Summer writing project, part five
More work on my summer story, with things getting weirder as we enter dream sequence land.



I’m in a box. Buried alive. And I can’t breathe.

The smell of sweat fills my lightless world. I hear a panting noise. I realize that it’s coming from me. The sound of my jagged breath echoes against the cover of my wooden coffin. I have to calm down. The more I breathe, the less air I have left. But I can’t stop. The more I think about it, the faster my panting becomes. I get light-headed. Darkness. Sweat. Death.

Pounding on the lid of the coffin now. It’s a poorly constructed wooden prison. Some dirt crumbles in through a crack in the lid. Cold. Unseen. Nobody will ever know I’m here. I’m trapped here forever.

“Letmeoutletmeoutletmeout LET ME OUT!” My voice grows from a babbling incoherence to a full on scream. I can’t die. I’ll live forever, trapped in this grave.

Scratching on the lid. Rats and worms, waiting to tear at my flesh. I’ll pass out and they’ll find their way in. Tear at my flesh. Rip me to shreds. I’ll still live, a thinking skeleton stuck forever with my fear.

“Robin!” I can’t see my tattoo in the darkness. Can’t see anything. But she has to be there. Please. “Robin, I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. Help me, please.”

I feel nothing. No twitching on my palm. Nothing but my own trembling limbs. I can taste my fear now. Moisture from my breath settles on the tip of my tongue, wetting an otherwise dry mouth.

The scratching grows louder. I won’t let the vermin take me. I pound at the lid, then claw at it like a wild animal. Wooden splinters get stuck under my fingernails. I keep scratching.

I want to die, but I never will.

The scratching becomes something else now. A thumping. Not rats or bugs – something else. Someone is out there. Someone will save me. I keep pounding and screaming, letting them know that I’m alive.

Then the lid opens, and I’m somewhere else entirely.

I sit bolt upright, gasping for breath. Bright light assaults my eyes, blinding me. The air is warm – summer breeze, summer wine. When my vision clears, I find that I wasn’t buried at all. How, then, did I get dirt on my clothes?

Where am I?

I’ve fallen out of time. A large room stretches out before me. Marble floors, white pillars. No electrical sockets or modern appliances. On the far end of the spacious room, someone has opened a window. The warm wind of a summer day blows in off the balcony. It touches my skin, sending a chill through my body as it combines with the moisture of my sweat. My hands and wrist, face and neck, cool down immediately. The rest of my body is still stifling hot. I look at my clothes. No ratty t-shirt or old jeans. I’m wearing a black suit with a red vest underneath and a puffy white cravat. The clothing is all covered with a thin gray smear – dirt from my nonexistent grave.

As my eyes adjust to the light of the room and my heart rate slows down, I notice someone standing next to the large wooden trunk I’ve been lying in. He’s dressed in a black suit and tails with a bowler cap on his head. He leans on a thin black cane with a white tip. When he speaks, he has a slight British accent.

“I had hoped you wouldn’t be popping up again for a while, sir.”

I decide to ask the obvious questions first. “Who are you? Where am I?”

He straightens up and twirls his cane. “Ah. Your head’s gone a bit wonky again, I see. My name is Bertie, sir. Your valet Jeeves is pulling the carriage around as we speak.”

“My valet?”

“Don’t listen to anything he says, sir. He’s a bit of a know-it-all, but like me he’s just a metaphor. We’re here as a failsafe of sorts, just to make sure you don’t lose anything you might have really needed.”

“What are you talking about? And where is ‘here,’ anyway?”

Bertie taps the cane against the marble floor and sighs. “We really should think about printing up some pamphlets for you, sir. ‘Here,’ by definition, is anywhere that’s not ‘there.’ Your body is ‘there,’ and your mind is ‘here.’” He pauses and gestures around the large room. “You haven’t done much furnishing lately, as you can see. ‘Here’ is a combination of a few stray memories rattling around in your head and some subconscious commands left to yourself. I’m meant to be your guide to ‘here,’ while Jeeves will take you ‘there’ when you’re ready.”

“How can I remember something like this? All the architecture, these clothes…they’re from a time before I was even born.”

“You’re much older than you look, sir. Age and sickness tend not to set in with you. They haven’t ever since you made the deal.”

“What deal?”

Bertie ignores the question, looking at my dusty grave-clothes. “If you want something more appropriate to the period you’re familiar with, I suppose we can do something about that.”

