Chapter 7

I don't care what it is at this point, just let me know if you read it or not.

 

A week or so after everything had quieted down; Charles Davis did something absolutely unheard of. He had written a free-verse poem. It wasn’t until the next day that he realized what he had done.

It was awful, he thought. Scandalous even. What would the others at the country club think? He paced his apartment for a good long while before he decided to burn the poem"hell, burn the whole notebook! And the pencils for good measure. That will ensure that he never does anything silly like that again, right?

Charles went to stir up a fire in the fireplace. It was fake, of course. Nobody had real fireplaces anymore, but the chimney shaft had vents in it because Charles liked to have friends over to smoke cigars now and then and the smoke would have become unbearable otherwise. So he removed the fake wood from the metal rack and tossed in a dozen or so sheets of paper along with the notebook.

Before tossing in the page with the poem, however, Charles hesitated. He looked at it and read the poem. It was only a few lines long and he couldn’t imagine where the inspiration might have come from. “A scrap of paper drifts out of the sky, its edges blackened by fire, and beyond, a floating city crashes to the Earth,” he read out loud. Now that was something he never would have thought to say. It was strange: he clearly remembered writing the poem"it wasn’t as if he had gone into a trance or anything"but he couldn’t have written something like that. It was beyond him, beyond anybody he knew. He didn’t feel different; he had taken his temperature just the other day and had been perfectly healthy, but still something was off.

He wondered just what else about him might have changed. What could be happening? He tried to remember what had occurred the past few days and grew paranoid about every detail that was even the slightest bit deviated from his normal routine. A cup held in the opposite hand, or a different greeting to his assistant. Even his thoughts fell under scrutiny, and he cursed himself a thousand times over because just the other day he had looked up at a cloud drifting by and wondered where it might have drifted from and where it was headed.

There was nothing to it, he thought. Just get rid of the evidence now and if you don’t get back on your feet tomorrow, then you’ll call the shrink. Yes, that’s what you’ll do. Everything will be just fine.

He threw the poem into the fireplace, lit a match and tossed it in. Before heading off to bed, he watched the embers burst and fizzle until the room fell into darkness. He was afraid. As the final fragment of paper hissed into oblivion, he could have sworn he felt regret.

It really had been a beautiful poem, he thought.

He slipped into his pajamas and settled under the sheets. He turned over on his side, then onto the other side, then onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. He could not stop the flow of words were rushing through his thoughts. He tried to mentally capture the words, but they disappeared whenever he got a handle on them.

He laid in bed for three hours before he came to the conclusion that he would not be getting sleep anytime soon. He got out of bed and threw on some clothes. A brisk walk through the chilly city air should clear his head. The elevator doors popped open immediately when he pushed the button. The doorman seemed to have been waiting for him in the lobby, and opened the door for him, smiling warmly. Charles smiled back. Outside, it was not as cold as he thought it would be, but it was snowing. He stood outside on the street looking up as white flakes drifted through the air, illuminated by the soft glow of the streetlights, and landed softly on the ground. A thin blanket had formed, but it didn’t seem to grow any higher. Charles picked a random direction and started walking

Everywhere he went, people seemed to stop what they were doing and wave to him. He waved back, smiling wider and wider, he couldn’t help it. Something was hanging on the edges of his mind, trying to remind him that something was wrong with him, but he could care less. If something was wrong about how warmly he felt, then he decided he didn’t care to know what was right. Strangers came up to him, commending him for his golf score last week, or how well he always dressed. Charles was flattered.

