by TA Williams
“Okay,” Stan stopped her short.
“Well, do you like me or not? I am a busy, busy woman. I can show you so much more. I have other places inside me—that was just a teaser, like a teaser movie trailer, you know. Or maybe you can let me travel inside you sometime.”
Stan creased his brows, saying, “I’m not sure. I like the part of you where I got to float in space, and the music in my veins, just not the boiling eyes and catching on fire. You could’ve sent me into a sunspot then let me get kicked out in a flare. You know, experience the magnetic forces, become the sun, be the heat—not be poached by the heat. I dislike heat. So, I don’t think we’ll be doing this again,” he said, “No.”
“Oh,” she said. Stan caught a flash of hurt in her deep brown eyes. He would have missed the frown if he had blinked. Then her face returned to a stern, unreadable façade. She was stoic.
Her faux leather black purse had been placed on the hardwood floor beside her, and not a speck of dust appeared to be on it. She snatched the purse, stood up from the chair, and walked out of his apartment.
Peachy, Stan thought, as the door shut remarkably quiet. He had expected a slam. Maybe she’ll find someone who’s in to that. What’s her name? Ellie, I think. Other than that sentiment, Stan felt nothing at all for her. She was as gone and forgotten to him as water down the drain.
For now he simply wanted Kona. He took a long, slow taste and nodded. It was always interesting—always. Traveling inside someone’s “self.” One could witness many spectrums of a person using the Cortex Composer 8, which read and generated worlds within. Not all were so pretty. Each paraded varying sideshows of oddity and vivid streams of phantasmagoric accounts, and some people played like scenes from the Grand Guignol Theatre, others like Disney meets Sweeney Todd. There were unicorns in some, fairies, and shadowy creatures.
Not a horrid way to start off a Saturday morning, Stan guessed. He had met the woman, Ellie, yesterday afternoon at a sandwich shop called Chives and Honey. She had approached him matter-of-factly, and he invited her over, but told her she had to come at seven the next morning or not at all. It was as simple as that.
Now Stan got up and walked to the bathroom and took a leak. Then he hopped into a hot morning shower, knowing he hadn’t had much time before Lisa, his wife, would arrive. Stan wasn’t certain if he was being dim-witted, or if deep down he wanted to be caught. Then, to his curiosity and above all else, he found the streams of water running over his skin extremely fascinating.
Suddenly he felt woozy, lightheaded. A creeping sensation seemed to tiptoe up his veins, like a ghost was trying to perform ballet inside him, and he soon visualized a gaping hole forming in his mind. The pain was coming soon. He knew it. This was a rare side effect only few experienced, and it felt much like a cluster headache, only it was called a caterpillar headache. The pressure slammed his skull. Stan dropped in the shower, hitting the side of his head on the tub, then was hanging on for what felt like dear life.
Stan half-believed behemoth gods of war smashed hammers over his face. He crawled his way out of the shower, cursing and naked, to the oxygen tank in his room. As he crawled, a veil slowly seemed to drape over his vision, the oxygen tank dimming, and soon he was encompassed again by blackness.
Stan knew he was still crawling, but to where now? It was a big black box infested with the constant hum of black static and high-pitched whining, like locusts and sirens. It was a world inside him that the CC-8 could not register or generate. Stan was in two places at once, a split consciousness. This had happened twice before, in the last year.
Reaching and groping, eventually he turned the valve and put the mask to his lips and inhaled. The blackness closed around him, allowing reality to seep in once more.
Ten minutes had passed. The pain began loosening its grip.
“Stan.” Lisa’s voice was soft. She stood, a silhouette in the doorway, looking at Stan’s naked, wet body.
“Lisa.” Following a lull, attempting to keep his voice steady, he said, “Thanks for the help.”
“I didn’t help.” Lisa was always rather literal, which, when she was a little girl, had caused minor frustrations in her mother and father. “So, who was the hussy in the dress?”
***
Stan watered his ZZ plant and took pride (as much as one could) in the three ladybugs demurely crawling—one on a stringy stalk and the other two on the black soil of the pot. He’d found them in the courtyard of the apartment complex by some daffodils under the cherry tree, let them play on his fingers, then set the three wise-bugs, as he called them, in the pot a few days back. Stan was astounded they were still here.
