Horrific Nightmare Action (2 of 2)

Been meaning to finish this. So:

Men, boiler suits and masks – hammers, rope. More and more people screaming. Breaking into the flats, pulling the people out, dragging them. Into the courtyard. Pushing their bodies into the coffins.

I’m watching. I think: oh shit I have to protect my grandmother. Pushing them into coffins and hammering the lids shut with massive iron nails. Up onto my feet, armchair falling over.

One of the teams is near the flat, the leader looks my way
looks right at me
points
to say: 'that one'
and they set down the hammers
start walking over
walking across the courtyard of coffins
walking through harsh sunlight
sound of screaming is everywhere
but not too fast
an assured, practical stride
four or five of them
coming over

I run to the door and somehow it's hanging open. Somehow they're closer than they should be. The first one is just three or four steps away. Blank-faced mask, reaching out.

No time to shut the door. Got to save my grandmother.
I turn and run into the flat, and that's when everything
I mean everything
explodes with wriggling, crawling
there are old people climbing out from everywhere
out from inside the furniture
under the carpet
out from behind the pictures on the wall
climbing out of vases, climbing down out of the lampshades
they have these leering eyes
broken teeth
naked
all of them are naked, they have drooping flesh and liver spots
matted hair
veins under their skin
purple/black flesh from bad circulation

I run through the lounge, leaping up from the limbs clutching up from the floor, amazed - HORRIFIED! - by this. In the hallway doors are bursting wide, they're falling out in twined masses, piling onto the floor.
I scream. I turn back - the men are stepping inside, the first man is staring at me across the writhing, transformed room. His eyes are made of shining metal.
I don't have a choice, I run into the hall. I have to step on some of them. They moan. They are hard to step on, they're all in motion, churning, it's a sexual thing - OH GOD, they're having SEX with each other, or they're trying to.
The rooms have moved. The whole layout of the flat has changed, I open the door to what should be my grandmother's bedroom, but it's a toilet and two of them are pushed up, rutting against the sink and watching me in the mirror.
I turn - metal eyes at the end of the hall. Climb over more of them, they're moaning now, and here's a side-hall which is free of them, it's empty, then a corner, a small room. A washing machine. A big wooden door. Beside the door, my third grade teacher.
My teacher pulls her top off, revealing large naked breasts.
She points at the door, a gatekeeper from an old, old story.
She says: "Your father is waiting for you."
The panic is gone. A strange silence has settled, it's almost like peace but it's not. A hum of expectancy.
I step up to the door. My teacher's breasts are heavy, pale, round. She smiles.
"Go in."

I open the door. It's a bedroom. Not my grandmother's.
It's too late to save her anyway.
Ornate. A four-poster bed, drapes and tapestries on the walls. Antique furniture. A large gold-coloured statue - an eagle taking flight with something dead in its claws. On a side table, a smaller sculpture of two dogs tearing at each other's throats. The whole place has a feeling of opulence, dread.
Opposite the door is the most important thing - a cheval glass. A full-figure mirror. Ornate golden frame, fashioned into a series of animals eating each other. This has been a recurring image for me, both before and since. Chains of animals, all eating each other. Here, looking at this mirror, I think: this is Nazi stuff. Evil.
I look at the mirror. I guess I must have taken a step forward because she's closed the door behind me. The hum is actually in my ears now, humming and growing louder. The reflection in the mirror is cloudy, I can only vaguely see myself, my own body. The glass is rippling, like water. The glass is on fire. Those invisible flames which shimmer, warp your vision. My reflection is moving, stepping closer.
What did she mean "My father is waiting"? My father?
It isn't my reflection. Something's coming out. Something breaks the surface up high, up at the top - two points, horns. Far apart, more and more of them. And now I can see fingers, emerging to grip the frame, which is on fire.
More and more of the horns, my god they are huge.
And a hairy knee, a leg, a cloven hoof planted onto the carpet, which blackens, scorched.
I'm thinking: MY FATHER?
When this thing comes out, when I see its face, some part of me will be destroyed, utterly. It doesn't matter that it's only a dream. When I see this thing's face, it'll be over.

Moon Over Desert

Log off, shut down.

How is it possible that it's 11 o'clock?

Lights out. These terrible fluorescent lights. All day, all evening. The feeling lingers on the skin afterwards. Unhealthy.

The long walk out. Office to the left, empty. Big window on the right looking down onto the facility floor.

