Nightmares From a Lovecraftian Mind (6 page)

Microscopic blood
drifts through the air and
Osman
sticks out his
tongue to taste the environmental storm of redness. He is fueled by the ingestion.

He is startled by
a voice that says, “There’s something wrong with you.”

Osman
turns his head to see the source. Standing to the
side of him is an extremely hairy dwarf in a t-shirt that says DEEP DENDO.

“Do I know you?”
Osman
says.

“You probably
should.”

“Okay then.”
Osman
steps towards the hairy figure.

“You gave birth to
me,” the dwarf says, pointing to
Osman’s
torso.

Osman
runs his hand along his body, feels the soreness.
“Seems like it. That explains a lot.”
Osman
aches
with maternal-paternal confusion.

The dwarf says,
“After I left you I explored the crimson abyss. I rode the plasma through eons
of neon atrocities to the cold wastes of cloudy glass.”

“Sounds like you
had a good time,”
Osman
says.
“Very
adventurous of you.”

“This is not a joke.
I wished you would have been there. I ate and drank from the very hands of the
Queen in Red.”

“So my offspring
made such great strides. I should be so proud, huh?”

“Yes,” says the
dwarf. “But there is something wrong with you.
Nightmares
perhaps?
Nightmares of a blossom you cannot expel. Nightmares of a hole
you cannot dig.”

“I don’t think so.”
Osman
shakes his head.
“Maybe.
I don’t know.”

“Do you want to
feed on the city?” the dwarf says. “I would like to.”

“Are you asking me
to become your master?”

“No,” the dwarf
says. “I am asking to become
yours
.”

Osman
laughs and his voice echoes through the trash, waking
up the homeless sub-humans, their wine mucus spilling out into occult shapes of
primordial inspiration. They will have countless days trying to dispel the
desires to reconstruct lost idols out of cardboard and whiskey bottles.

“
My
master?”
Osman
says.

“Yes.”

“I’ve given birth
to a joker.”

“You think so?”

“No other
explanation. There’s no way you can be my master.”

“Stranger things
have happened.”

“Indeed.”

The dwarf
approaches quickly. Two of his yellow fingers strike.
Osman’s
alchemized veins tremble and squirm like thirsty worms after a rain of LSD.

“What are you
doing to me?”

“Nothing you will
not do to yourself in time,” the dwarf says.
“In time.”

Osman
melts through the asphalt and into the sewer system.

***

In the sewers
there are ancient beasts.

Osman
knows the stories about them: the plague-eaters, the
fecal dog-flowers of
Leng
imported by a Tibetan
immigrant in 1866.

Osman
falls into a pile of them. They cry out in a language
older than civilization, a language like the violent expulsion of tortured
cows: obsidian mantras of rage.

Their leaves and
thorns dig into his pale flesh and try to drink of his power.

“I have no
business with you,”
Osman
says.

The plant-matter
beasts speak his language now. “Then eat,” they say, loosening a lotus flower
that falls onto
Osman’s
lips. He takes it into his
mouth and swallows.

The dwarf stands
in front of him on a pedestal of glass, bone, and frozen blood that is both
ancient and inhuman.

“Father,” he says.
“Call me master.”

“No.”

The dwarf digs his
hand into the squirming plants and pulls out a bulbous skull.

“Who is that?”
Osman
says.

“Don’t you mean
who
was
it?”

“Who
was
it?”

“It was you.”

Osman
sees the resemblance. It is indeed him.
“How?”

The dwarf laughs.
“How!”

Leaves fall from
the sewer’s ceiling and the water below bubbles into brown spheres of filth.
The bubbles surround
Osman
. They tickle him. They
entice him. They poison and pervert him.

Vines drop down
and pull him to the surface.

Osman
is pulled through the asphalt and is standing face to
face with a New York City police
officer.

***

“Got I.D.?”

“No.”

“Turn around.”

But
Osman
has no intention of complying. He stares the cop
down. There is no way in hell he is going to be handcuffed.

“Turn the hell
around, faggot.”

“No.”