He snaps his fingers. The trunk around me disappears, leaving me to fall a few inches to the floor. I wince in pain at the uncomfortable jostle. Apparently, feeling pain won’t end this vision. I go to all fours and then push myself to my feet. By the time I’m standing again, I’m wearing my ratty jeans and white t-shirt. I feel the band of my paperboy cap pressed around my head and adjust it instinctively. Bertie looks me up and down, then shakes his head while making a tutting noise.

“You really should pay more attention to the way you dress yourself, sir. Someone of your status deserves to look his best.”

“What status?” I try to mimic Bertie’s accent by pronouncing it “stay-tus” like he does, but I fail miserably.

“You were at one point a very wealthy and powerful man,” he says. “It saddens me to see how far you’ve fallen, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Where am I? The last thing I remember is looking into a mirror.”

“And that would be how you wound up here, sir. You’re not supposed to gaze too long into and abyss, you know. It’s not part of the deal.”

“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned a deal.”

Bertie’s eyes twitch. Then he grabs me by the arm and starts leading me out of the room, talking out loud the whole time.

“What was that quote? ‘Thou shalt not gaze into an abyss…’ no, it wasn’t biblical.” He leads me to the door on the far end of the room and holds out a gloved hand. The lock clicks and opens without him touching it. “Ah, yes, of course. Nietzche. Wonderful man, except for the nihilism and psychosis. I believe you and he met once or twice. He said, ‘He who fights monsters must take care lest he become a monster. When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gaze into you.’”

“What does that have to do with mirrors?”

He stops as we enter the hall and looks at me with the dull stare of a cow. Then he breaks back into his banter, speaking as casually as though he were reading a grocery list.

“Why, you’re the abyss, of course. That’s why you’re not supposed to gaze upon your own reflection. You can’t, as a matter of fact. If there isn’t someone to pull you away, you wind up here.”

We start walking down a twisting series of corridors. They all look the same to me – white floors, black walls. A door here and there. Sometimes, there’s a crystal chandelier above us.

“You keep mentioning some sort of deal. What kind of deal did I make, and who did I make it with?”

“You were bargaining out of a desperate situation, sir. You needed to save her, but she had already died.”

“Who had died?”

The corridor ends in a red doorway. Bertie pauses in front of it, then pushes it open with both hands. “She did, sir. Or rather, they did. And they still are.”

We walk into a room that looks remarkably like the large chamber we had just left, which makes me wonder if Bertie has just led me around in one big circle. But he waves his arm dramatically, calling my attention toward the one thing in this room that distinguishes it from anywhere I’ve been before. A series of almost two dozen oil paintings lines the walls, each depicting a woman. I recognize the first one right away. A wisp of a girl, with pale skin and a corset. I remember her from the time I looked into the bathroom mirror at Robin’s office. This time she just looks back at me with large, sad eyes. The brass name plate underneath reads “Sarah.”

I follow the row of paintings, taking a note of each of them. The backgrounds, the skin tone, the hair, and the clothes of the women all change, but their eyes stay the same. Large and brown, earnestly pleading for something from me.

I come across another familiar woman. Coffee-colored skin and dark hair. I look at her and remember the hum of Louis Armstong’s music. The name plate beneath her picture tells me that she was Shondra.

I count the pictures as I cross the room, taking a long look at each woman. Twenty-one in all. And the last one – number twenty-one – looks the most familiar of them all. Olive colored skin. Red-blonde hair. She dresses in modern clothes – a t-shirt and a jean jacket. I shared a glass of wine on her as the clock crept just past midnight, officially bringing us into the last day of summer.

“Mona,” reads the name plate beneath her picture.

“Who are these women?” I ask Bertie. My voice carries easily across the room. My eyes don’t leave the painting.

“‘They’ are all actually ‘her,’ the one you’re looking for. Unfortunately, she doesn’t know when to stay dead, and neither do you.”

I turn slowly. Even wearing sneakers, my footsteps echo loudly on the hard floor. The echo seems to carry forever. The room itself has started to grow larger. The walls disappear into darkness, leaving only the painting visible.

“The women. Who are they?”

“They’re the ones you’ll always recognize, and they’re the only people you can’t ever forget, sir.” He starts walking around the room, following the same pattern I had taken. He stops in front of the first painting. “Sarah was the first. Technically, she’s the only one. All the others are just masks. You couldn’t take your eyes off of her from the moment you saw her. If there is such a thing as fate, you two were fated to be together. But she died within days. She already had the Red Death when you met her, you see. That’s when you made the deal.”

