Tales of Ordinary Madness (23 page)

THE BLANKET

I have not been sleeping well lately but this is not what I am getting at exactly. It is when I seem to go to sleep that it happens. I say “seem to go to sleep” because it is just that. More and more of late I appear to be alseep, I sense I am asleep and yet in my dream I dream of my room, I dream that I am sleeping and everything is just where I left it when I went to bed. The newspaper on the floor, an empty beer bottle on the dresser, my one goldfish circling slowly at the bottom of his bowl, all the intimate things that are as much a part of me as my hair. And many times when I am NOT asleep, in my bed, looking at the walls, drowsing, waiting to sleep, I often wonder: am I still awake or am I already asleep, dreaming of my room?

Things have been going bad lately. Deaths; horses running poorly; toothache; bleeding, other unmentionable things. I often get the feeling, well, how can it get worse? And then I think, well, you still have a room. You are not out in the street. There was a time when I did not mind the streets. Now I can not bear them. I can stand very little any more. I have been pin-pricked, lanced, yes even bombed ... so often, I simply want no more; I cannot stand up under it all.

Now here's the thing. When I go to sleep and dream I am in my room or whether it is actually happening and I am awake, I do not know, only things begin to happen. I notice that the closet door is open just a bit and I am sure it was not open a moment ago. Then I see that the opening in the closet door and the fan (it has been hot and I have the fan on the floor) are lined up in a direct point that ends at my head. With a sudden whirl I rage away from the pillow, and I say “rage” because I usually curse some most vile thing at “those” or “it” that is trying to remove me. Now I can hear you saying, “The lad is insane,” and indeed, I might be. But somehow I do not feel it is so. Although this is a very weak point in my favor, if a point at all. When I am out among people I am uncomfortable. They speak and have enthusiasms that are not a part of me. And yet it is when I am with them that I feel strongest. I get this idea: if they can exist on just these fragments of things, then I can exist too. But it is when I am alone and all comparisons must fall upon a comparison of myself against the walls, against breathing, against history, against my end, that the odd things begin to happen. I am evidently a weak man. I have tried to go to the bible, to the philosophers, to the poets, but for me, somehow, they have missed the point. They are talking about something else entirely. So long ago I stopped reading. I found some small help in drinking, gambling and sex, and in this way I was much like any man in the community, the city, the nation; the only difference being that I did not care to “succeed,” I did not want a family, a home, a respectable job and so forth. So there I was: neither an intellectual, an artist; nor did I have the saving roots of the common man. I hung like something labeled in between, and I guess, yes, that is the beginning of insanity.

And how vulgar I am! I reach in my anus and scratch. I have hemorrhoids, piles. It is better than sexual intercourse. I scratch until I bleed, until pain forces me to stop. Monkeys, apes, do this. Have you seen them in the zoos with their red bleeding asses?

But let me get on. Although if you would care for a bit of an oddity I tell you of the murder. These Dreams of the Room, let me call them, began some years ago. One of the first was in Philadelphia. I seldom worked then either and perhaps it was worrying about the rent. I was not drinking any more than a little wine and some beer, and sex and gambling had not yet come upon me with full force. Although I was living with a lady of the streets at that time, and it seemed odd to me that she wanted more sex or “love” as she called it when I did it, after indulging with 2 or 3 or more men that day and night, and although I was as well-traveled and well-jailed as any Knight of the Road, there was something about sticking it in there after all THAT ... it turned against me and I had a rough time. “Sweetie,” she'd say, “ya got to understand I LOVE you. With them it's nothing. You just don't KNOW a woman. A woman can let you in and you think you're there but you're not even in there. You, I let in.” All the talk didn't help much. It only made the walls closer.

And one night, say I was dreaming, say I wasn't, I awakened and she was in bed with me (or I dreamt I awakened), and I looked around and here were all these little tiny men, 30 or 40 of them wiring us both down in the bed, a kind of silver wire, and around and around us they went, under the bed, over the bed, with the wire. My lady must have sensed my nervousness. I saw her eyes open and she looked at me. “Be quiet!” I said. “Don't move! They are trying to electrocute us!” “WHO'S TRYING TO ELECTROCUTE US?” “God damn it, I told you to be QUIET! Be still now!” I let them work a while longer, pretending to be asleep. Then with all my strength I surged upward, breaking the wire, surprising them. I swung on one and missed. I don't know where they went but I got rid of them. “I just saved us from death,” I told my lady. “Kiss me, daddy,” she said.

