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.

Lost at Sea

Even as deep as six fathoms she could feel them—thoughts charged with emotion so intense that they were able to penetrate deep beneath the black ocean waves.  She stopped swimming.  The gills on her neck flared as she hovered in the water, her long serpentine tail rhythmically licking from side to side.

                She closed her eyes and waited.  At first there was nothing, and then suddenly an image flashed in her head.  She saw a tall ship returning a husband home from a long voyage at sea—a woman knitting small clothing as she periodically glanced out the window.  The image drained from her mind’s eye, but like blood rushing away from the heart, more flowed in to take its place.  The same couple sat in church.  The woman stroked the meat of his palm with her thumb and forefinger.  Though a small gesture he found it soothing.  He looked at her from the corner of his eye and smiled.  The image was traded for another.  The man was hunched over his wife, crying.  A midwife swaddled a baby in a sheet, its blue skin disappearing in swaths beneath white linen.

                Her tail spiraled spinning her around in circles.  When the next thought arrived, she was able to pinpoint the direction from which it came.  She headed toward the thought’s origin, her tail casually swishing back and forth as she moved to investigate.

                First mate Jonathon Wythe leaned against the gunwale looking out over the rolling waves. The moon’s reflection shimmered in the ocean current.  To him the ocean looked beautiful only at night.  He took a pull off a bottle of whiskey, then set it down and wiped a tear from his eye.  Jonathon had volunteered to stand guard on the Rubicon while it was moored, and most of the crew went ashore seeking pleasure.  Throughout that year he hadn’t spent more than a few days on land, preferring instead the comfort of the ocean’s unceasing tides.  It was as if the longer he stayed out to sea, the more unreal terrestrial life became. 

The last time he went home he discovered that a large family of rats had made a nest in a wall in his kitchen.  He ate his meals as they scampered about, each ignoring the other’s presence.  Maybe in 100 years, he thought, they will gnaw the building to bits from the inside out, leaving nothing more than a few wooden planks as evidence that it had ever been a house.

                He took another sip of whiskey before stuffing the cork in the mouth of the bottle.  Jonathan pulled a gold locket from his coat and clumsily pried it open.  On the left panel was a picture of his wife, her freckles and radiant red hair seeming to transcend the limitations of a black and white photograph.  The right panel was empty.  When she had given it to him, Lydia had said that the right side was reserved for the baby, just as soon as they had saved a few extra dollars to pay the photographer. 

                The baby, he thought, and let the locket fall from his hand.  It dangled over the water, suspended by the chain around his wrist.  Jonathon gritted his teeth at the son that never was.  “Refuse the seed if you do not want to be a part of this world,” he mumbled angrily.  “Do not come into our lives for a moment only to take everything with you when you decide not to stay,” he said, and in one fluid motion he grabbed the bottleneck and hurled it into the water.

                Before he released the glass from his hand he could feel that something was wrong, but the whiskey had slowed his thinking and his actions outpaced his brain.  Jonathon looked down at his arm.  The only thing that encircled his wrist was his coat sleeve.  The locket chain had slid over his hand and around the bottleneck, hitching a ride on its flight out to sea. 

                “Oh, lord, no,” he whispered.  “What have I done?” 

The locket was the only thing he had kept to preserve Lydia’s memory.  Jonathon lowered his head onto his folded hands and began to sob.  The only possession he had that was worth owning, and he had lost it in one impulsive, drunken action. 

Jonathon wondered for a moment if he should jump in after it.  He peered over the side of the boat.  The frothy waves rocked the wooden hull from side to side.  The longer he stared the more he thought he could hear his wife’s voice calling to him.  No rope or ladder reached the water.  If he jumped in there would be no way back onto ship.  Does it matter? he thought.   

Jonathon gasped as he was struck by a thought.  The bottle was corked and he had drunk most of the whiskey.  It would be floating behind the stern on the starboard side of the ship.  The locket could also be afloat, its chain wrapped around the neck of the bottle. 

