This Waking Sleep

We’re given free tickets at the train station, and then we board the train to Berlin.

At the station, I’m certain that the Paris police are looking for us. We pass one who stands with his hands on his hips in front of the station surveying the busy afternoon crowd.

I can feel his eyes boring right through both of us, but he never moves. He just stares.

Inside the station it is a little darker and the air is a little cooler. It’s a relief.

I let Sabrine acquire the tickets because the burns to my face have been fairly extensive. The damage is extensive enough that I have taken to wearing a tall hat and a scarf as not to alarm passersby with my recent scarring. This disguise works fairly well from afar, but up close I might as well bite them with my new teeth while speaking to them. My disfigured appearance makes communication difficult, if not altogether impossible.

We board the train and I take the window seat. I stare out across the platform and watch people mill about as they amble to and fro, boarding off and on the different trains.

In the reflection of the window, I see a man in the aisle pause to check our tickets. Thankfully, he does not resemble Hull in any fashion.

We sit and Sabrine whispers into my ear about trains and Berlin and Gassou. I do my best to ignore her words by concentrating on the crowds moving outside the car window, but they cannot be ignored. I feel the steel tips of my new teeth with my tongue and resist the urge to bite her, barely.

A man sits down across from us. He is large and carrying a pair of scotch-patterned carpetbags with him. His girth is such that he takes up both chairs when he sits down adjacent to where we sit. He coughs loudly and bumps against Sabrine as he maneuvers his girth in the narrow space between the seats.

“So sorry,” he wheezes, once seated. He wipes his sweating and rotund face with a white handkerchief.

Sabrine nods, indicating that she accepts his apology, and he takes her gesture as an opening. He leans forward, smiling as a predator might, and offers her his outstretched hand.

She accepts and she takes her hand in his and kisses the top of it.

“I am the Baron Gebberd Von Fridenreich, returning to Berlin after a brief stay of rest in Paris.”

“I am Sabrine and this is my traveling companion. We are both from Paris, visiting relatives in Berlin.”

Baron Fridenreich glances at me, but does not offer to shake my hand. In return, I do not tear my gaze from the train window to acknowledge him. If Sabrine wishes to play the part of the Baron’s whore on this journey, I have little interest in this play.

“My wife, she is in another passenger car. She says I snore when I sleep. I hope that I do not disturb you both during the night.”

“We sleep soundly.”

He rummages through one of his bags and produces a brown bottle and a sandwich made of rough bread. He uncorks the bottle and begins to eat the sandwich, quite contented, until a foursome of men sit down in the seats on the other side of the aisle from us. Each of the men is bearded with curly, hanging locks. They wear the black robes of Catholic priests, except the garments do not possess white collars as I am used to seeing.

The Baron is clearly perturbed by the presence of these men. He stop eating. His mouth hangs open, still half-full with food, and then his face contorts into a sneer. I watch his eyes narrow to slits in hatred at this group of passengers.

Eventually, he leans in and beckons Sabrine close, whispering: “Jews. I recommend you do not look them in the eye. They will take it as some kind of an advance. They will assault you while you sleep.”

I speak for the first time.

“And why should this behavior be any different from the other men on this train?”

The Baron stares at me as if I have just murdered his firstborn child. I feel like tearing into his face with my new teeth, but that will have to wait. My jaws are reserved for a select few.

“Do you realize that the Jewish female is sterile as well as frigid? The Jew… he cannot contain his lust for Western flesh. He is gripped by the Devil.”

Fridenreich struggles to get to his feet, huffing and puffing.

“Excuse me,” he says. “I must send a telegram.”

I watch as he trundles back down the passenger aisle and exits the train.

“Do you think he will return?”

I shrug and turn away, returning to scan the crowded train platform in search of Hull.

I feel for the key inside my pocket and my fingertips find its narrow steel. The metal is cold beneath my touch, and it reminds me of my journey across the ocean. Of the chilling hold filled with goats and water, and of my equally chilling reception upon arrival in Paris.

The reflective surface of the window glass darkens momentarily. It looks like someone is looming behind me on its surface. Of course, nobody is there but Sabrine, and she is still seated harmlessly in the seat beside mine. No. There is something else. Gassou, perhaps, is prying about inside my mind again.

My eyes are affixed to the glass, and I fear I am about to receive a message.

I do, of course.

It feels as if the car is suddenly filled with a crush of people. They are not truly there, but I can smell them and feel them pressing against my back and elbowing me for room in the sudden, overcrowded space.

The trains, again!

I sink down low into my chair, pulling my gaze from the reflection in the window to stare at the patterns on the train floor carpeting. I pull the collar of my coat up over my nose and mouth in an effort to staunch the smells of excrement and strong body odor that assail me. I do my best to swallow back nausea. It would be a shame to vomit all over Sabrine, after all.
She touches my arm out of concern.

“Are you okay?”

Her voice sounds distant and distorted, as if she is talking into my ear from the far side of a glass chemistry tube.

“Do you need to use the restroom?”

I sink lower in my seat and wave her away with my hand. Then I squeeze my eyes tightly and try to block the crawling sensations attacking all of my senses.

The baron returns at some point. I hear him huffing back to his seat and then murmuring things to Sabrine. No doubt he is inquiring as to what might be wrong with me.

I want to open my eyes and assault them both, but I am too fearful of what I might see.

Instead, I sit paralyzed and crippled by the sickness that churns inside of me.

It is going to be a long train ride to Germany.

I rush down the narrow spiral staircase that leads from the projectionist’s booth to the main lobby of the theatre. In my hurry, I fall and half-slide down the last ten steps on my ass.

I stand up and hurry into the hallway where I last saw Sabrine.

She lies on the floor, moaning, and I rush to her side. A large bruise forms across her forehead that’s ruining her good looks. She grips my arm tightly and says something too quiet to understand.

Annoyed, she pulls me closer and I tilt my ear to her lips.

“Hull…” she whispers.

The warning comes too late. My old friend slams something hard and made of metal into the back of my head – a short-handled spade. It’s the kind the army uses to dig trenches.

When I fall, he uses it on the back of my legs and then tips me over with the shovel’s edge and the tip of his wingtip shoe.

He touches the blade of the shovel’s head to my throat.

“I’d crack open your head to slurp your brain’s like the yolk of a robin’s egg, but I must leave you to burn in the fire, instead. My car is running.”

Hull motions towards the office and I can see empty kerosene cans strew about the cluttered paper-filled room.

He brings the flat of the shovel down upon the side of my head and then leaps across the hallway towards the projectionist’s booth.

No matter how hard I will it, my legs do not respond to my mind’s desire to pick myself up off the floor.
He comes back moments later, stepping through a thick and black cloud of smoke while he wipes the blood of the theatre owner from the edge of his spade with a white handkerchief.

