“You can leave.”
Silas is standing in the foyer of his home and his bags are packed next to the door. He stands in front of the door, hand on the knob.
“Is that what you want?” His wife is not mad but she screams like she is. She is hurting. Things have not been right with their family since Silas’s car accident. It hasn’t been completely horrible, but Silas’s night terrors, his irritability that has only gotten worse because of his worsening insomnia, had become so bad that they zapped the family of any happiness.
Silas hangs his head and feigns a look of pain. All he wants is to leave. It makes sense to him that he should be far away from everyone that he cares about. His hellish nightmares were only getting worse and he was sleeping less than ever.
“You are always in the hospital Si, is this really what you think is best?” His wife would be pleading if her tone wasn’t so harsh. It’s true, too. Silas is always passing out from exhaustion and doctors have identified the lack of sleep as the cause. She knows that something is terribly wrong with him. She feels betrayed that he hasn’t taken better care of himself. How could she expect for him to be the caregiver that he promised her he would be if he is on the verge of death?
“I won’t fight you if you need to go. I won’t make you feel bad for it.” This is a lie. She knows that Silas hates when she raises her voice. Even though the two are largely transparent about the superficial nature of their marriage, that Silas picked her because she was dutiful and obedient to him and she looked very good on his arm, Silas really does love her and she has always been more than just a trophy wife to him. He hates when she cries or yells because then he is not doing his duty to keep her content.
“I can’t let you do this to me and our daughters. I promised you and I promised them that I would do everything to make sure they were always cared for. I can’t do that when you’re in the condition that you’re in. You understand that?” He does. Which is why he is prepared to leave. But he can’t seem too eager, then she would wonder if he planned to leave her for good and even the idea of that was preposterous. She is the love of his life. And leaving her today is the best thing for everyone.
“You don’t have to leave.” I do, he thinks. “You can get help. Go back to the sleep doctor. Go back to the psychiatrist.” Her voice breaks and Silas knows that she will cry soon. And that will make him stay. Just long enough to see her smile again, but he can’t waste time. He has to leave.
“I’ll figure it out,” Silas says finally. He smiles and even though the corners of his mouth are in the proper place, his eyes squint like he is flexing to keep hold of his own tears. “I’ll figure all this out and be back to you in no time.”
He wants to kiss her, but that is not a good idea. Then he hears a horn outside.
“The car.” Silas speaks as he opens the door and waves for the driver to help him with his things. “Don’t worry about me, don’t worry about money. You’ve got your credit cards, access to the bank account. None of that stuff is going to change. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll be at the hotel until I can be the man you love.”
She crosses her arms over her chest and she looks down at the floor. Silas wants to kiss her.
“I love you,” he says when all of his stuff is in the car and as he closes the door to his home.
When Silas is inside the car, the driver asks him, “The hotel, right sir?`
Silas glares at the driver in the rearview mirror. He is annoyed that the driver must have been eavesdropping on the conversation with his wife.
“No. Take me here.” Silas hands the man a slip of paper with an address on it. The driver smiles, and it quickly fades when Silas does not return it.
It is a short drive and Silas looks out the window at the world passing him by. The whole thing has gone to shit, he thinks. If clowns aren’t stalking people, then crazy young folks are having sex and committing suicide in public. What has the world come to, he thinks. But it is not a real question. He knows the answer. He has seen the horrible beast that is responsible for the chaos of his world and if his demon guide is to be believed, then there was no way to stop it. At the intersection a street over from his house, there is a line of homeless people begging with cups. Silas watches as they seem to take turns at the line of cars waiting for the light. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed that the number of homeless people in his city had increased lately and there were more abandoned homes with boarded up windows in neighborhoods less affluent than his own. The line of homeless people becomes unruly when a homeless man cuts in front of a homeless woman at a car. She jumps on his back and digs her fingers deep into his eyes while he screams in pain. They both fall to the ground and while the man screams in agony, the woman continues her assault, swinging wildly at his genitals, then at his stomach. Silas shakes his head as the car pulls away.
As the car leaves the city, Silas notices strange vegetation in the countryside. He can’t tell if the trees he sees are afflicted with some malady that causes them to be gnarled and leafless, or if he is seeing something completely new. There are regular, healthy trees with green leaves and straight trunks, but there are also the nightmare trees as he calls them. They look like a winding trail of smoke flash frozen, as if the earth is growing thick black hairs.
Over a bridge, Silas looks down at the water and sees the bodies of floating fish that he presumes are dead floating gently on the current. Further down the river, Silas sees what he imagines to be desperate people wading into the water to catch the fish. He assumes that something toxic in the water must be responsible, and if that is the case, then those poor people were doomed as well. He can’t know this for sure, he is too far away to confirm it, but he feels that this is happening. The world around him is doomed. Unless he can do something to stop it.
They drive for about thirty minutes before the car pulls into an apartment complex. Silas gets out and leans into the driver’s side window.
“I got a lot of fancy stuff in your car right now,” he says as he produces a wad of bills from his pocket. The driver looks in amazement as Silas pulls off four hundred dollar bills. It is well beyond the cost of the ride. “You keep it, do what you want with it.” He gives the driver the money in his hand.
“Sir, I can’t take this, its way too much…”
“Think of it as a ‘get rid of my shit fee’,” Silas says with a smirk. He may be incapable of smiling anymore.
The man nods silently and he drives away. Silas finds the apartment number of the man he has left home in search of.
Silas bounds up two flights of stairs and then knocks anxiously at the door of the apartment he is looking for. A young man answers. The two have met before,
“Good to see you. I wondered if I had contacted the right Silas.” The man motions for Silas to come inside.
“You got the right one,” Silas says. He surveys the apartment. It is neat because it is mostly empty and there is an obvious layer of dust over everything. “I left my life and I can’t go back until I figure all this stuff out. I have to put a stop to these dreams.”
The man chuckles. “You still call them dreams?”
Silas shakes his head, “You know what I mean, Adam.”
Adam nods. “I do.”
“So, what do you know that I don’t?” Silas looks desperate. He looks tired and about twenty years older than he actually is.
“Enough to help you, I think.” Adam smiles.
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