Futures Near and Far

by Will McIntosh

  “It goes back to what we learned to love in childhood,” Byron said.

  “When the dots first formed. Yeah.”

  They racked their brains for power places that overlapped. Most were transient. Pumpkin sales. County fairs, but different parts of them. The problem was, most natural places were deadly bad for Leia. Gardens were cold, bleak, awful places. Byron couldn’t watch movies or TV. His dots loved them.

  They couldn’t even agree on a restaurant. Byron could only eat where the orange sauce was drizzled over the salmon with the esthetic of a Pollack painting, with a side of slaw white as starlight, curled into springs set on ponds of romaine.

  Leia did best eating in places that shouldn’t serve food. Convenience store hot dogs rotating on wire racks washed down with Slurpees. Chicken and dumplings ladled into questionable cups at the county fair. Foil-wrapped barbecue sandwiches that materialized out of nowhere, passed across a worn Formica counter at the dusty auction barn out on Highway 24. How often could they possibly need to replenish those cans of tuna stacked on that dusty shelf, or the mayonnaise sitting inside that barely breathing refrigerator?

  “What was your diagnosis?” Leia asked.

  “Obsessive-compulsive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. You?”

  “Delusional parasitosis.”

  “You’re kidding, right? There’s a specific name for people who have imaginary parasites?”

  Leia’s memory flashed—sitting on a stuffed chair in a marble-floored psychiatrist’s office, talking about the dots. She blocked it with practiced ease. Neither Paxil nor Xanax had been allies. “Look it up. Your psychiatrist didn’t do his homework. Or hers.”

  “Do you ever wonder if that’s all they are? Delusions?” Byron asked.

  “Every day. They feel real, but that doesn’t mean they are.”

  “I wish there was some way to know for sure. I’d like to know I’m not crazy.”

  “I’m not sure which would be worse, discovering that I’m crazy, or knowing for certain that they’re real.”

  “What do you think they really are?” Byron asked.

  “I don’t like to think about it. All of the possibilities are terrible.”

  “When I was younger, I used to think they were dead people. Then I had a period when I was sure they were psychological. Repressed memories maybe. Then I went the science fiction route. Beings from another dimension. Portals to another dimension. A horrible dimension, one that would drive you insane if you ever glimpsed it head-on. We’re only glimpsing shadows.”

  “Byron, stop!” Leia got off her bed, moved a bunch of Star Wars action figures onto the bed one handful at a time. “They just are. They don’t have to make sense to us. They’re no more unlikely than we are.” She got back on the bed, surrounded by power totems to banish her dread.

  “I’m sorry,” Byron said. “I didn’t say it to scare you. I just think we have a better chance of beating this if we can understand what we’re fighting. Since I found out about you I’ve been feeling more hopeful. Maybe together we can find a way to beat them.”

  “It’s nice to have an ally.” He was right. Leia knew he was right, but she hated thinking about the dots. “Okay. Let’s make a list of possibilities. Everything we can think of, no matter how stupid.”

  “Number one: they’re dead people,” Byron said.

  “When I was little I was sure they were the devil, and that if they got too strong he would take me to hell.”

  “Number two: Satan,” Byron said.

  Between them, they came up with some fascinating ideas:

  1. Leia and Byron were AI programs on a starship. The world was a delusion to keep them from going insane. The dots were them sensing the real world. They called this the Matrix theory.

  2. The dots were implanted by aliens who had abducted them when they were children.

  3. The dots were cancer. Their awareness of it was a rare, undocumented ability.

  4. They were serving as wombs for the dots—keeping them safe, gestating them. When Leia and Byron felt unsafe and agitated, the dots were in danger of birthing prematurely.

  None of the theories seemed likely.

  The pumpkins were gone. It was October 31—they should have kept them out one more day at least. Leia kept her car running for the heat, surveyed the barren straw, the planks of wood stacked by the church’s driveway, ready to be hauled away. The dots started to complain.

