CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I don’t know exactly how accurate he was when he relayed the following information but my dad had always told me that if one were ever to fall through the ice, into a frozen lake, that person would only have a few seconds to get out before the cold would overtake him—paralyzing his muscles and drowning him. Needless to say, that was the foremost thought on my mind, when my head followed after my feet and I found myself fully submerged, staring up at the broken ice above me.

Determined to resurface before hypothermia claimed me, I held my breath tight and began to swim upward. My heavy boots and bulky coat made it much more difficult than I could have imagined. I had always been a decent swimmer but navigating back toward the top, at that moment, was like trying to swim through molasses. Oddly enough, it was not, however, cold. Even through my coat and gloves, it felt as if the lake was heating up, specifically for me. That’s not to suggest that fate was conspiring in my favor though. I found quite the opposite to be true.

The physics and composition of everything I thought I knew about the world had changed by the time I reached the top—where there should have been a hole, out of which I could have surfaced. Instead, what I found was that my gloved hands were pressing up against something quite solid. This wasn’t ice at all; the jagged contours made it feel more like a collection of various-sized rocks.

In a desperate attempt to gain my bearings before my breath ran out and I was forced to drink, I kept my hands on the rocky ceiling and bent my head backwards, in order to ascertain my surroundings and, more importantly, my escape route.

In the blackness of the lake, I expected to see very little. I was, therefore, surprised when the liquid surrounding me (I don’t know if I’d even call it water) all at once changed into an orangish, brownish color. It was, as I said, warmer than I had expected too. It was also riddled with little bubbles everywhere, though they were descending (rather than floating upward) all around me.

It burned my eyes horribly—much more than water (even heavily-chlorinated water) ever should. Regardless, I fought through the pain and kept them open, for if I were to drown they’d be of no use to me anyway.

In that moment, one of the anomalies they showed me was a collection of numerous pockets of green, lake vegetation, sporadically growing above my strained neck and head. Desperate to gain understanding, before I was completely deprived of oxygen, I whipped my head forward and saw silt trickling downward. My gloves had somehow kicked it free. It traveled a few inches, toward my face, and then fell upward and landed back onto the hard surface around my hands.

It was at that moment that I realized I was upside down. Somehow my body had been turned and my gloves had found the ground, at the bottom of the rapidly warming, brown water lake. Instinctively, I flipped myself around so that my boots were touching where my gloves had just been. I crouched down and, as Lulenne had done back at The Hive, I used all the power I could muster in my legs to rocket myself toward where I now believed the surface to be.

I was trusting in the logical deductions I had made (that I was traveling in the right direction); however, I still felt upside down—like I was somehow sinking deeper into the abyss. I was not afforded time to ponder my decision though. In that moment of truth, I had to rely on the upside-down plant life, ascending silt and falling—rather than rising—bubble as evidence that my presupposition was correct. All of those oddities, in my mind, were strong enough logical indicators that I needed to quickly travel in the direction that still felt so wrong to my soul.

I hadn’t much breath left in me. I was kicking my boots as best I could but their awkward shape, size and weight made treading water difficult. Fisky always hated these boots. I wonder what she’d think if she ever learned that they aided in my own demise.

My lungs were on fire, begging me to draw air into them. I had just about reached my limit and could stymie their violent insistence on oxygen no longer. Just as I was about to give in and inhale, I suddenly and quite unexpectedly somehow emerged.

Like so many other impossible affairs as of late, here too I found myself enveloped in circumstances I couldn’t understand. Below me was the lake I had just escaped but it was above me as well. Looking up, I could see that it still went on, seemingly indefinitely. Such was the case in every direction I looked. To the right; to the left; down; up… it just went on and on in perpetuity. It was as if I was treading water inside a watertight rectangular box, with invisible borders.

Still, even being invisible, I could see where the borders were; the juxtaposition of the encased night sky around me pushed against the brown liquid that surrounded it, making it easy to tell where sky ended and lake began.

