Dreams

by Richard A. Lupoff

  Roger Corman, the great director. But Corman didn't own the name, the character, the story. It was Poe's creation, and Poe was hardly in a position to complain if Jimmy Kerr used his character's name. It certainly wasn't plagiarism. Think of it as homage.

  Madeline Usher. Madeline Usher from the Borough of Brooklyn.

  That was worth celebrating.

  He broke the seal on the bottle of Vieux Carré absinthe, found a dirty shot glass and swabbed it out with a damp cloth. He poured a hefty shot and held it up to the light. It was definitely a gorgeous shade of green.

  The cursor was still pulsing away but at least there were more words on the monitor screen than the story's title and Jimmy's by-line.

  giving pincers resume borough unbend

  Madeline Usher, fifteen years old. Mother an alcoholic. Father a tyrant. No siblings. Raids mom's jewelry box. Full of junk. Favorite pin has fascinated her since she was little. Black, shiny stone. Used to make believe it was alive. Looked like an Egyptian scarab. Stole brooch, pinned it on pea coat, stole money and took subway into Manhattan.

  Now he was getting somewhere.

  He lifted the shot glass and took a little of the absinthe into his mouth. Don't toss this down. This isn't some cheap rotgut from the corner booze outlet. This was good stuff, a gift from Zachary Grand himself, the man who wrote the checks.

  Jimmy decided the absinthe was amazing stuff. The inside of his mouth lit up as if it was filled with an ice cold green flame. He swallowed what couldn't have been more than a thimble-full of absinthe and felt it all the way down his gullet and into his belly.

  He was sold.

  He took a more generous sip of the Green Fairy and felt a grin spread over his face.

  giving pincers resume borough unbend

  Okay, so Madeline Usher, teenaged runaway from a rotten home life in Brooklyn with her drunken mother and her abusive father, turns up at Crazy Crepes in Manhattan. It's snowing. She's wearing a knitted cap and a navy-style pea jacket. She's wearing a brooch that she stole from her mom's jewelry box along with some cash. From Mom's stash. Her stash of cash.

  Jimmy giggled.

  Resume.

  Time to resume the story. Don't know if that's exactly what Jordan Elster would have had in mind, but that's what he's going to do.

  Resume the story.

  He glanced at the clock face beside his bed. It was getting late but he didn't feel especially tired. Maybe the absinthe was doing that for him. Fighting his fatigue. Pepping him up. Good stuff. Good, good stuff.

  The black stone in the stolen brooch. How do we work this into the story? What's left in our impromptu outline?

  giving pincers resume borough unbend

  Pincers.

  Now there's a good word! Talk about a lucky find. What has pincers? He knew what the word meant, at least in a vague way. Pincers, pinchers. Some retired lieutenant colonel playing studio hack on one of those military history programs on TV was always talking about pincers movements. German pincers around a Russian city. American pincers, General Patton, that crazy old military genius, planning a pincers movement against the retreating Nazi army on the western front.

  Jimmy snatched up his battered paperback dictionary and turned to the p's. Might as well get the definition right.

  An instrument involving two short handles and two grasping jaws working on a pivot and used for gripping things; a claw (as of a lobster) resembling a pair of pincers; one part of a double envelopment in which two military forces converge on an enemy position.

  Yes!

  A claw (as of a lobster)!

  The black stone in Madeline Usher's brooch – actually her mother's brooch that Madeline had stolen – looked something like a lobster. Or – some kind of creature. Black, shiny shell. Little metal clips like insect legs holding it against the metal backing, the backing pinned to Madeline's pea jacket. Not so much like a lobster, though. More like a beetle. A big, black, shiny beetle, something like a lady bug but without the red shell and cute little polka dots.

  This thing looked more like an Egyptian scarab. The Egyptians were fascinated with scarabs, used them as decorations and fashioned jewelry after them.

  Jimmy shook his head, striving for clarity, placed his fingers on the keyboard, reached for the computer mouse, scrolled upward and changed the title of his story.

