Unquiet Dreams (13 page)

My dinner scrapes his key into the lock and shakes it loose. He flips on a light to reveal the glory of his homestead. It's surprisingly cleaner than I would have thought. I follow him into the kitchen-stroke-dining room and breathe in the smell of spaghetti with too little garlic. He motions with a jerk of his head and like a docile pet, I tread behind him toward the bedroom in the back.

The hall is unadorned. Usually a sign that I have chosen wisely. Pictures mean family, friends, a life. I must eat, but I need not compound the tragedy. I do not tell myself I am only being cruel to be kind; they are not all Poor Maries. But they offer nothing to the world, no magic, no art. Anyone with a spark—however untended—I walk away from when I see it. There is nothing here but squalor and an incurious motion forward. Who am I to decide who lives and dies? I am what I am.

The bedroom itself remains dark even after he switches on the small light beside the bed. Entirely unsuitable for my transformation, my revelation. More light. I look for a switch on the wall. He mumbles something indistinct and shrugs off his coat. I turn away, as if modest—no modesty here!—and kick off my boots to give him the impression of my acquiescence. He gets busy chucking off clothes and I shiver with anticipation.

He slips into the bed and I turn swift as calamity and flip on the light. It catches him awkwardly, one leg over and one under the covers. His look of surprise shifts to surly annoyance. It is an unspoken part of the deal, we do not reveal ourselves. In the light he looks so much less, years of neglect and aimlessness have cragged his face with a permanent frown and the scarring furrows of hard time. But I will change his expression one last time.

I throw off my coat, throw back my shoulders and stretch my wings across the too-small room. Even in the flickering fluorescence, I know I am magnificent. The pulsating light caresses the scales of my flesh and I open my mouth fully, drawing a jagged breath of power. My nose, released from its habitual snub, draws in the bland stench of the room and the suddenly pungent sharpness of urine. Behold, O man, behold a god before you. I give just the slightest ripple of flap to my wings and see the awe mirrored in his swiftly glazing eyes. I lash my tail behind me, reveling in play of musculature.

It is enough. He does not move at all when I step forward, grab his neck and wring it like a chicken's. I plunge the other daggered hand into his chest and pluck his trembling heart from its cage and bite into it with relish. It is not bitter, though you might expect it, but it is his heart. For a time, it was always livers—rich, decadent treats—but too often I found them choked with gall, hard granules that were unpleasant to crunch and bitter indeed to eat. People just don't care for livers as they should. Too much junk food, too much food period. Hearts though, even if they're bad, taste good. Sometimes a little too much fat around them, but strip it away and the center reveals itself all the juicier. I savor each bite like the treasure it is. "You are a sacrifice," I tell his inert form, "I will leave and trouble your kind no more for a time."

I turn and she's there. No more than twelve perhaps, as they reckon time. Her eyes take me in from the dainty twisting horns on my head, through the auburn curls, the magnificent stretch of my wings, down my powerful thighs to the claws on my toes. She is amazed, but amazed and unafraid. I resist the urge to wipe the blood from my mouth, let her see me as I am. Let her know my strength, my powers. I curl my tail around my ankles and gaze into the depths of her soul.

"He beat me," she says at last.

"You are free." I am feeling magnanimous.

"I dreamed you."

"I am real." Make no doubt about that. I reach out to draw two bloody fingers through her tousled hair. She flinches but does not move away. A couple of strands stick to my claws and I suck them and the blood into my mouth. Exquisite.

"No, I dreamed you. For three nights, I have dreamed you."

Ah! This is good. "You have a gift. You must never forget this. You are not like other people. Do not let them make you so."

She nods. So rare to find one so young—but what was Blake? Seven or eight? Perhaps they are born this way and it is the dull weight of normalcy that weighs them down to mundane blindness and deafness.

"Hold out your hand." She complies quickly, cupping her hands before her. I grab a curl and slice it off with an extended claw and drop it in her palms. Then I rub may hand up and down my forearm, releasing a spray of dry, flaky scales. Enough land in her hands. "When you doubt, you will have these. Remember. The extraordinary is all around you. Do not let this happen to you," I say, pointing to her father's limp flesh.

