Scrubbing for Dreams (short story)

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Scrubbing for Dreams (short story)

Postby Panicked_Gesture » Sun May 29, 2005 12:19 am

(what I'm most interested in is if anyone can follow this)

Scrubbing for Dreams

Scrubbing. Always; back and forth, front to back. Take your time, don't miss anything. Clean and spotless, without blemish. Perfect creations once more. Perfection. Is that not the goal of all humanity, fulfilled ultimately by death? So you see what an important position you hold? You have been entrusted with humanity in her most pristine state! Take pride in your craft, oh purifier of man! And scrub...

A click silenced the recording, now a tiny shriek of white noise. The small hours of the morning had just begun to pass, but dawn was already here—his sun a small steel ball that rested close on the bookshelf. His arm reached slowly above his head, silencing the orb with a brush of the hand. His feet found the cold floor, carried him across the room, leaving the lone white sheet on the floor by the couch. Past the long-vacated bed and into the cramped, spartan bathroom. Looked into the mirror, into those glassy, lifeless eyes that stared back. Twinge of distantly familiar fear. But only the mirror. What did it know, what did it think?

He slid his card through the slit in the thin glass. Left hand agitatedly clenched and unclenched around the handle of his suitcase. Eyes took in the pretty blond clerk; he waited for his well-worn card to be returned. At last, it appeared out of the slot, and his hand reached out quickly to grab it.

"Seeya later, Charlie. Have a nice evenin' now."

"Charlie?" He stood there, confused. His eyes darted from his hands back up to the clerk, who returned his eyes blankly. Her posture gave impressions of a perpetual shrug that is forever stuck in the process of being transferred from the brain to the limbs. Gradually, the lights in her eyes dimmed, receding with the already dim light of the booth into darkness. She slumped, slightly, chin coming to rest inches from her plastic chest. All eyes in the room stared back at him now in the translucent reflection in wired glass. He walked out with a vague sense of disgust.

In the pale sunlight, he was walking with a slightly determined pace, his head pointed towards the rehashed pavement below him. His feet turned corners independent of the rest of the body, which dragged along behind him, wearily. His gaze remained intermittently transfixed between the pavement and the suitcase. The dead noise of his durable, plastic, deeply black shoes hitting the ground was lost amid the troubled ambiance that infused the city walkways.

To ears unaccustomed, there would have been an unearthly quiet in the street that day; as usual, none of the thousands of people in it had anything to say.

The trek back to his apartment was long, as usual; he accomplished it with knowing weariness, never questioning feet bringing him from point A to point B. They passed him up the flights of stairs to his door, as usual. He reached into his left breast pocket for his identification card, as usual—but his motion was arrested by a noise approaching from behind. For a moment, he was still; his hand remained, vaguely uncomfortably, in his left breast pocket. His brow furrowed, confused and unexpectedly frightened. He could feel his palms and forehead becoming moist as the uncertainty mounted. Slowly, he removed his hand from his pocket and placed it at his side. Then, waiting a few moments before moving, he turned, the shuffling of his feet on the dry concrete grating in his ears. Finally, he was facing opposite of the door and into the open-air alleyway, like one would face if one were walking out of the door.

Again, the sound crossed the threshold of his inner ear—just barely enough to register. It was coming from above him. The abandoned apartment building in front of him and the overhanging walkway of the floor above him obstructed his view. Making what he guessed to be a conscious decision, he stepped forward to the railing of the walkway. His hand shot up instinctively to block the light of the early evening sun that flooded his field of vision, previously obscured by the walkway. Slowly, though, he shifted his hand so as to allow himself a better view of the rooftop of the adjacent building. His eyes, still dazed from the shocking exposure, adjusted slowly. When they did manage to expel the brilliant caramel haze, he wasn’t sure that they still worked in the way that they had always worked before.

A dark shape against the sky, blurred, but with the unmistakable likeness of a human being.

He stood still, staring with blank eyes shaded by a hand above them. From what his eyes could discern of the shadow of a figure, there was no sign that his own presence had been recognized. No movement in it whatsoever, in fact. The figure might as well have been…entirely singular. He could think of nothing to compare it to. Except when it exploded. The word seemed to fit, strangely. The figure went from motionless to the most violent states of thrashing about, like bombs he had seen in newsreels that looked so calm, so unchangeably solid until they hit the ground. Arms flailed wildly, torso whirled like a suit on a clothesline tossed about by the wind. A head of long hair whipped back and forth in mad expression. There was no verbal part in this marvelously curious display. No utterances, words flung to the sky, shouts of any kind. It continued for a few seconds and finished with the sweep of a foot and the shuffling of loose stones, some of which shot off the side of the building, through the tall wire fence and clattering into the space beyond.

