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SECOND
PLACE
Nightmare
By Fred Venturini
Patoka, Illinois
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. “Miles
to go,” Jacob thinks, probing further. The woods
are also syrup-thick, with droves of underbrush intertwined
in a circle of protest. They want to protect something—a
secret. Jacob knows that it’s an evil secret,
even darker than the woods themselves. So he probes.
Despite the thickness, despite the sheer impossibility
of passage, Jacob finds himself in a clearing and unscathed.
The tent is lovely in many ways due to sheer size—a
large, domed tent that’s beige in color, drab
and moody. The trees stay away from it. So does the
sun. There is no sun, there is no sky, only tent. Only
the doorway. Jacob knows that the man is gone, the
main occupant of the tent, but the pain he inflicts
remains. The man’s handiwork is there, and Jacob
can’t help himself now. He wants to see it.
The tent invites him inside, and Jacob sees the people
with no faces. At least not human faces. Not normal
human faces. One face is stretched, his facial flesh
bolted to the clasps of a basketball hoop. He wears
a suit, and the flesh is drum tight, but not torn.
He looks Chinese because of the stretching—his
eyes are sleek and narrow, with a clear fluid dripping
from the corners that is too thick to be tears. The
corners of his mouth have massive sores, and look on
the verge of ripping away. The man’s eyes dart
towards Jacob—emerald green, fully aware, loaded
with pain and confusion.
There are others. One woman’s face is almost
completely gone. Her eyes are left though, two jewels
jammed in the center of the corded mass of meat that’s
left. She smiles, and her mouth is a black hole.
One person’s head, and Jacob can’t tell
if it’s a he or a she, is completely gone. Completely
gone. The stump that’s left at the top of the
torso is laying on—a tree stump. There is blood
all over the tree stump, and a gloppy mess dripping
from the edges onto the roots. Beside it was a sledgehammer.
Jacob wished it was an axe. An axe wouldn’t have
been so messy, it wouldn’t have turned the bone
into splinters. The maggots and the bone splinters
look strangely alike in the throbbing mass.
Near the top of the tent, people hang down, far above
him, like a massive meatlocker. Fluids drip—some
crimson red, some black, some Jacob just ignores, but
none of them hit him. Deep inside, Jacob knows that
someone is behind this. Someone is at the center of
the gruesomeness inside the tent, and he wants to run.
But at the same time, he wants to see that justice
is served.
There is a buzzing noise, and Jacob observes the no
smoking sign in the tent, flashing on and off. On and
off. On and off.
He leaves, feeling the man about to return to his handiwork.
Outside of the tent, there are places to hide, behind
limbs and fallen trees. Jacob can see a group of helpers.
Somehow he knows that they are helpers. They sense
him, and they chase him. Jacob has an excellent headstart,
but they gain. He wants to run as fast as he can, knowing
that he is a football star, a state-class sprinter.
But they gain. They don’t even run, they limber,
they saunter, they hop. They are creatures in the form
of men, with greenish flesh that sticks to their faces
like charred pieces of paper. Snottish flesh, skinny
legs, and long arms. And they’re so fast.
Or he’s so slow. Trying his best to escape, they
are close. He can feel these creatures breathing in
wet, sticky grunts, just behind him. Jacob turns back,
and is surprised to see they are so close. He is surprised
to see that even though he runs, he is walking. Now
in the teeth and dark of the woods, he scarcely moves
fast enough for the branches to notice—they drag
slowly across his face like a the fingers of a lover.
Somehow, Jacob knows his pursuers are the man’s
former victims. The man did this to them, and now they
want to help him, protect him. They are upon Jacob
now, jawls hanging open and ready to latch on, and
Jacob thinks it’s for the best. At least the
man won’t get to torture him, to change him.
They’ll just kill him. He closes his eyes—
And opens them. There are police, his saviors. The
tent is gone. The woods were lovely, dark and deep,
but they are gone. He stands in an alley, with three
cops. Two of them laugh, the other one, who is Sandy
Smith (Jacob knows this) is uneasy. Sandy Smith can
sense the horror, the man. He can sense that something
is very wrong. Even though the others talk and laugh,
Jacob cannot hear what they are saying. He can only
walk along with them, and look at the gaunt face of
shock on worn by Sandy contrasted by the broad smiles
of the other two officers. Sandy can sense it . . .
he can sense it, and Jacob knows this.
It isn’t as bad as Jacob thought. There is only
part of a person’s head near the gutter, just
a large piece of pink flesh with a swatch of scalp
hanging from the side. Sandy wretches in the gutter.
The other two officers continue to laugh. They’re
having a coffee, the cup steaming in their hands, and
don’t even see what’s wrong with Sandy.
They surely don’t see Jacob. They laugh at the
bowl shaped chunk in the gutter. They laugh and laugh
. . . and laugh.