"Can you breathe fire?" she asks at last, and her eyes shine with the madness, the excitement. I hope it is not too much, that she has the strength to bear it, but that will be her journey not mine. I imprint her face on my memory. Twenty years from now, who knows. She may be mad, she may be magical. I have done my part. All but the final thing, and that too, I will do tonight.

I answer her by turning to the mangled form on the rusty bed, opening my jaws and belching forth a roar of flame, red, green blue and yellow. It latches onto the flesh like eager seedlings springing forth, growing swiftly. Freed from my chest, they crackle with delight and multiply, sisters, brothers, cousins all. Beds are burning, the burning bed, a hundred years of their culture crowds in my head at any given minute. The hungry flames will not be content with a bed and a body.

"You must get your things. There is one more sight you must witness." She turns at once, cradling the gifts in her hands. Within minutes she is back, a Hello Kitty knapsack slung over her shoulder, a heart shaped box clutched in her hands—her treasure. I have bundled my coat and boots together. There is no need to disguise myself tonight. I am celebrating. In tandem we walk out the door, the restless consummation burning behind us. We have only trod down a few stairs when the gasps begin. Warding off the evil eye, praying to
madre de dios
, signing the cross in my wake. I can laugh but I want to show dignity, always dignity on a night like this. The revelation will be complete.

From the steps I bend once more to touch her forehead and repeat only, "Remember." Then I stretch my wings and bound into the air like a crouching tiger, no longer the hidden dragon but there for them all to see. But I know only she will truly see. The rest? They'll see something smaller, a dream perhaps, a demon, something they can explain, something they can contain in their too-small lives. A whisper at most, a frightened story, something to fear—but not for her. For her I will be a legend alive, for her I will be a truth, the revelation that there is so much more, so much more than any of them are willing to admit so much more that they cannot—no, that they refuse to see. And she has been blessed by a god. I feel her eyes upon me in my flight. As I soar over the squalor below me, I feel free myself. How long since I have stretched my wings! How long since I have found one who can see, who can know, who can tell the story to the rest of them? And I realize that I will never go to Hardraed, never give up on the possibilities here in this land of misfits, on the chance that our kind will revive, will rule, will thrive.

Forget Canada: I am legend. I will dwell in the heart of America.

 

 

for Mr. Zimmerman

She was a beauty, all auburn curls, doe eyes, and hippie garments. But I think it was chiefly the eyes, moist and beseeching, that made me forget my usual caution and help her out of that sticky situation, but—like the man said—I guess I used a little too much energy to do so. What is it with some women? They cling to whatever wind blows the most hot air. She was with a jerk, I applied a little leverage and next thing I know, she was stuck on me. Not just stuck—glued, applied, corkscrewed into my entrails—she showed no signs of budging. Which was why I found myself standing in that solitary grove with books of Albanus and Bacon and a big old Latin bible that I could sort of read, inside a chalk circle, ready for conjuring.

Bobby swore it would work. I guess I should have considered the logic of that assumption, but I was too busy daydreaming of life post-hoc. I was an idiot. Gravity is the destiny of us all. Suckers.

The borderline separating my circle from the mundane should have been safe. Well, for that matter, the charm itself should have produced rather different results. I guess that's where better reading knowledge of Latin would have helped, but it was never so easy for me. There were so many distractions: crickets rhymed shrieks back and forth while the trees' limbs guffawed an obscene parody of their song. The stupid wind kept blowing the pages back and forth. For all I know, now that I think on it, I managed to conjure two different rituals into one.

I really just wanted to peel off that persistent drag. She was nice enough at first, but I never did take to the clingy types. As the sun descended like a slippery egg yolk down the cobalt sky, I was already picturing my new life, free from the eternal bondage—eternal since Tuesday—of that woman who wanted to keep hold of my shoelaces and drag along behind my sorry carcass for an apparently indefinite period. I knew I was in trouble when she fluttered those too long lashes at me and murmured in my ear how happy she was. I didn't even blink, but I knew I had to start planning right then.