He watched in silent wonder for an indiscernible amount of time. He could not move, he was so enraptured with this amazing cyclical process of serenity and passion. Each state of being seemed absolutely foreign to him, who had lived his whole life with a buzz at the back of his mind, at once settling and agitating him. One uniform state of suppressed confusion, hung chained a few feet above reality. But something seemed to be clearer for this person, if not constant. Something was transferred in the sheer experience of the moment that communicated emotions that, till now, had seemed to elude him. Something inside of him—absurdly, and for no good reason—stirred.

He woke up. Reached for the cold sun, then stopped. He looked for a moment at his palm. Saw the white half-moon fingernail marks. Moved his fingers, felt the stiffness in them, in his arm. He started, touched his forehead. It was damp, as was the pillow. He jerked the white sheet off him. Felt the cool night air cooler than ever before on skin that was busily ridding itself of heat through sweat. Finally, he reached over and silenced the silver ball. Its silence probed him; it seemed to wonder suspiciously if anything was wrong, perversely motherlike. Something like resentment crawled across his mental landscape. A flash of something. Something that had happened to him yesterday or the day before? No, too brief, too sudden. Too recent. He looked back at his pillow and brushed his hand against it. It was still slightly damp. He brought his hand close to his face and saw the shine of something wet on his fingers. He stared at them closely for a while, could feel them drying in the breeze from the open window. The window suddenly began to close, anticipating his departure for work.

He frowned, realizing that he would be late.

But, as he knew they would, the dead waited for him, patiently. Two tables today, both men. The instruments sat on a stainless steel cart between them. Picking up the smallest of the implements on the tray, he turned and leaned over the man on the left. Mid-70’s, well-trimmed gray hair, beard. He started in on the forehead, gently sweeping the small brush—the tips coated with a compound that would at once relax the muscles and preserve the skin—up and down, carefully. The face was the most important aspect of any corpse. This man had been a businessman, and his suit would cover the rest of his body—which would, in fact, be replaced with a plastic form, the real flesh and bone (aside from his hands, of course) incinerated to insure a constant figure. The result would be placed in a glass case and fitted into the walls of the lobby of the office in which the man had worked.

He paused, straightened and turned to the cart, where he swished the end of the brush in a cleaning solvent for a moment. He removed the brush, tapped it on the lid of the glass containing the solvent, and then gently pressed the bristle tips against a small, spongy pad. He turned back to the man on the table. Looked down at the face, placid and unfeeling. Half of a forehead gleamed with a kind of plastic brilliance in the clinical light of the small workroom. He found himself staring at the man. He did not wonder what the man’s life had been like—he knew that already. He wondered what those eyes saw now they they were dead. He tried closing his own eyes, to see what he could see. For a moment, he saw nothing. He tried harder, putting the brush down so he could shield himself from the lamplight. And he saw the man on the table. He knew he was just remembering it, that it was a picture in his head. He looked closer, getting a better look at the face. Imagined himself bending over the man, as if he was about to start cleaning again. Saw the eyes, wondered what they saw. Saw them open. He opened his eyes with a start, backing off-balanced into the table behind him, bumping a younger corpse of about 50 with a clean-shaven face and only slightly grayed hair. For a frightening moment, his vision blurred a bit from closing his eyes so hard, he could not decide if the man’s eyes really were open or if they weren’t. After a moment, he found his hands clutching the table he had backed into, knuckles white. His fingers started to object, so he loosened his clutch, slowly. Of course the man’s eyes were not open and had not opened. He reached up and touched his own forehead. He looked at his fingers and noticed a damp gleam that shimmered in the sterile light.

Clump Clump went the shoes, in an uncharacteristic manner. His head straight, his eyes flicking back and forth slightly, taking in the scenery. His ears were in his footsteps, now feeling more like his own. And still no one glanced his way; he was one step nearer contentment. A passing man ticked so slightly at the corner of his mouth. He was back at the apartment. His hand, reaching for his card, paused, though he heard no noise. Terror in his eyes. Shaking his head, he stepped through the door.

“Who are you?”

“A…a man.” Her small frame was the picture of his horror. Those black smudges on her cheeks, the way her hair lept off her head. He was down on the floor, leaning against the closed door, shaking.

“No…no you’re not. Not a man.” She was twitching steadily, her head moving back and forth in the center of the room. Couldn’t manage to look down at him.

Wide-eyed recognition. “Am I…dead?”

* * *

He moved his stiff joints, eyes closed. Out the door. He turned from her silent body. The gun in her hand. The blood cold against the wall, almost black now. He left the room. His mind still.
Panicked_Gesture
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