Anyway, getting back to now. I have been getting up in the morning with these welts on my body. Blue marks. There is a particular blanket I have been watching. I think this blanket is closing in on me while I sleep. I awaken and sometimes it is up around my throat and I can hardly breathe. It is always the same blanket. But I have been ignoring it. I open a beer, split the Racing Form with my thumb, look out the window for rain and try to forget everything. I just want to live comfortably without trouble. I am tired. I do not want to imagine things or make up things.

And yet again that night the blanket bothers me. It moves like a snake. It takes various forms. It will not stay flat and wide across the bed. And the night after that. I kick it to the floor by the couch. Then I see it move. Ever so quickly I see this blanket move when my head seems turned away. I get up and turn on all the lights and get the newspaper and read, I read anything, the stock market, the latest styles in fashion, how to cook a squab, how to get rid of crab grass; letters to the editor, political columns, help wanted, the obituaries, etc. During this time the blanket does not move and I drink 3 or 4 bottles of beer, maybe more, and then it is daylight sometimes, and then it is easy to sleep.

The other night it happened. Or it began in the afternoon. Having had very little sleep I went to bed about 4 p.m. in the afternoon and when I awakened or dreamed of my room again it was dark and the blanket was up around my throat and it had decided that this was THE time! All pretense was over! It was after me, and it was strong, or rather I seemed rather weak, as if in a dream, and it took all I had to keep it from finally closing off my air, but it hung about me still, this blanket, making quick strong lunges, trying to find me off guard. I could feel the sweat coming down my forehead. Who would ever believe such a thing? Who would ever believe such a damn thing? A blanket coming to life and trying to murder one? Nothing is believed until it happens the FIRST time – like the atom bomb or the Russians sending a man into space or God coming down to earth and then being nailed to a cross by that which He created. Who is to believe all the things that are coming? The last snuff of fire? The 8 or 10 men and women in some space ship, the New Ark, to another planet to plant the weary seed of man all over again? And who was the man or woman to believe that this blanket was trying to strangle me? No one, not by a damn sight! And this made it worse, somehow. Although I had little sensitivity toward what the masses thought of me, I did, somehow want them to realize the blanket. Odd? Why was that? And odd, I had often thought of suicide, but now that a blanket wanted to help me, I fought against it.

I finally wrung the thing off and threw it to the floor and turned on the lights. That would end it! LIGHT, LIGHT, LIGHT!

But no, I saw it still twitch or move an inch or 2 there under the light. I sat down and watched it carefully. It moved again. A good foot this time. I got up and began to get dressed, walking wide around the blanket to find shoes, stockings, etc. Then dressed, I didn't know what to do. The blanket was still now. Perhaps a walk in the night air. Yes. I would talk to the newsboys on the corner. Although that was bad too. All the newsboys in the neighborhood were intellectuals: they read G. B. Shaw and O. Spengler and Hegel. And they weren't newsboys: they were 60 or 80 or 1000 years old. Shit. I slammed the door and walked out.

Then when I got to the top of the stairway something made me turn and look down the hall. You are right: the blanket was following me, moving in snake-movements, folds and shadows at the front of it making head, mouth, eyes. Let me say that as soon as you begin to believe that a horror is a horror, then it finally becomes LESS horror. For a moment I thought of my blanket like an old dog that didn't want to be alone without me, it had to follow. But then I got the thought that this dog, this blanket, was out to kill, and then I quickly moved down the steps.

Yes, yes, it came after me! It moved as quickly as it wanted over and down the stairs. Soundless. Determined.

I lived on the third floor. Down it followed. To the second. To the first. My first thought was to run outside but it was very dark outside, a quiet and empty neighborhood far from the large avenues. The best idea was to get next to some people to test the reality of the situation. It took at LEAST 2 votes to make reality real. Artists who have worked years ahead of their time have found that out, and people of dementia and so-called hallucination have found it out too. If you are the only one to see a vision they either call you a Saint or a madman.