                He lowered the rowboat as quietly as could, taking care not to wake the few remaining shipmates below deck.  Using spare cordage that he had tied around the mizzenmast, Jonathon lowered himself into the dinghy.  He would wake his friend, Gabriel, to help raise the boat from the water when he returned.

                Jonathan spent the next hour rowing.  He stopped periodically to sweep the water in front of the bow with his lantern and then moved on when the light revealed nothing.  Finally, fifty feet from the ship, he caught sight of something small glinting in the lamplight.  Jonathon hurriedly paddled toward the object.

                Using an oar he gently pulled the bottle toward the boat.  He then plucked it from the water and examined it.  Defeated, he fell back onto the bench.  Jonathon flicked the cork out of the naked bottle and finished the last sip of whiskey.  A few drops dribbled through his beard.  He knew it was foolish to think the locket had not flung free and sank to the ocean floor, but the loss made him desperate.

                “You never used to drink, Jonathon,” said a woman propped up on the edge of the boat, her arms folded across the gunwale.

                Jonathon’s heart paused for a beat.  “L-Lydia,” he gasped.  “W-what are you doing in the ocean?”

                “Looking after you.”  The beads of water clinging to her alabaster skin sparkled in the lamplight.

                “But… how are you alive?” said Jonathon with amazement.

                “Remember what Pastor Collins said, ‘The soul cannot be destroyed, only the vessel can.’”

                “Am I—I must be dreaming?”

                “I am not a dream, Jonathon.  Come here.  Feel my skin.  It is real,” she said extending her hand to him. 

                He stood and took a step toward the front of the boat, taking care not to topple overboard.  Jonathon was about to take Lydia’s hand when he noticed something that startled him.  The end of a massive tail lazily swished back and forth behind her.  He recoiled in fright.

                “What is it, love?” she said, a look of disappointment on her face.

                “Lydia, you—you have a tail!”

                She looked over her shoulder.  “It would seem I do.”  The end of her eight foot tail lifted out of the water and then fell down with a light clap. 

                Jonathon gasped.  He had heard many stories and even seen drawings of mermaids.  In the pictures the tips of their tails always forked parallel to the creature’s body, but Lydia’s rounded at the end.  A posterior membrane flared perpendicular to her torso like the tail of an eel.  And instead of metallic scales, as the drawings often depicted, Lydia’s lower half was slick and spotted with dark green markings like a northern pike.

                “Do not be afraid, Jonathon.  I am still your wife.”

                Jonathon shook his head.  The folklore surrounding mermaids varied wildly.  Some tales described them as playful caring creatures that sometimes helped shipwrecked sailors.  Other descriptions compared them to sirens—tricksters that lured men to their deaths.  Regardless of the truth, Lydia certainly did not have an eel’s tail when she was alive, and she was not buried at sea.

                “My wife lies in a cemetery not far from our house,” he said gravely.  “She cannot be here.  You are some kind of devil.”  

                “No, my love,” she said smiling with eyes alight.  “It is the exact opposite.  I am an angel.”

                “An angel,” he scoffed.  “Angels are part-bird, not part-fish.”

                “Mermaids are angels, Jonathon.  When we die some of us are allowed to become angels if we desire.  We are also allowed to choose a territory to protect.  Angels that choose to protect a territory on land are given wings.  Those that choose the sea are given tails.  Does it not make sense for someone who protects the sea to be half-fish?  If I had wings, how would I rest?  How could I carry a man to safety with wet feathers?”

                “Why choose either?”

                “For you, Jonathon.  I wanted to watch over you while you sailed.”  She began inching toward him along the edge of the boat. 

Instinctively he slid to the opposite side.  “Why have you revealed yourself to me only now?”

“This is the first time you have needed my help.”

Jonathon furrowed his brow and cocked his head to the side.  “What help do I need?  I am not shipwrecked.”

Lydia raised her fist and unclenched her fingers allowing the locket to dangle from her hand.  The gold sparkled as it twirled in the air.

                Jonathon sighed in relief.  He had resigned himself to the idea that the keepsake was lost forever.  He reached for it, but he stopped himself.

