When Beth Wakes Up

by Matthew Franks

  I stepped out into the hallway and knelt beside Little Beth. “I think it’s them,” I told her softly.

  Tears welled in her eyes. “Can I see them?”

  “Of course,” I said. After all, they were already in her head like that. What good would keeping her out do? “I’ll go in with you.”

  We eased into the room. She kept her distance but suddenly didn’t seem as upset. She moved over to the mahogany dresser and opened a drawer. She took out a neatly folded quilt and carried it to the bed. She spread the quilt over their bodies, leaving their heads uncovered. She stood close to the bed, smiling as she stared at them. That moment felt eeriest of all.

  “Mommy quilted it herself,” she said. “She was going to show me how but never got the chance. At least now, they won’t catch cold.”

  She moved toward me and wiped a single tear from her cheek. “We can go,” she said. “They’re at peace.”

  Before I could respond, not that I had formulated a response that I considered particularly productive, there was a crash in the kitchen. Little Beth grabbed my arm tightly, her unexpected acceptance giving way to fright. I held my finger to my lips for her to be quiet. Holding her hand, we slowly and silently made our way down the hall to see what had made the sound. When we reached the kitchen, we found Allie and Edward Martin, alive and in the flesh. They were the age they would’ve been when Beth was a child.

  “Beth?” Allie said when she saw her daughter. She ran to her and hugged her closely. “Thank God, you’re alright!”

  “We heard a noise,” said Little Beth.

  “That was your father,” Allie explained. “He was going to tear this place apart to find you.”

  Edward approached Little Beth and rubbed her head like a puppy dog. “Hey, sweetheart. We were worried sick about you.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Little Beth. “If you’re here, who is that in the bedroom?”

  “What in heavens are you talking about?” asked Allie.

  “I’ll show you,” said Little Beth.

  She took Allie by the hand and led her out of the kitchen. Edward and I followed closely behind. He glanced at me, smiled, and then looked away. While Allie seemed the same, only younger, Edward didn’t have the “lost in thought” look in his eyes he did in real life at his actual age. I wondered at what point his mind started to go and about the accuracy of Beth’s current depiction of him.

  Little Beth entered the room first. “See!” she said, indicating the bodies.

  “Oh, my,” Allie said, moving near the bed. “This is quite peculiar.” She studied the uncovered heads and turned to Edward. “What do you make of this, dear?”

  Edward rubbed his chin in the doorway. “I can’t make hide nor hair of it,” he said. “Take off that blanket so we can get the full picture.”

  Allie whipped the quilt off the couple. They were now wearing clothes. The female had on a farm dress like Little Beth’s except in an adult size. The male wore a black suit and tie. Both outfits were unwrinkled and pristine compared to the bodies inside them. Allie noticed a necklace on the female and examined it. She walked over to Little Beth and put her arm around her.

  “I don’t know how to say this, sweetheart,” said Allie. “But it’s you.”

  “Me?!” Little Beth began to breathe heavily. “How is that me?!”

  “Well, that’s your dress. Isn’t it?” she said in a calm, unsettling tone. “And look here…”

  She pointed to a charm on the necklace. “It says Elizabeth.”

  Little Beth began to sob. “I-I-I don’t understand,” she said.

  “There, there,” Allie consoled her. “It happens to all of us eventually. Your time just came sooner than expected.”

  “B-b-but if that’s me…” Little Beth said, crying uncontrollably. She motioned toward the male body. “Who’s that?”

  “Let me take a gander,” said Edward. He moved to the corpse and gave it a once-over. He nodded knowingly and then turned to me and smiled. “That’s you, Max.”

  I jolted out of Beth’s mind and back into the uncomfortable chair in her hospital room. I wasn’t sure if it was her strong emotional reaction that pushed me out or mine. Either way, the whole scene had enough nightmare-like qualities to warrant waking up from it. Only Beth didn’t have that luxury. She couldn’t escape and would continue to face whatever her unconscious laid out for her. I hoped that she had moved on to more pleasant thoughts. But then the monitors tracking her vital signs began to beep loudly.

