Hair of the Dog (Part I)

Hair of the Dog (Part I)

By Brett Van Valkenburg

The door of the Tin Lounge swung open.  Darnell Harris stumbled out of the bar and fell to the ground.  His fitted Yankees cap flew off his head, landing in the gutter.  Already his eye was swelling shut.  The man who had given him the shiner attempted to follow him out of the bar, but he and his stocky partner were blocked by a 350 pound bouncer.

                “We’re leaving!” said the boxer.  He was on the tips of his Timberland boots, trying to see over the bouncer’s mountainous frame.

                “I can’t let you leave until he’s gone,” replied the bouncer, pointing his thumb over his shoulder.  He knew if he threw them all out at once there would be a brawl in front of the bar, and that would draw the police.  A business that dealt largely in cash, the Tin Lounge’s accounting practices weren’t exactly on the level, and the owner’s policy was to avoid deferring to cops whenever possible.    “When he’s gone you two can go.”

                Darnell stumbled down the street, his head awash in alcohol and adrenaline.  He leaned against an apartment building to regain his bearings.  It was foolish to go out in public so soon, he knew, but he had been cooped up in his girlfriend’s apartment for over two weeks and he was beginning to go stir-crazy.  Darnell looked back.  The bouncer was trying to force Semi and Miguel back into the bar with little success.

How did they know where to find me? He wondered.  Only one person knew where he was going that evening.  His eyes widened.  “That bitch,” he said in his thick Jamaican accent.  Darnell balled his fist and punched the brick wall.  The mix of chemicals in his blood helped him ignore the pain that accompanied a broken hand. 

“Get back here!” someone shouted.

Semi and Miguel had forced their way out of the bar and were running toward him. 

“Shit,” muttered Darnell before breaking into a run.

The chase led from Bedford Stuyvesant into Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where various cultural enclaves gave way to white gentrification.  Darnell knew he had to make it to the police outpost beneath the Lorimer Street subway station if he were to survive.  Although he was on probation, it would be better to deal with possible jail time than face Semi and Miguel. 

As Darnell neared Grand Street he heard a loud pop and felt a piercing pain in his thigh.  He fell hard onto the pavement.  Darnell felt the leg of his camouflage pants begin to soak with a sticky liquid.  I’m shot, he realized.  Darnell stood, his hands cuffing the bullet wound.  He turned to see the duo closing in.  There was a gun in Semi’s hand. 

Crippled, he pressed on toward the police station.  After crossing the street he was shoved to the sidewalk.  Darnell rolled onto his back and faced his pursuers. 

Semi pointed the gun at him.

“Wait, wait!” he pleaded.  “Don’t keel me.”

“You should’ve taken it like a man, punk,” said Semi.  He had been in and out of jail most of his life, and had no sympathy for rats. 

Miguel mumbled something in Spanish and spat in Darnell’s face.

Darnell whimpered as Semi cocked the gun.  He fired three rounds, hitting him in the chest.  Darnell’s body convulsed with each consecutive shot. 

Miguel moved in, hurriedly stripping a wallet and fake Rolex from the body.  He turned back to find that Semi had already sprinted halfway down the block.

“Wait for me!”

“Come on, you idiot!” Semi yelled over his shoulder.

Miguel ran after him.

As Darnell’s life detached from tissue and bone, he could hear sirens in the distance.  His consciousness seemed to liquefy, draining through the bullet holes in his body and spilling onto the cement.  It mixed with his blood and coagulated inside the pores of the concrete. 

After 24 years of misdeeds and continuous struggle, Darnell Harris was no more.  And yet… much more.

Over the course of the following week a shrine accumulated on the side of the La Bonita bakery where Darnell died.  Flowers, devotional candles, and knickknacks were left in memoriam.  Some offerings were left fondly, but most were left by acquaintances and relatives who looked on their ties to Darnell with confliction.   Money was the only thing he had respected.  A tattoo on his back read Rags to Riches, Schemes to Dreams.  It was a motto he lived by.  Whether it was selling stolen Apple computers and chopped-up motorcycle parts or dealing drugs, Darnell’s methods of money making were always crooked, and everyone who knew him was aware of it.  