                Lydia frowned, disappointed by his persisting fear.  She did not think it would be this difficult to get him to believe her.  Lydia closed her eyes and took a deep breath. 

                “I remember the day I gave you this,” she said looking at the locket.  “You had returned from your longest voyage since we had been married.  It was Christmas Eve and you were due to leave again not more than two days following the birth of Christ.  You said you could not bear to be away from me again.  I was going to wait until Christmas morning to give you the locket, but you were so sad that I thought it better to give it to you that night.  When you opened the locket it brought tears to your eyes.”

                At that moment Jonathon’s eyes began to well with water. 

                The wind blew and the ship creaked behind him.  He looked back.  It was now several yards further away.

                “Do not worry, my love.  I will help you get back to the Rubicon when you need to.”

                He looked back at her and winced.

                “And Gabriel will be asleep for several more hours.”

                “How do you know about Gabe?” he asked, surprised.  Again she had spoken his thought just as it came to mind.

                “I am an angel now, Jonathon.  I know many things.”

                He stared at her curiously.  At that moment he conjured the most erotic image that a man of his Christian upbringing could think of.  As he did he saw a flash of confusion on Lydia’s face, but she said nothing and the knowing smile returned almost immediately. 

                “Do you remember the day you died?” Jonathon asked, recalling the memory.

                “Of course.  I was lying on our wedding bed.  The doctor was trying to deliver the baby.  You were beside me holding my hand and dabbing the sweat off my forehead with your handkerchief.

                The doctor said that the baby was coming slowly.  I was scared, and you said, ‘Do not worry.  Our son, Christopher, will be here soon and we will be a family.’  I smiled even though the pain was immense.  Then suddenly I felt something in my stomach burst.  Everything grew dark, and the next thing I knew I was carrying Christopher to heaven to be with god.”

                Jonathon smiled as tears streamed down his face.  “Yes, that is exactly how I remember it.”

                He reached out and took the locket from Lydia’s hand.  “Thank you, angel.”

                Lydia smiled as Jonathon dried the locket on his coat before opening it one last time.

                “I thought I had lost this.”

                “I can’t leave the water, Jonathan.  You can swim with me.  Swim and you can hold me in your arms again.”

                Jonathon paused, weighing the thought in his head.  He looked at Lydia, then back at the ship, and finally down at the locket.  With a tired breath, he stood and began removing his clothes.  Jonathon set them on the bench in a neat pile.  Mild excitement came over Lydia as his naked form turned to face her.  She backed away from the boat giving him room to enter the water.

                As Jonathon lowered himself over the side of the boat, the cold water sent a chill through his body.  Like a baby baptized at the start of its life, he thought.  Lydia slowly moved toward him, smiling widely, her arms open for an embrace.

                “I want to let you know,” said Jonathon as he treaded water, “we had never decided to name our son Christopher.  I had only thought that we did.”

                The mermaid ignored his admission, thinking it was something meant for his dead wife, not her.  As she wrapped her arms around him, Jonathon knew that his life was over, but he had already surrendered himself to the idea before stepping into the ocean.  He was tired of being alone, and sad, and angry. 

                The creature squeezed Jonathon with superhuman strength, breaking his back.  He cried out, but his voice was quickly muffled as she pulled him underwater.  As the mermaid dragged him deeper, the lantern above grew dimmer and dimmer until he could see nothing but darkness.  And although he could see nothing, Jonathon could feel that the human half of her body had changed to match her fishier half.  More pairs of greasy hands grabbed his arms and legs, and just as numerous sets of needle-like teeth began gnawing at his flesh, his lungs gave out and he lost consciousness.  Before dying Jonathon felt a calm wash over him as he was relieved of his petty earthly emotions.  The sadness was gone—the anger extinguished.  For the first time in years he felt unburdened. 

