Jewels

What defines the seconds before an encounter? Can the subconscious follow it the way a wolf might follow the scent of blood? Are the cues ever given to us? I wondered this for a long time. Usually it was my wife that had this thing about stopping every half hour to pee. On long trips this particular one was seven hours, I learned rest, as in rest stop, should be called inconvenience. Of course Valerie would tell me I was thinking from a man's perspective and maybe I was, but if you asked me, I'd tell you to write the number two and circle it; add this to pee standing up: a man's ability to maintain consistency.

When the urge struck me, we were in Connecticut en route to New Jersey, the New Hampshire countryside already hours behind us. A week of bonding unlike any I remembered, was behind us as well. Man, what a vacation; everything went so right, the hiking, our feelings about each other, the sex and just everything. It was the sort of vacation that was going to stay with me for a long time; the kind your mind holds on to and re-broadcasts when everything else goes wrong. The kind you reference when you trade sleep for questions (and I've been there) about your life's approach and the relevance of your philosophies.

It had been therapy for both of us, actually possibly even the three of us. In the back amongst our camping gear, was our Golden Retriever, Daisy. I wasn't a fan of Daisy riding the Benz, that was usually reserved for the Pontiac, but Valerie said a seven hour ride would be much more comfortable in this, and she was right. She was always right about things like that.

When Valerie took her eyes from the road and a sly smile formed at the corner of her mouth, I swear my discomfort elevated. I had to go so bad, and she knew it. She could be as spiteful as she liked with me. The pressure on my bladder was so precise; the slightest move sent acute aches through my thighs and to the backs of my knees. What was worse, I was beginning to perspire. "Now", she said, "Do you see what I have to go through?" Oh I saw it all right, and for the first time I truly appreciated it. On the Hutchinson Merritt Parkway, when the blue sign that once upon a time made me wince came into view, I realized the irony in circumstance. 'Service Area. 1 Mile'. Okay, I could do that. Or could I? It might as well have been one hundred miles. How weird, I told my wife that just came out of nowhere. It sucks, I know. Don't you worry, she told me; patting my lap and sending searing jolts right were the pain was, just hold it for another minute. She signalled for the left lane, passing up two vehicles. One had a couple in their forties, puffing some smokes and preferring memories as opposed to conversation. Now I don't know if peeing plays tricks on your mind but in the pickup we were soon to pass, I would notice something that momentarily would make me forget my anguish. This two-lane highway, bound north and south, divided by a maple-lined isle, was a gorgeous stretch of road. But these maples were fully grown and created trickery of shadow and light.

It was a blue GMC, blemished by wild splays of dirt. Valerie was doing about sixty, the truck, probably fifty, fifty-five. When I looked into the driver's window I saw an empty seat behind the wheel. I looked in for a few seconds, I'm certain I did, and saw, no one, absolutely no one, just a torn leather seat with strands of silver tape patched across the headrest. Valerie! I yelled, not realizing how startled my tone could make her while she was driving.

"What is it?" "Look" and when I looked over again, I saw an old farm guy, a podgy hick, mid-fifties, wearing a flannel shirt and thick specs. She made a face at me.

As she steered in front of him, I realized I expended too much energy and my sudden movements caused the tension in my bladder to knot tighter. I closed my eyes absorbing every last bit of it. She looked into the rear-view mirror, "What about him?"

Breathing heavily, and now able to sway my legs rapidly, I said, "Does your mind fool with you when you really have to go?"

Daisy, so called because she had an appetite for daisies in our garden, barked. "You sense something too, don't you girl?" I didn't have the strength in me to turn back and look for myself. Daisy barked another shrill bark, which echoed harshly. "What is she barking at?" my wife asked. I decided one thing. I was going to be a tough trooper, and turn my anguished body around to steal one final glance at whatever the hell it was that I didn't see.

I put my left hand over the headrest, took a breath and moved my butt; my tank protested. The driver was too far behind us for me to see him, but I wasn't entirely sure he couldn't still see me, because a fraction of a second after I turned to look, he signalled behind us for the same rest stop.

Oh what was the big deal? I considered the significance (if there was any), and in a crazy twisted way I decided I wasn't pissed enough to be cautious. This is no time to be cute, I reminded myself, and breathed as rhythmically as a woman in labour. But I was worried about him and decided that if I didn't have to go as bad as I did, I would have waited.

Rest areas off the Hutchison Merritt Parkway, (well, most of them) are unconventional because they are not directly off the road;. Just take a block off the exit and take your choice. This complimented my torture. Valerie steered into a self-service gas station with a small convenience shop. I knew these final steps would prove what I was made of. You've made it this far; does a good boy scout ever surrender? No, a good scout never does, even if that meant being followed in by a copper trail.

