by James Curcio
A last thought stuck in his mind, before darkness: Janus was the God of doorways. Janus, two-faced, the ambivalent hermaphrodite. A passageway... to dream.
He was carried unceremoniously to his shared cell. His roommate Cody sat in his own bunk, strumming on a guitar.
“Trouble again?” Cody asked, not looking up.
The orderlies grunted as they shackled Dionysus to the bed.
“That’s not code, you know,” Cody said.
They glared at him, as if to ask if he wanted to get tied down, too. Cody shrugged and went back to transmuting the melody of Seal’s “Kiss From A Rose” through the key changes in John Coltrane’s giant steps.
Doctor Fein was being rushed through corridors, strapped to a gurney. Cables dangled and flapped against him. They were filling him with their fluids! Catatonia, one of the nurses said. Damn shame, said another.
He knew he would be fine. He was the one in control. Everything in his manner, voice, his surface thoughts all screamed: “this man knows.” He was integrated, wise, with a sturdy grasp on the here-and-now. He took care of his suits, short of obsession. He was practical, short of boring. Low-carb dinners, exercise on the weekends.
He understood everything, standing on the shoulders of rational giants and the scientific method born from the great Enlightenment. He knew. He knew who he was, where he was, when he was, and why. He knew when yesterday was, when tomorrow will be. Things fall down, but the center holds.
The feeling lasted until he opened his mouth to speak the truth, to let the nurses know that everything was okay. Instead he gagged, jackknife vomiting in a steep, sour arc.
He knew he’d been there before. He’ll be there tomorrow. Be here be here. Oh God. No escape from eternity. No escape from uncertainty. Anything, anything, anything but this.
“Wouldn’t you feel less incurably mad after a nice, long nap?” he thought he heard a nurse say.
He tasted vomit and smiled at her. Tried to make a joke and bear down on his gorge. But all the words had turned to grease and coated his tongue black.
“Go to sleep, Doctor. Rock-a-bye, Fein, on the wave front…” The nurse leaned in and opened her mouth. Wide. Stretch marks formed at the hinges of her jaw before the skin tore with a running, wet zzzzziiiipppp! And she was growing, looming over the table, rows of sharp teeth sprouting with muted pops from a gummy pink palate. She grabbed his bed like it was a dinner plate and tilted it up, the hospital machinery sliding into her wet maw with cracks and crashes.
“You’re not real!” he shrieked. “None of this is real!”
“Then hop in.” She smiled.
Dionysus tossed in his bunk, his hands latched in place.
Sharp, tawny blades of wheat parted and gave way to a stone path that wound its way through picturesque hills. The sound of creaking chains rolled towards him with the fog. Atop the hills stood the outline of dangling figures, swaying in the wind like marionettes. Beyond the macabre forms laid a village.
Those that watched over the village must have seen it fit to hang deviants from iron chains on a stone gallows. Tongues cut out meant watch your own. Eyes gouged out meant mind your business. Hands removed with a splitting maul meant no begging, idling or street busking.
The village itself couldn’t be placed in time, or by culture — each house varied too widely in construction, placement and class, though overall it was a pastiche of peasantry throughout time. As it receded into the distance Dionysus saw a stone maze.
He stumbled through the field, not yet aware of himself. The familiar sound of a girl’s laughter danced on the wind. Then he saw her. Eyes sparkled and shifted colors, as he gawked and fell in love. Each of her gestures had the slow-motion, natural grace of a high quality shampoo ad.
It was her eyes he kept returning to — impossibly huge, self-contained worlds. Dream eyes. Everything beautiful that he’d ever seen was distilled in the form of her radiant face, framed by thick braids of crimson hair. He wanted to clutch them with both hands as they made endless love in the field, distracted by nothing, serenaded by the whispering of wind through the wheat and the crickets.
She wore a summer dress of red cotton that fit her like a nightgown, and as she laughed a strap worked free from her shoulder, stopping his heart.