He steps over me and I clutch for his ankle as he passes. Hull frowns and kicks me in the face. I lose my grip and he steps free from me with a growl of disapproval.

Then Hull is gone. He leaves me sprawled in the smoke and the flames.

When the air becomes so hot that it scorches my lungs when I breathe in, and my skin feels tight and constrictive, I strain forth with great effort and manage to get to my feet. I hook my hands beneath Sabrine’s armpits and drag her down the hall to the outside.

I see a pair of vagrants watching the building burn from the other side of the road. They look so impassive to the whole disaster that one might think they’re observing the building not burning to the ground at all.

Hull is nowhere to be found, of course.

I scramble about the street looking for a bucket and some water. When I remember that the three films from Gassou’s loft are still inside the burning theatre, I rush back up the front steps.

I pause at the theatre doors. From where I stand I can hear the breaking of timbers and the roar of unseen flames behind a wall of black smoke. The heat against my skin is unbearable.

I’m instantly blinded and choked by the smoke when I rush back inside. I trip over something and fall forward. Large chunks of the ceiling fall about me in large chunks of flaming structure. I leap to my feet and run blindly towards my unseen target. The heat becomes so intense that I worry my eyes will wither from their sockets.

I find the burning front door of the office and stumble through it. When I snatch the film canisters from the floor, the metal is hot and the sounds of my sizzling palm flesh fill my ears.

I stumble back into the collapsing hallway. ‘Midnight Mirror’ is gone forever. There is little chance of making it up the stairs and coming back again in one piece. On the roadway outside, my clothes are smoking, and I do my best to pat out the flare-ups that leap across the hair on my head. My whole body is bright red, like the carapace of a cooked lobster.

Sabrine is sitting on the curb, cradling her head. She points at the smoking canisters of film beside me.
“Those will be ruined, you understand.”

“Damaged, maybe.” I am an optimist.

I gather the canisters and clutch them to my chest. I am afraid to open them for fear of what the film reels might look like.

The vagrants are still standing slack-jawed across the street.

I grab Sabrine by the crook of the elbow.

“Let’s go.”

On the way back to Pons’s bistro, we pass a row of shops near the canal.

A dentist’s sign catches my eye. It is wood-carved and hand-painted. Music drifts down from the second floor window, out of tune and off key.

I feel the broken ends of my teeth with my tongue.

“Wait here.” I tell Sabrine.

Later, inside the quiet of the kitchen, I hold a block of ice to the side of my swollen jaw. Sabrine goes about my body with a cold washcloth and tends to my burns.

In my free hand are a pair of steel dentures I purchased with the remains of my savings. In my lap is a granite cutting board.

I sharpen the teeth against the hard edge of the stone. I make a series of gentle sparks upon contact.
“How will we catch him? We have no car.” Sabrine asks.

“We will take the train.”

I recall the dream I had earlier in which Hull threw me into the passenger car.

My new teeth are ill-fitting, but they are very sharp.

Perfect for Hull.

Perfect for Gassou.

Perfect… for Sabrine.

A placard depicting the Roman numeral I appears from the flickering darkness momentarily. It vanishes again in a blurry haze of focus and re-focus.

On a rooftop in a flat Paris at night, a young girl stares into the moon and stars overhead. She grips at the breast of her nightgown. Her mouth moves without a sound. Her eyes are filled with regret.

OH PIERRE. HOW COULD YOU EVER LEAVE ME?

The atmosphere is full of heavy grain, like air molecules grown too large. It is hard to make out the small details. It takes a moment to realize, but the girl is carrying a sharp letter opener in one of her pale fists.

She addresses the moon as if it is her lost lover.

OF ALL THE LETTERS I HAVE OPENED, I SHALL NOW USE THE VERY SAME TOOL TO TEAR YOUR LOVE FROM MY HEART FOREVER.

A crowd of people gather in the streets below. Three women look up towards the roof with one policeman, while a second policeman attempts to kick in a nearby door. He gives up, exhausted, and moves to the side of the crumbling tenement. He motions for his partner to follow him.

They both stare up a long fire escape that seems to twist its way all the way into space. It looks like they might be able to climb all the way to the moon from their vantage point.

The girl has taken to stabbing herself over and over in the heart with the letter opener. Dark stains appear beneath the stark white of her gown and I wince. She however, shows no expression of pain. Instead, she continues to stare into the sky with the same mournful expression as she stabs and stabs in a mechanical fashion.

A policeman arrives on the rooftop. He holds his head with a look of dismay written across his face.

Momentarily, ever so briefly, the same policeman is grinning and undoing the buckle on his belt. Then he is not, just as briefly. He holds his head with the same concerned dismay.

The second policeman arrives on the roof, and the pair have a silent dialog and wave their arms around a lot. The girl continues to stab herself, and her once-white gown is now almost as black as the night sky backdrop. She crumples to her knees in the ever-expanding quagmire below her feet.

The first policeman draws his pistol and shoots her repeatedly.

BANG BANG BANG BANG

Smoke curls from the barrel of his pistol.

In the crowded streets below the building, the girl is motionless an being loaded into the back of a black truck. Both policemen stand nearby and hold their hats to their chests. When they close the truck doors, the word MORGUE is stenciled across the back of the vehicle.

A placard depicting the Roman numeral II appears and dissolves.

In a parlor room, a young man in a straw hat stands mournfully beside a mirror. He stares into it and addresses himself.

OH WHY, HELOISE? WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DO THIS TO YOURSELF?

His reflection shifts and blurs. The face of the girl from the rooftop appears in place of his. He is taken aback, and in his surprise, he falls sprawling across the parlor floor. His tumble upends a tray with a tea set on top of it.

*CRASH*

A SPECTRE!

An older man and woman run into the room and proceed to comfort the fallen Pierre. They peer squinting in the direction of his pointing finger.

WHY PIERRE, THERE IS NOTHING IN THE MIRROR BUT YOUR OWN REFLECTION.

They pick him off the floor and pat him on the back.

IT IS LATE. I THINK YOU SHOULD GET SOME REST – WHY DON’T YOU GO TO BED?

Pierre rubs his eyes and finally nods his head in agreement.

He is dressed in a nightgown and stands inside a small bathroom. He takes a pull off a brown bottle and then sets it down beside the sink. Then he plucks a straight razor from the sink and begins to lather his face with shaving cream.

As he peers into the mirror with razor poised, the reflection of his face changes to the face of Heloise again.
AIYEEE!

A GHOST!

He runs the straight razor across his throat. Dark mingles with light. With two swift punctures, he has gouged out his own eyes. He slices off his nose and then takes the tongue from his mouth.

