Sheep and Wolves

by Jeremy C. Shipp

An almost orgasmic sense of relief gushes inside me. I release the horrible feeling that ravaged me, because whatever I was dreaming about, whatever happened inside the cave, it wasn’t real.

  Then I remember.

  I remember everything.

  “Jade,” I say.

  She steps out from behind a tree.

  “I’ll be your slave,” I say.

  “Servant,” she says.

  *

  Sure I’m saddling her chest, holding down her arms as she writhes and kicks, but don’t get the wrong idea. She’s the one in control.

  Green goop spurts from my eyes, nose, mouth in a constant stream onto Jade’s agonizing face. The liquid burrows into her orifices. It dives into her mouth with every sputtering scream.

  I think the word toxin. Then I don’t.

  After a while, she stops struggling. She trembles.

  When I can’t excrete anymore, I release her, lie on the floor, and attempt to cry. I’m too empty though. I’m numb.

  A moment later, I’m standing in a hallway with Jade at my side. As far as I can tell, the corridor stretches on forever in both directions. Suddenly I feel very small.

  “This is much better,” Jade says. “Thank you.” Her eyes shower me with a gentle radiance.

  “You’re welcome,” I say, almost meaning it.

  She takes my hand and we walk. Candles interspersed evenly on the walls light our way. The flames lean toward us as we pass.

  “Her name is Aalia,” Jade says.

  “I don’t want to do this,” I say, and mean it.

  “This isn’t about you, Tomas. She needs us.”

  The door beside me swings open and Jade shoves me inside. I go for the door, but they’re curtains now.

  “Stay away from me,” someone says, behind me. Aalia, I’m guessing.

  I turn around and find her sitting on a bed, hugging her legs.

  The old me wouldn’t have crept toward her with a dark energy buzzing on his skin. The old me believed that the human body was a sanctuary, and a mystical one at that. He hugged his wife and son even when they weren’t around.

  This was me.

  Now he’s gone.

  Aalia screams and runs out the bedroom window into the night.

  I chase after her.

  I chase her through a field of corn, which always points me in the right direction. I chase her through ancient ruins, and the symbols on the stones transform into arrows. She’s betrayed at every turn.

  There is no escape.

  I corner her in a room without any windows or doors.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” she says, crying.

  “I won’t,” I want to say, but I don’t believe that. I’ve done much worse.

  The cloud of dark power around me seizes her as I approach. It grips and strangles and squeezes her mind.

  I tower over her, not myself, but her husband. Her father. Whoever I am, I’m going to destroy her.

  I touch her.

  She screams and punches me in the gut. Hard.

  I fly backwards, crashing and tumbling through wall after wall. Artifacts and corn whirl around me. They nip at my skin. When this world stops spinning, I’m back in the hallway and I have one hell of a stomachache.

  I think of probiotics and chamomile tea. Then I don’t.

  “Sorry,” Jade says. “I didn’t know Aalia had that in her. No, that’s not true. I knew it was there, I just didn’t know she’d let it out yet. Anyway. Good job. She may leave him now in the waking.”

  I lift my shirt. My stomach expands and contorts into the shape of a hairbrush.

  “What is this?” I say.

  Jade kneels and pats my stomach. I yelp with pain. “It’s sort of a difficult thing to put into words,” she says. “At least for me. But what I can tell you is that the gap between you and Aalia, between your feelings and hers, is just an illusion. I create these illusions, so I know what I’m talking about.”

  I try vomiting, but I can’t. “Are you going to take it out?”

  “What’s inside you is real, Tomas. It’s yours to deal with. But I can help you.”

  A door opens.

  *

  I glance at my son through the rearview mirror. He chomps the head off a marshmallow chicken.

  “Marshmallows used to be a medicine, you know,” I say. “This was back when they added an extraction of the marsh mallow plant to the ingredients. Marsh mallow juice is great at healing wounds, boosting the immune system, and suppressing coughs.”

