Nano Day 19 - Trippin the Vortex - working title

[joegoda]

For Capi and the readers... it was a rough night, so I wrote a bit more...


I, of course, dreamed.

I was standing in the middle of the desert, watching a blue, blue sky and listening to the wind push tumbleweeds around. There was an empty filling station, one of those that have the big red star on top of a tall pylon. I couldn't read the name of the station, blowing sand had long ago eradicated any trace of name. I know I should have known the name of the filing station, but I was damned if I could remember it.

It was the type of filling station where a man would come out, pump your gas, check your oil, and wash your window. I looked at the price per gallon on one of the ancient pumps and it was selling for twenty-five cents. I hadn't seen that sort of price since before 1969.

I looked at the filling station, apparently long deserted, and noticed that two of the big plate glass windows, one near the garage bay, and the one to the left of the front door, had been broken. The third one, the one just to the right of the front door was intact, and the writing on it said, in big yellow letters, trimmed in red one word. The word was NOW! with the exclamation mark.

In the garage bay, there was an old dodge, maybe a '57 or a '58, sitting rusting, waiting for someone to come change the oil or maybe adjust the brakes. I peeked in through one of its windows and the upholstery had grown faded and sand-blown. There were holes in the fabric where a coil spring could be seen, trying to sneak out. I drew back a bit when two beady eyes and a nose peeked out too, just to see who this intruder was.

I thought to myself, what the hell? and went inside to the office.

There was an empty Zagnut wrapper on the floor, but otherwise the only thing left was dust. There was a counter, still smelling of motor oil, where thousands of customer must have leaned to pay their bill. A very old push button register was there, lonely and abandoned, its drawer open and empty. There was a calendar on the wall, one of those with some half naked woman trying to sell wrenches or something. I couldn't see the date on the calendar. It's not that the date had been torn off or anything. I'm sure it was there. Every time I tried to focus on it, though, it would turn blurry and I simply could not make it out. There were a few yellowed bills of sale tacked to the wall to keep the calendar company, but they had faded to the point where even the mimeographed letters were no longer legible.

There were two bubble type gum dispensers, but they didn't contain gum. One, the one on the left held a candy called burnt peanuts. They were peanuts in a sort of reddish bumpy candy covering. Sweet and crunchy and wonderful and determined to break your teeth. The other held regular salted peanuts. Each dispenser had a big yellow circle that said 1 Cent. On the burnt peanut machine there was a smaller circle that told the buyer that their money was going to bring aid to blind children, courtesy of the local lions club.

In the corner there was a pop machine, one of those where you put your dime in and the bottle clink, clink, clinked it way to a door you opened. If it had been running, it would have had a rattly hum from it's overworked compressor. If it had been running it would have been cold inside of the door, so when you pulled the soda out, the cold would come misting out and you could, as a small boy, breath in the chill and pretend you were in the artic, fighting polar bears. I looked inside and there was one twelve ounce bottle of RC cola left, so I reached into my pocket and found that I had exactly one dime.

I dropped it into the slot that said "money here" and listened as the dime rattled its way into the innards of the machine. There was a brief rattly hum as the beast came to life, the lights on the top of the machine came on as if by magic, and the single bottle clinked its way to the bottom slot in the door.

I opened the skinny door and reached down to pull out my RC. It was cold and frosty, and the mist from inside the machine poured out over me. I had not noticed how incredibly hot I was until just then. Of course, I thought to myself, I'm in the middle of the desert!

The bottle was not a screw-top. It was the type that you had to have an opener for. Of course, there was an opener on the machine, and the little slot that the cap would fall down into, for later disposal. I levered the bottle cap against the opener and popped the top off. Instead of it falling into the little slot, however, it fell and bounced a couple of times on the floor.

I reached down and picked up. White lettering on a big red diamond proclaimed that it was the 'King of Colas'. It might have been true, I didn't think about it. Something ticked at my memory, and I pulled turned the bottle cap over. Sure enough, it had the fortune, written right on the cork seal of the bottle cap. Some of the old RC bottle caps had fortunes, sometimes jokes, and sometimes just didn't say anything.

The fortune read, 'What you avoid, chases after.'

"Huh," I said to myself. I put the bottle cap in my pocket, turned and walked out into the blazing sun, just me and my bottle of RC cola. I looked up at the sky, saw a very few wispy clouds and continued to watch as sand, dust and tumbleweeds drifted by, powered by the ever-present wind. There was nothing else to really see, except the far off mountains, shrouded in purple mist, and looking very majestic.

