They both fell asleep waiting for the tow truck. Martin had fought against dozing off, but with no spare tire, no radio reception, no outside world, there wasn’t anything left to do. It was strange how his dream took him to somewhere completely different and yet he never thought to question the absurdity. Sense no longer mattered. He drifted in a hot air balloon over eighteenth century London. Should he feel this was absurd? In the real world he possessed an ability few knew possible, so anything could happen; it was perfectly reasonable to suddenly be in a royal purple balloon, swinging over Baroque architecture. Forget rationalization—he was above everything; this was heaven.
He curled into a tight ball in the corner of the balloon’s basket. The wind burned his face. There was a jet of fire overhead—it nosily blew upward. After brief inspection, Martin’s body stiffened. There were supposed to be sandbags in the basket. Weren’t there? Where were the sandbags? Didn’t he need those? How would he get down? This was a dream, so he shouldn’t care. But he did. He peered over the side. Buildings swam beneath. Above, a ripping sound went from east to west. His heart lashed out, caught in its cage. This balloon was deflating. Why had he chartered something so asinine?
But there was a trapdoor in the bottom of the balloon.
Of course there was.
He tugged the handle, and rather eagerly, maybe grasping this was a dream again. This was the only intelligent way to escape the sky—to fall out of it. If he lost Teresa to cancer, this life didn’t have much more in store for the likes of him anyhow.
He dropped through the trap door. It felt like he left someone behind. Falling was sluggish, as though he’d been dropped into an atmosphere of transparent worms. His chin and fingers raked across something slimy. There was too much pressure, too much terror for him to open his eyes, so there was nothing, there was black, but the black came apart in hot colored shapes that rained upward and stabbed sideways.
And that was it. He was sobbing and balling and grunting and he lost energy weeping—he was spitting out slime. He was, once again, losing composure, many times after vowing never to take so seriously tangled dream logic forged from Chaplain Cloth’s taunting.
He shouldn’t have brought Cloth into this. He shouldn’t have thought of him.
Evil had its eyes on Martin now. The slime had coated the wall of an alley. He hadn’t been falling really, just standing in the alley, clawing at the bricks and freaking out. It was daytime. Steam lifted from rain puddles and dragged heavy through the air. The sunlight sawed away at the plumes of dark factory smoke. Martin blinked into the alley to see something, anything that would make a shape he would understand. He shielded his eyes, but his arms had stuck in the slime. Tears came from the light’s attack and he tried to kick... something had closed over his legs too. Animal sounds of panic rumbled in his throat as he tried to conceive something different, something happy and from a different place. But there were things filling the alley. He knew what they were too. He’d seen Cloth’s children too many times to not recognize how they moved and breathed, even if he couldn’t distinguish their little bodies in the rapiers of unfriendly light. He tried to create a mantle but in his dreams he was a normal man: feeble. The children fell around him, swiping away tufts of skin with spread green claws. Their bloody fangs drank the light. He squirmed, locked to the wall, ready for more abuse, their bare-bone abandon, their clandestine abattoir, their delightful abdication from all mercy. Hair and flakes of skin and red streamed into the air in celebration. There were footsteps in the back of the alley. Cloth came. He walked the cobblestones, laughing like a sick jester, his expression hinting to the black things he would do with Martin’s body. The sun cut through and between two tresses of light he saw Cloth’s eyes, one black and one orange. His heart valves slammed closed. Evil had its eyes on him.
~ * ~
Martin shot up in his seat.
Teresa and the tow truck man wheeled around. They stood a few paces up the road. Martin sank a little in the seat, his back dream-sweaty and face hot with embarrassment. Before they looked away he searched around for the real crazy man who’d yelled out. There was only desert though.
Luckily the drive to the next stretch of civilization was short on distance and conversation. The little town wasn’t much to speak of, but there was an automotive repair shop located right off the highway, even if it was closed today. The tow truck driver had almost an opalescent sheen to his slick black hair and his pocky skin looked like charred cherry wood. “Sorry there. It’s bad timing, I know.”
Martin used what Teresa called his Buddha voice. “We would have to wait until tomorrow. Isn’t there something else around here?”
“You could find someone to give you a lift to Kingman, but it’s another sixty miles. Sorry I can’t.”
Martin laughed. “It’s a lovely town but I don’t even see a Mickey-Ds.”
“There’s a bar, Jarrie’s Place. They serve sandwiches sometimes.” The man shifted at the blaring reality of the statement and quickly returned to the subject of the auto shop. “So they work four-tens every other week to fit the trucking schedule better. It’s their rules. I can’t do nothin’ about that. They open early tomorrow, around sixish—”
Martin smiled. “Come on. It’s only one tire. Our roadside is covered, right? We’re good. If someone rolls one out, I’ll put it on all by myself.”
The man shrugged. “Not happenin’ guy. It’s the shits.”
Martin sighed through his teeth, and with two fingers scratched his head. He hoped if he stared at the guy long enough it would change something.
Didn’t.
“Thanks for your help,” he said.
“Hey, no problem. Stay outta the sun.”
Martin walked back to the van, opened the door, and draped his body over the seat. After a manic moment he rolled his eyes back. “For fuck sake.”
“What’s going on with the tire?” asked Teresa.
“Oh that.” He leaned back. “Well, I guess we’re going to camp out here until tomorrow.”
“We’re already running behind. Let’s just try filling the spare. It’s a slow leak.”
“And maybe be stranded where nobody lives at all? We don’t have any money left for even a truck stop sandwich. If you hadn’t noticed, the Messenger hasn’t left anything yet.”
“Maybe he won’t. Maybe he found new people to be his Nomads.”
“That’s rich. Don’t fool yourself. Nobody would waste such able-bodied slaves. We’ll be used up, like batteries.”
“Now you’re seeing.”
Martin gave Teresa a once over. In the last few months it was clear she’d given up on herself, just as he had. She never wanted to try his herbal remedies, never attempted to do the healing yoga routines and hadn’t quit smoking cloves above all else. He’d begun to gradually turn the concern-dial down to zero. She just didn’t understand. To her it was nonsense; a bunch of rainforest sticks and leaves wouldn’t take away the tumor in her lung. Why quit smoking then? She would succumb with or without his intervention. And she was overdue. Tony Nguyen probably could have attested to that, had he not been devoured last year.
Martin scrubbed his face.
“Stop being that way,” she said.
“Which way?”
“Disparaged. I don’t want to deal with the disparaging Martin today. Not so close to the 31st. Okay?”
“Whatever you say darling.”
“I do have some good news.”
“Oh please, tell me, quick.”
She held up a deformed twenty dollar bill. “Found this at the bottom of my duffel. In my humble opinion, it’s not too early for a drink. That is, if you let me drink and don’t give me any shit. We can try and see if that bar’s open. This should be enough money for a beer, right?”
“For domestic, I’d say its plenty.”
Martin remembered saying that before. Déjà vu. But there was something oddly misplaced in the feeling, different than experiencing a recurring sound or setting. The sensation frightened him but he couldn’t say why, not offhand. It did seem though that this déjà vu belonged to someone else.