Aberrations of Reality

by Aaron J. French

  I, too, have grown. I keep up with them. My strongest thought is that I don’t want to be left behind. Where they are going, I also want to go. We approach the crown of the tree, where the last circle opens, and my body is humming, fully enlivened by the love coursing through it. I wonder if this is something new or if I have always felt this way. I wonder if the others moving up the trunk feel as I do.

  We enter the leafy bloom and disperse, firing out in all directions to take our manifold positions among the branches. The Great Tree is gorgeous. Clouds continue to part, forming the circle. I gaze up through foliage, a burning intense stare, a neophyte posed in devotional worship and peering up at old Egyptian gods.

  The giant angelic beings now bend their faces out of the sky. I realize the voices of the spirits have begun chanting a single word again and again—Keter, Keter, Keter. Vast arms unfurl like colorful tongues, reaching down to the abundant beings dispersed among the leaves and branches. These etheric feelers collect us, gather us into the center of the crown, where I notice my fellow travelers have become elderly—and yet serene, resigned, as I too have grown elderly and resigned. Together, we have released our struggle.

  I am reminded of my childhood again, of those years I remember distantly, like a half-forgotten dream, and I want to cry. I want to hug my poor mother in that old folks’ home, where she’d lived with the other forgotten souls waiting to die. I want to dig up my father and stand him upright, salute him as his men saluted him during their military tour of Vietnam. I imagine having Sarah back, living in our house on Madison Lane, with the girls coming home from elementary school in the afternoon and me coming in later after a hard day at the office. I kiss her, and I kiss them too, then we sit on the sofa to eat popcorn and watch TV.

  I remember that.

  I can remember it all, actually.

  But suddenly the images fade, and I’m being borne up with my fellow travelers, funneled into a splendiferous column at the center of the crown of the tree, a tempestuous tornado, a storm, a beacon of living, vibrating souls. The colossal arms reel us in, siphon us up. I may look elderly but I feel so young. And when I look into the angelic faces dominating the sky, toward whose bosoms we stream with single purpose, I forget about the small child I once was. I forget about my poor parents. I forget about the divorce and Sarah’s new husband, Paul; about the girls calling him “Daddy,” even though I asked them not to. I forget about that night I was drunk in the one-bedroom apartment with the loaded 9mm handgun. I forget about this Spirit Country, and I forget about Keter, the clouds, the angels, and even the Great Tree.

  I can forget about all of it, if I really try. And I feel one thing and one thing only. And I know only one true experience…

  … peace.

  WHEN CLOWN FACE SPEAKS

  Clown Face is the painting that hangs over the writing desk in my office. It is a medium-sized print with a white background and a walnut frame. It depicts a floating, disembodied clown head. The clown has a white face, puffy orange hair, a red mouth, a red nose, and a pair of blue-and-black eyes.

  There is nothing inherently wicked about the Clown Face painting. And the story of its acquisition is also quite innocuous. I won it at one of those carnival games. The one where you shoot a water pistol into the yawning mouth of a frightened-looking duck, which then inflates a balloon attached to the duck’s head. The object of the game is to inflate the balloon to bursting before the time limit runs out.

  After three tries, I did just that. The game’s operator, sullen though he was about my victory, offered me any one of the prizes dangling overhead. I asked Sylvia, my wife, to pick something, but she insisted on my choosing. She said I had beaten the game fair and square, so I deserved the prize.

  Behind the stuffy child-sized bears, the filigree of small ducks and kittens, behind the baseball caps and inflatable snakes, hung Clown Face on the rear boards of the stall. I asked about it and he reluctantly gave it up. It’s hung above my writing desk ever since.

  I’ve always thought it a bit odd with its goofy grin and dead, staring eyes, but I liked it because it reminded me of my favorite book—Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut. The various covers of that book depict a clown face of some kind; so whenever I looked at my Clown Face, I was reminded of Slapstick, which is a brilliant book. In this way it served as a source of inspiration, especially during the end times when Sylvia and I were always arguing, when writing had become more chore than voyage.

  It didn’t become a supernatural painting until Sylvia left; that’s when it finally felt safe to reveal itself. Sylvia’s career was in the computer sciences, and she held a Bachelor of Science degree… so for the most part she was skeptical of all things unnatural. In my opinion, her presence alone negated any possibility of the supernatural made manifest.

  I, on the other hand, am much more sensitively organized. When our marriage fell apart—mostly on account of my increased alcoholism and her endless boredom with our sex life, which she eventually found relief from in a coworker named Dennis Ulster—her departure from our home, and the subsequent removal of her things, felt like a planetary death. With Sylvia gone, I found solace in my writing. I worked on a new novel, this one a horror story, and I sent my agent Jim Royce the preliminary chapters.

  “Charles, this is some of the best prose you’ve ever written,” he told me over the phone.

  “Do you think so? It’s not too gloomy?”

  He chuckled. “Oh it is, but that’s what’s so great about it. There is more feeling in this one than in your other novels. It’s a horrible feeling, but still a feeling.”