I raised the bottle to my lips and heard, off to my left, a voice whisper "Not yet."

I almost dropped the bottle, but I didn't. I clung to it with a death grip and turned to look at whoever it was that had whispered to me. There was nobody to be seen. I turned full circle, and I turned it twice, checking to see who the joker was.

Huh," I said to myself, shrugging. I lifted the bottle to my lips and once again, the voice whispered "Not yet." This time it sounded far off, like someone talking to me through a paper towel tube, distant and echoey.

"Why not?" I called out to nobody at all. "I'm thirsty and it's damned hot!"

"You'll know," came the answer. "Look to the North, not the West. Don't go to the hole, but to the nest."

"Groovy," I said. "And it rhymes."

I followed the advice of the faceless voice and looked to the North, toward the misty mountains. I not only looked, I stared, I glared, and I squinted. Nothing was to be seen, except a few trespassing dust devils. "Yeah?" I muttered. "Big deal."

Shrugging my shoulders, I turned to the West and did exactly what I was told not to do. I looked West. There was nothing there. When I say there was nothing there, I mean there was a big boiling cloud cover of nothing, roiling like sooty, oily oatmeal. Looking at the miasma made me feel nauseous, and a sweet and bitter taste of bile rose in my throat.

In that dream, I remembered a dream I had as a child. The dream came from a smallpox fever I had, which reach 103 and my family was very poor so there wasn't anything to do except ride it out and hoped I didn't die.

The dream was of me falling, falling down through some sort of cloying sweetness, and all of my friends, all of my family were laughing at me. I didn't see any faces. No one else was in the dream, only voices. I felt the same sort of sickness in that childhood nightmare, the same sort of taste in my mouth, that I was feeling in the dream I was having right then, in Winnemucca.

With incredible difficulty, I turned my head away from the vision the boiling and nasty looking everything to the West and force my neck, popping and creaking like a rusty bolt, to turn my eyes back to the North.

"Fine!" I yelled. "I get your point. To the North, not the West." To the North I gazed, as three fine dustdevils, dancing and picking up sand and tiny tumbleweeds played catch. I watched as their tails twitched and their heads grew larger and soon they weren't just dustdevils, they were funnel clouds dancing and playing tag and tossing very large tumbleweeds around.

And they were coming toward me.

I couldn't run. In fact, it seemed that my feet were rooted to the spot. I looked down and saw that my legs were no longer legs, but two tree trunks. I was indeed, rooted to the spot. I couldn't bend my knees, as I no longer had them, I could not move my feet, as they didn't exist. And I watched as the twisters were coming closer, getting larger, more black and gray and sandy with every mile.

"Look closer," was the whispered advice.

"What the hell?" At least I still had eyes and a mouth. "This is just a dream, just a dream, wake up, wake up!" I knew I was in a dream. I thought that if I could just wake myself up, it would be over. No such luck, though.

So, instead, I listened to the voice and looked closer. The crowns of the tornadoes were enormous, and they scared the crap out of me, so I didn't look at them. I lowered my gaze down, down to the base, where sand and dust had risen up in a boiling cloud and obscured the bottom.

"Smoke and mirrors," came the whisper.

"Smoke and mirrors," I echoed. Smoke and mirrors, the stuff of magic, the stuff of illusion, it's what every wizard depends upon. It's the basis of misdirection, so you don't see what you're supposed to, or rather, what you're not supposed to see.

"Smoke and mirrors," I repeated again. I looked closer, leaning into the oncoming wind. I stared until my eyes watered and grew dry from all the dust that was caking on them. So I blinked. And blinked again. My eyes cleared, and it seemed like my vision sharpened. I reached up with incredible slowness and took my glasses off.

And I saw, with blurry vision that had suddenly become crystal clear, what my eyes, wearing corrective lenses could not. These were no tornadoes. These were no dustdevils. These were men, coming toward me, very fast.

Just men. I laughed. I laughed loud and long and thought to myself, "Is that all it is? Smoke and mirrors?"

The seriousness of it suddenly hit me. Three men running very fast across open desert toward me. Friend or foe, friend or foe? Friends don't show up as tornadoes, they come as fluffy bunnies, I thought to myself. Once again I laughed at it all. "Is that the best you can do?" I called to the men.

It was fear that had kept me frozen and rooted. I looked down and saw that I had legs again and my dusty boots were right were they were supposed to be. My laughter had set me free. Which, once I thought about it, made perfect sense. I stripped off my fear like an old undershirt and tossed it away. I was perfect. I was God-like, and there wasn't anything I was afraid of.

