Nightmare Ballad

by Benjamin Kane Ethridge

  What opportunity had come to her right now?

  Death.

  My Luke is dead.

  You can’t believe that.

  You WON’T believe that.

  Everything ached and twisted and hurt, but that would go on only as long as she remained part of the explosion. She didn’t have to. Just this once, she could use the pain to rebuild herself, and not only that, she could become someone else. A better person. Somebody Luke and Maribel could be proud of. A real woman.

  With a better, less selfish heart. An inbred sense of duty that would never let parents drive off alone to their death. The kind of person who would take every opportunity when it arrived. She hadn’t told her Uncle Sal how much he meant to her, but this new woman would have. Luke would stop being critical of her laziness around the house, and he would appreciate everything she did. Maribel could finally lean on somebody else’s shoulder for a change and not have to endure her hardships on her own.

  The new body came together. It felt perfect. Right. Smoke inundated her, but Dara kept working, pulling, fastening, melting, twisting, weaving, tightening, growing! The pain was staggering—this could only be done once, she only had this one chance.

  With a cough, she recognized that she’d re-formed completely. It seemed to have happened quickly and yet had taken a thousand years. Her arms still showed the burns, but the broken bones in her shoulders had fused.

  Through the mess of smoke, she could see that even the Volt had been repaired. Dara shuffled to it, happy, but remembering the raging pain of the moments before. She examined her hands, her body, her silken blonde hair.

  It was all the same. She was just Dara again. This body, this mind, it was the only blueprint she knew. Her vision drowned in tears. She’d wanted a way out so badly. For a moment she grabbed her face and buried her fingernails into the flesh.

  Get a grip. Get moving. Don’t waste this.

  It’s already wasted.

  She pulled her fingers away from her eyes.

  Porcupine cars and Dragon trucks roared by quickly, the drivers sitting in the monsters’ eyes, their own faces demonic, buckled flesh.

  Terror crept over her. Suffering through that pain again…was something she would not do. Especially now that she knew there was no changing who she was. If that happened at all, even a moment of it, she feared that giving up and wishing for death would be the only recourse.

  Dara froze as a face appeared in the smoke. The Bone Man’s eyes and nose protruded just enough to be seen. The bone through his nose flexed as he spoke. “Your mind disfavors you. Please. Allow me to ruin your thoughts so you won’t come back again.” The gleam of a hatchet shimmered through the smoke. Dara turned away, her legs prickling with pins and needles. “The Horse needs to lighten its yoke. Release yourself for the good of the world.”

  She ran on the glass-littered freeway. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Bone Man, hatchet raised over his head. He closed the gap quickly and his heavy breathing grew intense. A battle cry rang out. A motorcycle engine roared.

  Dara fell to the ground.

  The Bone Man dropped his hatchet and flew back from the impact as Johnny turned his Harley into a side skid that he stopped with his foot.

  “Johnny?” Dara yelled in disbelief.

  His face, t-shirt and shorts were covered in dried blood but his sly smile belied his appearance. “Never thought you’d want to see me, eh?”

  “You’re right,” she said, getting up and climbing onto the back of the motorcycle. She wrapped her arms around him and gave him a grateful squeeze. “Get me out of this dream.”

  “Yah-fucking-Yes, ma’am.” He revved the bike and took off.

  “Look out!” Dara saw the Bone Man dash at them, hands outstretched. He grabbed her midsection and held tight.

  Johnny glanced back as the motorcycle wobbled. “What the shit?”

  Dara dug her fingernails into the Bone Man’s wrists. The crazed monster had steadied himself on the running board, perched like a crane.

  “We’re going through!”

  Looking ahead, Dara tried to figure out where they were. But she didn’t know. She’d never been to this side of town. The black curtain unfurled in front of them. A moment later, they burst through, throwing its silken folds every which way.

  Dara was in a daze when Johnny stopped the bike just outside the convenience store. He put out the kick stand and slid off. “Now somebody is gonna get fucked up!”

