We are such mentally frail creatures.
I wonder if death has caught up with Logan, who is probably better off dead, but a decent human being just the same. It is strange how goodness manifests despite corruption. It isn’t really fair to call human beings evil because for every vile trait within us, there are a few good ones. Sometimes I doubt Annabelle’s “kill ’em all” edict. Look at someone like Logan. Look at someone like me. We deserve lots of shitty things, but do we deserve to die? To be no more?
Okay, assessment time:
Do I believe in Annabelle’s dreamer?
Do I believe in Jim’s undead?
Do I believe in my old God?
Though the Mojave desert twists its barren dead-lands through the windshield of Annabelle’s parents’ car and into my eyes, I daydream them away. I see through this world and through my dead bones and into my metaphorical heart and I find myself there, naked, fetal, screaming for God, screaming for guidance, screaming for the father I never had.
No matter how hard I try to buy in, God and baby Jesus and guilt still beat strong at my core. It’s like my life— who I am, what’s happening to me—are all of these jacked-up patterns, wavy tendrils, and God, baby Jesus and guilt are the off-kilter weavers. Something inextricable, something beyond flesh, beyond real, something solid, binds me to my old beliefs. Though I would never admit this to Annabelle or anyone, or even myself, a strong part of me still believes that when I truly die, when I am released from this dead shell, I will ascend and float through the gates of heaven and take my rightful place alongside my father and brother.
I believe this.
I don’t believe this.
It’s so much easier to take comfort in the fact that I am completely insane.
It’s easier to believe in the dreamer or the undead or the tooth fairy.
It’s easiest to believe in love.
“I am undeniably, certifiably crazy,” I say aloud for emphasis.
“Indeed you are,” Annabelle giggles back.
I look over. She is still asleep.
“Back here!”
I look in the rearview and smile big. Annabelle’s gorgeous dream form waves. My stomach waves back and my throat goes dry. “Hi,” I manage to choke out.
“You look good, Charles!”
“Thanks,” I answer, a little taken aback.
“The suit,” she clarifies. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Oh, right. This old thing?” I joke. Annabelle looks pretty good herself. Her hair is a little darker than the last time I saw her. It’s almost jet black, but there are still streaks of plum here and there. The red is completely gone. She is still wearing a white baby tee (no slogan) along with those familiar plaid bondage pants and boots. Her body is curvaceous and delicious and perfect and she has the face of a goddess. Flawless skin, symmetrical features, contours in all the right places. My eyes squint from the sheer beauty.
“Sorry I conked out on you.” She gestures to her sleeping body and makes a disgusted face. “God, I am horrendous. While you were doing your thing at the airport I felt useless, so I swallowed down a few pills and tried to get us a little more information.”
“From Allen Michael?” The name rolls off my tongue like a cantankerous disease. Heat wells within.
“Easy.” Annabelle senses the accumulating invidiousness. “Good news. Everything is moving along right on schedule. Or at least that is the impression I gathered.” She notices her sleeping body once again and makes another disgusted face. “How far from Ontario are we?”
“According to the map, another five hours or so.”
Annabelle points up ahead. “Pull off the freeway here.”
“Here?”
“Get a room at that motel. You see it?”
An Eazy 8 sits lonely, flanked by a gas station and a McDonald’s and nothing but desert as far as the eye can see. I exit the freeway and ask, “Don’t we have to get to Ontario and then L.A.?”
“Yeah, but it’s better for us to drive at night. I figure if we only got five hours to go, we might as well relax here for a while and take off around midnight. Besides, I can’t stand looking at her.” She points to her sleeping body. “I gotta get away from that filthy thing.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” I say in defense of her sleeping body. “You’re beautiful.” However, now that I take a second look at Annabelle’s real-world body, directly contrasting it with her dream form, I have to admit she is right. In comparison to the otherworldly perfection of her dream form, her real body is filthy and disgusting and unwashed and greasy and fat and pocked and odorous and…I stop myself before I make a disgusted face involuntarily.
“Like you care,” Annabelle scoffs.
“What?”
“You don’t love me. You’re incapable, remember? You wouldn’t want to give me the wrong impression, would you?”
I swing the car into a parking spot and Annabelle’s dream form leaps out. Turning off the engine I get out and try to explain myself. “I didn’t mean those things.”
Annabelle folds her arms across her chest. She looks pissed and her dark eyes glow ominously. “Save it.”
“I—”
“Neither did I,” she says, cutting me off. That weak shit, that was the stupid fat sleeping thing in the car. I know you love me, I also know it’s all a sham, I also know that it doesn’t fucking matter.” She walks up close to me and puts her ecto-lips to my left ear. “I also know that I don’t love you. I don’t love anybody.” Backing off, she commands me to go get a room.
The hotel clerk is nowhere to be found, but a pegged wall lousy with room keys is within arm’s reach of the reception counter. A few sidelong glances followed by a quick lunge does the trick. Big-time relief as I walk back to the car; I don’t much feel like killing anyone what with all of this wishy-washy love-emotion swirling within me.