"Should I gas up?" Valerie asked. The gauge read a quarter of a tank; it only made sense, but a greater instinct (call it Houdini if you like) told me to take the next one. The gas could wait, nature couldn't.

"You'll have to pee soon enough," I winked at her. She gave me a look of sarcasm. "Lock the doors, Ill be right back." The last thing I did, agonized as I was, was to I pat Daisy's head.

The doors did not part for me as they would in the supermarket near home; this figured. Next I feared I'd have to go to the counter and ask for a key to get in; this would also be my luck. Leaving the humidity of the afternoon for the cold in the convenience shop, I was taunted by specialty coffee radiating from thermoses (the ones that get left out all morning).

A brave patron went for the French Vanilla, which was probably not the worst choice, but definitely not the best. Behind a row of freezers filled with soft drinks, a small sign over an archway read 'RESTROOMS'. You would think I discovered the lost arc, but my face never showed it. I moved over cautiously, stealing a glimpse at the young lady behind the counter in the event that I had to ask for the key. She was no older than eighteen or nineteen, her hair was tied back and something in her eyes told me this was not what she planned for the rest of her life. She was shelling back change for three packs of Marlboros, a bottle of Coke, and a bag of barbecue chips.

I'll never make it to that counter, I decided. The moment of truth came and passed. The door was unlocked thank God. The last thing I saw, before my relief, was the brave patron churning his coffee with a stirrer and a ten-year-old boy (maybe his son) wearing a Yankees cap, running with his little sister. He was more interested in impressing her than where he was going. Likewise, the man hadn't seen him either until a collision was imminent.

I smiled, closed the door and pressed in the lock button. The floor was slick, and I didn't want to imagine why. I think I might have started pissing before I had it out. I didn't care; worry about the pants later. My first spray was misguided and fell far off course, but for that second all that mattered was pissing itself. I straightened out, and let it go, throwing my head back, closing my eyes and breathing remnants of urine with a topcoat of Lysol.

I began laughing. Lightly at first until I could no longer control myself, and again my urine went off wildly. At thirty-four years old I am the youngest Lead Technical Analyst in my company's history, a Fortune 100 firm in New York, thank you very much. I started as the baby, twenty-four then, surrendering to my colleagues ten years or better. Hard work has become my forte, and has done things I never would have imagined. Maybe it was because I was young, and with youth comes rebellion, or maybe it was stress, but my first day, I had this sporadic moment, a spontaneous, psychotic moment, while in mid-piss I decided it would be funny to urinate upon the walls. Just like that, tie, shirt, jacket and all. The first shot hit the sink and its meticulous shine was instantly altered. I got the walls and the ceiling, without regard for my new colleagues, I was thinking let it flow baby, let it flow. How's that for making a statement on your first day? In the moment it was incredibly hilarious, and I laughed all through that day and many days thereafter. Maybe tomorrow, after my morning meeting I'd return to that restroom for old times sake. I couldn't imagine myself doing that, not now. It's amazing our capacity for change. How we were once able to find delight in things years later you couldn't even imagine.

I zipped up; sweet relief, I could climb a mountain now. I didn't even remember what happened on the highway only moments ago. Not then anyway, but I would. When I opened the door wondering how the situation played with the coffee, I was in for a surprise, because when I opened the door, when I went to step back into the convenience store, it was no longer the convenience store I was looking at. I patted the side of my head what the…? My heart began racing. There were no more freezers, no racks of candies and chips, no coffee thermoses, no counter. Before me now were oaks, replete oaks spanning a vast woodland, it was like I came out the wrong door. You have to piss Al? Here you go. Pick a tree and let loose. Oak trees, branches as dead as yesteryear. A terrain where I could see, quite clearly, bones peeking from the soil (I wondered whether or not these were human). There was a smell like decomposition, soiling the arid air. Then I had a thought; it was the least of my worries, but somehow it came. I would learn lots of things didn't make sense here. I was staring upon a landscape that obliged by laws all of it's own and not those of nature, for the trees in such weather would be green.

I wondered if one of two things happened: Either I slipped and hit my head while I was laughing, or I'd passed out somehow from holding it so long. Then I saw the man in the truck from the parkway, standing where the trees were sparse. "He can manipulate the land," I heard myself say. He leaned back, his shoe on the fender and his arms folded. Up until this point, he looked like a man, but I would learn otherwise. What did he want from me?

Close the door! I told myself, hoping whatever freak circumstance brought me here would return me home. As I grasped it, I realized the door too had changed. It was no longer aluminium; it was pine planks, brittle enough to have aged for hundreds of years. It splintered upon contact, and smelt of undisturbed dust that got up my nose. In the dark I began to pray. Pray words I haven't heard myself pray in a long time. Promising God a renewal of faith (hoping He did not look too far into the future to see if I would make good on that promise.) When I opened the door, when I opened it with prayer rolling from my lips, the man was still there. He pointed his finger at me; then turned that finger towards the heavens, and in an action that stilled the wind in my chest he motioned for me to come forward. I just stared at him. Then I closed the door again, and this time sunk down far enough to discover a bench under my butt.