  Two nurses entered the room and checked the monitors. “Her heartrate is accelerated,” one of them said. “I’m going to need you to step outside.”

  I quickly got up from the chair and stepped out into the hallway. “Will she be okay?” I asked.

  “We’re going to do what we can,” the other nurse answered and then shut the door in my face.

  I stood out in the hallway while the nurses attempted to calm Beth down. She’d already been through intense physical and mental trauma. Further anguish would be difficult for anyone to endure. I wanted badly to go into the room and project again, just so I could tell her everything would be okay. I couldn’t bear the thought of her younger self experiencing more horrors or possibly encountering her older self’s attacker.

  After several minutes, the nurses emerged from the room. “She’s stabilized,” one of them said. “We’ll have an on-call doctor check in with her later, but you can go back in for now.”

  They headed down the hallway together and I stepped into the room. I sat down across from Beth and glanced at the vital sign monitors. Everything was as it was before, quiet and steady. I wondered if they’d given her medication through an IV or if she’d found her own way out of an increasingly stressful situation. Wanting to see for myself, I entered her mind without further hesitation.

  I materialized outside of the “retirement” hotel, right by the front door. I tried opening it, but it was locked. I looked around for Beth, but she was nowhere to be seen. A thick mist that hadn’t been there before bordered the imaginary property lines. I walked down the neatly manicured sidewalk and stopped at the edge of the hazy wall. When I reached out to touch it, it resisted my finger like a force field.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A similar phenomenon occurred during dream work. Quite often, a static barrier would appear, preventing me from being able to go further. I call it a dream peripheral, as it represents the outskirts of the context in which the dream takes place. Only in Beth’s case, the obstruction was added rather than having existed from the beginning. It was as if her mind had initially offered the possibility of going beyond the “retirement” hotel and now closed it in so there was no escape.

  I walked the perimeter of the imaginary property and discovered that the dense wall of fog did indeed fence in the entire place. It even went so far as the end of the golf course, where any one working on their swing would find that the ball would only bounce back to them like a boomerang. But there was no one on the imaginary golf course. Nor was there anyone sitting on the veranda of the imaginary restaurant. Beth had either sent them away or hid them somewhere.

  I checked the back entrance through the veranda and discovered that it was locked as well.

  I suddenly heard AC/DC coming from inside a patch of forest within the golf course. I cautiously moved toward the repeating chorus of “Highway to Hell.” When I reached the trees, I pushed my way through some branches and came upon a clearing. A Ford pickup truck was in the middle of the clearing. The music blared through the stereo speakers and out the open windows. A resurrected Charlie headbanged near the truck while Teenage Beth sat on the lowered tailgate and took a swig from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Another teenage girl and a guy who looked twice their ages were lying in the bed of the truck behind Teenage Beth and kissing.

  Teenage Beth saw me as I approached her. “Oh, it’s you!” she shouted over Angus Young’s guitar, her eyes glazed over. She took another drink of whiskey. “I want to a
pologize for turning into a monster and trying to kill you!”

  “Don’t worry about it!” I yelled back and then motioned to Charlie. “Looks like he came out of it okay too!”

  “It takes a lot to stop Charlie! Once we sewed his head back on, he was as good as new!”

  She held the bottle out for me to take, her eyelids drooping to slits. “You want some?!”

  “No, thanks!” I pointed toward the “retirement” hotel. “I was hoping you could get me inside!”

  “I’m not going back in there! Too much freaky shit going on!”

  “All you’d have to do is get me in!”

  The song came to an abrupt stop. Charlie ceased giving himself whiplash and came over to me. The older guy in the truck leapt out and joined him. He had a crewcut, a sleeveless white t-shirt and a tattoo down his arm that said “Kick Ass. Ask Questions Later.” The words were encircled by a snake. The fact he could have been their father made him look a little ridiculous.

  The other girl that was with him in the truck sat up beside Teenage Beth on the tailgate. She wore a Mötley Crüe t-shirt cut off at her belly and blue jean shorts.

