Authors: Jeremy C. Shipp
My wife laughs. “We’ve seen you every night, Tomas.”
Jade touches the back of my head. I remember. My wife is right. I’ve dreamt of them hundreds of times since they left the world.
I want to say, “I love you,” but for now I vomit out the window, and leave a trail of green behind us. A green that eats away at the asphalt and seeps deep into the ground.
That was me.
Now he’s gone.
Baby Edward
There’s more than one way to kill a dream.
My dream is a baby boy named Edward and he’s not allowed in the house. He lives in the VW Bus in my backyard. I keep the windows closed and the doors locked, which doesn’t serve any real purpose, obviously. But I like to keep the key on a chain around my neck. I like to wear it under my dress shirt, coat, and tie. When I first put it on in the morning, the metal’s cold against my chest. By the time I’m tapping at my keyboard, inventing new ways to politely coerce resources from suspecting citizens, I’m cold on the inside. Anytime I want, I can put the key in the lock, twist, and end this. But I don’t.
You might ask, where’s the mother during all this? Well, I hate to burst your predictable bubble, but there is no mother.
I made Edward.
And he’s mine.
Mine.
*
Harboring resentment is a great way to meet women. Try it. Sit down in your least favorite bar, let your eyes glaze over, frown, and put up your walls. The kind of walls you’d need to contain a plague, because most likely, that’s what you are.
Now, see who comes knocking.
“Hi,” Annabelle says.
I’m not psychic. She’s wearing a nametag.
Well, maybe I am a little psychic.
“You’re Ed,” she says.
“How do you know that?” It’s ridiculous, but I look down at my shirt to make sure I’m not wearing a nametag also.
“I remember you,” she says. “About ten years ago I was visiting San Francisco and I heard you sing. We talked for about thirty seconds before I left. I wanted to talk with you more, but I was intimidated and shy. It’s strange. I’m not usually good at remembering faces.”
“Why did you want to talk to me?”
“Because your songs touched me, Ed. I told you that. Remember?”
I don’t.
Honestly, I don’t even remember being in San Francisco.
“I remember,” I say.
“You don’t have to lie to me.”
“Sorry.”
She laughs. Maybe the way I used to laugh before my VW became a cage.
“Do you ever get the feeling that a storm is coming, a bad one, and you hope to God you’re wrong, and then you are wrong and you’re disappointed?” This is sort of what I want to say, except I want to scream it without any words. Gutturally. Instead, we talk about her job as a manicurist, or stuntwoman, or whatever it is she’s saying.
*
If you heard the crying I’m listening to, you’d get a portable hacksaw from your basement too. You’d cut a hole in the side of the Bus so that you could insert a bottle.
An hour ago, I was in the bathroom, minding my own perverted business, and it started.
Actually, I’m guessing it began a while ago, before I heard any of the sobs. It’s one of those cries that starts out silent and then bursts. The buildup has been going on for months. Maybe even years.
After my hard-on melted away, I tried burying my head in a pillow. I tried earplugs. I tried television, ice cream, a good book, a bad book. I tried cleaning and remembering my childhood and burning some old photographs. I tried driving around in my new BMW and keeping an eye out for the homeless.
I even tried not giving a shit.
Nothing works.
So I’m here, with this bottle and formula and cold sweat.
My head is killing me. I feel like fighting back.
“Just drink the damn milk,” I say.
The crying stops.
I hear sucking.
The relief you expect me to feel is really nausea and a trick-fart that turns out to be quite a bit of diarrhea.
Good thing I’m not wearing my good pajamas.
*
The secret to a man’s heart isn’t food or sex. Annabelle and I have already shared those together, but they’re not what keeps me from running away.
That’s what I do, by the way. I run and I hide, the way I did when I was a kid, except it’s not a game anymore. At least not a fun one.
I used to drive, searching for a place where I could be, for lack of a less cheesy sentiment, happy. A place where I could smell my lyrics in the air, and other such nonsense. I searched for a magical place. But I ended up here, of course, because real magic doesn’t exist.
Enough of my bitching.
“How did you lose your leg?” I say.
“Trampoline accident.” She pauses. “Sorry, that’s a stupid joke.”
