The Pseudo-Chronicles of Mark Huntley

Bound to a Tiny Pad II - 9/23/04

Thursday, September 23, 2004

I'm sure I've made my way now onto Gerald Ryloff's shitlist. Regardless of how much it's actually my fault. 

I stayed home from work again today. It was another bad eye day. To say that my eyes were "aching" is like calling the Grand Canyon a piddly hole in the ground. They felt ready to pop out of my head. Like, I honestly kept putting my hands up to them so they couldn’t sail off and away to greener pastures. They feel a little better now, the only reason I’m able to write this, but today was rough, man.

I was so desperate that I gave Dr. Leonsis a call to see if he would come check out my eyes. I offered to pay him extra, no questions asked. (I was sure that I had a few items kicking around that I could sell off at Crown Pawn in Logan Circle.)

"I don't do house calls," he said, frostily. "Why don't you go to the hospital?"

But I didn't want to do that. I excused myself and hung up. 

I'm barely hanging on expense-wise as it is (yes, all right, those boozy lunches are killing me). Bribing Dr. Leonsis is one thing, but a hospital visit… that would do me in. Do you know how outrageous the cost is just to get looked at in an E.R.? Way beyond what my meager health insurance would cover.

In any case, as I said, my eyes did get better as the day wore on, and I’m writing this with vessels intact. But what new horrors can I look forward to tomorrow? Look forward, right! Do you “see” how many of our metaphors rely on sight?

I’m just trying to picture myself on permanent dark mode. I’d lose my job—Ryloff’s not about to spring for a Braille machine. I’d probably have to throw myself on the mercy of the state, and we all know how merciful the state is. And I’d be alone in this place, dictating to a tape recorder my increasingly unhinged thoughts as I stumble around and break dishes and step on CD cases.

Someone would find me here. Maybe because of the smell. Or maybe before it got to that state—if Lucy were wondering about me… if she came to my door, found it unlocked…

No! God, no. I’m not going to let this problem get to that point. 

If my eyes haven’t improved when I wake up tomorrow, I’m going to drag myself to the hospital. Maybe at Georgetown. If I let the med students experiment on me, maybe they’ll give me a discount.

OK. Had to take a break. Eyes ready for a little more duty.

Another dream last night, and I’m sure you’re tired of hearing about them—there are few things more boring than someone describing their sleepytime adventures in obsessive detail. But it’s just you and me to figure this out, Reader. And Gwen, I mean, but somehow I trust you more.

Again I was in some dark, ominous setting. But this time I wasn’t in the woods— I was standing on some hard, cracked surface. Kind of like a parking lot that someone fell down on the job maintaining. The woman from the last dream—Lynne Samuelson?—stood in front of me, wearing the same long dress as before. 

Even up close, I had a hard time figuring out the contours of her face. But that purplish aura she had, oh, that was clear indeed. I could see that it roiled, like a living mist around her. 

I lifted my hand, like I was trying to protect myself from whatever evil influence her aura might try to exert over me. Then I saw that in my hand, a knife had appeared.

Now here’s a question—did the knife show up because Gwendolyn told me that story? Like a suggestion implanted into the dream? Or was I actually "remembering" the incident as it happened?

You might ask the same about my next action, because at that point I lashed out with the knife and savagely slashed the woman across her breasts. 

The blood wasn't red. It was... ethereal? Prismatic? No, that’s just too much of an airy-fairy way to describe somebody’s liquid life force. I mean, come on. But it’s the best I can do for now. This not-quite-blood splashed me, and on impact, the many colors scattered. And I shoved the blade into her belly.

She screamed, but not in fear, not even necessarily in pain. In fury. That's what it was, I'm sure of it. In fury.

I pulled the knife out, raised it again, and then I woke up, sweating, rattled, and with eyes a-poppin’.

Gwen's call today was a little longer than the other ones have been, because I let it go on. I wanted to know more about her version of what happened.

So with the dream in mind, I asked her, "You weren't there, were you? You told me the story like you were there, but I didn't see you."

"No, I wasn't," she admitted. "You didn't see me...? What, you had a dream about the actual attack?"

"Yes, I did," I said, but I didn't share the details with her. Instead, I pressed her for details.

Apparently I stabbed Samuelson in, yes, the school parking lot. No one had been there to witness. Gwen didn't mention anything about prismatic blood or furious screams, then; she hadn’t been there. She'd arrived later, after the ambulance had already come for Lynne Samuelson. She saw dried blood on the pavement. She saw me being led away. Then the police ushered her back.

“And the blood," I said. "On the pavement. Did it look unusual at all?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like, out of the ordinary."

"Um... no, Mark. Just regular old, red blood. I missed the attack by a few minutes."

I thought about it a moment. "Wouldn't it have turned brownish by then?"

"Sure, I could be remembering it wrong," said Gwen. "Why?"

I rebuffed her questions, saying that my eyes were acting up again and that I had to go.

I still didn't quite trust her motives, or story for that matter, but... my dream had shown me a parking lot, right? Or something that felt like a parking lot. That was a detail Gwen hadn't mentioned when she was first relating the story to me in Childe Harold.

The blood, though... was that just artistic license my brain was taking? Or did it point to the fact that my dream was a surreal riff on Gwen's original, untrue story?

Yeah. I’m still on the fence here. I keep going from yes to no to maybe so? This is all too much at once. I can only say that even with all these insane events, I still don’t feel insane. Not in the membrane. Not in the heart of hearts.

Here’s hoping tomorrow won’t bring continued agony, a case of bankruptcy, and/or the Divide giving me the boot-in-fanny.

posted by Mark Huntley @ 10:29 PM

---

Thanks for reading this entry. If you liked it, consider voting for it (click the star icon).