“Ladybugs came from Europe,” Stan said. “They sold them to farmers because ladybugs eat little bugs that eat plants—or something like that.”
“So interesting, Stan,” Lisa said, nibbling her lip to accentuate the sarcasm, “I had no idea about that. Now let’s talk. I thought we made a deal, and in that deal you said we’re not experiencing other people anymore. We’re married.”
Lisa crossed her arms, scrutinizing Stan with her blue eyes. She wore black leggings, black sequin skirt, black tank top with a black cardigan (knitted from teddy-bear fur) over it. She also had on black boots and hot-pink lace socks under them.
“I know,” Stan said.
“Yeah. I’m sorry about your headaches and all, but you should tell me if you’re in to other people. It’s something I need to know, don’t you think? You are, aren’t you? Do you like her more than me?’
“No. Calm down. I didn’t, you know, cross any real boundaries, I don’t think. We didn’t have sex.”
She put her hands on her hips, narrowing her eyes. “Oh, I’m calm.”
“I can see that,” he said with a bite.
“I’m detecting some attitude here from you, Stan. I’m the one that gets to have an attitude. You know I work in Foster Care, and that’s damn stressful enough to be around. I deal with crappy situations everyday. I don’t want to have to be dealing with this bullshit from you. I don’t need it. I don’t want you doing that.”
It had been a year since they’d had sex, and Stan watched her eyes turn red and a tear welling, about to drop from her eyelids. He wondered for a moment what it would be like to be one of Lisa’s tears, salty and rolling down her hot cheek. He walked to her, trying to break the sort of invisible barrier she’d often put up. He stood in front of her, eclipsing the daylight coming through the window.
After a moment of her looking away from him, and Stan staring dead at her, she broke, took her arms off her hips, sighed and hugged him. That was the game played, the struggle for power. They had lost a baby together a year ago, after eight months of her in Lisa’s womb. Things distorted afterwards, but not only with their marriage—her hormones, heavier periods, and her erratic psychological states. And the thought that she was clinging to a man, a shell that used to harbor her husband, was on her mind frequently. There were traces of the old Stan, but he was fading.
The two didn’t speak terribly much for the rest of the day, and rarely made eye contact. For lunch Stan made two sundried tomato bagels with herbed cream cheese. He also sliced two avocadoes, and served the lunch with pasta that had garbanzo beans in it.
Sunday, Lisa attempted to loosen up, and spoke of work, saying things like, “I can’t believe this case I’m involved with.” But Stan would ask no questions to further conversation on the matter.
The rest of the weekend moved in a gooey, sluggish sequence consisting of awkward moments, and things wanted to be said but never were, and the things that were said probably shouldn’t have been.
A sunny but chilly Monday dawned and the workweek started its engine. Lisa stayed under duress in her office, executing family assessments and child service plans, then heading to court to witness the judge’s (a portly old fellow named Dennis Black) final hearing on the case. The case dealt with a young mother and father that had fixed their five-year-old’s hands behind his back with ro
pe, leaving the kid bound overnight. The circulation had been cut off to his wrists, and one hand would need to be amputated. The kid had taken a dollar from the mother’s purse, and that was the punishment the parents saw fit.
Stan entered data, spending hours upon hours in front of the computer and making random small talk with the woman wearing gray (coincidently her name was Robyn Gray) in the cubicle next to him. At lunchtime the two attuned and Ms. Gray showed Stan what it was like be an owl, hooting, preying and swooping on mice in the black of the night and under the cool of the full moon. She offered to give him more, to experience sex with her but not actually having it, therefore Lisa wouldn’t have to know. Stan consented, and being it was the first time in a year (real or no but felt more than real), his performance was rather ephemeral and clumsy.
On the way home Stan stopped by the bookstore, feeling possessed to buy a certain book. A woman in blue browsed the same section which was labeled, “Mind Mapping in the 21st Century”. Stan paid her no attention. He located a thick book titled, On Building Worlds, which was priced at $975. There were four copies left, and after he finished only three remained.