                As the school of mermaids feasted on their victim’s flesh, the creature that had posed as Lydia thought about what Jonathon had said before she drowned him.  Somehow he figured out that she was reading his mind instead of recalling things that had actually happened, and he fabricated a memory in order to trick her into revealing that she was telepathic.  Until that moment she had been proud of her rouse, but now the victory was tainted by the realization that she was not the deceiver, but rather the deceived.  She repressed the thought for fear that one of her sisters should read it and use it to challenge her rank as leader of their school.

                No one communicated a challenge to her.  Whether this was because there was none or they were too busy eating was unclear, but she was safe, for the moment. 

                The next morning Gabriel discovered that one of the rowboats had somehow come loose and drifted several yards from the ship.  A feeling of dread came over him.  As the Rubicon pulled beside the rogue boat, one of the more nimble crewmen lowered himself aboard. 

                “Have you found anything?” Gabriel yelled down to the crewman.

                “Aye, sir.  Just some clothes and an empty whiskey bottle,” he paused, “and an old locket.”

                   Gabriel put his hand to his chest.  He knew who the locket belonged to, and he knew that grief had finally gotten the best of his dear friend, Jonathon Wythe.

Woodstock

(This is an excerpt--the first chapter really--from a larger story I've been working on.  It has been very challenging and even a little frustrating.  I bit off a lot to chew.  I was hoping that maybe some feedback might reignite my passion and dedication to the project.)

            “Why aren’t you naked, Bob?” said Seraphim, her manner slow and deliberate.

            “Huh?”  Bob snapped to attention.  Her smooth brown areoles had hypnotized him.

“Your clothes, man, you should lose your clothes.”  She knew he was staring at her bare breasts, but that didn’t bother her.  Although Seraphim had only known Bob a few hours, she trusted him completely, just as she trusted everyone she met at the festival—like one massive, happy family.

“I’d love to, darlin’, but I have something I don’t want to lose track of.”  It was partly true.  He was also embarrassed by his doughy, middle-aged physique.

                Seraphim wove a sprig of hemlock into Bob’s shaggy  brown hair.   Her own auburn curls were salted with clusters of the dainty poisonous flower.

                “Lost in our clothes,” said a naked young man sitting beside Seraphim.  Two tabs of acid had dilated his pupils to the size of tack-heads. 

“What’s that, Billy?” Bob said smiling.  The things people said while on psychedelics always amused him.

The boy looked at Bob.  “We are lost in our clothes,” he said without a hint jocularity.  “Clothing is like a series of caves we lose ourselves in day after day.  It—,” he tried to continue, but couldn’t.  A wave of LSD washed over him, and his eyes dove deep into space.

“What were you gonna say, Billy?” He said, in an attempt to bring the boy back from the ether.   

Billy looked at Bob and laughed, loudly and abruptly.  “I don't know.  I’m sorry, man.  I’m peaking, hard.”  He stared over Bob’s shoulder intently.

“I know.  I can see your mind branching out in a thousand directions at once.”

“Exactly, man!”

Bob chuckled.

“Does anyone want to go hear some music?” said Seraphim.

“I don’t know,” replied Bob.  “I’m a little nervous.”

“Is it the mescaline?”

“No.  It's not that.”

“Nervous, nervous, nervous,” Billy chanted.  “Nerves,” he carefully enunciated the word as if examining each of its letters.

The mescaline made Bob want to verbalize everything he felt, but he thought better than to state his fear plainly.  He took a moment to formulate an explanation. 

“I feel like I’ve been here before, numerous times throughout history.”

The two said nothing.  They watched him with undivided attention. 

“It’s like I know I’ll love Woodstock so much that I’ll be able to return to it again and again throughout the rest of my life.”

“Groovy,” said Seraphim.  Wonder shown in her bright green eyes.

“It is, but that would mean there are dozens of me’s from different times roaming around the festival.  I’m nervous I’ll run into myself.”

“Why does that make you nervous, man?  I’d love to hang with myself.”  Billy could barely finish the sentence before breaking into a fit of giggles.

“I’m afraid that if I come in contact with another version of myself,” he paused, “we’ll annihilate each other at the subatomic level.”

Billy and Seraphim looked at each other gravely and then burst into laughter. 

