2. Roadkill

Barking. Oh please, for shit sake, not again! Incessant and persistent, as though it’s been taped and looped.

Maybe there is no dog.

Maybe I’m dyslexic and there is no god!

What if the barking is not out there in the neighborhood, but in here – in your head?

What if I’m really fast asleep and only dreaming that I’m awake? Dreaming and can’t wake up, or awake and can’t fall asleep? Or lost. Somewhere in between.

Stuck in a moment that you can’t get out of…

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… late. In a panic. Hair sticking out wildly from my half-asleep head. Late again. Moving swiftly, passing through kitchen door, swiping brown bag-lunch from countertop as I go, tripping over sneaker’s loose laces hurriedly falling out into acrid Miami morning air, headlong, beneath baking sun, catching myself from falling, straightening up, increasing pace, hurtling into the oppressive embrace of hot dead air. Late, late, for an important date. A test. Oh jeez, please… can’t be late again. If I run… if I just run as fast as I can… it’ll be okay. Everything will turn out fine. Just have to keep running.

… faster… sshh-sshh-sshh-sshh whisper Nike Air’s gliding along the pavement like skimming-stones... Whoosh of cars passing on right, smell of carbon-monoxide making head feel light, varied shades of green (hedges, leaves, lawns) blurring by on left, chest getting tight, and somewhere up ahead in the distance, the sound of a dog barking. Relentlessly.
Running faster still. Unexpected turn right and I find myself beside myself at odds with one another. Being aware of them both brings back the feeling of being In Between. Middle of the road. In the midst of honking horns-screeching brakes-skidding tires. Mist fogging brain. Like the green lawns and manicured hedges that featured a moment ago
... moment? felt like a day!
everything’s a blur.
Running again. Blindly. Breathing hardfast: lungs aflame. Each inhalation fanning the fire, depriving me of oxygen.
Just like that
! – in less time than it takes to print an exclamation mark – everything stops. Abrupt halt. Period. Including me. It’s as if the sun-heated concrete has melted the soles of my sneakers, sticking me to the spot. Wind, traffic noise, barking dog, my own heavy breathing – all swallowed up in the shock of suddenly showed-up silence
Stuck in a moment you can’t get out of
a dusty needle stuck in a scratched groove on a warped record. Looping. Why can’t I move? What’s holding me? Who’s been messing with the controls? Turning down sound. Adjusting contrast: intensifying color and brightness, zooming in for closer inspection, pushing pause button killing movement. Gazing into the luminous blue sky for answers. Something – a feeling – suggests I look down, and looking down is the last thing I want to do, but the stomach-churning dollop of fear hooked to this idea isn’t strong enough to stop me. Unable to help myself, I lower head and cannot believe the sight in front of me.
Judy! Is it? Could it be? Judy, my 15-year old baby sister and only sibling, standing before me in her pyjamas, shimmering like an oasis in the scorching heat, defiant and indignant with hands on hips and legs akimbo, her big furry Betty Boop slippers on her feet… no. Frantic, I wonder – this bizarre hallucination – where it’s come from and why. And the look in her open-wide eyes: blame or forgiveness, love or hate? The light’s so bright I can’t really see eyes winking wildly in the sun
and in the blink of an eye, it's done, she’s gone.
Eyes wander lower. Feet, way down below me miles away distant wear her slippers. Only, I gather on a second, closer look, that it isn’t Betty Boop’s shiny black hair at all: its fur, and it’s not black either, but a saturated shade of red, the deep color of a pool of blood. Other glistening wet colors stimulate my rods and cones – purple, yellow, green, beige, black – and I’m beginning to understand that I’m not standing in Judy’s slippers at all, but something else entirely.
Heart sinks as gorge rises: I’m standing in the middle of a dead dog.
It’s all too bright and vivid.
Eyes smart and slide shut.
Head shakes to scatter the dream, but eyes open to find me still here, in the middle of the street, stuck in place.
The dog my feet are buried in is a young Golden Retriever, lying on its side, ribcage squashed flat against cement. The imprint - a tattoo of the deep-treaded tires responsible - is plainly and horrifically visible.
A twisted, steaming mess of entrails spill out through popped-open stomach and ooze from broken-jawed snout.
Attempt to lift feet but nothing happens. Scream but no sound comes out. Try to look away from the dog’s broken body, but can't stop staring into its bulging eye.
Oh Jesus, Mary and Holy St. Joseph, I say to myself, it’s looking back at me.
But you said it was dead… my self (or a voice purporting to be my self, or the me-beside-myself) counters.
I know I know but look, see, it’s turning its head. Its pop-eye is peering into me - and did you see that? Its mouth moving?
But you said –
I know I said its jaw’s broken and it is - but its mouth is moving. Black lips, pinkredyellow tongue, talking to me without words, in my head, saying its all my fault, I can read its lips - if I hadn’t been late, if I hadn’t run out into the road causing that car to brake, skid and swerve out of control, that this dog wouldn’t be like this.
‘Look at me,’ it says, its one good eye a hernia ready to burst, ‘look at me would you? I’m not supposed to be like this. I’m not supposed to be dead. It should’ve been you. You’re the one!’
Teeth dripping blood and bile, its shrieking howl tearing the silence apart, the dog lunges for my throat.

