Dark Dreams, Pale Horses

by Rio Youers

  Revolve: I already have.

  The chainsaw snarled, the teeth whickering, flickering in the ultraviolet light. The Cowboy lifted it to waist-height and gunned the trigger. The machine vibrated in his arms, belching smoke.

  “Come for me,” he screamed, pointing the bar toward Giovanna. She circled him, thudding her knuckles on the floor, the bloody swags of her breasts swinging as she moved. She roared: an insane tangle of sound—words and yawps on a stream of hot air. Vapor poured from her long mouth. Her shoulder blades were pressed together, as if she were about to take flight.

  The Cowboy raised the chainsaw and took a step forward. Giovanna moved between the shadows. Her claws flashed. She howled. The chainsaw snarled and Fernando heard the change in modulation as it carved the air. She was too quick for him. He was thrown aside, still holding the chainsaw. It purred along the floor, kicking up sparks and spits of concrete. He got to one knee and the weight of the machine dragged him down. It kicked and wheeled back on him. He let go and rolled away, but Giovanna was there. He seemed too small in her huge claws. His fluorescent facepaint dripped as she breathed on him.

  “Infecção,” she growled, and crushed him. His body twisted and fractured in her hands. Fernando watched it become loose as she snapped every bone and ground his spine to dust. He screamed louder than the chainsaw. Blood leaked from his eyes. His arms and legs dangled uselessly. She threw him away. He twitched and died.

  Fernando faded again, to the edge of the abyss, where the hurt couldn’t reach him. The last thing he saw was Giovanna picking up the chainsaw and lifting it to the chains. He heard the squeal of metal on metal. He felt the hot/cold flicker of sparks. Then he was falling. Then he was held.

  O CRISTO REDENTOR

  She cradled him and crossed the city, through twisting alleyways and across rooftops, pressed to the shadows.

  You can’t see me.

  The lights of ruined lives shimmered below them.

  “My mask …” Fernando said, lifting to consciousness.

  “You don’t need it anymore.”

  She ascended Corcovado Mountain with effortless, unfaltering leaps. He trembled against her breast. She reached the magnificent statue and continued to climb. Her claws scratched into the smooth stone and she made her way to the shoulders, and then clambered deftly onto the right arm. The statue’s solemn face regarded the city. Giovanna held her lover, stroking his face, breathing hard. Sweat dripped from her coarse skin. She kissed him. Her hair pooled on his chest.

  Fernando opened his mouth but couldn’t speak. He pulled an image into his mind, shaped it, and then cast it at her. It wasn’t perfect, but she understood.

  Wh/t happ//ed to y/u?

  She kissed him again and stroked his face. You have spent the last two years looking for a man /// whom we thought could save us /// but were wrong. Her angular face soothed him. It seemed to be made of stone, like the great, pale face behind her. I escaped and moved in the other direction /// into Amazonia. She closed her eyes. The shape that blossomed in his mind was smooth on one side, hooked on the other, like a bat’s wing. They knew I was coming /// They found me.

  He wanted to touch her tattoo—trace the lines, make subtle changes. QUE LINDA. His broken arms throbbed. His mouth opened. He managed to speak one hurt syllable:

  “They?”

  She looked at him, and then gave him a glimpse. Not all of it. Not even close. But it was enough: a horde of thorny creatures hanging in the darkness. Fernando could almost taste their blood, and feel their brutal penetration—over and over—turning her soft body to stone.

  “They made me pure,” she said.

  Imagine a shadow, but vague, only slightly darker than the surface onto which it is cast. The light is obscured. The shadow suffers. It is a cataract.

  You can’t see us. We are less than shadows.

  We are nothing.

  But we are coming.

  CLOSE

  Ho/d me, Gi/van/a.

  And she did, pulling him close as a cool night wind moaned across the statue’s arm. Her lips whispered against his bruised skin. His heart moved against his ribcage. Tears glittered in his eyes and the city spangled like a butterfly’s wing.

