The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2)

by Mark Reynolds

  It was time to find Jack. They had been apart long enough, her time spent reclaiming sanity while Jack sacrificed his own one piece at a time, mad over her, losing his mind that she might stay safe, be sane.

  It was time to find him.

  This place was nothing anymore, just an apartment; an empty box where she started her mornings and finished her days. Her first real memory of this life was here, and it would be the last memory she would take with her. The chapter was ending, the screen fading to black, and what came next would be nothing like what had gone before.

  Ellen went to her bedroom, discarding the blouse and vest in favor of a loose white T-shirt more suitable for traveling. She left the clothes discarded on the floor; there was no point in being neat when she wasn’t coming back. She took only Jack’s book as she left; she wasn’t exactly sure she would need it, but it was a hard thing to surrender, and she didn’t think it would hurt anything if she kept it.

  Everything else she left behind.

  She found herself on the landing, staring at the words scrawled in heavy black marker upon the opposite wall leading up to the roof. STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN. Likely the product of some half-asleep recollection of another Stairway to Heaven, the one she would climb at the Sanity’s Edge Saloon, seeking refuge and freedom in the isolation. Jack did not understand; a novice when it came to flying, it frightened him. But not her. She earned her wings a lifetime ago, swallowed it in small pills that opened her eyes to realities different than the one everyone insisted she accept. Yes, she knew a thing or two about flying, and about the Dreamline, and how the two were connected.

  The Stairway to Heaven.

  The Dreamline.

  Fly on home.

  She followed the twisted rope of extension cords back to the roof like a guideline, a thread tied to the entrance of a maze and unwound through the labyrinth. Or maybe simply a safety-line lowered down into the hole she had found herself in, a clear avenue out. It was time to go. She need only find the way … and the means.

  Opening the door to the roof, she felt a gust of wind try to pull the door’s handle from her grasp. The wind was picking up, whipping her hair about her head and face. The storm was close now, and she had to leave before it arrived. For no reason she could explain, she knew that if she delayed, she might never escape.

  Ellen went to the edge of the rooftop, that same place she had started her dream journey night after night, careful to navigate the abandoned tools, snaking power cords, discarded scraps of sailcloth and sawed chunks of aluminum tubing, all left where they fell, features of the silent landscape. Stepping up on the capstone ledge, she looked out over the distant horizon of green beneath a thick pall of a storm-darkened sky. Far below, the oily brown river snaked thickly along its endless, winding course that surrounded and gripped the city in its coils. The wind sucked at the treetops, updrafts lifting the crowns then lowering them back down, only to lift them up again. No grand sweeping motion like waves of wheat fields, the trees were more surreal: the rise and fall of the ocean’s surface, a world breathing as it slept.

  And perhaps dreamed.

  Above the treetops, beyond the river, a sign crowned a distant building that she knew to be a dairy co-op. It was the only thing visible past the river, over the trees, outside the edges of the town. The Riverside Dreamery. She could see it from her apartment, but never more than the name painted on the brick of the building’s top floor. The Dreamery.

  That was the direction she should go. This moment had been lived out a dozen times or more in her dreams, the precise circumstance subtly different but the basic situation always the same. She needed to reunite with Jack. This world was meant to be a safe place, a haven away from the ravaged Saloon. But peace was a resource in short supply, and maybe exhausted now. She felt it in the storm, in the silent streets, in the strange behavior of the final inhabitants of this existence. She was behind the curtain, the Oz machinery collapsing, the smoke spent, the mirrors cracked. The dog was old, the pony dead. It was time to leave this place behind.

  All that remained was to find Jack again, to return to him.

  She was ready now.

  Somewhere out there, beyond the river, beyond the wilderness, beyond the sky, Jack was waiting. Beyond this reality, this universe, this time and place and meaning. There were other worlds than this; it was time she moved on.