“No it’s not. I didn’t know you were joking, so I didn’t laugh.”
“How could I lose my leg on a trampoline?”
“I don’t know. It could get caught on the side.”
“And then what? The force of the jump rips me in two?”
“I don’t know.”
She laughs. Maybe the way I used to before I started taking drugs. The legal kind, anyway.
“It was a car accident,” she says.
“I’m sorry.”
“You probably don’t know this, but as soon as I said car accident, your face released a lot of tension.”
“It did?”
“I used to be offended when I saw that in people. But instead of getting pissed off all the time, I decided to try to understand what was going on. I may be wrong, but my theory is that people don’t like unexpected tragedy. Car accidents cause over a million deaths every year, and it doesn’t matter, because it’s normal. Like war is normal. Like malnutrition in Africa. Like…is that a dying animal outside?”
No. “I’ll go check.”
*
I present the food on my flattened palm, the way I did at the petting zoo when I was a kid. The first time I ever fed a goat, I was terrified that he’d chomp off my fingers, and I’d never be able to play piano again.
A similar terror molests my neck, my back, my stomach.
Ed won’t drink milk anymore.
“Just eat the damn cereal,” I say.
The difference between this feeding and the one at the petting zoo is that this time my fears are justified. Tiny sharp teeth rip open my flesh and clamp down on my bone. I scream and yank as hard as I can, but only manage to further mangle my index finger.
Ed yanks back, and pulls my arm deeper into the hole I cut in the side of the Bus. We play tug-of-war for a while.
“Let me go!” I say.
He doesn’t.
I kick the Bus as hard as I can, and it must startle him, because he lets go.
I kick the Bus again before walking away.
Minutes later, I’m in bed all patched up.
“What happened to you?” Annabelle says.
“I accidentally smashed my finger with the car door.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. Relieved.
*
Annabelle whistles while putting on her leg. She’s tone-deaf.
“Do you ever feel it?” I say.
“What?” she says.
“Your leg. The missing one. What’s that called when you can feel it?”
“Phantom limb. Yeah. My phantom used to be really painful. It felt like my leg was on fire almost all the time.”
“I’m sorry.” There’s no relief in my face.
“Nothing really helped until I started using the mirror box. It’s exactly what it sounds like. A box and mirrors. I put my good leg in one hole and my phantom in the other. With the mirror, it looked like I had two good legs. So I moved the phantom in sync with the reflection of my good leg and tricked part of my brain into believing I was controlling the phantom. The reason why my phantom hurt in the first place was because my mind considered it stuck. I had to set it free.”
By now we’re in the kitchen. The key against my chest feels colder than usual. Or maybe I’m running a fever.
“What happened to all the food in the fridge?” Annabelle says.
“I accidentally left the door open and a lot of it went bad.” I pause. “No, that’s a lie. I can’t keep lying to you. I’ll show you what’s going on.”
“Good,” she says, as if she’s been waiting for these words. Maybe she has.
I take her hand, and lead her out of my present, into my past. We walk over the neatly-trimmed lawn, past the pawn-shaped fountain and the gnome-infested garden, to the corner of the yard exploding with weeds and wildflowers. It may only take a few moments to get here, but it’s not an easy path to travel with someone else. I squeeze Annabelle’s hand to keep myself from running away. She doesn’t complain.
“In there,” I say. I point. “He’s in there.”
The windows of the Bus are tinted, so she leans in close, and cups her hands around her eyes.
She’s looking in more than a car, you know. I lived in this car. And even died a little.
When she returns to face me, she says, “It’s just a guitar.”
“You’re a guitar,” I say.
“What?”
“Sorry. I was being defensive.”
“It’s OK.”
There’s nothing wrong with her eyes, you know. She’s just not looking the right way.
I want to tell her about Edward. I want to take off my bandages and show her my wounds. I want to let her hold my key. I would do these things, but there’s a big problem.
I’m not on stage. A hundred thousand fans aren’t singing the words with me. I’m only Ed.
So we go back inside.
Through the tinted glass, I see a dark form scampering about the seats. He’s growling.
“No,” I say. “No more food, Edward.”