  “I believe the lady told you ‘no,’” said Charlie.

  “Don’t you remember me, Charlie?” I asked. “We smoked pot together.”

  “Not really,” he answered. “Everything’s been kind of blurry since I had my head reattached.”

  “Look,” I persisted. “All I want is to get inside the hotel.”

  “Then do it on your own, hoss,” spoke the other guy.

  “Believe me, I would,” I said. “But I don’t think I can do it without Beth’s help.”

  The other guy grabbed my shirt collar like we were in high school and pulled my face toward his. “I think you’d better leave,” he scowled. “Nobody wants you here.”

  “Let him go,” slurred Teenage Beth.

  He let go of my shirt collar but kept glaring at me. “Alright,” he said. “But just say the word and I’ll kick his ass.”

  “You’ll have to excuse Earl,” continued Teenage Beth. “He just got out of prison last week and has been looking for a brawl ever since.” She stood up between us, drunkenly wobbling back and forth. “Which gives me an idea.” She patted my chest. “I’ll help you…” She turned to Earl and patted his chest. “But you gotta fight Earl first.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “If you win,” she continued. “I’ll go with you. But if Earl wins, I stay here, and you go away forever.”

  Earl’s eyes lit up. “Hell, yeah!” He peeled off his shirt and exposed another tattoo on his bare chest off a bikini-clad cartoon woman straddling an inflight nuclear missile. “Let’s go, ya sumbitch!”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not going to fight you,” I told him.

  “Then I ain’t goin’ anywhere,” Teenage Beth said and then plopped back down on the tailgate.

  She obviously wasn’t going to budge. I had no idea why she wanted me to fight him.

  The best I could figure was that she had entered an anger stage and Earl represented a desire to lash out because of her circumstances. I guess it didn’t really matter. I couldn’t get back to her adult self without her assistance, so I decided to play along. After all, none of it was real.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll fight him.”

  “Woohoo!” cried out the other girl. She leapt off the tailgate and gave Earl a sloppy kiss. “You got this, baby!”

  “This is gonna be good,” said Charlie.

  Everyone stepped aside except for Earl and sat on the edge of the tailgate. He stood about three feet away from me, popping his neck and shaking his hands out like we were in professional boxing ring. He definitely outsized me, but I had the power of manipulation in my corner. I had imposed my will inside dreams many times before. I didn’t see how this would be any different.

  “So, what are the rules?” I asked.

  “There are no rules,” replied Teenage Beth.

  “So how do we know who won?” I inquired.

  “Whoever isn’t dead,” Teenage Beth replied.

  “Hell, yeah!” laughed the other girl.

  “Enough yapping!” said Earl. He got into a fighting stance with his fists raised. “Let’s go!”

  He swung at me, but I ducked. He tried an upper cut, but I caught his fist midair. I squeezed his hand and willed it to turn into an orange. He stepped away from me with a look of shock on his face. He held up the piece of fruit now attached to his wrist and the others gasped. Earl tried shaking the orange off, but it was stuck to him like a new appendage. He attempted to pull it off with his remaining hand, but it was no use.

  “Dude,” said Charlie. “I gotta stop smokin’ so much weed.”

  Now mad as hell, Earl let out a war cry and charged at me. I moved out of the way and he ran into a tree. He came at me a second time, but I willed a Dobermann Pinscher to appear.

  The imaginary dog attacked Earl and knocked him to the ground. It pounced on him and bit into his arm, causing him to scream. Blood spewed from the open gash. The animal went for his face, but I made it vanish right before it tore into his flesh again. Earl scrambled around on the ground and found his t-shirt. He wrapped the garment around the wound to stop the bleeding.

  “Well?” I said to Teenage Beth. “Is that good enough for you?”

  She scowled at me. I had seen that look before. It was the same look Katie gave me when I grounded her unfairly or gave her a half-assed version of the truth. She knew what I was doing and wasn’t going to let me get away with it. She focused on Earl as he applied pressure to his injury and then turned her attention back to me. Her facial expression shifted to an equally familiar one. She smiled smugly.

