We are transported to some version of the future – here’s how:

An area mostly industrial and deserted, with the space of a junkyard but the containment of a back alley. It is at once claustrophobic and infinite and we know we ought to be scared but are not…yet. there is a spaceship resembling a submarine or a playstation controller. We are toying with some nearby contraptions, one that looks like a viewfinder with a trigger. It shoots fireballs, perfectly round with short tails like tadpoles. they are elastic, bouncing from one wall to another and realizing they are not made of flames but something we are not prepared to handle, we climb into the ship for safety.

When it hits, we expect the be engulfed but instead it pushes us. Further and further and it is impossible to tell if we are underwater or in the air and most of us are squinting are eyes closed waiting for the end. I can see us from the outside of the ship.

The stop is gentler than the start and we glide into a suburban street, tapping the car in front of us while we park. we are at my cousin’s house. It is not their block, but it is their house and the family is gathered at a too long table in the kitchen eating breakfast. My parents plan on taking over the house, building an extra room onto the back. we have to climb up outdoor steps to get in, like some apartment complex in warmer climates, like a motel. And we can’t bear to watch them changing our childhoods, so we leave, pile back into the craft that brought us here.

My future version cousin is driving and we are approaching the city. There is traffic and he clips an old man pedestrian near the side of the road. We panic, he is feeble, slow moving with oversized glasses, and we send him on the subway with a copy of my cousin’s screenplay, as though this is consolation of some sort.

He goes a stop and somehow – I don’t know how – but I see him get off at the next stop and turn around, as though he were worried about us following him, as though there would be consequences for us. He’s going to leave the script on the train, we say and I suggest we get on the train to try to cut him off, but my cousin still driving has other plans and leaves us by the station.

Since we are in the city already, she suggests we go to the strip of stores near the edge. They are dangerous mostly but she is collecting memorabilia of my time and this is the only place to go. There are two stores next to each other with a man standing out front, shaved head crossed arms and she shields her face when we go by, whispering that we can’t go in yet, and drags me into the third store of the row.

Suddenly I become aware that my clothes have changed and I am dressed like an action hero, some tight black lycra/leather body suit that I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to get into on my own with long black hair and bangs. She has changed too and I am sure that she is responsible for my own transformation, assuring that I do not understand this place.

Inside there is strange metal music moments arranged more like a museum than a store. In the backyard is an agent from work with long black hair and a headband. he comes in with a friend of my parents and yells hey zora good to see you again and I look behind me to see who he’s speaking to but there is no one there. And my parents’ friend comes over to introduce himself and I tell him we’ve met literally thousands of times before. He doesn’t remember. I am ready to leave.

clearly i need a better system of recording my night thoughts.

Driving down roads where the streets all wind together and invariably stop at gated dead ends or water. Some variation of Baldwin or east rockaway or franklin square or any number of long island towns that are ultimately indistinguishable. We are not on long island. It is somewhere far away and distant, but still very familiar.

They are driving down a road that a hugs a fence that separated them from a carnival of sorts. It is the permanent sort of carnival that attracts the gamblers and low level mobsters and other seedy types that make it unsafe to venture the parts in the dark. It is past midnight. The car is low to the ground, a convertible. He is driving and she is in the passenger seat, willingly captive. Her father is involved in some degree of Mafioso, he’s not sure how far, but knows it’s deep enough that there will be repercussions for tonight. But that doesn’t matter, there are things that need to be said, and she is willing to see how this all pans out, because there is something exciting about a boy without fear.

He apologizes for running her over years before. There had been an accident many years ago, when he was a young teenager. His parents were involved but they are dead now, and he had long since left town, feeling responsible. She had been injured, but healed with only the slightest trace of scarring.

I never meant for you to get hurt, he says with the utmost sincerity and she believes him, eyeing his hand on the gearshift, and her own, folded into each other on her skirt.

I know she says, almost under her breath, keeping her eyes downcast, trying to force herself into some sort of guarded hesitancy that doesn’t suit her.

They drive along and there is an understanding between them, some unspoken sadness where they love each other but know it is too late. They are too far removed from who they used to be and there is this sense of “if only…”

There is something in the road, a possum, or something bigger, more terrifying. Its hair is matted and it is walking sideways as though it is drunk or hurt or both. There is the instant sense that if it spots them it will jump into the car and turn around. Except there is something waiting for them behind, a large man with a club and it is unclear which is the worse fate to befall.

