By Ari Tulk
The gangly man with the encaged spirit awoke hot. Uncomfortably so. The covers stung his thighs like poisoned things. Those fleecy stretches of serpent wound round and round and round his legs. Perhaps one could argue that they were only trying to keep him warm, but that did not occur to this man—to him they were live coiling monsters. His bald head flickered with cold pasty sweat, and his forehead’s every fold and crinkle stated some confused fear.
He always had these night mares—why was he still afraid? He should have learnt to deal with them by now. But every morning when he woke he refused to do so—he ignored his nighttime experiences and the devilish emotions they provoked. He would attend his job on Wall Street and disconnect from how much he hated the corporate world. He would lose himself in thoughts of promotions and higher salaries, and try his best to forget that horrible experience that had divided him from all he loved.
That experience that he had spent all his life dreaming of. That horrid experience that had taken him by surprise when he had thought he was following his dreams. Now his dreams were pursuing him—stalking him. At every turning point in life since, he had thought that he had shaken them off in the curve of the road, but they would appear again, as vivid and frantic to be heard as ever, to take him in the middle of the night, coat him with sweat, and wrap the blankets too tight around his legs.
He panted, the thick murky darkness overwhelming him with first claustrophobic heat, and then cold lonely shivers. He had been so hot, and was now so cold. Like the dream—shiver, shiver, shiver, and all the while the blue-green serpents clutched him tighter. His feet were so hot. His head so cold…And then the dream came again.
Cold, cold sky. Big, big moon. Hot, hot sun, gleaming like a chunk of gold at the bottom of a well. He was shooting like a cannon ball towards the moon, leaving the blue-green coil of earth far behind. His feet were on fire, and his head was encased in ice. The moon laughed at him.
“And you never went back.” It sneered. The image crashed over him, more vivid and blunt then it had ever been before. It was a roaring tsunami, yet unlike a wave it did not pull back. It continued on and on. On and on. The laughter of the moon echoed round and round his head, getting louder each time around. The blankets—live and seething—wrapped round and round his legs, getting tighter each time around.
“We are only trying to help thee.” They assured him, but they hurt him, whether they succeeded at what they were trying to do or not. They hurt him as all truth tellers hurt the people they communicate to.
Burning feet, freezing face—that was what it had felt like, being up there all alone. Isolated from the earth and all he knew and loved. He had been surrounded by galaxies and stars, instead of being surrounded by trees like he should have been. He had not been able to bear being so far from the earth. He had hated the moon. He had longed all his life to travel into space, but when that terrible feeling overwhelmed him, he knew that his career as an astronaut was over. He never looked at the moon or stars again.
Cold sweat trickled over him and he tried for a gasping huffing time to rid himself of those blankets that encroached upon his barriers. When at last he disentangled himself from their grip he did not feel free. Only empty.
That same great emptiness that had sunk into his soul the moment he stepped onto the earth again. That terrifying realization that he no longer felt anything when he saw or touched the earth, and the discovery that he was no longer interested in trying. Before he had ventured into space he had believed that the key to happiness was lying on the earth. But when he came back he seemed to be stuck in that disconnectedness of standing on the moon. He had forgotten his love for the earth, and from there he sought happiness from other things. He became obsessed with money and capitalist ideals. From there everything fell apart. His marriage was destroyed. He moved to New York City, and bought an apartment. All he wished for now was wealth, and he earned it, for nothing was distracting him. He had no other passions besides making as much money as he was able. But he was not happy—the dream—and those words that filled it. “And you never went back, you never went back.”
He rolled over on top of his covers, shivering. He was soaking all over. He wished to go back to sleep as he had always done before in these situations, but somehow tonight was different. Every cell in his body battled the urge to open the blackout curtains that he had purchased specifically for moments like these. He would not endure moon beams in his room at night, let alone look upon the moon itself. It brought back too many memories of that fateful voyage to the stars. He would not let himself be reminded of it
He twitched and shook in the bed, and finally made up his mind. He could no longer resist the temptation. He stood, kicking his mass of bedding into a frenzied seething heap at the foot of his bed. He leapt to the window, peeled open the curtains, and looked out.
The first thing that met his gaze was the city lights—thousands of them, extending out forever. And then the moon. Great luminous. Like an eye, glowing cold and ghostly—hovering over the city, crowning all the other lights. It was so much smaller than when he had last seen it. So much more innocent looking—it did not fill him with fear. It did not laugh at him. Only smiled in a pitying affectionate way.
The great solitary eye seemed to wink, and the memories came rushing back again. The moon of that night swelled to three times its size, and cackled at him, with its crinkly craters bulging. The man hunched over himself and lifted a weary hand to shade his eyes. His body was dizzy, and his eyes blurry with tears, but his mind took on an air of delirious clarity.
“I never came back.” He whispered, his words cracking and snapping. The coils of cotton at the end of the bed stilled. “My body came back but my soul got stuck…in that disconnected, empty word of loneliness.” The tall man swayed dizzily for a moment, his trembling fingers resting on the window pane, their heat gathering little blurry clouds around them on the glass.
In an instant he was suddenly overwhelmed with a desire for his husband’s kisses. How…could this be?
