Night Mare


The man at the back of the line in the Travel Center suddenly exploded. It wasn't an organic explosion; it was a big black shadow, like a vampire can throw onto a castle wall, and which has enough libido just by association with the master that it qualifies as a monster in its own right. It exploded outward and threatened to murder the woman behind the register. Just one person noticed. Some things are not seen because to see them would mean confronting them. The jockey saw the monster jump out and then slip back behind a benign indifference.

Wilson had been standing quietly at the back of the line and listening to the mannish woman behind the counter explain to another customer: "The holidays are the worst time of the year for identity theft so we're checking all the cards. Do you have a picture I.D.?" She spoke with the cold authority of somebody raised by assholes. The last time Wilson had bought gas in this Pilot station, he thought there was something wrong with the computers. Now he understood that they had decided to quit using the card readers at their pumps and inconvenience every single customer for the Holiday season.

There was a voice in Wilson's head which was outraged by this. "If I would've known the card readers at the pumps were just decoration, and this is a fucking third world gas station, I could have gone someplace else," it said. It said other things, mostly about the mentality of the management of any company who'd come up with a way to deliberately create a problem for every customer they have, but he kept saying, "I am not going to identify with negative emotions. This is not personal. This is just a minor annoyance."

He didn't know that the monster had been seen by the wiry little man in a yellow and black jockey's cap. Wilson had been looking at him -- the way he'd look at a dog in a suit -- when the jockey vanished. Wilson hadn't turned away and then back to find him gone. He'd been looking right at him when he faded away, like a projected image when the projector is turned off.

"You smoke too much pot," one of the voices said.

"Kiss my ass," he said. "I didn't ask you."

"Is it laced with something? We're hallucinating leprechauns."

He paid no attention to the background noise in his head because he was going to have to deal with the cash register warden, and she was looking at him with a native suspicion, one born of her search for what had gone missing in herself and been forgotten.

"Everybody is looking for just one thing," the jockey told him a half hour later. He'd been at the freeway ramp with his thumb out, and though Wilson didn't pick up hitchhikers, ever, he had to stop for the jockey. He'd been looking at him when he vanished into the air. It was a sign, like when a white owl flies across your path at night.

"What's that one thing?" Wilson asked.

"What's missing," the jockey said. "What else would they be looking for?"

"What was she missing?" Wilson pictured the cashier and a surge of adrenalin locked in an emotional memory of anger.

"The dark side of God."

"Yea?"

"Yea. And when you feel that negative animus hit you, the thing to do is stand right up to it the way you did."

"I shouldn't have gotten so mad."

"I don't think mad is the right word for what you did back there."

Since he gave the jockey a ride, Wilson had been trying to frame in his mind a way to ask him about the vanishing. He tried different approaches in his head, all of which left him open to sounding like a crazy person. The reason he didn't pick up hitchhikers was he didn't want to deal with crazy people, especially inside the confines of his car. Now he was afraid of imposing a crazy person on a hitchhiker.

Finally he took a shot at it. "When I was standing in line waiting to pay for gas, I swear you seemed to just disappear."

The hitchhiker nodded matter of factly and said, "I can do that. It's something I learned to do."

"You can make yourself invisible?"

"I don't know about that. The guy who taught it to me calls it smoking yourself. You learn how to leave an image of yourself in place while you split, and then it just breaks up, looks like you vanished."

"So, you can teach somebody how to do that?"

"I don't know. I guess you can teach some people how to do it and not other people. Not many people know how to do it to my knowledge. Now, I could do it there because there was an open door and all I had to do was get about six feet to be out of sight, and I can do that it a second or less. It's like sleight of hand; you trick the perception of the observer.

Being here in the car, where would I go if I was to try to do it? So it's like a lot of things, you have to pick the right place and time, and you have to be real quick on your feet."

"Did anybody but me see you do it?"

"No. And nobody but me saw you do that trick you do."

"You mean the mad thing?"

"Whatever you call it. It looked like a monster just jumped out of you like Jack out of the box, and then went back in; like it's hiding inside of you."

"It starts with a voice inside that thinks something is really rude or stupid, and if I identify with it, it can go berserk."

"I knew you were a berserker. The guy who taught me to vanish was a berserker. What does it feel like when you berserk?"

"It feels like I just vanish, and something else is there underneath, just waiting for me to leave. This other thing is a lot stronger than me, and it doesn't care."

"It doesn't care about what?"

"Anything. It doesn't care what happens. It's all six of one and a half dozen of the other. Once it's loose it just goes crazy."

"Yea," the jockey said. "That's where I just get on my horse and ride away."

"What kind of horse?"

"The night mare."

"What do you think they're gonna do to me if they catch me?"

"They don't have to catch you; you left your card, remember? As far as charges, I guess it depends on how much damage the card did; I don't think she had time to relax."

"I should've used a stolen card."

"That's what she was looking for."

Posted: Tue - December 5, 2006 at 07:13 PM