Then she is gone, standing at the center of a podium among a stadium crowd. His mother is there too, announcing her to the crowd like some sort of sideshow. He calls to them all I do, I do for love. And through the loudspeakers comes the bellowing response that there is no such thing. The argument continues, the crowd becoming convinced. He cannot get any closer to the center.

I love you mom, he says, half out of defeat, half out of shock of seeing his dead mother standing there with the love of his life, the one that got away.

I love you too she says both automatic and genuine, and just like that everything falls away, the edges blurring to blue, as if the whole world had been melted by this admission.

there is a toad or frog, it is hard to tell in this light, but it is dangerous. it clamps down on my thumb like a chinese fingertrap (do frogs/toads have teeth?) and i am waving my hand around frantically trying to shake it off. it is more terrifying than painful, and i stick my hand in a nearby water basin hoping to loosen its grip. it doesn't.



also i rather enjoy that upon a single meeting i can be assessed as a "funny piece of work"

one:

the world has fallen apart and we are underground, underwater, in some crude metal contraption with the seams showing. there are frankensteined bolts and rust and the illusion that things have been falling apart for longer than they actually have.

there is a girl there, and in some other version of reality she is a friend. we are trying to save the world and she is doing a better job than i am and this is somehow more upsetting than the state of the world. she is a mother and more suited for creation, salvation, than i. i find myself in a locker in a state of half hiding. it is less of a locker and more of a tall metal box, something in the process of being. there is a boy there with me and we stand, almost touching. i look at the ground, the ceiling, anywhere but him, and though i am not looking, i know he is doing the same.

later, the girl’s husband and children pull up in a mini-van to the courtyard in front of the apartment i grew up in. they wave to her and she smiles and i slide a welder’s mask over my face and pick up a blowtorch.

two:

an alleyway somewhere between a small city and suburb. there are no streetlights and it is getting to the point of night where you need streetlights. the night is grey, not just the sky, but the night itself, as though it were washed over by some sort of nothing.

at the end of the block on the left is a storefront. it used to be a hardware store, or maybe still is. everything is covered in sawdust. at the back, there are boxes full of dvds. this is why i’m here. this place is some sort of video store, and maybe my last chance to find some low budget no name horror movie that i have promised to find for the evening. it is for a friend, just a friend, and worth all the trouble of tracking it down. i find it right away, and skim through the rest, but there aren’t many there and most i’ve never heard of. i am alone in the shop and the combination of horror movies and creaking floorboards is making me uneasy. sometimes the clouds pass over the moon and everything gets dark, as though there’s a shadow looming in the window.

i go to leave, with the movie i came for and another. there’s no one at the counter but a note with instructions to go across the street, to the house with the light on. there is a low porch there with wood railings that are rotted and i step into the doorway. inside the house, there is a folding table and a man with a visor and long hair. he is digging through boxes and i have to clear my throat twice to get his attention. when he turns around, i see he is bald on the top of his head, and he has a cigarette hanging from his lips with the ash creeping nearly to his lips, threatening to fall.

he invites me in and i decline. tells me he’s just getting settled and that’s why there’s not much there yet. i managed alright i tell him, waving the movies, careful not to stray so far inside that the door will close. he doesn’t ask money for the movies, or any information at all, he is in no rush for me to leave and I end up hurrying out empty handed.

three:

i am in bed and the phone rings. a friend’s parents have died in a plane crash. the news is delivered without any of the shock or sorrow that should accompany it, but as something more routine, as though it is a fact that has been known for ages, and nothing unusual.

the friend is on his way over, we are all going to the beach. a few minutes pass and the man in bed with me rolls over, asks if we’ve dreamt the phone call. some sort of awful collective unconscious. no, i tell him, it’s real.

ONE

It is Christmastime. I am at some religious gathering of people I know but can’t name. I am well liked by all of them. There is a rafter along the top of the room and a woman comes in yelling:

Where is he?

Everyone turns to look at her. She is built like a teapot, wearing an apron, and dragging a small boy with bangs by his wrist. His hands are bloody. Nobody answers.

I know he’s in here. I saw him come this way. There’s no where else for him to go.