  The Bone Man staggered backwards, looking in terror at the new world around him. His skin was a normal shade of brown now, more human looking. His eyes were not cauldrons of ink, but shallow pools of gray, full of lucidity.

  Johnny didn’t stop to ruminate on the Bone Man’s changes. He hurried over, lifting his big fist, about to club the man. Like a flash, the Bone Man drew a knife from a feathered sheath on his leg. Johnny halted and took a step back. “Fuckin’ pussy! Put that shit down.”

  The Bone Man spoke in a dialect that carried rage and panic.

  “Where is the balladeer?” Dara slid off the motorcycle and was almost overcome with dizziness. “The balladeer, the one you call the Horse? Tell us how to find the Horse.”

  Eyes widening, the man took another step back. He looked to the distance, to one of the other black curtains.

  “You spoke English before. Tell us. We can help you, if you help us.”

  The Bone Man crept back further.

  “I’m going to run your ass over—”

  “Johnny! I’m handling this.”

  The Bone Man glanced at them and then took off, sprinting into an alley. He was twice as fast as Johnny could even dream to move and Dara, no athlete herself, would not come close to matching his speed.

  Johnny lowered his arms and shook his head. “Great handling job, Dara.”

  She scrubbed at her face. “Shit….”

  “Whatever. Fuck that guy. Let’s just focus on Luke and that other curtain—could that be Maribel?”

  Nodding, Dara looked to the rippling black shape in the far distance. “But why would she be on that side of town? She was at her classroom.”

  “We better check there first then. If it’s not her, I don’t care to jump into another one of these things for some asshole I don’t know.”

  “How did you find me, Johnny?”

  “I was off looking for you guys. I’d just busted out of my own curtain—you should see these new mods on my bike—I rode it through the curtain and they actually still work here and there. I don’t get it, but that’s what’s happened. I think if you take something through the curtain, you bring a version of it into this world.”

  “Like that Bone Man?”

  Johnny shrugged. “Aside from running like a mother fucker, he looked pretty weak.”

  “We need to get to the others.”

  “Agreed. Which way?”

  She didn’t want to choose between her husband and wife. Luke was at home, and Maribel should have been at school.

  “There’s something you should know, too,” said Johnny.

  “What?”

  “The song is much closer now for me. We could have another one fall down on us soon. It might be better to split up. I don’t think we want to see what happens in a double-nightmare.”

  “Maybe they’ll cancel each other out?”

  “Or maybe it will do all sorts of great or fucked up things, but we don’t want to experiment.”

  “Right….” She felt sick. “I need some clothes, and we know Luke’s in one right now. Maribel isn’t for sure.”

  “Yep.”

  “We’ll just chance it. Let’s both go to the house. It’s safer if we stick together.”

  “I’m not kidding about it being close,” warned Johnny. “This song is about to come together again. I can hear it clearly now. We won’t have long. Could be in an hour, could be five, but it’s coming.”

  “We just have to do it. Okay?”

  He gestured to the motorcycle. They
both got on.

  Dara sighed. “Thank you for coming for me.”

  Johnny started the bike and his shoulders dropped a little as he tried to calm himself.

  “How do you feel about the plan?” she asked.

  He glanced at her for a moment and then laughed.

  “Like I’m taking a very dumb dare.”

  Chapter 27

  Johnny had earned this new improved Hog.

  As proud of his new mods as he was, the ride was altogether different, unnatural. It didn’t move like a 900-pound bike. It didn’t move like a crotch rocket either—shit, it moved like a feather in a cyclone. He kept checking himself to see if the nightmare had come back, that this wasn’t some twisted version of reality. Last time, caught in Dara’s nightmare, the new parts had disintegrated inside the bike when she left the curtain. Game Over. This time, he’d taken it through and it had survived. Permanent. Not going anywhere. Johnny’s heart leapt when he looked down at the gas gauge and found an infinity symbol.

  At a stoplight he traced his finger along the ∞.