Nightstick strikes
abdomen.
Osman
barely feels it but he is so drained
that he falls to the ground. He is handcuffed and put into a patrol car. The
backseat smells like overtime sweat and abuse of power.

Sleep comes fast.

Sleep……

***

False bloody
sunshine oozes down through florescent lights and illuminates police work.
Paper shuffles around, pens scribble, typewriters go: click, click, click, tap,
tap
.

And
Osman
is cold on the cell floor. His nose bleeds wasted
nutrients. He wishes for a chance to strangle the dwarf but then remembers it
is his son or at least some form of offspring.

Someone in the
room says, “Sleeping Beauty is up.”

Laughing ensues.

Another voice says,
“Looks like he’s a real deep one.”

“Oh yes.”

“We should wake
him up to play.”

Laughter.

Osman
ignores the voices and instead eyes the cops through
the bars of the cell. They all look the same: olive faces, grumpy and
disgruntled. They are all itching for an excuse to put power into play. Too
much paperwork has made their eyes hurt and their minds sour and twisted. Who
wanted to become a police officer in order to fill out forms? They wanted to
cast brutal spells of their own.

Osman
acts as bait.

He coughs a racial
slur to the nearest cop.

“What did you just
say?” the man in blue says.

“I called you a
wop,”
Osman
says.

“You
gotta
be
shittin
’ me.” He turns
to the other officers. “You hear this shit? This guy wants to play.”

The other
prisoners in the cell stare wide-eyed, holding in laughter. They think the guy
on the ground has a lot of balls. He must be crazy or on drugs.

The cell door
opens and in walks three cops. They drag
Osman
out
and bring him into an unmarked room. He is forced into a chair and his legs are
shackled. The ceiling is dripping with water from a broken pipe. It smells like
sweet mold, gin, and incense.

“You know it’s
been a slow night,” Officer Wop says. “You’re really doing us a favor by
provoking us, you know that?”

Osman
grins. “What are you waiting for?”

“Shit, this guy
doesn’t know when to quit!”

The other two cops
grunt.

“Officer
Pharol
here will teach you to comply,” one officer says,
gesturing to another who was already taking his shirt off.

Osman
inhales the mold smell. His eyes concentrate on the
hair on Officer
Pharol’s
chest: swirls of darkness
against pale, pimpled skin.

The hairs become
sweaty tendrils and curl up around
Pharol’s
face. The
other cops dig their fingers in, pulling and twisting.
Osman
watches with a smirk. The mold and incense invigorate him.

“Next!”
Osman
says and then he’s out of the shackles and out of the
chair. With only a few smooth movements he pulls the entrails out of the
officers and uses them to construct an altar.

“
Edo
edi
essum
.”

One quick ritual
later and
Osman’s
strength is restored.

***

Osman
is back in Central Park.

He’s standing
behind a tree, the same tree he stood behind when he had used the two punks.
There is no one around him now, however. It’s just him and the darkness.

At his feet there
is a small mound of dirt.
Osman
taps it with his
toes. Shards of memory flood over him and he remembers what’s buried there.

He crouches down,
his fingers and palms working through the soil to unearth the secret beneath.
Finally it is revealed: the book.

When had he buried
it? He can’t remember. He thinks he remembers it exiting his body in a furious
deluge of shit.

It is his again,
that’s all he cares about. The binding is loose and the cover is filthy but the
book is still readable.
Osman
sits in the dirt and
opens the book, eager to relearn the blasphemies he had forgotten.

His eyes peruse the lurid descriptions of VCR
tapes: bloody magnetism and
magick
in the form of
popular entertainment. As he mumbles along with the text, he hears something.

It is coming from
the hole in the ground.

The sounds are
like tiny teeth chattering and fish slapping against flesh.
Osman
peers into the hole, into the abyss.

“There’s something
wrong with you,” the dwarf’s voice says.

Osman
nods. He brings the book to his chest. “I know.”

“You belong down
here with us.”

“Yes.”

The dwarf laughs,
his tiny teeth chattering with delight. “Yes
what
?”

Osman’s
hands melt into the book and his brain breaks into
dark spirals.