The square was at the center of the neighborhood and was host to a large geometric fountain. The spouts were made to look like buildings in a skyline, but it wasn’t very impressive. Charles entered the square expecting to see the familiar sight but was instead met with a new one.  The stone buildings were replaced by a ring of elephants, their enormous bodies supported on their hind legs as they lifted their trunks into the air and sprayed enormous amounts of water at each other. Charles stared at them, mouth agape. A string quartet began playing at a restaurant nearby, which Charles didn’t remember being there before. There were lights strung up all along the square and people were dancing beneath them to the music. Charles had never heard such music. It was so happy and beautiful; he just wanted to join the people dancing. A woman appeared, her hair silky blonde and her dress was a bright red that seemed to glow in the light. He smiled and took his hand, pulling him into the throng. Charles didn’t complain, and although he hadn’t the slightest idea how to dance, he found himself moving in tune to the quartet. He was laughing harder than he ever had, and even though he couldn’t understand what was happening, he wanted desperately to lose himself to it.

Eventually he started to feel short of breath, and the woman who he had danced with came to his side, entwined her arm around his, and walked him away from the excitement. Charles was laughing and the woman was laughing. They hadn’t said a word to each other, yet they were laughing as if taken by some wondrous disease.

They reached a bar, which was also unfamiliar to Charles. The buildings all seemed to be different as well; shorter and quainter, more wood and painted plaster than metal. Inside, the woman sat him down at a bar stool and ordered two cups of coffee.

“Oh no, it’s late for that, I was hoping to get some sleep tonight,” Charles said.

The woman smiled at him then looked at the bartender and said, “Make one decaf then.”

The bartender nodded then turned a few knobs on an enormous and elaborate silver container. The woman asked Charles about himself, what did he do and what was his life like?

“Well, it’s nothing like this,” he said, chuckling to himself. “It’s really uninteresting, actually. I manage a construction firm.”

“Well that sounds interesting,” the woman said with genuine curiosity.

“Oh no, no. I’m not allowed any leeway with the design of buildings, so it’s not exactly a creative atmosphere. I just make sure the builders stick to the plan given to us by the company.”

“That’s awful. They don’t let you do anything yourself?”

“Unfortunately no, they really don’t. Although sometimes I’m allowed to handle the explosives for demolitions when they’re called for. Constructing a building is fun and all, but to be perfectly honest, there’s nothing in this world more satisfying than watching one crumble to bits.”

The coffee came, and Charles sipped it delicately. It was delicious, much better than the kind he usually got from the shops. When he finished, a small fortune of grains clung to the bottom. The bartender asked if he wanted some milk in his mug. The woman recommended it, asking for some herself when she finished.

They sat for a long while, talking about Charles. Even the bartender would sometimes comment. It felt so good to talk to people, he thought. Nobody had ever truly listened to him before, but then again he had never really felt inclined to share. These people were so easy to talk to, and Charles found himself discovering things about himself that he had never quite realized. He liked the color forest green immensely, and he hated the hollow noise of a coin descending into a payphone.

After a while, a bell tolled the hour and Charles realized how late it was getting (or early, considering it was nearly five in the morning), and he told the woman in the red dress and the bartender that he really must be going.

“Oh,” the woman whispered sadly. “That’s too bad.”

“Well, if you really must go,” said the bartender, looking equally downtrodden.

Charles felt terrible, but he really needed to head home.

“You’ll come back soon, won’t you?” the woman pleaded, her enormous blue eyes opening wide.

Charles smiled. “Of course I will,” he said.

This seemed to satisfy the woman. She pointed a finger at him and said with feigned sternness, “Same time tomorrow then?”

“Sounds wonderful.” Charles opened the door as the bell rang once more. “Oh, but I didn’t catch your name.”

“My name? Charles, dear, my name is whatever you want it to be.”

Charles frowned, but then began to feel light headed. He drifted out through the open door and into the snowy night. The bar disappeared below him and soon he was staring up at his bedroom ceiling. A few spots of early morning light peeked at him through the shades.

He had dreamt.

Charles sat up quickly. The world around him didn’t seem real. He put his clothes on, feeling as if he had done just that only moments ago and left the apartment, not minding that his hair was a mess.

The doorman opened the door for him, but he wasn’t smiling. The people outside didn’t spare him a passing glance, and every one of them looked solemn. He found himself jogging to the square, where the familiar sight of the stone-city fountain greeted him. There were no lights, no music, and no woman in a red dress. An overwhelming sadness crept over him.

