Nightmare At 20,000 Feet Page 5

  I turned on the lights.

  All right, Leo.

  I turned on the light! Ma! MAMA!

  Click

  5 – WITCH WAR

  Seven pretty little girls sitting in a row.Outside, night, pouring rain-war weather. Inside, toasty warm. Seven overalled little girls chatting. Plaque on the wall saying: P.G. CENTER. Sky clearing its throat with thunder, picking and dropping lint lightning from immeasurable shoulders. Rain hushing the world, bowing the trees, pocking earth. Square building, low, with one wall plastic. Inside, the buzzing talk of seven pretty little girls. "So I say to him-'Don't give me that, Mr. High and Mighty.' So he says, 'Oh yeah?' And I say, 'Yeah!' "

  "Honest, will I ever be glad when this thing's over. I saw the cutest hat on my last furlough. Oh, what I wouldn't give to wear it!"

  "You too? Don't I know it! You just can't get your hair right.

  Not in this weather. Why don't they let us get rid of it?" "Men! They make me sick." Seven gestures, seven postures, seven laughter’s ringing thin beneath thunder. Teeth showing in girl giggles. Hands tireless, painting pictures in the air.

  P.G. Centre. Girls. Seven of them. Pretty. Not one over sixteen. Curls. Pigtails. Bangs. Pouting little lips-smiling, frowning, shaping emotion on emotion. Sparkling young eyes- glittering, twinkling, narrowing, cold or warm.

  Seven healthy young bodies restive on wooden chairs. Smooth adolescent limbs. Girls-pretty girls-seven of them.

  An army of ugly shapeless men, stumbling in mud, struggling along the pitch black muddy road.

  Rain a torrent. Buckets of it thrown on each exhausted man. Sucking sound of great boots sinking into oozy yellow-brown mud, pulling loose. Mud dripping from heels and soles.

  Plodding men-hundreds of them-soaked, miserable, depleted. Young men bent over like old men. Jaws hanging loosely, mouth gasping at black wet air, tongues lolling, sunken eyes looking at nothing, betraying nothing.

  Rest.

  Men sink down in the mud, fall on their packs. Heads thrown back, mouths open, rain splashing on yellow teeth. Hands immobile-scrawny heaps of flesh and bone. Legs without motion-khaki lengths of worm-eaten wood. Hundreds of useless limbs fixed to hundreds of useless trunks.

  In back, ahead, beside, rumble trucks and tanks and tiny cars. Thick tires splattering mud. Fat treads sinking, tearing at mucky slime. Rain drumming wet fingers on metal and canvas.

  Lightning flashbulbs without pictures. Momentary burst of light. The face of war seen for a second-made of rusty guns and turning wheels and faces staring.

  Blackness. A night hand blotting out the brief storm glow. Windblown rain flitting over fields and roads, drenching trees and trucks. Rivulets of bubbly rain tearing scars from the earth. Thunder, lightning.

  A whistle. Dead men resurrected. Boots in sucking mud again-deeper, closer, nearer. Approach to a city that bars the way to a city that bars the way to a…

  An officer sat in the communication room of the P.G. Centre. He peered at the operator, who sat hunched over the control board, phones over his ears, writing down a message.

  The officer watched the operator. They are coming, he thought. Cold, wet and afraid they are marching at us. He shivered and shut his eyes.

  He opened them quickly. Visions fill his darkened pupils- of curling smoke, flaming men, unimaginable horrors that shape themselves without words or pictures.

  "Sir," said the operator, "from advance observation post. Enemy forces sighted."

  The officer got up, walked over to the operator and took the message. He read it, face blank, mouth parenthesized. "Yes," he said.

  He turned on his heel and went to the door. He opened it and went into the next room. The seven girls stopped talking. Silence breathed on the walls.

  The officer stood with his back to the plastic window. "Enemies," he said, "two miles away. Right in front of you."

  He turned and pointed out the window. "Right out there. Two miles away. Any questions?"

  A girl giggled.

  "Any vehicles?" another asked.

  "Yes. Five trucks, five small command cars, two tanks."