“I like you, Bob.  You are out there,” Seraphim said with a smile.

“I think I’m just going to hang back from the stage, but I’ll walk you up to the edge of the crowd,” he said, opening and closing his hands. 

“Groovy.”

As the trio headed up a hill Bob threw a few psilocybin mushrooms into his mouth.  He washed their stale, earthen taste off his tongue with a can of warm Utica Club beer.  “Two stems, one cap—stand back,” he said to himself.

Fanning out below the crest of the hill was a sea of hundreds of thousands of people.  To Bob, in his drug-addled state, it looked like a massive bowl of colorful cereal teeming in frothing milk.  The beginning of Motherless Child by Sweetwater was drifting from the stage in the distance.   As they neared a drum circle Bob thought he caught a glimpse of himself, bare-chested, dancing with a plump blond woman in an emerald green sundress with gold trim. 

His heart sped up and his breathing grew shallow.  “Hey, let’s listen to these cats jam!” said Bob, leading Billy and Seraphim toward the drum circle.  “Keep it together.  Everything’s okay,” he whispered to himself through a gritted smile.  “I think you’re actually doing quite well—totally fine.”

They followed Bob’s lead and plopped themselves on the grass at the edge of the circle.  Billy and Seraphim’s nakedness prompted nothing more than an affirming smile from one of the conga players. 

Bob's nerves were calmed by the entrancing beat of the hand-drums. 

Seraphim leaned toward him.  “Are you a Bob from the future or are you a Bob from the present?” she said with coy smile.

“Can you keep a secret?”

She winked.

Bob spoke softly so that only she could hear him over the clamor.  “I’m a Bob from the future.”

“Batteries,” Billy suddenly blurted out.  They looked at him curiously.  His face wore the expression of someone who had just discovered the answer to a very big problem.

Seraphim looked back at Bob.  “If you’re from the future, then what song plays next?”

“It’ll be Look Out followed by For Pete’s Sake.”

They looked toward the stage and waited.  After Motherless Child ended Sweetwater began playing Look Out.  Seraphim quickly turned to Bob, her mouth agape with amazement.  He closed his eyes and smiled and nodded.

She leaned in and kissed him.

“What was that for?” asked Bob, his cheeks flushing lightly.

“That was your prize.”

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, scanning her up and down, breathing in her being.  Bob ran his fingers through an unadorned ringlet of hair.  Despite the warm air a shiver relayed through his body.  “I love you," he concluded.

Seraphim closed her eyes and smiled.  “I love you too.”  She stood up and took his hand.  “Let’s go back to my tent.”

“You and Billy aren’t, um…?” said Bob as he rose to his feet.

“It’s cool,” she said definitively as she led him away from the group.

Bob looked back toward the circle.  Billy smiled and waved.  Surprised, Bob waved back.

As they neared Seraphim’s campsite a canvas door-flap unzipped, and a young woman with coarse black hair stepped out of a beige tent.  A tail of smoke followed her.  She held out her palm and a hand grasped it.  Bob froze at the sight of the man who followed from the tent.

“Is that me?” he whispered to Seraphim, hoping it was a drug-induced hallucination.

She answered with a gasp. 

The woman from the tent look confused.  “Do you have a twin brother, Bob?” she asked the man she had just smoked a joint with.

“Yes,” both Bob’s replied simultaneously. 

The dark-haired girl approached Bob and Seraphim.  “Wow, you two look so similar.  It’s trippy.”

“Yeah, that’s what everyone says,” said the second Bob.  “Could you excuse us for one second, darlin’?  I have to talk to my brother for a hot minute.”

She nodded.  As the dark-haired woman headed down the aisle of tents, the Bob’s looked each other up and down.  Two identical beings—the only difference was their clothing and the superficial signs of self-inflicted chemical abuse.   

When the other woman was out of earshot Seraphim blurted out, “I can’t believe you two are the same person!”

“She knows,” said Bob prime.

“Probably not the best idea,” replied second Bob.

“I was vague.  I didn’t think I’d be running into myself to prove it.”

