No sooner has Slave passed out in the Basement than he finds himself in a new house, in a living room at an upscale table.
Not actually a new house, but definitely another one. The one that Slave always goes to at times like this, his home away from home.
He’s there with the Infanta and there are no doors. Not a problem for finding their way in (they both got here easily enough, as many nights they do), so the problem, as these things go, will be finding a way out.
Not actually a new house, but definitely another one. The one that Slave always goes to at times like this, his home away from home.
He’s there with the Infanta and there are no doors. Not a problem for finding their way in (they both got here easily enough, as many nights they do), so the problem, as these things go, will be finding a way out.
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Slave and the Infanta are seated at the dining room table, wearing their finest.
Dinner is served: multi-course, extravagant, full of delicacies neither can name nor even clearly picture.
They take their time eating and drinking, side-by-side, and eat a lot, feeding themselves and each other. In the background crackles a healthy fire, and there are animal trophies on the walls, shelves full of books, globes.
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A wooly blanket stretches over their laps and knees, as if the fire weren’t heat enough.
The table is reduced to scraps, the bones of complex shellfish and game fowl.
The table is reduced to scraps, the bones of complex shellfish and game fowl.
Digestion begins.
A low grumble from the walls and wainscoting, at first no more than house noises.
They huddle close, trying to shoo away the awareness that something is wrong.
A low grumble from the walls and wainscoting, at first no more than house noises.
They huddle close, trying to shoo away the awareness that something is wrong.
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But they can’t, and, because they’ve been through this before, they know what it is:It’s the house doing the digestion, not Slave and the Infanta, though they’re the ones who got to eat.
But now they’re the matter being digested. The house will soak them in acid and try to boil them down to a pulp. |
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They grab one another,
overturning the table, throwing off
the blanket and the semblance of settled life,
and begin to make wild escape gestures. They grab
at air, trying to swim-fly up and through the ceiling, but,
though this works in most dreams, it does nothing here.
The room is now so hot the walls are warping and
bowing in, almost touching overhead like curtains.
A smell of stomach-work gusts out of the sagging fireplace,
the sour, angry smell and taste that, when Slave used to get
stomach flus as a toddler, he called Cheerio burps.
The escape plan is the same every time, but, since the
dream is truly a recurring one, they have to reach
the edge of despair and come up with it anew.
overturning the table, throwing off
the blanket and the semblance of settled life,
and begin to make wild escape gestures. They grab
at air, trying to swim-fly up and through the ceiling, but,
though this works in most dreams, it does nothing here.
The room is now so hot the walls are warping and
bowing in, almost touching overhead like curtains.
A smell of stomach-work gusts out of the sagging fireplace,
the sour, angry smell and taste that, when Slave used to get
stomach flus as a toddler, he called Cheerio burps.
The escape plan is the same every time, but, since the
dream is truly a recurring one, they have to reach
the edge of despair and come up with it anew.
So they shriek and flail, feel capsules of adrenaline exploding all over their bodies, tingly and electrifying and causing their skin to break out, close to shutting down their brains in last-ditch resignation.
They fall onto their faces, straight into the carpet, as the room gets slushy with stomach acid and the wallpaper and sheetrock give way.
They move on to the walls, peeling out organs and viscera, the whole inner workings of stomach and gut. The animal heads are reduced to glass eyes and floating horns. The house groans and heaves, tries to vomit but doubles over instead, acid spewing down on them like a sprinkler system as all up-down-left-right orientation is lost. It burns off their hair. |
Slave and the Infanta realize, in this instant before death, that the floor is made of skin.
It may be carpet-colored, and beneath that, wood-colored, but it peels up under their fingernails. They tear and tear, racing each other, starting to enjoy it. Blood and pus spew out around them. They start to feel like experts, like they’re getting the hang of something. Their fingernails grow long, first straight-out and then so long they loop and spiral. 
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Red tissue, blue acid, swirling food particulate, a botchery of intestine and gall: it’s like they’re inside a carwash, nearly blind, scrabbling by pure feel, trying to keep their mouths closed so they don’t swallow too much.
Slave and the Infanta ride this wave up toward the esophagus, letting the imploding system push them out.
THEY LEAP THROUGH HOOPS OF FLAME, ONE AFTER ANOTHER AFTER ANOTHER, UNTIL THEY TOUCH DOWN ON THE STREET.
At dawn.
Here they stand side by side, looking at the burnt bodily mess of that house, sirens cresting the distance.
They stand and stare at a shrinking space directly between their two houses –Slave’s parents’ house and Eye’s house.
Soon this middle space will be gone.
They are both bald, their scalps corroded by the acid, so, for a moment, they look the same.
Their hair begins to grow back the longer they stand here thinking, though the Infanta’s is so long it won’t fully return until she’s back inside, resting off the morning in what was once Slave’s boyhood bed.