  He thought, for one moment, that he was still wearing his mask.

  THIS IS THE SUMMER OF LOVE

  BECAUSE

  “… Always on Memory Lane here at WZPP, your number one station for music from a time when livin’ was easy, and lovin’ was easier.”

  “Take me away from here, Billy.”

  “Away?”

  “Anywhere. Let’s go. Let’s just drive.”

  “… just heard ‘A Girl Like You’ by The Young Rascals, a top ten hit back in the summer of ‘67: the Summer of Love. Whenever I think about …”

  “How does California sound?”

  “Baby, you know I love the sun.”

  “Hollywood?”

  “Are you serious? Don’t say it if you don’t mean it, Billy.”

  She has stopped crying but her eyes remain wild with sadness, mascara running in desperate designs, her eyelids shining: sugar-coated. When she looks at him he feels his fingertips tingle. When she looks away, out the windshield or down at her hands, he feels something like loss.

  “I have to get away,” she says, shaking her head as if getting away was the last thing that was going to happen, as if the car they were sitting in—Billy’s car—was not going anywhere. The sky could crumble and fall in clouds of red dust, the mountains could turn to ash, but she would still be sitting in Billy’s no-go Camaro. She would still be stuck in this shithole town, chasing the dreams she’d had since she was seven years old.

  Billy reaches over, spins her hair between his fingers, and touches the part of her mouth that makes her sigh when he kisses it. She does not move, and he sees her as if she were the subject of a painting: perfectly captured, and eternally beautiful. The illusion is broken when she blinks. He takes her hand and she holds it tight. She holds it like someone who is afraid, and alone.

  “What’s wrong, baby?”

  “It’s too late,” she replies, and smears one of the black trails on her face with the back of her hand. “It’s all over, Billy. With or without you, I have to get away.”

  “Is it him? Is he hurting you again?”

  “… even more great sounds here on WZPP, starting right now with this catchy number from The Turtles—”

  “Is he hurting you?”

  Billy flicks off the radio and the sounds of the night crowd in. The true sounds, the honesty of the night: the satisfying twist of the trees, dancing in the wind; the weeping of the rapids out near Point Zero; the tick-tick lament of his engine cooling; a beastly truck chasing its headlights on the Interstate; the high grass of summer, whispering like girls.

  Terri leans close to Billy and kisses him. It isn’t a great kiss—it’s too clumsy; her lips are wet and her nose has been running. He is left with a smudge of mascara on his cheek and the taste of her tears on his lips.

  Billy knows that he can only be her hero for as long as she needs one, which is why he doesn’t want to take her anywhere.

  “Do you want the moon?” he asks, impersonating Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. Terri loves that movie. It always makes her cry. “If you want it, I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down for you. Hey, that’s a pretty good idea. I’ll give you the moon.”

  But she does not say Donna Reed’s line. She does not play along. She lowers her head, shoulders trembling. She catches her tears as they fall.

  “Do you want the moon?” Billy uses his own voice.

  “How far is it to California?” Terri says, and kisses him again.

  THE

  Terri Stanic had always believed that love lived in the movies, and that was the only place it lived. It belonged to the beautiful people and the happy ever afters. It was all sweet fiction; there were no beautiful people in the real world. There were no heroes walking the streets of her town. And when
she’d kissed (those fondling, frightened boys with their bad nicotine breath and their hearts running like the engines of their daddies’ cars), there’d never been an orchestra playing. No final credits about to roll.

  This is what she believed…until she met Billy. He had walked into her life in Technicolor. When he looked at her his eyes shone in the set-lights. The words he spoke could have been penned by a Hollywood script writer.

  The ‘set’ was a shady club that shook from dusk ‘til dawn on the wrong side of the tracks. The kids called it The Slum. The neon sign flashing above the entrance insisted it was actually called The Slam. Terri had been there with a guy she knew from high school, who walked in black and white and played bass with an offensive thrash band called Llama. They were doing a set in The Slam’s back room that night. Terri went along because she didn’t want to stay home. She didn’t like the music Llama played. She didn’t particularly like their bass player, either, but she agreed to accompany him because there was nothing else to do, and she didn’t want to stay home. It was Friday: payday, which meant that Daddy would be on a mean-drunk. Payday was never a good time to be around Daddy.