  In the rear view mirror, she saw Byron approach, the whirr of his scooter rising. Disappointment bordering on despair registered on his face. She got out.

  “Now what?” Leia said.

  Byron wrapped his arms around her, kissed her. “I don’t know. Maybe we can meet a few times a day, just for a few minutes each time?”

  Leia looked at their feet, their toes inches apart. “We have so much in common, but we’re incompatible in the most fundamental way.”

  “We could get married,” Byron said.

  “What?” Leia said.

  Byron smiled, though it was a distressed smile. His dots were rising. Leia’s heart was hammering too.

  “Where could we get married?” she asked.

  “At a pumpkin sale next October.”

  “Then what? We can’t live at a pumpkin sale. As soon as the pumpkins started to rot, the dots would be on us. We can’t afford to fly in fresh pumpkins year-round.”

  “So we live apart most of the time. So what? I’d rather see you a few minutes a day and talk to you on the phone than not have you at all.”

  “I don’t think I can do it. It hurts too much.” She started to cry. The dots took advantage, swelling obscenely.

  “Please don’t,” Byron said.

  “I have to. We have to. You know we do.”

  * * *

  Through Leia’s bedroom window, the drive-in stretched out, a field of grey gravel surrounded on three sides by trees, a big white screen at the far end, leaning, looking eager to feel the color of a new release.

  Leia sat staring, stroking a pumpkin in her lap, the one she’d bought the first day she met Byron. Everything made her think of Byron, even things that had nothing to do with him. Packets of sugar made her think of Byron.

  Her drive-in still had old-fashioned speakers set on poles, even though almost none of the customers used them anymore. Byron would use them, if he took her to a drive-in. If he could.

  She put the pumpkin on her dresser (Byron had asked what she kept on her dresser), grabbed her keys and headed out. She needed to feel really cold air, the kind you only felt when you drove fast with the windows open in November.

  She headed out route 301, away from town. She drove fast.

  The dots woke. She’d never hated the dots more. She turned her hate on them like a blowtorch, imagined their edges curling before they burst into flame. Somewhere, she’d read that anger was more powerful than fear. Maybe she could hate the dots to death.

  They hummed cold electric threats that tore through her anger like knives through paper, exposing the solid core of fear underneath. She kept driving.

  She drove as long as she could, until it was too much and she had to turn back. Instead of going home, she headed to the bowling alley, for a burger and fries on a white paper plate with ruffled edges, the comforting sound of bowling balls crashing into heavy wood pins in the background.

  The familiar crunch of gravel under her tires welcomed her home to the drive-in. Fear receded, but the sadness sat in her chest like a block of concrete.

  Byron’s scooter was leaned up against one of the speaker poles.

  Leia threw the car into park, leaped out, thrilled to see the scooter, even if seeing him would only reopen a wound that would have to start healing all over again. “Byron?” Unless he’d just arrived, he wouldn’t have much time.

  He was in the kiddie park, lying curled in a snow drift beside the teeter-totter. Leaning up against one leg of the swing set was a little chalk board. On it, Byron had written I’ll beat them, or d
ie trying. I love you.

  He was shaking all over, his eyes distant, his hands clenched in fists. Leia held his head and called his name, but he didn’t respond. She gripped him by the shoulders and dragged him toward the door.

  Halfway there, she stopped. How could she let him suffer the fury of hell while she sat sipping cocoa in her power place? What he was doing was so brave. No one but her could understand just how brave. If he succeeded, if he beat the dots without dying, or losing his sanity, they would still be confined by Leia’s dots.

  “I love you, too.” She pulled him toward her car. They would face their demons together.

  She drove to the state park, went a mile or so down a dirt access road and pulled over. The dots were already swelling, already humming.

  She spread a pile of blankets beside the road and dragged Byron out of the back seat. He was locked in a tight ball, whimpering. She arranged him in the blankets, then turned and threw the keys into the woods and lay down next to him, wishing she’d gone to the bathroom before leaving the drive-in. Her worst nightmare was coming true. She would likely die, or go insane, or be swept into some horrible black dimension where she would be trapped for eternity. But maybe Byron would be there with her. At least she would finally know what happened when the dots grew. She was so tired of running.