Dark down there. Up here, more of those fluoro lights, one after another, steady pulse, like driving a car - the "cat's eyes" on a dark road, the overhead lamps.

Door release. Elevator. Another door release. Deserted lobby. Footsteps on the hard floor. Picture window, glass door, orange sodium lights of the carpark.

Warm night air.

Dead pigeon on the asphalt beside door. Blinking. Nudging it with a foot.
What's that supposed to do, bring it back to life?

Tired. Warm night. Car park, mostly empty. Three or four cars, and there's the Audi, lonely out there on the far side. Footsteps, heels sharp against asphalt. Slight breeze. Black shape - security guard, walking along the side of the facility. Hand lifted in acknowledgement.

'Night,' he says.

'Night.'

Stating the obvious.

Pausing for a second once the door's unlocked. So tired. A tired pause. There's the moon, full moon tonight. Or not quite. Almost.

Driving.

Voice on the radio. 'Not immediately apparent,' it says. 'Whatever relevance, whether any of it is in fact relevant.'

Streetlights, a steady pulse. Wall on the left, screening out the other plants, the other facilities. A slope on the right, down to the train tracks, the desert. Rocks and plants scattered around down there.

Graffiti on the wall, vivid pink: "ASHNOPI".

'Obviously have a better picture as it plays out,' says the voice.

'Ashnopi,' he says. Trying out the sound of the word.

He notices something out of the corner of his eye - a train, down there in the valley, coming up from behind. Lights at the front, big ugly bull of a locomotive, then car after car after car after car, rolling out beneath the almost-full moon. Beautiful sight.

Thinks about the train, those cars. Thinks about tramps maybe riding in the cars. A young guy, runaway, looking up at the moon. What the hell, give him a musical instrument, a guitar. No. A trumpet. A muffled trumpet.

Eyes back on the road, but shooting glances down at the train. A rush of feeling, thinking about that kid. The melody he's playing out over the train's percussion. Excited, wistful, jealous. You could do anything with that freedom. You could do anything. Just your instrument, a little money, half a pack of cigarettes. Maybe a girl somewhere, or maybe that's too much. The girl would weigh it down, he thinks. Okay, so there's a girl but maybe things didn't work out between you, you needed time to think, get out into the open spaces.

Christ, so fucking tired.

There it goes. The tracks veer away from the highway as they reach the outskirts together.

The highway carries on to the left of the residential zone, runs close beside it, there are exit ramps and entry ramps connecting it like veins.

The car goes left, follows the grey bloodstream.

The train rolls right, into a wide shallow valley. Surburbs sprawling away on the left, some more off on the other side, further away. The valley and the tracks rolling like a wide river between them, a continuation of the desert which spreads out on all sides of the little streets and houses.

Any big space will give you a spooky feeling after dark. The desert, the ocean. Outer space.

Locomotive pushing forward like an angry jaw. Yellow and black stripes on its face. Huge lamps, loud white light. ROARING. The engine, the wheels against the tracks.

There is a car with its door hanging open.

A broken latch. Momentum tugging at the door, a little further aside, hour after hour, wind and motion shifting the cargo inside. Inch by inch, until this, a crate falls out. Crate slipping out of the train as it rolls through the valley. Tumbling out. Hitting the ground, rolling, smashing to pieces.

The train rolling on. Regardless.

Clattering, shaking. Car after car. Car after car. The broken crate beside the tracks. The wood shifting, pushed from inside. Clattering. Car after car. Gentle pushing, edging the splinters away. Creating a gap. Large enough. Clattering, shaking. A feeler emerging, testing. A tendril. Probing the dry earth. Moist, dark.

The black clay.

Car after car. Car after car.

So fucking long, the train. Always like this.

The locomotive already out of sight to the right of her, what is that, North, and to her left you still can't see the end of it, it's like a wall running along the valley, "a wall between them", her place and his, and that's perfect actually. That says it all, right there.

Tilting the wine glass up to her lips, except it's empty.

Walking back from the picture window to the table, the bottle. A refill. Warmer than the last glass, the flavour not as sharp, sweeter now. Sickly sweet. Like rotting flowers - HAH.

The next song starting. Track list on the back of the case, listening, pacing.
Was it this one? The woman starts singing again.

She sings: 'I'll remember FOR you'.

And: 'can't take it away'. Was it this one?