  She noticed Billy toward the end of Llama’s first set. He was leaning against the back wall with his arms folded, his long hair covering one eye. His features were striking, but it wasn’t this that had demanded her attention, and it wasn’t his black leather jacket or the way he was propped against the wall with his arms folded, smoking a cigarette—all too cool—like Jimmy Dean. It was his color. Everything was gray next to him. It was like looking at one of those stylish, filtered photographs where there is a single splash of color in a scene of black and white. The walls were lined with posters and old 45s and guitars with missing strings, yet they seemed featureless, somehow. The people around him were as inanimate and dull as the pieces on a chessboard. Even the lights seemed strangely drained. He was beautiful, no doubt about it. But more than this, he was different.

  See me, Terri thought, rouge flowing into her face with such speed and heat she became light-headed. She gripped the edge of the bar to stay balanced, catching her reflection in the mirror that ran the length of the bar behind the bottles of liquor. She stared at herself, as black and white as everyone else in The Slum, as everyone and everything in this sad town—this sepia stain a world away from heroes and lovers. See me. I’m right here. I’m waiting for you. She flicked loose whispers of hair behind her ears in some effort to appear alluring, knowing it was futile, but full of hope regardless. Some part of the woman she hoped to be—the intuition that spoke with the voice of a movie star—assured her that if this wonderful stranger were to touch her, or even speak to her, then some of his color would flow into her forever. He was hope incarnate. He was what she had been waiting for.

  Llama played, powerful and ugly. The bass player appeared to punish the required notes out of his instrument, his head rolling on his neck as if it were jointed by a ball bearing. His long hair made circles in the air like the sails of a windmill. The drummer was an explosion of sweat and sound and the vocalist barked lyrics like an enraged animal. The chess pieces in the crowd were held in check, drawn with a kind of hopeless pain. Terri was aware of them all. She knew how they looked—how she must look—and attempted to detach herself so that the stranger would notice her. See me. She was not one of the pieces, not a part of the game. She was color, she was light. See me. She pushed herself away from the bar, her legs parted so that her short skirt hugged her thighs. She pursed her lips like Monroe, pushed out her breast like Jane Mansfield. She turned her head and looked at the stranger from the corner of her eye.

  Slouching. Arms folded. Crushing the butt of his cigarette beneath his boot heel. Lighting another.

  See me.

  And then looking up.

  Oh God oh God see me, see me …

  He brushed the hair from his face and slowly (except it had been in slow motion—just like in the movies, she was sure of it) turned to look at her. His eyes were fabulous lights and when they fell upon her she was lifted. Prudence screamed at her to turn away…did she want to appear so goddam trashy? She tried, but was simply unable. She didn’t care how trashy she looked; she was lost in his eyes and loving every moment. She could look at him forever and be happy.

  He smiled and blew smoke at the same time. Terri raised her eyebrows. Her body effused sex and wanting and she cast this energy at him with all the God-given power of her femininity. She wasn’t one of those tree-hugging, New Age folks (Daddy called them earth-turds—now there was a man who liked his steak blue and his neck red), but she would have given anything to have seen her aura at that moment. She imagined a wonderful corona of burnt, exotic color, spinning away from her like a polychromatic spider’s web and entangling him—coupling them: magical connection, like something dreamed. She watched the tip of his cigarette burn brighter. He exhaled smoke in a thin line, then dropped the cigarette and started toward her.

  Her heart suffered a succession of worrisome lurches, throwing itself against her ribcage, as if the poor creature knew that it was about to be hurt and wanted to escape before such cruelty could come to pass. She felt an icy trembling in her legs that sent, paradoxically, a warm flush to her groin. The prudent girl trapped inside advised her to affect indifference, to turn away the moment he stood beside her. She could do nothing of the kind, of course—only face him like a sunflower and pray to a God she had all but forsaken that this was the man she had been waiting for.

