By way of response, Charles stared at me while slipping his hand inside Tanya’s robe and caressing her stomach. The fabric slipped and parted, revealing concave shadow and bone white light. She continued to stare straight ahead as though nothing was happening. My own reaction was to feel the blood in my veins freeze. I knew that if I lost my cool in front of the Awakened, they’d turn on me in a heartbeat.
‘I’ll give the demon to you soon enough, Paul. In the meantime, though, there’s another playmate of yours here that you might be glad to see.’
With his free hand, he pointed toward my left. There in the corner a body hung from the ceiling upside down like something from a Tarot deck. A long cotton rope had been coiled around and around its legs, mummifying them. Captain America’s red white and blue were barely discernible through the mess. But the truly terrible thing was what had been done to Brandon’s head; it had been submerged in a bucket of the same bright yellow paint that had been used on the building. Thick drops splattered on the blue floor around the can whispered of struggle, of the agonies of drowning.
‘We found him where you left him, fast asleep. He wouldn’t wake up no matter how we shook him. All that work we put into his redemption wasted.’
‘Fucking Sleeper piece of shit,’ a voice behind me whispered.
Charles’ hand was now on Tanya’s now-exposed breast and was pulling and pinching at the nipple.
‘Say ‘hi’ to Paul, Medusa,’ Charles instructed her.
She swallowed, then glanced at me and grinned like some blissed-out hippie chick. ‘Hey, Paul. What’s up?’
I didn’t answer, just tried to keep from puking, or from walking over and throttling Charles.
‘Paul, do you want this to be a public meeting or a private one?’
I choked the words out. ‘Private.’
‘Everybody out!’
The people behind me jerked backwards, and the door closed behind them. Charles sighed.
‘Alone at last. Now here’s the deal, Paul. You’re going to play prophet for a few more days and then you’re going to anoint me—don’t laugh—King of Nod.’
I didn’t take his advice. In fact, I laughed immoderately. My immediate thought was to compare Charles’ proclamation to the very Noddish Michael Jackson and his bizarre self-coronation as the ‘King of Pop’ back when the singer’s personal disintegration was accelerating so quickly (as quickly as Tanya’s or Charles’, almost) that only a Big Lie in the form of a phrase like that could even pretend to do damage control. But then Jackson died, and people started calling him the King of Pop ‘for real’. And by the time the world ended, the uncomfortable facts of the singer’s life seemed to have been completely expunged from the popular narrative. So I had no doubt Charles could make his coronation stick, could glue that thorny crown to his feverish red pate.
Scowling, he took his hand off Tanya’s breast and placed it behind her head. He pushed sharply down; she tumbled to her knees and began to fumble with the zipper of his pants.
‘Get to work, Medusa.’
Tanya took out his flaccid penis and began to suck on it. I looked away, but there was no place for my eyes to rest.
Nothing new here. Sex had been trying to go public for a long time before Nod was spawned. Public and corporate: a pubic IPO. All that porn. Wade in deep enough and you’d see someone you knew down there: your neighbour, your teacher, your sister, your wife—writhing on the screen in some grimacing parody of ecstasy—ecstasy itself a ghost, long since vanished from the scene.
‘Stop it, Charles. Stop it now.’ The coldness of my voice shocked me even more than the sight I was witnessing. I was now someplace cold, someplace beyond emotion. I could kill or die, it made no difference to me. But what Charles was doing amounted, in my book, to the desecration of a corpse, and I wasn’t going to let it continue.
‘We’re at an impasse, Paul. How about that?’ He slapped the spine of the couch with the palms of both his outstretched hands while Tanya’s head bobbed mechanically below. ‘We appear to have reached a fucking impasse.’ He grunted with pleasure, but his penis wasn’t erect. ‘Fucking is done for us, Paul. In case you’re interested. For Medusa, this is mostly just a form of meditation and hygiene. My hygiene. When you’re Awake like we are, you turn away from fantasy. Your pretend world of sleep, your games of love and fucking. It’s pathetic.’
