Dream: [Hank] and Haircuts (Weekend Edition)
Saturday morning:
musicin68 cheered and shouted directions while Ed played a video game. His character hopped or glided towards a hexagon of honeycomb tiles; a white spiral (the Vortex spiral?) spun overhead, or maybe it was etched into the platform. Every tile held a small navy pip or a jelly-like finger-puppet monster. I told Ed to aim for the purple ones--there were two--because they hold the most coins.
Our group took a leisurely walk along the sidewalk just south of the school and my old church. We'd scattered along the path a while back, and now I walked by myself in the middle. I veered left to the corner where a driveway cut the swale beside the road. Kneeling, I found a few short orange hairs that had caught the sunlight as I walked by. I peered down where the road and driveway had been to see the tawny ground several yards below me; I sat at the edge of a natural embankment. I spotted many more curved orange hairs at the bottom, and one clump that still had a band of mahogany. So it was gunn's hair, from that flashy icon of hers. She must have sat here while she cut her hair, I thought. A pretty place for it... peaceful in the forest. The lonely sadness she'd seeped into the earth where I sat breathed into my legs and up through my body. [She'd felt like I did driving home Friday night in an empty car, singing along to Glycerine.]
gunn approached; she wasn't walking with us, but maybe she lived around here. She told me that a good friend of hers had lived in the apartment under the hill, but she'd had to to move home again, for a while at least. gunn had been checking on the apartment, and after a while moved a bunch of her friend's things into storage to protect them from looters.
She sat down beside me, pulled her feet almost under her. I could see she missed her friend, but it had to be more than that. She leaned against me, then buried her head on my chest. She wrapped her arms around my waist, her breathing quiet but shaky. I hugged her gently, felt the shape of her back beneath my broad palms. My hands slipped too easily around her; she was barely more than a span wide. My hands are big, sure, but not that big. I rubbed her shoulder with my left hand while sliding my right down her backbone to where her waist should have been. Her back just kept going, though; even tall people aren't that tall.
Just then, before I could wonder what I'd discovered, somebody said, "I bet her [power table] is still down there." It was some sort of large shop tool, like a drill press or a table saw, something that breaks things apart. I thought I could use it to make sculptures I've been planning, which is all putting things together. That's not going to work, gunn thought, even though I hadn't said anything aloud. I formed an expedition to recover the [power table] from the apartment and take it to my basement for safekeeping.
The phrase "open plan" doesn't quite cover the apartment under the hill; only shelves and furniture divided the single, huge room, more a retail space than a home. Nice furniture, though. I searched around a cash register with Rachel (or someone like her) while she casually explained the mechanics of a concentric bong, all the layers of water circulating to... do whatever.
A few college kids walked in to shop, and Rachel sold them something. I tried to take over for her, but the register was a Mac (same setup we had at Air Traffic). I hit * (which had replaced the Apple-splat), but the screen went black before I could press the other key. Rachel sneaked in beside me and popped it back to normal, and I relinquished register duty. Rachel sold a college banner to the rest of the students.
I worked with musicin68 on a project at her place while beltramgregor and Alyssa played something (monkey?) from the other couch. musicin68 leaned close to say something, far closer than she'd intended. Eyes bright with excitement, she made a suggestion, her face so close to mine I could feel the heat radiating from her cheeks. More than that, I felt that anticipatory tingle of sharing personal space, the palpable manifestation of trust and desire that makes new relationships so exciting. Which was quiet out of place, given our circumstances. I pulled back slowly, eyebrows frowning, and she reseated herself. Is there a tad more color in her face? I couldn't tell. She's not embarrassed; did she feel it too? I was relieved to realize I was so calmly uninterested. We resumed our discussion, and I used her laptop at some point.
After beltramgregor and I got home, I realized I'd swapped screens and memory sticks on our laptops (which were about three inches by four, more like palm-tops). I had musicin68's silver machine with my black screen folded on top of it, and I'd left my memory card plugged into the side. My machine must still be at her place with her screen on it. I'd be okay for now, since all my work was on the card, but I knew musicin68 had class work on her computer, so she'd need it by Monday. Come to think of it, the power cords are incompatible, so the batteries will run down and she'll lose everything if I don't get it back to her tonight.
