Dreams and Scribblings

Home sick today with a seasonal cold, bored of reading and tired of watching Netflix, but not quite ready to go to bed. I started looking through old e-mails and draft e-mails, absently clicking here and there. 

Sometimes when I get an idea for a story, or something happens that I want to set down somewhere, I write a draft e-mail and save it, let it hang out in the Drafts folder. It waits for me to delete it, or to come back and tweak it. Today was a 'tweak it' kinda day.

This story is from a few years age, based on a dream I'd had. When I wrote it out, it became more of a story and I wished I knew the rest of the tale. The main elements from the dream that remain clear in my memory are the clarity of being me, but also being a guy named Cal; bumping my head into the man and his exclamation in response; the three evil guys; and the end part about the mysterious second book and the emotions it evoked. I tried hard to communicate the silly yet intense nature of the dream in the style of writing.

Anyway, here's the story I fleshed out of the shreds of my dream. I have no title for it and am not sure if I'll ever figure out the rest of it, but here you go! 

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I can never quite recall it clearly. The details get a bit murky, you see, and it’s hard to tell if was me, or someone else, who is the center of the story, or even the narrator. Was it a dream, or is it a memory? All I know is that there is me, and there is Cal. Am I Cal? I certainly don’t think so. No, love, it’s completely unclear.

Cal – a jaunty, smirky, mischievous and yet honest bloke, has red hair, short and spiky. Spiky? Maybe not. Messy, more like, and what with the cap and all – yes, a cap, that’s right – his hair more often than not seemed to stick out somewhat spike-ishly. He wore rustic clothing, rough-hewn and green and brown. He was stick thin. There, you see, not me at all. And yet, these things happened to me, sometimes, and at other times to Cal. It’s all quite confusing, more so for me even if I am the one telling the tale.

It had to do with maps, you see. I could point to a spot on a map, concentrate for a moment, and be in that place. Not any map, of course, but Cal kept the secret of his maps close, and I couldn’t tell you what was particularly special about them.

You’ll have to get used to this, sweetheart, this switching between me and him. I just can’t be more clear. It’s like the bathroom mirror, the one over the sink, you know, that’s really a small door into the medicine cabinet. If you open it, and watch the mirror, the world swings. Well, the room does, anyway. That’s what it’s like for me, thinking of Cal, thinking of his maps and me in the woods, in the snow, that one time when it was harder to get through. Wait, back up. 

Sometimes it’s me that the story is happening around, you see? Sometimes it’s Cal. And switching between us is as smooth and random has the mirror on the bathroom medicine cabinet door, opening or closing, making the room behind my reflection swing and shift to become Cal’s.

But to be honest, I really don’t think we’re the same person. Absolutely ridiculous. I look abysmal in a cap.

Regardless, I could point to a point on a map, and concentrate, and be there. I don’t know how. It’s not magic, I can tell you that, although people in those places that I could go seemed to think so. Simple folk, really, although they weren’t really simple at all. It’s just that they thought Cal was magic, you could see by how they looked at him, spiky hair and triangular cap and rustic garb. You could almost envision him with a knapsack, although he didn’t have one.

Head first – bumped my head, couldn’t get through. Someone – a  man, an impatient man – refused to move, and even said something, I don’t recall what, but to the effect of, “Stop that!” So Cal stopped, paced, dreamed, and eventually made the effort again to go to the same point. He pointed, his fingertip on the map, and then there he was: in a wood, a wood of birch trees with a ground blanketed with snow. It was that maddening silence, the beautiful peacefulness, with no trace of the impatient man in black. No footprints, no coals from a fire – more’s the pity, it’s cold – nothing to indicate who it might have been. It would have been interesting to meet him, since no one has ever been in my way before, and it seems odd that I should bump my head on someone. I walked through the snow, the slush and dead leaves sticking to my breeches.

Cartoonish, three wise men, glittering snake-like eyes that were blue, and black, greasy hair, and sharp noses. They stood close, even when walking, and turned to glare maliciously over their shoulders.

The people, richly dressed in velvets and silks, bodices of lace and satin, sequined shoes, were yet so provincial: they wanted my blessings, they put together a list of names, written in elegant script that made their names no easier for me to pronounce, so that I could read them out and bless them. Cal, give blessings? He in his leaf-blown, dirt-patched pants and long overcoat? Ridiculous. He struggled to pronounce the names correctly, but even so the people – there were hundreds! Or perhaps a hundred… but so many, anyway! – would reach out to him, not to touch him, or grab him, but as if to encourage him to say their name, yes theirs, now, please – hurry! I got through the list wondering at the strange mix of consonants and vowels written on that parchment.

That parchment is gone now – Cal must have lost it, or perhaps it was taken from him after he butchered the pronunciations so badly. At any rate, that was when he saw the three wise men, the evil-infused sharks of men, whose eyes glittered at him menacingly.

Later, I was with the king and queen, who were at that venerated stage of wisdom and kindness, and also of frailty. They seemed as provincial as their people, although they were infinitely quieter, wiser, and more intelligent. They showed me their books, kept in a lighted alcove on a book stand. The first was common. Cal sneered slightly – they thought this was a relic! – as they showed him the book of maps. It was much like his, which was interesting but hardly unusual. Everyone had maps. These weren’t special. I could tell that just by pointing, I could travel by it, but that applied to most maps in the worlds I visited. Sure, it was a dusty tome, and large, and well preserved, but their awe in showing it to him was unjustified. The king seemed to realize this, and lifted the huge thing, asking if the other was of more interest.

Imagine the alcove: curved back wall, a slightly elevated platform, just a step or two above the floor of the main room. It was perhaps five or six paces deep, just large enough for all three of us – king, queen, and me – to stand around the book stand that held the book of maps and the book that lay open beneath it. As the king lifted the book of maps – it was as wide, opened, as he was! – dust swirled in the light from above, and there is Cal, standing with arms crossed, smirk on his face, as if onstage, facing the audience, turned slightly away from the book stand. His breeches and tunic have dried now, but are still dirty. His height and his spiky red hair put him out of place against the clean, rough stones of the alcove.

He glances over to see the second book, fully expecting the mundane of another book of maps, and the smirk melts off his face. His eyes widen slightly, and although he fights to control the expression on his face, a tic under his right eye mars the effort.

The book underneath is, indeed, another book of maps. The pages are opened to a map of the Old United States, unusual in itself; disturbingly, though, this book shows truth in the awful charcoal strokes that obliterate the east and west coasts of the continent. It’s as though a child took a stick from the fire and used it to scribble carefully, but the effect is jolting: it shows what is left of OUSA. I have never seen this map before and hope to never see it again. It sends chills down my back, makes every inch of my skin crawl. I am suddenly aware of everywhere my dirty tunic is touching me and it itches terribly.

I’m frozen within that alcove and I can tell that the king and queen have seen. Cal tosses his head and coughs, begins to make a joke but lets it die away. They all three stare at it, a map in yet another dusty tome, and suddenly Cal wishes he’d never come through to this world. He doesn’t want to be here, doesn't know what to do. 

I don’t know what to do.