Pierre lies in the bathtub. His face is a mangled disarray of raw meat and bloodied bone. The straight razor is still gripped tightly in one of his hands.

The older man and woman burst through the bathroom door and both make pantomime motions of great dismay. Eventually, the woman faints into the arms of the man.

A placard depicting the Roman numeral III appears and then vanishes like smoke.

Both lovers lie side-by-side in matching open coffins. Pierre wears a mask made of fabric overtop his disfigured visage.

Behind the coffins, Pierre and Heloise hold one another. They are wearing black funeral togas like dead Greeks. Their skin is bright white and luminescent. Pierre’s head is a grinning skull.

The pair of policemen and the older man and woman all step into the funeral parlor together. When they enter, the ghosts move back behind the black curtains that line the viewing room.

The four line up mournfully behind the coffins. Their heads are hung low and their hats are doffed. Each one speaks in turn.

ALAS, THE LOVERS DIVIDED.

THEY WERE BOTH SO YOUNG.

I DO NOT THINK I CAN SURVIVE THIS GRIEF THEY HAVE SET UPON MY OLD AND WEARY BROW.

WE DID OUR BEST BUT WE COULD NOT SAVE THEM.

Both ghosts descend upon the foursome from behind the curtain.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA AHAHAHAHH HAHAHAHAHA HAA

They rend the clothing and flesh from their mortal counterparts with fingers tipped by sharpened steel fingernail extensions. They stomp upon their naked and prone forms when their victims fall to the floor. Both coffins are upended in the chaos, and the corpses flail about on the floor with writhing policemen and parents alike.

The ghost of Pierre disrobes. Instead of a penis, the steel sculpture of a snake with large fangs juts from the front of his pelvis. He falls upon the old woman and thrusts violently behind the horizontal edge of an overturned coffin.

A fountain of blood jets from the floor and rains down upon the parlor. It paints everything dark and wet with blood.

AHAHAHAHAHAHH HAHAHAHAA HAAAHAHAH

A final placard appears.

It reads: FIN.

The screen goes bright and the end of the film flaps emptily on the projector reel. I sit quietly behind the theatre owner fidgeting with my hands in my lap.

My mind struggles with the contents of the film we’ve just witnessed.

What is the point of such things?

“Did you enjoy that?” asks the theatre owner.

“No.”

And before I can slam my fist into the side of his head for showing such things to me, the sound of a screaming Sabrine cuts my critique short.

Before we leave the bistro, I close the kitchen and check on Pons. He still snores away in the trash beneath the kitchen window in the back alleyway.

A stray dog licks away at his face and Pons has lovingly turned towards the direction of its mouth. He smiles and whispers in French to it about lost youth and young lovers.

I re-cover him with newspaper and take my leave.

I follow Sabrine along the canal front and we veer off into a maze of slum-like tenements. The alleyways are so narrow here that the sun is all but obscured beneath the building walls, piled high. The spaces between buildings in the sky are choked with laundry lines that drip with wet clothing.

Men with rotted teeth peer at us from beneath crooked overhangs, and a group of ragged children run past us. Their laughter sounds like that of maniacs, and not youth.

My hand goes to the pocket where I carry the key. It would be careless of me to lose it now to pickpockets.

The theatre is located at the end of an alleyway. The building is as derelict as the rest of the area, and I wonder what sort of business could possibly survive in the midst of such a poor neighborhood.

They’ve tried to tidy things up. Someone has mortared a series of bright red ceramic tiles to the face of the building. Most of these have fallen from the brick and lay scattered about the street however, smashed and fragmented.

Sabrine steps up to a pair of doors, forever defaced with old play bills and graffiti, and knocks. An older man answers. He stares at her with dark eyes and sneers.

“We are closed.”

When he tries to shut the door, I step forward and block it with my foot. When he stares at me with a certain level of arrogant disdain, I push through his obstruction and grab him by the lapels of his grimy stage jacket.

“We’re not here for the picture show.” I tell him. “We’re here to ask you questions about a film.”

I’ve pressed him against the plaster wall of the inner hallway hard enough that flakes of the stuff break off and shower us with dust. He nods in understanding so I let go of him. We follow him down the hall and into a little office room stacked high with old paper. He sits on the far side of his desk and motions with his hand that I should get on with my business.

I tell him that I am Gassou’s friend. Specifically, I tell him that I am Hull and I’ve come to take ‘Midnight Mirror’ off his hands. When he asks me to prove it, I show him the other film canisters for ‘So High the Moon’ and ‘The Butcher at Midnight’. He seems compelled by these additional movies, but hesitant. He explains that he would like to watch them, but he will not watch them on his own.

I take a moment to consult with Sabrine in the hallway.

“I have not seen them.” She whispers. “And I am not sure that I would like to watch Gassou’s films, either.”

I return to the office and tell the proprietor that I’ll agree to show him my movies if he agrees to show me ‘Midnight Mirror’ first. He nods, amicable to my idea.

When he leads me from his office towards a tall and narrow spiral staircase at the end of a long lobby area, Sabrine has her back turned. She’s facing a wall and staring into a poster that depicts a Paris skyscape at night. The film proprietor pays her no attention, but I linger and stall behind in hopes that she’ll change her mind and follow us.

She doesn’t.

I follow him up the spiral staircase to a projection booth that looks over the theatre below. Despite the decrepit condition of the rest of the theatre, the viewing floor is in immaculate condition. A pair of red velvet curtains flank a vellum projection screen. The upholstery on the theatre seats and the carpeting in the aisles compliment the paintwork on the walls perfectly.

“You keep the theatre in excellent shape.” I note. “Why is the theatre in such a bad location?”

The theatre owner pulls ‘Midnight Mirror’ from a shelf stuffed with old rolls of film. He begins to load it into the projector.

“I’ve made my money and now I don’t need any more. I screen films for other purposes, now.”

“But you can hardly have theatre-goers in such a dismal place. Isn’t that the point of this? Charging admission?”

The theatre owner shakes his head.

“I am closed to the public. I only show movies to a select clientele.”

He motions towards a drafting desk in the corner. On it are a series of cut-up photographs. The shards of the pictures largely depict a young and naked girl. By the darkness and the cold concrete walls that surround her, it appears as if she is somewhere located deep underground. In the contrast of the black and the white, her skin glows like Sabrine’s glowed the night before. She looks like a ghost.

“There’s a patronage for this?”

He nods.

“Quite. The moving picture, with all of its flaws and distortion, lends itself quite well to subject matter regarding occult issues and recreations of the supernatural experience.”

I suddenly loathe the idea of watching ‘Midnight Mirror’, aware of the probable nature of its contents. No doubt it contains material similar to what lies dead on the drafting board.

I need to watch it, however. Otherwise I might never catch up and save my lost May.