  The dots were already holding court. They were swollen and vibrating. The sound resembled atonal, droning, miserable music that repeated in a tight loop. With each throb, the dots moved closer to the lens of her minds’ eye, and the sound got louder. Amidst the droning, Leia made out voices. What were they saying? It sounded like ‘count to ten,’ or maybe ‘cut the tape.’

  No—it was shifting, saying one thing over and over, then morphing into some other, similar phrase. Now it was ‘come to them.’

  They pushed closer. She wanted to move away from them, but didn’t know how. She felt nauseous and wanted to go home.

  * * *

  For the first time Leia saw them close up—black pools too close to be seen as complete circles. She cried in fear as they loomed closer. She thought she could make out faces on them, rudimentary slits for mouths and angry angled slashes for eyes, like demons in a child’s nightmare. Was this about hell and demons after all? The demon faces twitched, and Leia recoiled, almost certain now that she was possessed, and on her way to hell.

  “Trailers for sale or rent…” A voice cut through the horror show in her mind. It was Byron, singing in a weak mumble.

  “Pushing broom for fifty cents…” He’d butchered the line, but still, Leia lapped it up like water in the desert. “I’m a man who’s mean by no means. King of the Road.” He was trying to save her. A lifeline tossed by a drowning man.

  “No. Stop it.” We live or die together, she wanted to add, but didn’t have the strength. Byron stopped.

  Leia could feel the warmth of his hip pressed against hers. She wanted to reach over and touch him, brush his hair, but she was falling into a black pit, she was having the worst drunken bed spins anyone had ever had. She struggled to open her eyes, tried to focus on Byron, on the buttons of his winter coat, to stop the spins. The sunlight hurt—it leapt straight to the backs of her eyes. Even squinting, rays of light stabbed like lightning bolts. With a terrible effort she raised her hand and shielded her eyes.

  “Oh God. I can see your dots.” One was bulging from his ear, like a fat, round slug. Another was squeezing out of the corner of his eye, inflating as it pulled clear.

  Byron managed to peel open one eye. A weak cry of terror fluttered from his chapped lips. They were pulsing in time with Byron’s heart.

  Leia closed her eyes. The faces on her dots had vanished. She wondered if they’d really been there before, or if she’d only imagined them. And what did it mean to imagine something on something else that you might be imagining? She was insane, wasn’t she? Of course she was. In the muddle of terror and noise and the staccato flashing of the dots, a tiny oasis of clarity nodded sagely. This was full-blown schizophrenia. It was manifesting after years of warning—a classic case, replete with paranoia and visual and auditory hallucinations.

  Byron jerked, grunting in fear. Leia opened her eyes.

  One of the dots had squeezed free of his eye. It rolled/crawled across his cheek, still expanding, and plopped onto the ground beside him.

  It moved off into the brush—a glistening, ink-black beach ball. The thrumming was deafening; it shook the branches of the trees. Byron’s mouth was cranked open wide, but Leia couldn’t hear his screams. Four dots were pushing out of him. And those were only the ones she could see.

  A second broke free.

  The first was now huge, the top lost in the treetops. Its edges were blurred, as if it were vibrating.

  It popped.

  * * *

  Her head was in Byron’s lap. He was stroking her hair. “Hang on, it’s almost over,” he said.

  Leia pried an eye open. A dot was bulging obscenely from her ear. She moaned.

  “Hang on just a little longer.” His voice was hoarse, but stronger. “We had it all wrong. All this time.”

  Leia thought her nose was growing. It was another dot, squeezing out through her nostril. The pain was excruciating.

  “Take deep breaths, Leia. It’ll be all over soon.”

  “Sing the song,” she said. “Please. I can’t stand this.”

  “Leia, listen.” He shook her gently. “Those aren’t our power places, they’re their power places.” He had to raise his voice. The dot was getting louder. “Every time we left those places, the dots drove us back to them, because they can’t survive away from them.”