As I treaded water, baffled by this development, I spied a small, solitary island, not far off in the distance. Inside the enclosed pocket of absurdity that had imprisoned me, it was the only land available to me. On it, I could see a fire burning and the outlines of several characters camped around it, which, along with the obvious presence of an atmosphere, led me to postulate that the same physical laws I had always been forced to obey in my own world had manifested themselves here too.

The characters on the island didn’t seem to have noticed my appearance. They were laughing and talking loudly amongst themselves, over the sounds of some melodic, oddly beautiful music I recognized but was unable to place. Although my boots would have preferred to pull me back down into the saltless brine, I pushed them against the liquid around me and propelled myself toward the island. When I finally reached it, I pulled myself onto the beach, lay on my side and breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

For about thirty seconds, I laid there, sucking in air, as if I had never done so before. I was, therefore, surprised when none of the group came to greet me, or even inquired about me amongst themselves. I was only a few feet away from them, after all.

Taking the initiative myself, I stood up, removed my coat, placed it on the dry sand in front of me, wrung my shirt as best I could and began my soggy march toward them. My socks were squishing inside my boots and I wanted to take them off but I didn’t, for fear I might need them to defend myself. Their steel toes had come in handy more than once—most recently when a neighbor’s dog ran into my yard to attack Blue.

A swift kick in its ribs had humbled the beast and sent it scampering away, back to its own residence. I wondered if I would have to employ any similar actions here. I hoped not, for I was far outnumbered.

There wouldn’t have been much room to run either. The island was small—maybe half of a city block, at most. From what I could see, the small group in front of me comprised its only inhabitants. Sand was its only ground, brown, bubbly water, its only surrounding and palm trees its only vegetation. In addition to the strangers there, there were also the chairs, on which all but one of them sat a small stereo and a tattered, decrepit shack off in the corner. It was behind the aforementioned individuals, who were burning palm tree wood and dried leaves.

***

I would have been tempted, in most instances, to try and describe the group in front of me as “strange”; however, as the paradigm of reality itself continued to shift, I couldn’t help but recognize a contrarily inconvenient truth—that encountering “strange and peculiar” beings, such as the ones inhabiting this particular island, was actually becoming quite a “normal” occurrence for me. Perhaps, with that in mind, it was actually I who was the “strange” one. Perhaps, then, I should stop using my own axioms as the gauge for which to measure normalcy—especially when I was, in the eyes of this world, so clearly abnormal.

Besides their apparent indifference to me, the first thing to strike me as what I’ll call “traditionally unnatural,” as I approached the group, was the fact that I could see through everyone in it (and I mean that in a quite literal sense). They were visible but, as with the unseen borders protecting this pocket of reality, I could look at them and see through to the other side—as though I was looking through clear, human-sized vessels, full of extremely murky water.

From the choices they had made with their attire—attire that was also somewhat translucent—I got the sense that they were close to me in age. I could not say for certain, though, because not a single one of them had a face! Instead, that particular part of their heads was completely smooth! That part of their heads, to use an earthly example, more closely resembled the sleek, plastic mannequin faces that one might have expected to encounter in the department stores of old. Their heads turned; their bodies gestured but their faces were devoid of any hair or facial components whatsoever.

They were all drowning out their music with their laughter, as I approached. Three of them were sitting on folding chairs that had been strategically placed around a medium-sized fire. The fourth was wearing cargo shorts and a V-neck T-shirt; he was sitting on the sand, in front of his chair. I wasn’t sure if he had fallen off of it or slid down to the ground on purpose; regardless, he seemed quite content wallowing in laughter, on the sandy beach that surrounded us.

Just before I reached the group, I heard the fat one, on the ground, exclaim passionately, as if he were arguing a very important case, “Because they’re amazing! That’s why!”