  “Hot damn,” he breathed. This was the first good thing to come of this madness. It was too good to be true. It couldn’t last. Could it?

  The song had almost come together now. What if it just kept quickening, iterations coming one after another? He’d have to keep finding new places, new curtains. Going into Luke’s neighborhood was a mistake. These were well-traveled roads for all of them. Who knew how close another curtain might be?

  “Has it come back again?” Dara asked.

  “No, but anytime now.”

  Entering other people’s nightmares seemed easier than conducting your own, although each was unpredictable.

  Johnny’s thoughts returned to the jail. Just as he had been about to slip away, his cellmate Roberto had loosened his grip and, with sulfurous breath, told him, “No-no, you have to want to go shit-ass. It’s time to have fun.” The devil lifted up a five-inch claw. “I’m going to ram this through the hole in your dick so far I’ll be able to pop your heart open.”

  Johnny’s cock—still recovering from whatever trauma his amorous wives had put it through—twitched at the recollection. He’d kept little Johnny safe this time, though. He’d reached out in a panic, grabbed the devil’s horns, thought about how good it would feel to rip them off, and fucking did it! Really. He tore the horns out of Roberto’s head, and the blood left two holes, like he had struck some kind of biological well, the source of the human race itself. It was gory, disgusting, and satisfying as all shit.

  Johnny had used the horns to pry open the bars to the cell and defend himself on the way out of the police station. The cops had turned into some ghoulish things with bare skulls for heads and tumor-spotted hands that leaked Time and Death from their ruptured surfaces. He had been praying to find one of the cop’s motorcycles outside the madhouse. He had found something better. His own bike…but one from some kind of Flash Gordon Shrooming fantasy. It pretty much looked like his Hog, but goddamn.

  “There it is. You can see the dream boundary right there.”

  Johnny snapped to attention at Dara’s voice. He did indeed see where the trees began to darken and the houses looked bent, pulled by an unseen force.

  “Why here? Luke’s been on his own street.”

  “It has to be a radius. You got caught up in my dream while you were at Shasta’s, right?”

  “Yeah. That’s only a couple of miles from here.”

  “It must move with us, extending only so far.”

  “Then that means the curtain could move, too.”

  Dara nodded.

  Johnny pulled up to the curb at the boundary of the nightmare. Dara stared at the dim area stretching before them. She took a deep breath and shifted to get off the bike. Johnny put out his hand and laid it over her arm. “God, I don’t think I’m ready to go into another one….”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t, then.”

  “No, I’m okay. He’s my husband. I have to.”

  “I know you want to go…but only a couple notes are missing.”

  She sighed. “You’re really that close?”

  “I think so. Like I said, it’s getting closer.”

  “But we don’t know when it will happen. Just because it’s almost there doesn’t mean anything. It’s unpredictable.”

  “And sudden. It’s too risky, Dara. Let me go in first. See if I can’t get Luke out.”

  “Sit here in a bathrobe and wait?”

  “Just for twenty minutes—half an hour.” Johnny pinched his eyes shut for a second, the song nearly coming to fruition. “I’ll leave my keys in case you need to use the bike.”

  Dara pressed her lips together. She couldn’t look him in the eyes. He studied her a bit. She was one of the prettiest women he’d ever had the pleasure of knowing, but he’d never said as much. That was Luke’s fucking job. Still, maybe he should have told her something to make her feel better.

  The stress in her brow indicated she must have been feeling what Johnny was—that all their good luck was about to dry up.

  She patted his knee. “I was wrong about you, Johnny.”

  Damn, he’d jinxed himself thinking about comforting her. He looked down at the bike, uncertain what she wanted him to say. His mouth opened and shut a few times, almost involuntarily.

  “Cat got your tongue? What were you going to tell me?”

  “That I liked your boobs a lot better before the surgery.”

  “You weren’t going to say that.”

