The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik

by David Arnold

  And so began my righteous plotting for a dog, that joyous, age-old process of wearing down one’s parents until they are but a ghost of their former selves. The result? A family trip to a local breeder, where we found a cute little Shar-Pei with rolls upon rolls of coarse skin, who was not at all fluffy, but come hell or high water, I’d decided my dog would be named after the three-headed mutt in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and so it was. Fluffy the Shar-Pei. (He would not become Fluffenburger the Freaking Useless until years later, after commanding his true potential as the most useless animal the universe had yet sprouted from its perplexing loins.) And for a while we were thick as thieves, Fluff and me, all because my crazy uncle Jack gave me a book wrapped in camouflage.

  Three days before the following Thanksgiving, Uncle Jack was shot and killed in a hunting accident. It was November 22.

  Jack London died on November 22, 1916.

  November 22, 1963, Aldous Huxley died of laryngeal cancer.

  C. S. Lewis, who wrote about a different kind of primordial beast, and whose friends called him “Jack,” died that same day too.

  Huxley and Lewis are remembered for their work, their words. But neither is remembered for the day they died. That day is overshadowed by a different death.

  John F. Kennedy, sometimes called Jack, was killed on November 22, 1963. Kennedy is best known as being the President of the United States. He is also known as being the namesake of my uncle’s wolf-dog.

  For all I know, he was my uncle Jack’s namesake too.

  The Kennedy family had a dog, given to them by a Soviet leader. (The Soviets are known more for their robotic lunar rovers than their gift giving, but hey.) That dog was called Pushinka.

  Pushinka is Russian for “Fluffy.”

  I sometimes picture myself in a cave, late at night, in the glimmering light of a torch. I feel its ashes brush my shoulder on their glided-fall to the ground, and I wonder if someone, twenty-six thousand years from now, some Person of the Future with capabilities beyond my imaginings, might find those ashes.

  And I wonder what those ashes will say.

  14 → my new sweater

  Circuit says his mom is at some convention, and all his sister’s friends were at the party too, so she won’t be home for hours. “Just ignore Nike,” he says on the way up the stairs. “She’s a little pissant.” A cat (presumably Nike) is perched on the top stoop, calmly and quietly watching us as we approach. From a couple steps away, Circuit bends down and literally roars—like a lion—in her face. The cat scampers down the stairs, brushing my leg as she passes. Clearly I’m not the only one who has a complicated relationship with the family pet.

  “I need to urinate,” I say; Circuit points to a room down the hall, and when I come out of the bathroom, he’s literally standing there waiting for me.

  “Ready?” he asks, and I think, Ready for what, weirdo?

  All that comes out is, “Okay.”

  Inside Circuit’s bedroom there’s a full bed, a couple of half-empty bookshelves, a dusty electric guitar in the corner, and a desk, at which Circuit has already taken a seat, pulled himself up, and opened his laptop. The desk is a scrambled mess, which I’d pay a solid twenty bucks to clean: stacks of papers in no apparent order; textbooks on top of textbooks, all of which have the word psychology somewhere on the spine; a few mad-scientist-type devices, one of which appears to be a pair of binoculars welded to a large pair of goggles; and, buried among the rubble, a small framed photograph of Circuit and Sara standing in front of the White House with their parents.

  “Dude.” From his seat, Circuit is staring at me staring at the picture. “Tell me you’re checking out my sister and not me.”

  Considering Sara’s first name, I’m guessing their mom won that coin toss. “So what’s her middle name?”

  “Ha. Flux.”

  “Circuit Patrick and Sara Flux.”

  “Sara always joked that together we make one normal human and one cyborg.”

  “Speaking of cyborgs.” I point to the hybrid binocular-goggles on his desk, where a bunch of wires run from the contraption to his laptop.

  “We call that the Oracle,” says Circuit.

  “You and Sara?”

  “No, I meant—never mind.” He points to the edge of the bed. “Have a seat.”