“You stupid bastard,” said Shakia Monroe.  Tears streamed down her face.  She took one last pull from a bottle of Hennessy before setting it in front of a milk crate that housed a statue of the Virgin Mary.  Beneath the bottle Shakia could see a faint smear of her boyfriend’s blood.  It stubbornly persisted no matter how many times the bakery owner washed the sidewalk.

“Wasn’t his fault he got shot,” said Shedley Harris, Darnell’s cousin.  Shedley was in the middle of painting a mural on the bakery’s cinderblock wall.  The mural depicted Darnell wearing a white robe and Yankees cap, sitting cross-legged on a cloud.  Angel wings sprouted from his back.  Shakia couldn’t help but smirk at the gross misrepresentation of her on-again, off-again lover.

“Don’t be stupid,” she seethed.  “He chose this life.  This life got him killed.”

Shedley shook his head and went back to detailing the feathers on Darnell’s wings.  He was proud of this piece.  His work had been steadily improving over the last two years, and this was his most lifelike depiction yet (wings withstanding of course).  Shedley made a note to take a photograph.  It would make a great addition to the portfolio he planned to submit to Pratt Institute the following fall. 

Shakia nudged the bottle of whiskey with her foot.  An inch of brown liquor sloshed around the base of the bottle.  “Now don’t you go drinkin’ that, Mary,” she said to the virgin icon staring at her shins.  “That’s for Darnell.”

When Phillip Paige awoke, the first thing he noticed was the unfamiliar white stucco ceiling overhead.  Phil sat up in his queen-sized bed.  A painting hung on the striped white and yellow wall across from him.  In the picture a carousel blooming with light caught the attention of Victorian passersby on a spring evening.  In the background Cinderella’s Castle rose into a salted night sky.   Phillip was in his room at the Disney Boardwalk Inn outside Orlando, Florida. 

He looked through the glass door that led onto the veranda.  The sun was beginning to rise over the eastern shore of Crescent Lake.  Phillip sat up and pressed his feet into the blue and gold checkered carpet.  The polyester fibers soothed his toes. 

                The bed across the room was neatly made.  Where are mom and dickface? Phil wondered.

His mother was an early riser.  Phil guessed she let him sleep while she and her new husband enjoyed a moment without him, which wasn’t a surprise considering the attitude he had radiated during the drive down from New York. 

                Phil got out of bed and walked over to the veranda.  He opened the sliding doors and stepped outside.  A warm breeze blew against his half-dressed body, enveloping him like amniotic fluid.  He peered over the banister past the empty boardwalk.  The surface of Crescent Lake was as still as glass. 

                Phil shut the door and headed toward the bathroom to brush his teeth and wash his face.  As he crossed the bedroom he noticed a note on the desk next to the television cabinet.  The note read: Went to park.  Meet for lunch at noon in Germany. Love, mom and dad.

                Dad—right, thought Phil.  His lip curled.  His name is Robert. 

                Phil plodded down the carpeted staircase into the lobby of the 1940s-styled seaside inn.  As he passed the hotel bar he overheard a patron ask for the “hair of the dog.” 

“Hennessey on the rocks,” replied the bartender. 

A little early to be drinking, Phil thought.  Even at the fresh age of fifteen he knew what an alcoholic was. 

                A ferry was tied to the dock that extended from the boardwalk over the pristine waters of Crescent Lake.  Phil hopped on board.  The captain nodded and smiled. 

As the empty ferry puttered around the bay Phil searched his pockets.  He was pleasantly surprised to find a full pack of Camel cigarettes in his khaki shorts. 

                He slapped the pack against his palm to pack the tobacco tighter, or so one of his buddies had instructed him.  The noise caught the attention of the ferry captain.  They locked eyes in the rearview mirror.  Phil smiled at him guiltily.  “No smoking?” He said. 

                “Aren’t you a little young?” said the captain. 

“It soothes my arthritis,” he replied, trying to win the captain over with a joke.

