Moving Day

[cross-posted from LJ]

They came for the house today.Around noon, this big yellow Ryder truck pulled up in front of the Triple B and three guys spilled out of the cab, dressed in jeans, T-shirts, and don't fuck with me attitudes. The lead guy, a stand in for Roddy "All Out of Bubblegum" Piper, marched up the steps and handed me the papers.

He re-arranged the Seahawks cap on his head and gave me a look of real sympathy. "Everything ready to go?" He looked uncomfortable.

I've never been good at this. Dealing with simple things in the midst of endings. I just nodded.

"Good. It'll be a few hours. You can stick around if you want - but I'd spare yourself some pain and go somewhere else. Legally, you're not allowed within the bounds of the property." He shrugged a shoulder in the direction of the street, toward the black Lincoln Continental cruising to a stop in front of my former home. "They'll enforce it."

I wandered to the opposite curb, sat down, and pulled out a cigarette. Two years in the house. Two wonderful years of friends and fetes, fun and games, quiet nights in front of the fireplace and the wide-screen TV. Two years reduced to a few guys packing up my life. My cell phone rang - Josh.

"They there yet?" he sounded tired.

"Yeah. They're working the inside first," I said.

"What're they going to do with the gazebo and the deck? They keeping the hot tub?" His work. I understood why he wanted to know their eventual fate.

"I dunno. The truck's big enough to take everything. It wouldn't surprise me."

"Ahh...I'm sorry, dude. You okay?"

"Yeah. No. I'm not okay. I wanna leave - but I can't. It's like a wake - and my house is dead, laid out on display, and there should be a party or something, but it's just me and it's cold and this is just so fucked up. I could use a drink."

"I'll be right over. With a bottle of Jameson. Don't move."

I clicked the END button on the phone, lit the cigarette and sucked the smoke in and out of my lungs as they piled the dining room chairs into the back of the truck. Then the japanese bench. The bar stools. The dining room table. One cigarette lit the next - and the next. The movers breathing into the house, the things of my life breathing out. Slow and deliberate breaths.

Josh showed up about twenty minutes later with liquor in hand. He hadn't bothered to put it in a paper bag.

"This is shitty," he said.

"Yeah."

The kitchen appliances exited along with U-Haul boxes I could only assume were filled with dishes, silverware, and glasses. I took a long pull from the bottle.

"What will be, will be," I said.

The property guardians watched behind the tinted windows of the Lincoln.

"They even talk to you?"

"Nope. Had the movers do the talking. Fucking cowards." I kept the bottle.

"Keep it," he said. "You need it more than me. I'll drive you where you need to go after this."

"Thanks, Brother."

We sat there for three hours, drinking and smoking. I watched my guitars devoured. DVDs and CDs disappeared into the great maw. My comic book collection - gone. When they reached the baby's room, I started to have a hard time. They brought Jesse out in a blanket, and I could hear her screaming at the top of her lungs. They put her in the Lincoln - I couldn't see who took her.

After they finished the furniture and appliances, and after they broke down the backyard - and I could see Josh wince at the sounds of the sawsalls ripping into his creation - and after they pulled out the inside flooring and the blinds - they brought Dori out, cuffed and hooded. At least that way I didn't have to see my wife's eyes. She darted her head around as if she were looking for me.

"Dave? DAVE! Where are you? I don't know what's going on - please help-" And they shoved her into the Lincoln and she was gone.

Roddy Piper, the Seahawks hat guy, wandered over with his clipboard.

"That's it. I need you to sign off."

I scribbled my signature in the little blue box and wondered if I should give him a tip - and decided against it. Roddy handed me the envelope with the check and tipped his hat.When the Ryder and the Lincoln finally left and were out of sight, I opened the envelope. $843,679 and 23 cents. The price of my life. I wondered how many others had sold out.

I handed the empty bottle back to Josh. "Let's go get another drink."

"Where you wanna go?"

"Tokyo. My treat."

Dispatches from Booville 3.1

J and D are dressed in their pajamas and robes. They discuss breakfast plans.

"I wish you could drink coffee," says D.