I grab his wrist as he reaches for the projector switch.

“Wait. What is this movie about?”

“I’ve no idea. I’ve yet to view it myself. It is a rare movie though, written and directed by the vanished film star, Toffel Grob. Are you familiar with his work?”

I shake my head. I am not. I’ve never heard of him. I suspect that films are largely for children or madmen, especially the foreign ones. Something cold and invisible grips at my heart when he mentions the film star though. It reminds me of Hull, and what he told me of his movie star friend at the beginning of this whole awful mess.

“He was an actor, initially, from the Shlotterbek Moving Picture Studio outside of Berlin. They reproduced a series of films based on old play manuscripts from the Grand Guignol. Horrible things depicting awful atrocities, but popular. There was an accident, however, and it ruined his looks. He moved behind the camera, so to speak. He began to film plays of his own, no longer relying on the old manuscripts whatsoever.”

“You said he vanished. Where did he go?”

I dread his answer. I know full well that Grob somehow found his way to California.

But the theatre owner shrugs instead.

“Nobody knows. He made these three films, plus a fourth: ‘The Black Pantomime’, and then he simply disappeared once the government switched hands.”

“What does the government have to do with any of this?”

“Everything.”

I blink at him.

His voice drops to a low whisper: “You need to understand of course, that Grob was a Jew.”

I release my grip on his wrist and he flicks the switch.

A dim light floods the darkened theatre from the blank image reflected off the screen.

Midnight Mirror begins.

I leave Pons to curse me from the back kitchen as Sabrine and I leave to return to the loft. While we’ve both discussed the repercussions of being caught by the police, I don’t care and it doesn’t really matter if she does.

We press our faces to the front of the bakery window. The inside is dark and empty. Sabrine stands watch while I smash one of the paneled windows on the bakery door to gain access.

We both slip inside and carefully shut the door behind us, and then cross the bakery to the stairs that lead up to the loft.

I begin to head upstairs, but Sabrine stops me. She grips my wrist tightly.

“I can’t go up there.” She whispers, frantic.

I nod, slightly annoyed, and then pull my arm away from her.

I head up the staircase alone.

It is dark and quiet in the loft. Most of the furniture has been cleared out along with everyone’s belongings. Brown stains dot the floor in spiral patterns of old blood, and I move across this impromptu carpeting with great caution. Despite the emptiness of the loft, there’s an underlying menace to the place. There is something in the air, lingering or otherwise.

I find footprints on the pale wooden floor so I follow them. They take me into a small back room, empty as well.

When the footprints begin crawling up the wall and then back down again to stop at the foot of an olive-green footlocker, I wonder briefly if I am asleep and this is simply Gassou toying with me from afar. Perhaps I am still lying on the cot in the back of Pons’s kitchen? I move towards the footlocker and stand poised. I wonder if I should open it or not.

Of course I should, and I do.

Inside is a pile of old clothing – our costumes. I find our masks and set them aside.
The footlocker also contains three film canisters; each is carefully labeled in thick black ink: ‘So High the Moon’, ‘The Butcher at Midnight’, and ‘Midnight Mirror’. The third canister, the mirror movie, is empty. I carefully pack the footlocker back up and then drag it downstairs.

Sabrine is staring out the front window of the bakery when I arrive. She spins around and her body quakes.

“It is only me,” I say, then I open the footlocker and present her with her mask. She takes it and hangs it from her neck while I show her each film canister.

“Those are Gassou’s. He brought them with him from Germany.”

“Germany?”

“I met him at the train station. I was selling tickets and he was coming off the train. I could see the platform from my booth. He had a tremendous amount of luggage with him, and when he stepped off the train he lost his balance on the step and fell. I hurried to help him to his feet and help him recover the scattered items. That is where I saw these film canisters.”

I pick up ‘Midnight Mirror’ and shake it, indicating that it’s empty.

“And this? Where is this moving picture?”

She blinks.

“I – I don’t know.”

It’s a lie. I can tell be the inflection change in her voice.

Whip-fast, my hand snaps out and grabs a handful of her hair. I pull her close so she can feel my breath, and then I repeat myself, hissing.

“When Hull knocked my teeth out, you kicked them beneath the oven when all I wanted was to retrieve them. Now, where is the film?”

“There is a theatre in the city! The man who runs it is friendly with Gassou. He sold it to him. I do not know the details. That is all I know!”

We return to the bistro and stumble across Pons passed out drunk in the little alley beside the building. I cover him carefully with newspaper and then take Sabrine inside, to my little cot in the back of the kitchen.

She allows me to undress her and in the dark, her pale skin looks luminescent against the shadows. I take her nipple between my teeth as my finger slides inside her sex.

Moments later, we are on the floor, rutting as the dogs do it.

When I am finished, she pushes me away and moves as far away as she can. She looks like a soft ghost in the dark. She’s a blur of white against a background of black.

“How do I know this is not a trap?” I ask. “This could be a dream.”

Sabrine laughs softly.

“You could be in New York City still. Hull perhaps drugged your drink. You could have fallen asleep at any point along the way and have yet to wake.”

I think fast: “The same goes for you.”

“It’s pointless to ponder such matters. You should get some rest. Tomorrow, we will go to the movie theatre.”

I agree silently and lie down on my cot. I turn away from her to face the wall and close my eyes.
My last thought before reality melts away is that my suggestion that this might all be a dream did not phase her. It’s as if she has thought about this before and has consigned herself to the fact that she can no longer recognize reality for what it truly is.

Perhaps she has even consigned herself to the fact that she is indeed trapped inside a dream. Whatever the case, my heart hammers in my chest.

Regardless, I sleep and dream again.

This time I am seated in a passenger car with Gassou and May. Outside, a mountainous countryside blurs past us in the night. Gassou asks me something that I don’t quite catch and then repeats himself.
For lack of understanding or hearing him, I simply disagree. I shake my head. No.
He is angered by my argumentative stance and begins to shout. I still can’t quite hear him for all of the dream haze, however, and begin to laugh.

Hull strolls by checking tickets, and I suddenly realize I have left my ticket back at the loft in Paris. Sternly, he grabs me by the collar of my coat and hauls me from my seat. He leads me to the back of the train and opens the car door. A foul stench rises in the air, emanating from the new car behind the door. It is poorly furnished and unlit, more like a car for livestock then for passengers. It is crammed with people, though. Families of people: men, women, and children. There are so many bodies that there is hardly any place to stand or move.

“This is where inferiors ride.” Hull sneers. “In you go.”

I grip for the sides of the door frame, but Hull pushes me with such force that I go sprawling into the midst of the crowd. I turn and claw for the door but it shuts in my face. Then hands are grabbing me and pulling me deeper towards the center of the car. Faceless and nameless, I recognize none of them.

