All Too Surreal Page 9

  She couldn’t go on like this. She was always exhausted, her work was suffering, and not only didn’t she love Barry anymore — if she ever truly had — she was starting to actually hate him. Her dream had turned into a nightmare.

  “Hi, Sweetheart. How was your day?”

  The apartment was immaculate as usual. Nothing out of place, no lint on the carpet, not so much as even a speck of dust on the furniture. The faint smell of cleaning chemicals in the air reminded Kristen of a hospital — antiseptic, sterile and cold. Barry puttered about in the kitchen, dressed in the same gray shirt and pants which never needed cleaning or pressing. She’d tried to get him to go out shopping for some new clothes (she was so sick of that damn gray!) but he’d politely refused.

  “I’m making stir fry for dinner tonight. How’s that sound?”

  “Fine.” She slumped wearily onto the couch. “Could you come in here for a minute? We need to talk.”

  Barry responded so quickly it was as if he’d materialized on the spot. “Yes, my love?”

  She patted the cushion next to her. “Sit.”

  He did so, sitting with perfect posture, hands folded on his lap. He looked at her expectantly, his attention completely focused on her. Just once she’d like to see a hint of distraction in his expression — a glance off to the side to check what was on TV, a tightening of the lips as he fought to suppress a yawn.

  She felt an urge to take his hands, decided against it. It was best to maintain some distance right now. “Barry, I’m afraid I’m not very happy.”

  His face clouded over. “What’s wrong? Is it something at work? Don’t tell me that bitch Lauren has been pestering you again.” His hands curled into fists. “I’ll go in with you tomorrow and tell her to back off.”

  “NO! Uh, I mean, it’s not work. It’s … us.” She sighed. “Actually, it’s you.”

  “That’s not possible,” he said simply. “I’m everything you’ve ever wanted. I exist only to make you happy.”

  “There’s such a thing as being too happy. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I need a little bit of mess and uncertainty in my life. Hell, I’d be happy just to get a good night’s sleep for a change. You’re smothering me with love and attention. Can’t you understand that?”

  He looked at her blankly.

  Evidently not. She tried another approach. “I miss the way things were before you entered the real world. Isn’t there some way you can go back to where you came from? Back into my dreams?”

  Barry shook his head. “I may not be exactly human, but I am flesh and blood.” He tapped his chest. “As long as I have corporeal existence, there’s no going back. But I understand what’s bothering you now, and I think I can fix it.”

  She smiled hopefully. “You do? You can?”

  He nodded. “I haven’t lived up to your expectations of me. I need to work harder to please you: keep the house cleaner, come up with more interesting things for us to do, be a better lover. From this moment on, Kristen, I will rededicate myself to your happiness. I will shower you with love such as no woman has ever known before!”

  Kristen started to protest, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. “That sounds … wonderful.”

  He beamed. “I’m so glad we had this talk.” He gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Now I really must get back to making dinner. I thought we might go wading in the fountain again tonight. We haven’t done that for a while.”

  “No, we haven’t.” If four days counted as a while.

  Barry returned to the kitchen, whistling tunelessly as he began chopping ingredients for the stir fry. Kristen closed her eyes and wondered what she was going to do. What if she told him point blank to get out? No, he’d probably just rededicate himself to making her happy all over again. She supposed she could not come home tomorrow. She could stay in a hotel for a while — days, weeks, if necessary — and wait to see if Barry left the apartment on his own. If not, she could always cancel her lease and let the apartment manager worry about throwing Barry out. But she doubted even that would get rid of him. He’d found her in the bar, hadn’t he? What if there was some sort of connection between them which allowed him to hone in on her, to track her? If that were true, she’d never be rid of him. No matter how far she ran, eventually he’d find her, more determined than ever to make her happy.

  She thought back to something Barry had said. As long as I have corporeal existence, there’s no going back. She realized then what she had to if she wanted to be free. She stood and walked into the kitchen. Barry was slicing a boneless chicken breast into bite-sized chunks on the cutting board.