“Yes….…..master.”

Several decaying
clocks chimed at once.

The noise woke
poor Ben from his melancholy slumber.

He had only
managed to get to sleep shortly after
midnight
despite getting into bed at dusk. His small supper of lamb and cornhusks made
him more tired than usual and Ben expected to fall right to sleep once under
the covers. But he found himself staring at the walls for hours instead, trying
to decipher the shadows that covered the dull paint like fading hieroglyphics.

Once he did get to
sleep, his dreams were as mind-numbing as his waking life. Cyclopean machines
stood on grassy hills while Ben sat before them. He was not able to move his
body, only his eyes. Sleep had brought just a subtle change. Instead of staring
at the walls and shadows, his eyes were focused on the clanking apparatuses on
the hill. Though they looked modern, the hulking metal structures looked
strangely archaic to Ben as if they were built by a primitive people who had
not the faintest conception of how machinery should be constructed.

The dream seemed
to last for days, sending Ben into a hypnotic state until the chiming of the
clocks woke him up.

It was only
two a.m., a little less than two hours after he
had fallen asleep and Ben cursed the clocks for finally deciding to work at
that most inopportune moment. He needed sleep to rest both his body and mind.
The sound of the clocks struck his ears like mischievous children eager to use
musical instruments for the first time.

Ben sat up in the
bed and stared into the darkness. Even the window was pure black. The usual
moonlight was absent and in its place was a thick darkness that seemed to creep
over the windowsill and into the room.

Not wanting to
tempt the blackness outside, Ben turned his eyes to the floor to find his slippers.
He could not see a thing.

After fumbling for
matches on his nightstand, Ben lit a candle. He saw his slippers partially
covered by an opened book he had not remembered even taking into his room.

The cover of the
book resembled dark yellow leather and Ben was reluctant to touch it. It did
not look familiar. It was not from his collection. But why was it opened and
draped over his slippers?

Slowly his hand
moved towards the book and as soon as his fingers touched it, the clocks
stopped chiming.

Through the
flickering candlelight Ben could make out the title of the book.

The title of the
book was
Several Decaying Clocks Chimed at Once.

AND
YOU SHOULD BELIEVE IN SOLAR LODGES

Sometimes I fall asleep to the sound of
ominous spheres rolling down the hallway outside my door. Sometimes I awake to
the sound of spherical doom opening and closing doors in the hallway outside.
Sometimes I sit and listen to the soft babbling of my empty room as it smears
interrupted silence on the surface of my gloom.

But more often than not I pinch the skin
between my thumb and index finger until the pain pushes me into blackness for I
do not want to hear anything but my dry skin cracking. That is what brings me
those dreams of hiding in an industrial park.

I hide in doorways and corridors and
janitor’s closets and under desks and in bathroom stalls and closets filled
with medication. I hide and feel my bowels nervously rumble. In my dreams, I am
never found.

Never mind that. My dreams are not
important. No one’s dreams are important. All dreams are bastard offspring of
babbling brains. They try to escape to the dusty corners of the ceiling where
cobwebs catch them, ingest them, and wrap them in plastic to sell in
five-and-dime shops where frugal housewives buy them for their children so the
little pests won’t cry. I should know. My mother took me to five-and-dime shops
when I was a child. More times than not I would come out holding a cheaply made
action figure or toy robot.

So it is Friday afternoon and Casey asks me
if I want to drive up to his college with him. “It’ll be fun,” he says. “We’ll
just stay in the library and read.”

“Why do you need me for that?” I ask.

“I like company when I read,” he says.
“Besides, we won’t have a lot of distractions there and I know you wanted to
finish up your little project.”

“Okay.”

And so I drive up to the college with him.
As soon as we approach the campus I know I have made a mistake. It has been
years since I have stepped foot anywhere near that place and I now remember why
that is so. The college seems to suck all the psychic fluid from me until there
is nothing left but a crude construction of bones topped with a sentient prune
inside a pale, wooden cranium.

“Something wrong?”
Casey asks. “You look terrible.”

