(Recovered from the Genesee Estate Sale)
He had never been a particularly imaginative type. That was one thing which people had always ascribed to him, was that he did not possess the faculties required to formulate complex schemes, general problem solving, and so on. Most of what he knew was learned through textbooks over the course of many years and forgotten just as swiftly, his memory retention was flawed and his temper was short.
Therefore, he was confused when he found the seashell.
The seashell was wrapped up in the blankets next to him, loosely, and pouring sand from its orifice. He picked it up, mulled it over in his hands, blinked twice to make sure the sensory input he was receiving could be trusted. Yes, there it was- the golden ratio, reflected in the swirling pearl interior, the scraggly rectangles on the outside, tapering away into smaller and smaller versions of themselves near the tip.
He held it up to his ear. No ocean, just echo, but pretty damn close. He chuckled.
Yes, he remembered it now. It had been Coney Island, or somewhere like that, a beach on the East Coast, definitely not the West, but rather of the Cape Cod variety, nice little fishing village, lighthouse about half a mile up the bank, and little tufts of grass blowing in the salt-drenched breeze. And he had been sitting there, placid, on the shore, some nondescript rock tune blowing out of his tinny little pocket radio, a couple passersby to his right making small talk, but it was drowned by the roaring hum of the waves, crest after crest falling in succession upon the sand, dragging some and depositing some in their maddening cycle.
He had absentmindedly lowered his hand and felt something rough and solid in the bank, wondering at first what it could have been, then realizing that it was the shell, glinting in the sun, sparkling like the finest treasure, as rare a gift as ambergris. And he raised it to eye level and caught its immaculate composition in one piercing look, and then the dream had ended and he had woken up to the humbuzz of his alarm clock and the aroma of the automatic coffee machine.
Having no imagination to speak of, it did not cross his mind even once throughout the remainder of the morning that the subsequent discovery of the seashell was impossible.
“Nice trinket,” his roommate innocently remarked. “Where’d you get it, go to the ocean sometime this month that I didn’t know about? Or just a curio from a gift shop or something?”
“I- I found it. Found it somewhere.”
“In Denver? Damn, you’ll have to show me that sometime.” Laugh, brush of her hair, back to the kitchen to find a suitable mug for her tea. Glance over her shoulder.
He was tired, he realized, sitting with his arms folded over the thing as if he were guarding it from some unseen force, tired of the small life, the simple things, tired of her and the way she went on, no certainty as to where they stood or if they’d ever have a thing going, just funneling money into the broken property they had attempted to secure. He didn’t know what he was doing anymore, had lost direction, and the solidity of the item, the certainty of it, had brought some kind of meaning back to him. A glint in his eyes.
“It’s a beach,” he idled, turning it over yet again. “Beach with a lighthouse, red and white type like in the picture books. Picturesque spot, good weather. And I feel safe there, and comfortable. I’ll show it to you sometime, if we can find the right day for it. So busy. So much to do, you know how it is.”
She emerged from the adjacent room wearing the same revealing azure top she always did, the same one which made him feel insecure about his own modesty and the perverse thoughts tangled in the mess that his brain had degraded into sequentially across years of torment. She was too well-spoken, she understood him too well, knew every mechanism that ticked away in his labyrinth. She was a genius by comparison, even if she only operated the diamond kiosk at the mall, and he filed insurance claims.
“How’s that one?” she inquired, as if she knew what he was considering. “The one with the Honda Civic and the rearview mirror. Pretty gnarly, from how you described it.”
“It’s okay,” he acquiesced, cradling his head in his fingers and pressing down on his eyelids. “Not that bad, I’ve seen worse. How about you?”
“Usual, just zirconium. Nobody buys the real thing, everyone assumes it’s obtained unethically even if it’s not.”
“Makes sense,” he said, although it only did in an abstract way, because there was something between her diamonds and his shell, linked chains of molecules bonded together in uniform structures by elemental forces. Minerals under intense pressure. He was a mineral. Couldn’t quite draw any conclusion. It failed him. Stupid mind, failing him yet again. Needed sleep.
“Could we go to Pete’s Kitchen after your shift?”
“Sorry,” she said. “I have something else planned tonight. But we’ll figure it out eventually.”
He didn’t really hear her, he was applying pressure to his temples, feeling them clench as his jaw contracted, sinuses full of oozing liquids to clean out all the horrible bacteria which plagued him. The head was like a shell, openings and holes everywhere, structures on the surface with a soft interior. Could be something there. In his field of vision, a grid with dots, the sort of optical illusion where they all disappear if you check on them.
She kept sipping her tea, lip jutting out over the rim of the cup, and he was so overwhelmed, so taken by this vision, that he had to get out. He removed his jacket and tie, which he had put on only moments before, and ran upstairs.