“Far out,” said Seraphim.  She touched second Bob’s face to be certain he was real. 

“I think we’ve just about maxed-out Woodstock,” said Bob 2.  “Maybe one of us should go home.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Silence.

Second Bob spoke first.  “The oldest should go.  What year are you from?”

“I’m from 2011.  You?”  Bob 1 was certain he’d get to stay.  He had no memory of this ever happening, which meant that the second Bob had to be older.

“I’m from 2010.”

“What!  No way?” 

Second Bob shook his head.

“But I don’t remember any of this.”

Second Bob smiled.  “I’m not surprised.  I am on a ton of stuff right now.”  He laughed.  “I think I may have erased all our memories from the past month in one day.”

“Why does the oldest have to leave?” said Bob 1, not ready to concede Seraphim to the natural order of time.

“Because you’re the one that can cause the most damage to our history.  Since you’re older, I’m not altering our past by interacting with you, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t altering your past by interacting with me.  This exchange could change you, possibly for the better, but possibly for the worst.  We shouldn’t chance it.”

Bob 1 sighed, defeated by his own logic.  “You’re right—we’re right.  I’ll go.”

There was a look of disappointment on Seraphim’s face.  “I don’t want you to leave me, Bob.”

“Well, I’m not exactly leaving.”  He nodded at the second version of himself.  “I mean, I am still here, technically.”

Seraphim looked at the other version of him, slightly suspicious.  “I guess so.”  She shook her head.  “This is so gnarly.”

Second Bob walked up to Seraphim and put his arm around her.  He went to touch first Bob's shoulder.  Before Bob 1 could move out of the way, Bob 2 grazed his t-shirt.  
First Bob winced, fearing his atomic annihilation, but nothing happened.  As Bob 1 exhaled his counterpart looked at him curiously.  Then he smiled and nodded.
“I’m sorry.  Chalk this up to the perils of time travel," said second Bob.

When Seraphim turned back, the Bob she had first met was gone, as if he had vanished into air.  She looked at the remaining Bob, reticent to embrace him.

“It’s me, darlin’,” said Bob.  “It’s still me.”

After reconciling the moment, she took him by the hand and led him to Billy’s tent.

They lay on an unfolded sleeping bag, sharing a fat joint.  Bob was now naked as well.  
"Why didn't you and the older Bob annihilate each other when you touched his shoulder?" said Seraphim
"Oh, that," laughed Bob.  "That's been disproved."
"But wouldn't the other Bob have known that?"
“Can I tell you a secret, Sera?”

“Of course,” Seraphim replied as she ran her fingers through Bob’s chest hair.  She had never been intimate with a man who was so much older than she was.

“I’m actually from 2013,” he croaked through a mouthful of smoke.

She sat up and looked at him warily.  “But you said the Bob from 2011 was older than you.”

“I know.  I guess I lied,” he took a hit and then coughed up a lungful of smoke, “to myself.”

“But why would you do that?”  She was not pleased.  Her trust was beginning to fray at the edges.

“It’s not anything I ever thought I would do to myself.  All I know is that an older version of me pulled the same trick two years ago.  I felt cheated, so I did the same thing.” 

Seraphim stared at Bob, a look of mistrust on her freckled face.

“Look, I’m not a villain.  I met you two years ago, and I loved you then as much as I do now, but for some reason the future me stole you… from me.  I had to get this back.”

“But why would you ever do that?”

“I guess I enjoyed being with you so much that I just had to relive the moment,” he paused, “at the expense of the first moment.”

“This is so trippy,” she said.

“I know, darlin’, and I'm sorry.” 

She lay back and thought for a moment. “So I imagine that at one point I must have made love to the younger you.”

“You would think.”

“Then at what point would the older versions of you decide to start stealing me from your younger self?”

Bob exhaled a ring of pot smoke.  He stared wide-eyed at the undulating halo as it rose slowly overhead.  “Maybe I never made the decision.  Maybe it’s always been this way, infinitely.”  With a wave of his hand the smoke dispersed.  “Causal loops are funky.”