The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1)

by Mark Reynolds

  So what was he supposed to do?

  He loaded a CD, turned up the volume, and returned to the desk. He repositioned the chair and sat down in front of the keyboard. He saw a cord trailing from the back of the new PC to his laptop, which now sat beside it on the desk. He didn’t remember leaving his laptop here, and was certain he had never plugged it into the new computer—precisely because the new computer hadn’t been here the first time he was in this room—but he was starting to accept the fact that reality within the Saloon was … fluid.

  Maybe he was having a breakdown?

  Or maybe you’re already broken?

  He flicked the computer on, rewarded with a soft hum, initialization procedures scrolling past in an indecipherable array that concluded with an all too comfortable Windows tableau—something that he was at least familiar with.

  He experimented with a couple rounds of solitaire, lost, and tried searching for any preexisting Word files, in case the Writer had left any messages for him. It was unlikely given that the Writer clearly intended to be here with him and favored the typewriter to the word processor, but it was a place to start. He found just five stored files: TICKET1, TICKET2, TICKET3, TICKET4, and TICKET5.

  Were these the tickets the Writer mentioned, the ones Jack was supposed to write for the others who were coming, so that he could send them all home, him included?

  He opened the first one, but the only thing he found was a digital image, visible for only a moment before it disappeared, the pixels dissolving back to white and leaving him with a simple blank page. The cursor blinked at him expectantly, mockingly. Jack stared at the whiteness a moment longer, then closed and reopened the file. Only the picture did not return, only the empty page. No matter. He knew the image the moment he saw it: Cross-Over Station. He recognized its quiet grayness, the lonely clock staring over an empty terminal abandoned years before. It looked exactly as if someone had photographed the place that same morning. Jack immediately opened the second file, this one a picture of an empty corner in a padded cell, some kind of asylum where the walls were bare canvas, dingy and gray-white and stained with smears of deep, ruddy brown. He thought the stains looked like dried blood, but he couldn’t be sure. There was so much of it, too. It sent a chill up his spine, and he wasn’t sorry to see the picture fade to white. In the third, he found a picture of a first-class plane cabin, plush seats and unfinished glasses of white wine and amber-colored liquor left behind on lowered tray tables. But the seats were empty; like the first two pictures, all he had was a vacant setting. The next was a woodland scene viewed from the ground up, as though someone was lying on their back staring up at a thick clutch of tangled trees looming overhead, dark and ominous, crowding forward to suffocate the viewer. The final picture was of a dry culvert, white cement blinding under the noon sun. For a moment, Jack thought about the wasteland outside, the bone-white sand and pale blue sky overhead. But the two places could hardly be the same. Graffiti decorated a nearby abutment, a chalk-scrawl on the ground, the outline of a body since removed, more red stains.

  Then blankness. No mention of the people he was supposed to take care of; not who they were, or what they looked like, or what he should do with them when they arrived. Not even names. How was he supposed to tell the difference between them and the others, the ones the Writer called the Tribe of Dust?

  Maybe the Writer had been wrong about him. Jack had never been very good at writing assignments. He had only done passably well in an Introduction to Writing course he took in his freshman year. He thought the assignments were stupid; he couldn’t write from the perspective of a shoe, or imitate the style of a famous writer. He preferred to write on his own, write what came to mind. He learned long ago not to question where the Word came from or why. God, a Muse, the tooth fairy, what difference did it make? So long as the Word came, he cared for neither where nor how.

  But he still had no idea what to do with the five tickets, and was afraid to even start until he knew more. He opened a new file instead, staring at the blank screen while the music slowly lulled him into a kind of trance, the emptiness transforming into possibility. He placed his fingers lightly atop the keys, letting them get a feel for how they were spaced on the board, then started typing the first thing that came to mind.

  My name is Jack Lantirn and I want to be a writer. So yesterday I left my job. I left my car. I left my apartment.

  Today I left the world.

