keyed padlocks interconnecting them.

At the top of the door was a small window with three short bars prohibiting penetration. Clara leaned into the shortened door and peered through the bars, attempting to see what may lie inside. The smell that she encountered was horrible, like a mixture of fear and nausea. She wrapped her hands around two of the bars and pulled her face in as close as she could, pressing her nose into the pungent space.

            Suddenly, a wild and hairy beast raced to the door from the inner shadows. Thrashing and screaming in madness, it came at her with gnarled teeth and unchecked anger. As it railed against the interior of the fortified porthole, Clara fell back, wrapped in astonished terror. The beast beat itself so hard against the entombing barrier, she instantly feared that it would meet its unstated intention of escape and ravage her, but, thankfully, the door held. As the demon succumbed to its evident imprisonment, it looked out at her sideways, ever snarling and salivating at its unapproachable prey.

            Clara fought to her stance, once again, and, uncharacteristically, stepped forward for better vantage. What she saw was even more daunting than the original encounter. The face of the wild thing held still against the protective bars, looking at her with wanton madness. It was Charlie. Twisted and burned, grotesque in appearance, she could see past this vileness into his primal heart. This, she gathered, was the site of his deeply buried fear and rage, and she was, in fact, within the darkest recesses of his broken mind. Unable to process, and, again startled by his freshly invigorated attempts to escape, she fainted and landed softly on his bed.

            Clara bounced out of the bed and landed in a three point stance on the cold floor. She looked up and saw her impromptu host munching on an old carton of noodles, greedily smiling in her direction.

            “What just happened? What did you do to me?” she demanded, forcefully.

            Charlie stopped mid-chew. He looked injured. He chewed twice more, pondering her accusation.

            “I don’t know what you mean. You were sleeping, and then you jumped out of my bed like Cheetara.” Left over Chinese food fell from his beard to the floor.

            “But where was I?” she beseeched him in such a way that was startling, yet he was fascinated by the question.

            “You were in my bed. Which leads me to my first question of the day,” but he was cut short by her imploring.

            “I touched you to wake you up and then I was inside of you.” Her eyes raced with bestial paranoia. Hearing her own words caused her to question whether she had been drugged.

“What did you do to me?” she reiterated forcefully, checking her clothing to make sure she was secure and without breech.

            “Whoa, lady,” he barked, flicking noodles at her with his crude utensil, “You just said that you were inside of me. I think the better question is what did you do to me?” He punctuated the question by fingering out his ear and stretching his neck and jaw, mockingly.

            Her mind searched through her own memory to figure out when he may have slipped her something, but she saw no opportunities. Maybe there was a gas leak in the flat, she imagined, but his stove was electric. Besides, she wouldn’t have woken up. The only thing she could consider was that his joint was laced with something that had infiltrated her virgin blood.

            “Charlie, what were you smoking last night?” She calmed herself and spoke very simply, as if to a child. Charlie smirked at her patronizing tone. It reminded him of the way adults spoke to him as a small boy, underestimating his accelerated mind.

            “What were you smoking, Miss ‘I was inside of you’?” he teased. She covered her face dramatically with cupped hands. Peeking through spread fingers, she laughed. Then she realized that her fragile-minded friend had suddenly developed a greater rapport and ease. He is funny when he is sober, she thought momentarily, before observing the uncapped bottle beside him.

            She sat on the edge of the bed and then fell back, hitting her head on the wall.

            “Careful,” he grimaced, “it’s a small bed.” He spoke softly, aware that he was offering the agonizingly obvious a lump too late.

            “It was so vivid. I felt like I was actually inside your head,” she exclaimed to his returning grin. “The smells, the songs, the events. I could even see the green sweater your Aunt Ruth knitted for you on your second birthday,” she laughed, amazed. Unaware of his sudden choking as she rubbed her sore head and stared wildly at the cracking plaster above, she continued as she sat up.

“And then there was this horrible room. Charlie! Are you OK?” she shouted as she ran across the room, finally aware of his dilemma. Charlie cleared his throat with his fingers, tossing the offending blockage onto the floor.

            Gasping, he added in gravelly strains, “What was on it?”

            She was nonplussed by the query, looking down at the pile of extracted mess when she finally understood, retracing her own conversation.

            “Oh. There was a dog with balloons tied to its head, I think. Funny, right?”

            He stared back. “It was a moose. She used to call me ‘Moose’ before she died, because I was a large child.” He ran to a small trunk and began throwing objects about the room until he spotted his intended subject. It was a small, poorly knit sweater with an awkward representation of a moose on the chest. Before she saw the front, she nervously laughed.

“Alright. Stop messing with me, Charlie, I don’t think I could handle…” Her voice and heart synched in cessation as she looked at this would-be figment draped in full view. They stared at each other, each grasping for reason or, at least, plausible denial.

            “Who are you?” they asked in unison. Another long pause developed.

            Charlie folded the garment gingerly and placed it as egg shells into the chest, caressing the fond memory of his lost Aunt. Breaking the nearly halted pace, he darted to his bottle. Before he could lift it to his lips, Clara interjected.

            “Charlie, no,” she implored. “Something is obviously happening here and we need our heads clear to understand what this is.”

            “I am going to numb my brain to the point of catatonia is what is happening here,” was his scornful and discouraged reply. As he sank the final gulp, he realized his callousness and softened. The alcohol began to speak.

            “I’m sorry. I am, but you need to understand something, if you can. This is not normal, but it’s not so abnormal either. My whole life has been about inexplicable occurrences or crazy visions or ridiculously mature theories at incredibly young ages.”

            “I understand,” she said plainly.

            “No you don’t,” he shouted back with sudden frustration. Manically centering, he reiterated.