When he had returned from the voyage to the stars he had been unable to love anyone or anything. He had been unable to love his husband, they had taken a break, and this had broken his husband’s heart.
Whatever cruel devil had taken the reigns of his heart that day they had broken up, he was rid of it now.
“I still don’t understand.” His husband had said as he stood on the threshold of their house. “For you are the only man I will ever love, and I know you feel the same way deep inside. Just remember—I won’t be having any other relationships. I am here…if you need me.” The words echoed in his mind. He adored his husband too much to comprehend in that moment.
“I have ruined everything!” The man exclaimed, his whole person shivering with the raging torments that battled within him. “I’ve failed at living fully, so I shouldn’t be allowed—” His words, which were heavy with bitter violence, were drowned out in the squeaky scream of the window as it opened. His now-cold fingers groped desperately at the little things—those little metal things (where were they?) that he had to pull in order to open the second pane of glass. He snatched at it with wild fury, and wrenched it from its frame, hurtling it backwards over his shoulder. It smashed against the wall, crumpling like a dead thing, and spattering its shards of translucent blood all over his fake sheepskin rug. It would never be soft and plush again.
The man squatted before the gaping hole where the window had once been, his breath coming in gasps. His pupils were shrunken and tiny, only little pinpricks in the swirling coils of green. His soft sloping eyebrows fastened into a scowl. He let the silken moony air hoist itself over the window sill, and plop down beside his bare toes. There was an instant of quiet. It was so quiet, so still and so rigid it nearly froze the man completely. But it did not. It disappeared as quickly as it had come.
He clutched at the sill and launched himself from the room, feeling the cool star filled air creep up his sleeves and under his pajamas. The brown ones with the little moles and earthworms and bunnies in burrows all over them. The ones his husband had made for him. “I’m coming back.” He thought.
He was soaring. Speeding through the night on wings. Wings that flew him downwards. He had never flown without the assistance of some kind of machine. “It is wonderful that my last experience on this earth is flying…” His thoughts whispered very slowly. Everything felt so slow all of a sudden. So slow.
But then the ground was coming closer and closer, nearer and nearer—and he hit it.
But he didn’t—it was almost as if he had collided with a squishy belt of compacted and compressed air before he hit the ground, for he landed like a feather on his stomach, arms like angel wings, spread out beside him. He was reminded of his childhood days, where he and his friends had lain down on the snow and “flapped their wings” and their legs, making snow angels.
He felt as bewildered as if he had turned into an angel. And he felt a light airiness of spirit filling him. “How…?” Every part of him was asking. There was no answer, yet he was so overcome with awe that he did not even bother about the question. He only knew that by some miracle he had been saved.
He lifted his head, and turned his cheek to the cold roughness of the ground. He watched the jagged swirls of the concert interlace their fingers with his. He stood slowly, his bones feeling filled with air. He began to wander the streets of the city in a daze.
The flashing signs blinded him, and the buildings were too tall, too bright. He could not see the stars, and for the first time since he had stood upon the moon, the thought stifled him. Even though it was his fascination with stars that had eventually pushed him to this point, he almost wanted to thank them. His falling had reawakened his old belief that it is the heavens that work miracles. He wanted to bend down on his knees and sing to them.
He strolled on at a slow shaky pace, past a little flashing pink teddy bear sign behind the glass of a shop window. Above it were the proud neon words: “Jeremy’s Village of Toys.” An ad played on a large billboard, screaming in bright white letters: “Hot spa and cold beverages—the perfect combo!”. “Willie’s Style And Zazz Hair Clinic” glowed blue and red around the corner. He walked on, sniffing the aromas of Indian and Italian food wafting over from nearby restaurants. He was longing for his husband, and something else that he could not identify or describe. Then suddenly he spotted what he was looking for. He knew in that moment, that that was all he wanted that night. His expression, unmistakably one of the overwrought, dazed middle-aged man he was, shifted, and anyone would have thought he was a mere youth visiting a theme park for the first time. His cheeks were flushed a rosy pink with happiness, and his whole person glowed with a beautiful and joyous brightitude.
Standing at the center of the sidewalk was a circlet of spiky fence, which contained a tiny stage of grass, topped with a tiny tree as its centerpiece. Without caring that it was probably prohibited, he climbed over the fence with agility and ease, standing at last in prickly close proximity with the tree.
“Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, little one.” He breathed in awe of the great being. With awkward squeezing and scratches up and down his vulnerable pajamaed and bare-footed self, he lay down beside the tree, and curled himself around the soft little trunk. He was pressed against the earth. He remembered now why he had believed that lying on the earth was the key to happiness. He giggled with a pure grounded joy that he had not felt since before the moon journey.
There he fell into a slumber, and dreamt of his husband and of traveling alternate universes with him, and meeting elves and fairies and tree spirits. “Tomorrow,” he resolved the moment before his eyes closed, “I will travel back to my husband, make up for all the time we spent apart, and start life anew, as connected to the earth as I am now, and as fully as I have tonight, with all the crazy ups and downs of human emotion.” The words that filled his dreams that night were not expressed in scornful laughter, but sung in joyous tones; “You came back! You came back! You came back! You have found your way home again!”
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