"How about this?" says J. She holds out a box of oatmeal. "I'll make it with milk. It will be creamy goodness. And good for us, too."

J prepares the oatmeal at the stove while D washes dishes and sips Ethiopian gold.

After the oatmeal is simmering, J wanders over to the sofa where her wings have been discarded from the night before. She slips her arms through the straps and poses.

"Are you going to fly away?" says D.

"Jessum!" says J.

She bounces over to the stove, a drunken butterfly.

D notices repeated attempts at lighting the gas burner - it must be for the teapot. *clicks* fill the air like crickets.

"Careful of your wings," says D. "You wouldn't want them to catch fire."

"Being on fire isn't much fun," says J.

She makes a butterlfy face. "This is how butterflies look when they're thinking," says J. "Will you brainstorm with me?"

"I will," says D.

J ponders for a moment, flapping her wings.

"I can't be a butterfly if I'm going to think," says J. She takes the wings off and hangs them on the back of her chair.

J and D sit down with a pad of paper and a pen. They brainstorm life.

Three Dreams of Snow: Three

I sometimes wonder if the temperature of the room I'm sleeping in effects the environment in my dreams. On this particular night, we hadn't turned the furnace on yet, and the temperature dropped to autumn levels. I remember I woke up with my skin cold as marble...

***

We attend a party at Cliffside - the mansion on the bluff overlooking the sea. The house sits close to - or perhaps on - a thin space between the worlds. Each time we attend a fete, the rooms and trappings are different - but the hosts look familiar - luminous, or dressed in feathers and furs, or formal black and white and red. Always attentive.

Occasionally, the structure shakes, chandeliers jingling, wood creaking. Cliffside is strong enough to endure the quakes, a common occurrence here - but it always sets me on edge.

It is summer when we arrive, the late afternoon daylight pouring through the glass wall facing the sea. Two stories high, it runs the length of the ballroom, reminding me of a greenhouse or a train station. The feasting table overflows with "winter fruit". Our thin, towering Host offers me what looks like a Bartlett pear. I bite into the cool flesh and my mouth is flooded with icy juice. It's like eating a snow cone with skin.

As the sun dips lower toward the edge of the world, the season changes from summer to fall. Multicolored leaves blow in small whirlwinds outside the lodge. The Hostess takes me by the arm and walks me around the Great Hall. She smells like lavender and roses.

"What do you regret?"

I think hard on this one, then under my breath, "Not embracing my gifts as a child. My lack of confidence."

"And would you change it?"

Without hesitation - "No."

The Hostess smiles and she glows as if infused with moonlight. We've made our way around to the fireplace. I smell rosemary and roasting meat, potatoes, carrots. Fresh bread. And then I hear something from behind one of the delicately carved wood doors leading out of the hall. A woman singing.

"...survive, stay alive, through the thick and thin, survive, stay alive, until it all ends..."

The music pulls at my heart and my nerves go electric. The Hostess brushes a hand through my hair and whispers in my ear, "One of our songbirds. We keep her in an open cage. Someday she'll leave, but for now, she chooses to stay. We are honored."

Food is brought in on enormous platters of silver and glass. Nigiri sushi, pot roast, spiced lamb kabobs, cedar plank salmon, acorn squash, garlic mashed potatoes, broiled green beans, roasted garlic, soups and mountains of exotic greens. Endless variety, stretching from one end of the table to the other. The Host stands at the fireplace end and raises a glass of rice wine, ice visible on the rim.

"To the change of seasons."

We raise our glasses and drink the cold sake as the last sliver of sun disappears at the ocean's edge. The world turns white - thick snowflakes drift down from the heavens, and a pitch black sky burns with unknown constellations and a thin sickle moon.

After the main course, the Hostess pulls red velvet curtains away from a nearby alcove and reveals a giant metal disc, etched with circles and lines and symbols. The warm bronze reflects firelight and the warped reflections of the dinner party.

"Before dessert, I have something that will whet your appetite. Entertainment - as interactive as you like."

She strikes the gong and the house shakes, an earthquake unlike any I've experienced here. A deep rumbling remains, rising in volume as the low metal thrum fades.

"Watch this," says the Host and he points toward the sea. His eyes blaze with white fire.