  I sit, catch a glimpse of a document on his computer with the heading Catalepsy and Chaining Anchors. Circuit swivels in his chair to face me, and suddenly I feel like I’m in a doctor’s office, like he’s about to tell me to open my mouth and say ahhh.

  “You want a new trajectory,” he says.

  “What?” I try to stand up, but my legs aren’t cooperating and everything feels heavier—my eyelids, my head, my arms—like I’ve been an empty vessel my whole life and someone just filled me with rocks and sand. “I should go.” But my lips are heavy too, and I’m not sure I said anything at all.

  “It’s simple, Noah. Trust me.”

  LOOK, IT’S → PART TWO

  Henry: . . . which is probably why I’m so dead set on writing real people. Because of the minutiae.

  Mod: The minutiae?

  Henry: Yes, I prefer minutiae.

  Partial transcript from “A Conversation with Mila Henry”

  Harvard, 1969

  (Henry’s last known public appearance)

  15 → the fog

  Two summers ago my family took a Caribbean cruise, and one of the many lavish evening performances was a hypnotist. I remember watching in curious horror as he told a volunteer to close her eyes, imagine she was at the top of a long, beautiful staircase with a hundred steps down. He told her that the further down she went, the more relaxed she would become. Eventually, this woman was under to the point she was basically a human marionette subjected to the whims of her puppeteer. And while this was disturbing enough, what happened after is what really stuck with me. I saw this woman around the boat a few times that week, and I saw her face in the crowd of the other evening shows—the magician, the comedian, the feathery dance troupe—and not once did she smile. She just sat there, eyes glazed, every bit the stringed puppet.

  * * *

  Nike won’t budge. She guards the door like a sentry, blocking my exit, calmly looking around like I’m not standing one foot away. I pick up the cat and expect a fight, but instead she nuzzles my arm and purrs. Set her at the bottom of the stairs, glance up the way I came—Circuit’s room looms at the top of the staircase, a soft glow seeping through the bottom of his closed door. He didn’t say a word when I said I was done, not a word when I forced open my eyes, stood up, walked out of his room.

  It’s simple, Noah. Trust me. Close your eyes. Breathe deeply, in and out, there you go. Now. You’re standing at the top of a staircase. . . .

  With a pounding headache and a solemn swear never to return to Piedmont Drive, I’m out the front door and through the yard, boots on pavement, hitting the streets in the direction of home.

  Kurt, the old neighbor, nods as I pass. He’s in the same spot on the porch next door, his cigar now a stub.

  His dog barks. Abraham, Circuit called him.

  I stop. Everything goes slightly numb, hazy; I look back at Circuit’s house, an odd sensation of having been there before tonight.

  Abraham whines, staring at me with those glowing eyes, all-knowing and diligent. Kurt pets his head and talks so quietly, I can hardly hear. “So last spring I’m hiking out near Starved Rock, and it’s pretty regulated, you know, with guides and horseback riding and a winery, but I’m not interested in all that, am I, Abe? No, sir, nothing worse than manufactured nature.”

  I stand motionless on the curb in front of this stranger’s house, listening to him tell a story to his dog.

  “So I go off grid, opt for the unguided tour, when I come upon a cave. Not one of those protected caves with the cascading waterfalls and touristy shit,
just a natural cave. Dark, dank, mysterious as the depths of hell. Well, you know better than anyone what a curious old cur I am. I set my walking stick a-straight and strode on inside. Way I see it, what good is the life untested, what value in nary a risk taken? I intended to risk and test, and I reckon that’s exactly what I did. And you know who I met in that cave? A mystery, and that’s a fact. God Almighty! Iffin’ that don’t beat all. And you know what God told me?” Slowly, intentionally, Kurt takes a final puff of his cigar, crushes it beneath his boot, and his eyes land on me. “She told me to come into the light.”

  The walk home is foggy, inside my head and out, and there is no joy or inherent value in these steps, only distraction.

