But the place was so damn strange....
He tried to look past the woman at the cocoon. She shifted her position, blocking his view. He could see a slight bluish glow emanating from the object behind her. "I just want to look," he said. "I won't touch."
"No," she said. Her eyes bored into his, glaring.
From the back of the house someplace, from the depths of the dilapidated structure, came a strange mechanical whirring. It rose in pitch until it almost hurt his ears. He winced, looking up at the sound, staring at the bare wood wall though he couldn't see past it. "What is that?" he asked.
She looked at him, uncomprehending, and he shook his head in frustration. He walked through the doorway nearest to him and found himself in what appeared to be a hallway. Brown weeds pushed up through the crumbling floor tiles, and moonlight streamed through large holes in the roof.
Moonlight!
He looked up. Through the holes, he could see darkness and the faint imprints of stars.
That wasn't possible. He had come into the house only seconds ago, and it had been midafternoon. He looked behind him, through the doorway, but both the woman and the cocoon were gone. The old man was still in his high chair by the chimney, laughing toothlessly.
The whirring, which had risen to an all but inaudible level, began a downward spiral, dropping in tone until it disappeared. He took a few tentative steps forward, toward the source of the sound, and peeked through an open doorway off to the right. Something black and shapeless lunged quickly from the center of the room to its shadowed edge.
He turned back, shocked and scared, running through the doorway the way he'd come. The woman was now lying on the ripped and legless couch, her panties down around her ankles. Both hands were shoved up her hiked dress, working furiously. She was smiling, and her eyes were wet with tears. She was moaning something in an alien tongue.
As he scanned the room quickly, he saw the bluish glow of the now unprotected cocoon in the corner. Forgetting all about the black shape in the room off the hall, he started forward, his head craned curiously. The cocoon was lying in a makeshift sandbox, its rough translucent skin flat against the pale sand. It was glowing strangely, the blue light pulsating, and as he watched it slowly cracked open. Blue light and yellow liquid poured out of the crack in a sudden rage, and he felt some of the liquid hit his arm. It felt sticky and alive. As he stood, unmoving, the liquid coalesced into some semblance of a shape-something like a twisted tree branch. And now it was pulling him. He tried to peel the dried substance from his arm but only succeeded in getting it all over his hand. Liquid continued to pour out of the cocoon. Some of it glopped onto his shoes, dried, and began pulling as well.
The whirring noise, less mechanical this time, started again.
"No!" he cried.
A glob of liquid spurted onto his face, pulling at his skin.
"No!"
The woman looked up at the cry. She took her hands from beneath her dress and sat up on the couch, pulling on her panties. She stared dully toward the cocoon. She saw the man, now covered with the yellowish drying liquid, waving his arms, screaming. There was a sudden flash of blue-white light, and the man seemed to shrink, deflating beneath the yellow covering like a balloon.
She stood up, walking toward the cocoon. The two halves closed, locking everything in. Through the rough translucent cocoon skin she could see a hunched and twisted form struggling to break free. She knew that by tomorrow the form would be gone and the cocoon would be all right again.
In his high chair the old man cackled.
She shook her head slowly and walked into the hallway, where dust-filled pillars of sunlight fell through open holes in the roof, illuminating the weeds which grew through the tiles. She shambled into the bathroom and pulled off her dress, her nipples hardening immediately as wind from outside somewhere blew into the bathroom through the cracks and knotholes in the ancient boards. She pulled down her panties, letting them fall around her ankles, and sat on the dirty porcelain toilet.
She waited, hoping it would come.
The Pond
This is a story about lost ideals and selling out-moral shortcomings which are not limited to the boomer generation depicted here.
By the way, there really was a group called P.O.P (People Over Pollution). They used to gather each Saturday to collect and process recyclable materials. Back in the early 1970s, my friend Stephen Hillenburg and I belonged to an organization called the Youth Science Center, which would offer weekend science classes and field trips. We got to do Kirlian photography, visit mushroom farms, learn about edible plants on nature walks, tour laser laboratories-and one Saturday we worked with People Over Pollution, smashing aluminum cans with sledgehammers.
Stephen grew up to create the brilliant and wildly popular cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants.
"Hey hon, what's this?"
Alex looked up from the suitcase he'd been packing. April, kneeling before the box she'd found on the top shelf of the hall closet, held up what looked like a green campaign button. "Pop?" she asked.
"Let me see that." He walked across the room and took 1 the button from her hands. A powerful feeling of flashback I familiarity, emotional remembrance, coursed through him as he looked at the button.
POP.
People Over Pollution.
It had been a long time since he'd thought of that'll acronym. A long time.
He knelt down next to April and peered into the box, see-ing bumper stickers and posters, other buttons, pamphlets with green ecology sign logos.
"What is all this?" April asked.
"People Over Pollution. It was a group I belonged to when I was in college. We collected bottles and cans and newspapers for recycling. We picketed soap companies until they came up with biodegradable detergent. We urged people to boycott environmentally unsound products."
April smiled, tweaked his nose. "You troublemaking radical you."
He ignored her and began to dig through the box, sorting through the jumbled items.
Buried beneath the bumper stickers and buttons, he found a framed photograph: an emerald green meadow, ringed by huge darker green ponderosa pine trees. A small lake in the center of the meadow grass, its still and perfectly clear water reflecting the cotton puff clouds and deep blue sky above.
Major flashback.
He stared at the photo, reverently touched the dusty glass. He'd forgotten all about the picture. How was that possible? He'd cut it out of an Arizona Highways as a teenager and had framed it because he'd known instantly upon seeing it that this was where he wanted to live. The photo spoke to him on a gut emotional level that struck a chord deep within him. A chord that had never been struck before. He had never been to Arizona at that point, but he'd known from the perfection presented in that scene that this was where he wanted to settle down. He would live in the meadow in a log cabin, just he and his wife, and they would wake each morning to the sound of birdsong, to the natural light of dawn.
The girls with whom he intended to live in this paradise had changed throughout his teens-from Joan to Pam to Rachel-but the location had always remained constant.
How could he have forgotten about the photo? He'd been to Arizona countless times in the intervening years, had scouted a resort site in Tucson and another in Sedona, yet the memory of his old dream had never even suggested itself to him. Strange.
April leaned over his shoulder, resting her head next to his. She glanced at the photo with disinterest. "What's that?" He shook his head, smiling slightly, sadly, and placed the picture back in the box. "Nothing."