He returned to his apartment and called in sick to work. They asked if he wanted to contact a doctor, but Charles turned them down. I just need a little rest, he had told them.

The first thing he did after calling was write down the poem he had written the other day, the one that he had burned. He wrote it down, and then he wrote another and another. Soon, his apartment was littered with scraps of paper and hundreds of poems. Words were flooding his head again, but this time he could picture them and piece them together. He poured his heart out into the poems and felt like he was doing something illegal. And yet, he couldn’t stop.

He was counting the hours until nightfall. He hadn’t had a drop of coffee all day for the sole purpose of falling asleep quicker. It was painful though, he felt empty without coffee; he had never gone so long without it. The food he ate would not satisfy him, and he drank every type of beverage he had in the apartment besides coffee but his throat was dry as sand in the sun. The thought of dreaming again, however, was even more alluring than his craving.

Charles had pulled up a chair close to the window so he could watch the colors of the sunset melt away into the dusk. He was nodding off, the lack of caffeine taking its toll, but he wanted to do it right.

A little buzzer on his alarm clock rang and Charles turned it off. He was already in his pajamas, and sheets were already pulled back, just waiting there for him. Slipping under the sheets, Charles couldn’t help but smile. He closed his eyes and was out like a light.

This time, he wasn’t even given the start from his bed. He was standing in the square, the elephant fountains rearing up before him. The woman in red appeared next to him.

“I am so glad you came back,” She said, smiling. She took his arm in hers and walked him through the square down a sides street, where an enormous tent was set up. It seemed to grow as they neared it, it’s rolling curtains of red and yellow fabric pushing apart the buildings on either side of it until the narrow street was as wide as a runway strip. The woman ushered him in and sat him down in the stands surrounding a wide ring of dirt. People funneled into the tent and crowded the stands around them. Everyone seemed to know Charles and nearly all of them asked if he was enjoying himself. He answered, “Oh yes, of course,” but this statement couldn’t have summed up half of the elation he felt.   

The show began and beings Charles could never have imagined during the day stepped out from behind the curtains. There were fire-jugglers who moved so quickly it was as if they were enveloped in a maelstrom of flame. Out came women riding elephants that bowed to you and walked on their hind legs. Out came lion tamers sending their beastly golden counterparts jumped through hoops set ablaze. Out came clowns in bright pastel-colored clothes pulling scarves out of their mouths and spraying each other with hoses. Out came magicians who appeared clouds of smoke and making a giddy audience member disappear beneath a tarp. There were tightrope walkers and trapeze artists, and a fat man in a tight leotard that jumped off a diving board thirty feet up into a tiny pool of water.

After the show was over, Charles and the woman returned to the bar they had visited the first night. Charles ordered tea. He was beginning to be suspicious of coffee and was setting his mind on quitting.

“How noble of you,” the woman said with a smirk. “I’ll have tea as well, in that case.”

The tea came and Charles felt particularly proud for having denied himself the coffee.

“Charles, dear,” the woman said after a while.

“Yes?”

“Do you want to stay here?”

Charles took a moment to consider it, disregarding whether or not it was possible and only wondering if his life was worth salvaging.

“Of course I do,” he said finally.

The woman smiled and she took his hand. “Oh Charles, I’m so very happy you do. There is just one thing you must do first. I hope it’s not particularly difficult for you, and really I wouldn’t bother asking if it wasn’t terribly important, but you see, it is.”

“Just say the word,” Charles said, clutching her hand in his. “I’ll do anything.”

The woman took a deep breath, as if the next words were difficult to say. She whispered into his ear, “Charles, dear, I need you to destroy the city wall.”

Author's Note

Please let me know what you think.

Reviews

[PaperLife]

I'm still reading and becoming more and more enchanted and sucked in, you have a very beautiful way of writing. Your words drift like smoke slowly and softly into my mind twisting and tugging gently at my imagination and letting pictures grow. Very few people can write like you. :)