  “I don’t know…”

  The line between what I wrote and who I was began to blur around this time. I lost myself to the work. Day and night I toiled, perched at my desk like a golem with the cats looking on. I seldom left the house—or The Castle, as I had termed it—except to replenish my supply of alcohol.

  Two weeks after my lovely princess was taken from The Castle by an evil wizard, I was seated in the upper turret of the east wing, writing my novel with a quill and inkpot, when suddenly Clown Face morphed into lurid life.

  Its first word was my name. “Charles,” it said, more a statement than a question. “You… are… Charles.”

  I had become conscious of a certain ambiance in The Castle which was more sensitive than in previous years when the princess roamed its halls. This ambiance did strange things to one’s perceptions. More than once I’d stopped to stare at some unusual spot on the floor or ceiling, convinced something was wrong about it. I would stare for hours, not quite sure what I was seeing, but sure it was dissolving, that I was seeing the atoms whirling about.

  A handful of these experiences had alerted me to the increasingly sensitive nature of The Castle. So when I heard the voice of Clown Face speaking over my head, it didn’t surprise me all that much.

  “Who’s there, who’s calling me?” I asked.

  “Up here. Look and see.”

  My attention thus directed, I regarded the painting and noticed that the bleached background was swirling dreamily. Clown Face, whom I have already taken the time to describe and shall not do so again, bobbed in this churning whiteness, his lips parted in a bloated grin, eyes blank and staring, dead and seeing nothing (everything).

  “I see you,” I said. “Are you some demon come to torment me?”

  Clown Face laughed. “What makes you think I am a demon?”

  “There are only demons,” I answered bitterly.

  “Foolish mortal—simplistic mortal man. You are blind to the truth of reality.”

  “What truth, as if I should like to know…” It occurred to me that I was holding a conversation with a painting, and scolding myself with various sanity-based epithets, I returned to my manuscript.

  For the next several hours Clown Face tried to get my attention, but I resisted. I banged away at the keyboard, producing God knew what rubbish, until eventually it quieted.

  The Castle returned to its former mode
of existing—sensitive and brooding, while mercifully keeping its most powerful secrets hidden. The painting I had won at a carnival game solidified and ceased its swirling, and the cats went about their business and I went about my writing. But now I had the knowledge that The Castle possessed certain secrets which were soon to be revealed.

  * * *

  Days and nights started feeling the same. Sunlight was no longer able to penetrate into my Gothic cathedral, even with the drapes pulled and the windows open; the sunrays seemed to flicker out as soon as they crossed the threshold and entered the dark world I now called home.

  I would often stand by one of the windows, focusing my attention; then, when the sun reached the rectangular space over the windowsill, it did a strange thing by bursting apart into a million glittering gold specks. Those specks, like dust motes, entered The Castle and immediately dimmed and dispersed, negating any illuminating qualities they might have possessed.

  Still, when my agent Jim Royce called, I answered and did my best to seem sharp.

  “How’s the writing going?” was his imperishable question.

  My answer, always: “Absolutely fabulous. The best I have ever written.”

  “That’s wonderful to hear, I’m so excited about this new novel of yours. What are the chances of getting a few chapters?”

  “Not good. At the moment I need everything I have for reference. This book is unlike anything I’ve ever attempted, so it’s easy for me to get lost. And when I get lost I have to backtrack and pick up the thread. You understand.”

  “Of course I understand, but let me know when you’re getting close to completing it so I can start with the publicity buzz.”

  “Will do.”

  “And Charles?”

  “Yes?”

  “Chapters, chapters, chapters! The sooner you can get those chapters to me the—”

  “Yes, will do, Jim.”

  Chapters.

  Who cared about chapters when my world was crumbling apart? I sure as hell didn’t. My writing was no longer limited to such lineal constraints as chapters. Everything was much more cyclical because the writing, like myself, was being undone.

  * * *

  Once I realized the extent to which The Castle was sensitively built, I began to accept the phenomenon of Clown Face’s speaking. It was a process, a wearing down of my defenses, and the advent of my suprasensory perception.

  The painting would speak. I would listen. And then I would write.

  “What do you want to tell me today?”

  Clown Face, bobbing in its rectangle of creamy whiteness, said, “Write this down. ‘All reality is subjective.’ How’s that?”

  I stared at the four words. “Sounds like bullshit.”

  Clown Face laughed. “Now write this. ‘There is no objective reality that exists in the space outside of mind. All external phenomena are actually internal phenomena. Mind is the ruler over all. Physical matter exists only in the mind. Laws of Science exist only in the mind.’ How’s that?”

  I leaned back in my chair. “It’s interesting. But it doesn’t fit in with the rest of the narrative.”

  “Forget the narrative. We are writing a philosophical treatise.”

  “But my agent—”

  “Your agent exists only in the mind. If your agent is talking to you, but your mind is not present, your agent is not talking.”

  “No, but he’s still talking.”

  “To whom is he talking?”

  “He’s talking to himself, I guess.”

  “That’s right.”

  I shot up from my desk, enraged. “I’m getting tired of this. If people could see me, they’d call me crazy. They’d say I was losing my mind.”

  Clown Face replied, “That’s preposterous. It is you who is gaining your mind, and they who have lost it. Besides, just tell them a disembodied clown head told you.”