It was dark, but I covered my eyes anyway. I could hear his footsteps. Hear bone and twigs crunch under foot and with every step each crunch became more prominent. Beneath the old door there was a fine stripe of light that I watched through the fingers covering my face. At the same time I was almost choking on my recycled warm breath. Then a certain smell found it's way to me. A mix of hay, apricot and hot tar. I realized this smell was him and as he came forward it became as pronounced as his footsteps.

With two final crunches, the stripe under the door was compromised. Under normal circumstances (I was certain) my age advantage close to twenty years would be enough to lay an ass whooping on him the size of Manhattan but these weren't normal conditions. He's going hurt you, I told myself, hurt you in ways you've never been hurt, and you are never going to see Valerie again. What did he do: he knocked. He knocked the conscientious knock of a butler. What was I suppose to say, come on in, or come back another time? In the end I decided to say nothing at all, wondering, hoping, if maybe this shed or outhouse, or whatever the fuck it was, might be a barrier protecting me in someway.

"Allen Freemont," he said getting my name right, come step outside. I stayed right where I was, thinking hard of the rest stop; thinking if I wished hard enough I just might return. Listen now, you come out or I'm coming in there to get you, and believe me, son, that's the last thing you want to happen.

The smell was changing. The apricot, and hay were dissipating, and the tar odour radiated-- radiated so strong in fact, that I began to cough. I tried concealing it at first, but soon realized that wasn't going to work. The dry air that had been plentiful was fading and I began choking like a wild man. I was breathing fumes. Tears began forming in my eyes and I grasped my throat, seeing the white stripe bounce uncontrollably with my movement. I couldn't bare it any longer. With a hand on my chest I reached forward for the plank and shoved it open.

On my hands and knees, on bones and dirt, I was panting, but finally I had air. The brittle planks broke upon impact from the man who did not waver and fragments of wood dropped on all sides of me. Apricot, and straw blossomed heretofore.

"There, the man said to me, isn't that better?"

"Please," I said, "please don't kill me." That was when I saw something protruding from the mouths of both his sneakers; dirty white Nikes or something. Where his two feet should have been there were large talons that ended in three joints, each tipped with thickly aged claws the width of drainpipes. He looked at me funny. "Kill you? Allen Freemont do you think I brought you all this way just to kill you?"

No, he's going to have some fun with you. Torture you, and play with you like a toy. Fuck with you, the way he fucked his Nikes.

"I should hope not. Now you come and take a walk with me." As he said this I watched a piece of his shoulder fall off with a sound I will never forget. He did not flinch I don't even think he noticed. What he had lurking beneath could make the bravest soul see his lunch. Layers of moist, bulbous muscle intertwining like something from an autopsy. Only I don't know whether it was really a layer of muscle. I think it was him growing out of his mold.

"This way Allen Freemont."

This time I did not resist. I followed behind him through his forest of death, watching the mold break from his back. Soon bare masses of shoulder tissue were exposed. Then as something began manoeuvring at the denim seam of his buttocks, I had this horrible thought. If I did get back alive, if I found my way home, no one was ever going to believe this happened. This was going to be mine and mine alone; not an image a young professional wanted to carry around the office or otherwise. This thought scared the shit out of me.

The seam began to oscillate. I could feel my eyes bug, because something was trying to climb out of the creature's asshole, I was certain. I didn't know what tar shit smelt like, nor did I care to. And then POP; something exploded through the denim, a thick orange block that caught me in the knees and sent me down, cursing out in surprise. "My apologies," the thing said.

I climbed to my feet. Before me now a python of a tail, dragging through the terrain. I closed my eyes, feeling desperate and wondering, was I dead? Could I be dead and this be hell? Yes, this is hell and this son-of-a-bitch is going to sign you up; show you the ropes. I stayed behind it, at a safer distance now. By the time we reached our destination, all the earth woven clothes, and the human mold from tail to head, were completely gone. Before me was a beast, comprised of raw tissue, raw muscle, with teeth rigid enough to slice bone.

He forced me down into a pit containing three stones. On the largest he sat, and instructed me to sit adjacent to him. Between us was the final stone. He raised his hand talons, three joints, identical as his feet except the claws were more refined. "You probably have a great many questions Allen Fremont, like where you are and what you are doing here."