The captain paused.  “Ah, go ahead.  There’s no one else on board,” he said with a smile and a wink.  “I’d smoke one myself if I wasn’t on the clock.”

                Phil thanked him.  He opened the pack and threw a cigarette into his mouth.  To his embarrassment, the first drag of the cigarette made him cough.  He was still trying to get the hang of looking cool. 

                The ferry puttered down the channel leading to the main lake.  The captain pulled the boat beside a set of cleats bolted to a stone break-wall.  “First stop: France!”  He leaned out of the boat and roped the ferry to the cleats.

                “Thanks,” said Phil. 

                He jumped out and headed toward the Eiffel Tower looming in the distance.  Where is everyone?  He wondered.  The park was empty.  Abandoned.    

The scent of fresh pastries wafted toward him.  Phil followed his nose and headed to Les Halles Boulangerie & Patisserie where he purchased a croissant and a hot chocolate.  When Phil left the café he was surprised to find that, in only a few minutes, the park had filled with people. 

                He ate and drank as he headed to Japan.  On the porch of a pagoda, three Japanese women in full eastern regalia danced as they wildly beat on a series of elongated wooden drums.  Phil watched, captivated by their showmanship.  After Japan it was on to the American Adventure. 

The Imagineers at Disney had done a wonderful job.  The American Heritage Gallery looked exactly like the interior of a 1700s Georgian-styled building that one might find in Williamsburg, Virginia.  Crowds of people bustled around him.  They moved from one exhibit to another examining paintings, artifacts, and interactive displays.  In the grand hall, a colonial-garbed acapella group sang the richest rendition of Yankee Doodle Dandy Phil had ever heard. 

The music reminded him of his father.  He had been in bands all his life, even up to the car accident that ended his life five years earlier. 

Dad would have liked this, thought Phil.

When the song ended Phil entered a theater and took a seat in the last row.  He was just in time for the American Adventure.  The show began with a prologue delivered by a woman dressed in authentic colonial attire.  Upon her exit, the spotlight focused center-stage where animatronic replicas of Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain discussed the virtues of a nascent America. 

                Phillip was fascinated by the life-sized robotic puppets.  From a distance they looked and sounded real.  The only thing that gave away their soullessness was the way they moved.  The puppets’ appendages glided smoothly through the air before abruptly stopping, like assembly-line machinery in a factory—their momentum countered by an opposing mechanical force—too precise to be human. 

                More puppets came and went, and after a half hour the show ended.  Phil left the theater aglow.  He stopped in the grand hall and leaned against a Doric column to watch the acapella group perform another song.  Phil nodded his head to “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”.  As the performance progressed, Phil felt that something was off.  The choir group seemed stiff—their movements rigid and punctuated.  He looked around the audience to see if anyone else shared his look of suspicion.  The crowd was blissfully unfazed.  They simply nodded and clapped along with the arrangement.  That’s when it occurred to him that they also moved oddly.  The spectators clapped in exact unison, one hand bouncing off the other and stopping at a precise outer orbit. 

Their movement is too smooth, thought Phil, too clipped, too… mechanical.  Phil backed away from the circle.  “What’s going on?” he whispered to himself. 

                Despite the music and his hushed tone the entire crowd seemed to hear him.  The singing stopped immediately and at once everyone in the grand hall pivoted their heads in his direction.  There was a moment of stillness and then the crowd encroached upon him. 

                 “What are you doing?” said Phil.  “Get away from me!”

                The crowd said nothing.  They moved toward him slowly and smoothly, as if on rails.  Their legs rose and fell in exaggerated motions, but contrary to their grand movements, they moved at a crawl.  Their eerie simultaneity was enough to send Phil running.

                He dashed to an emergency exit and shot outside.  The park was empty.

                Where the hell did everyone go? Phil wondered.

                The puppets poured through the main entrance of the American Adventure.  Phil ran.  He ran all the way to Epcot China before stopping to catch his breath.  The puppets never halted their pursuit, zipping along hidden rails on the edge of the lake. 

