Fade (more)

By John Verion

Steve Key was drunk when he first discovered he could walk through things. It should have been a moment of extreme gravity. There should have been music playing, or lightening flashing, but there was neither of those things. So instead of realizing what an important discovery it was, he assumed it was a trick of his beer-soaked mind -- just an extreme example of the usual inability to negotiate around coffee tables or locate objects with his hands whenever he had a bit too much. Curious and confused, but not immediately afraid, Steve's forgivable reaction was to go home to sleep.

When he awoke several hours later, the world was gray outside his bedroom window. The alarm clock claimed it was nine fifteen and after a few minutes of head-pounding consideration, he realized he didn't know whether it was morning or night. Then he decided it didn't matter. It had been weeks since he allowed himself to believe there was such a thing as too early to drink.

Steve crawled out of bed and made his way to the kitchen where he scrounged around in the refrigerator until he found an orange that was only half consumed with moldy green fuzz. He put it on the cluttered sink, chopped it in half with a whack from a dirty knife, and let the inedible portion slap to the floor. He consumed the "good" half greedily and washed it down with a freshly opened beer while looking at the gathering storm clouds out the window.

Despite his best effort, the memory he wanted to fade would not leave his mind. Usually after waking, those dream-things he believed real would be discredited by the world around him. Nevertheless, the memory of the city bus bearing down on him would not depart. He specifically remembered stepping off the curb and taking a large deliberate stride in into its path. Then, just at the moment of intended impact, he squeezed his eyes shut and for some reason the world went quiet.

A heartbeat or two later he was shocked to discover he was still alive. There was no bone crushing collision, no flight through the air, no pain, not even a squeal of brakes. Steve opened his eyes then and saw that the bus had moved from his left side to his right. The world came back with a rush of noise, a swirl of diesel exhaust and a strange feeling of sickening dizziness. He had tried hard to stay on his feet but found that the ground was canting while the scenery was spinning around him. He collapsed and only just managed to crawl back to the curb. The rest of approaching traffic came to a slow stop and monitored his progress with shouts and honking horns. Once on the curbside he had vomited repeatedly.

Now, here in his kitchen, Steve relived a bit of the nausea that had plagued him. He managed not to vomit, though the half-orange floating in its beer solution did little to quell his discomfort.

People just can't pass through things, he insisted. Something about what had happened eluded him. There was some detail he had to be forgetting because even if it weren't a dream, there was still something he didn't understand. There had to be a practical explanation for how the bus missed him. It was certain to be logical and sensible, and only his hangover was preventing him from seeing it.

He tipped back the rest of his beer in an attempt to poison his upset stomach into submission. Then he placed the empty bottle on the table behind him and studied the window before him.

It was a picture window -- easily eight feet wide and four feet high. At those dimensions, it was the principal part of his kitchen wall. So to his way of thinking, that outside wall had to be less substantial than a city bus. If he had already passed through the bus, then a wall made primarily of glass should be easy enough. If he were truly able to pass through solid objects, this wall shouldn't pose a problem at all.

****NEW PART HERE****

A moment later his forehead thrummed the glass.

Of course, he thought, it had all been a dream. Even as he thought that he didn't believe it. The bus had been real, he knew. Very real. Still nothing good could come of this, a part of him argued. Though unable to deny it had happened, that part of him would prefer altogether that it hadn't. It was definitely better left alone, he decided. But then Steve took a breath, let it out and bounced his forehead off the glass a second time. Another thrumming sound -- like a bass drum.

No change, no passing through the glass. What was he expecting? Stop now! It was all a dream, afterall. If not a dream then it was madness. Except...

Without warning, Steve tried again, and then again. A fifth, sixth, seventh time. With each attempt he grew angrier.

On his eighth try Steve closed his eyes, held his breath and snapped his head forward violently. This time he meant to break the glass, or at the least crack it. But there was no gratifying crack of the window. This time there was no thrumming sound. In fact, no sound at all... anywhere.

He felt himself moving forward and falling. He squeezed his eyes tighter and suddenly wished he had given up after the first failure. He tried to twist and turn himself around in a vain attempt to go back. He could not.

Farther he fell, turning, twisting. He could feel himself rolling over into an ungainly sort of somersault. Panicked, he clawed at the coffin quiet around him. He reached for something... anything to stop his momentum. Unable to gain his balance, he was forced at last to open his eyes.

Ass-over-teakettle, he thought. It was his father's colloquialism that floated through his head then. He was still falling, but his eyes were open. He saw the green grass and then a blue sky and then as he took a breath, the world turned to one side and began to spin wildly around him. Sounds rushed back to him like ocean waves angrily sliding into sand. His ears popped and his stomach rolled and then slowly his view of the world began to stabilize.

He had passed through the glass onto his front porch, through the black railing around it and on through the bushes below that railing. Now he was on the other side, flat on his back and staring up at the sky. Best of all, he didn’t vomit. It was close, but he had managed to stave it off and now that he did, he felt better than he had felt in days.

No hangover, no headache, no stomach ill at ease. Instead he felt invigorated, tuned-up, and altogether more solid than he had been before his trip through the glass. His skin felt tighter, his body was firmer and the only thing possibly wrong was the hunger pangs that were now starting in the pit of his stomach – as though he had never even eaten the half orange. He didn’t even have so much as the taste of beer in his mouth.

It was a big bag of Cool Ranch Doritos that finally put a lid on his hunger. That, plus a turkey sub and a bottle of Orange Crush. When he was done with the food, he crammed the wrappers into the garbage can just outside the grocery store doors. It was a little embarrassing eating that quickly, but by the time he had gotten there, the warm feeling in his stomach had turned to real heat. Plus, despite feeling physically prime twenty minutes earlier, he now had a headache and a strong metallic taste in his mouth. Somehow he felt that the combination was a harbinger of true starvation -- no matter how foolish the idea was.

When he was done gorging he felt normal, not bloated. It was hard to argue with that. Whats more, he had to cinch his belt in a notch. The Kit Kat and Snickers Bar were supposed to be a snack for later, but he finished them before leaving the parking lot and he was grateful that he could almost feel the sugar swirling through him.

Real food, he thought. It was just that he had real food for the first time in a long time. No rotting oranges, no liquid diet of beer. His body obviously craved solid foods, was all. And now that it had some, he was just fine. A thought occured to him then -- he should have bought some groceries for home. There was nothing in the house. Hell, he hadn't done any real shopping since Nina...

No matter, he interupted his own train of thought, food was easy enough to come by and his life was about to change in a very big way.

Talkback: Post Reply | View replies (1)