Fantastic Metropolis

When I came to, it was dark outside and Bill had gone. The house was utterly silent again and I focused on the dripping faucet. I got up, leashed the dog and went out. I knew I was headed for the vale and that the quiet one would be there waiting to make me forget the forgetting. I walked quickly, and even Wood did not stop to pee on every telephone pole but also seemed to walk with purpose.

Down along the river, the wind was blowing, and as I passed, I thought about the Colonel. Just then, he and Moissac were lifting handfuls of jewels and letting them run through their fingers. All around them in the treasure vault lay the lifeless bodies of the enormous painted clay figures they had hacked and skewered and chopped their way through to get to the end of the story. The colonel stopped in the middle of his revelry, looked directly out at me and said, “Here it is needful to use a little skill in keeping close, now hither, now thither, to the side which is going away.”

In the vale, I found them all—my wife, the kids, Bill, the red haired girl, Helen, the Committee, the guy at the spittle stick store with the ham theory. They formed a single line at the head of which stood the quiet one. A path had opened up in the woods where previously it had been impassable. As I arrived, the quiet one was mumbling something in the ear of the red haired girl. She listened intently, and then strode off at her usual pace down the path. Half way to the point where it turned out of sight, there was a bright flash of light and she disappeared. I ran over to my wife and put my arms around her, but she was rigid and she felt nothing, saw nothing but the quiet one. I hugged the boys and tried to get them to notice me, but they couldn’t.

“Mr. Forte,” the quiet one said to me. “Please take your place in line.” Wood growled and the hair went up on his back. “You will not be taking the dog, let him go.” I let Wood off the leash and he ran out of sight into the thickets. As the Committee, one by one stepped up and were whispered to by the quiet one, I stood in line, my mind racing. Flash, flash, flash, the old crones were fed to oblivion and the spittle stick salesman stepped forward. After him it would be Bill and then my wife and sons. The tension I felt made me begin to twist the dog leash in my hands, and when I noticed this, I knew I was going to strangle the quiet one with it.

Helen went with more of a fizz than a bang, and the spittle stick salesman followed her lead. Then Bill took his place. As the quiet one leaned over to whisper in Bill’s ear, I made my move. I broke from the line and ran at him, the leash twisted around my hands and held up in front of me. He saw me coming and he smiled. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground. An explosion had gone off in my mind. In the flash and the bang, less than a second, I glimpsed the entirety of my life before Purgatory. The experience had stunned me and I knew it had come from the quiet one. “I’ll have to take you the hard way,” he said. He smiled and another jolt passed through my thoughts, making my eyes bulge and my tongue loll.

In between the jolts, I would come to consciousness and see him begin to grin again. In one of these strobe flashes, I saw Bill holding his gun to the head of the quiet one, and then deep in the afternoon of my previous existence, my other wife was serving tea in glass cups in our living room. “I got a call from Berrin today,” she said. Her hair was brown and hung down in ringlets that covered her ears and forehead. I looked out the window and saw a plane pass high above the roof tops of the development. “What’s with Berrin,” I asked, playing along. “Berrin says…” Just then a beautiful round faced child came to the entrance to the kitchen. I wasn’t sure if it was a boy or a girl, but its hair was silky bangs and its eyes were a startling green. “Mr. Farley is shooting his dog,” it said.

Then I heard the gun shot. Its noise echoed out and ate its way through everything like acid. When the smoke cleared, I was here, sitting writing to you. My wife is asleep, downstairs, laying in front of the television. The boys are breathing steadily. Wood is lying on the floor behind my chair. I know if I go downstairs there will be Turkey meatball left overs waiting for me. Tomorrow, I’ll take these last few days entries and rip them out of my diary and stuff them in an empty beer bottle. Then when I walk with Wood tomorrow night, through the park to the edge, I will toss them out into the void where they belong. Some time years from now, I will remember this, but the memory will be tattered, partially eaten and half forgotten. For now, I will have a spittle stick, listen to the breathing and study the quiet.