  “How about I help you with dinner tonight?” Kristen asked. “I know you like to do it all yourself, but if I help, we’ll be finished and on our way to the fountain that much sooner.”

  “I don’t know …”

  “It would make me happy, Barry. Very happy.”

  “Well … all right.” He smiled. “But just this once.”

  She nodded as she reached out and drew a long, sharp knife from the butcher block. “Once is all I need.”

  Three swift strokes later, it was finished. Barry lay on the floor, unmoving, eyes open and staring up at the ceiling. His shirt was torn, but no blood issued forth from his wounds. As Kristen watched, his form grew hazy and indistinct, until finally he evaporated like morning mist in the harsh glare of a summer sun.

  That night, Kristen lay alone beneath her sheets.

  “Forgive me?” she thought in her dream.

  A pause, a sigh, a tolerant smile. “Of course. I could never stay mad at you.”

  Barry took her hand and led her toward a forest where the leaves were just beginning to turn gold and crimson.

  It was perfect.

  At the Movies

  Monty Becker sat before the blank white screen in a seat that was most definitely not to his liking. The ideal position from which to view a film was just close enough for the screen to fill one’s area of vision, so that the viewer’s entire world was defined by the images thereon.

  Unfortunately, Monty had gotten to the horribly overcrowded Cineplex 20 too late to have his pick of seats, and so had been forced to settle for what he could get, a seat three rows from the back, too far off to the right, between a fat man in a torn black T-shirt balancing a mountain of snacks on his belly and a bird-boned woman who smelled of chewing gum and cleaning fluid. Add to this the giggling teen-agers in the row before him, and it’s safe to say that Monty Becker was not a happy man.

  He had only himself to blame, really. As film critic for The Daily Call, he usually saw movies all by himself — well, save for a handful of other critics in town, but considering their complete lack of critical faculties and abysmal writing skills, he might as well be alone — during the early morning hours in a theater rented by the film’s distributor. But he’d lost a filling the night before he was supposed to see the latest Randolph Redmond abomination, Tic-Tac-Toe-Tag, and thus was sitting in the dentist’s chair while the town’s other (lesser) critics were subjected to Redmond’s latest mindless concoction of action, blood and sex. It was the first time in his life he’d been grateful for a dental emergency.

  He still had to review the film, though, and in order to meet his deadline,

  Monty had had no choice but to go to the Thursday night sneak preview at one of the city’s obnoxious multi-cinemas. And it had been so long since he’d seen a film like a normal person — close to a decade, in fact — that he’d forgotten to get there early and had been forced to choose among the few abysmal seats left.

  As the lights went down for the coming attractions, he settled into his too-small, too-stiff seat and did his best to tune out the chattering, munching mass of mediocrity that surrounded him. But it was no good. They hooted and hollered all through the coming attractions, and when the theater’s admonition to please refrain from talking came up on the screen, nearly half the audience said SHHHHHHHHHH! as loud as they could, th
en broke into laughter.

  It was at this point that Monty thought about saying to hell with his deadline and getting out of there, but the idea that he’d be leaving his city, undeserving as it was, in the hands of the other so-called critics and denying his readers another bitingly insightful Monty Becker review made him stay. He’d just have to endure, that’s all.

  The film started, if a lofty term like film could be applied to such hackery as Redmond’s work. It began quite predictably, with a hard-bitten action hero fighting off an unprovoked attack by a street gang who had enough artillery to start their own army.

  The audience laughed and cheered with each corpse the hero contributed to the body count, and Monty sneered. How could these morons actually like this dreck?

