Dark Day Dreams, page 10
Mitch was stunned by her intensity. And even though he could understand her frustration, he still felt the need to respond. “We can’t just accept this stuff, Lilah. We can’t just go on with our business like some kind of numb robots, ignoring the news and spending all our time and energy shopping online or trying to get reservations for whatever hot new restaurant your boss suggests we try.”
Her eyes started to tear up. “I’m not ignoring it, Mitch. I absolutely hate it. But what’s the point of getting twisted up in knots every time I see the words BREAKING NEWS come up on a television screen? I decided at some point I just couldn’t live that way anymore. I’m not telling you how to live or what to do…if you want to work for gun control, be my guest. If you want to help stop terrorist attacks, get a job with Homeland Security. Even if you just want to get really, really upset every time this stuff happens, go right ahead. Just don’t expect me to be your partner in misery.”
He was pretty stunned after that conversation and replayed it several times in his head the next couple days. Then the thing in Oklahoma happened and they more or less had the same conversation. And once again, it felt like she won the argument.
She wasn’t asking him to change, just telling him she’d found a different way to be. And he thought to himself, you love this woman and what does it say about you that you’re pissed because she’s not crying and hyperventilating under a blanket in the corner of the bedroom?
He had to admit, this was about stuff that was way down in his gut or soul or whatever you might want to call it. This was about actually being honest with himself…he might donate a few bucks to an anti-NRA group and he often posted cartoons and articles and memes on Facebook that took issue with the Second Amendment fanatics or mocked them in some way. But with his work load, he knew it was unrealistic to think he’d ever be able to spend a lot of time volunteering at some office or on some campaign. And no, he didn’t think all these years working as a financial advisor would allow him to segue smoothly into a career where he got to track down terrorists.
Both his mother and father had been very big on keeping up with current events and that was a habit they’d shared with both Mitch and his sister. He’d always taken pride in knowing what was going on in the world and (even though he kept it to himself) thought less of others who didn’t.
He was a liberal and generally speaking, liberals think problems should be fixed. But that philosophy was bumping up against reality in these days of terror and mass murders done to prove a point. And for the life of him, he couldn’t seem to come up with a solution for the problem or even a better answer than his wife had.
The next incident involved a jetliner being shot down as it began to leave the ground in Madrid. A jihadist with a portable surface-to-air missile had shot it down and then security forces killed him. Hundreds of passengers died. The world was outraged and then moved on, preparing itself for the next act in the gruesome show.
This was the first time Mitch made a conscious effort to dial it down and just care on a minimal level. It was hard and he had to fight guilt generated by decades of thinking about these things in a very different, far more passionate way. But he did it and then told Lilah.
They were sitting on the couch together. She put a hand on his shoulder and said, “I’m happy if you’re happy, sweetie. I believe that not taking everything so seriously will definitely add some years to your life.”
He grinned and replied, “That’s fine as long as somebody doesn’t shoot me or blow me up before I hit my golden years. That kind of irony would really piss me off.”
And the days rolled on, marked by birthdays, weddings, work deadlines, explosions, mass shootings and hostage situations. Violence that Mitch used to find shocking was now starting to seem par for the course, a part of life you just had to learn to tolerate. Someone always seemed to be sending a message about their religious beliefs or loneliness or hatred of anybody who was different.
On one particular Wednesday morning, he got out of the shower, got dressed, kissed his wife goodbye and headed out the door. His first stop on work days was always at a bagel place located just a few blocks away from where he normally boarded the subway.
While he was waiting for his Americano and blueberry with a shmear, he watched the local news on the television they had up on the wall. The words BREAKING NEWS came on the screen and Mitch silently mouthed the words, “Fuck, here we go again.”
A middle-aged black male news anchor came on the screen. “We have reports Sarin gas has been released in downtown London. Authorities there have no information yet on who might have done this. It appears thousands of innocent people have been affected and the British government and city officials are doing their best to save lives in what can only be described as a scene of unimaginable terror.”
A few of the other people in the shop gasped as they watched what was unfolding on the screen above them. One woman even started to cry. Mitch looked at her and thought for a moment he was not only feeling bad for the people of London but also this sensitive soul standing four feet away from him in Manhattan.
But then his head started to argue with his heart. He remembered his conversations with Lilah…there was nothing he could do to alter the reality of what was happening on the other side of the ocean. No matter what he was feeling at this moment, the innocent people would continue to die in a truly agonizing manner…all their bodily functions occurring at the time. Noses running, eyes weeping, mouths drooling and vomiting, bowels and bladders emptying. And finally, death due to suffocation because the person can no longer control the movements of their diaphragm.
After he was handed his drink and bagel, Mitch walked out of the place and headed toward a subway stop. He felt strange. The world suddenly felt unreal and he began feeling like he was just playing the role of a man going to work. He looked around at the other people in the vicinity. Was that woman just pretending there was a baby in that stroller she was pushing? Was that sad looking older man sitting on the bench really homeless?