I began to move toward him, but he hurriedly pushed Tanya away.
‘That’s enough! Slow down, Paul. Think about the child. You don’t want your precious Zoe to get hurt!’’
That stopped me. I stood there as Charles zipped himself up and Tanya rose and fastened her robe. Again she coughed. Shivered. Stared straight ahead.
Charles was talking fast, trying to normalize things again. ‘I need another day or two to get ready for the Rabbit Hunt, Paul. There’s no reason why we can’t both have what we want. What do you say?’
I felt close to tears. ‘They’re just kids. Why do you want to hurt them?’
He sighed patiently. ‘It’s not about hurting anyone, Paul. It’s about sleep. Your buddy sleep was never any friend of mine. Believe me, after a day wandering the alleys and with night coming on cold and no bed on the horizon, sleep was never something I looked forward to. While you were snoozing the night away up there in the sky, I was down there in the dark, Paul, with my eyes wide open. That was my kingdom, even though I never asked for it. But it prepared me for Nod. And in Nod no one gets away with sleeping. Not on my watch.’
‘What if I call in those people out there in the hall and tell them you’re a demon?’
‘Feel free to try. Right now they accept you as a mystery. A freak. They might believe you, but then again, they might believe almost anything either of us say. If our mythologies start to clash, I’d say it’s a toss up as to which of us will still have all our arms and legs attached five minutes from now. And don’t forget the example of poor Sleepy Headed William,’ he nodded toward Brandon’s body. ‘It wouldn’t take much for them to turn against you. And then there’s your little demon, of course. What are you doing with it in that room of yours, Paul? Fucking it? I bet you still like to fuck. Right?’
At this, Tanya’s white face flushed and she bit her lip until a thin line of blood dribbled down her chin like jelly from a doughnut. There was still someone inside her body, then, some vestige of her soul huddled in a dark corner of that ravaged mind.
‘One more speech. One more and then you give me the child and let us go.’
‘One more speech, and you anoint me king. Then you can go.’
‘Fine.’
I knew that this was bullshit, of course. There would be no delivery of Zoe once I ‘anointed’ Charles. By agreeing, all I was doing, at best, was buying myself two or three days. He knew it too.
‘A gentlemen’s agreement. So glad we’re past our impasse.’ He was taking on what he saw as courtly tones now. ‘As a way of putting our differences in the past, can I offer you a free ride on Medusa? It won’t mean much to her, but it might mean something to you. No? Then get out of here.’
These last words were addressed to Tanya, who stumbled past me out the door, head down. We were alone now, except for Brandon’s body.
‘Charles.’
‘Yes?’
‘Do you believe in any of this? In Nod?’
‘Who’s asking? Hello? Who’s asking, please?’
Without an audience, Charles seemed to shrivel. I wondered how much of an effort it took for him to hold Nod together in his unravelling mind. He was no better off than Tanya, really.
‘I’m asking. Paul. You know all this Nod stuff is bullshit and that the reality is you’re dying, that you’ll be just another corpse in the street a week or so from now. And that you’re insane.’
But Charles wasn’t listening. He seemed to have forgotten I was in the room. He drifted over to the window and was whispering to himself, his fingers dragging down the glass.
‘Fly, fly, little birdie. Fly
, fly. I am a Child of Nodgod. A babe in the imperial woods…’
DAY 13: Abraham’s bosom
The repose of the happy in death
Whatever final sleep had come for Brandon was coming for me as well—and maybe even faster than death was barrelling toward the Awakened. But I had one or two things left to accomplish in Nod before I allowed myself that release. And so when I got back to the classroom I made myself a jabbing nest of old math textbooks in hopes that I’d be able to sleep on a razor’s edge—exhausted enough to doze, but uncomfortable enough that I wouldn’t drift too far from the shores of Nod.
It worked, and I managed to contort my way through another night, and just as Ebeneezer Scrooge famously wondered if his ghostly visitations were poorly-digested morsels of cheese, so too was my return to consciousness a stiff piece of Math Fundamentals 6 jutting into my ribcage.