  The only question that remained was how. She thought the answer would come to her, thought it would leap into her mind like words off a page once she put herself in the right place at the right moment. But the place and time had arrived, and she still didn’t know. She didn’t think a swan dive into the air was right; not this time. Dreams were one thing, but reality, however ephemeral it could be at times, was governed by very different rules. And gravity was one. Nothing would come from an act of sheer stupidity except the validation of all of Dr. Kohler’s warnings about her to herself, her father, the authorities, everyone. And the last thing she wanted to do was prove him right. There were plenty of ways to fly, but for actual flight, the physical world required one to have wings.

  Ellen noticed for the first time the plywood plank lying up against the ledge, hanging out over the lip of the building like a ramp overlooking the ravine. Someone had placed it there for a reason.

  A shiver coursed down her frame like a spark seeking ground, and she turned back to the rooftop and Jasper’s creation, complete and standing at the ready. The Dream Flyer.

  The wings and tail were fully fleshed in sailcloth skin, less a glider than a large bat or a flying fish, a thing part avian, part aquatic, features like wings or fins, both and neither. Only a small seat and seatback for the rider, pedals hooking into the main front bicycle wheel and chained to the gears to power the wings. Hand levers to either side of the seat manipulated the steering controls in the tail. There was no propeller or motor, the flyer powered solely by the pilot, bike gears and chains making the wings pump, driving the flyer forward and up. Where the flyer was going, fuel was difficult if not impossible to find. Jasper’s solution was both elegant and masterful.

  Ellen walked slowly towards the craft as though it were a wild animal that might turn skittish and bolt, a creature in need of the gentle reassurance of a slow step, soothing words, a hand calmly extended. The flyer was aimed at the plywood ramp, its means to overcome the lip of the building and fly free, out over the river and past the Dreamery beyond.

  There is no coincidence; only plans of which one is unaware.

  Jasper Desmond lay asleep beside the small outbuilding of the stairs, apparently exhausted. Ellen approached him, knowing now what she needed to do.

  “I need to find Jack,” she said. “I guess you wouldn’t understand. I don’t understand myself, but I know it’s what I have to do. But in order to reach him, I have to escape this place: this roof, this building, this town with all of its people, and, yes, I suppose, this entire universe and all the reality that goes along with it. More things I don’t expect you’ll understand. Probably all you will understand is that I need to borrow your Dream Flyer. And since I don’t know when or if I’ll ever return, I suppose I’m really stealing it.” She stopped and swallowed. “I’m stealing your Dream Flyer, Jasper. I’m sorry for that. If there was any other way, I wouldn’t. But I’ve run out of time. I’m sorry. And thank you.”

  Jasper grunted, adjusted his position, and continued sleeping. Once she would not have suffered any guilt over stealing what she needed, but it bothered her now. She thought she should say something more, but knew there was nothing more to say, her unheard confession merely a postponement of the inevitable.

  She took a seat in the Dream Flyer, staring out past the ramp to the vast open sky with a kind of sparkling detachment, hypnotized and bedazzled. From the Flyer’s “cockpit”, she could envision it all: flapping down the runway of the rooftop like an enormous crane, wings pumping faster and faster, building up the speed and lift needed before throwing itself out over the wild roaring ocean of clouds
that swirled before her. She could see the Dream Flyer doing this, see herself at the helm, flying out into the great unknown, passenger and pilot, guide and follower.

  It was to be a leap of faith.

  When Jack first found himself in the Sanity’s Edge Saloon that day that felt a hundred lifetimes ago, it was not due to some precise plan or grand scheme. Jack simply left; followed his instincts; attended to his soul instead of his intellect. He left his entire world behind, taking only the things that comprised who he really was, and boarded a train with no idea where it would take him. It all came back to that first step into the darkness, no idea what lay ahead, only the knowledge that it was different from what he left behind. Jack made the leap.

  Now it was her turn.

  Ellen looked forward at the narrow plank of sagging plywood then at the aluminum skeleton and canvas skin behind her, the last vestiges of a moldering raptor trapped in a world outside of dreams, a world run its course and now slowly dying. There was no knowing what might come next. The only certainty was that it would be different from the world she was leaving behind.

  It was time to return to Jack.