  I would like to say I arrived at this decision with a great deal of forethought, but that would be a lie. It was impulse, pure and simple. Gut instinct. I had had enough of my situation, knew it was only going to get worse, and decided simply to leave it behind. Cash in my chips, dealer. I’m outta here. I didn’t really think about where I was going, or what I would do when I got there. I only knew that “there” would be better than “here.”

  Now, I’m not so sure. It is quieter here, and I like that. But at the same time, it is quieter here, and I’m feeling alone. Lonely. I would not have thought it possible yesterday. Yesterday I would have sworn to you that I could live alone on a deserted island or on some uninhabited refueling station on one of the moons of Jupiter. But yesterday seems like a long time ago now.

  Perhaps I should start back at the beginning. It might make a bit more sense that way, to me if to no one else. And I guess I should face the very real possibility that I may be the only one who ever reads these words. Lucky me.

  There was no rational purpose to this, his message in a bottle set adrift in a sea of electronic ether, save the appeal of self-clarification, understanding through writing, voicing the ideas, making thoughts tangible then releasing them to see what came back.

  Likely nothing. It was a fool’s dream, and Jack Lantirn was the king of fools.

  * * *

  The first CD stopped and another one started, the player changing by itself. Jack never thought to question it. The coffeepot on the corner of his desk brewed a pot of hazelnut-flavored coffee—strong the way he liked it. He didn’t wonder about that either, just like he didn’t wonder how his Heavy Metal coffee mug managed to find its way to the right side of the desk, sitting by the coffee pot as though it had always been there instead of being in his duffel bag where he last remembered it. But like his laptop and the beer and so many things, he simply stopped questioning.

  He wasn’t getting any answers anyway.

  Jack wrote himself up to the present just as the sun began sliding down in what might have been, in a more conventional reality, the western sky. What began as a journal turned into a story constructed around himself, the outlandish plotline simply a mirror of his life over the last forty-eight hours—it was too implausible to be a journal, anyway.

  He saved what he had and pushed away from the keyboard, his stomach reminding him that breakfast was a long time ago, and beer, coffee and snack crackers were no substitute for a meal.

  He went downstairs, hoping to test a theory. He concentrated on a boiled Maine lobster with melted butter. He visualized the details as vividly as he was able: the bright crimson shell so hot it burned his fingertips, the fishy, briny aroma of the tender, dripping meat in the claws, the moist, flaky white meat in the tail, the nutty smell of melted butter for dipping. Until now, the Saloon’s reality had altered of its own accord; he needed to know if it could be deliberately controlled.

  What he found for his efforts was a cellophane-wrapped, lukewarm lobster roll in the vending machine. That, half a carton of cold-milk from the refrigerator, and a box of butter-flavored crackers he found behind the bar was as close to a meal of whole Maine lobster with melted butter as he would come tonight.

  He ate the meal on the third floor, sitting on the false front of the Saloon where he could watch the sun settle over the horizon. It was strangely comforting, the sun turning from orange to red, the sky fading behind it into deeper and deeper shades of blue. It was almost possible to forget he was watching it set over an endless wasteland blemished only by a single saloon perche
d upon the very edge of reality and madness, and him the sole inhabitant. As the last sliver of the sun edged below the horizon, Jack decided that a cup of coffee might be better than sitting here on the rooftop contemplating his predicament.

  He turned, and found himself staring at a creature that was the spitting image of the gargoyle he’d seen earlier, the statue now conspicuously absent from the rooftop! The gargoyle bristled with fur and horns and tusks, staring at him with its black-in-black eyes like a dog would a stranger, head tilted in wonderment.

  — Nail —

  And there it was again, that word whispered inside of his skull like a thought too loud to be denied. Only it was not a whisper or a word so much as an impression. Jack stared back uncertainly. “Nail?”

  The monster responded by padding over and climbing up on the false front where Jack was sitting. For all its fearsome appearance, it had the non-threatening gait of a dog approaching its master, wanting only a scratch behind the ears, and perhaps a treat. It stopped within arm’s reach, staring first at him, then at the half-eaten lobster roll between them.