I wandered alone through the endless parking garage. Lost men lived down here, mildly supernatural cannibals, completely feral. That's why everyone carried guns. I wished I'd brought mine. The normal folk were almost worse than the cannibals, because they were so edgy and always armed. A lot of them turned into bandits anyhow. I stumbled through a few firefights by accident and collected a shotgun from one of the casualties.
A silver sedan slid around the corner and slammed against the wall beside me. I'd have been flattened if the headlights hadn't caught first. Trapped in the corner between the car and the wall, I hid in a crouch. The driver jumped out the passenger side and readied an assault rifle. He looked up and was shot dead by a confident black man with a round gray beard. The killer stalked around the back of the car and the back door opened on my side. The passenger rolled out, gun in hand, then whipped around to see me just as Graybeard rounded the trunk. I pulled the trigger, startled, and the man dropped dead, a red hole gaping in his chest. Graybeard "realized" I was on his side, and told me we'd split the loot. I pulled the flamethrower and fuel tanks from the passenger and strapped them on.
Graybeard slung the other man's M-16 and reloaded DayGlo orange flechettes into his extension rifle. A rare weapon, all black carbide and graphite, hollow folding shoulder stock... really more of a sniper's weapon. Those flechettes were faster and more accurate than bullets, especially at long ranges. It said a lot that he'd been so successful with it in the relatively cramped quarters of the parking garage, when automatic weapons were so common. I didn't really want to join him in banditry, but I didn't see a way I could slip out without becoming a victim.
The next car he stopped didn't panic, it just slowed lazily. He pulled the driver out viciously and threatened her, but she wasn't phased. Her glazed eyes struggled to focus on him. She was wasted on something, trying to deal with the fact that she was six months pregnant... presumably from the last time she was pulled over, robbed, and raped. I don't like it down here.
The fire-fighters' engineer, [Hank], scouted the basement with a respirator and a flashlight. He followed the quiet sibilance of a slow gas leak until he found its source. Silver tape and magnesium plate patched it quickly. He'd only just finished when the halon system kicked in.
"Some clots of gas are hard to kill," he said.
I imagined him drawing a sword and slashing at a halon cloud, but he just maneuvered out carefully and backed up the stairs. [Violet]'s repairs would have to wait.
We crossed Otto Street twice. That neighborhood has two of them, only two blocks apart. I parked at Whole Foods, and we all went inside. I'd brought beltramgregor, Alyssa, musicin68, and someone who might have been Molly. One of the women carried a baby wrapped in blankets. An older woman approached me while we browsed the dry goods. She asked where the rice was, and I pointed her in the right direction. Two aisles over, a pair of late-30's suburban fellows talked to a stock clerk. One of the customers produced a phone and called his cousin, the one that always barbecued. He told his cousin about the deal on potato chips; 18-inch chips in a 25-pound bag for only $13.00 Smoked wood powder gave them a tangy, reddish-brown flavor.
[Violet] walked her fiancee between the brick foot works of the giant rail bridge. [Hank] measured for chair aisles from the corner of the piling, pacing them out across the clover glen.
"Honey," she said, "This is [Hank]. He's going to help us plan the wedding." She explained that [Hank] had helped her rent the bridge, so they could run a little streetcar back and forth across the top during the ceremony every twelve minutes, stuffed with flowers and good cheer.
[Hank] chuckled in the entrance hallway to [Violet]'s apartment. He launched into a cautionary tale about the perils of burning a hole through a turbine mount while the fan's still spinning.
Once everyone had else had left, [Hank] returned to the basement of [Violet]'s place, ready to seal the halon vent. The pipe burst the moment he began, dumping the entire tank of unbreathable gas and pushing all the air from the room; his respirator was useless. "Sometimes," he said, "you see the disaster coming just long enough to fear it, but there's nothing you can do."
Three train cars rattled quickly across the bridge. They hit a bump above a lateral support and bucked off the bridge, tumbling twenty feet higher. I felt sick watching from the uprights overhead. No one had ever tested streetcars on the rail bridge; they were too light. I couldn't remember who was inside. The cars landed askew on the tracks and rolled over twice, then slid off the side. The wedding party below would be crushed or killed by the shrapnel. But it was a different bridge, somewhere in Germany, bathed in the blue light of a full moon. Everything went black, then the logos appeared for Medal of Honor and XBOX 360.
