Whimsy*

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed in with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T.S. Eliot

I put my nose to the pavement and flare my wings, stumbling on barely knotted shoes that catch the ground in front of me, and skip off my nose as they push the pavement past. My wings won’t hold the wind; they flap uselessly like a kite in dead air that will fall to the grass when you give up running to catch a bit of air for yourself. Laces of tar jostle by; their smoothness a cool relief on my nose (like Puffs tissue) which is a glowing tip, sparking like flint on the craggy asphalt. The buzzing street lamps watch me skate by; peeking through the overgrown foliage of trees craning for the artificial light in the midnight hours. I swoop an arm down to brush the manicured greenery while arcing round a corner. A muted metallic clank resonates in my wrist after my outstretched fingers graze the base of a stop sign, but despite the numbness I spread my digits; pinions to ensnare the pockets of air that slip by which little by little will separate me from the earthbound sleepers weighted down by quilts, defying the feathers under their heads.

All of a sudden a pressure builds up at my back and my stutter-step smooths. The pockets of air beneath my wings billow out to support my weight, and I lean out onto their cushioning fabric. I’m no longer running into puddles of greenish light thrown by the arc lamps, but they are blown past me in tremendous, towering waves by a ferocious wind that would snap your tenuous kite string, and will bear me aloft. I jump and my nose lifts from the tarmac but falls back skidding. I jump again and again sending the sleeping world farther and farther from my feet but I keep crashing down in puddles of light splashing drops into the darkened lawns which, being spongy and quite parched, thirstily drink up the luminous liquid.

I leap, leave the ground behind and forget about landing (I could land flat on my nose, now raw and nearly fanned to flames, for all I care) and in the moment before my descent begins the air below me swells and swells, bursting and swirling, an exploding kernel of popcorn suspending me above the blacktop, the lawn ornaments, bird-nests and darkened bedrooms, severing the knotted, musty ropes that had bound me to the rock below. For the first time I am moving over the world instead of the world moving itself past my stationary frame and I am followed by the whooshing noise of the breeze propelling me through the speckled sky.

I look down at the ground that I am speeding past and let out a whoop of enthusiasm, but in my excitement I forget how dangerous flying can be, and like Icarus I will fall because I’m caught up in the moment. A branch slaps me on the head and claws my neck and I look forward at the tangled mess just ahead of me. I fumble the air around me to gain altitude but the branches below are tearing holes in my buoyant cushion, and I am descending into the thicket. Boughs shatter, but my inertia carries me through into a web of wires strung between the branches. The electricity snaps at me like angered spiders and copper lines crack like whips as they’re torn from insulating anchors. I shelter my head in the crooks of my arms as I careen through the canopy and towards the unforgiving sod below me that is waiting with open manacles to arrest my upward movement with newly forged chains of steel. But leaves suddenly thin and recede into the distance and a pale yellow light wells up beneath me. And I crash.

I prop myself up on one side; pieces of the wall are still falling onto the ground around and there is a large scar, twenty feet above me, where I collided with it. A brick teeters and falls at my head but it bounces off me without damage. I pick it up; a box of breadcrumbs. Next to me cream of mushroom soup is oozing onto the cobblestone. I look up again, confused. There are still stars dotting the sky above me though most of them have been extinguished by the competing light of hundreds of kerosene lamps. And reaching up to blot out the remaining stains of light in the sky are shelves upon shelves all stocked with produce, canned goods, freezers, appliances, books, even pets for sale, all lining the alleyway I crash landed in. Shoppers walk past, dreamily oblivious to the mess of broken cans and boxes littered around me. Some mount tall ladders strung all the way to the top of the buildings and collect items from the uppermost shelves. I stand up and wander into a row of smaller shelves that stand between the walls of the alley and make my way towards the light at one end, and away from the dark neighborhood streets. As I walk my eyes scan the shelves on either side and something catches my eye. A gold fish bowl filled with chocolate balls. Without thinking I take one, just to taste. It flakes into a thousand little pieces at the slightest pressure and then dissolves on my tongue, rich sweet chocolate and creamy hazelnut. I eat a few more and grab a handful that go into my jacket pocket. I walk past the lines and out of the alley into the brightly lit town center. A broad traffic circle sweeps around the plaza and the thin traffic creeps by to turn down larger streets at four points of the circle. A multitude of pedestrians mills about in the plaza, crossing the traffic and ducking in and out of the alleys carved into the faces of every building.