  Oh, it had a certain raw energy, true, and a plebian brand of excitement, but even so …

  And then Monty noticed something strange. The scene on the screen became blurred, almost as if another were super-imposed upon it. There were two distinct images. One was of the hero mowing down bad guys in a haze of bullets and fountaining blood; the other was of something pink and rounded. It almost looked like … and then the image sharpened, completely eclipsing the carnage, and Monty saw that it was indeed what he had suspected: a gigantic pair of flabby buttocks crammed into the rectangular boundary of the screen.

  Monty couldn’t believe it. He rubbed his eyes, but the huge ass remained on the screen. He looked to the fat man on his left and the bird woman on his right, but neither seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. And the teen-agers in front of them were still shouting and cheering as if the screen continued to show their hero busily slaughtering anonymous gang members from central casting.

  And then, as Monty watched with horror, the buttocks tensed, cheeks pulled away from the rectum, and with a thunderous explosion of intestinal gasses, a river of brown shit surged forth. Unbelievably, it seemed as if the disgusting torrent was actually flowing out of the screen and into the audience. Monty could hear it splashing onto the floor.

  Seconds later the foul stench of gas and shit made its way to the back of the theater. Monty’s gorge didn’t just rise, it shot up into the stratosphere as if rocket powered. He clenched his jaw tight and was able to keep from throwing up — barely.

  As he watched, the flood of shit continued gushing forth, as the audience cheered for more. The smell grew stronger, and Monty became aware of a warmth around his ankles, of wetness seeping into his shoes and through his socks. The tide of waste had reached the rear of the theater — and still more poured forth from the inexhaustible bowels of the gargantuan ass on the screen.

  Yet no one save Monty seemed to notice anything amiss, and he thought that it had finally happened. Years of watching and critiquing mass-produced, soulless commercial product which could only laughingly be called films had taken their toll on him, and he had snapped.

  The sea of shit quickly rose above his knees, spilled into his lap, crawled up his chest, until it was lapping at his chin. The people around him — the fat man, bird woman, the loud-mouthed teen-agers — were no longer ignoring the excrement which engulfed them. They devoured it, scooping it into their mouths with both hands as fast as they could, laughing and cheering between swallows.

  As the level neared his lower lip, Monty squeezed his eyes shut and told himself it wasn’t real, was just a figment of his lunatic’s imagination. And then, to his puzzlement, he realized the shit didn’t smell so offensive anymore. In fact, it smelled rather sweet, like honey, or, more appropriately, chocolate.

  The sweet-sweet smell grew stronger, and despite himself, Monty felt his saliva glands go into overdrive, his stomach roar like the MGM lion. He kept his mouth shut tight but the warm, sweet ocean rose up to and over his nostrils and Monty took a reflexive breath. Hot, sweet ecstasy flooded his nasal passages and washed down his throat. And he then knew the truth about himself.

  He’d always thought he was better than everyone, superior. But he was really just another member of the mindless herd, just another pig rolling in shit.

  Well, he thought, I suppose there’s no accounting for taste.

  He opened his mouth wide and joined in the feast.

  Exits and Entrances

  “It’s your fault I’m dead.”

  Morgan looked up from his pad, where he’d been jotting down notes for a review of a new production of Waiting for Godot that he’d had the misfortune of suffering through that evening.

  Tall, blonde hair cut short with a bit of a curl around the edges, thin but not unattractively so, green dress that left her arms bare, hem above the knees. A bit on the plain side. She’d look better in black, he decided, with a neckline that revealed a hint of cleavage. Cobalt blue eyes, the flesh beneath puffy and tinged purple. Nose a bit crooked. Gives her a bit of character, he thought. Lips thin, a bit dry. Two words: lip balm.

  He had no idea who she was.

  “I don’t suppose you’re a waitress. I really could use another pot of hot tea.” It had been his custom during the last fifteen years to dine at the Purple Pagoda after seeing a play. And in all that time, the service hadn’t improved a jot. If anything, it had gotten worse. Oh, the food was good enough. His kung pao chicken —

  “I’m not a waitress, I’m Claire. Didn’t you hear what I said?”