The boy she’s looking for is hiding in the rafters 10 feet away. He is a street urchin type and has no family that we know of. He stands up.

I didn’t do anything wrong he yells to her.

You come down here. She is threatening and has not yet let go of the arm of her son. Come down here and be punished for what you did to my boy.

He retreats so that half of him is obscured by the shadow of the rafter.

Come down here gypsy child. She addresses the crowd, seated in neat rows faced away with their necks arched back to listen. Did you all know that? His mother was a gypsy. He told my boy here and then he put a gypsy curse on him and pushed him down.

This of course isn’t true, not completely. We know this from earlier when we saw it happen:

SCENE - The boy is 10 but looks 8. there is a circle of children around him, a combination of girls and boys, though it is hard to tell who is what. They are ash blonde and dirty and he is dark haired and dirty and clutching onto something that they are trying to tear away from him. They push him around the circle, from one end to another and at some point, this thing in his hands falls, something resembling a snow globe without the water, a crystal ball with a message inside. He drops it and it shatters on the ground and stares at it for only a moment before the tears come and the other kids giggle some sort of satisfaction and he is desperate to get out of there, and pushes the son, the one we’ve already seen, to make enough room to leave. The son falls, lands hard on his back and the others go “ooooh” and chuckle some more. And the son isn’t hurt really, just embarrassed and angry, and goes to stand, placing his palms on the ground near him for leverage, forgetting about the broken glass. The boy hears his scream as he’s running away and runs faster. The mother hears his scream from the kitchen of her house, where she is washing dishes. She runs out towards the sound.

The boy stands there, half obscured by shadow staring down at the angry mother. And for some reason she says, I bet you don’t even know the names of my children. And he does, and recites them, Billy, Bobby, Billie Jean, Bobbie Sue, Beebee, Baby, and Bubba. When they’re listed out, it sounds like an insult and the mother fumes further, mutters some threat along the lines of I’ll teach you to be different.

I step in and begin a speech that starts with a proclamation of my Jewdom, but quickly unfolds to be something much more religiously deviant. I wander from room to room, saying that Jesus is no one, I don’t think he even existed in any form, man or god. I call the Bible a piece of fiction. I say these things, and I mean them, but I am saying them for shock value. Some people turn away from me, but most listen. And I ask what these would beliefs would matter on a daily basis, in daily interaction. If what I believe in changes who I am, who I have always been to these people. And when I am finished wandering from room to room, giving different incarnations of this speech, which sounds brilliant in my head, but mostly offputting out loud, the gypsy boy has had plenty of time to escape and although I am still widely accepted, I know it is time to move on.

TWO

I am on the run still, and always. I am sitting at an outdoor restaurant one step above fast food. The table is the green, grated four curved benches around a circle. I am sitting across from a boy who I do not know very well. The two others we are with, an older man and a young teen girl have gone inside to get more food. The boy is finished with his food, and I am still eating my sandwich, but it is falling apart in my hands. The boy is simple and crude and not completely unlovable. He is bored with wandering and bored with sitting and asks for a kiss, posing the request as a cure for boredom rather than any sort of romantic sentiment. With my mouth half full, I lean over the table and give him a peck on the lips, then return to chewing. No, a real kiss he says and I tell him I’m still eating. He licks his lips, says my sandwich looks pretty good and starts picking at without asking, as though we have known each other for years. And somehow this disarms me, humanizes him. I smile. Okay, come here I say, motioning him closer. And he smiles and we kiss the awkward sort of kiss where both people are smiling too much for it to really be a kiss at all. Let’s go, I say and he doesn’t ask where, but follows. We pass the other two people in our group as they head back to the table and we tell them we’ll be right back and know that we will never see them again.

THREE

This boy and I are in a room off the side of some main highway. There’s a long white stucco wall with doors along the back of the building, and we are behind one of these doors, giggling insincerely and being generally ridiculous. There is a sound from outside, of a police car pulling up, an older officer in tan like a state trooper. Stay here, I tell the boy, giving specific instructions to wait so long before following me out. I kiss him on the forehead, and I know it is goodbye, but he does not. I walk around the side of the building, evaluating which car to take, settle on a white pick up. As I drive away, I could see the door opening in my rearview mirror. I’m not looking.

on my 25th birthday, i tell my little sister that there is no santa. she cries.

my parents are not happy with me.