Pacing. Clock on the shelf. How is it possible it's 11:30?

Here we go, yes, it's this one. She's singing: 'Everything you've done, everything'. YES. That's it. Tipping the glass to her lips, filling her mouth with rotten sweetness.

The woman sings: 'the things you say / you're a fucking liar'.

Nodding, swallowing the wine. Exactly, yes. Thank God for this woman, the singer. She's a genius. That's exactly it, EXACTLY the feeling. Nodding, listening, pacing.

Wheels turning fast, round and round. Heat and momentum. Another refill, last of the bottle.

Song finishing. Walking over to the player, stopping it.

Thinks about playing it again. No. Or about calling him. What's the time? 11:33. Looks out at the valley. The train's gone. Just the streetlamps on the other side of the valley, lights in some of the houses. Yeah, some of those houses with the lights still on.

Ought to be able to tell which one is his, see if the lights are on, but the wheels turning fast and fuck it, if he's asleep she'll wake him, he fucking deserves it. Standing still for a moment, middle of the room. Are we doing this? Blue light from the fish tank. Hypnotised for a moment, watching them drift back and forth.

These god damned fish, she thinks.

She reaches for the phone, punches the speed dial. Back to the window.

A second of silence, as the call is relayed through dozens of miles of fibre optic cable, then routed back to the other side of the valley. Then a steady pulse in her ear, the phone ringing on his side.

The black clay has pulled itself free from the wreckage of the crate. It lies inert in the dust, as if exhausted.

She squints, half-expecting to see a light come on in one of those houses.
Phone ringing in his kitchen. Small, shrill sound.

The dog rises from its place by the front door, pads over and stands in the kitchen doorway. It watches, quiet and misrable, as the phone on the kitchen counter continues its unpleasant screeching.

She waits. Pulse after pulse, then a click. Teeth clenching. His answering machine message.

After the ringing, the familiar silence as the answering machine plays its greeting.

The dog stands watching.

There is a piercing beep. Then a loud metallic voice says:

'Are you there?'

The dog watches, does not answer.

'Pick up if you're there.'

Standing at the glass, looking out, watching for a light to come on.

Lying in the dust, gazing eyelessly up at the stars. Listening.

'You better pick up if you're there.'

No answer.

'Yeah, I guess not. Well it's eleven thirty, and I guess you're so fucking choked up about things you've gone out to a party, or you're sleeping with someone.'

It twitches.

Lights outside, through the curtains. The sound of a motor. The dog turns, whines, it's deep melancholy lit by painful flickers of hope.

'Which would be quick, but not a surprise.'

Another twitch, the clay rolls over onto what might be its belly.

The dog walks to the door, listens excitedly. The engine dies, the lights die.

'You fucking tryhard. At your age. Not so young anymore are ya? No, well neither of us are too young anymore.'

It shudders. New extrusions, new limbs sprout from its sides.

'Thanks for that, by the way. Wasting FOUR YEARS of my FUCKING LIFE, with your FUCKING USELESS LIES-'

The click of a door opening, the thump of it closing. Footsteps. The metallic rustle of keys.

'-BALD sack of SHIT can't even get it UP don't know why I'm calling NOT WORTH THE FUCKING EFFORT I hope you're DEAD in a DITCH, I bet that's why you're not answering, you're fucking DEAD.'

The black clay turns itself, eyeless, up towards the moon, and out towards the houses on either side.

'I hope you are.

'I really hope you are.'

She hangs up.

The door opens.

The answering machine falls silent.

The clay takes its bearings. It quivers. Then at once it moves, pulling itself across the valley at terrifying speed.

The Big Sleep Dep Monster

The laughter dies, an awkward silence ensues, and then the ground quakes.

The Big SDM wakes, it comes lurching out of the soil, from a field or a hillside somewhere. Maybe out in Sterling, the outskirts of Perth.

It would yawn, except for that mangled face. It grinds its jaws in a yawn-like way.

It's sort of a greyish green monster. It has lean limbs, a dessicated face, teeth which grow straight from its cheeks. No time or expense wasted on lips or other such pleasantries.

It would blink, except that mess of tissue couldn't really be called eyelids, and the misty grey balls of mush therein couldn't really be called eyes.

It does, however, have a garage. From this garage it extracts two oily, bulging sacks, both leaking coloured powder.

The one in its left hand, the bag with the white powder is labelled FEAR.