  “It tastes good,” my son says.

  I smile and look at my wife, like I often do when I smile. But she’s asleep. Her hands rest on her lap, gripping a hairbrush. I smile again and turn my attention to the road.

  A lost kitten poster flutters on a streetlight up ahead. I stare.

  Suddenly, a chthonic force seizes me and squeezes my chest.

  The voice says, “You are doomed.”

  I am doomed.

  Fear closes in on me from all angles.

  The light is red, but I can’t move. My right foot remains pressed against the pedal.

  It may look like I’m in control, but I’m not. I’m helpless.

  “Stop doing this to me, Jade,” I say.

  “Don’t blame me,” Jade says, sitting in the back seat with my son.

  This is how it happens. These are the moments before the truck hits. These are the moments that last an eternity.

  “Why did I go through the light?” I say, crying, frozen. “Why didn’t I stop?”

  “Because you weren’t paying attention,” Jade says. “You were looking at that poster, thinking about your childhood cat, Snappy.”

  “Should they die for such a little mistake?”

  “No. But they did. They will again if you keep this up.”

  “I don’t know how to stop!”

  “You can’t stop.”

  There is no escape.

  I see the presence in the approaching truck. He’s the shadow of a man. A void that I created because I didn’t know how to stop.

  Now I do.

  I slam on the brakes, and the truck comes to a screeching stop, just in time to avoid hitting my car, my family, and me.

  I’m back in my car now, driving, safe.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ve been away for so long.”

  My wife laughs. “We’ve seen you every night, Tomas.”

  Jade touches the back of my head. I remember. My wife is right. I’ve dreamt of them hundreds of times since they left the world.

  I want to say, “I love you,” but for now I vomit out the window, and leave a trail of green behind us. A green that eats away at the asphalt and seeps deep into the ground.

  That was me.

  Now he’s gone.

  Baby Edward

  There’s more than one way to kill a dream.

  My dream is a baby boy named Edward and he’s not allowed in the house. He lives in the VW Bus in my backyard. I keep the windows closed and the doors locked, which doesn’t serve any real purpose, obviously. But I like to keep the key on a chain around my neck. I like to wear it under my dress shirt, coat, and tie. When I first put it on in the morning, the metal’s cold against my chest. By the time I’m tapping at my keyboard, inventing new ways to politely coerce resources from suspecting citizens, I’m cold on the inside. Anytime I want, I can put the key in the lock, twist, and end this. But I don’t.

  You might ask, where’s the mother during all this? Well, I hate to burst your predictable bubble, but there is no mother.

  I made Edward.

  And he’s mine.

  Mine.

  *

  Harboring resentment is a great way to meet women. Try it. Sit down in your least favorite bar, let your eyes glaze over, frown, and put up your walls. The kind of walls you’d need to contain a plague, because most likely, that’s what you are.

  Now, see who comes knocking.

  “Hi,” Annabelle says.

  I’m not psychic.
She’s wearing a nametag.

  Well, maybe I am a little psychic.

  “You’re Ed,” she says.

  “How do you know that?” It’s ridiculous, but I look down at my shirt to make sure I’m not wearing a nametag also.

  “I remember you,” she says. “About ten years ago I was visiting San Francisco and I heard you sing. We talked for about thirty seconds before I left. I wanted to talk with you more, but I was intimidated and shy. It’s strange. I’m not usually good at remembering faces.”

  “Why did you want to talk to me?”

  “Because your songs touched me, Ed. I told you that. Remember?”

  I don’t.

  Honestly, I don’t even remember being in San Francisco.

  “I remember,” I say.

  “You don’t have to lie to me.”

  “Sorry.”

  She laughs. Maybe the way I used to laugh before my VW became a cage.

  “Do you ever get the feeling that a storm is coming, a bad one, and you hope to God you’re wrong, and then you are wrong and you’re disappointed?” This is sort of what I want to say, except I want to scream it without any words. Gutturally. Instead, we talk about her job as a manicurist, or stuntwoman, or whatever it is she’s saying.