I knocked on the door of apartment 102. Mick's wife came to the door. “Hello, Hank,” she said, “come on in.”

Mick was in bed. He was all puffed up, his ankles twice their size, his belly larger than a pregnant woman. He had been a heavy drinker and his liver had given out. He was full of water. He was waiting on an empty bed in the Veteran's hospital.

“Hi, Hank,” he said, “did you bring some beer?”

“Now, Mick,” said his old lady, “you know what the doctor said: no more, not even beer.”

“What's the blanket for, kid?” he asked me.

I looked down. The blanket had leaped up over my arm to gain an unnoticed entrance.

“Well,” I said, “I have too many. Thought you could use one.”

I tossed the thing over on the couch.

“You didn't bring a beer?”

“No, Mick.”

“I sure could use a beer.”

“Mick,” said his old lady.

“Well, it's hard to cut it cold after all these years.”

“Well, maybe one,” said his old lady. “I'll run down to the store.”

“That's o.k.,” I said, “I'll get some out of my refrigerator.”

I got up and walked toward the door, watching the blanket. It did not move. It sat there looking at me from the couch.

“Be right back,” I said, and closed the door.

I guess, I thought, it's my mind. I carried the blanket with me and imagined it was following me. I should mix more with people. My world is too narrow.

I went upstairs and put 3 or 4 bottles of beer in a paper sack and then started down. I was about at the 2nd floor when I heard some screaming, a curse, and then a gunshot. I ran down the remaining steps and into 102. Mick was standing there all puffed up holding a .32 magnum with just a little smoke trailing up from it. The blanket was on the couch where I had left it.

“Mick, you're crazy!” his old lady was saying.

“That's right,” he said, “the minute you went into the kitchen that blanket, so help me, that blanket leaped for the door. It was trying to turn the knob, trying to get out but it couldn't get a grip. After I recovered from the first shock I got out of bed and moved toward it and when I got close it leaped from the knob, it leaped for my throat and tried to strangle me!”

“Mick's been sick,” said his old lady, “been taking shots. He sees things. He used to see things when he was drinking. He'll be all right once they get him to the hospital.”

“God damn it!” he screamed standing there all puffed up in his nightshirt, “I tell you the thing tried to kill me and lucky the old magnum was loaded and I ran to the closet and got it and when it came at me again I shot it. It crawled away. It crawled back to the couch and there it is now. You can see the hole where I put the bullet through it. That's no imagination!”

There was a knock on the door. It was the manager. “Too much noise in here,” he said. “No television or radio or loud noise after 10 p.m.,” he said.

Then he went away.

I walked over to the blanket. Sure there was a hole in it. The blanket seemed very still. Where is the vital place in a living blanket?

“Jesus, let's have a beer,” said Mick, “I don't care if I die or not.”

His old lady opened 3 bottles and Mick and I lit up a couple of Pall Malls.

“Hey, kid,” he said, “take that blanket with you when you leave.”

“I don't need it, Mick,” I said, “you keep it.”

He took a big drink of beer. “Take that God damned thing out of here!”

“Well, it's DEAD, isn't it?” I asked him.

“How the hell do I know?”

“Do you mean to say you believe this nonsense about the blanket, Hank?”

“Yes, mam.”

She threw back her head and laughed. “Boy, a couple of crazy bastards, if I ever saw any.” Then, she added, “You drink too, don't you, Hank?”

“Yes, mam.”

“Heavy?”

“Sometimes.”

“All I say is take that god damned blanket OUT of HERE!”

I took a big drink of beer and wished it were vodka. “O.k., pal,” I said, “if you don't want the blanket, I'll take it.”

I folded it into squares and put it over my arm.

“Good night, folks.”

“Good night, Hank, and thanks for the beer.”

I moved up the stairway and the blanket was very still. Maybe the bullet had done it. I walked into my place and threw it in a chair. Then I sat a while looking at it. Then I got an idea.