“Nothing’s wrong. I’m just…..” I say but I
never finish the sentence. Instead, I open the door to the library and start up
the flight of stairs that will bring me to the third floor.

“Why do you want to go to the third floor?”
Casey asks.

“I don’t know.
Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

We find a table in the corner and sit down.
I set my bag down on a chair and go off looking for a book. Casey has already
picked one up on the way. It is a seemingly random choice but knowing Casey, it
might have been planned weeks in advance. I don’t see the title but I know it
is something about antler jelly.

I leave him at the table and walk to the far
corner of the room. The books there are dusty and look untouched. It is as if
college students don’t read anymore. I expect the books to be mere props. I run
my fingers along the spines, pushing them inward to feel the weight of them,
just to make sure they are real.

After a few minutes of perusing I find a
book that interests me.

I sit down on the floor and start to read.
Sitting next to Casey isn’t something I really want to do. He moves his lips
while he reads. He also has mild body odor like cheese. Besides, my little
project requires unconventional reading environments and the library floor
seems to fit that description.

What is my project? It’s….

Casey touches me on the shoulder. “What the
hell are you doing?”

“I’m reading,” I say. A sound on the other
side of the shelf makes us both turn our heads. It is the sound of a heavy
sphere rolling through sludge. Then: doors open and close followed by wordy
dreams being sucked through brown cotton until they scrape the dull paint on my
walls and form bulbous pyramids of black glue.

“Let’s go,” I say. “I’m going to check this
book out.”

“You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“They’re closing the library at the end of
the semester and they want all the books in. You can only read them in here
or…..”

“Or what?”
I ask.

“Or you can steal them.”

“I have no problem with that.”

Casey nods.
“Didn’t think
you would.”

We walk quickly down the aisle, turn right,
and go down the stairs. Dizziness sets in. I see a janitor mopping a floor. A
librarian is leading some young freshman up the stairs. A dog barks in the
distance.

I duck into a corner and open the back of the
book where they keep the security sensor. After an impromptu surgery with my
ballpoint pen, the sensor is out and I am free to adopt the book as my own.

When we go outside I notice how cold it has
become. Normally I don’t notice things like the weather but this time the
temperature slaps me in the face. Casey grabs my arm and leads me to the next
building. “In here,” he says.

“Why?”

“I have to show you something.”

I stand in front of the door to the new
building and look at my reflection in the glass doors. The library is no longer
behind me. It is an industrial park filled with 18-wheelers hauling
merchandise, pallets of plastic-wrapped boxes, and stocky, sweaty workers
operating worn-out forklifts.

Casey opens the door for me and I walk
inside.

In front of me is a vending machine offering
candy bars and potato chips. I dig in my pocket because I usually keep a little
bit of change on me. This time, however, I am broke. “Got some quarters?” I ask
Casey.

“Nope.”

“Dollar bills?”

“Nope.”

“Well then….” I say, disappointed but
understanding. Casey is usually broke. I don’t even know why I had expected him
to have any money.

We walk down a hallway that is lined with
brick walls and trophy cases. Occasionally there is a framed picture of some
obscure aspect of biology or architecture.

“What building are we in?” I ask.

“Building Three.”

“No, I meant, like…..” I start but stop when
we approach an elevator.

The doors open revealing an extremely large
but empty elevator. There is a sound like someone punching a bag of rice. I
used to eat a lot of rice when I was in college. White rice with processed
American cheese melted on top. I had probably eaten that for five out of seven
dinners each week. The other times I ate a few bowls of some generic cereal. It
was never extravagant but it’s all I was able to afford and to be
honest,
it’s all I really wanted to eat.

We step into the elevator and Casey presses
the button for the third floor.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“I have to drop something off.”

“Where?”

“Third floor.”

“No, I meant, like…..” The elevator starts
and then stops quickly. I almost fall over. Now I notice my bladder was full.

“There a bathroom on the third floor?”

“Probably,” Casey says. “Yes, I’m pretty
sure there definitely is.”

The doors open and we step out into a bright
hallway that does not look like a college. If I knew any better I would have to
say it belongs in some sort of office building in an industrial park.

“Where are we going?” I say.

