The authenticity in the extended dream astonished the dreamer, as it had manufactured a complete day (or its strong impression) to fulfill a plot.
“When did my dream begin?” he pleaded urgently.
Howard glanced at a folding chair across the break room table. “Well, it did not begin before our exchange with the consultant. There still sits his walking cane.”
Liam could not shake the moribund aspect of his nightmare. “Eventually I will dream only of myself in bed trying to sleep, all the while immersed in a sleep from which I will not wake.”
His coworker explained plainly, “Death is transitional. A sliding scale. Where one stands on one side of the door, he cannot know the measure of the one who answers, or whether his arriving at this door was to summon or be summoned.”
Liam did not leave work before the final hour of daylight, and did not travel home immediately. He could produce no sensible explanation for why he returned to the turret. Dusky light from the small upper window revealed that the detached door was still foremost on the wood pile—
It was grabbed by its splintery rail lock and turned over.
A Nativity statue stared back through its loose fitting of boards. Its robe matched its regal but faded countenance, which, in being beardless, was judged too youthful to be a wise man. The life-size decoration was pulled toward the first stair step, leading to the discovery of a rupture. This trauma originated in the back of the figure, and indicated the removal of wings, though the deity was able to stand unassisted.
The discoverer thought he should carry the angel away from its indignant entombment, so strapped it lengthwise to his bicycle basket with bungees. By then, the sun had all but vanished into its own embers, and the shadows in the small wood thereabout made twilit shapes pass for living things.
The statue was wiped down before being placed in his bedroom corner. This left the resident to meditate uneasily on its contribution to the décor in the minutes prior to falling asleep that evening.
The angel was arguably that night’s particular complication in his lucid dreaming. Liam envisioned himself restlessly confined to a proper bed with squeaky wheels. His sensation was one of his bedstead being trundled from room to room.
These rooms were better furnished than his own.
The fretful sleeper was aware of connecting passageways in this house, which were nothing of unmasked memory but, instead, dim placeholders or breezeways. One or more beds queued in these murky areas, and their movement worked in contrary motion to his because they were tethered together by ropes.
Elasticity constituted the briefest delay, yet allowed the bed-bound man to sketch details of persons on other beds before they wheeled unceremoniously out of view. All were in profile, yet with each room change more was seen. One set of profiles unquestionably belonged to his parents. His paralysis prohibited him from calling out to them.
Windows, though none close by, lay within his impeded field, and terrifying effects of light leapt in their full firmament. This illumination twisted in dark-hewed trees, and uppermost in their heaviest branches. Leaves, or perhaps bodies of angels, swirled like ash thrown up in a smoldering fire. The world was seemingly consumed in flame while sleepers awaited its transformation.
No source of locomotion existed with his parents’ bedstead, which made Liam’s bed the action’s initiator.
In searching for the source of this choreography, the plastic deity still stood in its corner. Heat poured over the statue from the bright window, and presently its melting legs separated. Its steps were both solid and counted, and these placed the figure not at his bed but at the open closet door. A glowing ray found the larval form standing upright among his clothes hangers: Contours within its translucency revealed an embryonic formation of feathers.
The smoldering angel blackened and dissolved into smoke, filling the room and closing around him like heavy curtains. Liam awoke in a gasp, thinking his company had wandered into another room; but no statue was on the premises.
The early riser fixed a pot of coffee and plotted his doubt over actions taken the previous day. His last conversation with Howard was recalled, while his day’s work—up to but not including his visit to the turret—was indistinguishable from other days.
The object removed from the factory ceiling began its existence as a set of life size wings for a Nativity angel—of this he was now certain. Due to continuous exposure to a forced air furnace conduit, the wings melted and reformed repeatedly over the decades. Yet how it came to its forgotten place was as inscrutable as his ascertainment of its identity through a dream.
An exemplary daybreak set the distraught man retracing his steps and looking for evidence that he was genuinely awake. Whatever he imagined himself to have packed that week at the factory was carried off by freight truck; the same was true of paperwork. Nothing would be gained by rooting through trash cans for food wrappers since Liam brought an identical sack lunch with him each day. He was in no mind to compare and date the staleness of bread crusts therein, which, unconsumed, he regularly discarded.
When Howard failed to make an appearance following the first brew of coffee, an inquiry was made after his whereabouts.
The supervisor informed, “Mr. Meade was taken to the hospital yesterday. Packing materials trapped and crushed one of his legs.”
The inquirer found this scenario unlikely, and suspected collusion, or worse, on the part of his employers.
Echoes were everywhere in the emptying building; and perhaps more than could be wedded to an unadventurous imagination. As each part of the complex had been stripped of its purpose, the Koreans had seen fit to turn off the lights: perhaps to dissuade foot traffic in these areas.
Regardless, an unimpeded line of sight now connected the two ends of Building B, and the only room where the chimney could be accessed was along this passageway. Liam was drawn to its heavy metal door, which was locked. A small window in the door revealed two panes of glass separated by chicken wire. The view through this portal was under lit, yet parts of mannequins were seen scattered about on shelves. These specimens were odd in color, as if made with an experimental pigment that failed. Their discover was unsettled by their appearance in that late hour of the afternoon, and might have been persuaded that these simulacra had not always been lifeless…
For want of work, he left the factory never to return.
Copyright © 2008-2022 Michael Teague. All rights reserved.