The storm was worsening. Visibility was reduced to a few feet. In her feeble headlights falling clumps of snow were discolored as old ivory. The snowplow had done a rushed, careless job on this back-country road, as usual. Stretches of ice had been left untouched. If I can make it to the edge of Skowhegan. To the Sunoco station. She didn’t want to concede that she should have allowed Burt Proctor to drive her back, for his pickup had four-wheel drive and was far better equipped to deal with such conditions; she didn’t want to concede what a mistake she’d made. Yet suddenly she began to sob and curse, in frustration, in fury, pressing her foot down on the gas pedal in her impatience to get to town, gripping the steering wheel until her fingers were frozen to it. As if by force she might hold the speeding, suddenly skidding car on the road.
She heard a cry—”No! No!” A child’s hurt, incredulous voice.
For it was so unfair.
Waking in a haze of muted white, a delirium of swirling white, pain wracking her upper chest, a terrible roaring in her ears — for some dazed minutes she didn’t know where she was.
Then she remembered. This time, I will know what to do.
It was crucial to have her father’s flashlight firmly in hand. She would have to leave her grandmother’s book behind, the keys in the ignition. Managing to squeeze herself out of the car, nearly fainting with pain, her bloodied face beginning to freeze into an ice-mask as soon as the wind struck it. She stumbled through snow, in the direction of the road, crying, “Help! I’m here! I’ve been injured!”—though she knew there was no one to hear, no headlights in sight. She understood that she wasn’t behaving rationally, her strength was being exhausted, but she didn’t know what else to do. There was a neighbor’s farm close by — in which direction? If only the snowfall wasn’t so thick. The air so dark. It was hard to breathe, in such wind. She would collapse, perish in the bitter cold. But no: this time she was wearing her mother’s coat, the bulky quilted goose-down coat with the hood to protect her head. Wear it. It’s warm. So very attractive on you, dear. And it’s no use to me. She set off, this time, on what she believed to be the road, in the direction of Skowhegan, or what she believed to be that direction. She was limping badly, dragging her left leg. There was the danger of wandering into a field, of wandering in circles. She was panicked, perspiring inside her clothes even as the exterior of her body was going numb with cold. Her toes were losing all sensation. Her nose, cheeks, mouth were turning to ice. Someone was waiting for her ahead — wasn’t he? Someone was coming to rescue her — wasn’t he? She could not recall his name but she knew he was coming if only he knew where she was. She waved the flashlight in eager, darting circles. The battery was weak, the amber light feeble. “Help! I’m here! I’ve had an accident.” It hadn’t been her fault: the wind had blown her mother’s compact car off the road, into the ditch. But where exactly was the road? And where — somewhere behind her? — was the abandoned car? She fell, her left leg buckling beneath her, but managed to get to her feet. Confused, she saw only snow, dunes, and declivities of snow, through cascading falls of snow, as if earth and sky were being shaken violently together. There was no road. Yet, a short distance away, vague lights appeared — headlights? They moved with maddening slowness. She stared, wiping snow from her eyes. “Here! I’m here!” It would be the man in the sheepskin jacket, the tall man with the bristling black beard, the hook-scar in his upper lip. She was stumbling forward, waving the flashlight desperately, but, oblivious to her effort, the vehicle must have veered away to the left, and was gone. She stared after it, stunned. “Come back! Please! Don’t leave me here to—” She tried to follow the vanished vehicle, not wanting to think that it might be headed in the wrong direction, away from Skowhegan, and perhaps it hadn’t been a vehicle at all but a hallucination or optical illusion caused by the flashlight’s beam reflected in falling snow. She could not recall her lover’s name but she would know him when she saw him. She felt the strength of his arms, the warmth and kindness of his hands, a man’s big-boned, roughened hands, he’d removed his gloves to caress her feet, to revive circulation in her toes which had turned to ice, how grateful she’d been, how she’d wept with gratitude and love for him, but where was he now? She shook the flashlight to strengthen the failing light. She dared not switch it off, to save the battery, for fear it would never switch on again. The cold had gotten inside her, her throat and mouth were coated in frost, her nasal passages were blocked in ice, ice-needles had penetrated her ears, inching toward her brain. Her tongue was ice. Suddenly the thought came to her, I have dreamt him: I have dreamt my life. God help me. She stamped her feet, shook her head, how sleepy she was, how powerful and sweet the urge to lie down in the snow, soft blanketing snow, her eyelids heavy as if stones were pressing upon them, but she held the flashlight at the level of her chest, shining its feeble beam into the night. I have dreamed my life — is that it? And in the next instant, mercifully, she forgot these terrible words, even as you and I.
“This story evokes what is for me perhaps the greatest possible horror, that our happiness is but an illusion, a dream generated by deprivation. The young woman of the story has invented herself as one who doesn’t need love; in fact, her soul is languishing for love, as her body is languishing for warmth. Her dream of being saved and being loved is so vivid, it’s difficult not to believe it isn’t real (even for the author). Maybe our lives are no more than a match girl’s flaring matches; we live so long as they burn, and then are gone. In the meantime, the solace of art.”
Dreaming among Men
BRYN KANAR
Bryn Kanar began to write after working at two bookstores and three libraries. In 1996 he attended the Clarion West writers’ workshop, and since then he has sold a number of stories. His first appeared in the horror magazine Cemetery Dance. “Dreaming Among Men” is his second sale but his second appearance was in gothic.net. Kanar is currently working on a mystery novel.
Palinuro Rubio is a teller at First National. One day he comes home to find an unexpected letter in his mailbox.
He has never received a letter like this before. He had thought all his relatives were dead. He is afraid to open it.
Palinuro puts the letter on the passenger seat of his car and drives. An unaccountable forboding beats in his chest more loudly than his heart. The sky is as white and brittle as bone.
Crow flies at dusk over the foothills of the Guadalupe Mountains, over arroyos made by rivers that dried up long ago, when time was sacred and uncounted. These days, Crow reminds himself, everything is numbered. A hundred and twenty-seven wing-beats past the Pecos. How many more until he reaches his nest?
Palinuro wants to scream when he feels the jar of the impact. But he does not scream. He looks in his rearview mirror at the red-faced man in the car behind him. The man is yelling and waving his arms accusingly as if the accident were Palinuro’s fault.
Palinuro swings his door open and approaches the man as he begins to roll down his window. He unbuckles his belt and pulls down his pants and the man begins to roll up his window again as fast as he can as Palinuro pees on it, a hot yellow stream more apt than any words.