Bodies press in on all sides, and briefly, before I am crushed and suffocated beneath the throng, I simply long to see a face I recognize.

I spend the night crushed beneath strangers.

Needless to say, the following morning I wake in a very foul mood.

I take a day to sleep and recover in a local vagrant’s shelter.

There, my sleep is plagued by nightmares of goats and pantomime masks and an ocean awash with blood. I dream of the cold day in New York when May left me, and the cold night in Paris when she returned to me. I dream of Gassou too. He snarls and tears the flesh from my bones with a pair of heated steel tongs. He shaves my head and brands a swastika across my forehead. He chokes the life out of May and castrates me with a pair of surgical snips.

The following morning, I steal a pair of shoes off the feet of the still-snoring drunk in the bunk above mine and then I steal away into Paris, returning to the loft.

Hull’s car is gone, and when I enter the shop, it is clear that Gassou, Hull, and Sabrine are gone too. An old man with a whip-thin and gnarled body frowns when I pass through the doorway.

May is behind the counter too. When she sees me, she runs behind her father with fearful eyes.

He takes a large knife used to cut dough from the countertop and brandishes it in my direction. I raise my hands to indicate that I mean his daughter no harm, and then I politely inquire as to the location of my loft mates.

He tells me he does not know where they went, but he hopes it is close to Hell and that they die along the way. He has evicted them, believing his daughter’s word, and then he proceeds to threaten my manhood with the wave of his knife.

I try and ignore his fearsome outburst and stare at May, desperately trying to get her attention.

Somehow, I want her to recognize me.

Eventually, she flees the bakery and runs away upstairs. The baker becomes furious and advances on me with the dough knife in his hand.

I run from him. I run from the shop and leave him shouting and hurling insults at me from the safety of his doorstop.

I spend the rest of the day milling about the city and working the predicament through in my head.

I still have the film star’s key in my pocket. It’s tempting weight reminds me of its properties. I wonder of its capabilities beyond the reach of Gassou, and I wonder if I can control the fugue-state it induces and use it to protect May without the girl ever knowing I am helping her.

I find a job that afternoon. I agree to work in the small and cramped back kitchen of a tiny bistro near the location of the loft. In exchange for my services, I am given a small amount of money, free food, and I am permitted to sleep in the back when the bistro is closed.

The owner is a drunken misogynist named Pons, and I am thankful that he asks very little questions. I suspect he is simply happy to have an employee who asks even fewer. We get along well with a series of simple greetings and grunts of recognition.

I spend another night of bad dreams. My nightmares are filled with terrible visions of death and destruction, caused by me, Hull, or by Sabrine.

There is a new vision as well, a dark and cold place far beneath the earth where someone waits. Someone I have yet to meet, but who would like very much to meet me.

I do not, however, dream of Gassou. Perhaps I am overcoming his somnambulistic control? I am certain he is sending the bad dreams, but maybe he is far away now. I do not know.

In the morning, Pons brings me fish to clean wrapped in newspaper. I unfurl the wet paper from the skins of the fish and scan the news articles.

The axe murders at the jeweler’s home have made the press. The police are searching for a single killer – a negro of extraordinary height who possesses the eyes of a cat, not a man. The eyes are the mark of the Devil, and they provide him with night vision by which he performs his heinous deeds.

I begin cleaning the fish when Pons returns.

“There is a customer already.” He tells me. “She wishes the cook to serve her meal, himself.”

He winks.

My heart leaps inside my chest. Has May come to apologize for her father’s inhospitality? I cut my hand on the teeth of the knife in my excitement and the blood drips rapidly across the newspaper photograph of the jeweler and his dead family.

I rush from the kitchen so quickly I almost knock Pons to the ground. He curses at me in French but I am already gone.

There is a woman waiting for me but it is not May.

Sabrine’s long blonde hair looks like shimmering strands of translucent flaxen in the pale light that shines through the bistro window. She looks at me with eyes ringed with dark circles and motions for me to sit down. The action of her arm is a frantic one.

My injured hand flexes unconsciously, feeling for the grip of the knife I left in the kitchen. If I did not think that Pons would be upset by my attacking of his customers, Sabrine might already be dead.
I sit down across from her.

“I bring bad news.” She whispers. She beckons for me to lean in closer. I do not.

“My waking hours are precious.” I snap.

I feel an urge to pluck a fork from the table and jam it into her eye. I am strongly tempted to pluck up the candlestick and bash her over the head with it. Brevity is of importance to Sabrine’s welfare. She would do best to hurry with what she has to tell me.

“Gassou has grabbed the girl. He has grabbed her mother and father as well.”

I gasp audibly and then catch myself. I mustn’t indicate to Sabrine that I am in any way affected by her information.

“How do you –”

“I was there. Gassou sent Hull and I… We – We hurt them all.”

“Why do you come and tell me this?” I scoff.

“They left me. Gassou and Hull. I think they are no longer interested in me. I woke up one morning and all of them were gone in that little car of theirs.”

“Where?” I grip her shoulders fearsomely.

“Gassou said he is going home.”

“Where?” I repeat.

Sabrine shrugs.

“He said he is going home to father.”

That night the three of us go out.

We find some old masks in a chest of theatre costumes at the rear of the flat. No doubt these have been left behind by the silent film star and they will do nicely for tonight’s festivities.

Hull wears the pig mask, Sabrine wears the frowning tramp’s mask, and, initially, I pluck a bearded and sinister wizard mask from the pile.

Hull warns me that this is Gassou’s mask and we are not to touch it. I hang it back up, carefully on its peg and fit a clown mask over my face instead.

We arm ourselves with a straight razor, a wood axe, and a meat tenderizer, respectively, and then we march out into the night in our costumes.

As Gassou indicates, the jeweler lives in a quiet house along a neat row of homes near the edge of the canal. We arrive shortly after midnight, and Hull and I wait nearby while Sabrine takes down her mask and rips the hem of her dress along the collar. She knocks frantically on the jeweler’s door and calls for help.

The jeweler answers in a blue-and-white striped nightgown and sleeping cap. Sabrine falls into his arms sobbing about the infamous Canal Rapist. As he tries to calm her, we easily slip through the open door and enter the home’s foyer. The jeweler’s wife and children have stirred for all the noise, and they stand in a row at the top of a staircase. One child peers out from beneath either sleeve of her ample nightgown.

When the jeweler sees hull and I closing the front door, he shouts out in alarm. Sabrine pulls the tramp mask up over her face and then slits his throat with her razor blade. His blood spurts in time with his fading heartbeat, hypnotically painting the white interior of his house in deep crimson. He thrashes about, pulls the foyer curtains down, and writhes on the carpet like an eel.