“No, you don’t. I figured out time rather early. When I was four, I wrote a thesis on our linear collective consciousness moving on a single arc through a reoccurring ripple of outwardly flowing concentric spheres away from and finally back toward the center, thereby creating our common and ill-contrived notion of time by imperfectly observing the change in our surroundings during the ascent, apogee and inevitable descending perigee.”

            Clara started breathing. “That’s an advanced notion for a four year old.”

            “I said I wrote it when I was four. I began developing the theory when I was about nineteen months.” He began chewing his nails as he waited for the ridicule to begin.

            “You remember being nineteen months old?” she asked with a note of fascinated disbelief. He was stunned by the atypical interest and spewed verbal continuation without cognitive self-permission.

            “I also remember looking through a reddish semi-opaque curtain as I recognized the presence of others for the first time,” he said, cringing, waiting to gauge her next response.

            “When you were nineteen months old?” she asked, confused, trying to interpret the purpose of the curtain.

            “In my third trimester, as best as I can tell. I only ascribe it to that due to how many shifts in light and dark I counted before birth.”  He nervously tipped back the empty bottle one more time, his tongue direly searching for a coveted droplet of increased defense.

            Clara pondered the statement carefully. She would have quite certainly walked out or scorned someone for such outlandish hubris typically, but Charlie, and last night, was far from typical, and he obviously did not seem to desire praise as he practically tried to hide inside of his bottle at the statement. She felt an impulse.

Standing, she slowly walked over to him as he continued to speak. He rambled forward into the absolute existence of mathematical autonomy devoid of our subordinate realization of it while she unbuttoned his shirt. His voice rose in pitch and speed while he spoke and she removed his top, nearly climbing backwards onto the counter when she placed her palm on his bare breastbone. Instantly, he fell silent.

            “I can see you, Charlie,” she whispered with closed eyes. Her head dropped. She saw images flashing through her mind as she raced through the synapses of his. Exploring the boundaries of his conceptions, she felt like she was flying on a cosmic wing into the far reaches of the universe, immersed in light. Charlie breathed slowly.

            “I can see you. You have to stop running, Charlie. You have been given a wonderful gift. It needs to be opened. I can see everything.” Her head rose suddenly and her countenance shifted tragically.

“Charlie! There’s something else here. It’s dangerous. Charlie, it’s coming. Oh my God, Charlie, it’s coming!” she cried, trembling.

            Charlie grabbed her wrist and pulled it away from his chest. She instantly swooned, but he caught her and gently laid her on the bed. Almost perfectly limp, her words repeated in a loop, words of desperate fear. Words which he had lived with his whole life, but were refused and rebuked by everyone in it, until now. Panic shook him as he attempted to stroke her hair.

            Clara woke up in the bed, alone. She jumped up. Charlie was gone. A note lay on the counter with her name on it which read:

I drugged you.

We had sex.

Please go away.

Your friend, Charlie

            She would not be fooled.

            Charlie sat in the park and watched the birds meticulously constructing their nests. The air was warming and summer would soon rest upon the city with a blanket of humidity and hostility. He enjoyed the benevolence of the springtime. It was caught in the communal descent from cheerful misrepresentations of perennial good will to the brutal unmasking of human cruelties. Sort of a chance for depravity to thaw from its comfortable nap by the fire before it went back to work, full time. He breathed in the last vestiges of cool air and sought to burn the appreciated memory into his consciousness for an oasis during the impending months.

Bliss.

            Interrupted.

            “Charlie,” she yelled as she ran through blaringly unimpressed traffic. He thought of flight, but he felt too good to be bothered.

            “Charlie?” she yelled again as she drew near. Looking into his eyes, she understood that he was gone. She needed to continue their conversation but it would prove useless today. Frustrated, she sat next to him and sulked.

             “Oh, Charlie, why did you run?” dripped quietly from her pouting lips.

            “Have you ever just listened?” he asked, attempting to reach for her with still arms. “I mean, get past the horns and the voices and just listen? Let’s just be quiet and listen for a while, OK?” His eyes were filled with tearful need, which struck her heart as hard as she had his face the first time they met. She reached for his hand. Sitting back together, they listened.

            After some time, she sat forward and began to talk, slowly.

            “OK, we don’t want to talk about it, I get that, but we can’t just sit here and listen forever, Charlie,” she prodded him.

            “Of course we can. Unless you want to be tied to time and exist within this broken illusion of reality,” he said flatly, gesturing to the swarming masses. She sighed loudly.

            “Take that sigh for instance. How long did it take?”

            “What?” she snapped. Her annoyance surfaced.

            “It’s a simple question, Clara. How much time elapsed during your breath?”

            “I don’t know, Charlie.” She slumped her chin into her hands and sat back quickly. “Maybe a second,” she relented, placating his drugged posture.

            “Perfect. Now place yourself outside the bounds of time and answer that again.”

            “I can’t. If there’s no time, there’s no clock. There is nothing.”

            “Wrong,” he said excitedly. “Time does not supersede existence. It only began to track the end.”

            “What are you talking about, Charlie?” She began to tire of the word puzzles.

            “I am talking about the egg timer. It is set into motion to track its end, until it’s cooked. But the egg existed before the timer was set. The egg existed outside of the boundaries of that timer and only became dependent on it at the moment it was chosen for destruction.”

            “So, are you saying that we are an egg?” she questioned, with traces of curious incredulity.

            “In a way, we are,” he retorted, somewhat amused. “The world was here, in existence, before it was set to be destroyed, or ‘cooked’ if you will, and only then was the timer set. And when the bell goes off, we are all cooked.” He mimed a mini-explosion.

            “I think you mix metaphors as well as you mix whatever drugs you are on,” she added playfully, the cynicism not lost on him. “So, I’ll bite, Aristotle, when did this timer get set?”