Phil kept moving.  When he reached Norway he found it was enclosed by a tall wooden fence.   Pardon our appearance while we make some improvements read a sign strung across a gate.  Exhausted, Phil decided to hide.  He leaned into the gate, trying to create enough space to slip through.  The fence gave and when Phil peaked inside he was shocked by what he saw.  Behind the fence was nothing. 

Startled, he let up and the fence contracted.  Phil stepped back and put his fist to his mouth.  He was unable to reconcile what lay hidden behind the wooden panels.  Overcome with curiosity, he again pushed against the fence and peered through the crack, and once again there was nothing.  Not demolition, not an unfinished building, or even a vacant lot—it was a completely washed-out section of reality, as if the whole world had been painted by an artist who stopped at the stretch of canvas that would have been Norway.  The blue sky, the fence, the pavement—all matter was defined to the edge of a circle where it faded to pure white, like the photo negative of an eclipse. 

He backed away, scared and confused.   When Phil turned around he found the mob was right behind him.  They enclosed with arms outstretched, forcing his back to the gate.  Trapped, he took one last look at the pure nothing behind the fence.  With nowhere else to go their reaching hands drove him to the pavement, pressing him against the concrete.

                Phillip awoke with a yelp.  He sat up and gasped for breath.  After a moment he realized he was back in his hotel room.  The early morning sunbeams illuminated the carousel painting on the wall. 

Just a nightmare, he thought.  An extremely vivid nightmare. 

Phillip got up and washed his face and brushed his teeth.  He dressed and then left the room.  As he headed downstairs he heard a patron in the hotel bar ask for the “hair of the dog.” 

“Hennessey on the rocks,” replied the bartender. 

Phil paused.  His stomach knotted.

He headed to the front door, but he stopped, his gaze stuck on the entrance to the hotel bar.  Phil swallowed.  He wanted to keep going, but he was too curious to deny an investigation.  Phil peered in and saw a male patron, dapperly dressed in a three-piece suit.  The man lifted an empty rocks glass to his mouth.  He tilted his head up and down several times before setting the glass back on the counter.  He did this again and again even though there was nothing to drink.  The glass was a prop. 

Is this a… park amusement? He asked himself.

Suddenly the patron and the bartender turned their heads toward Phil, their gaping toothy smiles sending an arctic chill up his spine.  Phil quickly turned away.  He strode across the lobby and out the door, taking care to avoid eye contact with the concierge.

               

The ferry carried him across Crescent Lake.  He looked out over the water and ran his hands over his thighs.  There was something in his pocket.  Phil reached inside and found a pack of unopened Camels.  The ferry Captain stared at him through the mirror.  Phil swallowed.

                “Go ahead,” said the captain.  “No one else is onboard.”  His tone was more jovial than it sounded in Phil’s dream.  “I would have one if I wasn’t on the clock.”

                Phil suddenly felt too sick to smoke. 

                “Shall I drop you off in France?” asked the Captain.

                “Yeah, sure,” said Phil thoughtlessly.  “No.  Let me off at Norway.” 

                The captain nodded. 

                Moments later the boat pulled up to the dock at Epcot France. 

                “Here you are,” said the Captain.

                “I said ‘further down shore!’” Phil barked.

                The Captain said nothing.  He sat, back turned, waiting for his passenger to get out.  A slack-jawed smile never wavered on his face.

                Phil deboarded, more to get away from the glib Captain than anything else.  He didn’t visit France.  He even skipped the next four countries before stopping at Germany.  A sign for the Biergarten Restaurant caught his attention.  Robert and his mother were supposed to meet him there in a few hours. 

Phil swallowed.  Maybe I can sneak a drink, he thought.   He glanced from side to side and then entered the biergarten.

                The restaurant was a full-scale recreation of a Bavarian village during Oktoberfest.    The hall was almost empty aside from the wait-staff.  They zipped in and out of the kitchen, preparing for the day’s customers.  Phil took a seat at a banquet table. 

                A bandstand stood in the center of the faux village.  It was bordered by half-timbered homes—their exposed wooden framework creating a convincing air of authenticity.  There was even a projection of a parallactic moon moving over the buildings.

                “Can I get you a drink, mein Herr?”