I do, I said. This was the first time I looked into it's natural eyes and I knew as sure as I knew Routers and Gateways, that those eyes could not see me. Those eyes were lifeless, as dead as deer eyes on the highway. They moved (this is what frightened me most), they moved but the coordination was completely off; like a satanic puppeteer pulling strings. When the beast moved it's bald head, those eyes slunk around every direction, except where they should be focused. But they were eyes. They had pupils and even though I was so sure he could not see me with them, I could still feel them looking at me.

"Last night, what did you ask for while you were staring at the novas?"

There were certain times (they were rare but I found they happened most often in the company of Eric Millington, the executive vice president of the company), when my mind would draw an absolute blank. I sat here now like a stupid grade child, my head filled with shit. Last night, I was in New Hampshire on the final night of the camping trip; I must have thought a thousand things.

"Are you as heartfelt as the soils you walk upon? Oh no, of course you aren't faggot. Of course you aren't. My mistake; that is why you are here to begin with. You were at the flame with your companion. Clearer now Allen Freemont? Is that a better perspective or need I make it clearer?"

"What the hell are you?" I somehow asked it. But it's eyes were only facing mine.

"Dare to question, is dare to remain. What, in your shallow universe did you wonder Allen Freemont? You felt it like a current of electricity. Like a serpent slithering within your little body; and can you now not recall it to your mind?"

I thought about it, more afraid it was going to hurt me if I didn't give the answer it sought. The most profound moment I shared with Valerie was questioning a persons approach to life and all that kind of stuff, but what was so unusual about that? That's the shit you think about when you're on vacation.

"That is the one," the creature said as if it were reading my thoughts. "That is the one. I'm not the devil, and this is not hell. I'm one of many Allen Freemont, and you are my work, my territory. Arrangements comprised, which you shall never understand, not even in your death, every third orbit I must relinquish what I've gained of but one. This is random of those who seek."

On the stone that sat between us he placed a glass canister. Condensed steam, or so it appeared, circulated throughout, pressing up at it's sides, rising, and floating like mist. "The contents belong to you." His claw slid around the glass creating horrid shrieks. "Do remember this: The means you undergo to obtain your jewels cannot come with sacrifice of the being given to you. Do you understand? When you sacrifice, I never give back."

I was laughing, but I didn't know why at first, then I remembered, pissing everywhere, the first day at LFX. My head was raised and I could hear the stream bubbling the water below. See the white tiles, the mirror, the sink, smell urine and cleaner and I'm back. I pinched myself. I'm back. I'm alive. I'm back.

The freezers were there, the candy racks, the counter and a man with the morning's French running down his leg and a guilty ten year old boy (drawing a blank). It was the most relieving feeling. Then the thought hit me, what the fuck just happened?

Anybody?

When I didn't see our car, I feared the nightmare was still going on, but I did see our car; I was looking directly at it, and directly at my wife behind the wheel with Daisy in the back. Only it was not the Mercedes. I walked over; not casually; visibly upset, but trying not to let it show. Manually my wife rolled down the window of the Grey Monster. "What's the matter, aren't you feeling better now?"

I stepped in, not understanding what was happening or why we were back in the Grey Monster; our first car, but at the same time I was so overjoyed that I was okay and with Valerie and Daisy, my two ladies.

There was something I understood about history from all this. There was history by the books, the world's history, all that was recorded, all that was to be remembered, and then there was personal history. The world's history remained constant; it was still 2004, uninterrupted. My history, and Valerie's history was interrupted as was our families and our friends as far as I knew. We were changed back by ten years. It seemed intricately impossible at first, and long after I accepted it, it did not make any more sense. I was twenty-four years old in 2004, when I should be thirty-four. I guess I could see some good in that but more than anything else it disturbed me. It made me forever aware of the sinister forces that touched my life in a Connecticut rest stop. I never liked that thought. Not one bit. Rest assured curiosity will never make for a return. Like I've said, sometimes you look back and you can't imagine.

Even more unsettling Valerie, all of our relatives, the children we once went to school with, were unaware of this play of the clock; unaware how their own lives were altered; for them time was constant. It reminded me of the impartial way lives were altered for George Bailey; only if you hear a bell chime, this Clarence was not going to find himself a set of wings; horns maybe. I never told Valerie. But one day, at the risk of insanity, I would.

There is no more Mercedes, no home overlooking the New York skyline, no lead technical Analyst for LFX. I work in a supermarket, live in an apartment, and I drive the Grey Monster, the old springboard. Everything I've worked for was gone. And who does care when the pay is little, the living space small, and the car a sleazy mechanics fantasy? I don't waltz for any of it. I've lost so much. How the mighty have fallen?

I looked for ways to understand what happened to me, and why I did not forget it. And no, this was not the trickery of Satan, or some anti-God, believe me I have wondered.

The mighty have not fallen. Because there comes no might in self-mutilation.