            “Right before we got here. And Aristotle was a genius. Don’t belittle him.” He was just joking around, she knew, but she felt his defensiveness.

            “Sorry. So who set the clock? And if someone did set the clock, I guess it stands to reason that we were put here specifically. And, if so, why would someone go to all this trouble just to destroy us?” She heightened in her questioning as she searched for a flaw in his reasoning.

            “Not to destroy, but to refine,” he said while patting her knee. He got up and walked away. A bit startled, she hesitated but then followed quickly. He continued while nonchalantly picking leaves from a nearby tree.

            “Did you know that vinification may take years of arduous work just to stage, and then the craftsman will let his newly produced fruit just sit for, perhaps, years more? Allowing it to decay and ferment and mix in its own caustic acids within a controlled environment just so that, one day, one specific chosen date on the future’s clock, he may open the cask, filter the impurities, and put it into prepared vessels so that he may enjoy it in its final, purified state. A long and violent process just to yield a drink worthy of his palate.”

            “So, we are the grapes in this one, huh?” she lightly joked as she intertwined her arm with his. She argued internally that she was only doing so to keep him from drifting away as easily as his imagination, but she secretly felt drawn into him. He liked it, too.

            “So, if I am following you, we are being purified as we become something else. But what? And from what? When does the timer go off, Charlie?” She waited for him to expound with another metaphor. Maybe cheese this time. But he didn’t. He just pointed.

            “Ask him,” he said with a smile, indicating Gus.

            “Who, Michael?” she asked, befuddled. Michael was not someone she would expect Charlie to be friendly with, especially now that she was uncovering the truth of him. She did not hold similar hopes in a homeless guy screaming through an amplifier.

            “Is that his name? I just call him ‘Gus’.” Her jaw dropped open as she looked back at Michael, slapping Charlie in the chest. Intermittent recollections of Michael’s words to her yesterday mingled with newly discovered revelations of Charlie, creating a hazy, semi-cohesive picture.

            “It’s you,” she blurted out loudly. “You’re my guy!” she laughed, attracting attention. “Of course, all of the destruction and doomsday talk,” her voice waned as her heart skipped another beat. Fading from her face, her smile was replaced with a far off stare.

“You are the messenger, and he is here to help me find you,” she exclaimed gleefully. Clara began putting roughly sawn puzzle pieces together as a small modicum of clarity presented itself.

“I don’t quite understand, but I found you and now we need to let him give us the next clue.” She patted Charlie on the bicep as she dragged him out of the park and toward Michael’s podium.

            “Who, Gus?” he retorted sarcastically. “But he’s crazy.”

            Michael, who had been aware of them since Clara’s outburst moments earlier, looked down at Charlie, still dumbstruck, but with a deeply furrowed brow upon that last utterance made directly below him. Charlie looked up at Gus and pulled his shades down over his eyes.

            Michael shook his head. “The shadows are not meant for you, Herald. It’s time to come out and reveal the truth. The time is drawing close.” He stepped down from his stand and handed his microphone over to Charlie, who cracked up at the gesture. Perturbed, he looked at Clara as if Charlie’s stupor was her responsibility.

She shrugged her shoulders and couldn’t contain her own giddiness. She had no intention of disrespect. It was more like a schoolgirl being reprimanded by her principal, just nervous reaction. She quickly snapped back to civility.

            “Take it, Charlie,” Clara encouraged her companion, who took it in good fun to humor her. He stood with it at his side awaiting more instruction, still finding the situation intoxicating.

“Go on. Tell them what you just told me. About time?” she implored.

            He looked into her beautiful eyes, feeling her seriousness and was moved by her misplaced faith in him. He had never experienced the joy of someone who was actually interested in his conjecture, and he didn’t want to disappoint her, yet his induced mental quagmire kept him from being too serious about it.

            “Ahem,” he started, melodramatically. “May I have your attentions, please?” He mocked himself and the idea of what he was doing as he looked down at her, goofily. She nodded emphatically as she noted that many of the travelers continued on their journeys, but a few did stop to listen. Redirecting his adolescent focus, he also took note.

            Flushed and unprepared, Charlie’s mind set adrift and began circling his rapidly nauseating ego. He felt himself spinning on the small stand as images of fire and annihilation juxtaposed recently shared knowledge of beautiful truths and eternal destinies. His mouth hung agape as the gathering crowd increased, curiously drawn to him.

            “Time, Charlie, time,” Carla repeated as her face danced around his field of vision. Thick beads of sweat ran cold down his neck and his mouth soured dry while a multi-plex cinema of imagery unleashed into his conscious.

A heartbeat thundered dramatically in his ear.

Charlie looked up in horror as the skies grew deathly dark and swarms of steel plated locust began to rain from the sunlight choking clouds.

Another heartbeat.  

Louder.

Closer.

Hot balls of salty perspiration pooled on his top lip. Sounds of charging hooves raced in from a distance and the smell of rotting flesh, fresh in putrefying sulfur, singed his nose hair as his lungs folded. A pair of unfamiliar, ominous eyes began to take shape in the sky as the clouds also mutated into gathered audience, representing the destruction and mayhem of his deepest fears.

            “Time, Charlie. It’s time, Charlie.” Her sweet voice distorted into a deep, resonating baritone, mocking him, daring him under threat of obliteration to speak. His tongue lapped at his lip as the world spun, drinking in the rolling beads of dead blood as they ran from his pores.

            “Time,” he heard himself mutter, echoed several times over, like the missed syncope of stadium speakers.

“Time,” he said again as he finally fought against the oppressive suffocation landing upon him.

            “Time.” He sucked in refreshing, cool air, “keeps on slipping into the future.” The awkward, merging heads of the mindless herds began to unfuse and reclarify.