“Forgot something. Be back in a sec.”
“Kay.”
She waited five minutes before she decided he wasn’t going to re-emerge, probably dealing with a particularly complex balance form, and while he assumed that her head was full of contingencies and schemes, she was in fact only concerned with his overall well-being, because, though he never would have afforded her credit for such a thing, she respected him in many capacities. He met most of her basic standards.
As she discarded the remainder of toast crust from her plate, she absentmindedly considered, in a roundabout way, why she put up with anyone as thoughtless and banal as him. He really had no redeeming features to speak of, he was thuggish and short-tempered and often made snide remarks about her intelligence or her prospects in life.
It dawned on her that she had no romantic interest in men, or in women for that matter.
He had no way of understanding this, or processing it, because he had no imagination and he was upstairs besides with his ivory seashell in the quiet morning lull, stroking its sides and gazing up at it in awe, unsure how to process the events of the morning. He fell back into the recesses of slumber.
Different scene, very different. Back end of an alley, spotlights on his face, technicolor film with the emphasis on full RGB hues. He was like DeForest Kelley, a raving madman with a tweed jacket and eyes gaping wide open full of sweat, tears streaming across the bridge of his beaked nose, lit artificially from below and above at once to ruin the perception of the third-party viewpoint. Manic frenzy.
Savage angles zooming in on his facial muscles as they contracted and spasmed, caught in the rictus grip of insanity, prison bars framing his face, jazz score with crashing trumpets and sonic cymbals, doom noises in every direction. Low growling oboe, taunting flutes, traffic lights blinking on and off. Before a brick wall, he snatched his madman’s cowl and dashed off to the right, but it was useless.
There would be no avenue he could take to escape himself, evade what he had allowed himself to become through the long years of self-inflicted torment.
“Going somewhere, stranger?” she moved through the ground-level mists in supine complexion, mascara on heavy, not a hint of the lighting on her, just a simple angelic halo which shone from above and bathed her in an innocent state. She was similar to his roommate, but her hair was a different color, her core features altered ever so slightly, and like all dream people they shifted in and out of focus and couldn’t be made solid no matter how much he squinted.
“Ah- yes.” He calmed down a bit, felt less like he was choking, it slowed to rapid gasps and then to a stuttering heave. He balanced himself and wiped his brow.
“You know what to do with this, I imagine.” She reached somewhere into the depths of her form-fitting technicolor strapless gown and retrieved a steel dagger, six inches long, encrusted diamond handle that sparkled in different ways depending on how she turned it with her excessive polished nails. She held it suspended like a baby’s mobile, and with one fell swoop he snatched it. He considered what she meant.
“What can I do with you?” She averted her gaze.
“Whatever you want. It’s your dream.”
He hesitated, then he lunged forward, his hands stern in an equal mix of frustration, impotence, and abject hatred. He was hellbent on having her, taking her by any means necessary, and just as it seemed like his digits were making initial contact with her soft warm flesh, and his lips were almost planted upon hers, she faded into mist and he woke up.
He rubbed his eyes and arose. Surely, it couldn’t be there.
Yes, there it was on the rumpled mattress, splayed three inches from him as if it had been thrown asunder from his person. Another gift from- from wherever. It didn’t really matter, all that mattered was the physical immediacy of it, the power it bestowed upon him. He picked it up, his lips parted and he laughed maniacally at its sheer brilliance. He ran the tip of his ring finger along the edge and it instantly drew a thin crescent of blood. He sucked the excess, taking note of the flavor, then considered what she had meant.
She asked him if he knew what to do with it. Of course he didn’t know. He had no imagination to speak of. He couldn’t imagine multiple uses for it, let alone some theoretically correct or otherwise preordained one.
After a few moments of mulling the statement over, he decided it didn’t matter, and stowed the knife beneath his pillow along with the seashell, where his roommate wouldn’t be likely to find them. He worked frantically, still reeling from the manic effects of the vision, unable to calm down or to get a grip on himself.
“You need to let her go,” his therapist said. “Find someone else. She’s clearly rejected all your advances thus far.” He wasn’t really listening, splayed out on the couch with his feet constrained in his shoes, every article of clothing feeling just one half-size too small. Overhead, a lone fly buzzed around the drapes of the office, crashing into the wall repeatedly.
“I can’t let her go,” he said. “I want to fuck her.”
“Have you considered that she could be asexual?”
“What?” he absentmindedly scratched his nostril, turned over onto his side, curled up into the fetal position. It felt too hot in here, somehow, even if it was early autumn and the temperatures were dropping. The whole building probably had the thermostat unreasonably high. Boiling in a vat of acid, a wicked cauldron, surrounded by a coven of witches, who all clapped and cheered for his imminent demise-
“Asexual,” the therapist responded, tapping a pen to his cheek. “She’s probably aromantic, too. From how you describe it, she’s lived with you for over a year now in that apartment, hasn’t shown interest in you besides as a friend. Like you mentioned, she’s never had a boyfriend or a girlfriend. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s definitely asexual.”