  “Go ahead,” Jack offered.

  The gargoyle plopped down, serpentine tail wagging, and picked up the lobster roll, consuming the entire thing in one mammoth bite that exposed sharp rows of teeth reinforcing the more visible tusks. Nail, if that was its name, chewed and swallowed the entire half a sandwich with no effort whatsoever. Then it looked expectantly at Jack.

  “There’s crackers if you’re still hungry,” Jack offered, sliding the box over.

  Nail sniffed curiously then upended the box with an experimental shake, crackers flying everywhere. The gargoyle came instantly to his feet, leaping at the crackers and scooping them up from the rooftop in handfuls, chewing them down as quickly as he could pack them into his mouth. A moment later, he was calmly inspecting the false front for the few remaining crumbs and broken bits which escaped his first assault.

  “Your name is Nail, isn’t it?” he asked.

  The creature looked up at him and nodded as if the issue had been plainly established already.

  “Are you part of the Saloon, or did you come here like me?” It seemed unlikely that Nail wouldn’t belong here; it was difficult to imagine anyplace other than here where something like the gargoyle would belong.

  Nail only looked back blankly then sat down and began grooming its scaled tail with both hands.

  “Nail, do you understand what’s going on? Do you know what it is I’m supposed to be doing?”

  The gargoyle looked up briefly at the mention of his name then returned his attention to his tail.

  “No, I suppose you wouldn’t. But I’m glad you’re here. I was beginning to think I was going a little crazy.”

  Nail hopped down suddenly and walked to the edge of the roof.

  “Where are you going?”

  The small gargoyle turned back to him and blinked, reminding him of the expression a dog would give when presented with a particularly interesting smell, and can only look back at its clueless owner as if to ask, why is this so hard for you to understand?

  Then Nail stepped off the edge.

  “Wait!” Jack shouted, running to the edge of the saloon, certain he was about to hear the deadpan thud of the small monster smashing into the packed desert sand, self-destruction preferable to being trapped here with the saloon’s new Caretaker. Instead, he heard only a faint flapping sound as the gargoyle sailed quietly away into the darkening sky on small, powerful wings.

  And once again, Jack was alone.

  * * *

  Washed out and empty, Jack went downstairs. He didn’t want to write or explore or know anything more about the Sanity’s Edge Saloon; he simply wanted to sleep. Morning felt like forever ago. Without another living soul, no reference to time but the sun overhead, it became meaningless, a simple medium eroding the future into the past.

  He went to the second floor hallway, staring in the rooms at each of the beds in turn. Exhausted, he could have collapsed on either one. The bed with the canopy looked dreamlike, as if dredged up from some distant memory or unfulfilled desire. A part of him wanted very much to try sleeping in that bed. And for that reason, he was afraid to. The smaller room he liked even less. It reminded him of the guest bedroom at his grandmother’s home, the room she always maintained in a kind of informal, empty, cleanliness; a room that lived in perpetual anticipation of guests who never came, and were not necessarily welcome when they did. In the fading daylight, it conjured only images of an old hotel room where shades of past occupants haunted the place in which they took their own lives.

  Neither one was right. Or maybe they were too right, too much like something he expected; the Corona and the lime. Jack had never gone out of his way to be fanatically well read, but he’d read his share of fairy tales and they all shared a prevailing theme: the acceptance of a new reality led inevitably to imprisonment within that new reality. Since coming to the Sanity’s Edge Saloon, he had eaten its food, consumed its spirits, talked to its inhabitants. All that remained was to sleep a night in its bed, and he would be the hapless victim of an old-world folktale, one that he would never escape.