“What about your body?” I ask Annabelle’s dreamy dream form as we ready ourselves to find the room. “Should we just leave it in the car?”
“It’ll be fine until I wake up,” she calls over her shoulder as she makes for the hotel.
* * *
The digital alarm clock reads 3:30. Eight-plus hours to kill. Annabelle’s dream form sits on one end of the bed, I sit on the other. Silence hangs between us like an impenetrable fog.
The digital alarm clock reads 4:15. Seven-plus hours to kill. Annabelle lets out a humongous sigh, I do the same and fall back onto the bed and stare at the ceiling.
“What did you mean you didn’t mean those things?” Annabelle finally comes round.
“I only said them, those things, that I don’t love you, because I am an idiot and I never know what to say.”
“So you really do love me.” Her voice is soft and soothing. She scoots a little closer and lies on her back beside me.
“How can I not. And it’s not the dreamer or something implanted inside me, it’s you.” I am good. I continue to stare at the ceiling, but I feel Annabelle smiling.
“Smooth, Charles.” Her smile widens.
“It’s true. You can’t see it because you’ve been blind and locked away and down on yourself, but even though I only know a little about you, I already know that you are extremely lovable. You are deserving of and you are owed love and if things were different, if the world were to continue, it would be a horrendous travesty for you to be denied, for you to deny someone, such an opportunity. Hell, if things were different, I would steal you away to some secluded island and love you until we died naturally.”
“You would?”
“Unquestionably.”
“You’re an idiot. But you’re sweet. I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything I’ve done and everything I do.”
“Me too.” I turn my head and look at her. Annabelle’s dream face is no more than three inches away from mine. We look into each other’s eyes and half smile and a funny thing happens, a wonderful thing, a big rolling
wave of warmth galvanizes my insides. My brain tingles. Her big, beautiful dark eyes bore into my anti-soul and entwine themselves within. Everything goes blurry, skin twitches, sweat beads—my mouth is a desert and every fiber in my being wants to touch her, wants to reach out and embrace her tiny frame. My left hand, phantom hand, not there, but there just the same, buzzes and begs for me to reach out. Alas I resist, but the missing hand still has a mind of its own and jumps into action. I break communion with Annabelle and roll back in a panic. Too late, my stump has pressed into her breast.
“Relax, Charlie. I’m not really here, remember?”
I do, but I don’t. I mean I know she is not really here, as clearly evidenced by my stump floating somewhere in the center of her transparent chest, but I forget, or at least I allowed myself to forget. Nevertheless, these feelings, these welling passions are most assuredly real. My stump reacting sans my permission is assuredly real. And it scares me because who is to say I won’t react the same way around the real Annabelle? What if the scabs between us finally heal and we are close and we are vibing and impulse takes over me.
I settle on my back and resume staring at the ceiling.
Annabelle moves impossibly close, the transparent edges of her shape fluttering over the defined, solid edges of my flesh and bone perimeter. “What’s wrong, Charles?”
“I’m tired,” I mutter.
“We were just having a moment, weren’t we? I mean, until you pulled away.”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to touch you, not even for pretend, not even now while it’s safe because I might fuck up and touch you when it isn’t.”
“You won’t.”
“I’m very clumsy.” This is very true.
“I trust you.”
“Brave girl. I wish there were some way I could join you, you know, as a dream.”
“Maybe you can.” Annabelle sits up. “Maybe you can sleep and I can find you or you can find me.”
“You think?” The idea makes absolutely no sense, but then again neither does any of this. “Do you really think it will work?” I sit up.
“It could, I suppose. Lay down and try to sleep.”
“I’m dead. I don’t think it’s gonna happen.”
“Try.”
So I do and it’s a mad struggle just to keep my eyes closed at first, Annabelle and I giggle at my mostly failing attempts and I have to keep refocusing and restarting, but after a number of tries I feel it coming on. My muscles exhale and my brain sputters happily, as if to say, Finally, you idiot. God, if I knew I could sleep, I would have done it ages ago. I just assumed being dead and not really ever feeling the need to sleep meant I couldn’t.
Falling into dreams my thoughts go fuzzy and I wonder if I will even see Annabelle or if I will have a nightmare or some uselessly dumb dream adventure instead. I start to regret giving myself over to the uncertainty of sleep, the loss of time, but I am lost and away before distress has a chance to take root.
Thankfully my fears are unfounded. The dreaming mind births me: white, billowy, wavy, the world a palace of clouds, whispering good, warm things into my ears. I float along at a dreamy (literally) pace until I find a break in the white and an entrance into our dingy hotel room.
The waking world shimmies and shakes and I feel drunk as I pass between worlds. The walls blur and breathe. The floor and ceiling jitter. I feel like I am a dream dreaming. Sitting on the cartoony, shaky bed, watching my blurred-out body sleep, Annabelle is solid, unwavering, and completely real. She is the only thing in the room that looks like it is actually here, undreamed, genuine.
“Hey,” I call to her. My voice trails and sputters and echoes.
Annabelle looks up and her eyes go as wide as stars. “Charlie!” She jumps off the bed.