But he’s not a good boy, like I used to be. He doesn’t know when to stand down. So he slams his head against the wall, over and over.
“Stop that, Edward,” I say.
He yelps with every blow.
Blood thrashes my innards.
“I’m not going to help you anymore, Edward,” I say. “You’re nothing but a nuisance.”
He won’t stop. I hear cracking.
I punch the window with my bad hand and scream.
At this point I realize that he’s not trying to get my attention. He’s after Annabelle.
When she peeked in before, he must have seen the kindness in her eyes. He knows she would feed him.
“It’s no use, Edward,” I say. “Annabelle slept through the last earthquake, and she’ll sleep through you.”
I smile, because I think I have him. I think, for a few fleeting moments, that he’s going to lie on the seat, close his eyes, and suck his thumb.
Instead, he begins devouring the seats. His sharp little teeth tear at the upholstery, lacerate the metal, mutilate the seatbelts. He chews and swallows. Inhales.
“You’re not getting any nutrients from that, Edward,” I say.
He doesn’t care.
*
If your girlfriend surprises you with a romantic candle-lit picnic, you can’t tell her it’s a horrible idea. You can’t tell her that the blanket is too close to the weeds and the Bus and you-know-who. I guess you could tell her all this, but she’s gazing at you, tickling inside you with her phantom toes.
So you say, “Thank you, Annabelle.”
I see him staring through the window, drooling. He smiles, and I attempt to hide my fear with a smile of my own.
“I wish I could see the world through your eyes, Ed,” Annabelle says.
“Why would you say that?” I say.
“Because you see such beauty around you.”
“What I see is grotesque. I don’t mean you.”
“Your songs aren’t grotesque.”
“My songs aren’t about the world. They’re about the world in my head.”
“What’s the difference?”
An enormous hand crashes through the side of the Bus and wraps around Annabelle’s torso.
She looks at me with relief on her face, as if she’s always known it would come to this. Maybe she has.
As Edward pulls her into the darkness, I dive forward and try to grab her foot, but of course it’s only a phantom, and my hand passes right through.
“Let her go, Edward!” I say.
I try to climb in through the hole, but a blubbery leg pushes me backwards. I punch, kick, and bite, the way I never did when I was a kid. I was a good boy.
It doesn’t help.
I try to yank the chain off my neck, but it doesn’t break, so I lift it off instead. I put the key in the lock, twist. It’s time to end this.
Immediately a pudgy arm thrusts out of the driver’s door and causes me to tumble onto the picnic candles. I go for the passenger door. This time I dodge the arm that darts at me. I open the door to the backseat and get kicked in the shoulder.
All of Edward’s arms and legs hang outside of the Bus now, like he’s some headless turtle.
I lift the hood.
There he is. He’s eaten the engine. I know that’s not all he’s eaten.
“Open your mouth, Edward,” I say. “Spit her out.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Spit her out!”
I reach down and try to open his mouth with my fingers, wounds and all. He won’t even budge.
When I try to use my key, he bites it in half.
I slam the hood shut and return to the picnic blanket to think. Part of it’s on fire, but I let it burn.
My head is killing me. I feel like surrendering.
I feel like lying on the grass, closing my eyes, and sucking my thumb.
Instead, I walk behind the Bus. Edward’s penis dangles out of the exhaust pipe, and I open the back door. I know what I have to do.
If Edward won’t let me in, then I’ll force myself inside.
I do.
*
My journey gets a lot easier when I realize I don’t have to fight anymore. It’s time to let go. My body surges forward, twisting and turning through the intestines, but it doesn’t matter which way I go, because I’m going to end up with Annabelle.
No matter what.
She may be shredded to pieces, of course, depending on whether or not Edward swallowed her whole. I may only have a few moments to grieve over her remains before the stomach acid melts my flesh.
And that’s OK.
Finally, I reach the stomach. I reach Annabelle. She’s alive.
We embrace, and stay that way.
Edward starts crawling, the Bus like armor around him.
The movement gently rocks me and Annabelle from side to side.
It’s warm in here. Comfortable. Intimate.
I feel closer to Annabelle than I’ve ever felt to anyone, including myself. But we don’t speak, me and her.