  Instead, he chose the wooden bench in the waiting room, line of sight for any arriving train. It was a better place to be in for when the others arrived, both the ones he was waiting for and the ones he should guard against. Besides, the big bed was too big and the small room was too small and darkness made the Saloon a little more threatening than daylight, a lonely place that seemed too eager to have him come along and stay, stay for awhile, stay forever. And ever and ever and ever…

  He took a blanket from the closet and stretched out, the candy machine buzzing and flickering incessantly, forever on the edge of death. The large chewed hole in the wall loomed blackly at him like the gaping maw of a disinterested beast. And still he liked it better down here in the waiting room. Better a restless night’s sleep than yielding too quickly to the rampant insanity of the Saloon.

  Or is the true measure of insanity your resistance?

  Before drifting off, Jack—not religious by nature, or even much of a believer at all—offered a silent prayer for forgiveness to whoever might be listening.

  ELLEN MONROE

  Ellen awoke on the floor, the dusty smell of ancient foam rubber layered with disinfectant—a thin concealment for the sour stink of sweat, old urine and fresh vomit—prickling her nose. The world floundered in a thick fog of surreal faces and impossible forms pretending at reality, a half-dream state, the residual slime of some unshed skin clinging to her body and rotting around her.

  The Dreamline did that sometimes.

  It began with mescaline and Demerol. After that … well, who could say after that? Mescaline turned the whole world into a waking dream of light and darkness, voices through the walls, half-seen images; too real to be anything but reality cleverly hidden from the eyes of the unenlightened. The Demerol kept you down long enough to enjoy the ride, no intrusions from the other reality upon this new, shadowy underworld, the wizard behind the curtain. The Demerol kept the dream going.

  At least, that was what Lenny claimed. As it turned out, the Demerol also had a way of keeping the nightmare from ending.

  She tried to pick herself up, but her head felt as thick as concrete. For a moment she worried that she might not actually be awake at all, just a dream of waking, caught in the confused state of half-sleep, dreams and reality indistinguishably mixed, left shaking, screaming soundlessly from lungs empty of air. It sometimes happened after flying on the Dreamline. She had tried most of them. Ecstasy and the sub-genre of rave-culture, chemical knockoffs were little more than candy, strictly for lightweights more interested in getting laid then getting enlightened. PCP was a good ride, but it usually made her throw up. And marijuana … well, marijuana was beneath contempt. It belonged on the shelf next to extra-strength pain-relievers—over the counter, five ninety-nine, thank-you and have a nice day. LSD was the other end of the spectrum. It drag
ged you down deep—too deep—and it hated to let go. Frankly, it scared the hell out of her. The hippie, counter-culture panacea lasted too fucking long, and liked to come back uninvited and without warning. She tried it once, scored a really good ride on the Dreamline, and thought she might try it again. A week later she flashed back, no rhyme or reason, just off taking a ride. She woke up in a jail cell, not for the first time. Her father quietly bailed her out and dumped her into a discreet, out-of-the way rehab clinic, also not for the first time. But she swore off LSD all the same. Never again.

  Now Mescaline, she liked. Mescaline was a rocket, fast and clean. No flashbacks. No LSD demons creeping around, stalking you for weeks or months, hiding out, lurking in the shadows of the real world, the waking world, boiling forth through the filmy reality without warning to drag you back down into Wonderland. It could be a good trip, but it could also be very, very unpredictable. And weird. Fast and furious, mescaline was a midnight ride on a roller coaster with a bag of fireworks: a distinct beginning, a disjointed middle of pure sensory overload, and a definite finish. And when the ride was over, it was over. No long, strange trip, thank you very much. She left that to the Grateful Dead.

  Lenny, who wasn’t so much a friend as an acquaintance who helped her score her Dreamline tickets, was the one who convinced her to try combining her mescaline with Demerol. The Demerol, so Lenny claimed, would make sure the trip lasted a good long time and keep her in one place while she enjoyed the ride. It would, as he put it, “keep her from walking in front of a bus, or playin’ fuckin’ superman off the rooftop.” Not that Lenny was her chemical Sherpa; he was just a grease-ball who knew where to score a few drugs when he needed to—and when he was paid.