“I want,” he struggled, as he shook off his hallucination and grasped at reality, “to fly like an eagle, to the sea.”

            Michael shook his head distastefully in the face of Charlie’s arrogant stupidity. Clara’s soaring expectations were smashed to the cruel streets of the awful city. The crowds angrily disassembled while a few Japanese tourists remained to snap shots of the American idiot.

            “Fly like an eagle, let my spirit carry me,” he continued. Michael ripped the loudspeaker from his grip and pushed him off of the small stage. Charlie, now clearly under his own, albeit enhanced, mental acumen, laughed and attempted to dance with Clara, who was deeply wounded and unresponsive. Michael took his former position and shrieked into the bullhorn at full volume into his face.

            “Do you think this is a joke? Will you mock Him all of your days? It is not just you that will pay for your recklessness, Herald. You will drag countless others down, chained to your defiance. You must fulfill your calling or face destruction with the mighty ones whom he has already cast down. What do you say to this, Herald?”

            Charlie uncapped his ears and stood erect after the oral barrage came to rest. Stoically, he responded, “My name is Charlie, Gus.”

            At this, Michael, stupefied, stepped down and marched away angrily. Charlie tried to shake the ringing out of his ears and turned to commiserate with Clara, but, when he turned, he saw her halfway down the block, arms crossed and head down. He wanted to chase after to continue in his confidence to her, but he realized what he had done.

He did what he had to rather than risk losing himself completely, but she could not know that, not yet anyway. Charlie similarly dropped his head in loneliness and headed back into the park. The birds sat in rows upon the branches, halted from their tasks, and stared at him. He decided to go back to the Atwater. He felt a need to paint.

His bay remained open while he worked, as he regularly stepped, hopefully, into the hall. Occasionally he saw some of the regular transients and miscreants wandering about, but not her. Hearing a noise, he jumped out at one point to see a green Mohawk clad storm trooper, puking against the brick wall thirty yards down, who followed his act with, “Hey, loser. Clean this shit up. It reeks like your mother,” before triumphantly staggering away, slipping in his own foul.

            He had tried to work on his woman, but to no avail. Upon returning, her eyes seemed to be shut. More hallucination, he thought, but no matter how many times he tried to refocus his mind, they remained shut. Even going so far as to repaint them several times, he only succeeded in muddying them into a further state of darkness.

            Covering her, and his shame, he set a freshly gessoed canvas onto his easel. Using a series of brushes and knives, he began to represent the terrible imagery of his day in acrylics. Unlike watercolors, he liked the textures he could create which communicated more of the emotional response he sought for in that moment. The horror-scape was set against a grayscale backdrop of foreboding inclemency. Tall, sinister buildings littered the ‘scape while bloodied streets of walking human remains strode by unawares to their own morbid conditions.

Hovering above them all was a myriad of mythological beasts, jovially mocking the fools below. Inadvertently, he noticed that the eyes he beheld had also made their way into the picture, staring deeply into his heart, full of wanton desecration.

            Alone and ghastly, Charlie stood in the foreground spewing disease and melancholic self-pity onto the teeming zombies clamoring by. Eventually, after savagely cutting at the scene with a series of thrashing blows from his paint knife, he stepped back to behold and wallow in his creation.

            “You really are pathetic, you know?” He was startled by her input, both in occurrence and tenor. He swung around, surprisingly excited to see her, despite her berating.

            “You have been given something, not only special and unique to you, but, and entirely beyond my grasp, essential and vital somehow. I don’t pretend to understand all of this, Charlie, and I am sure that it is unfathomably stressful for you to deal with, which is probably why you kill your brain with these drugs, but you must know that there is something larger than you out there counting on you. I mean, you believe the clock thing, right? Well, who ever heard of a clock without a clockmaker, Charlie? Don’t you think if someone or something can create all of this that he deserves our full attention?” Before he could utter a sound, she shut him down with a piece of paper.

            “Just read this. I was going to tape it to your door but since it was open, I figured that I may as well get some of this off my chest. I’ll see you around, Charlie.” She slowly walked away, leaving him feeling a different flavor of despair. He was used to the hopelessness variety, but she had infected him with a drop of fondness, so this was new for him. He actually felt the sting of loss for the first time in many years. He hung on her last words, sad as they were, but at least sprinkled with the prospect of more time together. Then she punctuated her statements with one last arrow.

            “Or not.” And she was gone. Charlie felt a lump in his chest. He reached instinctually to his medicine trove but stopped shy. He needed to read her note first.

‘Charlie,

There is so much pain and

sadness in your heart that you

are missing the beauty next to it.

If you only dwell in the destruction,

how will you ever taste the wine?

I want to be your friend, but

I can’t participate in your demise.

As long as the drugs are in your

life, I cannot be.

Love, Clara

Take care, Charlie X’

            Charlie folded the note into his pocket.

He worked on his picture for a few more minutes before leaving on his pathway home. As he rolled down his door, only the vague moonlight lit the space. His unholy death homage sat drying on the easel. However, it now included a tiny, bright figure standing beside his amended, healthier looking self-portrayal, radiating light into the darkness.

            Lying back on his cot, unlit joint between his lips, he flicked his lighter in his right hand as he replayed her words in his head. It was disarming that they carried so much weight, not to mention that her voice accompanied the words in his spinning mind. Today had been unlike any he had experienced in many years, but essentially the same, as well. There were plenty of days in his youth when he would catch glimpses of something, notions that lit his brain on fire that had to be written out before they swelled to dangerous levels in his head, but never as visceral as what manifested earlier.

            “Beauty next to it” he imagined repetitively. What could she have meant by that? And what was ‘Charlie X’ about? There was no way she could know about his self-subjected thesis. His middle initial? Had she seen some sort of official document with his full name on it? She had been in his head, after all.