“Like hell,” he sneered. “Dumb bitch is a tease. Leads me on, likes to make little innuendos and shit. It’s purely for economic necessity we live together, you know. Rent’s too damn high. If we didn’t have to, I would leave and-” His thought trailed off, he glanced up and noticed the expression of doubt and fear in his therapist’s expression, which was quickly smoothed over with the professional, stoic vernacular all shrinks since the beginning of time had mastered to maintain the illusion of mastery over something as chaotic and indecipherable as the underlying mechanisms of the brain. He knew it all too well.
“Let’s move onto something else. How’s your sleep medication?”
“Decent. Got seven hours last night.” This was a lie, he had in fact only been able to catch six and a half before coming to.
Since the dreams started- the initial one with the lighthouse, then the one in the alley, and around a dozen since that- he had been getting less and less sleep each night. Not that he didn’t want it, he desperately needed it to smooth out the creases and gathering furrows in his warped psyche. Every time he awoke, he felt nauseous just looking at himself in the mirror, knowing that he was who he was, caught in the net of his own being.
Every time, he had managed to retrieve some kind of artifact. A plastic toy sailboat which was as lumpy and misshapen as a dream could allow, some ominous clay mask with engraved eyebrows and weird sigils, a donut filled with the jelly of some imaginary fruit he couldn’t place. None of these things brought him any happiness, and he had considered telling his therapist about the growing pile of trash beneath his pillow, but ultimately decided against it.
“That’s- that’s pretty good, all things considered,” said the shrink, scrawling some indecipherable jargon down on the notepad. “Any nightmares? Drowsiness while awake? Anything like that?” He took a bit to consider this question, repositioning himself on the couch. He had been on the medication for a week and a half, had noticed his nascent inability to relax about three days before starting. How each night, successively, the hours clicked back in eerily precise 15-minute increments, and he would bolt awake suddenly, regardless of whatever was going on in the dream, whether it was pleasant or repulsive, with no alarm and no prompt.
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Good. Let me know if anything like that comes up.”
“Okay, Doc.” He retrieved his coat, draped it carelessly over his shoulders, rose to stand and yawned. The therapist guided him out, and as they entered the lobby the shafts of afternoon sun fell into his field of vision and he was startled.
“Let me know, whatever happens.”
“You bet, Doc.”
He stumbled mindlessly through the parking lot, nearly tripping over himself, unsure of where he had parked. If someone caught sight of him in this state they’d probably respond with fear, the therapist was great at hiding disgust but most people weren’t. He was glad he could work remotely from home.
His concerns raced back to the cauldron and the circle of witches. That was a mental image, he realized. Something he had never been able to form while conscious. It wasn’t that he had aphantasia, exactly, only that he lacked enough willpower and plasticity to stimulate the neurons of the visual cortex. And yet this had been so vivid-
A line of naked women in the forest, smiling in the firelight, all awaiting his imminent doom in the boiling kettle. Their raven hair streaked towards the pine needles and their floral wreath necklaces hung languid between their breasts, yet they held more power than he could begin to comprehend, a power from primordial forces beyond his grasp. And then one of them put on the mask, the grotesque weird mask with its mockery of the human form-
And just like that, he opened his eyes again and he was standing in the parking lot, right next to his car, ready to leave.
He didn’t know it yet, although he would soon. As the nights grew shorter and the days grew longer, and his mind could only be stimulated and made active during his waking hours, he was being granted the ability to perceive things which did not exist.
He was, against his own will, being afforded an imagination.
Tonight would be the night, he had decided. He was down to four hours now, or maybe it was 3 hours and 45 minutes, he had lost track. He was feeling giddy with anticipation and desire, feverish from the lack of sleep, dark puffy bags under his eyes like waning twin moons. He would crawl in and lose himself immediately.
He had realized what it was the evening prior after a long time considering what all the experiences had in common. He could bring anything out of his dreams, no matter how improbable or unreal, provided he was holding it when he woke up. And of course, dream time didn’t match up perfectly with real time, he knew that. So it would be tricky, synchronizing the two such that he would be making physical contact with the object. But it was possible. He had objects from around 75% of his dreams. He was usually holding something. Fondling something.
He had tried robbing a bank the night before, a dream bank, and bringing some of the money out, but when he came to the money had blurry serial numbers and Woody Woodpecker was on all the hundreds and so obviously it couldn’t be used to purchase things in the real world.
He didn’t want money. He wanted her.