[Violet] came home to find something hanging in the doorway. [Hank] was working in the basement, she thought. It must be something he left. It was a miniature noose made of [Violet]'s hair... no, not a noose. A slipknot? She thought it was quirky, but not spooky. [Violet] unpacked her groceries, then went downstairs to find [Hank].
[Hank] had been detained by [Mr. Devil] in the boiler room, but he'd thought ahead. He'd cut away his lips and cheeks with a circular stroke of his switchblade. The ring of severed flesh hopped up the stairs to meet [Violet].
"Sorry, [Mr. Devil]," it said. "It's hard to help when I'm chained to the boiler like this." [Violet] heeded the warning and retreated upstairs with the disembodied mouth. When we showed up later, [Hank] greeted us at the door. His mouth was slapped on, but it kept sliding off when he talked, leaving bloody trails down his face. We asked what was wrong, but he'd slap it back into place and say, "Nothing."
We found [Hank] upstairs that evening, naked and passed out in a hair loop-swing hung from the bathroom door frame. His face was intact, a result of [Mr. Devil]'s possession of the hapless firefighter. The villain's plan had backfired. When he came to, [Hank] was in control of himself. [Mr. Devil] wanted [Hank] to rape both the would-be brides from the loop swing, but [Hank] was too clever for that.
The wedding concluded happily. It turned out to be for two couples, but I didn't know the others. As she walked away, [Violet] said she didn't like the other bride. Someone said it was just because her leg was too long, and gray, and stitched up the side. [Hank] followed them out of the glen, fully recovered from his earlier ordeal.
A dark purple mouth, disembodied by a switchblade, hopped up the hill. Its outline buzzed in my eyes, just like staring at a black light fluorescent bulb.
"Guys!" [Mr. Devil]'s mouth shouted, bounding after the wedding party. "Hey guys! Wait up!"
What a chump.
musicin68 cheered and shouted directions while Ed played a video game. His character hopped or glided towards a hexagon of honeycomb tiles; a white spiral (the Vortex spiral?) spun overhead, or maybe it was etched into the platform. Every tile held a small navy pip or a jelly-like finger-puppet monster. I told Ed to aim for the purple ones--there were two--because they hold the most coins.
Our group took a leisurely walk along the sidewalk just south of the school and my old church. We'd scattered along the path a while back, and now I walked by myself in the middle. I veered left to the corner where a driveway cut the swale beside the road. Kneeling, I found a few short orange hairs that had caught the sunlight as I walked by. I peered down where the road and driveway had been to see the tawny ground several yards below me; I sat at the edge of a natural embankment. I spotted many more curved orange hairs at the bottom, and one clump that still had a band of mahogany. So it was gunn's hair, from that flashy icon of hers. She must have sat here while she cut her hair, I thought. A pretty place for it... peaceful in the forest. The lonely sadness she'd seeped into the earth where I sat breathed into my legs and up through my body. [She'd felt like I did driving home Friday night in an empty car, singing along to Glycerine.]
gunn approached; she wasn't walking with us, but maybe she lived around here. She told me that a good friend of hers had lived in the apartment under the hill, but she'd had to to move home again, for a while at least. gunn had been checking on the apartment, and after a while moved a bunch of her friend's things into storage to protect them from looters.
She sat down beside me, pulled her feet almost under her. I could see she missed her friend, but it had to be more than that. She leaned against me, then buried her head on my chest. She wrapped her arms around my waist, her breathing quiet but shaky. I hugged her gently, felt the shape of her back beneath my broad palms. My hands slipped too easily around her; she was barely more than a span wide. My hands are big, sure, but not that big. I rubbed her shoulder with my left hand while sliding my right down her backbone to where her waist should have been. Her back just kept going, though; even tall people aren't that tall.
