The Lava, the Monsters, the Mechanics of the End
You have not lost your mind. It is injured somewhere in this darkness, among dark bubbles moving like lava inside a lava lamp. That’s all you see until the pain arrives. Then a light blooms green inside shapes that flutter around the bump-bump of another darkness that isn’t so much darkness anymore as a place that simply is not there, because the light reveals what does not exist, which is almost everything except the dog and its big wet teeth, and the dog is gone too now. He does not bark under your window anymore. You are in a baggy pink nightgown, trying to squeeze through the dark while the pain blows you these bubbles.
The bubbles resolve into monsters. The monsters are big and doughy and dark and shaggy, Wild Things that have escaped their maker. They feel so sorry for you. They bend down to stroke your face with their claws. Softly. They weep into your eyes; their tears burn as they become your tears.
The monsters bring you an elephant so small that it does not need anything to stand on. It floats an arm’s length away from your face and sways side to side, swinging its trunk like an elephant at a zoo who is bored. But this is an enthusiastic elephant. It makes you happy. Er—happy-er; one tiny elephant cannot fix all the hurt.
Sometimes, fourth vision, very bad, there is a giant mechanical sphere made up of parts like cubes and rectangles and curved bits and bulbs that flash and then disappear because the parts are moving. It is big and precise and scientific, very shiny in some places and all Vantablack shadow in others. It is too big for your head; it is too big for your room. It is always in motion, with parts that slide up, left, down, right, backward, up again, on some infernal death-star grid. When it finds the right combination, when all of the parts fall exactly into place, everything will be over. Just looking at the sphere one time, you know this is true. It has nothing to do with the dog or the wall that he knocked your skull into or even the pain in your head. This is the world; you are a part of it; and you will be gone.
You have not lost your mind. You know that these visions are false. They come during migraines. Half-brains, the best you have left. Blind spots and pain, vomiting and visions.
Two you like and two you do not, but all are distracting while you are at work, answering phones and going to meetings. Your boss has had enough of you and those monsters. You try asking them to come only at night, when you are alone and can pay best attention, but they will not obey any better than that neighbor’s dog did. The lava tells you to be glad anybody has come at all. Lava you were once; to lava shall you return.
All four show up when you describe them to Dr. Ketterly, the neurologist you are assigned in the brain clinic. He is a young doctor, maybe just finishing residency. He is thin and dark and he disapproves of how much weight you have gained since the TBI. You do not like being fat but you cannot push your body with your head anymore. You draw a diagram of the sphere and its typical actions, how it is teaching itself to bring on the end of the world, which will mean a quick death for most everyone in the clinic today. You explain that the dog might be coming for him too.
He tells you to keep working on the picture; he has to go do something for a minute. But you’ll soon give up on your drawing because you keep getting parts wrong when a portion of the sphere makes its move. You wonder what happened to Ketterly. When you go into the hallway, you find him at a telephone, making arrangements to have you committed 51/50.
You go back and get your drawing of the sphere and take yourself and your visions on home, where you will be glad to say nobody shows up to carry you away. You conclude that Dr. Ketterly hung up when he saw the hulk of you walking off.
You climb into bed and wait for the monsters. You want someone to be sweet to you. But what comes first is the migraine, which blooms out of your left eye like an octopus and then wraps its arms around your skull and squeezes. You pull at the tentacles; the monsters grab on and eat them, and now you are a little bit smaller. But the pain is not an octopus. It is only itself.
Of course you are angry. You call to the monsters, “Monsters, I want to send Dr. Ketterly a nightmare. I have put on a lot of weight. I want you to take my face with you and let it be the monster face that he sees closest up. Show him the sphere. But leave me the elephant so I’m not alone while you’re gone.”
So that is what happens. The sphere arrives and the monsters reach their hands out and set down the elephant and take your face with them. You’re faceless in the pink nightgown. The elephant stands on your shoulders and sways in his happy dance, and you sway just like him. Not exactly happy but not unhappy either. Something is going to change, and at the moment any change will make something better. You dance until you fall into bed and asleep.
It works. Dr. Ketterly vanishes. You know this because when you wake up with your old face back, you call the clinic to say you want a new doctor. The voice on the phone tells you, “Who? What?” and “You have to stop barking, ma’am, I cannot understand.”
Susann Cokal has made it into Gargoyle for the third time. Her four novels include Mirabilis and The Kingdom of Little Wounds, the winner of several national awards and mentions, including a permanent spot on prominent banned and challenged lists. Her short work has appeared in venues such as Cincinnati Review, Electric Lit, Prairie Schooner, The Los Angeles Review, The Journal, Writers on the Job, Hunger Mountain, and The New York Times Book Review. She lives physically in a creepy old farmhouse in Richmond, Virginia, and on the web at susanncokal.com.