                “Ah!” said Phil, grabbing his chest.  A tall, slender waitress stood behind him. 

                “Sorry, I did not mean to startle you,” she spoke with a German accent.

                Phil relaxed.  The waitress was a stereotypical Bavarian beer girl complete with blond pigtails and a black and green dirndl. 

                “Could I get a beer?” he said, uncertain.

                She smiled and nodded. 

Phil was relieved to get a break, but he scolded himself for not being more confident.  Conviction, he knew, had the power to make or break a scam. 

                Without warning the red stage curtain drew back revealing a three-piece oompah band—accordion, tuba, and bass drum—clad in lederhosen.  Phil smiled and leaned back against the table.  The restaurant was relatively empty.  He’d have time to think, music, and he’d have beer. 

                The thought was punctuated by a heavy thud as thick glass met wood.  He turned to find that the waitress had delivered his beer with lightning speed.

                “Thank you,” he said. 

                He tilted the voluminous stein consuming half a liter within seconds.  Good gravy, he thought.

                The oompah band began to play a traditional German song.  The simple, syncopated rhythm had a lulling effect.  He took another gulp of beer and scanned the band.  Their playing was like clockwork.  It’s almost too precise, Phil thought, ringing his hands. 

The waitress came back.  “Something wrong, mein Herr?” She said, tilting her head.

                “Are these musicians animatronic or are they real?” he asked.

                “Why don’t you finish your drink?”

                “I don’t want to drink.”  His brow creased.  “I want to get out of here,” said Phil rising from the table.

                Suddenly the band stopped playing.  Their heads swiveled toward him in unison.  The wait staff at the front of the restaurant stopped bustling about and turned their eyes to Phil.  Without warning, the waitress snatched him by the shoulder. 

                Her grip was strong.  Phil cried out in pain.  Without thinking, he picked up the beer stein and slammed it into the her head.  She glided backward. 

                “You dick!” he said as he rubbed his shoulder.

                The right side of the waitress’s skull was collapsed into her head.  A liquid the color and viscosity of port wine oozed from the indent in her cranium.  It flowed down her forehead and over her bulging right eye.  Her arms shot out as she stiffly marched toward Phil.  Like Frankenstein’s monster, he thought. 

                The rest of the wait-staff came for him as well.  As he backed away Phil looked around the room for an escape. 

                Phil ran toward a green door set into one of the faux village houses.  He jiggled the handle, but it was sealed shut.  When he turned back he found that the waitress was only feet from him with the rest of the staff closing in behind her. 

Phil kicked the door.  At first nothing happened, but he kicked again and again until it began to give.  Finally the door flew open revealing a blinding light.

                Phil darted through the doorway, but he halted only feet past the threshold.  Behind the door of the Disney set-piece was, nothing—absolute, pure nothing.  Just like Norway, he thought.

Phil marveled at the sight of the white room, which was physically unlike any room possible.  There were no walls.  There were no angles or shadows.  It was simply an endless expanse of undetermined space interrupted only by the door he had come through.

                This isn’t real, he thought.  This isn’t real.  It’s a dream.

                Phillip backed out the door.

                The mob was still inching toward him, but compared to the intimidating infinity of uncharted space, the mob was small potatoes. 

The waitress reached for him, but Phil kicked her in the gut sending her flying into a lamppost.  As she slid to the floor the lamppost loosened and toppled onto one of the lederhosen-clad waiters.  His head came off sending a spritz of dark liquid into the air.

                They were vulnerable.  Phil was tense, but he was no longer scared.  “Cut the crap!”  His voice echoed off the walls, and with that, everyone in the room shuddered to a halt. 

                Phil squinted at the crowd of puppets.  “Now sit down!” he commanded.  They sat—some on seats, some on thin air.  Somehow he was now in control.

                “You,” Phil said to the waitress.  She sat up and stared at him, her face dented and her back twisted out of alignment.  “What is this?” 

                She stared at him blankly.

                “Tell me!”

                “It is a dream fashioned from memory.”

                What does it mean? He thought, uneasy.

                The door swung open and two figures came into the biergarten.  As they approached Phil’s jaw dropped.  It was his mother and his father—not Robert his stepfather, but his real father.