The woman at the top of the stairs is frozen in place. Her once-sleepy eyes are now wide with alarm. Her children dart from beneath her and vanish into the rooms on the second floor landing.

Sabrine moves to finish off the jeweler and Hull and I storm the staircase. Hull beats me to the landing and reigns down upon the jeweler’s wife with a series of heavy axe blows. Blood and splintered bone decorate the banister and she falls backwards with a death rattle from the impromptu hole in her throat.

He continues to hit her after she has fallen. The rhythmic sounds of the axe blows propel me down the hallway towards the dark rooms where the children have fled. I do not move quickly, but rather, it is as if my legs spasm forward in perfect time with the sounds of the axe.

I grip the handle of the tenderizer. There are two rooms up here and one, or both, might hold my prey.

As dust motes drift across the darkened hallway, I hear the whimper of a small child from the room on my left. My body stiffens as I enter the room. Inside, it’s modestly furnished. A sewing machine, a family of sewing dummies, and piles of fabric dominate it.

There’s a single slash of bright white light that divides the room into two equal halves, and I take the tenderizer to the sewing dummies. I smash and smash them until my arms tire from hefting the heavy steel kitchen instrument.

When I pause to rest, a small figure darts from between the piles of fabric. I catch it as it tries to run by me, bringing the mallet down on its head with a tremendous smacking sound.

Children die so easily.

I move back into the hallway where Hull is finishing up with the other child. They were clever enough to hide in separate rooms, it seems, but panic is a terrible equalizer and neither one has made it outside.
The family is dead. That leaves the vault.

We find it in the back of the house, hidden behind a pile of empty storage crates. Hull cracks the combination by listening carefully with an ear pressed against the safe wall. He turns the combination dial until it clicks and the safe door opens.

Physical wards cannot prevent the sleeping from access, he explains to me. We stand in a different reality and nothing so mundane as Jewish locking mechanisms can prevent our intrusion.
Sabrine takes a lock of hair from each of our victims and says that she will make them into restraints for Gassou, and then we return to the flat with our treasures.

The entire event, however thrilling, has left a bad taste in my mouth. A feeling roils beneath the surface of my subconscious not unlike the way that black mold grows behind the walls of a summer villa. Something is terribly wrong, but I cannot quite place a finger on what that might be.
We pause inside the bakery shop to life our masks and stuff our faces with pastries and tarts from the shelves.

The little bell above the bakery door jingles and we all turn to see the girl who looks like May standing there. I am embarrassed, how we must look to her, spattered in blood and flour and sweet jelly filling as we are. Our bags are filled with jewels and murder still glints in our eyes.

Sabrine and Hull move towards her with great menace and I hold them back, despite my urges to do the same. I cannot have them kill May, not in front of me, dream or not. Such things make my brain crawl with worms and so I stop them, standing in front of them and shouting with the tenderizer in hand.

Hull responds by slamming the blunt side of the axe into my head. I fall with a crash to the bakery floor, upending a shelf of bread.

With another little jingle of the bell above the bakery door, the girl is gone, run away. The little bird has taken flight back into the early Paris morning.

Hull and Sabrine are furious. Hull beats me with the bludgeon-side of his axe until I bleed across the floor. I mock his frustrations despite the pain. I have saved Meg from these rogues.
While physical connections cannot affect one inside of a dream, emotional connections, like the one May and I share, can reach through and break the bonds of both one’s sleeping and waking states.
I try and pick up my teeth, and Sabrine stomps my hand and then kicks them across the floor where they vanish beneath the oven.

Later, we sit upstairs in the flat. I hold a cloth bag filled with ice to the side of my head and Sabrine dabs at the wounds on my face with a damp cloth.

We sit and listen to Gassou, downstairs, convince a police detective that the girl who looks like May is telling lies about us, again. He explains that she has a tremendous crush on Hull, and Hull, an upstanding and moral gentleman, has little interest in an under aged girl.

She is jealous. She saw the tussle Hull and I had downstairs over Sabrine, and she has made up a lie.

When the policeman leaves satisfied that we are not the infamous Canal Rapist, they beat me some more. Gassou sneers at me and orders me from the loft forcefully. Hull and Sabrine throw me down the stairs and then roll me across the street.

There, they tip me into the canal.

I am fished from the waters by some helpful passersby. When I am brought to the local church, delirious and raving, I am told later that my only request was to have me thrown back into the water.
I realize later that it was the closet I have come to true sleep in many, many months.

I promise myself that I will return to the loft.

I must protect May.

They drag me screaming from my cell and I grip the barred door until they are forced to rap my hands with their truncheons. My fingers strain and threaten to shatter beneath the blows.

It takes three policemen to carry me down the hallway and they are unkind with their fists. By the time they dump me into the road in front of the station, my body is a patchwork of violet-hued bruises.

Hull leans against a dark green convertible with the German Iron Cross painted on its doors. He looks down at me and then motions for me to get into the car. He doesn’t need to ask me twice.

Soon, we are driving along a country road. He hands me a brown paper bag containing my belongings. I’m too fraught to ask him why he left me alone in New York. I’m too wracked from sleep deprivation to concentrate on the questions that should matter. I’m just happy to see him, mostly, and that the police did not get to shoot me.

“What is the saddest thing?” He hollers over the wind at me.

“What?” I scream back.

“I asked you… What is the saddest thing?”

I shrug and fumble with the cigarette pack he has offered me, trying to draw a cigarette from between the foil.

“I will tell you, then,” he shouts. “The saddest thing is that we all live inside of a waking dream, and none of us may ever escape from it.”

Hull knows.

I remember that he has a key as well, one that he kept for himself.

I nod in agreement.

“You are not in trouble, you understand,” he continues. “Gassou does not hold you accountable for the deeds performed, and he promises that he will take care of the men who already know.”

We drive the rest of the way to Paris in silence. Exhausted, I try and close my eyes to get some rest. Even with my eyes closed though, my body cannot relax, and so I do not sleep.

Paris is as glorious as the art books and journal articles depict it. We drive along the canal towards our destination. Hull points out the places where we should go and eat, the art galleries where we should look at art, and the nightclubs where I should meet girls, and he should meet boys.

A police car follows us but Hull tells me not to worry about them. He has taken care of the police and they will harass us no longer. It doesn’t occur to me to ask him how he sprung me from prison, or if it does occur to me, I simply may not wish to know.
We arrive at the silent film star’s flat and Hull parks his car at the mouth of a side alley. The flat sits above a bakery and the air here, despite its close proximity to the stinking canal, smells of baked bread and melting sugar. Hull slides out of his seat and takes my bag. He motions for me to follow.