  *

  If you heard the crying I’m listening to, you’d get a portable hacksaw from your basement too. You’d cut a hole in the side of the Bus so that you could insert a bottle.

  An hour ago, I was in the bathroom, minding my own perverted business, and it started.

  Actually, I’m guessing it began a while ago, before I heard any of the sobs. It’s one of those cries that starts out silent and then bursts. The buildup has been going on for months. Maybe even years.

  After my hard-on melted away, I tried burying my head in a pillow. I tried earplugs. I tried television, ice cream, a good book, a bad book. I tried cleaning and remembering my childhood and burning some old photographs. I tried driving around in my new BMW and keeping an eye out for the homeless.

  I even tried not giving a shit.

  Nothing works.

  So I’m here, with this bottle and formula and cold sweat.

  My head is killing me. I feel like fighting back.

  “Just drink the damn milk,” I say.

  The crying stops.

  I hear sucking.

  The relief you expect me to feel is really nausea and a trick-fart that turns out to be quite a bit of diarrhea.

  Good thing I’m not wearing my good pajamas.

  *

  The secret to a man’s heart isn’t food or sex. Annabelle and I have already shared those together, but they’re not what keeps me from running away.

  That’s what I do, by the way. I run and I hide, the way I did when I was a kid, except it’s not a game anymore. At least not a fun one.

  I used to drive, searching for a place where I could be, for lack of a less cheesy sentiment, happy. A place where I could smell my lyrics in the air, and other such nonsense. I searched for a magical place. But I ended up here, of course, because real magic doesn’t exist.

  Enough of my bitching.

  “How did you lose your leg?” I say.

  “Trampoline accident.” She pauses. “Sorry, that’s a stupid joke.”

  “No it’s not. I didn’t know you were joking, so I didn’t laugh.”

  “How could I lose my leg on a trampoline?”

  “I don’t know. It could get caught on the side.”

  “And then what? The force of the jump rips me in two?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She laughs. Maybe the way I used to before I started taking drugs. The legal kind, anyway.

  “It was a car accident,” she says.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You probably don’t know this, but as soon as I said car accident, your face released a lot of tension.”

  “It did?”

  “I used to be offended when I saw that in people. But instead of getting pissed off all the time, I decided to try to understand what was going on. I may be wrong, but my theory is that people don’t like unexpected tragedy. Car accidents cause over a million deaths every year, and it doesn’t matter, because it’s normal. Like war is normal. Like malnutrition in Africa. Like…is that a dying animal outside?”

  No. “I’ll go check.”

  *

  I present the food on my flattened palm, the way I did at the petting zoo when I was a kid. The first time I ever fed a goat, I was terrified that he’d chomp off my fingers, and I’d never be able to play piano again.

  A similar terror molests my neck, my back, my stomach.

  Ed won’t drink milk anymore.

  “Just eat the damn cereal,” I say.

  The difference between this feeding and the one at the petting zoo is that this time my fears are justified. Tiny sharp teeth rip open my flesh and clamp down on my bone. I scream and yank as hard as I can, but only manage to further mangle my index finger.

  Ed yanks back, and pulls my arm deeper into the hole I cut in the side of the Bus. We play tug-of-war for a while.

  “Let me go!” I say.

  He doesn’t.

  I kick the Bus as hard as I can, and it must startle him, because he lets go.

  I kick the Bus again before walking away.

  Minutes later, I’m in bed all patched up.

  “What happened to you?” Annabelle says.

  “I accidentally smashed my finger with the car door.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says. Relieved.

  *

  Annabelle whistles while putting on her leg. She’s tone-deaf.

  “Do you ever feel it?” I say.

  “What?” she says.

  “Your leg. The missing one. What’s that called when you can feel it?”

  “Phantom limb. Yeah. My phantom used to be really painful. It felt like my leg was on fire almost all the time.”

