~
"Something's been bugging me, like I had this dream I was in my kitchen standing on an awkward square of linoleum that isn't actually there. It's styled like porcelain but tattered edges are unfurling from the sides. And the edges extend out like a spindly plant growing in fast-motion, days shrunk into seconds, and at the same time it's raining, like rain falling on the inside of my house. This couch in the room isn't mine but reminded me of my childhood. The weave and pattern were nearly indistinguishable and I was holding back strange tears of nostalgia. The couch is drenched, rain tapping its soggy fabric and the shades are so saturated that their weight is bowing the rod. And there's blank, creamy light pouring through all the windows as if the whole place was raised into a bright morning sky. The light gets brighter as the unfurling edges of linoleum begin sliding up the walls. But all the strands bind around the window's frames and bridge inwards breaking the light into distinct rays. As the light grows ever-brighter the binds enclose tighter and eventually there's only a trapped glow filling the room like a fog."
With a distance in her gaze, Edna stared uneasily at a spot on the floor next to the sink. Her lips were pressed in palpable anxiety.
"I could move but only so slow, it was incongruous with the speed of everything else around me. I raised my hands so slow but they were the same as the rest of the glow, just an outline. And then the glass lamp shade attached to the ceiling fan bursts into shards."
Wyatt watched Edna twist her ring, and the small olive-tinged agate made several orbits around her middle finger. Her glass was nearly empty, a misshaped ice cube bogged in diluted bourbon.
"Do you want another drink?" he asked.
Edna looked up from the spot on the ground to meet Wyatt's eyes where she silently gauged the origin of his offer. A few moments went by like this, moments that felt like the second hand of a clock procrastinating, until she replied,
"I'll have another. But I think we've finished the bourbon."
"I have this," said Wyatt, reaching into the breast pocket of his jacket, producing a flask.
"Well aren't you prepared."
"I'll get the ice," said Wyatt, his voice quivered with mild embarrassment as he stood up and stepped into the kitchen. He swung open the freezer door.
"So what happens next?"
"Let's see after we're finished with our drinks," Edna replied.
"I mean in your dream," he said over churning rocks and ringing glass. Edna missed his grin behind the freezer door.
"Nothing else."
Wyatt set both glasses down on the counter beside the fridge and twisted the flask's cap.
"I mean, I'm moving slow and my hands are translucent. I feel outside of myself in some way or that something is missing in a really important way. I can't explain what is. It's visceral more than something I'll understand aside from how I know it'll continue on and on without stopping."
Bourbon flowed into the glass and the ice bounced to the rim with a familiar jangling.
"You know how a piano has those pedals, and when you press one down and tap a key the sound goes on longer?"
"Yeah."
"Well it's like if that sound just kept going on and on, and felt like it was on its way to a silent resolution. Except there's some sort of deception and it never does and maybe you think it's getting quieter but it never actually is."
Wyatt handed her the glass and, with gentle precision, pulled his chair a foot closer to Edna's and sat down, took a long swallow and exhaled though his nose. His gaze was now set on some distant and indiscernible point as he spoke,
"What if the key you pressed that rings on and on isn't supposed to stop? Would you feel better if you knew it was something meant for permanence?"
"Maybe, but that's not something I could change.” She felt a brief tug of unfurling despair.
"But you'd said something's been bugging you. Is that thing the dream or something outside that you could change, if it's just reflected?"
"I couldn't say what that would be. Besides it's probably just something I've created for myself, a feeling that shouldn't exist except now I've defined it."
~
A grouse purred in the folded tufts of long grass crackling in a whisper as morning's light snuck through bows and glinted in the crystal dew. A long strand of broken web shimmered, wavering in complex breezy stillness. Hands stuffed in pockets, he peered fixedly at grove of young aspens, exhaling a streamed geyser of smoke and vapor, skinny cigarette hanging from his lips. His boots were wet. Outside the purview of his gaze the grouse stirred then took off in a flutter, it's flapping grew distant as it plunged further off into the woods and stillness resumed. After some time in slow orchestration the puttering and chirping and scuffling and knocks began to stir upon another as the forest was embraced by waking sunlight. And then it was day time and he turned to stomp out his rolled cigarette.
~
She stood on clumpy tufts of grass at the lake's edge. Forceful wind churned the water so waves leapt up now and again to meet her feet. In washed twilight the water reflected the sky as old cottonwoods rattled and swept. The wind never stilled but came in bursts where things rustled deafeningly. She strode into a grove where the trees where oldest, tallest, and closest to the lapping waves where a wooden dock extended out just past the longest bows sweeping over the water. On the teetering dock she laid on her back, feet towards the center of the lake and watched the limbs sway and creak against a pressing, deepening blue ceiling.
~
It happens like this. A farmhouse sits in gloomy twilight. Two bottom windows are illuminated curtain boxes. Out front a pickup truck is parked next to a station wagon. Chickens are cooing in cautious squalls while a man and little boy sway on a bench on the porch. On the front steps a mantis revolves in a glass jar with holes poked in the lid. The front door is propped open with a tall blue boot and through leaking warm light two women are chatting in the Kitchen, one wearing an apron rifling through a drawer, the other leaning against the counter opposite.
A revolver bounces in the passenger seat while dust spins up behind the wheels. A man turns the knob on the console and blurry noises collide and morph until the frequencies align a symphony plagued with periodic crackling and words of monotone weather voices. In the backseat a manilla folder is bent open with papers strewn.