  “Get up, Earl,” she said, keeping her eyes on me.

  “I just got bit by a dog!” he shouted. “I’m bleeding!”

  “You’re not bleeding,” she said. “And there was no dog. Was there, Max?”

  “You don’t believe me?!” Earl said before I could respond. “Look!” He removed the shirt from his arm and the laceration had disappeared, blood and all. The orange attached to his wrist had also changed back into his hand. “How’d you do that?!”

  “Whoa,” said Charlie. “It’s like sorcery or some shit.”

  “Now, stand up…” Teenage Beth said to Earl. “And finish him.”

  Earl slowly got up off the ground. As he rose to his feet, he gradually expanded into a giant. Initially around six foot two with a medium build, he now stood five stories high with a proportionately enormous body. He let out a hearty, bellowing laugh that shook the trees and made the earth tremble. Charlie and the other girl grabbed onto the tailgate to brace themselves as the truck vibrated.

  “Damn, babe!” said the other girl. “Is everything bigger now?!”

  “Oh, yeah!” he said in a loud, booming voice. He reached down his human-sized hand and picked me up off the ground. He held me about six feet from his face. “I got you now, little man!”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked calmly. “Eat me?”

  “I don’t eat dudes!” he roared, making the others chuckle down below. “I think I’ll just…” He started to squeeze me tightly. “Crush you like a fly!”

  “A fly, huh?” I said as he squashed me. “That’s not a bad idea.”

  I transformed into a fly and flew out of his hand. I buzzed around his head, causing him to swat at me. Barely missing getting smacked by his huge palm, I dove into his right ear. He stuck his gigantic finger in after me. He dug in deep trying to catch me, but I escaped his efforts.

  I went further inside his head to find nothing but a thin layer of static electricity, not surprisingly since Beth’s field of vision didn’t go beyond his outside physical characteristics.

  “Get out of my head, dude!” shouted Earl.

  I shot out of his nose and avoided his feeble attempts to whack me yet again. I aimed for the truck and landed twenty feet or so away from it. I morphed back into myself and
watched as Earl checked his surroundings with a “Where did he go, George?” expression on his face. Teenage Beth hopped off the tailgate and came over with her bottle of Jack Daniel’s to join me.

  “That all you got?” she asked. “Looks like I win.”

  “Don’t count on it,” I said. “I planted a bomb in his brain that’s about to detonate.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Why do you think I flew out of there so fast?”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You might want stand back.” I took a few steps backward. I glanced at my watch as if I had set a timer. “Three…”

  “What’s going on?” Charlie asked bewilderedly.

  “Yeah,” said the other girl, equally as baffled. “Why’s he looking at his watch?”

  “Two…” I continued.

  Earl noticed me. “There you are!” he hollered and then reached down to grab me.

  “Three!” I exclaimed.

  Earl’s head exploded into a million pieces. Everyone’s jaw dropped. The rest of Earl came crashing down on top of the truck and several unsuspecting trees. Charlie and the other girl let out screams that were quickly muffled as Earl’s giant, headless body flattened them like pancakes. After the scene unfolded before us, Teenage Beth quietly drank a mouthful of whiskey. I wasn’t sure if she was planning a counterattack or to curse me for obliterating her companions. Ultimately, she seemed too numb at that point to care either way.

  “To hell with it,” she said finally. “I’ll go with you.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You think you’re pretty clever. Don’t you?” Teenage Beth said as we made our way through the golf course and toward the veranda.

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “You didn’t make me believe there was a bomb,” she said. “I wanted there to be a bomb.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I want all this to go away.”

  It made sense that Beth’s teenage self was predominant at this point. She was definitely the most self-destructive of the three. Sure, Little Beth burned her house down, but she wasn’t in it when it happened. And, of course, Adult Beth held a funeral for a cocoon, but that was more about transitioning than the act of dying itself. Teenage Beth, on the other hand, seemed hellbent on drinking and smoking herself into oblivion.