No Exit (933 hits)
Category: NoneLabels: fiction
Rating: 2 on 12 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by sonic ultra (View user info) at 2004-11-04 16:08:53 EST
In this dungeon we dance with somber jesters dressed in black
Wizard spells of slow time and cloaks of doom our senses bind
Crystal visions in our private night, a thousand waxing flames alight
Dark mirrors to reflect our dream, we quaff despair like blood-red wine
Three demons of desire and fate now weave from fires tapestry
Three angels of delight now warp from night peculiar travesty
A Summoning! An offer made and one wish granted, solemn oath is sworn
Dark consequence a boon to fools beyond the end of days: Life forevermore.
-- Jehovah Smith, Bound, God's Little Tricks
He walked to the edge of the property where the hedgerow defied the ministrations of lawn order and weed ordinances. For some reason the tangle of briars and clinging vines avoided encroaching here under the Elm, his favorite tree. He had often thought of putting the hammock up here, but he'd never gotten around to it. He grinned at the wistful memory.
Now he had a different plan. The Hemingway Solution, as he called it. Carefully he taped his left thumb onto the trigger of the Winchester. One shell in the chamber and two in the magazine. Gas-operated, so if he was lucky in reflex spasms he'd have three chances. He leaned back against the trunk of the Elm and thought of nothing for a moment. One heavy sigh, then he placed the black hole of deliverance in his mouth, and with the strips of duct tape he'd hung from the barrel awkwardly taped his head to the cold phallus of his desperation. This was all probably unnecessary, overkill so to speak, but he had nothing to lose. Duct tape. Is there anything it can't do?
Earlier he'd dug a small trench and into it had arranged some of the ubiquitous quartz rocks that had ever been the bane of the rototiller, back when he had kept a flower garden here. His wife had loved to arrange flowers in her very non-Zen way. He would have felt sadness upon this recollection, but he knew it wasn't real. Now he lodged the stock of the shotgun firmly in place. It was time. He'd left no note. There was no one to read a note from him.
He wondered if he should pray, thinking of Pascal's Logic. He remembered that one time in his youth, the experiment with the extract he'd made from the seeds of a tropical flower. He'd made an error, with the math, or perhaps with the chemistry. A horror of revolving hours and an eternity of agony was what he'd created for himself that night, and in the depths of his torment he had prayed. He'd done that before, of course, like anyone who drank too much. 'Oh God, please let me die'--a somewhat ironic prayer for a worshipper of the porcelain Goddess. But when the seeds whispered Don't Eat Me Don't Eat Me Don't Eat Me; when their acid warning ate deeply into his DNA to write their message of survival into the racial memory banks--that was a time when he really meant it. He, devout atheist, promising to go to Church every Sunday if God would make it stop. He had learned then that there is no God, at least not a God who answers prayers, so the experiment had not been in vain. He smiled around the taste of metal as he recalled his foolishness.
No reason to put it off any longer. He pulled the trigger.
***
The most irritating thing about smoking was running out of cigarettes. It was his wife's birthday and he was late leaving work. Her elegantly wrapped gift sat on the passenger seat. His secretary, Rachael, had handed it to him as he rushed out of the office. Thank God for Rachael, he thought. He hated to forget his wife's birthday, because she wouldn't say anything about it--but he'd remember sometime later and feel bad. He knew she sometimes suspected he didn't really love her. Well, this year he was going to do it right--he'd get flowers and take her to dinner, and he even had the gift. She didn't need to know it would be as much of a surprise for him as for her. Rachael would have gotten something perfectly appropriate. He was so lucky to have her.
He was making the left into the strip mall with the florist and the specialty shop where he could get the premium cigarettes he liked. He never saw what hit him.
***
It was years before he noticed that something was wrong. He had to repeat himself more and more often. People had that look, more and more often. The ordinary events of his life were interrupted by curious events, more and more often. He had eventually learned that it was best not to recount the tales of these odd occurrences to others, as doing so would inevitably result in the strange looks. He began to experience erratic mood swings and thoughts that seemed not his own. He just didn't feel ... real, anymore.
Eventually he sought medical advice. He found a sympathetic doctor at a nearby research hospital. Pasewalk had an interesting history. But he didn't care about history these days. Doctor Roberts had been intrigued by his story, and more so by his growing inability to speak intelligibly. Over a period of several more years Dr. Roberts and his staff had run every conceivable test. He'd had neurological scans, blood work-ups galore, psychological tests, aptitude tests. Test after test showed there was nothing measurably wrong with him, physically or mentally. Day after day he grew convinced there was something terribly wrong.