Sandy takes his revolver out of his holster, and shoots
the other two officers dead. He’s crying now,
and Jacob is relieved to see that Sandy doesn’t
see him. From somewhere, Sandy finds a shotgun. Even
though there’s enough bullets left in the revolver,
Jacob knows. He knows that the Policeman’s Farewell
is just as meticulous and ritualistic as Hari Kari
in Japan. In the middle of the empty street, Sandy
Smith takes off his boot, and his sock. He’s
crying. He puts the two barrels in his mouth, and with
his toe . . .
The gunshot forces Jacob to blink. When his eyes open,
there’s Sandra Smith. His love. She’s laughing.
Jacob looks around, and the whole cafeteria is laughing.
They’re laughing at him, because he’s naked.
He’s naked and his crank is little. That’s
what he hears them say, his crank is little and Sandra
says she can’t believe she ever sucked that little
crank. Jacob feels the tears welling up, and he runs.
He’s shocked to find that with his speed, he
can’t outrun the mob of gradeschoolers. He’s
running as fast as he can, yet he finds himself walking,
unable to gain momentum and speed.
“
Wake up.”
The no smoking sign continues to flash. The seat belt
sign flashes next to it. Jacob is comforted—he
looks out the window and sees an infinite pillow of
clouds, as far as the eye can see. The wing of the
plane is steady, and unoccupied. There is no one on
the wing on the plane. There is nothing on the wing
of the plane.
He drinks his complimentary water. “Must’ve
been asleep,” he thinks. The sign continues to
buzz and flash, buzz and flash. Something isn’t
right, he thinks. The person next to him is sleeping.
Everyone is sleeping. With a massive jar, the plane
begins to descend. “Ladies and gentleman, your
captain. Die. Die. Die,” is all he hears. They
clear the pillow of clouds, and Jacob sees the Earth
. . . but not quite. There is fire, fire as far as
the eye can see. The entire world is on fire, from
sea to shining sea. Die. Die. Die. The captain continues,
his voice monotone and flavored with static. The flames
lap up, hoping to catch the airplane. Too late, the
airplane is trying to catch them, shuttling straight
down, hoping up on all hope to take oblivion in a passionate
embrace.
Wake up.
Jacob doesn’t, realizing now that it’s
his voice that pleads with him. There are the two cops,
only they’re alive. Sandy isn’t with them.
How could he be? He blew his head off. There is a lady,
and they are all in her apartment.
“
Two for each limb,” she says. “That’s
the only way, two on each limb.”
Jacob looks down, and sees his own badge. He follows
the two police out the door, and into the street. There
is light on the street, but not from the sun. There
is no sun. Only the man, and Jacob feels this. Worse
yet, the man feels them.
“
He feels us!” Jacob cries, even as the man comes
into view. The man from the tent. The torturer, the
evil. He has long black hair, but the front half of
his scalp is shaved clean. His eyes are pure white.
He is smiling. His teeth are black. He mouths the word
. . . Jacob. The word escapes his lips in a low hiss.
Sandy Smith comes from nowhere and tackles him. Jacob
is frozen, and soon, Sandy rolls over and there is
a mess of blood. The man spits out Sandy’s tongue.
“
Ooh o eah weim,” Sandy cries. “Two on each
limb,” Jacob thinks. “The son of a bitch
is that strong, two on each limb!” But they are
outnumbered. Soon, the man will be upon him. “Jacob,” the
man says, rising. He approaches, and Jacob is frozen.
He cannot escape, can’t find the will to run.
Wake up!
The cry comes as a shock to Jacob, and thankfully,
delivers him from evil. He heard it . . . wake up.
The man is nowhere. The man is forgotten.
Jacob only knows . . . he only knows that his parents
are dead. His sister is dead. His uncle is dead. He
feels their death inside of him, the pain, the shock,
the grief.
Just a dream . . . a nightmare. Wake up.
He’s had them before. Every variety, sometime
or another. When he wakes up, everything will be fine.
For two minutes, with the images fresh in his mind,
he’ll wonder aloud if his family is dead, where
the man is . . . and then they’ll be gone, like
flash memory in his new MP3 player, it’ll be
overwritten with the need to eat and piss and go to
school.
Wake up.
He tells himself again. He wonders why conscious mixes
with dream, why he seems so aware. Why it seems so
real.
Clear.
Jacob is scared to the very core. It is not his voice
this time.
Defib is ready. Clear out people!
He feels something, but he doesn’t.
Clear!
At once, Jacob knows all the reasons for all the ways
things are, he knows he is dying, but he doesn’t
know what is real and what is nightmare. Mostly because
the tent-dweller is behind him. The stretcher of faces
is searching for him, lusting for him. It feels so
real, and Jacob can’t run. Can’t move.
He can only wait.
Jacob hopes upon all hope that the darkness will find
him first.
Copyright (c) 2003 for the
author, all rights reserved. |
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