That Dream

by David

The buildings, people, trash cans, everything, collapsing like the Twin Towers had, only instead of clouds of smoke and debris, these transformed into architectural outlines on pavement that became a smooth hard flat surface. Arnold was unchanged, but everything else had become diagrammatic, somehow embedded in the surface of the plane. Crap! He was in that dream again.

He looked down. He stood on a long row of squares about 6 feet on a side, a wide black ribbon to his left and on his right large rectangles and other polyhedra. Inside each were smaller rectangles (desks), brackets of various sizes that must be chairs and couches, and colorful moving ovoids. He stepped over the wall of the nearest building and approached one. It backed away, or at least he presumed that the surface facing him, fraught with invaginations and small protrusions, was the front. He backed it into a corner, then cautiously reached down and touched its middle. It rippled violently and darted past him, spun around a few times in the center of the room, and came to rest in the doorway. Arnold looked at his fingertip, where a damp red spot was drying.

*

Arnold glided through the doorway. He could see Saunders and The Chief in front of the conference table. Suddenly, their shapes ballooned and wavered like threads in a fast wind. Saunders had split into two… and so had The Chief. One of the two Saunders’s disappeared and reappeared so close to Arnold he could smell shoe polish. Arnold shied away in alarm and slammed into the coat rack. F*ck! That dream again!
The chief disappeared: first one chief and then the other one. Saunders did the same a moment later. Arnold’s pants were wet.

*

Arnold inhaled her scent, caressed the delicious mound of Charlene’s belly as she slept. He pressed down slightly. His hand blurred, sank in; her skin closed around his wrist, a tight ring of flesh that rolled warmly up his arm as his hand passed through her muscles, her womb, their son’s tiny skull… his arm snapped back into focus.

Arnold convulsed backwards out of bed, across the tiny bedroom, and through the shattering window, but he could clearly see:

Charlene jerking up off the bed,

her red fountain,

the scream distorting her face.

He plunging toward the street,

naked, his red

and dripping hand.

Guy Walks Out of a Bar

by Edd

After work Guy and I stop into the Long Island Barrel Bar as usual. I have my beer and Guy his whiskey, but after downing it he says, “Well, goodbye to you, Peter. You’ve been better than most.”

I jump to several conclusions, and say, “You’ve been fired? You’re leaving town? You’re dying?” Then one last conclusion. “You’re not getting set to kill yourself?”

“None of the above.” He signals Morty for another whiskey. “I’m just off to search for Bella.”

“Bella?” There had been an Annabelle back in high school. What was her last name? “Do you mean Annabelle Phipps?”

He lights up. “I’m close,” he says to himself. “Yes,” he continues aloud. “Bella and I, we got married right out of school.”

“You did not.” I know better; he’s as single as I am.

“Oh, I did,” he says. “I married Bella and moved to Philly. Then we came back to the city to see her parents, and I stopped in here, to the Barrel, because I’d always been too young to drink before.” He sips at his second whiskey.

Guy has been coming to this bar with me for years, almost every night.

“I had one drink, then walked out of the bar,” he says. “And the world was different. There had never been a Bella; her family had never even emigrated. And I had moved to Staten Island after school to work as a nurse.” He shakes his head, stares at the TV screen for a few seconds. “I stayed in that world for a month before I worked it out. I came back to this bar, the only thing that looked exactly the same, had one single drink, and walked out.”

“Things changed?”

“And how. The local football team was called the New England Plymouths. Nobody used neon. And still no Bella. I couldn’t trace her family at all, or mine.” He plunked his empty glass down. “So I came back here, and I’ve kept coming back. In some worlds I didn’t exist, in some the money was so different I had to find a job for a week before I could come in and pay for a drink. Some worlds they didn’t even speak English. Those were tough.”

He’s spinning a tall one, or more drunk than I realized. “Maybe we should call it a night,” I say. “I’ll cover that last drink.”

“Right. Well, this is goodbye.” And he shakes my hand.

When I walk out ten minutes later he’s there. “Hello?” he says, wary expression on his face. “Peter, is it?”

“You know it is. We were just in there together.”

“Oh god,” he says. “Did I have one drink? Or two?”