  “I’m sorry.” There’s no relief in my face.

  “Nothing really helped until I started using the mirror box. It’s exactly what it sounds like. A box and mirrors. I put my good leg in one hole and my phantom in the other. With the mirror, it looked like I had two good legs. So I moved the phantom in sync with the reflection of my good leg and tricked part of my brain into believing I was controlling the phantom. The reason why my phantom hurt in the first place was because my mind considered it stuck. I had to set it free.”

  By now we’re in the kitchen. The key against my chest feels colder than usual. Or maybe I’m running a fever.

  “What happened to all the food in the fridge?” Annabelle says.

  “I accidentally left the door open and a lot of it went bad.” I pause. “No, that’s a lie. I can’t keep lying to you. I’ll show you what’s going on.”

  “Good,” she says, as if she’s been waiting for these words. Maybe she has.

  I take her hand, and lead her out of my present, into my past. We walk over the neatly-trimmed lawn, past the pawn-shaped fountain and the gnome-infested garden, to the corner of the yard exploding with weeds and wildflowers. It may only take a few moments to get here, but it’s not an easy path to travel with someone else. I squeeze Annabelle’s hand to keep myself from running away. She doesn’t complain.

  “In there,” I say. I point. “He’s in there.”

  The windows of the Bus are tinted, so she leans in close, and cups her hands around her eyes.

  She’s looking in more than a car, you know. I lived in this car. And even died a little.

  When she returns to face me, she says, “It’s just a guitar.”

  “You’re a guitar,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Sorry. I was being defensive.”

  “It’s OK.”

  There’s nothing wrong with her eyes, you know. She’s just not looking the right way.

  I want to tell her about Edward. I want to take off my bandages and show her my wounds. I want to let her hold my key. I would do these things,
but there’s a big problem.

  I’m not on stage. A hundred thousand fans aren’t singing the words with me. I’m only Ed.

  So we go back inside.

  Through the tinted glass, I see a dark form scampering about the seats. He’s growling.

  “No,” I say. “No more food, Edward.”

  But he’s not a good boy, like I used to be. He doesn’t know when to stand down. So he slams his head against the wall, over and over.

  “Stop that, Edward,” I say.

  He yelps with every blow.

  Blood thrashes my innards.

  “I’m not going to help you anymore, Edward,” I say. “You’re nothing but a nuisance.”

  He won’t stop. I hear cracking.

  I punch the window with my bad hand and scream.

  At this point I realize that he’s not trying to get my attention. He’s after Annabelle.

  When she peeked in before, he must have seen the kindness in her eyes. He knows she would feed him.

  “It’s no use, Edward,” I say. “Annabelle slept through the last earthquake, and she’ll sleep through you.”

  I smile, because I think I have him. I think, for a few fleeting moments, that he’s going to lie on the seat, close his eyes, and suck his thumb.

  Instead, he begins devouring the seats. His sharp little teeth tear at the upholstery, lacerate the metal, mutilate the seatbelts. He chews and swallows. Inhales.

  “You’re not getting any nutrients from that, Edward,” I say.

  He doesn’t care.

  *

  If your girlfriend surprises you with a romantic candle-lit picnic, you can’t tell her it’s a horrible idea. You can’t tell her that the blanket is too close to the weeds and the Bus and you-know-who. I guess you could tell her all this, but she’s gazing at you, tickling inside you with her phantom toes.

  So you say, “Thank you, Annabelle.”

  I see him staring through the window, drooling. He smiles, and I attempt to hide my fear with a smile of my own.

  “I wish I could see the world through your eyes, Ed,” Annabelle says.

  “Why would you say that?” I say.

  “Because you see such beauty around you.”

  “What I see is grotesque. I don’t mean you.”

  “Your songs aren’t grotesque.”

  “My songs aren’t about the world. They’re about the world in my head.”

  “What’s the difference?”