PART 4.
This is a short story of sorts that might or might not be part of a larger cycle. If so, this is later in the cycle. Let’s say story 5 of 6 — right after “Lisa and her reflection.” This one is a bit rougher than the other two, but they are getting cranked out in real time, warts and all. Again, more meditations on emotions out there… Probably related to trust, since that is what I am reading a lot about these days. But let’s see where these stories go.
The Dream
A hot summer day. The road is narrow and rises and falls through farmland. Corn and soy. Silos and the faint smell of rich manure. The young man reaches the crest of a hill and stops. Off in the distance and below we make out a few buildings: a steeple, a town water tower. He unslings a battered, leather backpack and crouches there on the side of the road next to it. Reaching in he pulls out a sandwich, takes a bite, and continues searching his bag with his free hand.
There is a crunching sound behind him. An old Chrysler pulling off to the side of the road. A young woman’s voice comes through the window.
“You lose something?”
The engine cuts off, and a door opens and thunks closed. The figure comes between the young man and the sun. She is looking down at him. A simple sundress. A tangle of back-lit, curly hair.
“You want a ride somewhere?” She takes in the half eaten sandwich. “Come on, let’s get you something to eat.”
They walk back to the car, and she throws the backpack into the back seat through an open window.
“I’m Katie.” She looked over at him and smiles, “My dad’s the judge in town.”
With a crunch the car pulls back out on to the asphalt and recedes down the road. From his seat the young man looks out and sees a lone tree in the middle of a passing field. Crows stud its branches, fluttering and calling.
“Boy! Snap to. I’ll ask you again. You running from something?”
The young man is standing before a heavy, well-polished wooden desk. Bookcases line the walls. Heavy drapery. A single lamp lights the room. The voice belongs to a red-faced, crew-cut man sitting behind the desk.
“Katie, run along and get us some tea.”
Katie’s presence heads for the door.
“And tell everyone to wait until we get this sorted out.”
He turns his attention back to the young man.
“So, let me ask you again, boy. You running from something?”
“Not exactly.”
“You got family?”
“No.”
“No sir.” The man leans back in his chair and the heavy drapery behind him… did it flicker? Was there a red glow behind it?
“Oh, you got family, boy. You think you can escape that?” He reaches out and picks up a framed photo from his desk and heaves himself up from his chair and walks around the desk.
“This here was my boy. My boy before he left. Burned in a fire. Was his own damned fault. He should have stayed home.”
As the judge speaks, his voice rises.
“How dare you stand here saying you don’t have family.”
With that the judge holds out the picture frame under the young man’s face, tapping at its glass with a finger. The young man, looking down, sees the name “Sebastian” in block letters at the bottom of the frame. But where there should have been a photo is a black hole. And something was moving. Something was writhing up from the hole.
The young man is in a field. Planks of wood are in a pile beside him. Posts are pounded into the red dirt and scraggle of grass.
“That’s right, boy. It needs to be as high as we can make it.”
The judge is with him, standing back with his hands on his hips. Sebastian hefts up a board, and, placing one end against a post, hammers home a nail.
Thwack. Thwack.
“Why are we doing this again?”
“Better safety than love is what I was taught by my old man. We wouldn’t want anything sneaking up on us.”
Thwack.
The young man goes to the other end of the board, and raises it into place.
“By the way, Katie’s awfully glad that you stayed. I’m glad too, boy. I knew you wouldn’t leave us.”
Thwack. Thwack.
Katie’s figure rises above him, walking up the stairs. Lithe and attractive.
“I knew daddy would like you.”
They are in a barn next to the house. A broad yard. A flagpole. And it is late summer dusk.
At the top of the stairs there is a spare room, with wooden slats for a floor. A light bulb dangles from a long cord over a cot on a metal frame. A single wooden chest and mirror. That and a small 4 x 4 paned glass window looking out over across the yard.
Something thumps in the chest.
Katie comes in close to the young man until he can feel her heat and hear the rustle of her dress.
“So, what do you think? Can you be happy here?”
The chest violently thumps over and opens.
The young man jolts awake. He is lying on his back on the cot, but still fully clothed. Several moments pass as he stares up at the cobwebbed ceiling. Moon light is all that illuminates the room’s interior. The mirror. The upright chest. His backpack on the floor beside the cot.
He lurches up, walks over, and crouches to look out the window. Something had awakened him. Some memory. Some thought.
Outside the yard, lit up by the moon, sprawls before him. He can see the parked Chrysler car and the large farmhouse with its broad apron of a porch. The dark branches of the shade tree. The moon lit grass of the yard. Pearly tracks that came from this way and that, and that seemed to converge on the screen door at the side of the house.
Then, out in the farmyard he notices movement. A dark mass emerging from the house. Another, and another. The bumped skin wetly mirroring the moonlight. One after another, slug-like creatures silently streamed from the house. Searching blindly, as if sniffing. Gathering in the yard a communioned mass.
Mesmerized, the young man watched as the large creatures jostled and writhed over one another, until as if on command, and as one flock, they settled and turned toward the barn. A chorus of whisperings came from them. “It’s just us, boy.” “Can’t you be happy here?” “We’ll make you so happy here.” A jumbled and murmured chorus rippling with the mass that streamed towards the barn. Skin and voices, but no mouths.
“You will never.” “You. You know that you made her leave. You made her leave, boy.”
He heard them now in the interior of the barn below. Heard the unctuous sounds of their bodies. A slick, oily sickening that rose up the stairs and burst into his barren room. They were upon him. Wet enwrapment. Soothingly wrong hugs. The slug-like bodies bulged into the room and streamed over him like so many hands. Like so many memories. Like so much guilt.
“You made her leave,” they slickly whispered. “You did that.”
Only now the voice was different. It was that of a woman, and the creatures were the tentacled arms of a cephalopodan creature cradling and caressing him, squeezing, enveloping and suffocating.
“We had a deal. You, you would hold on to me. Hold on to it all.” The tentacles lapped and coiled around the young man, both threat and comfort, licking and gripping this Sebastian, for it was Sebastian, who was both in the room of the barn and here, back under the sea. “You made me leave.” “You agreed to hold on to us.”
Sebastian watched. He saw the room with the slugs streaming over and around him. He saw himself fetally cowering there in the barn, and he saw himself cradled and kept in the sensuous arms of the octopus. But despite these horrors, another vision appeared. It grew and grew and came into focus even as the other two dreams dissipated from view. This is what Sebastian saw.