“What. Deal?”

Predictably, Bertie ignores me, despite my shout. He keeps walking, stopping where I stopped next. “You had the money and influence to move the world for Shondra if you only had the time. But she died the night after the dance. The police found her in the road, hit by a car. They called it an accident. You knew better.”

He paces around the chamber until he stops right next to me. When he speaks next, he’s almost whispering in my ear.

“All women you loved, sir. All the same woman, even though they don’t entirely know it. You have died over and over again trying to save them. That’s the deal, sir. And now you find yourself in the space between life and death so I can remind you of your path.”

A mote of light flickers to life in the ever darkening room. I see into another time. I see a tiny reflection of the hotel room. I have a black glove on my left hand, blinding Robin as I enjoy my moment of privacy. She traces her fingers up my right arm, sending a shiver of electricity that lights up all the synapses in my brain. We kiss, and I can still taste the strawberry-flavored wine on her lips. Then the banging on the door. She tenses up. Our moment of passion ends as I push her gently behind me, interposing myself between her and whoever is coming for her.

“This is it,” I mutter to Bertie. “This is the man who killed me.”

“Please, sir. Just watch.”

The lock gives way and the door opens. The man who steps through looks like he swallowed a tool shed. He has to duck to get under the door frame. I stand tall, even as Mona cowers. The man sees that I won’t get out of his way and smiles. He makes a fist and steps toward me.

Then I spring into action, faster than I imagined I ever could be. I crouch low and fire a quick punch toward his groin. He steps backward and lowers an arm to block the punch, falling for my feint. My right hand stops mid-punch as I see the opening he created for me. My left first up toward his face, hitting hard right against the Adam’s apple. He gags, and I keep hammering at him as he stumbles off balance. A strike to his chest, a kick at his knees. I don’t have the muscle power to make him feel half these punches, but they put him off balance and on the defensive, where he’s not used to being. Within seconds, my assault ends as he falls backwards, hitting his head on the doorframe. Then I’m on top of him, pressing one knee against the front of his neck and shoving my thumbs into his eyes.
“She’s not going with you,” I hiss. “And if I see you again, I’ll kill you.”

The man finally speaks – or tries to. Instead, his voice comes out as a whining squeal.

“Good,” I tell him. “You get the message.”

I climb off of him and step back. He staggers back to his feet and glares at me. I glare back, and he breaks first. Without another word, he turns and scampers out the door, slamming it behind him.

I turn back toward Mona, trying to reassure her with a smile. “I can do this for you. I can protect you.”

She’s still shaking. She steps forward and touches my arm. I can feel her pulse racing. “Maybe for tonight, but not forever. I need to go.”

“Running off to another hiding place?”

She nods.

“I know all your hiding places. I’ll always be able to find you.”

“If you want to keep me safe, Eddie, you’ll forget again.” She kisses my cheek and then leaves the room. The door closes loudly behind her, leaving me alone.

“What’s she hiding from?” I ask Bertie.

His voice comes to me from the darkness. “Jeeves is here, sir. It’s time to go. I assume you know how to let yourself out by now.”

The vision of Mona disappears, and I’m back in the room of paintings again. I glance toward the curtains and the balcony beyond. Then I nod.

She’s hiding. Hiding from something I can’t protect her from.

In my mind’s eye, I see myself entering the hotel bathroom after she leaves. I take the glove off my hand, but I close my palm immediately, keeping Robin’s vision blocked.

Whoever is looking for her knows about me. They know I can fight, and they know that I know all her secrets.

I step onto the balcony. I remember last night, climbing to the roof. I pry up a loose stone and tuck the card key to Mona’s room underneath it, knowing that I’ll be looking for it.

What was so dangerous that I had to clear my own memory? Where is Mona hiding, and why is it so important that I be unable to follow her?

I look past the edge of the balcony. Several stories below, a man dressed similarly to Bertie has pulled up a horse-drawn carriage. He has brown hair and a crooked nose. He looks at me and nods.

I climb up onto the railing of the balcony. Last night, I stepped to the edge of the roof. I took a deep breath, knowing that I wouldn’t remember anything when I woke up. Then…

I jump over the edge, diving toward the ground below.