  THE STOLEN BROOCH

  By James Otho Kerr

  And –

  Unbend

  The clock radio clicked on, startling him out of the weird, almost trance-like state he'd fallen into. He turned around again and looked at the clock. The numerals were picked out in little electronic lines. They were green. The same shade of green as the absinthe he'd been sipping and the lights of the city that he could make out through the downward-drifting snowflakes.

  The radio was set on a classical music station and they were playing a composition by Alan Hovhaness, a favorite of Jimmy's, And God Created Great Whales. He sat, mentally and physically captured by the strange, reverential music, until the composition ended and a seductive-voiced female announcer began reading an obviously scripted biographical sketch of the composer.

  Jimmy took a deep breath and turned back to the window.

  Unbend

  The black scarab on Madeline Usher's jacket unbent its many metallic legs and began crawling upward toward the girl's shoulder. Jimmy had seen her only once, fleetingly, when she stood in line at Crazy Crepes, waiting her turn to buy a concoction of chocolate syrup and whipped cream and thin-rolled dough. She'd bought her crepe and paid for it, taken her change and walked away, mingling with the crowd milling on the sidewalk, disappearing just as Jordan Elster had disappeared a few minutes before.

  But now she reappeared, seeming to emerge from the tinny speaker on Jimmy Kerr's cheap bedside clock-radio. She floated across the room and out through the window as Jimmy watched her, followed her with his eyes and his attention. The voice of the radio announcer gave way to another musical composition. This must have been an all-Hovhaness program. Jimmy recognized Hovhaness's Mountains and Rivers without End.

  Madeline Usher drifted through the window behind Jimmy Kerr's computer like a ghost passing through a wall. The black scarab. Jimmy made a mental note, he must change the name of his story to "The Black Scarab" but he was too deeply fascinated right now by the music and the image of the girl and the snow and the lights and the absinthe. Before Jimmy's eyes the scarab grew to giant size and the girl floated upward, steadied herself with one hand, then lowered herself onto its back. She leaned forward and patted it on top of its head, then leaned farther and embraced it and kissed the top of its head as if it had been a gentle and beloved horse whom she had ridden since childhood, then sat up once more.

  The pea jacket had disappeared or been transformed into a flowing, diaphanous garment of glowing green cloth. Madeline turned. She no longer wore her knitted cap, but instead a delicate tiara of glittering emeralds. She smiled at Jimmy.

  He reached involuntarily for the bottle of Vieux Carré, filled his glass and held it beneath his nostrils. The scent of anise and sweet fennel rose through his sinuses into his brain. The Green Fairy danced. Slowly Jimmy consumed the contents of the glass. Outside his window the Green Fairy danced on snowflakes.

  Madeline Usher danced. She held her hands toward him as if summoning, or as if giving. Giving what?

  Giving

  That was the last remaining word in his pin-the-tail outline.

  Giving

  Giving what?

  The Green Fairy rose on one toe, balancing on a snowflake, whirling with it as it rose and fell and turned in the midnight wind.

  Myrna Fahey was Madeline Usher was the Green Fairy was Madeline Usher was Myrna Fahey, dead in Hollywood, dead in the House of Usher, dead at the age of forty, the same age at which the great Poe had died and the classical station on Jimmy Kerr's clock-radio was broadcasting Alan Hovhaness's The Mysterious Mountain.

  Behind the Green Fairy the Black
Scarab flexed the shining half-circles of its shell, spread it wings, circled like a sailplane soaring in a summer morning updraft. It swooped past Madeline Usher. Its eyes were red. Its chelae were large enough and – even from this distance, Jimmy could see – sharp enough to close around the waist of the Green Fairy and slice her in half.

  Jimmy gestured, shouted a warning. Long-dead Myrna Fahey took no notice. She held her hands toward him, giving something – perhaps summoning him. Summoning him.

  He lifted his glass. Somehow it had become filled once again. He emptied it at a swallow. He was suffused with warmth and chill, with energy and lassitude, with eagerness to move and shout and a compulsion to remain still and silent. He leaned forward, feeling as if he had become utterly weightless, his spirit rising from his body and floating above it, then drifting forward, moving toward the glass panes behind his computer, expecting to collide with the glass yet powerless to stop himself.