  “Hmm? Oh, yes. It’s my fault you’re dead. Please accept my sincerest apologies.” He turned away from the woman and scooped up a forkful of chicken, vegetables, and rice — he didn’t eat with chopsticks, considered them an affectation when used by anyone not raised with them — and returned his attention to his notes. He was trying to decide on a headline for his review. Right now, it was a toss-up between DON’T BOTHER GODOT-ING TO SEE THIS ONE, FOLKS and WAITING FOR A GOOD PERFORMANCE.

  Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the woman reach for his glass of water. He turned, starting to get angry now. He’d been a theatre critic for two decades, and he was used to being confronted by no-talent actors and incompetent directors who felt they’d been done grievous injury by his critic’s poison pen — or in his case, poison keyboard. Usually, he enjoyed the confrontations, fed on them the same way a football player or a boxer feeds on the fury and energy of an opponent. But he was on deadline tonight; he needed to finish this review, go home, type it up, and e-mail it to the paper before midnight so it could be printed in tomorrow’s edition. He didn’t have time to play games with this woman, whoever she was.

  He intended to grab her wrist, prevent her from getting hold of the glass which, he knew from experience, she would no doubt empty onto his lap or perhaps over his head. After informing her that he’d just stopped her from committing a terrible cliché, he would tell her she’d made her point and ask her to leave him alone or else he’d be forced to summon the manager.

  But he didn’t do any of that. His hand froze in mid-reach, his fingertips only inches away from her flesh — flesh scarred by a trio of long, deep gashes that started just below the heel of her hand and extended halfway to the crook of her elbow. As he looked closer, he saw that the cuts were open, bloodless wounds, more like gill slits, really. As her fingers closed around his water glass and lifted it off the table, the gill-wounds parted a little, almost as if they were gasping for air. He expected to see strands of raw, red glistening muscle inside. But all he saw was blackness, as if she were filled with ink and shadows and things much, much darker, and much, much worse.

  She brought the water glass toward him, obviously intending to fulfill Morgan’s expectation and dump it on him. As she came nearer to completing her maneuver, the water grew cloudy, and crimson threads began to appear. A second later, the water had turned blood-red. No, had become blood, he was sure of it, sensed it instinctively. Thick, red so dark it was almost black. What else could it be?

  And then she was upending the glass, not over his lap or head, but rather onto his notepad. He expected the contents to fall in heavy gouts, hit the paper with sickening wet plops, splatter onto the table
cloth and his plate, blood staining white rice. But it was just water after all, though it did splatter and run and drip, and people were turning to look now, but he didn’t care because it was only water, thank Christ.

  The woman dropped the empty glass onto the table. Morgan looked at her wrist; the wounds were gone.

  “Jerk.” She turned, actually pivoted as if she were a soldier who’d just received a command to about face, and walked off. She didn’t storm, didn’t stalk or stamp — she just walked.

  Whatever the hell had just happened, Morgan was relieved it was over. He picked up his napkin, intending to blot his notepad dry.

  And there, smack dab in the middle of the page, right over one of the O’s in Godot, was a single, small dot of blood.

  He typed the last phrase — which was “irredeemable dreck” — saved his file, and opened his e-mail program. He wrote a quick message to the typesetting department (Please try not to mangle my prose too much this time), attached the review, and clicked on SEND. He was about to log off — after all, the time display in the lower right-hand corner of the screen said it was closing in on one a.m. He’d missed his deadline, but not by too much — when he noticed a tiny envelope icon at the bottom of the e-mail window. The envelope sported a tiny red flag that waved back and forth, back and forth, like a virtual metronome. He had mail.

  Unlike some folks, Morgan wasn’t particularly thrilled to receive e-mail. He had few living relatives and even fewer people that could be called friends, even if one were to grant the broadest and most liberal interpretation of the term. Junk mail, most likely. Someone wanting to tell him how he could make 10 K a month from the privacy of his own home.