IN CALANDA (a story)

REG'S NOTE: It is a dangerous thing to take a nightmare and turn it into a story and an even more dangerous thing to put that story into a blog that your friends and spouse might read. But here it is...make of it what you will. If you want to know what parts I dreamt and what parts I made up, write to me and I might tell you. Or I might not. Either way, you should know that if you are easily offended or disturbed by profanity, language or certain imagery, perhaps this story is not for you... )

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IN CALANDA
By R.E. Scott

“How did I get here?”

The Man heard himself ask this question to no one in particular. He hadn’t even realized that he was talking out loud until he heard his own voice. He tried to keep a thought to himself. In his mind he said, “What kind of place is this?” He heard that out loud too.

What kind of place was this indeed? The Man stood in what appeared to be a splendidly overstuffed living room, albeit one with no windows but far too many doors. The décor was a haphazard, illogical jumble of contrasts—purple crushed velour here; overstuffed, tan leather chair there; a state-of-the-art high definition television set sitting on top of an unfinished, antique dresser next to a bookshelf with no books, but overloaded with knickknacks. If a room could be said to possess a stream of consciousness, this room was a torrent of consciousness, without focus or direction. It was everything and nothing at the same time.

The Man carefully picked his way through a village of ottomans until he came to a large, wooden, six-paneled door. He opened it.

He stepped into an Escher drawing, stairs everywhere, at right angles, at oblique angles, going everywhere at once but leading back only to themselves. Feeling panicked, The Man left the way he had entered and stepped back into the living room.

Only the room had changed. Some items had disappeared while new ones had materialized. (Where had that chandelier been before? Was that ping pong table in the corner?) The Man heard something in a far corner of the massive room and he went toward the sound.

Behind a translucent screen, the kind that you would see in old movies when the female star needed to discreetly change outfits, there were two men, one sodomizing the other. The man doing the sodomizing was wearing lederhosen, his suspenders undone and his shorts around his ankles. The other man was completely naked and seemed oblivious to the sudden bewildered appearance of the new Man. Nonchalantly and somewhat breathlessly he said, “Don’t worry, I’m being liberated.” He said it several more times, although The Man had heard him the first time. Quickly, The Man scurried away and tried another door exiting the living room.

This new room was lush and ornate but well-appointed, with just the right amount of furniture. It was dimly lit, dominated by two Chippendale chairs in the center of room with a tall floor lamp and desk small desk placed between the chairs. One chair was empty. In the other sat a woman who looked very much like Sarah Palin, the vice presidential candidate. Except she had on a red clown’s wig and white face makeup beneath her trademark glasses. Otherwise wore only a G-string, a holster, snow boots and pasties.

Not knowing what else to do, The Man sat down next to her.

“How are ya’?”, she asked cheerfully.

“I’m not sure. What is this place?”

“It is what it is and it ain’t what it ain’t,” Palin replied. She had a bottle of beer on the desk beside her and she took a long drink. She looked at the man quizzically. “Are we having the same dream?,” she asked.

“I don’t know what this is. I don’t know where I am. One minute, I was somewhere else, then I closed my eyes and I was…here.”

“I know how you feel.” She smiled but even with the smile and the clown makeup she still managed to look very sad. “I know just how you feel.”

“Do you have any idea how I can get back?”

“Get back to where?”

“To where I’m supposed to be.”

Palin motioned to the door. “Well I would imagine you would just go back the way you came, don’t you think? What do I look like, a geographer?”

“I saw two men in there. They…”

“They were fucking?”

“Yes. Have you seen them before?”

“I don’t have to see them. I know what goes on in there.” Her whole face darkened. With the wig and the makeup, she suddenly seemed more frightening than jolly.

Palin stood up abruptly. She took her pistol out of its holster. It had a pearl handle with the initials “SP” engraved into it in pink script. The Man took a good look at her for the first time. He didn’t want to ogle her, but he admired her body even as he was afraid of whatever it was she was about to do.

“I’m gonna take care of them,” she said.

“Take care of who?”

“Those men. This is a nice house, a decent house. There is happiness here.”

“You’re…going to shoot them?”

She winked. “Don’t you worry ‘bout that partner.” She took off her wig and threw it to the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, The Man saw the wig scurry off into a dark corner of the room.