We head inside the bakery and pass racks of freshly baked bread and pastries set out to cool. Behind the bakery counter, before a large wood oven, a plain-looking girl with straight brown hair works on some dough with a rolling pin. She pauses as we pass through and stares at me with brown doe eyes.

I make a half-hearted attempt to nod at her and mumble a greeting and she recoils from my gaze, returning to furiously roll the dough beneath her.

She looks exactly like May.

“Don’t mind her,” says Hull dismissively. “Her father rents the flat out and she doesn’t approve.”

“Is she… old, Hull?”

I’ve no better way of posing the question. I wince at its awkwardness. It isn’t what I meant.

Hull laughs.

“Old enough as you’ll soon see, friend.”

I’m afraid I don’t think much of his tone.

We enter the flat. I’m surprised and a little disappointed to see that there are other people inside and waiting for us. I was hoping to catch a goodly amount of sleep after the events of my travel.

A man and a woman sit in a breakfast nook eating croissants in matching red paisley-patterned robes. He is handsome and older, a little on the heavyset side. Grey hair at the temples taints an otherwise raven black mane of hair. She is blonde and obviously American, judging by the brand of wide sunglasses she wears across the bridge of her nose.

I recognize both of them from my visions.

The man gestures us towards their table, and we squeeze in along the bench.

“Hull, it is good to see you again. I am pleased you have brought a guest too. Come and eat with us, we’ve many things to discuss.”

Hull lazily reaches for a buttered scone with a half-smile on his face. He seems pleased but does not utter a single word of greeting. I follow his lead and spread marmalade on a scone.

The man nods in my direction and holds out his hand, indicating that I should shake it. I take his grip in mine and his skin is as cold as ice water. It reminds me of the hold at the bottom of the ship: bloody and filthy, swarming with goats and darkness.
“I am Doctor Gassou. Monsieur Hull has told me very much about you. I think you will be very pleased here, in Paris. You have recently lost a wife?”

Beneath the table, the blonde’s hand moves into my lap.

“I am recently divorced, although we were never really married in the first place.”

The statement makes no sense once it has cleared my mouth, but he nods in understanding anyway.

“Hull and Sabrine will take you out tonight and show you the city. Paris is a marvelous place. You will see this.”

I open my mouth, intent on politely declining his offer since I am so tired. Before I can speak, the blonde Sabrine has curled her fingers under the table. Her fondling touch turns to a vice-like grip and I’m paralyzed. I fear she may damage my genitals if I protest.

Above the table, her expression never changes. She stares straight ahead at Gassou and agrees with his plans with her eyes.
I thank him for the help with the police in the village and prattle on about my old life in New York City. He listens intently and the blonde resumes the caressing of my lap. Eventually, Gassou’s eyes seem to take on properties familiar to me. They sparkle in the morning light that filters through the breakfast nook, and it is almost as if his irises are contracting and expanding in rhythm with the sound of my voice.

Gassou makes a number of suggestions regarding the spots we might like to go that evening. He indicates that we should stay away from the bright lights and the tourist streets. He suggests a row of quiet homes off the main streets of the city. Specifically, he suggests a quiet home on a corner, where a quiet jeweler lives a quiet life with his wife and children.

I find myself agreeing with everything Gassou tells me to agree with.

The boat grinds ashore one cold morning. Its impact against the solid ground snaps me back to reality. The steam barge pushes sidelong into a small mooring of fishing boats alongside a river channel.

Beyond the docks, the green patchwork fields of France stretch out towards the rest of Europe.

I shiver in the morning air and pocket the key. Gathering my belongings inside a canvas bag I find below deck, I ignore the buzzing clouds of flies and the bloat of pale dead bodies as I make my way across the deck to hop over its side.

I land amongst the dock wreckage. Knee-deep in water, I wade through a graveyard of broken fishing boats and make it ashore.

A man comes running from a nearby copse of trees. He is old and leathery and carries a coil of rope and a woodcutter’s axe. His expression is confused. He spots me shivering by the shore and approaches me, concerned.

I am covered in old blood. He tells me to lie down and not to move, concerned about broken bones and other injuries I may have sustained in the accident. I blink, confused, and do what he says. He runs his hands over my trembling body and tilts his head to my chest, listening for my heartbeat.

More men appear from the fields around the village. A truck arrives with a little siren atop it: the volunteer firefighting brigade. While the men gather around me and stare down, one of them goes aboard the ship.

He returns screaming. The men shuffle away from me. The looks on their faces have turned from concern to a buffet of something else: revulsion, terror, and fear.

It is time to make my exit, and so I stand up to leave, but they forcefully insist that I remain where I am in the grass. One of them kicks me in the face. His heavy field worker’s boot leaves a black soil mark across my forehead. The force of his kick rattles my teeth in the back of my head.

A second truck arrives. It too, has a little siren atop it. It’s the volunteer police department, this time. When I see they are wearing Parisian uniforms, I note that I am close to my goal.

The group of men have an argument. Some of the men want to hang me from a nearby tree while the policemen want to arrest me. The policemen win this argument by threatening the others with their guns and truncheons.

No one has brought manacles, so they use a length of filthy and blood-encrusted rope from the ship to bind my hands. I’m picked off the grass and pushed into the back of the police truck, and soon we are speeding across the countryside. The wheels of the truck kick up clouds of dust and the vehicle periodically backfires, belching a cloud of black oil exhaust each time.

I’m taken to the local police station. A small bungalow cottage with a brick-and-mortar addition built into the back to house the drunks and the vagrants.

I’m placed in a small bare room with a little table and a pair of wooden chairs. Eventually, the inspector arrives. He is a slight man with dark hair and an impressive moustache. His fingernails are neat and clipped and he smells strongly of a masculine French perfume. He sits at the table in the chair across from me and folds his perfect hands across its surface.

“You have no identification?”

I shake my head. No.

“Did you kill those men on that boat?”

I shake my head again. No. I was dreaming. I was asleep. One cannot actually kill inside of a dream.

He taps the tips of his fingers together and stares at me for a long moment.

Finally: “Empty the contents of your pockets on the table, please.”

I shrug and twist in the chair to show him that my arms are bound. He rises and says, “Stand up please.”

He moves behind me and undoes my bonds. I remain standing and empty the contents of my pockets on the table. He is immediately taken at the sight of the key. He plucks it from my pile of other things and holds it up in front of me.

“Don’t.” I tell him.

I wince as the metal picks up the light from outside and makes the key glint between his fingertips.

“What is this for?” He shakes it at me.

I shrug.

“Please sit down.”

He leaves me sitting quietly in the room. When he returns, he carries a clipboard with a form clasped to it. He hands me a pen and asks me to sign it. I oblige without reading it, for it’s certainly a confession.