“Do you think we can fly?” she asked.
He grinned and took a step. “It seems reasonable. I’m dreaming, right? We’re dreaming?”
“Are we?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Fields of wheat, a cobblestone maze, an eternally receding village that exists outside of time. And you.”
“Me?” she asked, resetting the strap on her shoulder. “Where do you think I fit in?”
He racked his brain for poetry to steal, but found nothing. “You’re a dream.”
She swayed minutely towards him and smiled. His heart came in his ribs.
“You’re almost right.”
“Almost?”
She glided up and around him, breathing so close to his ear that he felt himself fainting. “I’m bait,” she whispered, ducking his encircling arms. She sprinted naked into the wheat.
He stood frozen, holding her red dress in his hands.
Without so much as a thought, Dionysus followed. The wheat blotted out the sky. Broad, brittle leaves cut him as he dove through rows of it, chasing a giggle, a flash of her taut calf, a breath of musk. He ran to the drums of the blood behind his eyes, panting with a mixture of horny abandon, supplication and elation that formed a nameless emotion somewhere behind his navel. He tore his clothes as he thudded through the stalks, toppling them. Their stems popped gunshots under his feet.
He remembered her question. “Do you think we can fly,” she had asked. Can we?
He jumped, hoping to see over the heads of the stalks. He floated above them, defying the laws of gravity, defying the laws of anything save willpower. Airborne, he swiveled and watched her disappear into the alleys of the village with a toss of her braids.
The ground was so very far beneath him. Fear surged through his veins. He had always been afraid of heights, the vast empty space would make his head swim. Sometimes, as a child, he had lost consciousness entirely.
Gravity wrapped its fingers around him and dragged him to the ground. The world rolled end-over-end. He tasted dirt, and was sure she was gone.
He shook his head and got to his feet. When he stood, he was in a corridor. The walls were lined with filing cabinets that seemed to go on forever. Ahead he saw a desk in the middle of the hallway.
With a mere thought, he was standing in front of a gnomish old man on the other side of the desk. The name tag on his ill-fitting suit read FILE CLERK A743G1. All caps, black type, probably Helvetica. The clerks arms were unnaturally long and spindly. He had eyebrows like cloud-like wisps. A young girl in an Alice in Wonderland dress sat on the corner, bouncing her legs back and forth as she hummed to herself.
“Young man, do you have an appointment?”
“Appointment?”
“You must have an appointment.”
“No. I was following someone. Did a woman run this way?”
“There is nothing here but words.”
The girl looked askance at Dionysus. “She went that way.”
Dionysus turned to pursue.
“Or, no. Was it that way?” She giggled.
“Are you messing with me?”
“You’re fun to play with. I haven’t even started.”
The File Clerk leaned forward, motioning for Dionysus to come closer. “Listen to me, and listen carefully. You don’t belong here, and bad things happen to those who don’t belong. The walls taste your breathing. The floor ponders your warmth. This is not a where, at all,” he whispered.
Indeed, the walls breathed with a regular rhythm, bulging and hissing like a living thing.
“You mustn’t tell him such horrible things,” the child said.
“You are in the belly of a sleeping whale,” the File Clerk said. A cabinet flew open
of its own accord, extending the entire distance to the file clerks desk. A single piece of paper shot out and danced down before him.
“Now you’ve done it!” The girl clapped playfully.
“Your appointment has been confirmed.”
“My appointment?”
The File Clerk shrugged. “With the Leviathan.”
The lights went out, one at a time. Dionysus was left in darkness.
Light returned in the form of the sun dancing out from behind the clouds. His shadow grew long and thin as he crossed a schoolyard – past the broken merry-go-round that tilted off its axis, the skeletal jungle gym, the empty swing set. The scent of opium flooded his nostrils as he approached the sheet-metal slide.