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Must've woken up then. Popped up like burnt toast.
Still hear barking.

1. Sad Mr Stevens

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Awake again. No idea what time it is. Clock flashes. Accidentally unplugged it when tripping over it earlier. Didn’t reset it as I can’t be bothered. What’d be the point?

Dark and silent inside. Outside, too, no traffic (not even a barking dog – out there, or in here), so it must be very late. Or very early. Same thing. See, Time can be tricky when it’s dark outside. And I’m beside myself again. Above, actually.

high up

Me-Above
looking down
at Me-Below on bed. Gazing down at shadowy lump sitting hunched over the bright burst of a circle of light punched like a hole in the surrounding darkness, scribbling in the journal. Gone word-fishing.
Not knowing how or when or why I got here.
There.
Now, then.
I’m getting a bite here and there. Words are nibbling.

Hello down there! Could you reach up a hand and help me down please, a little help?

Me-Below, wrapped in blanket, swaddled in night, drowning in a waterfall of words, witnessing. Watersurge more like – coming up fast… a fountain (pen) spraying linked-letters from unknown depths. Words surfacing so fast they’re suffering from the bends. 

Slow down. Calm down. Count down.

999. 998. 997…

Deeeeep breath.

Come down.

Is this what Judy was talking about? Am I travelling astrally? Has spirit separated from flesh and left my body behind? If so, how did I do it? And scarier still, how do I get back in?

Gather thoughts.

Is this what being dead will be like? Floating about like an idea in the ether, waiting to enter the neural-network of a passing-by head?

Sink like a stone. 

Can you feel the silence… 

Damn that dog. Barking again. Oh for a gun – I could shoot it out of my misery. What time is it? The digits 03:49 glow in the dark. I should be fast asleep inhaling sweet dreams not suffocating in clammy crawling humidity thinking how strange it is, the way it envelops you in its sweaty leather glove and grabs hold of Time like a sponge, squeezing each and every second out of it.

Swapped sweating in bed for staring out open bedroom window and playing I Spy.
I spy with my little eye… something beginning with… S.

My next-door neighbor, Mr Stevens. What’s he doing up so late? The damn barking, probably. And why is he standing perfectly still in the middle of his backyard in boxershorts and flipflops? Squinting to I see, I think I make out a Frisbee in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. Behind him, a long, skinny shadow stretches across the lawn like a narrow grave: above, a fingernail moon looking like an incomplete question mark hangs over his bowed head.

Now he’s bending an arm, saying a word - (straining to listen)… I can’t… quite… make out… (but guess to be: Ready) - tossing the disc gently into empty space.