He shook his head and thought about how ridiculous he was being. He told himself to get it together and get his ass to the office.
When he got on the train he took a deep breath and started thinking about what clients he was supposed to meet with that day. He also remembered he needed to make a reservation at a popular restaurant he wanted to take his wife to on their upcoming anniversary.
It felt good to sit down at his work desk. His mind would be occupied with work for the next eight to ten hours and he could escape from the troubles of the outside world. Or so he thought until his friend Lee came over and tapped him on the shoulder. He said, “Mitch, did you hear what happened?”
“You mean about the Sarin gas in London?”
“No, there’s been something else since then. Pull up a news site.”
Mitch went to Google. Unidentified gunmen and police were battling each other in a skyscraper in downtown Chicago. The reporter said there were reports of dead and wounded workers on at least ten different floors.
His hands began to shake. It was all so much to process…too much death and too much loss. Lee looked at Mitch and said, “Jesus, are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
A voice in Mitch’s head said that seeing ghosts would be an appropriate reaction on a day like this. A person who believed in that sort of thing would contend that thousands of new ones had been created in the past few hours.
He cleared his throat and replied, “Yeah, I’m okay. Just such a fucked up day for so many people, you know?”
Lee put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Boy, no shit. You start to wonder if it’s a good idea to leave the house in the morning.”
Mitch tried to get back to work. He kept telling himself there was nothing he could do for the people in London or Chicago. Or the guy getting mugged now in Detroit or the terminally ill beggar in Mumbai or the innocent kid in Seattle who was battling some rare form of cancer.
He finally went into the men’s room and just sat on the toilet for a few minutes. He couldn’t wrap his mind around what he’d seen this morning. He’d considered himself an agnostic since he was twelve or so but there were a few occasions when he’d tried to reach out to whatever divine entity might exist in the universe. He closed his eyes and whispered, “I can’t handle it. Please stop, no more for a while, let us breathe a little…”
He was thinking happy thoughts. Sunny days from his childhood, special moments with his mother, victories when he was on the high school basketball team, the first time he and Lilah spent the night together. He tried imagining he was alone in the forest or walking down the beach on a sunny day. He fantasized he was alone on a space station, looking at the calm blue planet he called home.
Anything to forget about the savagery and endless cycles of killing and revenge, killing and revenge.
A couple hours later, he decided to go to a local bar he liked and have a beer and some lunch. He was feeling a bit more relaxed and hoped the rest of the world would manage to calm down some too during the rest of the day. Or at least the parts of the world he cared about.
Right after he gave the waitress his order, he happened to look up at the nearest television screen on the wall. The words HAPPENING NOW appeared, biting deep into his psyche like a dentist’s drill headed toward a nerve area that hasn’t been anaesthetized. The sound was off but there were words moving across the bottom of the screen…bombs had exploded at a mall in Florida. Hundreds were dead and ISIS had issued a statement taking credit.
His hands began shaking again. He tried picking up a glass of beer but then put it back down, concerned he would end up spilling it all over the table. Other people in the place were looking up at the televisions. Some had looks of concern on their faces, one guy was just shaking his head and a waitress had tears running down her face.
Mitch suddenly felt a desperate need to get out of there. He slammed twenty bucks down on the table and exited the place. He felt a little better when he got outside and took a deep breath, deciding to walk around for a while.
Mitch ended up in Times Square. Suddenly, the enormous digital signs there were all showing the same thing…the words IMPORTANT ALERT!
He staggered for a second and ended up leaning against a wall, worried he was about to have a panic attack or maybe a full on coronary event. He tried not to look up at the signs but knew it was useless. Wanting to be in the know was part of his DNA. Choosing to ignore reality (no matter how upsetting) was no more possible for him to do than flapping his arms and flying up to the observation deck on Rockefeller Center.
Now the giant signs were showing a news report about simultaneous mass shootings happening all over the country. Islamic terrorists in Oregon, Indiana and Arizona. Domestic terrorists in Texas, Kansas and Michigan. Alienated young white men in Idaho, Colorado, Nebraska, Georgia, Alaska, Hawaii, California, Alabama…
He slid down the wall and sat on the concrete. He knew he had to be losing it, there was no world where his mind would be forced to contend with this amount of hate and violence. This was like the biblical flood but instead of rain he was drowning in other people’s blood.
Mitch put his face in his hands and sobbed. After a minute or so, he felt someone touch his wrist and speak with a familiar voice. It was Lilah.
She looked at him lovingly and said, “Honey, are you okay?”
He felt like his whole body was going to start shaking. “No, I am most definitely not. I think the world might be ending.”
“Open your eyes, Mitch.”
He did so and she helped him stand up. Then she said, “Remember what I told you. There are so many things you can’t begin to control…you have to back away from all this noise and make your own safe place.”
Mitch suddenly heard explosions and gunshots nearby. He grabbed her arm and said, “We have to get out of here…”
Lilah calmly touched his cheek and replied, “But where will we go?”