“It worked.” I hold up my hands (I have both hands!) and then pat my chest and legs to illustrate my presence. “Let’s get out of here.” I gesture behind me toward the world of clouds. “This place is making me dizzy.”
“It’s weird, huh? Like living in a cartoon. You get used to it.” Annabelle skips past me and into the white. “Come on!”
I follow her.
“This is beautiful, Charles!”
“What?”
Annabelle stops and twirls and plops down onto the cushiony, pillowy, cloud ground, “Your dream world. It’s perfect. It’s sweet and safe and wonderful.”
I plop down next to her, lie on my back and stare up into the anti-sky. Endless white. Not even white, anti-color. “This is my doing?” I ask. “It’s rather plain, don’t you think?”
“It’s uncomplicated. It’s perfect.” Annabelle crawls over to me and lays her head on my chest. My body explodes with sensation. Bolts of bliss blast inward and surge throughout. I gasp and yammer. And Annabelle says, “Relax.”
“I can’t touch you,” I stammer.
“You can here. It’s perfect.”
Slowly, cautiously and with disbelief I wrap my arms around her. I nuzzle my face into her exquisite dark hair and take a deep breath. My head goes swimmy. For the first time since I died—hell, for the first time in my entire life—I can feel my heart pounding, my blood racing, my nerves tingling and a hypersensitive sense of physical and emotional satisfaction pulsing within, tying all processes together. Annabelle nuzzles into me and kisses my chin, shifts and then kisses me full on the mouth. I am a raging pyre of desire. I am awareness. I am needed physically and emotionally and my brain embraces that need hungrily. My skin doesn’t flay, my organs don’t drop, revulsion doesn’t visit, repulsion is nowhere to be found and I am an exposed heart, I am an instrument of pressure and control and vitality, a conduit of feeling and tactility and importance. I am the confident face of God. I am a human being. I am alive.
Chapter Seventeen
Built to Save
My eyes come open at the urging of a strange voice.
“Wake up,” the voice says, deep, gruff, “Wake up, Mr. Baxter.”
And for a second I think it’s my dad and this has all been a terrible wonderful dream. I think I am twelve years old again and am being culled awake so that I can go to school or perform some menial chores.
Leave me alone, I scream inside.
Let me sleep, I scream inside. Rage. But not outwardly. Outwardly I am preparing to wake and do as I am told. Anger dies and dribbles away into weak, pathetic, internal (always internal) pleadings. I dread another day fighting off seizures. I dread the laughter and the empathy of the cruel and the sympathetic. Let me stay here in my head where I am safe.
Here but not really here.
The voice ignores my silent pleas and persists, “Mr. Baxter! You have to get up. We have to talk before it’s too late.”
Alas, sleep curls up and dies, a faraway friend, an impossible dream, a clearing cloud, and I am returned, seated firmly, snugly within my terrestrial skin. I feel dead once again. I feel adult once again. And I am cold. And I am just beginning to panic because I am beginning to realize it’s not my dad’s voice. And I am thinking that my dad wouldn’t call me “Mr. Baxter.” And I am thinking that I haven’t heard my dad’s voice in years.
And I am wondering, to whom does this voice belong?
Another thought: is Annabelle—the real, blind, sleeping Annabelle—okay?
My eyelids snap open and my eyeballs fight for focus.
“Get up,” says the voice.
Things come clear and I see that it belongs to a large man with a shiny bald head and smooth skin the color of coal. He leans over me and says my name. “Charles?”
I bolt upright and look around the room. The man’s eyes go wide and he leaps back in fright. Barreling past the stranger, I jump off the bed, rush to the window and part the curtains with my right hand. A number of shadowy figures, three, four, it’s hard to tell in the dark, stand around Annabelle’s parents’ car. I press my face to the glass and squint; Annabelle is still in the passenger’s seat. I can’t tell if she is sleeping or awake.
If these fuc
kers lay one finger on her…
Rage builds.
The man behind me is trying to tell me something but I can’t hear him through the roaring fire in my head. My left wrist yawns and an army of tendrils slink out. I turn and extend my arm toward the large man. The tendrils creep, slowly weaving forward like jittery, hungry, organic lightning.
“Wait! Please!” The man puts his huge hands up and his eyes go watery around the edges.
My tendrils halt inches from his face. I shake my wrist menacingly.
I don’t want to hear what he has to say, I want him dead so I can move on to Annabelle and take care of the others. My tendrils dance ominous patterns millimeters from the man’s pleading patheticism.
Closing my eyes I think about Annabelle in danger. I think about loss. I think about love. I think about Eddie. I think about need. My wrist begins to buzz and the room begins to hum and the evil little tendrils recoil slightly, readying to strike hard and puree this idiot intruder.
He keeps on, “I only want to talk to you! I can help you and your lady friend! I can help you! Please don’t kill me!”
And for some inexplicable reason I pause and look him over. Tension has turned him into a shaky, sweaty, teary mess. Just one flick of the wrist, just one inflection of the mind and he’s done, but something in his eyes manages to calm me down. Beneath the flustering begging he has a very sincere, trustworthy gaze.
I Will Rise Page 26
