A DARKNESS PALE

DAMNDEST

….Dec was deliberately getting lost, which also seemed to be going backwards, or moving in a circle…

Damndest

“Hey,” Muscle said. “Look what happens when I go take a piss. No seriously, they told me you came back.” He offered a tepid grin. “Yeah, I don’t know if you remember calling me. You remember calling me?”

He didn’t want to. Memory was the big trick to bring him back into darkness. He didn’t try to remember and he didn’t try not to. He let it be and faced Muscle with the moment.

Muscle was saying, “I made some calls. Vin told me you’d split but you’d be back. He knows about what’s going on with you. It’s like some new manifestation of long Covid. But you’re gonna to be alright. Out of all the places you could have popped, yeah, Vin knows what’s going on.”

He let the words enter and pass through unfettered. He focused on Muscle and felt him draining from his brain. His cousin… Gone. Selling cannabis… Gone. Aspen… Gone. History was hung on details. His biker uncle who owned a string of Army Navy surplus stores in Seattle… Gone. He felt tremendous satisfaction, and he wasn’t sure why. He felt a tremendous satisfaction because he wasn’t sure why.  The vibration increased and pleased him further.

He was in a room with three men. Strangers. Real. Honest. He didn’t question. He didn’t try to either frame or hold. He was in a mansion because a kid in the mansion had taught him how to forget and now he was forgetting the mansion and the kid. 

The man at the desk said, “I told him my guess was you’d be back. Drifters go in a loop, for a while. They leave and then they show up again at the last place they were at. Like around and around the maypole – I’m not kidding. My wife was doing it for a couple months, and then she was gone. It’s the damndest thing.”

The other one by the door said, “He’s offered to let you stay here. Listen, I know there’s some legal shit, but it’s clear the law and the medical community haven’t caught up. I don’t understand exactly what’s going on, but I think Vin can be very helpful. He’s got people working on this.”

“Absolutely correct. Forced travel could be very agitating. It’s a fast track for the big drift. Dec, I was telling Muscle how some people are trying to get their loved one’s committed, but that doesn’t work so good because the psych hospitals are already overcrowded and with drifting you can’t prove danger to self or others, or grave impairment. What do you think about being a guest here?”

They were talking to someone else. He had no idea who that was. He had no idea who these people were. They seemed concerned and interested. They seemed to almost understand what was going on, but they didn’t understand that they weren’t real. None of this was real. This mansion wasn’t real. That was the real issue.

The man at the desk said, “Looks like you’re drifting fast. This is a fast one. This trip must have been a major accelerator. I’m telling you man, this is going to be the new game changer. You heard of death quakes?”

“I heard some chatter.”

“Drifting and death quakes – watch out. These things are gonna be the splinter that shatters the punch bowl. I’m going to bring in a bunch of people, like the people I love and respect. Like Noah’s bunker – I’m not kidding. We gotta create our own thing.”

“You know, that’s funny because I’ve been wanting to do something like that myself. Like fuck all the noise.”

There was a tug, a mighty tug, and then there wasn’t.

“We’re all just carpenters. We’re all just trying to build. I’ll tell you Dec, something I’m very interested in. I got cameras all over and we saw you in the game room talking to my son. He’s non verbal at this point. I don’t have sound on the cameras, but you two were clearly talking.”

“Kid.”

They both looked at him as though he’d coughed up gold nuggets.

“Yes. My son is also drifting.”

Lies and tricks. Hearing about the kid made reminded him he wasn’t real. Nothing was real. He breathed through his nose, becoming aware of the vibration tingling his lungs. He turned his head up and silently screamed. The people who weren’t really there were startled enough he was able to dart out of the office before they could respond.

He flew down the corridors. He was running so fast if he fell he wouldn’t be able to get up again. Behind him men were yelling. Behind him was the past, the history, the story. The guard at the front didn’t know what to do. He rammed into the guy and scrambled and twisted and spun out through the front door and fell down the slick front steps.

A Cadillac parked out front. The driver came out and he kicked him and scuttled into car. The engine was on, purring, heat blasting. With the door still open he gunned it, twisty streets and rain, jumping onto and off the curb, down the hill.

…The vibrations go wide…