  The dot popped free of Leia’s ear. She recoiled in horror as it rolled across the blanket, expanding by the second.

  “See?” Byron shouted over the thrumming, pointing at it. “It’s trying to get to a power place. But it’s too late.”

  The dot grew and grew, and then it popped. For one awful second, Leia was doused in a spray of electric terror. Then it was just gone.

  She felt one crawling down through her nasal passage, into her throat. She breathed through her nose as best she could as it expanded in her mouth. It felt slick against her tongue, bulged like a black bubblegum bubble from her mouth, and finally popped free.

  One by one, they crawled out of her.

  And popped.

  Until there weren’t any more.

  It was quiet, except for the wind in the leaves and the papery flap of a hawk taking flight.

  “We’re free.” Byron’s face was pressed into her hair, his breath tickling her ear.

  Free. She watched the hawk rise over the treetops.

  “Give me your keys,” Byron said, rubbing her shoulder, “I’ll take you home.”

  “I threw them in the woods.”

  “You threw them in the woods.” He chuckled. “Okay. What’s the plan?”

  “I guess we walk.” Walk. They could walk. “But not yet. Let’s rest for a while.”

  It had been so long since she’d been in the woods. Besides the little road, there was nothing in sight that was not alive and growing. It had a different sort of power—energizing rather than calming. She soaked it in.

  “I have a new theory,” Byron said.

  Leia rolled on top of him. “Tell me.”

  “They were parasites. Rare ones that haven’t been identified yet. They took up residence in our brains when we were kids, and fed off the feelings we got when we were in our power places.”

  Leia considered. “I’ll buy that.” She laughed. “We can rule out hell and dead people, anyway.”

  “For a while there I was sure one of them was my dead mother,” Byron said.

  “It was so awful. So awful.” Leia shuddered.

  Byron lifted his head and kissed her. “It’s over now.”

  Possible Monsters

  Mailboxes whooshed by in the warm night air. Cooper was tempted to stick his hand out the window, to feel the pressure of the wind on his palm, to
feel something, but he didn’t trust himself with only one hand on the wheel. Not after four beers. What he didn’t need right now was to plow into a parked car.

  This whole stupid all-night drive could have been avoided if the night clerk in that rickety hotel hadn’t asked what he did for a living. For the briefest instant he’d swelled with pride and opened his mouth to say he was a baseball player—a pitcher. Triple-A, going to be in the majors someday. Then he remembered he wasn’t any more. Palm-to-forehead, buddy—you just threw in the towel, finally admitted to yourself that you weren’t good enough. That’s why you’re checking into a rickety hotel halfway between Zebulon, North Carolina, and home.

  Cooper yawned hard. Now that the fifteen-hour drive was over and he was two minutes from his parents’ house (his house now, he reminded himself) he was past sleepy, into that hyper-alert headachy state.

  He passed his old high school, his skin crawling as the sight fired off unwanted memories. They’d be all over town, his ex-classmates who hadn’t escaped this place, working in the auto repair shop where he’d bring the aging BMW he’d bought with some of his signing bonus, managing the diner where he’d choke down breakfast once the sun rose, and piled ass-deep at the Moviemail distribution center, the big employer in town for high school graduates who had no marketable skills, but could put things into alphabetical order. Julie, his ex-girlfriend, was out there somewhere as well, ready to gloat at his failure and humbling return.

  Cooper pulled into his driveway, washing the house in white light. It had only been, what, eight months since he’d last seen it? Two weeks spent going through his father’s stuff, deciding what should go to the Salvation Army, what went in the estate sale, what he should keep. Good times. About as much fun as he was having now, pulling into his new old home.

  As he pulled up to the garage he saw that it was damaged. The wood was bulging and splintered, like someone had plowed into it in a few different spots. Cooper pulled closer, cursing and squinting as his headlights flooded the little space. “What the hell?” Something was squeezing out between the splits in the wall. It looked like glass, or ice.