And then he lost consciousness.
************
The visitors went by a name no human being would ever be able to pronounce. Their ship had been hovering far above Earth for several months now, advanced cloaking technology keeping it from being detected by any human military organization.
The leader of the research team gently removed the thought planting device from Mitch’s head. He was satisfied they had enough data and besides, they weren’t a cruel race. No need to risk permanently injuring the subject.
Mitch was loaded into a pod. One of the leader’s subordinates would make sure the human was safely returned to his Iowa farm and family. The subject would have no memory of his abduction or the subsequent mental experiments performed on him.
The leader sat at his control panel and reviewed the findings. While humans were definitely not as evolved as his own species, it seemed they had their own special virtues and abilities. They somehow lived and thrived for the most part in a world filled with shocking violence. Some took steps to look away from the carnage but many others like the subject voluntarily stared into the abyss every day and walked that fine line between caring about other people and hiding away in some kind of emotionally risk-free isolation.
He was glad he didn’t have to live on this planet. He honestly didn’t know if he had the intestinal fortitude to pull it off.
Remember
Her name was Gayle Harvey and she was a registered nurse working at an assisted living home called The Transition House.
The name had always bothered her a little…she knew it was supposed to promote a sense of calm and well-being but to her way of thinking it actually said, “this is where they stick you for a while before you transition to the dirt nap part.”
But this was twenty-sixteen and that’s the way things were done now. Words and their meanings were often fluid and public relations experts were often tasked with putting the prettiest, most benign label on things regular people feared most.
Whenever cynicism about her chosen profession began to creep in, she made an effort to chase it away quickly before it had a chance to truly take root. Some days were harder than others, of course. After all, she’d been in the business over twenty years now and had lost count of how many elderly people she’d watched say goodbye to the world.
Many were sweet and some were nasty cranks. Sarah had learned over the years not to hold bad feelings toward the grumpy ones…she knew that in many cases they were probably nice people when they were younger but then the pain of advanced age cracked their spirits like a rock hitting a windshield.
But despite all the emotional wear and tear, she managed to put on her nursing scrubs every day and come back for the next shift. She had been married for five years when she was in her twenties but it turned out he wasn’t quite ready to stay loyal to just one woman. Darius had been such a charmer and she wouldn’t be at all surprised if he was still out there working all his player moves. She was just glad she’d been able to get free of him before they had any kids.
She’d dated a bit over the years since the divorce but had never met anyone who really made her want to disrupt the life she had grown quite comfortable living.
She had favorite patients. It was pretty much impossible not to, it was just human nature. But of course you couldn’t be too obvious about it and even more importantly, you needed to keep reminding yourself this was a temporary relationship. No matter how much she liked the people, ultimately she couldn’t save them from their own age and decaying bodies.
The one she liked most currently was an eighty-five-year-old white woman named Jennifer Tolman. One sunny April morning Gayle walked into the patient’s room and gently touched her shoulder. She said, “Are you awake, Jenny?”
Jenny slowly opened her eyes and then smiled. She said, “Good morning, honey. So nice to see you.”
Gayle took hold of the older woman’s hand. “I didn’t want you to sleep the whole day away. I knew you’d be excited to see the sun after we’ve had so many gray, rainy days lately.”
“That’s true. It looks marvelous out there.”
Gayle helped Jenny put on a robe and get into the wheelchair. While they were heading toward the exit that opened into the outdoor garden area, the nurse thought about the importance of human interaction. You needed to connect with people, even if the conversation was a simple one about whether or not the sun would come out from behind the clouds today. Talk and touch were emotional food and if you didn’t get enough, your spirit and body gradually starved and blew away like so many dead November leaves.
Jenny was in pretty bad shape at this point. There wasn’t a specific ailment assaulting her… it was more like all the really important organs were starting to shut down more or less at the same time. She was eating less and less every day and needing to sleep more and more. Gayle appreciated how many of her patients tried to fight the good fight but eventually the guy with the scythe ended up getting us all.
When they got outside, the older woman pointed at a squirrel sitting on top of a fence eating a peanut. She said, “Squirrels have always been my favorites. I know it seems silly but I’ve always felt like they have a sense of humor.”
Gayle replied, “Oh, I know what you mean. When I was a kid, we had a dog named Leon that the neighborhood squirrels never, ever seemed to get tired of teasing. I mean, they would actually risk their lives just to get a rise out of that mutt.”
Jenny chuckled and said, “Leon? That’s a funny name for a dog…”
“The dog had kind of a homely face so my dad named it after his older brother. They were always looking for ways to get one up on each other.”
Jenny touched Gayle’s hand and smiled. “Thanks for sharing these stories with me, honey. I enjoy them very much.”
************
A couple weeks later, Gayle was just starting her shift when her supervisor took her aside and told her Jenny had passed away in her sleep the previous night. “I knew you’d grown pretty fond of her so I thought I’d tell you myself.”