“Down here,” Casey says, leading me down the
hallway and then down another corridor to the right. This hallway is darker
than the first and smells like cheese being cooked in a microwave.

“What’s that sound?” I say. It is like a tin
sphere being attacked with spoons.

“I don’t know,” Casey says. “I’ve never been
here before.”

“Where?
The third floor?”

“No.”

“This building?”

“No, this college.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve never been here before.”

We reach the end of the hall. The burning
cheese smell is stronger and so is the sound of sphere versus spoons.

The door is barely visible on the brick wall
as if drawn in chalk. But indeed it is a real door because Casey opens it with
a slight push to the center.

“Thanks for coming with me,” Casey says.

“No problem,” I say.

We walk into my bedroom and I sit in front
of my bookshelf. I randomly grab a book and set it down in front of me. Casey
also grabs a book but throws his on my bed.

“Your books smell old,” he says.

“That’s a weird thing to say.”

“But it’s true.”

I nod, open my book, and start reading
something about licorice and conspiracies. Some man who goes to the moon had
come up with some crazy ideas about hooded men in space shuttles, dropping
documents onto the lunar surface.

Casey sits on the edge of my bed. “You
tired?”

“Not yet.”

“I’m going to use the bathroom,” Casey says,
getting up from the bed. He walks out the door and slams it shut.

My eyes blink through the book on my lap.
Now the sounds come.

The toilet flushes and spheres spiral down
the staircase and onto the wood floors. I hear them roll into the furniture,
into the walls, into the silence like manic round vacuums.

Casey slams the bathroom door, opens it, and
slams it harder. It opens once again. His footsteps echo in my bathtub. The
faucet turns on. Water splashes on his shoes. I hear his shoelaces become limp
with moisture.

“What are you doing in there?” I shout. No
answer. “Don’t make a mess!”

The bathroom door slams shut. The sound of
it combines with the clunking of the spheres as they make their way back up the
stairs.

There was a time years ago when the stairs
were covered in toys so much my father tripped and broke his neck. He had died
instantly. But now the spheres are the only toys haunting the steps.

A scream breaks through my bedroom door. It
takes me longer to get up off the floor than I expect. I feel old and rusty
like an unused bicycle. I throw open the door and look into the hallway. At the
bottom of the steps Casey is sprawled out like an octopus.

He has fallen down the stairs.

I know at this moment my gloom will become
legendary.

All around me the wallpaper falls down in
strips: tongues with stale glue and unwanted paint calling me into the bathroom
where I’ll find the black sun deep within the drain.

I turn the water on to flush it out while
behind me the spheres shuffle into an obscure formation I’ve never seen before.

The water refuses to go down the drain and
stays on the outskirts of the sink, refusing to be burned beneath my sink. The
water’s flesh crawls around the faucet and onto my hand.

I spit fire, burning my fingers into loops.
They fall down the drain, unwilling to bow to the sun in fear.

I think of Casey.

My gloom turns to soft babbling hope.

I run out of the bathroom and down the
stairs, dodging imaginary toys and hysterical strips of fatherly wallpaper.
Casey’s body has turned more grotesque. It resembles chewing gum stretched over
a bundle of broken sticks.

“Get up,” I say. “Get up.”

He twitches but does not get up.

I walk back upstairs and into my room. I
take the elevator back to the first floor and walk outside back to the library.
The stairs to the third floor are covered in hollow trinkets that trip me up at
every opportunity. I make it to the top, though.

It takes me only a minute to find the book:
A Brief History of Industrial Parks by Julie Antler.

I sit down on the floor between the stacks
of books, adjusting my pants so I’d be most comfortable. The florescent lights
above me flicker and buzz in code.

I start to read. The pages smell like old
age and doom. Words upon words slip through the haze of my most recent
memories. Antler briefly explains the history of the pallet.

Paper cuts spread across my hands like
rivers on maps. My knuckles are broken apart like five-and-dime toys. I pinch
the skin between my thumb and index finger.

It doesn’t take me long to fall asleep to
the sound of gloomy spheres and soft babbling of unread books.