  He half-smiled, got off the bike, fighting the ballad internally as it closed in on his brain. He swallowed. His throat was paper dry. A beer would be lovely right about now. He looked at Dara, who still sat as she normally did, arms folded over her chest, white-blonde hair hiding most of her face.

  He started, “If I don’t….”

  Her long-lashed hazel eyes lifted and held him.

  “Just make sure, if you can…call my kid one day, let him know he means a lot to me.”

  “No, no, none of that,” she said resolutely and checked the clock on the bike. “Now get going. Half an hour starts now.”

  Putting up a hand in farewell, Johnny slipped into the nightmare side of the street. A hot-cold flash went through his body and his guts dropped. He kept walking, not to alarm Dara, but he couldn’t help quickening his pace. The boundaries of the nightmare might change once he arrived, so having Dara hang back would be all for nothing….if it worked that way.

  We’ve all lost our damned minds. That’s the root cause. Mass insanity.

  Johnny walked up to the Rhodeses’ house and opened the front door. At once he heard falling water, like a pipe had broken in the walls. The living room looked untouched, and except for some construction in the kitchen, there didn’t seem to be anything going on there, either.

  “Hey dumbfuck!” Johnny called out. His words played with the music in his head du-du-muh-muh-fu-fu-kuh-kuh.

  He climbed the stairs. His knees hurt but not as much as usual. This experience had played hell with his eating and drinking schedule, and he must have lost about twenty pounds. Hell of a diet plan. Do not recommend.

  The roiling water grew louder as he approached the bathroom. A bass thump came from the other side of the door. He halted. The carpet was wet.

  “Luke?” he hollered. “You in there? I’m checking on you, man. Put your magic wand away.”

  Johnny twisted the handle. It was locked. Luke always locked doors. It was normally irritating but right now it was damn infuriating.

  “Luke!” he yelled. “I’m breaking the door if you don’t open up.”

  The music agreed, oh-oh-oh pen-pen-pen uh-uh-ppppuh.

  Taking a big breath, Johnny took a step back and mafia-stomped the knob. The door warped, and a west-east crack split the wood. Another kick blasted it open, the cheap knob almost popping out the other side. The sounds coupled with the frantic, growing rhythm of the nightmare ballad.

  A caution sign, that looked to
have fallen, rested against the wall. That must have been the thud he’d heard.

  DANGER!!! FROGMEN!!!

  The dark figure of a scuba diver swimming underneath.

  Johnny stepped over the sign and peered into the tub. The surface of the water was murky and pond scum had collected on the sides. Through hazy green, Johnny saw that the way led into a vertical cavern below the house’s foundation, maybe sixty or seventy feet down.

  Being a shitty swimmer, Johnny wasn’t about to swim down. He’d have to return outside and follow the boundaries of this nightmare, and maybe he could find where this tunnel ended up.

  That would have been his plan if the ballad hadn’t exploded in his mind like all the fireworks in the world.

  The atmosphere closed in on him, became cold, dark, bubble-filled. He struggled to see, to move, barbed hands clutched his throat, injecting painful venom—it wanted him to succumb, to wish for death. Where the hell am I? What the hell is happening?

  He never jumped into the tub, yet he was in the watery tunnel now, fighting with something in a charcoal-gray scuba suit, air tanks, fins, and all. But this thing wasn’t human. It didn’t move like a person, and that poison on its hands—it had to be Time and Death.

  Water filled both of his lungs, but he lived anyway. Pain made him concentrate on accepting the fate of drowning: how much Time (pain) do you want before dying? His body quaked with so much torment that the answer was easy—no, it couldn’t be easy. There were other people in his life, people that depended on him.

  Me? But he was no longer Johnny Cruz.

  Me? But he was no long Luke Rhodes.

  Aluke was both.

  The two nightmares had merged them into one being. So while the fear of water and drowning consumed one part of his thoughts, new-found strength in Johnny’s large arms empowered the other part. He reached around and grabbed the wicked thing by its neck and twisted hard. Underwater, the snap didn’t sound devastating.