  When I walked into Circuit’s house, Abraham was a collie.

  When I walked out, he was a Labrador.

  16 → that night in a dream I am suspended from the ceiling

  Just hovering up here, a spirit of myself, looking down at my sleeping body in someone else’s bed. Beside the bed Abraham the Labrador barks constantly, but it’s silent, a rhythmic, mute bark. There’s someone else in the room too, standing in the opposite corner, facing the wall, dripping wet like he just climbed out of a pool. A puddle of water gathers around his feet, and I only see the back of his head: dark hair, and every time he turns around, time speeds up until he turns back to face the wall. The air swirls like an invisible tornado, and then—colors everywhere. Big colors, colors so bright, it’s hard to look at them: blinding shades of pink-heavy fuchsia, turquoise, lavender, vivid greens and blues and yellows. And in the brilliant swirling colors, letters begin oozing from the walls: the As come first, then Ts, then Ns, then a whole pack of random letters of all shapes and fonts, floating and churning through the room in chaotic disarray until, eventually, they take shape, one letter in front of the other, and two words form, float right up to the ceiling, and stop just in front of my face: STRANGE FASCINATION.

  In the bed below, my eyelids flutter, and suddenly I’m in my body again, conscious and unconscious, aware of my own sleep and of an urgent desire to wake up.

  * * *

  5:37 a.m.

  Shit.

  My head is absolute murder. Like with knives and guns and some unidentifiable infectious disease.

  I grab my phone off the floor (nightstands are glorified clutter), to find twenty-three unread messages from Alan.

  Alan: OK I’ve decided wild hearts can’t be broken

  Alan: Which is to say our love soars on eagle’s wings

  Alan: Which is to say I love you a TUN and tonight sucked

  Alan: And jake is, in fact, a Titanic Dickhead

  Alan: (who btw got his ass handed to him in the pool by yours truly)

  Alan: Also I’m pretty high right now

  Alan: Yo, remember that time we rolled your mom’s basil?? That was funny AF

  Alan: Yo gabba gabba!

  Alan: WTF is a gabba anyway???

  Alan: The Flintstones were dope

  Alan: I AM FLINT-STONED!

  Alan: Heyyyyy kites

  Alan: I want CHICKEN

  Alan: Give me chicken an no one gets hurt!!

  Alan: 24 hour KFC drive-thru FTW!!!!!!!!

  Alan: Think outside the motherfucking bun!!!!

  Alan: Shit that’s taco bell ¯_(ツ)_/¯

  Alan: Wait. Check this out . . .

  Alan: o— ¯_(ツ)_/¯

  Alan: it’s a mic drop, haha

  Alan: Rosa-Haas OUT

  Alan: o— ¯_(ツ)_/¯

  Alan: Night night bae

  Reading this thread from my best friend in the sober, albeit early light of morning at least answers one question from last night: I was wrong to say what I said to Alan. And even though the pendulum can swing hard the other way too, I really do love him.

  Me: Alan, I am so sorry.

  Me: I was an asshole x 407,000. Please forgive me.

  Me: Whenever you see this (assuming that won’t happen for a while) I want you to say the following words out loud: “Noah Oakman loves me a great deal.”

  I swipe over to Val’s thread just to make sure I didn’t miss a follow-up to her one-word text.

  Val: Noah

  Nope. That’s it. Just Noah. Time-stamped 1:01 a.m.

  Best I can tell, I have the internal workings of a forty-year-old man: once I’m up, I’m up. After a long, thorough shower, I pull on some fresh Navy Bowie, sit in my ergonomic swivel, scoot up beneath my desk, open my laptop, open YouTube, find the Fading Girl, find solace.

  I love my room.