            He felt a strange sensation gripping his heart. A voice began to speak to him from a long ago past. He remembered touting the fact that his existence’s moniker would be that he was a truth seeker. No matter the ugliness or unpopularity involved, he would root it out and cling to it, regardless of outcome or personal price. But now, as he felt a deep sense that he was standing in the doorway of that which his pride announced its desire for, he lingered, unwilling to enter its unknown grasp.

Charlie continued to wrestle with his thoughts as he dropped the lighter to the floor and spit out the pot stick. He knew he could escape the drugs, he just didn’t know yet if he wanted to. They weren’t a crutch as much as a shelter. One night, he decided, he would give it just one night.

            “Whoever, or whatever, you are,” Charlie challenged the mysterious, “you have one night to show me why I should care enough to listen.” He folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes, imagining beauty. “But if you don’t get my attention,” he added defiantly, “you have no one to blame but yourself.”

            His mind pulled away from his body, rocketing upwards. He saw himself lying upon his bed and began to fear. His ascension halted. Drifting in the air, tied to his body by a string, he questioned the experience and opened his physical eye. He was still on his bed. His surroundings were unchanged. Breathing purposefully, he closed his eyes once more.

            Feeling the same quick rise, he came to the same stop. Understanding the ability to remain, he concentrated within his mind and watched as his corporeal self, yards below, reached out into the dark and, ceremonially, cut the string. He continued on his journey.

            Passing through a spectrum of light in reverse order, he entered the final, red environ and splashed into water. His breathing continued, though he knew in his mind that he should drown. He felt himself pass through a liquid barricade, transitioning into a pool of pure, transparent oils. Sweetness permeated his taste as he recognized an unusual familiarity. Rising up from the pool into serene light, he saw that he was in the center of a brook, teeming with life. A man sat at the bank that stood upon his arrival.

            “It has been so long,” the man said gladly. “Where have you been?”

            Charlie searched for an answer and lied, “I have been detained.”

            “It is good to see you. We have so much more to discuss.” The man offered his hand to him and pulled him from the stream. His clothes were dry. Charlie looked around and found himself somewhere known to him, like he had been there many times before, but he had little understanding as to why. He looked into the face of the strong, young man and said the first thing that entered his thoughts.

            “Uncle Rick?”

            “Hello, Charlie. But remember, I am called Samar. It has been a long time, hasn’t it? Come.”

            Charlie looked down at his hands and noticed that they were smooth and clean. The scar from his hiking accident was gone. He did not question how, his mind seemed to know the answer without even offering asking. Charlie looked up. He was inside.

            Surrounded by people, some milling about while others lounged, the room he was in was large and grandly furnished. Looking past the hanging gardens and expansive marble banisters, he saw a sky so bright and deep that he became alarmed by its intensity and that he did not need his sunglasses to stare into it. It was as if one of his paintings had come to life and, like Alice, he had entered it. The occupants slowly took notice of him and began to offer applause and loving greetings.

            “These are the some of the ones who are here because of you,” Samar whispered joyfully into his ear, as if to remind him, but he already knew. Across the room, she stood. In flowing white gown, still as a statue, she stared back into his heart with large, dark eyes. Charlie reached back for reassurance.

            “She is here to take you forward, Charlie. Do not fear her. She is your guardian. She has been with you since you left.” Charlie looked back into the loving eyes of his aged Uncle Rick. Touching his grey, perennial five o’clock shadow, Charlie smiled and was encouraged.

            “Uncle Rick,” he said nostalgically as the man’s face morphed back to youth.

            The woman was standing at his side, escorted by another of her kind, a male figure with similar strange coloring and stoic charm. Dressed in the same manner, he placed a strong, comforting hand on Charlie’s shoulder. The woman addressed him.

            “It is time to go to the Great City,” she said flatly but with great ease of spirit. She placed her hand on his other shoulder as they began to walk him out, down a great, single staircase of many flights. As they descended, he heard a voice scream his name behind them. He recognized the voice as his mother’s.

            She ran down the first dozen steps and met him in an embrace, whispering emphatically into his ear, “I am only here because of you.” Charlie felt a strange awareness and responded calmly to her.

            “I know.” He had no idea why he said that.

            “It is time. We must go to see the King,” the woman stated as she turned him back down the stairs. His mother kept repeating her words in greater volume and joy as they continued. Halfway down, he could see into the vast, horizon-less distance. He looked down into an enormous courtyard filled with large fruit trees which lined the carved banks of a hypnotically glistening river. An immense population stood together, facing a large, grand balcony. Charlie felt in his bones that this was where the ‘King’ would appear and where he would find his long-sought answers.

            Charlie opened his eyes and stared at the crack in his ceiling, almost unaware of his return. Slowly, his mind came to him.

Lifting his hand above his eyes, he surveyed the deep scar on his left palm and felt a warm teardrop fall from his eye to his ear. He sat up and looked about his awakening flat. Warm, morning light streamed in through his filthy window. Everything was in its place, yet seemed so foreign. He was back in his dwelling, yet, he felt deeply, so far from home.

Charlie sauntered over to his sink and began to rinse out his glass. He watched the liquid swirl in the bottom of the cup, pretending not to notice the glinting bottle enticing him from arm’s reach. Eventually looking at it, he took notice of the morning sun bending its way through the half-empty vessel and felt thirsty.

            Relentlessly working on his painting, he had managed to cover himself with paint from finger to neck and across his face. He was flying through illustrations of his released imagination. A series of canvasses were stacked against his wall, inspired from his strange dream. A voice finally broke his focus.

            “Good morning,” she said weakly. She was obviously attempting to appear strong, he realized, but stood almost folded into herself. He raced toward her, throwing his brush and palate as he went. Bracing for attack she screamed.

“Charlie?”