She turned and headed for the door. Palin looked back over her shoulder and said, “You should ring the butler and have him bring you some tea. Or maybe some whiskey.”

The Man looked down at the little table and saw a bell there. He could have sworn the bell wasn’t there before. “What if those men know the way out of this place? You shouldn’t shoot them.”

“If they’d a-known, wouldn’t they have told you?”

“I never asked them!”

“Then they probably don’t know.” And with that she cocked her pistol and was out the door.

Somewhere in the corner a scruffy little kitty cat approached a covered litter box. The litter box growled and lunged at the cat, spitting cat litter on her. The cat scurried away with a yelp.

The Man thought about going to stop Sarah Palin, but suddenly he felt very tired and thirsty. He rang the bell and out of nowhere appeared the butler, a tall, thin man with long black hair tied in a ponytail and sagging white skin. He looked older than he probably was, younger than he probably should. He was impeccably attired in his old style butler’s uniform except that he was only wearing one glove.

“Yes?”, the butler said.

“I’m very thirsty”, the Man said. “Could you get me a glass of water? And do you know how I can get out of this place?”

“Certainly sir. I’ll be right back.” The butler left. The Man looked around him. He noticed a very impressive bookcase against one wall, this one loaded with a vast collection of old looking books. He started to get up, but found that suddenly he could not move his legs. His feet felt as if they were stuck to the floor and his legs felt as heavy as two marble pillars.

When The Man looked up, the butler had reappeared. He was carrying a silver tray on which was a glass of water and a revolver. The butler set the tray down on the desk.

“Something’s happening to me”, the Man said.

“I think we’re having the same dream,” the butler replied.

“I thought you were going to show me the way out of here!”

The butler said nothing but nodded towards the gun.

“What is the meaning of this?!” The Man was starting to panic. He could feel his lower body slowly becoming immobile and heavy. “What’s happening to me?”

The butler sighed as if he had seen this a million times before and would see it a million times again. “The choice is yours sir,” he explained slowly. “You can live forever but never leave this chair. You’ll be cared for but you can never feel again, never walk again, never see the sun again. Or you can put a bullet in your brain and leave. But for a split second, at the moment of your death, all of the answers to life will be revealed to you.”

The butler turned on his heel and headed for the door. “I’ll leave you alone so that you may decide. But I wouldn’t wait too long. You haven’t got much time.” The butler left and the door shut behind him.

The Man panicked. He was paralyzed now from the waist down. He felt his stomach starting to harden and to convulse. He looked at the gun, then looked around the room. He wondered if Sarah Palin would come back. He thought about the two men in the living room. He wondered about his name, which he had forgotten or perhaps never known. Did he have a wife, children, friends, a job? What did the butler mean that he would live forever in this room? He felt like he was dying. The Man then realized, he wasn’t sure he’d ever really been living.

“This is a dream,” the Man said. “This has to be a nightmare. And the gun…the gun must be the only way I can wake up from the dream. But, if I die here, don’t I die for real? Did I read that somewhere, or see it on TV?”

It was getting harder to breathe. The Man looked at the gun. He closed his eyes. His mouth and throat were so dry, they felt like they were covered with sandpaper. He wondered if it was the adrenaline. The Man opened his eyes. He took the deepest breath he could manage. His arms felt heavy. He tried to move his right arm.

He was reaching for the glass of water. Just a sip, he thought, then the gun. It had to be the gun.

His hand reached the glass, but he couldn’t grasp it. He couldn’t even feel it. He watched as the glass tipped over, the water spilled on to the tray, then onto the desk and then dripped onto the floor. He tried to pick up the gun, but his hand would not close and his arm had turned to stone.
The butler reentered the room. He had no expression, he just calmly took out a handkerchief and wiped the water up from the floor. “I see you’ve made your choice”, he said. “Well done sir. I’ll be back to check on you in a while.”

As the butler picked up the tray and again left the room, he didn’t see the tear running down The Man’s cheek. The red wig saw it though and it came up to The Man’s leg and nuzzled against it.

It wanted to comfort him.

THE END

Copyright Reggie E. Scott 2009, All Rights Reserved