By Thursday afternoon rain had set in. Charlotte was coated with a hue of melancholy. The city appeared dulled, and from a bird’s eye view it would have looked like moving inkblots between stationary skyscrapers, due to the citizens putting their black umbrellas to use and going home, jumping in out and out of each other’s live via CC-8 (and there they experienced colors)—except for Lisa, she mused, because she was the only one in the city, possibly the world, who was asked to stay in late.
Prior to another CC-8 induced sexual encounter with Ms. Gray which didn’t end well, Stan sucked in a few shots of Jack Daniels at the bar, then he left. When Stan was climaxing with Ms. Gray, she had wrapped her arms around him and tried to tear his neck from his shoulders. Stan refused to speak with her again.
Now he lumbered across the living room in his home and went into the guestroom, which was originally going to be the baby’s room, but following the miscarriage Stan made it into an office. He towered clumsily over the stained desk. He sat down, a shadow painted by dark.
Hours passed. Stan sat in the dark until his buzz lifted. For all the color in his life, the worlds, the experiences, he felt like everything had become black and white and grainy and difficult to find any sort of depth—or if there was any depth to find in the first place. Stan opened a drawer in the desk and took out the book he had bought Monday, On Building Worlds, and began reading.
By the time Lisa had come home, Stan had fallen asleep at his desk. Seeing this, she tried to wake him but he wouldn’t, so she quietly went to the bedroom, slipped into her pink pajamas, mostly happy. Her case at work was now closed. The judge had ordered the kid to live with his grandmother, whom Lisa deemed fit. Lisa, descending to the halfway land between sleep and the world, wondered what it would be like to make as many important decisions as Judge Dennis Black had to make.
***
At seven in the morning on Saturday Lisa awoke. She turned on her side, looking at Stan. He still slept.
Her eyes gradually became brighter. She said, “I’d like to show you something. I’ve kept this reserved for a while now, and I’d like you to see. Stan, have you ever been rain?”
“I have never been rain,” he said sleepily.
In ten minutes the blinds had been closed and the light was dimmed. Stan watched Lisa, whose blue eyes focused on him with a childish sincerity he found endearing. The two were lying on their bed, side by side, looking at each other. This was the same bed where, once upon a time, Stan invented a sex move called the Crazy Mantis—in which he’d end up with bright red scratches caused by her nails, on his neck. Stan distantly thought of Ms. Robyn Gray.
Now a warm tune knelled in Stan’s skull. The tune was rather ambient, striking a C chord, the Entrance and Attune mechanism of the CC-8. Letting the sound of it take hold of his bones, after a few seconds Stan felt himself unfolding and walking into Lisa. The sound of rushing water seeped into his awareness, then he saw a waterfall. There was a great bright lake. Fish. Lush trees endowed with succulent fruit. Stan found himself walking beside the lake, breathing the sweet atmosphere. Then he looked at the thickening clouds above.
He stared for a moment, smelling the peaches from the trees and the scent of the oncoming rain. Rain. He suddenly felt his insides lifting as if coming undone. His flesh began falling apart, dissipating, evaporating, and his mind leaked and broke into countless fragments. Though, he was still one mind, only experiencing life in seemingly infinite perceptions and varying angles, at the molecular level.
He was weightless now, free, slowly ascending to the clouds, far above the earth, as if he were collecting all the aspects of himself. He drifted then, sailing with the wind yet colliding violently inside this vast collection –- body had become a cloud. The chaos astounded him, but so did the sheer eloquence of it.
His mind turned into thunder, rolling in vicious, sprawling sound waves across the sky. At the same time, he experienced his other aspects, inside the cloud, growing heavier, too heavy, then spilling and freefalling. He was rain, diving thousands of times into the great lake below.
There, the fish scampered, and Stan was one of them. He breathed under the cool water, moving along with his school of trout. He zoomed past rocks and minnows and headed for the waterfall, simply to let the force of it push and pull him around underwater.