  "That's too easy," laughed the girl, slender fingers fussing with her hair.

  "That's all," said the officer. He started from the room. "Go to it," he added and, under his breath, "Monsters!"

  He left.

  "Oh, me," sighed one of the girls, "here we go again."

  "What a bore," said another. She opened her delicate mouth and plucked out chewing gum. She put it under her chair seat.

  "At least it stopped raining," said a redhead, tying her shoelaces.

  The seven girls looked around at each other. Are you ready? said their eyes. I'm ready, I suppose. They adjusted themselves on the chairs with girlish grunts and sighs. They hooked their feet around the legs of their chairs. All gum was placed in storage. Mouths were tightened into prudish fixity. The pretty little girls made ready for the game.

  Finally they were silent on their chairs. One of them took a deep breath. So did another. They all tensed their milky flesh and clasped fragile fingers together. One quickly scratched her head to get it over with. Another sneezed prettily.

  "Now," said a girl on the right end of the row.

  Seven pairs of beady eyes shut. Seven innocent little minds began to picture, to visualize, to transport.

  Lips rolled into thin gashes, faces drained of colour, bodies shivered passionately. Their fingers twitching with concentration, seven pretty little girls fought a war.

  The men were coming over the rise of a hill when the attack came. The leading men, feet poised for the next step, burst into flame.

  There was no time to scream. Their rifles slapped down into the muck, their eyes were lost in fire. They stumbled a few steps and fell, hissing and charred, into the soft mud.

  Men yelled. The ranks broke. They began to throw up their weapons and fire at the night. More troops puffed incandescently, flared up, were dead.

  "Spread out!" screamed an officer as his gesturing fingers sprouted flame and his face went up in licking yellow heat.

  The men looked everywhere. Their dumb terrified eyes searched for an enemy. They fired into the fields and woods. They shot each other. They broke into flopping runs over the mud.

  A truck was enveloped in fire. Its driver leaped out, a two-legged torch. The truck went bumping over the road, turned, wove crazily over the field, crashed into a tree, exploded and was eaten up in blazing light. Black shadows flitted in and out of the aura of light around the flames. Screams rent the night.

  Man after man burst into flame, fell crashing on his face in the mud. Spots of searing light lashed the wet darkness- screams-running coals, sputtering, glowing, dying-incendiary ranks-trucks cremated-tanks blowing up.

  A little blonde, her body tense with repressed excitement. Her lips twitch, a giggle hovers in her throat. Her nostrils dilate. She shudders in giddy fright. She imagines, imagines… …

  A soldier runs headlong across a field, screaming, his eyes insane with horror. A gigantic boulder rushes at him from the black sky.

  His body is driven into the earth, mangled. From the rock edge, fingertips protrude.

  The boulder lifts from the ground, crashes down again, a shapeless trip hammer. A flaming truck is flattened. The boulder flies again to the black sky.

  A pretty brunette, her face a feverish mask. Wild thoughts tumble through her virginal brain. Her scalp grows taut with ecstatic fear. Her lips draw back from clenching teeth. A gasp of terror hisses from her lips. She imagines, imagines. …

  A soldier falls to his knees. His head jerks back. In the light of burning comrades, he stares dumbly at the white foamed wave that towers over him.

  It crashes down, sweeps his body over the muddy earth, fills his lungs with salt water. The tidal wave roars over the field, drowns a hundred flaming men, tosses their corpses in the air with thundering whitecaps.

  Suddenly the water stops, flies into a million pieces and disintegrates.

/>   A lovely little redhead, hands drawn under her chin in tight bloodless fists. Her lips tremble, a throb of delight expands her chest. Her white throat contracts, she gulps in a breath of air. Her nose wrinkles with dreadful joy. She imagines, imagines…

  A running soldier collides with a lion. He cannot see in the darkness. His hands strike wildly at the shaggy mane. He clubs with his rifle butt.

  A scream. His face is torn off with one blow of thick claws. A jungle roar billows in the night.

  A red-eyed elephant tramples wildly through the mud, picking up men in its thick trunk, hurling them through the air, mashing them under driving black columns.