He was able to take an early retirement when the firm downsized. Even with his reduced pension, he had enough to get by--to make the alimony and child support payments, pay the mortgage on the house and the vacation home where he lived now, and otherwise provide a pleasant if modest lifestyle for himself and his now-estranged family.
He never spoke anymore, not to other people. He seldom had need to communicate anyway. When he did, he wrote on a notepad. Sometimes he'd get it right the first time. Otherwise he'd just write the message over and over until the strange look went away. It was a Thursday--he was trying to mail a Christmas package to the grandchildren--when for the first time he gave up. The harried postal clerk had threatened to call the police. He'd walked out, leaving the package on the counter. He drove home through a veil of tears.
Thinking to distract himself he had pulled a book at random from the shelf in the den. It was Nabokov's Pale Fire. Opening it at random he read:
There was a time in my demented youth
When somehow I suspected that the truth
About survival after death was known
To every human being: I alone
Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy
Of books and people hid the truth from me.
And suddenly, he knew. The accident. He had not really emerged from his crushed vehicle, miraculously unscathed. His wife had not come to pick him up, they had not gone out to dinner and laughed and cried and, for a time, renewed their closeness. He had not watched his two sons become men, nor his daughter a woman. Hadn't doted on the first grandchild, or the second or third. He hadn't worked his way up to VP of marketing, improved his racquetball and golf games, buried his parents and his wife's father. He hadn't lived a full if increasingly mysterious life for the last twenty years. No. It was one of two things: he was a vegetable lying in a coma in some forgotten hospital bed, lost in a decaying dream of failing neurons or ... he was in hell.
He had to find the truth, or just end it. And so he formulated the plan. The Hemingway Solution.
***
He knew he was dreaming because the wolf was talking to him. Explaining things. There was a full moon in a starry anomalous sky, and he and the wolf sat across from each other in a forest clearing. The surrounding trees were dark spectral sentinels, protecting or imprisoning him, he didn't know which. The wolf spoke in song, a strange language, a secret language of the dawn which would never come. He could not understand the words but the meaning was clear. The stars were falling, one then another, faster and faster, until all the heavens came down....
***
Satin sheets and sunshine, beige curtains with frills of pink, a jarring, unfamiliar blare from the alarm clock that was not his. The wolf dream disappeared instantly as the new dream began.
Once again he woke up screaming.
User Reviews
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2005-01-03 18:08:12 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
wow.
This is an amazing piece of writing.
Submitted by T.chow (user info) at 2004-12-17 16:07:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
nice.
i hate to relate it to vanilla sky, but oops: i have.
this was much better anyways.
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2004-11-08 15:12:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm so glad it occurred to me to check and see if you had posted anything new...
Submitted by Istaros (user info) at 2004-11-05 18:53:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
do you use AIM or MSN messenger? if you do tell me what it is: archon_templar.at.hotmail.com (that's an underscore not a space)
there were a lot of good moments in this
like
"'Oh God, please let me die'--a somewhat ironic prayer for a worshipper of the porcelain Goddess. But when the seeds whispered Don't Eat Me Don't Eat Me Don't Eat Me; when their acid warning ate deeply into his DNA to write their message of survival into the racial memory banks--that was a time when he really meant it. He, devout atheist, promising to go to Church every Sunday if God would make it stop. He had learned then that there is no God, at least not a God who answers prayers."
or
"His wife had not come to pick him up, they had not gone out to dinner and laughed and cried and, for a time, renewed their closeness."
or
"The stars were falling, one then another, faster and faster, until all the heavens came down...."
or
the end
P.S. it's called Pascal's Wager ;)
Submitted by FilthyAssistant (user info) at 2004-11-04 18:14:20 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I almost didn't click on this. Glad that I did. Good stuff.
Submitted by Yes (user info) at 2004-11-04 18:08:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
good stuff.
Submitted by drfeggphd (user info) at 2004-11-04 17:01:30 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Yeah, I've been feeling a little down--
so I wasn't too sure about this one...
Thanks to all of you for the nice comments!
Submitted by Krog (user info) at 2004-11-04 16:57:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Strange, creepy, and a little depressing, good job!
Submitted by MeatJerky (user info) at 2004-11-04 16:29:05 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I like this a lot for some reason.
Submitted by LadyPlural (user info) at 2004-11-04 16:28:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Cool.
Submitted by screamfeeder (user info) at 2004-11-04 16:22:45 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Comment
Submitted by GodChicken (user info) at 2004-11-04 16:16:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Thats some pretty good moebius strip type shit.