Starting at the edge of the ocean, the surface ripples and drops across the horizon. The water surges forward, gathering height and momentum, a tsunami building before our eyes. It crosses the distance between the edge of the world and Cliffside in seconds, starlight flickering on the leading edge is it gains in breadth and height. By the time it reaches the shore, it towers over the mansion, blotting out the sky.

The guests cower - some dive under the table, or flail against the locked doors of the Great Hall. Some whimper. Some scream. I step toward the greenhouse window and become one with the wave.

Before it hits the mansion, it crumbles and explodes into a waterfall of ice. The pieces bounce harmlessly off Cliffside, mounding at the base of the building.

The Hosts open the door to the patio.

"Go. See what treasures the wave has brought to you. When you are satisfied, come back for dessert," says the Hostess.

I step out into winter. The air is sharp in my lungs but it invigorates me. Steam rises from the exposed skin of my hands.

The other guests poke and prod at the landscape, picking up a seashell, gold coins, driftwood, a silver chalice.

I wander to the far end of the courtyard, the one closest to the cliff overlooking the beach, drawn by some invisible thread. I find a young boy, naked, shivering in the ice and snow. He is six, maybe seven years old, with ash blond hair, fish-belly skin, and pale blue eyes. He does not cry, makes no other sound except the chattering of his teeth, but he looks up when I draw near.

This is me. Flotsam deposited on an alien shore. Me. So I wrap my arms around my younger self and push warmth into the freezing flesh. Let the fire inside me melt away the ice in his veins. We stay that way for a long time. He clings to me.

"No regrets," I say. "Know this."

I carry him inside, toward the warmth of the fire, toward the smiling faces of the Hosts, and the song of the songbird in her open cage.

***

"Clouds lift and there're mountains below, been awhile since I've seen any snow...Feels nice, to be home for awhile, let's sip champagne till we break into smiles, we'll go dancin', romancin', 'cause you're the reason I...Survive (survive), stay alive, through the thick and the thin, survive, stay alive, until it all ends..." - Jimmy Buffet

Three Dreams of Snow: Two

A few nights later, I had this one...

***

The thermometer hovers just above negative ten degrees. My breath turns to ice on the window as I look out at the empty street, only the occasional roof of a car or half-buried truck break up the blanket of white. Every few minutes, my teeth chatter and I think they’ll never stop, but they do. And then they do it again.

I sit alone in the house. Food gone. Water pipes frozen solid. The small fire in the fireplace dying a slow death. The chair on which I’m sitting will feed the flames for another few hours – after that I’ll rip up the hardwood floor.

Wind buffets the house, sweeping the snowdrifts into desert dune patterns, the tak-tak-tak of ice a frozen water torture. I will starve here. Or freeze. I’m not sure which will happen first, but I know that I will die soon. Somehow.

There are no other lights visible in the neighborhood, the only illumination coming from the half-moon burning in the dark crystal sky. Each house empty, the occupants long gone – or still there, “corpsesickles” as the sherpas say of the dead on Mt. Everest.

I slip into the cold like a down jacket. I become one with the ice and snow.

Outside, the wind hits the house like a sledgehammer and the front door flies open, flakes swirl into the entryway and the fire is snuffed out like a candle. Someone whistles a song in the dark of the yard, a high pitched, Irish jig. It’s not the wind – someone whistles a song and then it’s torn away by curtains of cold white and falling stars.

I stagger from the living room to the entryway, my footprints dark against the scattered white. Before I close the front door, I crane my head into the subzero night, looking for the source of the voice. I see no one, no footprints – but sitting on the front porch are three bags of groceries, overflowing, dusted with ice crystals, and a stack of Duraflame logs. The tears freeze on my cheeks as I drag them inside.

Three Dreams of Snow: One

A while back, Jerry asked me if wolves scared me. I said, "Not really. I've always felt an affinity for them." I had this dream a few weeks ago. And yes, they scared me. This one's for you, Jer.