            He gathered her into his arms and lifted her from the ground in a firm, heartsick embrace and began to sob into her chest. Tingling with startled tension, she softly stoked his hair and relaxed into his gentle grip. She did not want to commit to her return, however, until she was sure of his degree of baggage.

            “Are you alright?’ she asked softly, waiting to hear the quality of his words. He simply nodded, denying her quest. She pulled his head back from her breast and looked into his eyes. They were full of tears and ablaze with passion. She was nearly captured but withdrew, wriggling stiffly from his arms.

            “You got my note,” she stated, pretending to ask. Her question lay in subtext.

He nodded and wiped his face against his forearm, further smearing colors against his skin. His eyes looked even deeper than usual with the framing, she thought, fighting her carnal impulses.

“And,” she led him, preparing her self-preserving, emotional retreat to begin.

            “I’m good. I’m good,” he said as he collected himself. “I don’t need them anymore. I just need you.” His words flew at her like darts. Her heart skipped as they received their charm, but she continued to fight.

            “I don’t know how to respond to that, Charlie,” she said coyly, playing with various curios on his desk as she turned her back to him.

            “Clara,” he blurted emphatically as he turned her, “I haven’t felt this good in years and I owe that to you. I need your help to make this journey. Will you help me?” His eyes penetrated her and she felt hopelessly trapped, but in a snare that was reassuring and long desired. She nodded plaintively with wide eyes as he slung his body over her small frame and swallowed her deeply into his passions. Melting into him, Clara abandoned her misgivings and embraced a new hope.

            “I drank tap water this morning,” he chuckled. “It was amazing.” Clara joined his laughter, amused by the novelty he experienced in such a mundane act.

            Looking through his morning work as Charlie continued to craft his dreamscape, she was struck by the depths of his talent. She felt like she could walk through his paintings and recline into the imageries as if they were feather beds. He told her the story of his dream as she progressed through the illustrations.

            “That is amazing, Charlie,” she gasped, half at the work and half at the accompanying story. “Where do you think you were?”

            He stepped back, looking at his portrayal of the balcony and spoke, breathily. “I don’t know. But I want to go back and find out.”

            “Do you think you will,” she asked, concerned. It was, after all, a dream, she thought. Then again, her meanderings through his brain were, also, weren’t they? She flushed at the paradox.

            “I have been there before, many times, but I haven’t returned since I consciously objected to it. I decided to accept the assignment of mental delusion and control the deterioration of my rationality through drug use, prescribed and otherwise. But that was the joke, itself. I was actively orchestrating my own moral descent to avoid the stigma of metaphysical ascent. There is something, someone, calling me onward and I want to know why.” He broke his gaze from the painted balcony back to her. Clara became wildly nervous and shook visibly, struggling to maintain eye contact with him.

            “We need to talk to Gus,” he demanded and grabbed her hand.

            As they walked down the alley from his window, Charlie felt an odd chill ride down his spine. He squeezed Clara’s hand firmly.

            “What is it, Charlie?” she asked painfully, her fingers numbing. “Is something wrong?” He did not respond. She saw that his eyes were narrowly fixated on the shadows ahead, but upon her own inspection, she saw nothing. His breaths became shallow. Concerned, she placed her hand on his chest to feel his heartbeat.

            “We have much to offer, Charlie,” she heard the foreign voice speaking into him. She looked up at him as he was frozen in panic, continuing to stare into the empty shadow. The voice seemed to come from nowhere, but she heard it as plainly as if it was inches away. She turned back to look at the same spot, expecting to see only the same dark patch of rotting brick, but something else had manifested within its core.

            A black, imposing figure resided inside of the shadow and beckoned him closer. Charlie began moving forward, but she stepped in front of him and ceased his gait.

            “We are waiting for you, Charlie. There is much to discuss,” the voice hissed as the formless silhouette dissipated. Charlie’s hypnotic stare was broken and his posture loosened as he stepped back.

            “Charlie, what was that?” Clara asked quickly.

            “I don’t…I wasn’t…He knows me,” was his broken response as he continued to stare, blinking mechanically. Clara grabbed his hand and held it to her chest.

            “Charlie. Look at me,” she implored. “Look at me, Charlie. Focus on me.” Charlie diverted his gaze onto her, staring blankly into her eyes. He suddenly returned to his full faculties and placed his hands on her face. He smiled, full of relief, but the portent’s eyes still burned in his mind. She dragged him from the alley and into the daylight.

            “We need to stay out of the alley, OK? I think the light is the best place for us, OK, Charlie?” she stated nervously. The voice stung her ear and had inspired great trepidation, but she did not want to admit it, even to herself, so she simply acted like she had not heard it. They continued on their path to the park.

            When they arrived, Michael was in full form, regaling the crowd of the promise of eternity. No one seemed to care, but a few people begrudgingly dropped change into the coffee cup at his feet. Michael shook his head and stepped down as the pair walked up.

            “So you’ve returned. Do you want to sing another song for the crowd, Herald?” he asked as he fished through his cup with a straw.

            “Why do you keep calling me Harold, Gus” Charlie asked, watching him struggle with his beverage. “And what are you doing?”

            “People keep putting their dirty quarters in my coffee. The irony is that they never give enough to buy a new one so I need to get it out so I can actually drink it,” he barked. “And why do you keep calling me ‘Gus’, Herald?” he demanded. Charlie thought about this and shrugged a shoulder.

“Dunno,” he replied, “You just feel like a Gus, I guess.” He smiled at the unamused street performer. Gus finally caught a coin with his thin, red straw and slowly began to lift it along side of the Styrofoam cup. Charlie keyed in on the tensioning in Gus’ temple and the resultant beads of concentrated sweat forming on his pores. Just as Gus’ tongue slowly gave way to victorious smile, Charlie shouted.