  “Tell them a clown painting talks to me? Are you insane? They’d have me committed. And then they’d say it’s all in my mind.”

  “Then they would be telling the truth because it is all in your mind… but so are the Laws of Science. The law of gravity, for example, exists only because the mind knows about it. A rock dropped from someone’s hand only appears to fall, for if the mind were not around there would be nothing to perceive the rock, and so the rock would not fall at all.”

  I continued to listen, but my attention had been arrested by one of the cats. I could no longer remember their names so I recalled them by fur color. This was the black one.

  Over my shoulder, Clown Face said, “What’s that you’re looking at? Careful: If you stare too hard, you may see through it.”

  But I kept my eyes on the black cat sitting on the small end table. It had scattered various stacks of paper across the surface in an effort to get comfortable. It was sitting so still that for a moment I believed it was a statue. Then it swung its head and peered up at me with jade-green eyes.

  I began focusing on the strange fuzzy outline of non-light appearing to ring its body. The closer I studied this blur, the more defined it became, until it was almost more real-looking than the cat itself.

  “You’ll go too far,” Clown Face warned.

  The fuzzy white outline extended a full five inches off the cat, and not only was it visible around the edges, but also at its center.

  I stared for a long time until strain caused me to look away. I gasped. Now I could see the cat wherever I turned my head, like it was burned onto my retinas.

  I got a terrible feeling in my stomach. It was the feeling of knowing you’d had too many drinks, too much marijuana, or too much acid. I looked back to that original spatial zone the cat had occupied, but it was gone. Only the empty table and the scattered papers remained.

  Frantically, I scanned the room, poking my head into every nook and cranny, and under the bed, under the desk, in the closet, and out in the hall. But the cat had vanished.

  I heard Clown Face’s deep, godlike chuckle. “Missing something?”

  “The cat, the black one—where? It was just here, I know it. I saw it with my own two eyes. Now it’s—”

  “It’s gone, Charles. In fact it was never there in the first place. It was only visible to you because in your mind you had decided to perceive it. Since mind is all, one can just as easily decide to un-see something, as well as decide to see it.”

  I thought my brain was being cleaved in half. The disappearance of the black cat marked a turning point in these events. Following the incident, I ceased my questioning, doubting, and skepticism, and I was more openly conducive to the inflowing current of sensitive organization of The Castle. Things were not quite the same after that.

  * * *

  After the cat evaporated, other objects began vanishing too. One morning I finally worked up the courage to go grocery shopping, but stepping outside, I found no car. I stood for a long time in the early morning dawn, staring down at the place where my car had been.

  The following day it was the television. A vacant, dustless spot dominated the oak entertainment center where, for so long, the TV had stood. Next were the pictures on the walls (not including Clown Face, which actually appeared to be growing).

  Later the furniture began to dissolve. The two sofas in the living room, the dining table, the chairs, the mirrors, dressers, and beds. Soon I found myself walking through all the empty rooms scratching my head. The solitary feeling of The Castle was growing, and it seemed much bigger and danker.

  After some time had passed, the only things remaining in The Castle were myself, my writing desk, and the painting. The two cats were gone, but there was one other thing, something I wished would disappear. My cell phone.

  “I’m worried about you,” Jim Royce said the last time he called me. “We used to get in touch once a week. Now you almost never answer my calls. And when you do, you can’t wait to hang up. What’s the deal?”

  “You’ll be pleased to know I’m nearing the end of my novel, Jim.”

 
“Terrific! Is that why you’ve been so scarce lately?”

  “That’s why. To be honest, this is the most absorbing thing I’ve ever written. It’s like I’m actually taking part in the narrative.”

  There was a pause. “Well… you are taking part in it. You’re the one writing it.”

  “It’s not just the writing process. There’s something else going on. Strange stuff. The kind of stuff I’m writing about, Jim. The stuff I’m writing about has bled over into my reality.”

  “I see.”

  Another pause.

  “Well, how about chapters?”

  A piercing screech ripped out of the earpiece and I yanked the phone away. Then, as I hurled it toward the wall, it dematerialized midway through the path of its trajectory and before it could smash into smithereens, it flicked out in midair.

  I had never felt more alone.

  * * *

  I returned to work on my manuscript, and was shocked to find that Clown Face had grown to four times its original size. It no longer resembled a painting. Now it was like a large viewing screen.

  Clown Face bobbed in its ocean of whiteness, eyes large and godlike, mouth red-painted and bloated. It commanded me to take up my pen. I did, and Clown Face started speaking again.

  “There is a misconception held by the people of the world, that what they think is inside of them, and what they do is outside of them. If one person has an interaction with another person, and this interaction somehow turns disagreeable, then both people leave feeling either insulted or guilty for offending the other. Each person is then thought to go their separate way and to take this experience with them. But that is wrong. No one goes anywhere with anything. It’s all in the mind.

  “Just as you are every person—every character, rather—in your dreams, so are you every character in your reality, for your reality exists only in the mind. Just as you are all phenomenal objectivea in your dreams, so are you all phenomenal objectivea in your reality.”