  But instead of striking the glass he passed through it as a ghost passes through a wall.

  The air was frigid. Each snowflake as it touched his skin burned for an instant as if it had been a spark floating upward from a wood flame rather than a miniature latticework of crystallized water falling from the sky.

  Myrna Fahey, Madeline Usher, the Green Fairy, took his hand in hers. Her skin was cold but soft. Her touch sent a thrill through him, stirring every atom in his body. She drew him forward and he felt another hand take his own free hand. He peered into a new face, a face marked by a massive brow, lank hair worn in a dark wave, a clipped moustache. A face with eyes that had shed uncounted tears, eyes of a suffering soul. From a portrait he had seen countless times he recognized the visage of Edgar Allan Poe.

  Poe handed him a pointed object that grew into a medieval lance. He heard a clicking, grinding sound and whirled, freeing himself from Madeline Usher and from Poe and faced the scarab.

  The great insect launched itself at him, crimson eyes glowing, its chelae opening and closing. Once in their grasp, Jimmy knew, he was finished, and in short order so would be Madeline Usher and Poe.

  The scarab rushed at him and he leaped aside. He discovered that, like the dead Green Fairy herself, he could balance on a whirling snowflake. He dodged a swipe of the great beetle's claw and struck at it with his lance, having no effect whatever against the beetle's tough, curving shell.

  The scarab launched itself, spreading its wings and circling back toward the trio. This time it flew at Poe.

  Jimmy thought he heard Poe whisper, "They don't grow this big in Baltimore."

  That was ridiculous. He stared at Poe. The famous author waved dismissively at the scarab and it banked and swooped past him. It came at Jimmy again and Jimmy leaped like Baryshnikov. The scarab passed beneath him. As it swept past, Jimmy attempted to strike at the base of one of its wings with his lance but he missed the vulnerable spot and he was barely able to retain his grasp on the weapon.

  Now the scarab charged at the Green Fairy. She laughed aloud and leaped, pirouetting above the monstrous insect and landing on its head. She drew her hands back along its head, pressing gently. The crimson glow of its eyes faded, altered, passed through a murky, nondescript shade and then began to glow once again.

  They were green.

  Jimmy felt himself floating backwards, away from Poe, away from the Fairy, through the glass of his window. He watched the glowing green eyes of the scarab slowly merge into a single, glowing emerald gem whose light pierced the darkness and the falling snow across the city.

  Jimmy drew a breath. The scarab was gone. The Fairy was gone. Edgar Allan Poe was gone. He moved his hand toward the computer mouse but instead encountered the bottle of Vieux Carré absinthe.

  The Hovhaness program on the radio station had ended and a new announcer, this time male, had introduced a new series of cuts. The present selection was the Marche au Supplice from Berlioz' Opus 14.

  Jimmy stood up and carried the absinthe bottle to the cupboard where he kept his meager stock of groceries. He placed it carefully on the top shelf, toward the back of the cupboard. He went to the coffee maker. The machine had kept the unconsumed coffee hot. He poured himself a cup, carried it to his desk and set it near the mouse, where the absinthe bottle had stood.

  He scrolled back to the top of the screen.

  He took a sip of coffee, then another, then downed the entire cup and set it, empty, on the floor beside his desk.

  He looked over his shoulder at the clock-radio on his night table. Most of the night was gone. The Berlioz composition conjured images of its own. Jimmy hoped the selection was not an omen.

  He turned back and gazed out the window. One by one the city's lights were blinking out. The snowfall had ceased. A single ray of morning sunlight lanced between two skyscrapers and back-lit Jimmy's monitor screen. The night's snowfall had transformed the city, if only for one brief shining moment, into a glittering fairyland of pure unblemished white.

  He highlighted the title of his story and entered a new title.

  THE GREEN FAIRY

  By James Otho Kerr

  He wondered what Jordan Elster would make of that. He decided not to worry about it just now. He had to write a story. He began: Jimmy Kerr looked at the stack of unpaid bills on his desk. . .

  The Webster Sloat Stories

  DREEMZ.BIZ

  If you're getting this e-mail it's because you're very special to me. A close relative, former lover, dear friend, or esteemed co-worker. Believe me, it's not spam and I'm not sending it to any huge mailing list I stole off somebody's database or bought from a marketing house.