  He walked like Brando in The Wild One and his smile was so perfect—so celluloid—that she could feel her lips forming phrases of consent before he had so much as uttered a word. When he was standing beside her all other things—the chess pieces, the gloomy spaces, the discordant furniture-moving pace of the band—dissolved into a kind of pale backdrop where nothing was real and even less mattered. He brushed the hair from his face again and galaxies revolved around him. He inclined his head to the left so that the unemphatic lighting threw half of his face into shadow, creating an ambiguity that teased her. She felt his gravity like the hand of someone you trust.

  “My first time here,” he said. He even sounded like a movie star.

  “The kids call it The Slum,” Terri said, detaching herself from both the place and its clientele.

  He nodded. “Sounds about right. So what’s your poison?”

  “My poison?”

  His smile was neither condescending, nor an indication of amusement. It was a feature, like his charcoal eyes. For the first time—but not the last—Terri wanted to touch him to make sure he was real.

  He pointed at the empty glass in front of her. “What are you drinking? What’s your poison?”

  “Right …” She had been drinking 7UP, not wanting to dilute the waters of self-restraint; the bass player was banal at best, always banging his head beyond the periphery of her interest, but alcohol had a way of eroding the standards. Now she didn’t care. “J.D. A little ice.”

  “A hard drink.”

  She shrugged. “I’m a big girl.”

  His shoulders rolled as he turned to the barman, and Terri found herself wondering—no, imagining—what his body was like under the black leather jacket. He’d have a tattoo, she thought, on his shoulder, and there would be a narrow stream of black hair running from his navel to his groin. His chest would be smooth and there would be a tiny scar on his stomach: the remnant of a childhood injury, but this would remain the sole imperfection. Everything else …

  “J.D. A little ice.” He stopped short of handing her the glass. “You’d accept a hard drink from a man you never met before?”

  “Whoever you are,” she started, and her gaze softened, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

  Their fingers touched as he handed her the glass. “Vivien Leigh: A Streetcar Named Desire.”

  She nodded and took a sip from the drink—just enough to warm her lips. “You like old movies?”

  “I live for them.”

 
She edged a little closer. Their bodies were very close. “Do you ever go to Lou’s Drive-In? They have classic movie marathons every—”

  “Holiday weekend.” They said it in unison. A pause simmered between them. Terri sipped her drink and watched as he shook out a cigarette, cracked a light, and blew a parasol of silver smoke into the air above them.

  “Do you know what I like to do when the classics are playing at Lou’s?” he asked.

  Her lips lingered on the rim of her glass and she pressed her body closer: Tell me.

  “I drive to Whispering Creek, where it’s real quiet, real dark. Beautiful, know what I mean? I tune the radio to six-twenty—”

  “That’s the frequency at Lou’s.”

  The tip of his cigarette flared as he indulged in a long drag, shooting a silky ribbon of smoke from the side of his mouth. “Right. You can’t see the screen from Whispering Creek, but you can pick up the sound on the radio. I sit back, close my eyes, and imagine myself in those old movies. When James Cagney tells Bogie not to get smart with him in Angels with Dirty Faces, it’s my face I see. When Jimmy Dean is hell for leather on that chickie run in Rebel, it’s me behind the wheel.”

  The idea was so refreshing, yet so simple, that she was caught breathless. She lowered the glass, unaware that the band had stopped playing and that the black and white bodies around her had achieved the color of applause. She blinked hard, thinking that she would give her soul to sit with him in the darkness and listen to the classics, to be his leading lady.

  Take me with you. The words burned on Terri’s lips like the bourbon she was drinking. She attempted to voice the thought but her body betrayed her; she reached out and touched his face. The tip of her finger drew a curve from the corner of his eye to his lips: the trail a tear would make. His skin was warm—soft where it needed to be soft, rough where it needed to be rough. He was real.