A quick glance over shoulder at bed makes sure I’m not in it and dreaming all this. I mean, come on, what’s going on? What’s the story with Mr Stevens thesedays? I suppose that’s the question on everyone’s lips. Who really knows? I sure as hell don’t.

Gossip around town (tunes on the Devil’s Radio) has it that he’s ‘gone off the deep end’ ever since his beautiful young wife of five years just up and hit the road one day last Christmas, without hint or warning, reason or trace. Made like a banana and split, is how Jack put it. Sadder still, she took their one and only child. A pretty blonde-headed girl of four - four and half maybe. The light of her daddy’s life: the apple of his eye.

Stevens’ moving again, walking dazedly towards the spot where the Frisbee lays, bends over with a grunt, spilling a splash of suds on his feet, picks it up, gazes at it dumbly.

A conspicuously quiet couple were the Stevens’, kind of hard to get to know you could say. Kept themselves pretty much to themselves most of the time. Now that he’s alone, he keeps pretty much to himself all of the time, practically a recluse. Works from home, it’s whispered. Internet related activities, some voices say: drug-running, others counter. There’s a lot of traffic at his door, I suppose - he gets all his groceries and beer and videos and pizzas delivered. He used to be a manager in some bank down the mall. He used to be a husband and a father. I wonder if he knows who he is now.

.

.

Look: He’s putting the bottle down, throwing the plastic saucer again. Soft. Low. Its sailing steady on the still night air… soaring… 10, 12, 14 feet… hitting the grass like a pebble on water… skipping three times. Coming to a halt.

‘Great catch!’ he calls aloud, clapping with a delighted and approving smile.

What’s that? Run that by me again. A sad, strange idea bubbles up and surfaces while a shuddery feeling like a feather-duster brushes my insides as I watch him retrace his steps.

‘Who’s favorite little girl are you?’ he seems to be asking the Frisbee. ‘Daddy’s. Yes, that’s right. And who loves you the most in the whole wide world?’ He smiles and nods his head. ‘Yes. Daddy does. Daddy loves his little girl so very much.’

A neurological pathway lights up, drawing a line that connects my idea to my intuition to what I’ve just seen and heard and Understanding, like a jet, comes in to land. I understand now. Take a nauseating turn for the worse and feel so bad for him. So very sad. Poor sod. He’s playing make-believe, the way a child does, making out as if it’s not today but another, a happier one from the recent past: his little girl on the lawn with him, tossing the Frisbee back and forth, laughing and clapping and being silly. Just like a children’s game.

On knees now. Shoulders rising and falling, head slumping, face falling into cradled hands. Skin on back slides up and down ribcage.

Can’t hear him but I know he’s crying. A shiver runs through me, leaving a trail of deeper feelings: helplessness, horrible hopelessness. But are those my feelings, or am I somehow picking up on his, like a radio picking up soundwaves?

As though receiving orders from outer space, my hands go into motion, tear a page from the back of this book, and on it print ten simple words in purple magic-marker. Folding it quickly into an airplane, my right hand pushes the window open wider. My left, taking care to get the aim right, like a master darts player propels it

… and just look at her go…

                                        on a mission to deliver a spur of the moment message that I hope will help Sad Mr Stevens as it has me in recent times:

TO WEEP IS TO MAKE LESS THE DEPTH OF GRIEF.

Shit!

Aim’s a little off. The plane is going to hit him square on the back of his conk…

but no… wait - 
                      a gust of breeze picks it up, steers it with an invisible hand over the fence and – plonk - into next yard’s swimming pool. Stevens doesn’t notice a thing. I go to make another, but stop before I start. It was a spontaneous action, an off-the-cuff gesture. Doing it again, I feel, somehow, wouldn’t be sincere.

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Try to sleep now… let mind wander…

Wonder if the plane will eventually become sodden and sink to the bottom of the pool, ink trailing behind like purple smoke. And what if it somehow survived and Old Ms Izzard (a skinny, 70-year old spinster who used to be my kindergarten teacher and taught me how to remember the colors of the rainbow in the correct order) found it there in the morning – what would she make of those words?