It only took a few days to assemble the necessary materials. Thank the gods for the internet, which I mean to say, thank science—or technology or whatever. I don't know how it's done. It might was well be magic. But I found local shops with the needed ingredients—even dog tongue, which turned out to be some kind of herb. That was a relief. I might be able to hurt a woman, but never a dog! Damn, they're innocent creatures. Not that I meant to hurt her, just kind of discourage her, turn her off. Give her something else to worry about and let me go. Now she's just going to think I pissed off and left her. I guess that would be irony.

It seemed so perfect. I felt like some medieval Merlin, necromantic books before me, the world under m spell. Bobby said he'd had such successes with his chanting and such. Surely it would work just as well for me. It's all in the book. Why would it matter who said it? Yeah, sure, I know what you're thinking—pronunciation. Yeah, maybe—then again, maybe it was the wind and those pages. The back pages of the book were pretty thin and the wind kept blowing like it had it in for me from the start. It wasn't possible to tell at first whether it worked or not. It's not like I would have seen her disappear like some cloud of smoke. There was no clap of thunder or buckets of rain descending. But it wasn't too long before I knew that I had got my signals crossed and all was not well. Beware of Latin—dead languages don't care who they screw.

From the indigo darkness, something hit me from below. Never did see what it was—some creature lacking shape or natural order—but its impact was immediate and bruising. Knocked me clean out after seeing stars that were not part of the navy canvas of the night sky. Gone, over and out, no balls, no strikes, just error—good night, nurse.

I woke up on the side of the grove, flies droning around my head. I knew something was wrong because the sound made me hungry. Everything looked a lot bigger and before I could give myself a stern talking to, I was beginning to realize that things were worse than mere failure. So here I am, stuck. In my present state I can't even touch the books I read. What's the likelihood anyone will stumble across them and read just the right spell? What're the odds that anyone will listen to me in present state? What I wouldn't give for her to be so determined to find me that she comes out here, calling "Jimmy, Jimmy," and recognizing me and restoring me back to what I was. I wouldn't even leave her then, no, I'd be an honorable man after that. Really, you have to believe me. If you see her, you know, maybe if she hasn't gotten over me, hasn't begun to curse my name and all my sex, well, maybe give her some hope. She might be living there in my cruddy old apartment, thinking I forgot all about her. It's not true. She's all I think about now—well, her and the damn crickets. They turn out to be pretty tasty. But if you see her, you can tell her that now. I'd love to have her come find me. I want her to want me. I want to be me again, even with her hanging on me all the time. Hell, I'd welcome it. Tell her.

And if you see a toad, say hello. It might be me.

 

 

for Fred who will never read it

"Take my hand!" I begged, but Brigitte's wide eyes only stared back in mute terror. I inched further out the window, stepping gingerly onto the narrow ledge, trying to reach toward her hand. "Please!" There was an audible gulp, but no other response. She closed her eyes and lay her palms flat against the wall. Hope sprang up in my heart. Perhaps Brigitte had changed her mind. Her whole body suggested defeat, relinquishing. Give up this foolish plan, I urged silently, but aloud I repeated, "Please, take my hand." Brigitte turned her head slowly and opened her eyes once more to meet my gaze. My tentative sense of hope disappeared at once and I could hear an increase of fearful whispering in the crowd below.

"I didn't know," my friend said softly, a single tear crawling down her cheek. "I didn't believe…it. I'm sorry." And before I could begin to puzzle the meaning of her words, Brigitte pushed herself away from the wall, the ledge and, arms wide, fell into the air. I could not separate her scream from my own until the sickening smack of her body on the concrete below silenced her wail. The crowd, temporarily chased back by the imminent impact, bunched once more around her prone figure. I withdrew.

The next day, when the sad calls had been made, when the campus police and the one reporter had gone, I sat at last alone with Dr. Praetorius. As advisor to us both, he shared with me the stunned confusion at Brigitte's impetuous act. The friendly competition between us had brought out only our best efforts and solidified our closeness. No one knew Brigitte better than I, yet I was shocked by her sudden turn.