  Wolves bound from the darkness, spring, tear at throats. Gorillas scream and bounce in the mud, leap at falling soldiers.

  A rhinoceros, leather skin glowing in the light of living torches, crashes into a burning tank, wheels, thunders into blackness, is gone.

  Fangs-claws-ripping teeth-shrieks-trumpeting-roars. The sky rains snakes.

  Silence. Vast brooding silence. Not a breeze, not a drop of rain, not a grumble of distant thunder. The battle is ended.

  Gray morning mist rolls over the burned, the torn, the drowned, the crushed, the poisoned, the sprawling dead.

  Motionless trucks-silent tanks, wisps of oily smoke still rising from their shattered hulks. Great death covering the field. Another battle in another war.

  Victory-everyone is dead.

  The girls stretched languidly. They extended their arms and rotated their round shoulders. Pink lips grew wide in pretty little yawns. They looked at each other and tittered in embarrassment. Some of them blushed. A few looked guilty.

  Then they all laughed out loud. They opened more gum-packs, drew compacts from pockets, spoke intimately with schoolgirl whispers, with late-night dormitory whispers.

  Muted giggles rose up fluttering in the warm room.

  "Aren't we awful?" one of them said, powdering her pert nose.

  Later they all went downstairs and had breakfast.

  6 – MAD HOUSE

  He sits down at his desk. He picks up a long, yellow pencil and starts to write on a pad. The lead point breaks.The ends of his lips turn down. The eye pupils grow small in the hard mask of his face. Quietly, mouth pressed into an ugly, lipless gash, he picks up the pencil sharpener.

  He grinds off the shavings and tosses the sharpener back in the drawer. Once more he starts to write. As he does so, the point snaps again and the lead rolls across the paper.

  Suddenly his face becomes livid. Wild rage clamps the muscles of his body He yells at the pencil, curses it with a stream of outrage. He glares at it with actual hate. He breaks it in two with a brutal snap and flings it into the wastebasket with a triumphant, "There! See how you like it in there!"

  He sits tensely on the chair, his eyes wide, his lips trembling. He shakes with a frenzied wrath; it sprays his insides with acid.

  The pencil lies in the wastebasket, broken and still. It is wood, lead, metal, rubber; all dead, without appreciation of the burning fury it has caused.

  And yet…

  He is quietly standing by the window, peering out at the street. He is letting the tightness sough away He does not hear the rustle in the wastebasket which ceases immediately.

  Soon his body is normal again. He sits down. He uses a fountain pen.

  He sits down before his typewriter.

  He inserts a sheet of paper and begins tapping on the keys.

  His fingers are large. He hits two keys at once. The two strikers are jammed together. They stand in the air, hovering impotently over the black ribbon.

  He reaches over in disgust and slaps them back. They separate, flap back into their separate berths. He starts typing again.

  He hits a wrong key. The start of a curse falls from his lips, unfinished. He snatches up the round eraser and rubs the unwanted letter from the sheet of paper.

  He drops the eraser and starts to type again. The paper has shifted on the roller. The next sentences are on a level slightly above the original. He clenches a fist, ignores the mistake.

  The machine sticks. His shoulders twitch, he slams a fist on the space bar with a loud curse. The carriage jumps, the bell tinkles. He shoves the carriage over and it crashes to a halt.

  He types faster. Three keys stick together. He clenches his teeth and whines in helpless fury. He smacks the type arms. They will not come apart. He forces them to separate with bent, shaking fingers. They fall away. He sees that his fingers are smudged with ink. He curses out loud, trying to outrage the very air for revenge on the stupid machine.

  Now he hits the keys brutally, fingers falling like the stiff claws of a derrick. Another mistake, he erases savagely. He types still faster. Four keys stick together.

  He screams.

  He slams his fist on the machine. He clutches at the paper and rips it from the machine in jagged pieces. He welds the fragments in his fist and hurls the crumpled ball across the room. He beats the carriage over and slams the cover down on the machine.

  He jumps up and glares down.

  "You fool!" he shouts with a bitter, revolted voice. "You stupid, idiotic, asinine fool!"

  Scorn drips from his voice. He keeps talking, he drives himself into a craze.