As soon as the thought came to him, his mind filling with actual, true elation, the sound of black static rang in the water, infusing it, then grew to such a cacophony it wrenched Stan’s senses. His mind waned, withered, and he saw blackness looming in the distance under the waterfall, a black hole.
Turning, swimming away in as much haste as he could muster, Stan was suddenly stopped. He felt the maw of a large grizzly bear catching him from above. Its teeth sunk in and tore him to shreds.
***
“What!” Stan quickly stood up from the bed. “Why did you do that, huh? Do you want to annihilate my head? What is it with you people?”
Lisa slid her hands over her mouth, raising a brow, eyes wide open. Anger quickly took her over, and she whipped, “Us people? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Oh!” Stan yelled, “Because you think I’m doing other people, huh?”
“No. But don’t include me with ‘others.’ Don’t accuse me of screwing with your head, either. It wasn’t me, Stan. I didn’t do that. It was you!”
“Whatever.” Stan got up and headed for the door.
“No,” Lisa said, “it is you. I heard it too, that noise. It’s like you . . . it’s like you were ‘infecting’ me. You know me, and you know I wouldn’t lie to you, ever. I never have.”
“Right. Who are you anyway?” Stan said, narrowing his eyes.
“Who the hell are you, Stan? Don’t you think it’s funny how you haven’t let me travel in you lately? What are you hiding? Because the baby didn’t make it? Is that why? Well, I’m sorry. It hurt me too.”
Stan tapped his fingers on the side of his leg, saying nothing. She had shown him so much, at one point, about her, and had taken him to the most classified areas of her memories, which were like hidden folders and files in the depths of herself. Stan had experienced Lisa when she was twelve, watching her father slowly dying on a hospital bed after an aneurysm; his body ate itself and starved and thirsted to death. Lisa was seven. Her My Little Ponies, how she organized them, pink, white, blue, on the carpeted floors for the March of the Fair Princess Lisa.
There were more secrets, of course, some horrible ones that had left Lisa bare and vulnerable in Stan’s eyes, and there were beautiful ones, too. He knew Lisa, her essence, literally knew her to the core.
Lisa’s hand was shaking. While Stan couldn’t see what was going on inside her, he could tell she was beginning to fall apart. He’d seen this many times, and it had become a sort of dance. She turned her back to him, and laid her head do
wn.
He searched for something to say, dug in as deep as he could, but found nothing.
Stan went into his office and spent the remainder of the day there, reading about how the CC-8 is meant to genuinely reflect the darkness, light, depth, memory, future, fantasy. He found a passage pertaining to theory behind the cause of caterpillar headaches; that they were psychosomatic, squirming their way to reality, and blooming. Their proposed cause was that the CC-8 could not generate worlds or emotions in an extremely rare percentage of it users and there was confliction between body and mind. This was the theory, besides a malfunction in the CC-8 (which was even rarer). Stan put his hands to his head, knowing the pain was coming soon; it crawled.
He strained his mind until he fell within himself.
At first it appeared he was floating in a great, foggy hall that reached to what looked like infinity. Black static buzzed in his ears, and the sound echoed far, deep, and wide. Before he could comprehend, he was no longer floating but walking, and the air smelled dank and of the sea. The further Stan went down the corridor, the less he discovered.
He came to a point that, in the distance behind the fog, he caught a glimpse of the blackness. A terrible awe coursed through him. Then, as if a network of numerous mirrors had been angled to render a great illusion, Stan saw countless images of himself whirling and emerging from the fog. Each of the near countless images may have added up to be all the seconds of Stan’s life. There was nothing other than him, his images; some of them appeared to be from a different life, personifying what Stan would have been if he had made different decisions, taken other paths. His hair was longer on one image, and another wore a beard and dirt-smudged clothes.
The black static seethed, the sound of it wrapping around him as if it were a sentient being. Then the blackness expanded, eventually swallowing the fog until it consumed the mirror images of Stan. The body of blackness had taken hold of Stan and sucked him inward. Before Stan was lost, he saw a final image mouthing something that might have been of great importance, or it might have been a recipe for his late grandmother’s fruitcake. Stan could not understand it, and the liquid blackness ate him whole.