When I am finished, he begins to gather my things from the table. He touches the key and I grab his hand, so he punches me in the face. The force of the blow knocks the chair legs out from underneath me and I fall to the floor. I smash the underside of my chin on the edge of the table as I go down.

“There will be more of that later, eh?” He sneers as I roll about on the floor and attempt to work through the tremendous amount of pain he has just placed me in.

Two other policemen enter and drag me from the interrogation room. I’m thrown into one of the cells in the back.

There is a drunk that shares the same cell as me and he rolls me for my shoes. He sneers and spits and kicks me in the stomach repeatedly and eventually takes my shoes.

I’m powerless against him. My guts knot into twisted mass of nervous and sick, and I can do nothing but curl like a fetus on the filthy mat of straw they have provided, and cover my ears with my hands to blot out the horrible things the drunk slurs at me from the other side of the narrow cell.

Later, another policeman comes through the cell doors and informs me that they plan to shoot me at dawn. I argue that I haven’t had a trial yet and he just shrugs and laughs. The local magistrate is away and en route, but in the meantime, accidents are bound to happen, I’m told in French.

That night, I feel very small. The drunk snores and the sound saws away at my fraying nerves and threatens to drive me mad.
I can hardly remember New York or the boat ride. Yet at the same time it feels like I was surrounded by all of it a mere day ago.

At dawn, I am still awake. I stare at my haggard face in a little shaving mirror that hangs from the cell wall. My eyes are ringed in dark circles and my muscles feel like sludge. I feel like a wet bag of skin. My mind moves slowly and my thoughts are erratic.

Outside, they prepare to shoot me dead.

That’s when Hull shows up and springs me from this terrible oubliette.

The hold of the boat is filled with a noisy and braying cacophony of goats. An inch of water covers the steel floor and the interior of the hull leaks water between riveted sheets of steel. I manage to keep dry by sitting in one of the elevated goat pens, sitting among the beasts.

The goats bray loudly in my ear and warn me away with their baleful black eyes. Initially, they butt at me with their heads, but thankfully, their horns have been clipped down to harmless nubs. They do not have enough running room inside the cramped pen to cause me any physical injury.

The only place I am truly hurt is in my pride.

I lay a bed sheet across the straw pen floor to keep from sitting or laying down in goat offal. Occasionally, the ship lurches and startles the animals, and they trample across the fabric. They leave dirty hoof prints and pattern its clean whiteness with their blasphemous natures. I keep my bible close at hand, fearful of sin for lying down with these unclean animals.

The crew is modeled after their captain. They are a rough set bunch of scarred and tattooed thugs who stare at me with cold faces. I suspect they would like nothing better than to throttle me dead and steal the gold fillings from my mouth. They stay their hands however. They are under threat of the captain that no harm is to come to me.

Still, there is a tension. They throw crusts of bread to me from a trap door set in the ceiling of the hold and it is barely enough to sustain myself. If not for the captain, I am quite certain they will stop feeding me altogether. I realize that I am not allowed out of the hold and on deck for my own safety. It has nothing to do with rules and regulations.

The goats; the bad food; the threat of murder by unruly sailor. I find that I cannot sleep in these conditions. It is a three month journey, and I begin to fear I may perish as exhaustion sets in.

I could shout and scream and beg to be let off or taken back to New York. Instead, I hang my key from one of the cage bars and let the action of the rolling sea move the object back and forth like a pendulum. The effect is identical to the way the key worked back in my apartment. I stare hypnotically and watch it sway until my mind is locked into a waking sleep.

I perform this trick night after night and quickly lose track of time. I sit for hours, both day and night. The only way I can be sure of the passage of time is by the growing pile of bread crusts that rot in the water near the entrance to the hold.
The goats step on me with their sharp hooves, but I pay them little attention.

Soon, I begin to hallucinate.

Hull is in my visions, as is Paris. But there are other people as well. A blonde haired woman and an older gentleman with graying temples and a monocle. May is there as well. I do my best to shake these dreams free, but they stick fast and I feel powerless to purging them. It becomes like an old silent film in which I am the star, but it is filled with awfulness. First, the man with the monocle is sawing at May’s limbs while she is tied down, and then I am. The woman with the blonde hair fucks atop of Hull and then slashes his throat open with a razor blade at his point of orgasm. On and on these visions persist, over and over, as different players are substituted for each scenario, one more violent than the next.
When I bite into the neck of the nearest goat, it tastes of wet fur and old leather. Then salty warm blood wells into my mouth, runs over my chin, and splatters down my neck.

I have never heard the screams of an animal before, but there is a first time for everything.

I am aware of my moral obligation not to eat the captain’s livestock. Someone has paid good money for these animals, and further, the captain has been charged with their safe transport.

Eating them alive, in fact, is quite rude. But in my hypnotic state, I’m numb to all feelings of guilt or regret for these actions. They exist, but they feel far away and distant. They feel frozen in another time.

I kill all of the goats systematically. Each one takes a long time to die. I use my teeth first, and then I use my bare hands. Whatever I don’t eat gets discarded from the cage onto the floor of the hold. Soon, the layer of water that roils across the bottom of the boat turns to a red sludge that gathers flies and stinks of a slaughterhouse.

Eventually they send a man through the trap door. I watch him shimmy down a rope lowered from the deck above. He holds a lantern in one hand and a belaying pin in the other. His face is pale and underscored in the light shed by the oil lamp.
I lunge from my hiding place. With a shout, he hits me with the heavy wooden pin in his hand. Just like a dream, I feel no pain. I hit him back with my fist and the lantern falls. It hits the goat sludge with a shattering of glass and its light snuffs out.

The hold grows dark and I wrap my hands around the sailor’s throat, driving his skull into the steel floor. I repeat this motion until he is motionless.

The rope dangles freely from the trap door, and I can see the crew peering down into the hold with looks of concern etched across their rough faces.

I climb, hand-over-hand, until I am above deck, and then I attack the crew.

They die like the goats die. They scream.

I save the captain for last. Unlike the others, he doesn’t scream as I chew a path through his spurting flesh. He doesn’t beg as I break the bones in his hands and his feet to better fit the tender flesh between his fingers and toes into my mouth. He is stalwart.

He spits in my face and calls me a devil.

When he is dead and the deck is still and cluttered with the broken remains of the crew, I search the craft from bow to stern.

I find a cabin boy hiding below deck and break the pup’s neck with my bare hands.

I take back my payment to the captain and my belongings. When I am satisfied with my carnage, I move to the front of the boat to crouch on the bow. The key hangs from my hand.

The moon is wide and accommodating, and I watch the key sway in the moonlight. I forget the boat and let the ocean currents take me where they may.

I wait.

I listen to the waves lap against the sides of the boat and listen to the blood drip down the masts.

I wait for the Paris in my dreams.