  "You're no damn good. You're no damn good at all. I'm going to break you in pieces. I'm going to crack you into splinters, melt you, kill you! You stupid, moronic, lousy goddamn machine!"

  He quivers as he yells. And he wonders, deep in the self-isolated recesses of his mind whether he is killing himself with anger, whether he is destroying his system with fury.

  He turns and stalks away. He is too outraged to notice the cover of the machine slip down and hear the slight whirring of metal such as he might hear if the keys trembled in their slots.

  He is shaving. The razor will not cut. Or the razor is too sharp and cuts too much.

  Both times a muffled curse billows through his lips. He hurls the razor on the floor and kicks it against the wall.

  He is cleaning his teeth. He draws the fine silk floss between his teeth. It shreds off. A fuzzy bit remains in the gap. He tries to press another piece down to get that bit out. He cannot force the white thread down. It snaps in his fingers.

  He screams. He screams at the man in the mirror and draws back his hand, throws the floss away violently. It hits the wall.

  It hangs there and waves in the rush of angry breeze from the man.

  He has torn another piece of floss from the container. He is giving the dental floss another chance. He is holding back his fury. If the floss knows what is good for it, it will plunge down between the teeth and draw out the shredded bit immediately.

  It does. The man is mollified. The systematic juices leave off bubbling, the fires sink, the coals are scattered.

  But the anger is still there, apart. Energy is never lost; a primal law.

  He is eating.

  His wife places a steak before him. He picks up the knife and fork and slices. The meat is tough, the blade is dull.

  A spot of red puffs up in the flesh of his cheeks. His eyes narrow. He draws the knife through the meat. The blade will not sever the browned flesh.

  His eyes widen. Withheld tempest tightens and shakes him. He saws at the meat as though to give it one last opportunity to yield.

  The meat will not yield.

  He howls. "God damn it!" White teeth jam together. The knife is hurled across the room.

  The woman appears, alarm etching transient scars on her forehead. Her husband is beyond himself. Her husband is shooting poison through his arteries. Her husband is releasing another cloud of animal temper. It is mist that clings. It hangs over the furniture, drips from the walls.

  It is alive.

  So through the days and nights. His anger falling like frenzied axe blows in his house, on everything he owns. Sprays of teeth-grinding hysteria clouding his windows and falling to his floors. Oceans of wild, uncontrolled hate flooding through every room of his house; f
illing each iota of space with a shifting, throbbing life.

  He lay on his back and stared at the sun-mottled ceiling.

  The last day, he told himself. The phrase had been creeping in and out of his brain since he'd awakened.

  In the bathroom he could hear the water running. He could hear the medicine cabinet being opened and then closed again. He could hear the sound of her slippers shuffling on the tile floor.

  Sally, he thought, don't leave me.

  "I'll take it easy if you stay," he promised the air in a whisper.

  But he knew he couldn't take it easy. That was too hard. It was easier to fly off the handle, easier to scream and rant and attack.

  He turned on his side and stared out into the hall at the bathroom door. He could see the line of light under the door. Sally is in there, he thought. Sally, my wife, whom I married many years ago when I was young and full of hope.

  He closed his eyes suddenly and clenched his fists. It came on him again. The sickness that prevailed with more violence every time he contracted it. The sickness of despair, of lost ambition. It ruined everything. It cast a vapour of bitterness over all his comings and goings. It jaded appetite, ruined sleep, destroyed affection.

  "Perhaps if we'd had children," he muttered and knew before he said it that it wasn't the answer.

  Children. How happy they would be watching their wretched father sinking deeper into his pit of introspective fever each day.

  All right, tortured his mind, let's have the facts. He gritted his teeth and tried to make his mind a blank. But, like a dull-eyed idiot, his mind repeated the words that he muttered often in his sleep through restless, tossing nights.

  I'm forty years old. I teach English at Fort College. Once I had hoped to be a writer. I thought this would be a fine place to write. I would teach class part of the day and write with the rest of my time. I met Sally at school and married her. I thought everything would be just fine. I thought success was inevitable. Eighteen years ago.