                Phil could hardly believe it.  His father had died years ago, and yet here he was standing before him.  “Dad!” Phil said enthusiastically. 

                “Phillip, come,” said his father taking his son by the hand.  His tone sounded exactly as Phil remembered.  “Let us wake you from this horrible dream.” 

                Elation turned to unease as Phil took a closer look at his father.  His face appeared stiff and waxen, and he was wearing makeup.  He looks just like he did at the funeral, thought Phil.  Phil snapped his hand from his father’s grip and backed away.

As if responding to his moment of weakness the puppets stood and began to file toward him with outstretched arms. 

                “I said stop!” said Phil, this time with less confidence.  But they kept coming. 

He looked over his shoulder.  The door that led to the unfinished world beyond Epcot was still open.  It was his only exit, but where would it lead? 

                “Ah, screw it.” 

Phil took one last look at the imitation of his father and then charged through the open door.  As he ran through the blank landscape he looked up.  The white canvas stretched overhead spanning into a sterile white sky.  Phil looked at his shoes.  He wasn’t quite sure what his sneakers were making contact with.  Everything was so flawlessly white that it was impossible to infer dimension. 

I should turn back, he thought.  No.  Better the infinity of negative space than a hostile set-piece. 

A tiny black point appeared in the distance.  As he drew closer the dot grew bigger and bigger.  Phil ran faster.  He noticed that no wind blew in his face as he moved.  The black hole grew to the size of a manhole cover suspended in the air.  He dove through the hole.

Phil came into his consciousness with a gasp. 

A young Hispanic man standing only inches away stared at him menacingly before falling to the floor.  Phil looked down.  In his hand was a large carving knife smeared with the man’s blood.  Was this another dream, he wondered?  Phil nudged the man with his foot.  His lifeless body felt distinctly real.

What have I done? Phil asked himself, shaken.  Where am I?  This has to be a dream.  It has to be.

He was standing in a small, dark kitchen.  Streetlight ebbed in through the window.  The glass rattled as violent gusts of wind pelted it from outside. 

Phil dropped the knife.  It clattered to a rest on the worn linoleum floor.  Disoriented, Phillip hobbled down a dimly lit hallway, his ankle in inexplicable pain.  A lighted door at the end of the hall revealed a bathroom.  Phil entered and shut the door, careful to lock it.  He stared in the mirror.  His left eye was blackened.  His upper lip—swollen.  A sliver of blood leaked from the corner of his mouth.  He pulled his hands down his face, as if hoping to wipe away the insanity with the sheen of sweat that glistened on his skin.

Phil stared at his sorry face in the mirror.  What happened? He wondered.  The last thing he remembered was being at a bar.  The bartender had claimed he was too drunk and threw him out.  As dawn broke, he staggered down the empty street in the direction of his apartment. 

His bladder was full.  Phil leaned against a store front and relieved himself. 

“Hey!” said a voice from the floor above the shop.  “You get away from my shop!”

“Fuck off,” he had slurred as he zigzagged across the street.

A mural on the side of the local bakery caught Phil’s attention.  Through his drunken haze he noticed a bottle of Hennessey sitting in front of a milk crate topped with lit candles.  Phil knelt down and examined it.  He had an urge to finish the whiskey, almost as if to spite the dead man it honored. 

Phil picked up the bottle.  “You don’t need this,” he said showing the bottle to the man in the mural.  He uncapped the container and was about to take a sip when he suddenly felt compelled to say something, as if out of ceremony.  He thought for a moment.  “Hair of the dog,” was all he could come up with.  Phil raised the glass to the dead man and then downed what was left of the Hennessey.   

After that his memory faded.

As he stared at his face in the mirror, it began to slowly change.  His eyebrows darkened and his skin tanned.  His hair became black and coarse.  At first he thought it was a trick caused by a dimming lightbulb, but after his nose widened and his irises turned black he realized it was something sinister.  His face was no longer his own.  Phil thought he recognized the stranger staring back at him in the mirror.  It was the face that was painted on the bakery wall above the shrine.