Fear that you won't wake up in time for work, or that when you get there you'll have forgotten something. Fear that you're not doing a good job. That your colleagues do not like you, that your job itself is beneath you, that your childhood self would recoil in shame if it saw what a miserable hash you'd made of your life.

Fear that you'll be old before you know it, dead before you know it. Fear that you're missing the point, that people out there, your friends, are making a better go of being alive. You should be more like them. Or actually fuck your friends, let's have instead the fear that they're HOLDING YOU BACK. All of them. Holding you back from what? You don't know, and that scares you. Surely you ought to know what you're being denied.

Scary. Scary, scary fear.

The other bag, the one in the right hand trickling with candy-pink powder is labelled HABIT.

Because you need a little treat to reward yourself for getting out of bed on a Monday, let's say a danish or a donut, and then you're at work so there's your coffee. There's your chewing gum, good on you for not smoking. There's the mail, the Outlook Inbox, there's those fuckers you work with filing in. There's the 10:30 slump, waiting for lunch. The perfunctory lunch. Nothing too lavish, got to save money. The afternoon, Jesus, roll on the weekend. The clock, ticking. The chores, performed. Jesus, Jesus. Almost there. 4:30. 4:40. 4:45. The evening!

Except what to do, God, well there's the post-work run, dinner, a video maybe, a beer most definitely. Two? Any more than three and you have a drinking problem, so let's call it three. There's Monday. There's Tuesday. I wasn't kidding when I said roll on the weekend. Thursday. There's the weekend!

What were we going to do with the weekend? Tell you what, roll on payday. More money would solve this. Only the end of the month. Not much longer.

It's a monster all right.

The Big SDM hefts its two lethal bags, grins its mangled smile into the weak light, and sets off to destroy me.

It's big. It's HUGE. It's so utterly vast that a single one of its steps crosses 20 entries of Sleep Dep.

Horrific Nightmare Action (1 of 2)

Hands down the worst dream I’ve ever had – a nightmare I had while living in London. This would have been 1998. We found out about this stuff called Wild Lettuce which gives you “intense dreams”. I offered myself as the guinea pig, and because I wanted it to work I smoked two joints of the stuff before going to sleep.

I was in this flat in London, a housing estate. My grandmother was dying. My family was all on holiday, somehow I’d been landed with the task of looking after Granny while she died. So there I am, on my own in her apartment, listening to her laboured breathing from the next room.

Phone rings in the middle of the night. It’s my girlfriend, except she’d stoned or drunk or something. She’s cold and distant, sort of sarcastic. This other guy (my best friend) comes on the phone and starts cracking jokes and innuendoes.

Something has happened between these two, like they’ve had sex and they’re calling me to celebrate. They want to come round, and I say “fine” – I’m angry, going out of my mind, but I need to know what’s happened.

So finally they show up. And my friend is all hands, he’s making it obvious my girlfriend is with him now. I’m looking to her for some kind of signal to the contrary, except she’s so high she can barely speak. She may as well be a doll, she’s just sprawled out on the couch talking nonsense and non-sequiturs.

My friend’s gloating. He’s looking for some kind of reaction from me. He wants to know he’s won.

I’m furious. I tell them about my grandmother, I tell them I don’t give a shit, I ask them to leave. I walk over to the door and hold it open. Slowly, and with a lot of resistance, they leave. I tell him: “get fucked”. I say nothing to her. He makes some kind of final wisecrack and they walk away across this courtyard, off into the night. There are trucks parked everywhere, tail-lights flashing, engines idling.

I slump into a seat beside the door, listen to the sound of my grandmother’s breathing, and wonder how my life could have turned into such a nightmare. I fall asleep.

And then I wake up to someone screaming. I’m still in the chair, still in the dream. It’s the next morning. And there’s someone screaming out there, out in the housing project. Then from somewhere else – more screaming, someone else. I edge the curtains aside, and then because I can’t believe my eyes I pull them wide and look out into the courtyard.

It’s full of coffins. Coffins laid out in a grid, with their lids open. The trucks are still there, in fact there’s more of them, with the backs rolled open and the engines idling.

There are teams of men walking around. They’re wearing boiler suits and masks, and they have tools – hammers, rope, things like that. More and more people screaming now, and I can tell what they’re doing. The teams of men are walking off into the buildings, breaking into the flats and pulling the people out of their homes. Dragging them by the hair, by their wrists, dragging them into the courtyard. Pushing their struggling bodies into the coffins. I’m watching them do this, this is happening in front of my eyes, I think: oh shit I have to protect my grandmother from this. Pushing the people into the coffins and hammering the lids shut with massive iron nails.