I suddenly remembered my bottle cap and reached into my pocket to pull it out. It still read 'What you avoid, chases after.'

"Well, hell." I pondered, putting the bottle cap back in my pocket. "What if I chase back?"

I started to run toward the men. At first, it was slow, the wind pushing me backwards, so every step seemed to take more strength than I had. I pushed forward, yelling "Smoke and Mirrors!", and dug my feet into the sand and shoved and clawed my way through the air. "Smoke and Mirrors!" I yelled, and the wind seemed to relent, to die away as if ashamed to show its face.

My legs went faster and faster then, and I leaned forward, as if on an invisible staff. Pumping my legs against the ground I felt I had reached the right speed and I lifted off and flew towards the three. My legs still pumping, I was now swimming through the air, faster and faster, the filling station far behind me, the three men coming closer and closer.

I was going so fast that I don't even think they saw me pass them. I was a blur, a whirlwind, a whirlygig of flight, like and eagle, No! a kite, I zipped past them and stripped them of their sandy masks. I looked behind me, as I flew in mid-air and saw them tumble to the ground, twisting as they hit and climbing up on their hands and knees.

Zipping straight up in a dive into the blue, I somersaulted and landed gently on my feet. I placed my hands on my hips, and there I stood, all Peter Pan come to life and laughed like I had not laughed in ages.

"Well, gentlemen!" I called out, still laughing deep and loud. "Here I stand, and there you crawl. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"

My head was bigger than it had ever been. I could feel the pure and raw energy of... everything, and everything was bathed in an unnatural light. Lines of force and sparkly auras were everywhere, shooting from the scrubs, blazing from the men, even the nasty far to the West was alight with rivulets of reds and dark purples and cold, cold blues. I felt the nasty draw me, as if it was kin to me. I laughed at it, too, simply for it's audacity of trying to draw me in.

The three stood and walked up to me, joining hands as they did. There was a tall muscular one, looking like Hercules. A shorter one, but no less muscle bound and with reddish hair walked next to the first. The third, the same height as the second, had a gleam in his eye that read 'here there be dragons'.

"You must be the wizard," said the dragon. He smiled at me, all teeth and not in a friendly 'let's go have cheeseburgers and drink beer' sort of way.

"Yes," muttered Hercules darkly. "The little hedge wizard."

"I knew he would be here," said the third, the red head.

I knew exactly who they were. They were exactly who they had to be. Michael, Raphael, and Daniel, from the largest to the smartest. Holding hands like children in a crosswalk. I could see the lightning play between them, running down from their crown chakra, to their solar plexus and along their arms. They were linked in electric blue. I found the image fascinating and amusing.

"That's me, boys!" I laughed. "What can I do for you?"

"Well," said Raphael, still smiling his crocodile smile, "You could just turn around and go back home. You don't need to bring our sister any further." He looked from left to right, from Raphael at his left, to Daniel on his right. "Or, you could just leave her here, and continue on your merry way. Where was it you were going?"

"None of your beeswax, chum," I said. My bravado was starting to weaken. Not much, but I could feel it flow away from me, just a little bit. I could only maintain that sort of energy for short periods. I'm a sprinter, not a long distance runner. "My destination is my business."

Raphael drew back at my words, as if I had hit him. Maybe he wasn't used to being talked to like that. I didn't know, nor did I care. His smile weakened and I could see that, with just a little encouragement, he would gladly clean my bones with his teeth.

Daniel spoke gently, saying "Then go there, Chester. Just leave our sister here. We'll take care of her. You've done a good job, but we can finish it now."

"I'm sorry, boys," I said to them, and my voice was no longer laughing. Instead it had started to show some of the tired I was feeling. "I made a promise to the Princess, and I stick by my promises. Thanks, but no thanks." And then I just blurted out, "Besides, I don't trust you."

Daniel's eyebrows shot straight up and curled around his head. Raphael quit smiling, but didn't hid any of his teeth and Michael's teeth ground so that they sounded like hubcaps being crushed.

"What is there about us that you don't trust, Chester?" Daniel was the only one to use my name. He wasn't smiling, but he was staring intently at me. I focused my unfocused eyes on him, and I could see streaks of reddish energy, like red hot pokers streaming from him towards me. Now I knew where my bravado was going.

"Well, for one thing," I said to him, still smiling my charm, "You're stripping away my energy." I leaned against a rock that wasn't there. "I'd say that kind of puts you in the suspicious circle, wouldn't you?"