  Ellen started the Dream Flyer forward, hands on the levers, grips stolen from bicycle handbrakes. Pedaling proved effortless, the wings pumping faster as the flyer gained momentum, closing with the edge of the roof. She pulled back lightly on the hand throttles and felt the nose of the Dream Flyer start to pull up as the tail’s rudder responded. She quickly leveled it out, wanting to take full advantage of the short runway. The wings flexed in the middle, reducing their drag on the lift then locking as they pumped downward, getting a full scoop of the air beneath them. Better lift, lower drag, Ellen marveled. Even Da Vinci neglected that feature.

  The Dream Flyer hit the plywood plank and for one moment, she saw only the swirl of gray and white storm clouds before her, the wide open sky, the limitless possibilities, the opportunities granted through flight.

  Then the front tire—a converted racer from Jasper’s cannibalized bicycle—dropped off the end of the board, and the flyer fell like a stone.

  Forgotten was the powerful pumping of the wings, the noise of the wind past her ears that existed only a moment before. Now there was only her heart in her throat, the rise of her stomach into her chest, and the dizzying vertigo of sudden descent. From open cloudscapes to dark and distant forests, the tangle of tree limbs descending down the ravine into the turgid, brown, oily river panning further and tighter into concrete and asphalt and the litter strewn alleyway directly below. Pulled by the weight of its single passenger at the vehicle’s tip, the Dream Flyer plummeted.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, she thought.

  In that same instant, another thought. So much easier to fly with mescaline. Or PCP. Or Ecstasy. Or LSD. Right now, I’m not feeling overly choosy. No, not right now. It had been a long, long time, but she had not forgotten; dreaming was easier with the right tools.

  And behind both of those thoughts, one phrase shouted over and over: This is crazy! Crazy! Crazy! Crazy! Craz—

  As the tire tipped off the edge, Ellen felt herself pedaling harder, a kind of desperation that made the wings flap faster, pumping desperately at the air, fighting gravity’s grip. At the same time, Ellen pulled back desperately on the throttle arms, if only to distance herself by a few more inches from the ground fast approaching. Her mouth was open, but no sound came out, the wind forcing itself down her throat, filling her lungs, and she didn’t know whether to scream in terror or exhilaration.

  But the ground—

  Forget the ground. It’s time to leave. This world cannot hold you. It cannot hold you.

  “I’m coming, Jack,” she said.

  Or maybe she only thought she said it.

  Above the roar of the wind past her ears, past the giddy sensation rising in the pit of her stomach, Ellen heard a strangled scream coming from behind her, a single inelegant syllable stretching out into infinity. NoooooooOOOOOOOOOO!

  Or maybe she only thought she heard it. Because at that moment, both Ellen Monroe and the Dream Flyer disappeared, winking out of reality with the inexplicable swiftness of dreams upon waking.

  OF THOSE LEFT BEHIND

  Gusman Kreiger tried very hard not to lose sight of Ellen Monroe.

  He did try.

  He waited outside the bookstore all morning, keeping a careful eye on the coffee shop across the street and the whereabouts of its owner. Ellen almost saw him as she left to meet with her—about what, he had a pretty good idea.

  The proprietor of the coffee shop was an avatar, a fact Ellen was unaware of. Just as she was unaware that her boss was also an avatar. As was the man who picked up the garbage. The avatar calling herself Serena was, in every sense of the word, a goddess upon this earth. A goddess who ran a coffee shop in a small, jerk-water metropolitan, nameless and average and unidentifiable in every other way except that Ellen Monroe—Ellen Not-Of-This-World Monroe—lived here along with three—three! —avatars.

  Just another breach of realism in Jack’s absurd pseudo-reality.

  The bookstore owner and the garbageman arrived at the coffee shop moments later, less a social gathering than a meeting of combatants, each sizing the other up, their hatred of one another palpable. Kreiger melted down into the shadows, joining himself to the sidewalk cracks, the garbage stink, the raucous cackle of distant crows; not so much invisible as beneath notice. A useful trick against avatars that typically ignored minutia, themselves superior to the small details existing around them.

  There were exceptions of course. Kreiger suspected the coffee shop owner was just such a one. Details were her forte, and the depth of her expertise strained imagination.