Here they stand side by side, looking at the burnt bodily mess of that house, sirens cresting the distance.
They stand and stare at a shrinking space directly between their two houses –Slave’s parents’ house and Eye’s house.
Soon this middle space will be gone.
They are both bald, their scalps corroded by the acid, so, for a moment, they look the same.
Their hair begins to grow back the longer they stand here thinking, though the Infanta’s is so long it won’t fully return until she’s back inside, resting off the morning in what was once Slave’s boyhood bed.
It’s a classic sin dream, perhaps, they think, taking this moment to process before they lose hold of where they’ve been, the indulgence of the meal equated none too subtly with sex, but the question remains of whether this could’ve been avoided if they’d simply refrained from eating, since digestion in the house began only after they’d eaten what it had to offer. 
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If they’d sat in that house in frugal abstention, perhaps they could have grown old together, at least until they wasted away from hunger, like a couple of frontier homesteaders high on temperance and the promise of reward in the next life … Slave wants to lean in and kiss the Infanta goodbye, say, “I’ll see you in there again soon, and next time we’ll know better,” but, when he turns, she’s gone. He looks up, sees the front door of what used to be his house closing, his parents’ car in the driveway. |
Defeated, exhausted, Slave trudges up the front steps of Eye’s house to check on his master, likely as not sweating through with methadone terror by this late point in the night’s journey.
Tiptoeing to Eye’s door, he hears the pulsing and moaning that means Eye, too, is in the grip of a nightmare.
Some nights Slave tiptoes in and watches it play out in Eye’s white, like images in a glassy spherical screen.
Tiptoeing to Eye’s door, he hears the pulsing and moaning that means Eye, too, is in the grip of a nightmare.
Some nights Slave tiptoes in and watches it play out in Eye’s white, like images in a glassy spherical screen.
He decides that tonight’s one of those nights. Eye’s nightmares, he’s been finding lately, help him purge the stain of his own … not to mention taking his mind off the Infanta, whom he really might have kissed this time had she still been there when he turned toward her.
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Slave presses close to the body of his sleeping master, close enough to smell his dream-sweat.
Eye’s lid slams down and then shoots up like a windowshade. In between slams, Slave catches glimpses of a shadow-realm, a place of steep drops, frigid and stagnant pools, rock- and bone-piles pressed hard against low rock ceilings. Using a logic he can only call upon in this tender, exhausted state, Slave recognizes Eye’s dream as the Cave which begins where the Sub-basement ends. He’s even deeper in than I was, shivers Slave, remembering the darkest point of his dream before the Infanta appeared and the setting changed. |
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Ragged figures scuttle about, hunched and skinny.
Their jaws are oversized and their lips are chewed-away to reveal jagged, overlapping teeth that boil like mouthfuls of insects.
Half-formed humans, or not quite that, lazily eating one another, no real violence, more a kind of dumb resignation, a hazy line between eater and eaten, like they’re taking turns, like it’s a game that doesn’t have to end.
Cannibals, thinks Slave, aware that it’s too easy a term but too tired to think of another and too scared to do without one.
Through the low cannibal groaning and chewing comes a steadier voice, issuing from Eye’s pores, an audio component to the dream.
Not distinct enough to parse as words, but clearly a speaking voice, even-keeled and sober.
Their jaws are oversized and their lips are chewed-away to reveal jagged, overlapping teeth that boil like mouthfuls of insects.
Half-formed humans, or not quite that, lazily eating one another, no real violence, more a kind of dumb resignation, a hazy line between eater and eaten, like they’re taking turns, like it’s a game that doesn’t have to end.
Cannibals, thinks Slave, aware that it’s too easy a term but too tired to think of another and too scared to do without one.
Through the low cannibal groaning and chewing comes a steadier voice, issuing from Eye’s pores, an audio component to the dream.
Not distinct enough to parse as words, but clearly a speaking voice, even-keeled and sober.
Knowing he’s about to go too far, Slave reaches out and gently rocks Eye in his bath of jelly, tipping him sideways to see more of the dream.
Eye is hot to the touch, feverish. Slave isn’t looking forward to the ice bath he’ll have to administer in a few hours.
The dream moves, revealing the speaker in the Cave: it’s Tarletan the preacher ministering to the cannibals …
Eye is hot to the touch, feverish. Slave isn’t looking forward to the ice bath he’ll have to administer in a few hours.
The dream moves, revealing the speaker in the Cave: it’s Tarletan the preacher ministering to the cannibals …
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Whatever’s he saying to them, they’re paying close attention. They put down their hocks of brother-meat and sit cross-legged like preschoolers, staring up at
Tarletan’s mouth as it moves, their eyes as big as it is. This image is even harder for Slave to bear. Docile cannibals frighten him far more than feasting ones. A swelling inside him bursts and he bolts from the room, Eye groaning from the disturbance, about to wake up and be faced with a day he’ll wish he could swap out immediately for the next night. |
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