ONE

Prologue of sorts

The ghosts of his friends slowly crept across the hall, taking turns to knock on his bedroom door, rap rap rap rap tap. There was a waltz playing, as there should have been. In no sort of unreality could he have not expected a waltz to not be playing at that moment. At the moment when he went up to the door and it creaked open before he put his long fingernail-bitten fingers to twist the doorknob clockwise. The ghosts of his friends stood out in the hallway, fragile and brown and dead-scared of entering a room inhabited by the living. They crowded into the door like memories, yet no one took a step in. They waited for him, Our Unnamed Protagonist (OUP) to make the first move, to nod the first nod to acknowledge the things slightly beyond the quotidian. OUP caught a glimpse, past the many familiar figures waltzing in ¾ time in place in his hallway, and it was hardly his hallway anymore. The grubby old Big Lebowski rug was one of stars and pasted un-vacuumable memories. Vicarious and otherwise. Second-rate magic tricks burst in and out of the little bit of the hallway sky that he could see. Birds and rabbits and handkerchiefs and gold confetti merging into one not-so-menacing Ouroboros cycle. He knew he was dreaming, because his dreams were always more pleasant than his wakings. In reality when the ghosts of his dead friends knocked like memories after flitting gently across a carpet of burning stars to his bedroom door, it wasn't often very pleasant. They wanted more from him then. They wanted Time. Time that he could not afford to give. They wanted Time with ever-growing claws.. scratching long poems on his door.. scratching uncauterized poems like the scars that he wanted to forget. And the hallway sky was on fire then, in reality. Bits of ember rained down, and OUP got singed. And Tom Waits played then, played to a soundtrack of train whistles and kettle-bells and bones ringing like rattling dice deep within an empty oil drum. Dreams were better. Even more so of late, if not absolutely, certainly in comparison.

He gestured gently with his fingernail-bitten author's fingers. And the ghosts came in from the hallway, shyly, one by one by one. Tom Waits again, gentler.. still train whistles.. and empty stretches of years with no memories turned into a sudden gust of wind and blew the door shut, leaving the hallway alone with its stars and confetti. This was surreal, and rightly so. This was retirement for OUP.. retirement and rest and magick. Piano piano ah how he wished he could play. But one of the ghosts sat down and poured an instant piano mix onto OUP's bedroom floor. OUP closed his eyes and thought of crows resting their wet feathers under the eaves of green trees, dripping with summer rain, and dark clouds and the scent of wet earth. And it rained on the piano powder in the middle of his floor and there was a piano and the ghost who had poured the powder sat down to play Ruby Tuesday just perfectly. And he thought of broken faces and flooded pavements and loves which were almost by definition unfulfilled, but it was better in the dreaming. In reality he would slowly sink into his chair.. and the ghost playing the piano would start playing slower and slower till his fingernails grew ever so long and the piano keys became silvered mirrors, and the piano player ghost's fingers screeched a symphony (screech) across the piano-mirror and OUP would put his hands to his ears, to find that he had been wearing earmuffs but it didn't help. Never did in realtime. In The Dreaming it was better. He had been trying more and more of late to stay there. Stay there late. Waking up was hard. But he couldn't deny reality very long.. he had been working on it. Working on it endlessly. But things began to creep into the Dreams.. slowly almost imperceptibly changing everything from the inside out to the outside in. The nightmares started gathering like bits of hot late-summer Sun at the edge of the sky threatening to cancel a rained out school holiday.

He knew how it started, and he knew it was getting worse. But knowing about it did nothing to prevent it. It was all a variation on a theme.. a Sonata form of a dark symphony that started off on a slight major but got deeper and deeper into minor. He knew how it started, and he knew it was getting worse. But knowing about it did nothing to prevent it. It started with the sadness. The crippling incredible awful sadness.. and he stopped writing. He stopped writing empty set in sequence nonsensical critically maligned personally despised masochistic exercise words on a dust-covered laptop with Tom Waits singing about war sadnesses on OUP's Harman Kardon speakers. And he sank back into his chair and the room got colder even in the middle of South Central Los Angeles.. where the residents don't need alarm settings on their phones because the police car sirens wake them up even before dawn. And he kept writing did OUP.. and the version of Ruby Tuesday sped up, at first imperceptibly, then more and more till it extended itself into ugly gibberish and came out as a shriek. He saw bodies entwined, like Dylan's Johanna.. except it was his Johanna.. and he could just watch. And he thought of exit routes. And car sirens. And endless realities. And the futility of exit routes if these endless realities should choose to exist. (She sighed as he moved within her, like that Leonard Cohen song which Jeff Buckley adapted to a version that brought endless infinite drowning pools of tears where his reflection blurred beyond any recognition, beyond any repair). (And he could only watch, and hide a painful arousal). And by this time in his head the storms of a thousand cold nights howled and Ruby Tuesday was one never-ending shriek and in his bedroom the ghosts of his friends had changed into photo albums and deleted emails.. and memories of Moondog discoveries. And there was a rapid pounding at his door.. and a scratching, and long tendrils of smoke creeping in through the cracks in his fabric of dream existence.. and OUP could then only just close his eyes and wake up into Reality. Where the hallway carpet was singed with persistent fire.