A girl was perched atop, hands clasped around her knees. She peered down at him with an eerie intensity. They were the eyes of an adult. No, more than an adult; something ageless and incalculably cunning. A slight shudder passed through his spine as the odor became more pronounced, and it dawned on him: this was the girl he was chasing, though she was younger now.
She wordlessly extended her hand toward him, and he stretched his arm to clasp it. As she slid down, her red locks and sun dress billowed behind her, revealing pink cotton panties.
“Pick me up,” she demanded, brushing sand off her bottom.
He felt uncomfortable, but found himself strangely compelled to do what she asked.
“Over there,” she said, motioning towards a gulag-like school-building, reminiscent of the high school he had gone to.
Foreboding followed him as he cut a path across the lawn, cradling her in his arms. Something was very wrong.
The door creaked open, and he walked cautiously down the hallway. “This room, over there. Room 49.”
As he approached the door, her lips found his earlobe, delicately sucking, nibbling, biting. No! It was not at all okay. He let go and spun. She was gone. Her laughter echoed around him.
He stood alone in an old classroom. There was a dust-coated chalkboard in the front of the room.
“I am always here,” her voice said. It was the voice of the girl he had seen in the field, matured.
“Hello?” he asked, looking around behind desks.
“I hide in the gaps between each of your breaths. Every swallow.”
The door to the classroom opened and she entered. She was younger, a student. Maybe nineteen, with spiked hair. A striped skirt clung to her hips and a sticker and patch plastered bag slung over one shoulder. Another girl came behind her, this one in her late twenties and dressed like a rock star on her way down the red carpet at an event. That shampoo-ad hair. And there was another: slightly older, naked and utterly terrifying.
“Who are you?” he managed to ask.
“Lilith. We’ve met.”
“We have?”
“You can’t hide,” they said, in unison. “When you wake from this dream, I will still be here, waiting to take you again and again.”
The matron grabbed him, as the student dropped to her knees in front of him. Her book-bag slipped off her shoulder. She gave him a long, hungry look before yanking down his pants with a single tug. The rock star Lilith leaned against the desk, her arms crossed, a look of amusement on her face.
The Lilith at his fly bit her lip impatiently. She looked back at the other two.
“Oh no, by all means proceed.”
He felt himself harden in her hand as she locked gazes with him, her mouth opening expectantly. Oh, fuck. His mind balked as her lips closed around the head of his cock. The others tittered and circled slowly, watching... herself? He heard the familiar sound of chalk scraping against the blackboard, but he was too distracted to look.
Rock star Lilith ripped off his shirt, planted her hands on his chest and shoved. She smiled wickedly as his head slammed against the linoleum tile. They were all over him, sucking on every finger, every toe, in every crease and crevice and bulge of his body.
Her mouth tasted of berries and earthy wine. The nectar flowed into him as the youngest of the three rode him ferociously. Meanwhile, one of the others whispered in his ear, “You’d best wake soon. You’ve stirred the Leviathan. He will be looking for you in this world and the next.”
As she spoke, the words were burned into his mind by the gyrations of the lithe form on top of him. Her shirt shredded in his hands, exposing hardened nipples.
He felt the sting of fingernails ripping into his flesh with each slick thrust as he moaned into the ruby-lipped mouth of another.
She convulsed and flexed around him, and he felt the swell of the climax completely overwhelm his consciousness.
He read what she had written on the board. Wake up, Dionysus. WAKE UP!
The air was full of smoke and brick dust.
“Wake up Dionysus. Wake the fuck up!” Loki was dressed in maintenance coveralls. He cut the restraints quickly with a box-cutter. “Dude. Wake the fuck up,and get that stupid smile off your face. What were you dreaming about?”
Dionysus sat upright. “Already?” He looked over to see that the window had been blown open. The alarms buzzed painfully in his ears. Cody huddled in the corner, his eyes wide with terror. He held his guitar in front of him like a weapon.