“Excuse me,” I said, breaking the ambiance. When they all stopped laughing, I added an apology and inquired as to whether they knew where I was.

“Eh, where is anyone, right?” answered the chubby male on the ground. I wasn’t sure if he meant to be philosophical, comical or confrontational. His voice and mannerisms were somewhere between arrogant and insightful; however, everyone laughed in a way that indicated it was probably a mixture of all three.

“Right,” I told him, “but, I mean, how did I… I mean, how did you… How did you all get here?”

“We always come here!” the faceless gentleman on his right happily exclaimed from his chair. I was standing behind and a bit to the right of him so he turned and showed his un-face to me, as he spoke. While his expression was lost to me, I did get a good sense of his attire. He was clothed in a T-shirt that tightly hugged his muscular arms. Through the ripped, mesh backing of his chair, I could see his boxer shorts and his jeans, which began to gather around the bottom of his butt—instead of around his waist, where the manufacturer had intended.

“Okay, well, how do I… leave?” I asked him.

“You have somewhere you have to be?” his companion on the ground asked.

To his left, the only one wearing a skirt, flip-flops and a girl-cut T-shirt mumbled an invitation that would have probably been accompanied by a smile, if she was given to possess one. “Hang out for a little bit,” she said. The implication in her tone was not overtly sexual but I did detect a trace amount of veiled flirtation. It insinuated that I would enjoy my time getting to know her and the others, should I decide to linger.

Behind her right, flip-flopped foot, I saw, for the first time, a collection of unused, red plastic cups, a half-consumed package of hamburger buns and container full of ground-up, rancid meat. Though, from where I stood, I could not smell its stink, the maggots infesting it made it easy for me to tell that it had long since spoiled. I was just about to warn the group about the condition of the meat, when I suddenly thought better of asserting myself into their lives and possibly offending them.

Answering his own question, the hefty one whose cargo shorts-covered-bottom was resting on the sand then posited, “Yeah; he’s got somewhere to be, I think.” He did so just as I arrived at my decision to keep quiet about the meat.

“Do you?” the one in front of me, with the saggy pants, asked.

“Well, I don’t really know,” I told him honestly. “I don’t know what happened. I was walking across the lake whe—”

“Dude!” screamed the one to my right—the only one, as of yet, who had not spoken. He was wearing a jean jacket, littered with various patches and pins. Most of them related to ’70s rock bands but I recognized a small number of them as skateboard companies. There were a few of them, however, that vexed me completely, for I had never seen them before. “Do you know who I saw last week?” he anxiously asked the group.

Cargo Shorts and Saggy Pants both asked “Who?” at the same time. Flip-Flops had her head hanging low. She didn’t seem to show much interest in the question; in fact, I wasn’t sure she even heard it at all.

Turning to me, Patches said, “Sorry, dude, but I just thought of this and I don’t want to forget.” He seemed to be as sincere as he was excited so I told him that there was no need to apologize. He then blurted out “Katie!” as if it was a revelation of some sort.

“She’s crazy!” Saggy Pants vehemently testified.

“I always thought she was kind of nice,” Cargo Shorts said, emotionlessly defending this Katie person.

“Well, you’re crazy too!” Saggy Pants pronounced, which produced another round of laughter from three-fourths of the group. I didn’t hear any coming from Flip-Flops but her shoulders shrugged once, which indicated she had at least heard the comment.

Suddenly, she raised her faceless face and asked, “Wanna know who I saw last summer?”

It was becoming clear, at this point, that I wasn’t a priority in this group but I didn’t want to be rude so I continued to let them speak in hopes they would acknowledge me when the guilt from ignoring me finally confronted them.

“We already know!” Saggy Pants answered, laughing as he did so.

“Nuh-uh,” she denied.

“Then who?” he challenged.

Patches then ventured a guess: “Mike Ditka.”

“Mike, Ditka,” she proudly affirmed.

“We know!” Saggy Pants declared, in a way that suggested he had heard this revelation before.

