Tuesday, July 26, 2011

The Dreams of Hammond Schuster



They lived in the shadows and fed on dreams of light seekers. From behind concrete boxes they watched and whittled, watched and whittled, until they had crafted a manuscript out of the cumulous dreams that billowed into thunderheads from humid brain clouds. And people bought and read the pilfered dreams, never realizing they were stolen from their very thoughts.

An entire society of shadow creatures formed, thrived even, and laughed raucously together over late night martinis while wallowing in tidbits from their swipings. They began to believe in the dreams they had stolen, as if they were original thoughts rather than lifted from the collective virga. With each martini, they anchored the belief that they were above the spidery truth of their existences.

All except one.

60269 rolled out of the bar at 1pm and covered his face with his hands while his eyes adjusted to the mid-day shine. The fog in his head was thick pea soup. All the dreams he had ever taken were swirling in a vortex and he was certain a vicious tornado was going to blow the top right off his head.

At the corner a few yards down a man with a giant bottle of helium was blowing up balloons. 60269 walked over to the man and gave him a buck for a balloon. A swirling vortex moved with the force of a hurricane as every dream he had ever stolen blew right out of his head, through the rubber and directly into the balloon. He felt something he had never, ever known in all the years of thievery — absolute emptiness. 60269 took a pen from his pocket and scribbled some words onto the balloon, released it, then stepped off the curb directly into the path of the 41 Union Express.
___

 Hammond Schuster knew something was off. He sensed the lack of memory. How do you put your finger on something missing when you can’t remember that something is missing? He couldn’t, and yet it bugged him — it ached, the not there/there thing. He began to search the rooms of his home for some kind of clue, something that would point him to beyond the empty cloud that had meaning with no meaning. All he found within his house were blank walls and minimal furniture. There was nothing that could give a clue to anything beyond the mundane and grey that was his life.

 As he walked through the empty halls, an orange object outside the glass wall that enclosed his living room caught his attention. Given that Hammond lived some 100 miles from civilization or neighbors, it was odd to see a foreign object in the yard. He stepped outside onto the cool grass and picked up what appeared to be a deflated balloon with the words “I can’t deal with it. 4Realz” written on the rubber. As he picked it up by the attached string he began to feel a flood of memories returning. Pianos, music, voices, poetry, dreams — so many dreams — he dropped the string in a shock of knowing.

Emptiness… he couldn’t remember what he had just remembered, he just felt so horrendously empty.

Again he picked up the string, again the memories began, but they were formless, clues without a strand. He needed a map to the there place in the stratus fractus of his mind. He brought the balloon into the house and set it down on the table.

Again, empty, and wondering how a balloon got onto the table, and why it said what it said.

He shrugged and went to lie down on the sofa, deciding that he would read rather than deal with this mystery that he had no hope of solving. Besides, his brain was thickening to a greenish fog, he couldn’t even remember his name.

The book on the coffee table had no title. Hammond picked it up and rifled through the empty pages, then resting the book on his chest, he fell asleep and began to dream — a canvas appeared in front of him...he picked up a brush and began painting... from out of a fog of strokes the piano he played as a boy began to play itself and he saw himself sitting on the bench struggling through the years of lessons, choirs of voices grew to a crescendo of glory then melted away and a poet appeared with a pen and poetry began to flow and the words were sumptuous and full of passion, metaphors which faded into fractured sense as garden after garden filled the canvas — so much color — the entire world was in front of him, so many strokes...each stroke was a lifetime of dreams... a wife, or was it two... children, friends, explorations, passions and desire... oh... and the women, and the choices, he could do anything he wanted to on the canvas of his dreams — and so Hammond Schuster never woke up.

The cops found him in a sea of flies with an open book on his chest. The bright orange words on the cover read The Dreams of Hammond Schuster by 60269.
Note: The balloon really did appear on my lawn the other day so it seemed appropriate to give a story to its possible circumstance.

14 comments:

Catherine Vibert said...

Honestly, blogger is really annoying me...first, I put up the post and it won't accept my MS Word document because something in the HTML was all messed up. So I put it in text edit and made it a plain text document, then put it into blogger. Blogger proceeded to remove my paragraph indents and no matter how many times I press 'tab' it WILL NOT TAB. Grrrrr.... Any ideas folks?

Anonymous said...

Okay, you know I'm tech-challenged, right? In other words, I am of no use to you!

As for "The Dreams"--wow. The flow of this is so lovely. And it does flow, seemingly effortlessly, so that once you start reading, you cannot stop. How you got this from the balloon that appeared on your lawn is stunningly impressive.

My favorite line? "The fog in his head was thick pea green soup," and I smiled when you carried it through.

Sad but beautiful.

I'm glad you're writing!

Sarah Hina said...

You've tapped into something dissonant and unnerving here. Something deeply isolating and sad. It seems the perfect story for our technological age, with its aimless balloons and unsettling dreams, always (somehow) slipping from our grasps.

Plus: WOW on finding that balloon in your yard. You've done it justice, Cat.

Catherine Vibert said...

@Jaz, Thanks! I'm glad I'm writing too! It feels good to use this side of expression. There are things we can do with words that have no other way of being said. I'm so glad we're blogging again and that you are back, did I say that already? Can I say it again and again?

@Sarah, Right? Yeah the metaphors are manifold in this one. Even in ways I really didn't intend. :-) I let my imagination have full reign here and found it to be wonderfully cathartic. It's so wonderful to see you here my dear friend.

Catherine Vibert said...

Another note on the story, Chris was here when we found the balloon and we kind of challenged each other to make a story about it. I hope he'll write his too!

Precie said...

Oh, yes, a balloon like that has to have a story. And what a fascinating story you've given it! The draw toward something that can destroy us...

As for paragraph indents, HTML doesn't make it easy...so I thunk most people just double-space between paragraphs. If you really want the indents, you can put in the code
 
to insert a single blank space. So you'd need a few of those in a row. I think that should work.

Precie said...

I meant to comment too on how well you weave from ominous to empty to overflowing. Lovely.

Catherine Vibert said...

Hi Precie! Thanks for the html tips. I don't know why it works sometimes and not others to just cut and paste from Word, they do make things difficult you know? Grr...
Thank you for reading and for your lovely comments too. :-) Great to see you here!

Catherine Vibert said...

ah...spaces...much easier to read now.

Robert Farrell said...

Your work is like a foreign film; it always stays with me.

Catherine Vibert said...

Thanks Roberto! It's great to see you over here. :-)

the walking man said...

This was a wonderful story from a wonderful account of a wonderful event.

Hey Cat!

Catherine Vibert said...

Hi Mark! Thank you. :-)

Drizel said...

Stunning post, the balloon almost seems like a cry for help... but very fitting.

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