“Hey, Cody... Pssht. It’s fine. This is... a friend of mine. Get out, if you can.”
Dionysus shook his head a final time, trying to dislodge the delicious traces of dream that stuck to his thoughts. Other voices joined the din of the alarm, panicked patients, the clamor of administrative staff.
“Up and go, let’s climb.” They grabbed hold of the rope and scaled up to the roof. Dionysus grunted and faltered.
Loki hauled him over the edge and detached the rope ladder. It was still anchored next to the window and swung down, coming to rest near a twisted grate at the perimeter grounds.
“Problem?” Loki asked, in a whisper.
Dionysus shook his head. “No, no. We just don’t get much...exercise around here.”
“Don’t like fucking the orderlies?”
“There’s a ladder! He went down!” they heard from below.
“Is it really this easy?” Dionysus asked.
Loki shook his head. “Don’t tempt fate, okay? Just follow me.”
They approached a maintenance door with a black duffel bag propped against it. Dionysus was grinning like a kid on Christmas. Loki’s face was a perfect blank.
Loki reached into the duffel bag and threw a security uniform at Dionysus before stripping off his coveralls and replacing them with his own uniform.
Loki looked him up and down. “You still a 32/36?”
“Fuck, no. I’ve been doing drugs and coloring for ten months.”
“Huh. How do I look?” Loki asked, adjusting his security badge and nameplate.
“A pig among men.”
Loki spent a moment fussing with Dionysus’ collar, then opened the door behind them with a key card. They entered, Loki carrying the duffel over his shoulder.
Alarms and running feet echoed throughout the building. Dionysus and Loki approached the door, Loki with a small mirror in hand. He angled to look through the window in the door, glancing back at Dionysus. He frowned.
“What?” Dionysus asked.
“You’re grinning like a mental patient.”
Dionysus grinned wider, showing his teeth. “How’s this?”
Loki sighed. “Okay. Rent-a-cop, right? In over your head and trying to take charge of that.” He waved in the general direction of the alarms. “You want commanding, confused and a little hostile.”
Dionysus pursed his lips. “All at once, huh?”
“Yeah.” Loki’s expression and posture shifted, somehow perfectly nailing his description.
“That’s... creepy.”
Loki shook his head and swiped the key-card in the door. They entered.
The two of them moved purposefully down a hallway lined with high-security doors, shining flashlights through the windows of each door in passing, as though checking on pat
ients. Two RENT-A-COPS trotted past them, exiting through the stairwell. Dionysus and Loki dropped the act as soon as the cops passed.
Loki opened a door. “She’s in here, come on.”
Standing in the middle of a padded cell, arms outstretched, was a tall, broad-shouldered androgyne with a mane of purple hair.
“Jesus! Time to go!”
Loki tossed the duffel across the room at her. It hit her chest, bounced off and fell to the floor.
“This bag contains uniforms like those, right?” Jesus spoke slowly. It had been months since she’d bothered to speak.
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“The hell do you mean, no?”
Jesus nudged the bag dourly. “No. I’m not doing it in drag.”
Loki rolled his eyes. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
“No.”
“You’re going to blow this plan over...” Loki was at a loss for words.
“If we argue much longer, yeah,” Dionysus said.
“Look, just...” Loki paused, calculating something in his head. “Fuck it.”
He grabbed Jesus from behind and manhandled him out the door. Dionysus joined in. They made their way towards a stairwell, which disgorged two staff.
Loki shoved her against the wall. “We got this one. Go to East Second to assist.” Jesus spit at Loki and faked a struggle.
The staff looked at each other blankly.
“Go. Now.”
When they were out of earshot, Loki looked at Jesus. “Was the spitting really necessary?”
“No, but when will I get to do that again?”
A janitor stood outside the motor pool parking lot, back to the wall, kicking back and smoking his second cigarette in a row. The door slammed open. His cigarette hung precariously on his lip as three crazed faces regarded him with confusion.