  17 → passage of time (I)

  The rest of the day is like one of those chapters in a book where the author jumps ahead in time because I guess nothing interesting happened to the character. Henry called them “passage of time chapters,” and while she wasn’t a fan, sometimes nothing happens worth mentioning. Sometimes you sit in your room, recovering from a shitty party where you had way too much to drink and followed some kid home when you should have apologized to your best friend. Sometimes you overanalyze a one-word text because the more you think on it, the more you realize texting a person’s name usually precedes something more substantial, like We need to talk, or I have a confession, but you never respond, and that person never follows up. Sometimes you take a day to toggle between episodes of Gilmore Girls and the Fading Girl until you decide to write a little, and then, after an hour of getting nowhere, you get mad at your writing for masquerading as Important Work when it is, in actuality, a waste of fucking time, so you move on to something that knows exactly what a waste of time it is. . . .

  Sometimes you finish the drawing and feel entirely relaxed, taking comfort in the knowledge that a submarine diagram will never hurt you. And you find yourself wondering if you’ll ever have the opportunity to ride in a submarine, which leads you to other modes of transportation you’ve yet to experience. . . .

  Sometimes you get meta and think, If all I want to do is sit in my room and draw, I might as well draw my room. . . .

  Sometimes you wonder if there’s a career in drawing diagrams with little arrows, but then you think, What possible job would require this particular skill set? And you think, I should really do something more productive. So you imagine two of your drawings procreating and producing a child. . . .

  And sometimes that’s your day.

  18 → the colors and quirks of Penny Oakman

  Next morning, the same dream wakes me before the sun again. I shower, get dressed, brush my teeth, and once I’m done stuffing my backpack with new textbooks, I start an episode of Freaks and Geeks for some first-day-of-school inspiration. As it plays, I can’t help wondering how many nights in a row constitute a “recurring” dream. I can’t help wondering about the dripping wet guy in the corner and the letters coming out of the walls. But also, I can’t help wondering how NBC could have canceled Freaks and Geeks midway through Season One when it was so utterly brilliant.

  Mysteries of the universe abound!

  A knock on my door, immediately followed by its opening. “Hey,” says Mom. She always knocks, but it’s less a request, more a heads-up. “I was going to tell you it’s time to get up for school, but . . . I see you’re ready to go.”

  “Yep.”

  She smiles in that sort of concerned but loving way, a look moms in general, but especially mine, own. “So. Coach Stevens’s voicemail.”

  It was only a matter of time, I guess. Honestly, I have to give them credit for not asking about it yesterday.

  “Yes.”

  “So not a full ride like we’d hoped, but, Noah—fifteen thousand. That’s great. That’s huge, all things considered.”

  “I know, Mom.”

  “You know, it’s not really about the money, but about being at—”

  “Being at the place that values me most. I know.”

  This has been m
y parents’ catchphrase from the beginning. And I know they want to mean it, and part of them probably does, but when budget meeting and kind of a tight week are part of your family’s vernacular, and someone puts fifteen thousand dollars on a table, you do more than stare at it.

  “And with your back, there are no guarantees of—”

  “Can we talk about this later?” I ask.

  A beat; Mom’s disappointed I’m not more excited. “Sure. I’ll call Coach Stevens tonight,” she says. “Tell him we’re considering. That okay?”

  The subtext: Are we considering?

  “Sure,” I say. “Yes.”

  She nods once. “You look terrible, honey.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “You know what I mean. Tired, I guess. Are you getting enough sleep?”

  “Mom? I’m good.”

  She’s about to leave when I notice a scar on her left cheek. “Hey, what happened?”

  “What?”

  “The scar.” I point to hers, then motion on my own cheek. “What happened here?”

  She catches her breath—like, I actually hear her catch a breath. “Noah, do me a favor. Go to bed early tonight. You clearly need some rest.” She backs out of the room, closes the door behind her.

  Before I can figure out what just happened, there’s another knock on my door, only this time it stays shut.

  “Come in, Penny.”

  I swear, every time my sister opens a door, an angel gets its wings. She always cracks it open by inches, like she’s afraid it might fly off its hinges if she’s not careful, and I don’t know—it’s about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen, one of the few holdovers from when she was little.