Just then, before I could wonder what I'd discovered, somebody said, "I bet her [power table] is still down there." It was some sort of large shop tool, like a drill press or a table saw, something that breaks things apart. I thought I could use it to make sculptures I've been planning, which is all putting things together. That's not going to work, gunn thought, even though I hadn't said anything aloud. I formed an expedition to recover the [power table] from the apartment and take it to my basement for safekeeping.
The phrase "open plan" doesn't quite cover the apartment under the hill; only shelves and furniture divided the single, huge room, more a retail space than a home. Nice furniture, though. I searched around a cash register with Rachel (or someone like her) while she casually explained the mechanics of a concentric bong, all the layers of water circulating to... do whatever.
A few college kids walked in to shop, and Rachel sold them something. I tried to take over for her, but the register was a Mac (same setup we had at Air Traffic). I hit * (which had replaced the Apple-splat), but the screen went black before I could press the other key. Rachel sneaked in beside me and popped it back to normal, and I relinquished register duty. Rachel sold a college banner to the rest of the students.
I worked with musicin68 on a project at her place while beltramgregor and Alyssa played something (monkey?) from the other couch. musicin68 leaned close to say something, far closer than she'd intended. Eyes bright with excitement, she made a suggestion, her face so close to mine I could feel the heat radiating from her cheeks. More than that, I felt that anticipatory tingle of sharing personal space, the palpable manifestation of trust and desire that makes new relationships so exciting. Which was quiet out of place, given our circumstances. I pulled back slowly, eyebrows frowning, and she reseated herself. Is there a tad more color in her face? I couldn't tell. She's not embarrassed; did she feel it too? I was relieved to realize I was so calmly uninterested. We resumed our discussion, and I used her laptop at some point.
After beltramgregor and I got home, I realized I'd swapped screens and memory sticks on our laptops (which were about three inches by four, more like palm-tops). I had musicin68's silver machine with my black screen folded on top of it, and I'd left my memory card plugged into the side. My machine must still be at her place with her screen on it. I'd be okay for now, since all my work was on the card, but I knew musicin68 had class work on her computer, so she'd need it by Monday. Come to think of it, the power cords are incompatible, so the batteries will run down and she'll lose everything if I don't get it back to her tonight.
I wandered alone through the endless parking garage. Lost men lived down here, mildly supernatural cannibals, completely feral. That's why everyone carried guns. I wished I'd brought mine. The normal folk were almost worse than the cannibals, because they were so edgy and always armed. A lot of them turned into bandits anyhow. I stumbled through a few firefights by accident and collected a shotgun from one of the casualties.
A silver sedan slid around the corner and slammed against the wall beside me. I'd have been flattened if the headlights hadn't caught first. Trapped in the corner between the car and the wall, I hid in a crouch. The driver jumped out the passenger side and readied an assault rifle. He looked up and was shot dead by a confident black man with a round gray beard. The killer stalked around the back of the car and the back door opened on my side. The passenger rolled out, gun in hand, then whipped around to see me just as Graybeard rounded the trunk. I pulled the trigger, startled, and the man dropped dead, a red hole gaping in his chest. Graybeard "realized" I was on his side, and told me we'd split the loot. I pulled the flamethrower and fuel tanks from the passenger and strapped them on.
Graybeard slung the other man's M-16 and reloaded DayGlo orange flechettes into his extension rifle. A rare weapon, all black carbide and graphite, hollow folding shoulder stock... really more of a sniper's weapon. Those flechettes were faster and more accurate than bullets, especially at long ranges. It said a lot that he'd been so successful with it in the relatively cramped quarters of the parking garage, when automatic weapons were so common. I didn't really want to join him in banditry, but I didn't see a way I could slip out without becoming a victim.
The next car he stopped didn't panic, it just slowed lazily. He pulled the driver out viciously and threatened her, but she wasn't phased. Her glazed eyes struggled to focus on him. She was wasted on something, trying to deal with the fact that she was six months pregnant... presumably from the last time she was pulled over, robbed, and raped. I don't like it down here.
The fire-fighters' engineer, [Hank], scouted the basement with a respirator and a flashlight. He followed the quiet sibilance of a slow gas leak until he found its source. Silver tape and magnesium plate patched it quickly. He'd only just finished when the halon system kicked in.