  One avatar was dangerous.

  Three was apocalyptic.

  Good old Jack. Count on him for a big finish. Unrealistic, but that was part of his style—or lack thereof. Kreiger felt it, Jack’s subtle and not-so-subtle alterations, pushing at the rules over and over until normal became abnormal. Ellen might not realize who or what they were, and the others that walked around this city—the walking dead, tertiary characters, bland objects of no identifiable value—likely could not see what they were either. But he was not fooled by appearances. He knew what they were, and why they were here. He could read that far ahead, even if others refused to.

  So he waited, watching Ellen Monroe and listening to the universe. The time was fast approaching, a storm the likes of which this fragment of reality had never seen.

  The streets were empty, all other constructs having fulfilled their purposes. Please collect your check on the way out; we’ll let you know if your services are required again. And soon Ellen would leave, returning to the Sanity’s Edge Saloon—or whatever had taken its place since Jack blew the Saloon apart. It was now or never.

  Yes, he had tried very hard not to lose sight of Ellen Monroe.

  He knew the exact moment when everything went wrong, felt the tightening in the bands of harmony surrounding him, a tension about the universe that made his teeth ache, his ears pop, his stomach turn hollow. He looked up at the sky, grit and dust peppering his face, a piece of worn paper stuck against his leg, fluttering in the stiffening wind. A raindrop struck his cheek.

  And just like that, the universe passed him by.

  He leaped to his feet, camouflage abandoned, and expended a small portion of the staff’s energy—most was needed for the trip back to Oz—catapulting himself straight into the air and across the street to land nimble as a jackdaw atop the windowsill of the coffee shop’s second floor, balanced on the toes of his boots. Face to the glass, he peered inside, the lightning rod crackling with brilliant blue energy, exotic and new and raw as the birth of the universe, the unveiling of a new reality.

  Ellen was gone!

  The second floor apartment was empty. No coffee shop owner. No bookstore owner. No Garbageman. Not even an apartment! He could see all the way to the back wall, a single huge room that was empty of everything but the ra
vages of time. Walls grimed with the passage of years turned to decades, gray and indistinct, blending almost seamlessly with the fuzzy, pale gray of the floor, thick with dust so deep that the original surface was now gone, its color or composition lost beneath the layers of neglect and disuse. Festooned with cobwebs and littered with rodent droppings and the dry husks of dead insects, the second floor of the coffee shop revealed itself to be nothing so much as completely ordinary and completely empty. This was no meeting place of three avatars and his sweet ticket home, his Ellen Monroe; at least, not in this facet of reality.

  It was the Kansas City Shuffle, and he the hapless rube.

  He’d intended to follow her as she fled ahead of the storm, pursuing her in the dream flyer. While his mind might be broken, Jubjub Bird was still an accomplished dreamer, and where Ellen Monroe was going, only dreams could carry you. But she was the necessary guide, the pathfinder, the keeper of the keys and the doorways. Without her, he would lose his way in the clouds, or simply remain trapped in the Mobius strip of this reality.

  Only Ellen was already gone!

  He turned from the empty room, eyes the color of blood and glowing like twin suns. Around him, empty shops and abandoned streets, a dead town that had served its purpose like old roses or a used condom, a shell outgrown by a land crab and abandoned in favor of better lodgings. That was all this place was now: garbage, an abandoned shell forgotten in the surf.

  And he was trapped in it!

  He saw Ellen’s footprints below, bright blue against the fading world. She had slipped out the back, fleeing towards home—her real home.

  He dropped to the sidewalk, reading his doom in the dark splats of rain against the concrete, and started running, worn boots slapping cement, coat flapping raggedly, a scarecrow caught in a windstorm. He ran straight up the middle of the empty street, no concern for cars or the notice of pedestrians. All were gone. He was caught in a pause, the point when the swinging pendulum stopped and fell back the other way. He and Ellen were living in that single fractious moment, that almost forgotten time between now and now; that point when the world that Jack invented and the world he invented it from were as close as they would ever be.