  I know what that's like, I've been annoyed by spam and spoofs for years and I wouldn't do that to you. Truthfully, I couldn't live with myself if I did that. I really couldn't. I get mad when junk email turns up in my computer, too.

  Danged if I can figure out how the heck they get through. I've got a firewall, spam-blocker, anti-spyware, anti-adware, and they still get through. Every day I get offers to buy knock-off jeweled wristwatches indistinguishable from Rolex or Cartier except for the fifteen-cent mechanism inside, certified drugs from Canada or Iceland or Cambodia, or pills guaranteed to enlarge my penis, breasts, or other organs and make my partner ecstatically happy. Oh, stock tips galore, don't forget the stock tips. And my favorite, of course, pleadingly illiterate letters from the impoverished widows of Liberian millionaires offering to share their fortunes with me if I'll just kindly send 'em my bank account information and PIN numbers purely as evidence of good faith of course. Of course.

  Here's what I do with these. I hit the "forward" button, type abuse@myinternetserver.net in the address box, and send 'em off to the oblivion they well deserve.

  Then there are the chain letters. Two dozen rules for having a happy life or half a dozen photos of cute children, cute dogs, cute cats, or cute children hugging cute dogs or cute dogs hugging cute cats or fuzzy ducklings or whatever, or a soppy poem that somebody dug out of a 1946 issue of Good Housekeeping, or a joke that you thought was really hilarious when you heard it in the bathroom at your junior high school thirty years ago. Whatever it is, just send it on to your fifteen dearest friends within thirty minutes and something good will happen to you today—this is absolutely guaranteed!

  Right.

  The free offers can be tempting. You've probably got some of these yourself. You've won a free digital camera, a flat-panel giant TV set, a brand new laptop computer loaded with hi-tech features, a shiny late-model automobile or a lovingly restored classic '55 Chevy Bel-Air or '32 Ford roadster, or a free weekend getaway to the Bahamas for two, transportation included. All you have to do is click here and you're a guaranteed winner.

  I asked my guru about these. I mean, just click here and I'm a guaranteed winner, right? I'm not greedy. The great car or the Bahamas vacation for two would be terrific. I can think of one special person I'd love to take for a spin in a Little Deuce Coupé or romance beneath the Caribbean stars. But, hey, I'd settle happily for the camera or
the laptop.

  My guru says, "If you want the camera or the laptop that much, save your money and then buy one. You'll have less grief, far less grief, than if you start jumping through hoops for some online sharpster."

  Still, the offers do manage to get through and when I see a particularly attractive one it takes all my will power not to click where indicated.

  But I do resist the temptation.

  Always.

  Almost always.

  We all do slip once in a while or we wouldn't be human, would we?

  When an email came through from Dreemz.biz with a subject line of Dreemz 4 Sale it caught my attention. I've always been fascinated by dreams. I don't think we know nearly everything there is to know about them, and I think all the so-called "sleep labs" at research universities are going about their work the wrong way. They study brainwaves and eye movements and skin temperatures and respiration rates. Okay, that's fine as far as it goes. But the physiology of sleeping, particularly of dreaming, is only one aspect of the subject.

  What about the dreams themselves? What do people dream, and why do they dream what they dream, and for that matter what is a dream? That's one of those questions that seems simple enough, the answer should be obvious enough, until you start to think seriously about it. Then it gets very tricky, surprisingly complicated and evasive and ambiguous.

  Okay, so I received this e-mail titled Dreemz 4 Sale and I thought, yes, the fact that it was about dreams was at least slightly interesting. The "4" was also a nice touch. Very post-modern, very hip, very with-it.

  I suppose anybody who still uses phrases like post-modern, hip, or with-it is by definition square, dorky, and obsolete.

  Oh, well.

  I did like the word "Sale." It's honest, you see? Everybody who advertises on the internet or television these days offers something absolutely free of charge and without obligation and you get a free gift just for trying our product. Nobody ever says, "I want to sell you something," but that's all that any of them want to do.