That night my dream was somewhat different. I was a five-hundred-foot tall giant striding through Vancouver, carelessly toppling skyscrapers with my elbows. There were people on the streets below, and I felt them burst like blueberries beneath the soles of my bare feet. For some reason I had to make it to the ocean and across the Georgia Strait to Vancouver Island where a tidal wave was about to crash on the west shore. But before I could enter the water, a massive wave broke over the ghostly sliver of the island visible on the horizon. And then, of course, the world exploded. This time, however, as the last fragments dissolved into Golden Light, I saw the park, intact. Children running through the trees, mouths contorted in either laughter or terror.
The next morning, I woke to find someone had left an unopened bag of chips on the floor for my breakfast: Zesty Cheese Doritos. I ate them as best I could, though I tasted nothing and the exercise left me with a sore gut, raw lips, and a raging thirst. I crumpled the metallic bag, and the sound was hangover loud. Then I sat on the warm linoleum by the window and thought about Tanya.
True story. One New Year’s Eve a couple of years ago, she drank far, far too much, then spent the hours between midnight and dawn vomiting repeatedly, anywhere and everywhere. She puked in the same way heavy smokers clear their throats, casually, unconsciously. I spent those hours following her around with a bucket, holding her hair back, and listening to her laugh and cry, laugh and cry. She giggled about a conversation she’d had with a friend earlier that evening, then grew angry about it, then wept. Swampwatered all over the place. Shook her head fiercely whenever I tried to utter some inept words of commiseration.
‘Don’t talk. Just don’t,’ she warned every time I opened my mouth. I remember feeling as though, robbed of my words, I had nothing else to offer. Still, all in all a tender memory. If you’ve ever loved somebody besides yourself that won’t surprise you too much.
Someone once said that we get more difficult to love with each passing year because, over time, our histories grow so tangled that newcomers can no longer bushwhack their way into the thicketed and overgrown depths of our hearts. I’d search and cite those words for you if I could. I’d really like to give proper credit for the insight because it’s true: Tanya’s and my intertwined histories were like varicose veins on an old man’s ankles. Who could truly know an old man or woman, coming cold upon them in a nursing home when they’re ninety-two years old? It’s too late, by then. All we see are crooked shadows, faces rewritten as caricature, fully-lived lives recast as rasped anecdotes.
Looking over at the abandoned grizzly lying face down on the floor, I remembered the blood on Tanya’s chin when Charles had spoken about the kids in the park. Something about the fairy tale intensity of that red trickle made me believe that whatever spark was left in her brown eyes would flare up in Zoe’s defence. All of which is a roundabout way of prefacing the revelation that I found myself roaming the halls of the school that morning. Looking for Tanya.
The Awakened were growing visibly more frail, still going about their nonsensical business, but more and more slowly. Their weary eyes were tiny movie projectors, and as they stared, I felt myself covered with wobbly tattoos of light: old home movies and horror scenes. There was a lot of sneezing and coughing going on all around me as ravaged immune systems fizzled and sparked.
‘Do you know where Medusa is?’ I asked the first person I met, a teenaged girl wearing a full-face motorcycle helmet. She was walking down a hall, tapping on the walls every six inches then listening.
She nodded, smiling strangely.
‘Where?’
But she just shook her head and recommenced tapping and listening, face pressed against the self portraits and box-and-triangle drawings of houses floating beneath a sea of yellow paint.
‘I know where Medusa is.’
I turned and saw my wild-haired young friend. The believer.
‘Where is she?’
‘My name’s White-in-the-eye.’ It was once said that the devil had no white in his eye. ‘I can take you there.’
He led me to the next floor down, then toward the furthest end of the hall, talking all the while.
‘How did you know it was coming?’
That stumped me. Had I seen Nod coming? It was true that part of me had always remained outside the old world—a ghost with folded arms. I think I always suspected that some sort of fraud was being perpetuated as I watched ‘normal’ play out. Maybe I just expected more of life than it was realistically even going to be able to deliver—maybe I was a romantic.