I stand at the edge of the sidewalk, still slightly dazed and disheveled from my fall into the canned goods aisle. After watching the movements of the people in the town square… rather town circle… for a time, I decide to cross the street to where a lot of pedestrians seem to be heading; it seems to me that the town center is clearing out steadily. I cross the traffic and see that everyone is filing up as they walk towards a large sign labeled “Transportation.” I file in behind a man who looks as if he is walking in his sleep, but as we inch towards the entrance (moving like the legs of a millipede, in waves) I don’t see an escalator down to the subway. Instead there is a revolving door. People walk in and they seem to smear and are whisked away as the door shuts behind them and occasionally someone new condenses and walks out the other side. I stop at the front of the line and stare into the machine while people detour around me. I look at the floor where little holes in seem to suck the departing down as they gasify, and in the ceiling are tiny spigots that extrude the arrivals. And right at the threshold was the sniffer. That’s what a sign to my right says it is; sniffing for contraband and dangerous items. It twists to examine every one of the transported and they are careful not to tread on it. I remember the chocolate balls in my pocket and I’m suddenly wary of entering the revolving doors in case the sniffer can smell them. It keeps turning its nose my way when there is a lull in the traffic overhead. I walk around the side past the operator who is reading the paper and watch the people disappear for a number of minutes; many of them close their eyes as they are evacuated from the booth as if the process were uncomfortable and they were being sedated. As the last person in the line disappears in a spray of mist I see something else in the revolving doors that had been obscured by the constant motion. Two eyes are staring at me from behind the glass. A pair of eyes that is completely transparent, invisible. I can’t tell if my imagination is playing a trick on me but then I notice a long tail and flicking ears and the large feline form that paces back and forth, trapped in the enclosed glass of the revolving doors. Whether insubstantial, invisible or imagined I can see a tiger rubbing its sides up against the glass in the transporter booth and still view everything behind it with perfect clarity as if there is no image of it at all. I turn to the operator and try to catch his attention.

“Hey! Excuse me sir, but I think there’s something wrong with your booth. There’s a tiger in there, but it’s invisible and you probably can’t see it there for yourself. Anyways it’s trapped between the doors and I don’t think you should let anyone else through until you get it out. Hello?”

 I tap him on the shoulder to make sure that he isn’t listening to music, or half asleep like the people in line and that he can hear me, but he continues to flip through his paper. I walk back to look at the tiger; it is still staring at me and the sniffers nose is all ears as I approach. Suddenly the operator asks.

“Are you gonna go through or what?”

“No” I say. “But I really think you should do something…”

“Ok. Well I’m packing up then.” He starts to fold up his newspaper.

“What? But – the tiger!” He finishes folding his paper and pushes a button on his console and I stare with incredulity as the front of the revolving door divides and the circle disappears like a pie, devoured slice by slice. It folds itself like the paper, into a flat sheet, and then slides into the ground, tiger and all. The operator walks off into an alley and I’m left alone in the barren traffic circle.

*Unlike most of my stories, this one is not out to make any sort of point, so don't trouble yourselves looking for one or wondering what it is. This story is an attempt to lucidly describe a dream that I had this summer and I tried to keep it as faithful as possible to the actual events of my dream while also giving it the right voice. I did quite a lot of experimenting with language especially in the beginning of the story and my beta testers have commented that this made the first read an ordeal and a half because it obscured the plot for about half the story. Much of this story is an attempt to craft my writing to imitate the stories that I read by James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy over the winter break. Thank you for reading.