~
Edna found herself staring into the kitchen table where tiny notches, creases, stains and scrapes ran in disjointed patterns of organic idiosyncrasy depicting family meals, children banging spoons, tools dropping, searing pans and old conversations staining wood. She wondered what marks were now taking shape.
~
Dust flew behind the truck's wheels and the radio was low when Wyatt saw a limping deer on the road's shoulder. He decelerated to behold the calf in slow stoic brevity. It ambled past in the opposite direction. Its hind leg was apparently injured yet no wound was noticeable, but a distinct tuft of new fur on its quarter. In his periphery another figure loomed on the opposite side of the road. A man, haggard and aged, limped along in unison, jeans scuffed and dirty with a brimmed black hat and sunken shoulders. He made no notice of the calf or passing truck and kept on. Wyatt passed the adjoined lives in repentant haste then through the back mirror saw them moving along in contemplative passing. A compulsive and energetic rush ensued wherein he felt to suddenly stop and survey the scene, coalesce with these entities but an undisclosed force held him to trajectory so he barreled down the road gaining speed until breath gave way and the scene had passed altogether, as if she had already went back and they were no longer there. He'd driven the route hundreds of times over but this was another day. The waking dream passed like this and in a moment she was standing in line at the grocery.
~
Aspens grew densely along the sides of the drive, their longest limbs intersecting above the washed gravel in a faded yellow arch forming a scattered tunnel. Stray bows tapped the windows and roof of the truck and the leaves slithered. The driveway was so narrow that most of the largest rocks were unavoidable. Ray would slow the truck to a crawl, announcing a “bump” as it tipped sideways then heaved back into equilibrium on a bounce and creak of the suspension until the procession – including Ray’s announcement – continued with the back wheel. When the truck tipped left Ray would get jammed up into the driver’s door as everyone else slid and compressed on the bench seat.
“Just up there,” Ray nodded up the hill where the base of a brown structure could be distinguished. As they approached it became clear the cabin was situated on a precipitous incline. A couple of dilapidated rockers sat on the back porch which faced out over the hill, overlooking a vapid meadow of clumpy grass dispersed thickets of thorny bushes. The porch was fenced with wood railings and stilted high enough one could stand under it. Brown paint was peeling off paneling on the back and sides of the cabin except for the areas under the eaves where the steeply pitched a-frame roof protected the walls. A few shingles towards the bottom were misplaced and stuck out jaggedly. Ray parked the truck alongside the cabin and pulled the parking break hard.
A pile of firewood was neatly stacked by a red door with a wrought iron handle. There was a large window right of the door with creme curtains drawn. They smelled the sweet fragrance of rainy earth, juniper, and mountain flora as Ray slid a bulky key into the lock and opened the door which creaked inwards with a shove. As they lumbered into the cabin the scent mixed with shallow tones of coffee and smoke. A twin bed was wedged into the left corner accompanied by a nightstand with a lamp. A wool blanket was draped over white sheets. Beside the door stood a tall dresser over which hung a pair of rifles with wooden stocks and a coiled extension cable. On the back of the door hung a heavy plaid coat and a yellow rain jacket. A leather couch was positioned under the window, nearly the same creme color as the shades behind it. Atop a wooden coffee table rested a vase of shrunken flowers and sage, a pile of books and papers, a plaid hat matching the coat on the door, and a few household tools. A rug spanned most of the room, brick red covering dark floorboards. The walls were once white but had taken a hue from age and years of wood fires in the stove beside the couch. Left of the bathroom entrance in the far right corner extended a countertop dividing the main room from a kitchenette in the back of the cabin. It had a small sink, fridge, stove, cabinets, and round dining table pushed up close the the sliding glass door opening to the stilted deck on which a pair of rocking chairs swaying microscopically in a calm breeze and beyond a deep view overlooking the field then a forested valley.
~
Despite hesitance - or at times resistance - from Stacey, they'd arranged to marry in March. On a rainy night they had a fight in their one bedroom apartment on the third floor of the bakery building. Dustin said he was out on the fire escape to take space and catch his breath when he slipped and fell three stories onto the road, but Stacey swears he threw himself off in a manic fit. She called an ambulance to pick him up off the road and knelt beside him, stroking his hair while he bled and moaned. He was in the hospital for two weeks with thirteen broken bones but as soon as he could stand he left against the doctor's advice and walked right back the the apartment but Stacey had packed up and moved to South Carolina to live with her mother. He didn't hear from her again. A year later he drove his sedan through a guardrail on the pass and rolled down a series of switchbacks before coming to an upside-down halt right at the edge of the cliff. He crawled out of the crash and hitched a ride back to town without a scratch. Another year passed then he blew his brains out in his trailer.
~
The garden became noticeably desiccated over four days as the heat and dryness gradually replaced the verdant plot with shriveled, brittle strands of brown and yellow. At night she would lay awake and listen through the open window as the breeze would conduct these strand’s subtle clattering and rattle them amongst themselves and against the garden’s peripheral chicken-wire fence. In early morning, after an unrecognizable crescendo was long past, she'd slip out the front door with a wide-mouth jar. Finding any hint of green was now a celebration to saturate the soil covering the resilient plant’s roots. Watering at twilight meant absorption. It wouldn’t evaporate instantly like during the peak of daylight.