He set a glass of cold tap water next to himself on the side table, put on his cheap eye mask. His muscles became inert. His thoughts ceased.
And then, out of the void, she proceeded. She was blurry, at first, but he willed her forward, a marionette on strings. She was exactly as he had remembered her, and he was amazed at how she had been brought to him merely by the process of him thinking about her. That had never been very common in his waking life. He lacked a magnetic attitude, he couldn’t make money or goals or ambition appear from nowhere. Now, finally, he could manifest the impossible.
She was in the same sleeveless gown, but now looked a little more like his roommate, somewhat homelier with less makeup, and the hair color was closer. He couldn’t be sure, but she appeared to be looking around nervously for something or someone.
He approached her and grabbed her forearm like an iron vise.
“Hello there,” he said. “Wonderful night, isn’t it?”
“Let go of me,” she said, with startling force. “Let go of me. Right now.”
“I need to be holding you when I wake up.”
He checked his calculations. It seemed as if only 5 minutes had passed, but back in reality it was probably closer to 2 hours- he didn’t know why, but something about that felt right. He’d only need a minute or so more.
“Let go.”
“Just a little while longer,” he said. He wasn’t considering what he’d do once they both woke up together. He’d kidnap her and smuggle her out of the state, leave her real-world counterpart behind to rot and pay the full rent, which he knew would be impossible. And no jury in the world would ever convict him, because dream people had no record. He bared his teeth in an animal snarl, lips peeling back to reveal his carnal grimace.
The setting faded and blurred and before he knew it he was coming to. He kept his grip on her arm steady, but as his bedroom faded in and the early signs of dawn filtered through his eyelids, he realized that her flesh was becoming softer, immaterial. And as he regained full consciousness, he was only able to dimly make out a vague purple mist wafting from between his knuckles, rising towards the ceiling.
He gasped. Looked around for her. No. She had disappeared.
He realized that he had been gripping her arm with so much raw ferocity that, as she had retreated, he had dug his fingernails into his palm, they left four gaping wounds which bled and singed. He got up to treat himself in the bathroom with some isopropyl and neosporin. It hurt a lot, but his mind couldn’t be all too concerned with the pain right now. He had to consider what went wrong.
He had been holding her, he was certain of that. So that wasn’t the issue. Maybe dream people had a certain degree of sentience which set them apart from inanimate objects. Yes, that was it. He thought back to one of his more recent dream encounters, with a little frail toad-thing that chirped like a robin. He had held it, yet it hadn’t returned with him. Living things couldn’t pass the barrier.
He screamed as the alcohol burned a path into the four crescents.
“You look like you’ve been getting less sleep,” she remarked over dinner. She had ordered out, Chinese food, and they were sitting across from one another, emotionally distant. He hadn’t bothered to open his fortune cookie because he didn’t want to know what ugly truth it’d reveal.
“You could say that, yes.”
“Have you been taking that prescription?” She reached across to grab a carton of fried rice and he thought of her in the lowest, most reductive terms. Less than a harlot, a demon sent by the foulest tricks of fate only to make his life insufferable. Her eyes shone in the light cast by the dim orange bulb of the dining room, and she tapped her nails procedurally on the laced tablecloth.
“Yes, as a matter of fact I have.” As he looked at her, he realized he had no idea what he saw in her anymore. He hadn’t been able to visualize her again, and even if he had she would no longer be glamorous or compliant, no longer be the seductive idealization he had conjured, would instead be closer to the homely, stupid wench he knew.
He was down to half an hour, had only two nights left before he would ever experience sleep again. This night, and tomorrow night. And then- well- he didn’t want to think about it. He shoved an egg roll down his craw.
She was worried about him, deeply concerned because he hadn’t been down for breakfast, or lunch, and she would have to leave for her shift soon. Wringing her hands, pacing back and forth. She assumed the worst.
Slowly, with marked hesitance, she turned the corner, taking long, deep breaths, terrified that he’d pop out at her if she dared to disturb him and contact his volatile temper. She neared the door to his bedroom, opened it a little bit, its hinge creating an audible squeak. It had been ten full days since he went in, and he hadn’t emerged, and in all that time she’d refrained from going in. but it was time now. Time to confront the unavoidable.
She walked in on a grisly scene. Objects arranged in incoherent configurations, blobs of color and amorphous levitating sticks, impossible shapes gathered on the side table next to the lamp, which had been turned off and unplugged.
His rotting corpse lay atop the mass of blankets, a thick layer of blood staining the pillows and dribbling onto the floor, having long since congealed into a viscous pool. To his right she could make out something shiny- a knife with a diamond handle, unsheathed and vibrant.
On the wall directly above him, he had scrawled in a frenetic cacophony:
Thank you for the gift