"Some clots of gas are hard to kill," he said.
I imagined him drawing a sword and slashing at a halon cloud, but he just maneuvered out carefully and backed up the stairs. [Violet]'s repairs would have to wait.
We crossed Otto Street twice. That neighborhood has two of them, only two blocks apart. I parked at Whole Foods, and we all went inside. I'd brought beltramgregor, Alyssa, musicin68, and someone who might have been Molly. One of the women carried a baby wrapped in blankets. An older woman approached me while we browsed the dry goods. She asked where the rice was, and I pointed her in the right direction. Two aisles over, a pair of late-30's suburban fellows talked to a stock clerk. One of the customers produced a phone and called his cousin, the one that always barbecued. He told his cousin about the deal on potato chips; 18-inch chips in a 25-pound bag for only $13.00 Smoked wood powder gave them a tangy, reddish-brown flavor.
[Violet] walked her fiancee between the brick foot works of the giant rail bridge. [Hank] measured for chair aisles from the corner of the piling, pacing them out across the clover glen.
"Honey," she said, "This is [Hank]. He's going to help us plan the wedding." She explained that [Hank] had helped her rent the bridge, so they could run a little streetcar back and forth across the top during the ceremony every twelve minutes, stuffed with flowers and good cheer.
[Hank] chuckled in the entrance hallway to [Violet]'s apartment. He launched into a cautionary tale about the perils of burning a hole through a turbine mount while the fan's still spinning.
Once everyone had else had left, [Hank] returned to the basement of [Violet]'s place, ready to seal the halon vent. The pipe burst the moment he began, dumping the entire tank of unbreathable gas and pushing all the air from the room; his respirator was useless. "Sometimes," he said, "you see the disaster coming just long enough to fear it, but there's nothing you can do."
Three train cars rattled quickly across the bridge. They hit a bump above a lateral support and bucked off the bridge, tumbling twenty feet higher. I felt sick watching from the uprights overhead. No one had ever tested streetcars on the rail bridge; they were too light. I couldn't remember who was inside. The cars landed askew on the tracks and rolled over twice, then slid off the side. The wedding party below would be crushed or killed by the shrapnel. But it was a different bridge, somewhere in Germany, bathed in the blue light of a full moon. Everything went black, then the logos appeared for Medal of Honor and XBOX 360.
[Violet] came home to find something hanging in the doorway. [Hank] was working in the basement, she thought. It must be something he left. It was a miniature noose made of [Violet]'s hair... no, not a noose. A slipknot? She thought it was quirky, but not spooky. [Violet] unpacked her groceries, then went downstairs to find [Hank].
[Hank] had been detained by [Mr. Devil] in the boiler room, but he'd thought ahead. He'd cut away his lips and cheeks with a circular stroke of his switchblade. The ring of severed flesh hopped up the stairs to meet [Violet].
"Sorry, [Mr. Devil]," it said. "It's hard to help when I'm chained to the boiler like this." [Violet] heeded the warning and retreated upstairs with the disembodied mouth. When we showed up later, [Hank] greeted us at the door. His mouth was slapped on, but it kept sliding off when he talked, leaving bloody trails down his face. We asked what was wrong, but he'd slap it back into place and say, "Nothing."
We found [Hank] upstairs that evening, naked and passed out in a hair loop-swing hung from the bathroom door frame. His face was intact, a result of [Mr. Devil]'s possession of the hapless firefighter. The villain's plan had backfired. When he came to, [Hank] was in control of himself. [Mr. Devil] wanted [Hank] to rape both the would-be brides from the loop swing, but [Hank] was too clever for that.
The wedding concluded happily. It turned out to be for two couples, but I didn't know the others. As she walked away, [Violet] said she didn't like the other bride. Someone said it was just because her leg was too long, and gray, and stitched up the side. [Hank] followed them out of the glen, fully recovered from his earlier ordeal.
A dark purple mouth, disembodied by a switchblade, hopped up the hill. Its outline buzzed in my eyes, just like staring at a black light fluorescent bulb.
"Guys!" [Mr. Devil]'s mouth shouted, bounding after the wedding party. "Hey guys! Wait up!"
What a chump.