I pointed at Raphael, who was inhaling tiny bits of sparkly white from me, through his open mouth, as if he was sucking in a mist. Well, it was my mist, and I would be damned if he was gonna eat me. "Rafe, over there, is trying to suck in my life force. Not exactly a friendly gesture, and totally uninvited. It's been a long time since I told someone to eat me, and frankly, he's just not my type. Too ugly."

"And him," I said, as I pointed at Michael, "I don't even know what you brought him with your for. From the best I can figure, once you, Daniel, was done stripping my shield, and once you, Raphael, was done drawing my energy, Michael was going to... what? Pummel me? Bear hug me to death?"

I shook my head sadly at them. "Boys, boys!" I reached out with an invisible hand, drew a small circle on the ground and did a tiny protection that I didn't know I knew how to do. A flash blew up and crystal clear walls flared around me.

"This is a dream!" I laughed as I felt my energy flow back to me, as I felt my life returning. "Not only that, but it is MY dream! How incredibly stupid are you, Daniel, to think that you could come waltzing into MY dream, order me about and then threaten me? And you were supposed to be the smart one."

I sighed as if disappointed. I reached down again with that invisible hand and drew a small double spiral. I added two more straight lines to the spiral, and finished it with a helix, right where it was needed. A bit more stuff I had no idea I knew how to do.

"NOW," came the whisper.

"I know who you are, now, mister invisible man," I muttered darkly, no trace of my humor at all. "Mister Not now, Mister wait till they are defenseless." And it was true. My little spiral had drawn around the three before me, locking them in place, drawing their own energy and freezing it. I could do with them as I pleased. I could even kill them. The knowledge was right in my mind, all I had to do was say the words, think the thought, do the deed.

"Olly Olly Oxen Free!" I called out. My smile had gone, and I could feel my eyes blazing, I could see my aura reaching out, out, into the desert, with hands of its own and almost a free will.

"Red rover, Red rover, send Damien on over!" I called out, and I watched as the enormity of my own personal power reached into the murky and nasty West and pulled ,struggling and howling, the figure of the missing fourth brother. Smoke and Mirrors, indeed. The second he was discovered, the sky to the West cleared, and resumed its normal sky duties. Smoke and mirrors.

Damien was plopped down, snarling and cursing, with his other brothers. A quick squitch to the spiral and he was also caught, unable to do more than listen. The other three turned their heads and looked at him, in shock.

"Boys," I said, calmly, even cheerfully, "it looks to me, what we have here is a lack of communication. Damien, let me introduce you to your brothers, who wanted to kill me, maybe, but definitely wanted to keep Angelina from getting home. Why, I don't know yet, but I will. I may just have to ask your father."

I turned to look at Damien's brothers. "Brothers, I suspect that brother Damien here was trying to hedge his bet, whatever the hell it was he was betting on. Either he was hoping that you would kill me, or I would kill you. I suspect that he was hoping that I would do the killing. That's why he sent me this."

I lifted the bottle of RC cola. "Powerful stuff," I said. "Created in 1903. Made from pure, and I mean PURE sugar cane. Not that nasty sucrose that they use now adays. And you know what? It was my grandfather's favorite, right next to Pabst Blue Ribbon. You know what else? It made me burb, really bad." I looked at the frozen brothers, all glaring hate and anger and nasty stuff at me.

I nodded at Damien. "Of course, you couldn't know that. You just pulled from the memory of my childhood. Every gas station in Indiana had a soda machine." I lifted the bottle to my lips and drank, deeply. It was good, and it was pure and it was an eight year old boy, who knew he could conquer the world, who drank it. I felt the carbonation slide into my belly, and I felt the belly respond.

"Now, I'm not the sort to kill," I told them. "I don't even like to kill flies. They are just doing what is right by them." I shrugged. "Cockroaches, on the other hand," I grimaced, "I can't stand 'em. Still, they have to live too, right?" I nodded.

"There is one insect I cannot stand," I told them. "I don't see the reason for them, and they drive me absolutely bug crazy. They will pile up on top of one another to get to what little food they find. They will step on their brother and even commit cannibalism to reach their goal. That bug, gentlemen, is the June Bug. I absolutely hate them."

I turned my glare on them, shining red and spotlight like. "You four are June Bugs. You have trespassed in my dream, and you have made my dream nasty with your bad attitudes." I felt it was just about time, and I nodded at the boys. "Drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome! It's time for these boys to go home!"

And I belched. I belched to shake the world. The carbonation from the dream Royal Crown Cola reached up from deep inside of me and powered a belch that would have caused California to shake to its very roots. It was the burp heard around the world.