            “Watch out! Devil at four o’clock!”

            Gus swung to his right wildly and looked into the face of a tall blonde walking her hairless dog at the end of a long, rhinestone leash. Gus quickly looked back at the end of his straw and slumped his shoulders in defeat. Charlie fought to contain his humor.

            “Charlie, that wasn’t nice,” Clara scolded, likewise restraining her delight.

            “My bad,” Charlie responded. “Never can tell what the devil is wearing these days.” His infectious smile spilled across the triumvirate toward Michael whose hard faced disapproval thwarted any encroaching humor and left it to flail, defrocked, upon the cold concrete.

            “What do you want from me?” Michael pleaded to the sky, deeply emotional to the point of satire. Clara squirmed a bit and began to offer her desire. Michael quickly shut her down with a hand as he continued to speak.

“I have given you my life, Father, and you decide to confide in these two? Why must I be a party to this? Have I not proven myself worthy? Just give me the task and I will complete it!”

            Clara and Charlie grew increasingly uncomfortable and insecure about their choice to include Michael in any further discussions. Charlie blurted out the first thing that occurred to him.

            “Hey man, sometimes our thoughts and his…” Charlie began to mime his hand across his neck, showing severance. “You know, we have our different ways about us. Us and him, I mean. You hear me, right?” Charlie said, struggling to formulate some quick reasoned nonsense to let Gus off the hook and amble off, but his plan backfired.

            “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord,” Michael said humbly as he looked back at Charlie with pity and comfort, making Charlie fell extremely vulnerable.

            “Right, that’s what I said, but I’m not so sure about the whole calling me ‘lord’ thing.” He spoke very carefully to the feeble minded transient who returned his mockery with a tremendous stare. Oddly, though, the harsh disapproval relaxed Charlie sufficiently.

            “Isaiah fifty-five, verses seven through nine: ‘Let the Wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts’,” he began with a stern eye upon Charlie. He continued.

“‘And let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither your ways My ways”, saith the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth. So are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”’”

            Michael reached up and grasped the air in his palm, as if he had caught a fly. With the other, he palmed Charlie’s shoulder. No less than a little freaked out, Clara rethought the whole avenue of opening the door to fringe lunatics and decided to rescue Charlie from Michael’s clutches.

When she grabbed a hold of him and attempted to pull him back down the street, however, Charlie resisted. His eyes fixated on Michael’s and he stood as stiff as statuary. He gently placed his hands over Michael’s and Clara’s, both.

            “I think we should all sit down and talk,” he said, nodding reassurances to them.

            Over a fresh cup of coffee, Charlie regaled the pair about his dream the night before, childhood instances of déjà vu, and visions of destruction. He railed into his fascination with occultism and their connectivity to Biblical traditions, so-called heretical beliefs that shared common elements of Judaism and Christianity, earlier cultures with flood stories, oracles that predicted end times manifestations, the Maya, modern alien conspiracies and on and on he went.

            A couple of nearby listeners eventually stopped pretending to be oblivious to his diatribe and became fully engaged with him as he spoke. He went into his own personal theories about the physical universe and its myriad of tangential possibilities and mathematical paradigm shifts toward zero by the Indians as a number rather than a position holder.

            Realizing by the pointed looks given him by Clara and the glossiness of Michael’s eyes, he finally withdrew, much to the chagrin of several deeply entrenched grad students who voiced their dissent to the untimely summation and walked out repeating portions of the logorrhea followed by choruses of, “That was dope!”

            Sitting up, Clara addressed Michael.

            “You said to me yesterday that I would find him and that you were here to help, so…” she trailed off, expecting him to jump to action and begin prescribing directions or, at least, provide explanations. Michael sat, silently unmoved in his chair, continuing to sip his mug of coffee. Clara kicked at Charlie’s ankle under the table.

            “I guess what we want to know is, what do you know?” Charlie was careful not to lead the question.

            Michael reviewed the statements in his mind as he looked at the pair over the rim of his joe. Sighing frustration, he set the empty cup down on the table and got up, exiting the restaurant. The two remaining attendees scanned each other for a hint of answer and, unfulfilled, shot out the door together.

            “Wait up, Michael,” Clara insisted. “Is this your idea of help?”

            “Is this your idea of a joke?” he shot back. “I have spent all of my recent life in study and service. I will not be a part of some drugged out delusions of visiting heaven or seeing demons in the shadows. This is a serious time and there is serious work to be done to warn others. I will not waste my time on this nonsense.” He huffed off down the block.

            “What about Isaiah fifty-five, verses seven through…” Charlie was cut off before he could finish.

            “Do not dare to use the Word of God as a weapon against one of his children, son. It never ends well.”

            “Well, I can assure you, it does not end well for you either. I have seen your future,” Charlie replied, defensively.

            Michael stopped dead in his tracks. Desperate for personal information or, in the least, a good laugh, he turned and walked back to Charlie with guarded curiosity in his eyes.

            “I’ll bite. What did you see?”

            Charlie grasped for a quick, stinging lie or satire that would humiliate or embarrass the fraud. Placing his hand on Michael’s head, he fell into a trance and saw Michael leading a group of men and women through shadows. Then, there was a moment of personal weakness and anger that led to him high over a bridge as millions walked below him to a land of promise.

Charlie spoke out the events and pulled his hand back. He felt ashamed for trying to play charlatan but Michael seemed pleased by the announcement. Charlie was confused by what he saw amidst the prideful reaction to it. Even though he could not make complete sense of it, he felt that there was something less than desirable involved in the outcome. Clara grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him away from the situation.

            “Let’s go, Charlie. It is painfully obvious that he is not all there. We can do this on our own.” As they turned back toward the Atwater, Michael felt a deep regret for his poor attitude. He reluctantly turned around and spoke after them.

