A DARKNESS PALE

MAZES

….While Irie’s dad assessed his client and found out she wanted the hipster Moluxhc dope strain, he was also sort of aware there was something else he was supposed to be doing…

Mazes

Dec was navigating two mazes simultaneously, overlapping and folding back onto each other into infinity.

The first maze was the mansion. Traversing hallways that didn’t take him anywhere and didn’t seem to end. Trying not end up back in the Purple Room with the daughter who was passed out. The second maze had to do with why he was even trying to get out in the first place. Dec knew there was a reason. He knew he was supposed to be doing something that was extremely important, but…

Dec knew who he was, and as such, he also knew he was forgetting who he was. Drifting. It was happening faster. He was losing words. Detaching was becoming more frequent. There was shifting: the hallway wallpaper was slowly changing, the maroon zig zags exfoliating and fading, like breath dissipating in cold night air. The door knobs rippled from brushed steel to shiny brass.

Dec knew soon he’d just be along for the ride. There wasn’t anything to do about it except keep on with whatever he was doing and hope at some point he’d somehow get there, where ever any of it was. There was also a growing vibration that was crisp and palpable. He could feel it in the air and on the tips of his fingers and in the back of his throat. It felt bizarrely like a destination. Or perhaps a guide. The source would certainly be somewhere, and that was certainly more specific than where he was right now.

Hallways and doors. Most of the doors were closed. When he came upon one that wasn’t, he paused. It seemed significant. On top of the vibration he heard the familiar snap bang and fluttering snick snick of a pinball machine. A game room. A bank of glossy batteries in the corner next to a row of pinball machines and an air hockey table. A large flatscreen took up most of a wall. A teenager was hunched over one the pinball machines. Dec squinted. Primo vintage, The Nightmare On Elm Street. The kid was dark, with oily black hair past his shoulders. A thick green cast wrapped around his right leg up to his knee.

A shift. The kid was now on the couch, cupping a gaming console, soldiers in winter combat gear getting blown apart on the flatscreen. The batteries were gone. Dec got it. Somehow, they were both somewhere where the Big Dip hadn’t happened. The vibrations became more insistent.

The kid dropped the consul onto his lap and looked up at him. “We’re both here.”

“We sure are,” Dec replied. “And I can talk again. What’s happening with that?”

The room shifted back. The kid was bashing away at The Nightmare On Elm Street.

Here was the brother the daughter had told him about, the one who was drifting. Dec said, “Brother.” No more words were available.

The brother disengaged from the machine and regarded him with an empty expression, his face dead, like sculpted wax. The room shifted back. On the couch the brother put down his console. “We can speak because this isn’t real,” he said. “It won’t last. This is only to remind us the other place isn’t real either. Nothing is.”

“No doubt,” Dec agreed. “Nothing is.”

“But there is a source.” The brother held up a hand like he was trying to gauge the direction of a breeze. Dec understood he was feeling the vibration. “I was going but then I got tricked and now I’m a prisoner here. I was tricked. We’re all tricked back into what’s not real. But you know what?”

“What?”

“I know a way out. You follow it. There’s always a way out.”

Dec understood. He said, “Brought me to you. I’m lost.” 

The brother said, “The big trick is the difference between being lost, and willfully losing yourself.”

More importantly, the brother explained how to get out.

“I gotta stretch my legs for a moment,” Dec explained to the guy at the door.

Spiraling down the hill, he forgot who he was. It was the damnedest thing, he was still hanging on, and he couldn’t remember why. Why not just let go? Where was he? He knew he’d been talking but not talking, saying things in one world while at the same time he was muted in another.

The sidewalk was glistening, like they were in the movies. It was no longer pouring and the remaining rain floated like powder. After navigating twisty narrow streets he could remember the mission again. Coming into himself, Decent Baglavitti. The Source Orchard. Contact Irie and get her the keys to the Source Orchid. Salivation. The vibrations.

He needed to get away from himself. Getting to the source, which wasn’t the same as the Source Orchid. The Source Orchid was the big life project he’d committed to after he recovered from Covid and clued in about the end of the world. The Source Orchid was salvation, a gift to Irie, a humble way to make up for abandoning her all those years ago. The Source Orchard was still a work in progress, but there was no more time. He had to contact Irie to give her the keys.

The shift happened and all the rain was gone and the air went pizza-oven hot and it seemed like everyone else traversing Sunset boulevard hugged a smartphone to their ear or had one stuck in front of their face. Irie’s address was in his pocket. He had a smartphone before the Big Dip. He had one now. The number of Hoxton hotel was in his notebook. He knew Muscle’s room number.

“What’s that?” The voice sounded like Muscle’s, but he knew it wasn’t. It was his father. Fuck, things were really getting weird, and they were also getting more clear. Dec realized he was approaching the roots of the unreal. He was an explorer again. And since he was speaking from the other, equally unreal world, there were words he could use. He said, “I’m telling Irie about the Source Orchard.”

“What are you talking about? Are you okay?”

His dad had basically disowned him. His dad never met Irie and his dad was dead, which meant he didn’t know about the Source Orchid. No one did. His dad was trying to trick him, get him confused and worked up to keep his memories chaining him down, keep him remembering to keep him away from the vibration.

He said, “You’re welcome there too, but it’s up to Irie. It’s hers.”

“What is? You fucking high? What the fuck are you talking about?”

Dec disconnected. Who had he been talking too? Good. The vibrations fluttering all around him. Good, he was moving toward them again.

…Dec gets away but also back in…