“I didn’t tell you everything though,” the woman teased but Saggy Pants insisted that she had. He seemed to be laughing both out of frustration and a cognizance over the absurdity of the situation. That put he and I, at least momentarily, on a similar level and I took the opportunity to interject on my own behalf.

“Hey, everybody,” I started. “Sorry to interrupt again. I’m James, by the way. Again, I’m really sorry but I don’t really know what’s going on here. I think that I’m probably dreaming again—or maybe I’m finally awake—but I have a strong suspicion that, at some point, I’m going to come to, lying in my bathtub. I’m just… I’m just wondering how to expedite that process.”

By now, I was experienced in the preposterousness of my subconscious but I hadn’t yet learned how to control or even avoid it. I had little faith any of these folks would be able to tell me how to achieve that goal; nonetheless, I held out hope that at least one of them would be able to offer some small fragment of a clue.

Cargo Shorts was the first to speak. He told me he didn’t know what I was talking about but that his name was Blake. He looked over to his right and told me his companion—the one with the saggy pants—was named Boom. Boom told me it was nice to meet me, at which point Blake told me that the person to Boom’s right (Patches) was named Ace.

“What’s up, dude?” Ace offered, along with his hand. I shook it. He had a firm grip. I know it’s shallow of me but, for some reason, that made me respect him a little more. A firm handshake always made me respect people a little more. At that moment, I wondered why. I wondered if that sentiment was one that was created by the culture around me or if it was more widely spread across the globe, in other places where handshakes are common.

“And that of course,” Blake informed me, “is Star.”

Flip-Flops said nothing but nodded slightly upward at her introduction. Even without a face, I could tell she was getting ready to say something she deemed to be important. As if on cue, she then stumbled out of her chair, into a half standing, staggered position, raised her pointer finger to the air and said, as profoundly as she could, “He didn’t look the same, ya know? He’s a lot older now. When I think of him, it’s how I remember him from back in the day. He’s still the coach, in my head.”

Blatantly ignoring her attempt at changing the conversation, Boom then asked of Blake, his friend on the ground, “You know who she reminds me of?”

“I don’t know,” Ace answered in his place, “but I want to finish our conversation about this band first!” He seemed annoyed but still jovial, as he pointed to the speaker on the ground and criticized his friend’s interruptions.

“Yes!” Blake fervently agreed.

At this point, I began to try and speak again but all I got out was an “Um,” before I was overpowered by the group. No one even heard my “Um.” All they heard was Boom telling Blake, “She reminds me of you, ya wank.”

“What are you talking about?!?” Blake demanded to know, as Star plopped back into her seat. He was puzzled (or at least he was pretending to be).

“You know what I’m talking about,” Boom insisted.

“Hey!” Star then called out, before the interrogation could proceed any further.

“What?!?” Boom demanded, trying to pretend he was angry, despite the glee I detected in his voice.

“He’s a lot older now…” she started to say.

“Anyway,” Ace began, raising his voice over Star’s until she gave up, which didn’t take very long at all. “I’m not saying I don’t like them or anything. I just don’t understand your obsession.” As he spoke, he was directing his body language toward the ground, where Blake sat. “You think they’re, like, gods or something! You’ve been listening to pretty much nothing else for three years, right?!? Don’t you realize how insane that is?!?”

“Ace,” Boom then called out, before Blake could answer. “This guy,” he said, with his thumb pointing toward Blake, “is all sorts of insane! He tells groups of random senior citizens at Applebee’s about that band, when he’s drunk, aaaand…” He paused to make sure he had the room. When he was sure he did, he continued: “And the same night he did that, he tried to pick up this gross hussy behind the bar by telling her he met Billy Mays, at a charity auction.”

Ace seemed intrigued. “Yeah? Did it work?” he asked.

“I wasn’t trying to pick her up,” Blake insisted, in a way that suggested he had given this defense more than once.