Real romantics are never the ones with the easy, winning ways about them; the real romantics are always the guarded ones, the paranoid and the worried, the ones with furrowed brows and coffee jitters. After all, anybody looking with open eyes at the world we’d made would have to have been very, very worried.
So maybe, in that way, I had seen Nod’s skull and crossbones mast on the horizon.
‘Maybe. Maybe I saw two worlds, one on top of the other. But it was fuzzy, like when you try on someone else’s glasses.’
White-in-the-eye nodded gravely, then asked me about the ship again. Soon we stopped outside a closed door. Then he turned and spoke, tipsy with revelation.
‘You dreamed up Nod when you wrote your book, right? But Nod wasn’t the dream—the old world was. When you were dreaming of Nod, you were really awake! That’s why you’re the prophet.’
And I got it then. The Awakened had it backward. The old ‘reality’ of Vancouver had been unreal, a dream. Yes. I was with them that far. But the real reality wasn’t Nod—Nod was just all the dreams and nightmares smushed together in a blender. Real reality would be whatever remained intact after Nod had hammered down upon our heads and ripped away the last shreds of the veil of the old world. And that would be? What would endure?
Tanya.
White-in-the-eye opened the door and showed me a yellow room awash with light. The sun, visible through the window, smelled like a coat of fresh paint. Tanya lay propped up against a desk, hunched forward, hands between her spread legs. She was breathing with great effort: The Little Engine That Probably Couldn’t For Much Longer. Oxygenated blood wasn’t reaching her gray fingertips and blackened toes. Each breath was a momentous decision, undertaken only after serious consideration. And she wasn’t alone. Outside this room, Death was stalking the dusty halls, picking and choosing as he went. Out in the alley, there was a reeking, akimbo pile of meat that grew every day when I wasn’t looking.
I went over and tried to ease her down onto her back, but she screamed and threw her face at me. It was a horrible sight.
‘I won’t lie down and you can’t fucking make me!’
‘But you can’t breathe like this.’
‘I can’t lie, can’t lie. Sleepers are liars! Golden light, golden lie…’
Weakly, she pushed away the hand I’d placed on her shoulder. She was someone you might have seen begging on a street corner in the Third World: too far gone for genteel Developed World beggary, for the haute couture of the Salvation Army-swathed squeegee kid. She smelled like rotten fish and vomit. I had to turn away to take a b
reath, and when I turned back she was coughing and gurgling to herself. Her words, though unintelligible, had the intonation of conversation.
‘Tanya. I need to find Zoe. You remember Zoe? The little girl we found? You gave her that stuffed bear?’
She stopped mumbling and looked up, looked at me. Suddenly, someone was home, though peering through a filthy attic window. I struggled to hold her gaze as she crooked her finger, drew me nearer, and whispered, ‘Why didn’t you like people, Paul?’
How could I have replied to that? I could have confessed that I liked the idea of people, but not the reality. I could have said that in some insane way White-in-the-eye had been right and that I had seen Nod coming and had been hoping to stand clear of its path. Instead, I opted for the truth.
‘I don’t know why.’
‘I’d have left you I’d have left you I’d have left you I’d…’ Then she stopped and changed direction. ‘What did you dream last night?’
‘I was a giant, taller than the skyscrapers. Walking toward the beach. Then a tidal wave came over the horizon. The water was shining, and it really hurt my eyes.’
‘What happened next?’ She’d heard this story before and was suddenly playing an old game called ‘story time’.
‘The world exploded.’
‘Like a bomb hit it?’
I shook my head into her shoulder. ‘No. Not like that at all. More like it was a collage where the pieces weren’t glued down and someone opened the door and all the pieces just fluttered away.’
‘Just blew away…poor baby. Then what?’ She was being the little girl she’d sometimes liked to be. More than once, in the past, I’d wondered if she stuck with me because I was good at recounting old fairy tales. Because I was good at bedtime stories.
‘Then the pieces all disappeared and there was nothing left but golden light.’
She burrowed into me. ‘And then what?’’
NOD Page 15