(more)

Hey Hey We're the Sock Monkeys

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Philadelphia Story (Part 2)

This was in 1997, I think.

We’d arrived in Philadelphia three hours earlier, we’d only just escaped from this con we got tangled up in at the train station, it was sort of a kidnapping thing. We had effectively been kidnapped for ten to fifteen minutes. But as Michael Ende says: “that is another story, and will be told at another time”.

All you need to know is that we were shaken up, scared, but also very relieved. Glad to be alive. We checked into this place, a university dorm that was empty over the summer and being used as a youth hostel.

Nat said: “Do you want to… I dunno, I mean it’s okay if you just want to stay in.”

I said: “No, I'm okay. Let’s go check out that music store.”

There was this music store in Philadelphia that Nat had heard about from his room-mate. It was supposed to be really big, with a good range of different stuff.

It was getting dark. Possibly in light of our experience that afternoon, Philadelphia looked like a cold, mean, dirty city. It looked like it meant us harm. Also it was hard to navigate. The music shop was in a “bohemian” part of town. It took us a couple of tries to find, but then there it was. It was closed, but opening again in an hour or so.

“Damn.”

There was a bag lady standing near the door. When we got close she hobbled into our path and pointed at me. She said: “Hey. Hey you know who you look like?”

We didn’t really want to talk to her, but she was right there, so out of a sense of politeness I said: “What?”

She said: “You look like Eric Clapton.”

We laughed. I really didn’t look anything like Eric Clapton. My brother and I both had long hair, and I guess Clapton had long hair in the 60s or 70s, but the resemblance ended there.

Nat said: “Way to go.”

The old woman turned her finger to point at my brother.

She said: “You look like… Alice.” Her voice had a menacing tone.

I think Nat was losing patience with her, because he said: “Uh-huh. Who the hell is Alice, man?”

I thought she meant Alice Cooper, like maybe she was on a rock-star thing. (Note that this was years before the "Who the Fuck is Alice?" song.)

But the bag lady said: “Alice died this morning.” Then she burst into a peal of witch-laughter, exactly like creepy old women do in horror movies.

Nat was pretty shaken up. We both were. And off the back of the thing at the train station, we both arrived at the same decision: fuck Philadelphia. We left first thing in the morning and spent the extra time in Boston instead.

London Story

This was in 1997. I’d moved into this flat a month earlier, and I knew my way around the neighbourhood but hadn’t taken the time to really get to know it. Also I’d had mononucleosis. But now I was feeling better, so I started exploring.

There was a paved square dominated by a huge tree and an old stone church. There were some great little streets and alleys, and there was also this one long and very ugly street running along the train tracks. There were shops on this street, but most of them were closed or abandoned.

There was one shop, at least I assume it was a shop, standing on its own at the end of the road. It had a yellow facade. There was no sign or advertising. Nothing was written on the door, which was windowless and closed.

It had a window display, though. The window display was this: a teddy bear dancing on an empty grey stage. The teddy bear was missing one of its button eyes, and stuffing had pushed out through the socket. One of its arms was much longer than the other. “Dancing” isn't quite right – it was jerking and twitching. It was the most loathsome and horrifying thing I had seen for months.

I watched it for a while. Whatever mechanism was making the thing move was hidden from view. I thought: maybe I’m dreaming this.

I left. Later that day I was walking with a friend, returning to my house by another route. I said to my friend: “Wait, you have to come see this.”

It was a 10 minute detour, and I almost couldn’t find my way, but there was the shop and there was the bear. My friend had an instant and violent reaction to it. He said: “Why did you bring me here? This place is evil.”

I said: “I thought you’d want to see it.”

“Why did you think I’d want to see it? This place is dangerous, especially to someone like me.” I should explain: my friend claimed to have psychic powers, and he’d told me that this made him particularly vulnerable to supernatural forces.

Then he said: “Look.” He pointed to the ground, to where the corpses of two pigeons lay just in front of the shop. I watched the bear for a moment longer, and began to wonder whether my friend might have had a point about all of the psychic business after all.

“Sorry,” I said.

I walked out there again a week later, but the window had been covered with newspaper.