            “He will guide you. Release all of your doubt and accept the truth for what it is. If you hide behind the world, it will devour you, Herald. You were appointed for this time. He will guide you if you open your heart.”

            They walked with greater pace in order to escape his voice, but Charlie heard every word, even as they ran ahead out of earshot. Noticing his distraction, Clara stopped short and drew his attention.

            “How about me, Charlie. What do you see?” She stepped in front of him blocking his path, placing his hand over her own heart. Charlie’s eyes dulled for a brief flash before he spoke to her.

            “I saw you standing in a kitchen. You were cooking. I could smell pasta and meatballs, with garlic bread.” As he spoke, he waved his arms about mystically and rolled his head about his shoulders. Peeking at her through one opened eye, he cracked a smile. She smiled back and hit him in the shoulder, playfully.

            “Fine,” she moaned. “We can go to my place. I doubt you even have a single fork in your apartment.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him flirtatiously down the avenue. Charlie’s smile faded tragically as he strode behind her. He could never share what he saw with her. A lump swelled in his throat.

As Clara finished washing the final dish, she looked over at him lounging on her couch. His eyes had grown heavy. She reminded herself the promise she had made to herself before coming to the city and fought against her sudden desires.

            “OK, Charlie. It’s time for you to say ‘good-night’.”

            He wrestled his imagination away from the earlier vision he saw of her future, burned deeply into his thoughts, and protested.

            “How about if I just sleep on the couch? I promise to be a gentleman. I just don’t want to leave you right now,” he said with unusual seriousness.

            She sensed something deeper than a convenient ploy to spend the night and, against her earlier sentiment, relented compassionately.

            “Do you want to talk?” she asked as she sat beside him.

            “No,” he blurted. “I mean, of course I want to talk, but happy thoughts.” His voice was chirpish, like a scared child. This only reinforced her concerns. She retrieved a pillow from her room and laid it out on the couch for him.

            “Lie down and we can talk about anything you want until you fall asleep.” She began to stroke his hair while looking into his eyes. A deep fear resided within him. This must be hard for him, she assumed.

“Tell me about your childhood,” she inquired to focus his mind.

            “My parents were kind,” he began. “I was a lot to deal with. They would take me on trips to parks and museums and things, but, as I got older,” he yawned, “each trip ended with me crying and wetting my pants.” He laughed at himself.

            She did not. Tilting her head, she asked, “What were you afraid of, Charlie?” Her voice echoed in his head as he felt himself fall away from the couch and into his dream.

            Standing in the Museum of Natural History, Charlie stared down the skeletal remains of a T. Rex. The other visitors melted away from him as he saw the beast swing its tail and come to life.

            It roamed through a dense forest, searching for food. Charging ahead, it had spotted some other smaller animals and gave chase. Suddenly, it came under attack itself. Several men of huge stature and strange appearance dropped in on its back from the trees. With razor-like teeth, they eviscerated the screaming animal and drank the life from its pulsing wounds.

            Without much concern for its carcass, they abandoned their meal once it had let its supply of blood.  They gathered themselves while dozens of smaller creatures re-appeared and began to rut through the fallen creature.

            The large, disfigured men strode off with the gait of gazelles and leapt into the tree-line, out of sight. Charlie hid in nearby bushes, trembling in fear. He noticed that even these smaller creatures were unlike anything he had ever seen before. They seemed to have vestiges of humanlike quality, but were hoofed and covered partially in animal hides. Various horns, akin to those their vanished predecessors bore, broke through their foreheads above empty, menacing eyes. Charlie felt sick.

            He took the opportunity to escape as they were all engrossed in their meal. They snapped viciously and swung clawed hands at each other as they swam through the remains of the giant lizard. Charlie crawled through the underbrush as quietly as he could, straining to be absolutely silent. Hearing thunderous footsteps, he sheltered himself into a nearby hole in the ground.

            As he held his breath, Charlie beheld a monster that would have shaken the soul of even the most ferocious predator he could have otherwise imagined. It walked on two, massive legs that bent backwards at the knee like a goat, but upright. The torso was like that of the three hunters he saw prior, but its head was far more insidious. It resembled a huge Billy goat with long, sharp horns and dark red, searing eyes. Around its neck grew a long, white beard partially covering a massive chain that hung another hollowed horn from it. Charlie’s body seized in terror as it walked only inches from him. He remained perfectly still but felt himself urinating profusely.

            The giant beast halted its walk and began to sniff at the air. A guttural growl that would have shamed any lion quaked from its throat as it surveyed its surroundings. Baying deafeningly loud, it grabbed its dangling horn and blew into it with a resonance that carried through the entirety of the forest. Suddenly, Charlie felt something slip up and around his leg and then his whole frame.

            Now convulsing in pure, unquenchable fear, Charlie turned his head to see the face of a snake next to his, but much bigger than his own. The serpent’s tongue protruded, prickling his skin, and hissed at him sickeningly. As it tightened its grip around the boy’s fragile body, it dragged him down the unfortunate shelter he was hiding in while it looked out of the hole toward the angered creature above. As it hissed, the horrific monster bowed a knee, abandoning its fury dutifully.

            As the serpent turned its head back down the chasm, it laughed and spoke to the suffocating boy. “We have much more to discuss, Charlie,” it said in painful tones.

Charlie screamed inconsolably. He watched as his parents raced to him, spasming on the marble floor in a pool of his own vomit and urine, drawing the awkward stares and fingers of the uninvited spectators to his crippling sideshow.

            He opened his eyes and saw Clara shaking him violently, shouting his name repeatedly. He knew he was back in the safety of her apartment but could not contain his screams. Trapped inside a web of terror, he continued his wail as her front door fell victim to pounding fists from the hallway.