***

We arrive at the compound early in the day and unpack the gear. It's a low concrete building built into the side of a mountain, overlooking the Lake. The front is nothing but windows (superthick, bullet-proof, perhaps some strange new clear metal), and the winding road reaches from the edge of the woods, across a wide, rickety bridge, and up to the entry ramp leading into the structure. The building front is reminiscent of a 50's movie robot. I snicker and the rest of the team looks at me like I'm nuts.

We head out right away – I slide behind the wheel of the Land Rover while the rest of the crew piles into the vehicle. I drive across the bridge bathed in late afternoon sunlight. Crisp fall air plays across my arms and face as we head into the forest, fallen leaves swirling in our path.

The day is perfect. I wish for time to stand still, for everything to remain the same. A child’s wish – and one I know can never be fulfilled.

The woman in the passenger seat – I can’t remember her name – turns to me with a wild look in her eyes. “You hear that?”

I do. Wolves. The howls echo back and forth, first coming from the mountain, then bouncing through the trees. Wolves. There shouldn’t be wolves here.

And then the sky opens up – an avalanche of snow plunges from steel gray clouds, transforming fall to deep winter in the blink of an eye. The Land Rover skids sidewise and I bounce off an enormous pine. The right side windows shatter.

“Oh my god…” hisses the woman in the passenger seat. She points into the forest, index finger shaking.

A couple hundred yards away, smoke gray shapes move in the swirl of falling snow. I can hear the other crew members scrabbling away from the open windows, safety glass crunching under their boots.

I hit the accelerator and bounce the Rover off the tree – again. Then I hit reverse, slide the truck backwards and slam the selector into drive. The snow is slick, and it takes a second for the wheels to catch. The shapes are bounding through the tree line when the Rover rockets forward. I can hear the pounding of their feet, ragged breath, and quick low growls as they talk to each other – communicating the best way to take down their prey. Us.

The Lake is frozen solid, so I take the direct route to the compound – straight across the ice. Dotted along the ridge near the entrance, white snow is spotted with blotches of red. Each irregular stain a former person. Here and there, gray and white shapes surround the bodies, shaking and pulling. Ripping meat from bones. Words repeat in my head – “the wolves are hungry, they haven’t eaten in a long time, hundreds of years, the wolves are hungry…” I pull the plug on the loop as we approach the ramp - already snow has piled halfway up the entrance. I hit the wall of white at more than 30 miles an hour and careen into the garage.

I maneuver the Rover so it sits sideways across the door to the stairwell. We exit through the windows.

As we open the door I hear a growl echo in the stairwell. A gray-white blur slams me into the wall and plows into passenger woman. Its jaws snap through one slender arm, and sink deep into her throat. There are screams. And blood steaming in the freezing air.

“RUN! JUST RUN!”

And we do.

Time blurs. In the end, it’s just me, barricaded in the generator room, squeezed into one of the air ducts near the ceiling. I can hear the wolves slamming into the door. They’ll break through soon. The generator finally sputters and dies – and I am plunged into darkness.

Dispatches from Booville 2.2

J and D relax on the Barcaloungers. A classic movie from the 30's or 40's plays in the background.

"How you feeling?" asks D.

"Better. Still tired. I think I may go take a nap," says J.

"You go, girl," says D.

"Thank you, black woman," says J.

"Excuse me?" says D.

"That's what a black woman says," says J.

"I've been saying that for forever," says D.

"Yes, but I'm recognizing it now," says J.

"Thanks for accepting my inner black woman," says D.

J cocks her eyebrow and grins.

Dispatches from Booville 2.1

J and D ride in the Jeep, heading for coffee and comfy chairs. The Marillion song "Afraid of Sunlight" fills the interior of the car.

"Who do we da mmmm, d'wha..," sings J.

"How do we all come to be...," sings D.

"What are the lyrics?" asks J.

"So how de we now come to be, afraid of sunlight. How de we now come to be, afraid of sunlight. And so on." says D.

J nods, hums, then sings "...afraid of sunlight..."

"That's one of the things I've always loved about Marillion. The lyrics are so good." says D.

"That's one of the things about listening to Marillion," says J. "I've never understood the lyrics."

They glance at each other and laugh.

"You know I'm going to make that another 'Dispatch from Booville'," says D.

"Uh-oh," says J.