“No!” Boom yelled out joyously. “Cuz he’s Mumbles MacGoo, like this one over here!” He was pointing at Star, as he made his statement.

“Not every one of my conversations is a pickup attempt,” Blake tried to explain. “Geez.”

“Nooooo!” Boom replied. He was chortling as he said it and I expected he probably wanted to wag his finger but he opted not to do so. “She was gross too. Seriously.” He seemed to punctuate his statement with that last part.

“Billy Mays! Psshh!” Star scoffed. “I saw Mike Ditka!”

“It was the same night we got thrown out of that hillbilly bar you like too.” Boom claimed, while looking in Blake’s direction.

“Penny’s?” his cargo shorts-wearing buddy guessed.

“No.”

“Suzie Q’s?” Ace speculated.

“No!”

“He was at this restaurant in Chicago,” Star began to explain. “A really fancy one. That makes sense… for him to be there, I mean, right?”

“No,” said Boom, placing his facelessness in his hands.

“Guys!” I was quickly reaching my limit and so I very nearly screamed the word. I certainly hadn’t intended on seeming so brash and I was a bit ashamed in my lack of decorum; however, upon hearing that call, everyone stopped and looked at me, as if they had only just then remembered I was ever there in the first place.

With everyone’s focus now solely on me, I asked, “What’s in that shack over there? Is it a way out maybe?” Other than getting back into the “water,” which I had very much resolved not to do, it seemed like the only other plausible place for an exit of some kind.

“I wouldn’t go in there,” Blake cautioned. I asked him why not and he told me that, “It’s better out here.”

My interest was fully piqued, at this point. Somehow I knew I had to face that shack but I was, at the same time, terrified to do so. In some strange way, I could almost feel it calling to me—beckoning me to explore its insides.

“What do you mean it’s better out here?” I asked Blake, hoping he would enlighten me and possibly quell some of my trepidation. “I feel like I’m supposed to go in there, for some reason I can’t quite figure out.” I admitted, as the song on the stereo ended and another one, by the same group, immediately took its place.

“What I’m trying to figure out,” Ace said assertively to Blake, “is your deal with this band!”

“Dude, he doesn’t even know!” Boom exclaimed. “He was trying to tell these old people about it once, while he was falling-down drunk!” Boom tried to stifle a snort but was unable. He was now openly guffawing at the memory he must have been reliving in his head.

That’s when I turned my attention to Star. I was content to let the group reminisce over whatever nonsense they wanted, so long as at least one of them could recognize me. “Star,” I began softly, “I’m sorry to bother you but do you know what’s in that shack?”

As I waited for a response, I could hear Boom in the background. He was addressing Blake and Ace, regaling them with some story about how he and Blake almost got thrown out of an Applebee’s once. I wasn’t really listening though. I was more concerned with getting out of there—not with making myself comfortable for story time.

“All I really know is you’re not supposed to go in there yet,” Star half mumbled, half slurred, as though she was surprised I didn’t already realize what she was telling me.

“But why not? Who told you that?” I sounded more demanding and more desperate that I would have preferred. I was never good at concealing emotions.

“Listen,” she told me, in a near whisper. I leaned in closer to better hear what she was about to say. “I want to tell you something, okay?”

“Yeah. Of course. What?”

Star then inhaled deeply. Before she spoke, she looked over toward where Boom was seated. He was speaking loudly and laughing heavily. She then turned her attention my way and was silent for several seconds. Finally, she spoke: “Mike Ditka does not look the same as he used to. My boyfriend didn’t even realize it was him, when I pointed him out, but it was!”

I closed my eyes and sighed heavily, with my fingers interlocking behind my head, in a sign of defeat. She didn’t seem to notice and so she proceeded to tell me, “At the end of the night, he did a double take and goes, ‘I think that IS Mike Ditka!’”

