Fantastic Metropolis

“Jenson’s become a philosopher,” said Madd.

“Jenson’s become a drunk,” Edwin averred.

“Tell us your lousy stupid thing,” Madd said.

“I hope you’ll laugh,” I said. “Then I’ll know you’re taking me seriously. This is it. Do you ever think about dream? Sometimes I think we enter dream, even when we’re awake. And I think when people are together, they can enter dream together. I was reading something Jacqueline wrote and maybe that’s what crystallized this. A moment ago I was going to credit you, Madd, but maybe it was Jacqueline.”

“Your goddess,” he said.

“But I wonder if this all, this world, has been changed into a place of dream. First we had to physically make it the place of dream, with buildings and roads and cities and countries appearing out of bare places where there was only life before. All those things came out of minds. We built them. But we’ve gone a step farther. Because our heads are out of control. Now we’ve made the whole fucking world into one big dream. A place of dream. One huge fucking dream. The world wasn’t enough as it was, and we’ve dreamed it into a whole new state.” I had been this drunk—when? As a kid, surely.

“There was only life before we came along!” said Edwin. “My god, maybe you are still an American, you damned Yankee.”

“Quick,” said Madd. “Look down the beach. Do you see anything? Is the wall there? Do you see it now?”

“You’re standing in my way! Get out of my way!” I could see nothing.

“He’s goddamned blind drunk, Madd,” Edwin said, laughing.

“You both are! Give me that bottle!” said Madd.

He grabbed the remainder of the wine and ran down the beach toward the waves. Stopping just beyond the reach of the water he took a deep drink and then held the bottle up against the night sky. “Crone!” he called out to the waves. “Crone! Crone! Crone!” He repeated the word, shouting at first and then uttering it with the sound almost of a cow lonesome in a field, or of a lover calling for a hiding, playful partner, or of a besotted Falstaff crooning to his woman barkeep. Edwin and I almost collapsed in our laughter. My eyes watered as my body shook.

Then Madd tossed the nearly empty bottle as far as he could into the waves. By all rights the crone should have accepted the offering from her supplicant and given him the pleasure of rising in all her great, ugly glory above the midnight sea, and driving the three of us into gibbering madness through the sheer blasphemy of her appearance.

But through the tears in our eyes we saw only dark waves, stars above, and the far, curving horizon where the night sky met the rolling waters.

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“The Face of Days” appeared in Leviathan 1 (Ministry of Whimsy, 1996), edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Luke O’Grady.