The captive brothers before me tried to stand before the blast. They tried valiantly, in fact. I had to give them points for style, at the very least, as first Daniel cartwheeled off the ground, but was held back by Raphael, then Raphael lost his foot and was added as the tail to Daniels kite. Of the three, the herculean Michael was the most stubborn. He dug his hand into the dirt and was working his fingers for a hand hold.

"Uh uh," I said to him, wagging my finger. "My dirt. Go find your own." With that, his grip crumbled and he, too, was lifted into the air. I waved at the disappeared over the horizon.

That left Damien, who was kept on the ground by my will, who was still captive to the little casting I had done.

"So, Damien," I said, sitting next to him in the dirt. "What shall we talk about?" He tried to reach over and bite me, so I cast a zipper on his mouth. "Now, now. My dream, my rules." I looked at him with my best Dutch uncle look. "Okay? Will you be a good boy?"

He glared at me, and had I been the same person I was at the filling station, frozen to the ground, I would have burst into flames. Instead I just glared back, and for fun, licked his nose. He wasn't expecting that, let me tell you.

I removed the zipper, and said, "Look. I don't care about your family squabbles. I don't really care if you were protecting me, or protecting Angelina, or protecting yourself." I looked at him, and he looked back, with disbelieving eyes. "No, really, I don't care."

"I just want to get Angelina back to her parents, and then I'll just dissappear, go my way, never darken your door again." I looked at him, and he still looked at me, searching for what my game was. "Okay, don't believe me. If I was as nasty as you, I wouldn't believe me either."

I stood up, dusted my legs and rear. "I know I'm going to wake up soon. This dream has gone on long enough." I reached down, and scratched out part of the spiral. "I want to know, though, why it is important that Angelina NOT make it back home. Why are your brothers trying to keep her from getting there?"

Damien stood, sensing that, with the breaking of the spiral, he was free, or mostly free. He still couldn't move from his spot but at least it wasn't forcing him down to the ground.

His voice was soft and gentle, and he could have made a million doing voice-overs or reading those books on tape or disks or whatever they are now. It was calm and it was soothing. I didn't trust it for a second.

"Angelina is the key, stupid," he said. Huh. How rude. "As long as she's not home, dad has free reign. And that's what he wants. To reign."

"Ah. Okay," I nodded. "So... Angelina is the key to... what, exactly?" I poked him in the ribs. "What about this Anthony guy? What about this family in New York."

"Good folks. You should leave them alone." Damien snarled.

"You know, before I wake, I could always force you to tell me the truth." I wasn't so sure I could do that. Snaring and banishing is all fine and good, but to force the truth out of a strong lying mind is a whole nother butter. I could feel the dream starting to loosen its grip on me. I could feel myself starting to wake.

"Yeah, you could do that," Damien growled back. It was interesting to hear a silky smooth growl. "But then it wouldn't be much fun. Sis told you that I fight dirty. I do, it's true. But here's something that she didn't tell you. I prefer the world like it is. I enjoy all the differences that people have. I find the flavors of their actions tasty. I do not want a nice little homogenized world where everyone is the same, doing the same, thinking the same. How, how, how dull!" He winked at me, to let me know how serious he was. "And, finally, I do not, and let me make this perfectly clear, hedge wizard." He leaned over to me until we were nose to nose. "I do not want my father to become a god. That would spoil all my fun."

With that being said, he licked my nose, leapt up into the sky and vanished like a party streamer. Confetti rained down around me and the world started bonging like a million church bells gone mad.

I woke up with the phone ringing. I picked up the receiver and the voice told me it was my seven am wake up call. I also needed to pee really bad, and there was a taste like the taste of stale RC Cola in my mouth. I walked to the bathroom, did my business, and came back. Angelina was breathing gently, still asleep. I went to the door, opened it, and saw the morning all bright and shiny. I stood there yawning, leaning against the door post, and put my hand in my pocket. I felt something hard, sharp edged, and metal. I pulled out a slightly bent, very old RC Cola bottle cap. And on the inside, written in faded letters on the cork, were the words, 'What you avoid, chases after.' Of course, it had to be there.

Comments

[capi.livejournal.com]

*smacking her lips*

MMMMmmmm-hmmmm! Me and my RC, yeah! Me and my RC! What's good enuf for most other folks aint good enuf for..... *grin*

GO, Daddy!! GO!!!!!

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

You were and RC drinker too? Wow! This was actually a fun section, sis. I wrote straight for about 5 hours, and even went back and edited a bit. Sometimes it's the little words that trip you up.