***

Upon hearing Star’s revelation, I turned from her and told the middle of the circle, in a voice that would have been audible in most settings, that I was going to just go over to the shack and see what happens. In this setting, however, my voice was not heard. That, or it was ignored.

I was hoping that my threat would illicit more information about the shack but Ace was talking much louder than I was. He and the rest of the group seemed to be debating a medley of topics including bartenders, indie rock bands, retired football coaches and failed pickup attempts. I let the two of them carry on for a few moments and then declared, in a more commanding but also amenable tone, “I’m sorry I crashed your party, everyone. I really didn’t mean to. I’m just trying to find my way out of here.” I then looked over my shoulder, at the shack, and said, “Do any of you want to come with me to that shack over there—to see if there’s a way out?”

Without seeing any of their faces, I wasn’t sure what to think of the silence that followed. Eventually, Ace took the floor and reasonably said, “I don’t know about any of that. I just want to hear his reasoning for why this is ‘the greatest band in the last twenty years.’” He made air quotes when he said that, which I assumed denoted he was quoting Blake.

“Listen,” Blake began, eager to explain himself. “Have any of you ever seen the movie Amadeus?”

“No. Sounds dumb,” Boom insisted.

“I saw it; I liked it,” Ace confirmed.

“Who’s in it?” Boom asked.

“Uh,” Blake said, struggling. “I don’t know the guy’s name.”

“Is it Mike Ditka?” Boom offered, causing the room to erupt in laughter.

“Listen to me!” Star spat in frustration. “It’s not funny. I noticed him. And it made sense. We were in a fancy Chicago restaurant.”

“Uh-huh,” Boom groaned.

“Even my boyfriend didn’t know who he was, at first—”

As if Star wasn’t speaking at all, Boom then turned toward Blake who, at this point, was beginning to crawl off the ground and back into his chair, and asked, snickering to himself, “Hey, what was the name of that movie we were watching that night you got sick and threw beefy tacos up all over the table?”

“Love and Death. Woody Allen,” he answered, without hesitation.

“Yes!” Boom shouted in jubilation.

“Anyway,” Blake began, “Amadeus is about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In the movie—this wasn’t true in his real life but, in the movie—this guy named Salieri is doing his best to secretly kill Mozart. Salieri is another composer who comes to hate Mozart because he’s consumed by jealousy over Mozart’s unquestionable genius. He just can’t believe the gift that Mozart’s been given. He doesn’t think that Mozart deserves, or even appreciates, it the way he should. It all just comes so naturally for him.”

“Does anyone know of a gifted NFL coach like that?” Boom sheepishly inquired.

“Yes!” Star shouted.

Boom was beside himself laughing, when Ace threw his hands into the air and cried, “Duuuuude!”

Without giving credence to Ace’s outburst, Blake continued his synopsis, as if he had never been interrupted in the first place: “So, there’s this scene where Salieri comes upon a sheet of Mozart’s music. I don’t remember if he stole it or if it was just sitting there or what… I think it was just sitting there. Regardless, he picks it up and starts reading it and, as he’s studying it, it’s clear almost immediately that it’s divinely beautiful—that it’s art, in its purest form.

“He’s flabbergasted by how perfect it is. Every single note is perfectly placed. There are exactly the right amount of them; they’re played for the exact right amount of time and they’re played in the exact perfect sequence. It’s as though God himself wrote it for Mozart and Salieri admits as much. Despite his personal feelings toward Mozart, he cannot help but stand in awe of his genius. This half-finished doodle of Mozart’s is so beautiful, that Salieri almost cries!”

“Okaay…” Ace said, as if he was impatiently waiting for the conclusion.

“Well,” Blake explained, “THAT is how I feel when I listen to this band.”

Everyone at the table laughed heartedly at this—everyone except Blake. I could tell he was serious. So much so that he didn’t even have to answer when Ace and Boom asked him if he was. With everyone in the group laughing hardily, I silently absconded away, toward the shack.