Sueños​

Issue 18

        Just east of El Paso black smoke crawled from underneath the hood of Dylan’s pickup. Images of twisted metal and broken limbs barraged his brain. Desperate to shelter his heart from that looming sandstorm of grief, he banished them and leadfooted the gas.
        He’d left Fort Bliss as soon as his CO signed off on his emergency leave. By midnight he’d hit Plano. He didn’t want to see the pain in his parents’ faces—that would make it too real, too true—but he needed to soldier on. He raced through this flat land with its brown scrub and windmills like conquering aliens, radio cranked and heart racing whenever a single-engine plane came into view.
Nothing would ever be the same.
        He wasn’t ready for it.
        He cleared Odessa and its oil-boom sprawl when the black smoke coiled up again, this time too thick to ignore. A mile later an exit sign appeared, no name, no number, just EXIT. He chanced it and reached a stop sign. The desert gave him no clues. He gambled left.
        For three miles, nothing but blacktop and dirt. The sun bobbled close to the horizon. At this rate he might not make Plano until morning. Rather than panic he felt a guilty relief. That’s when he spotted the battered green sign.
        Sueños: Population 93
        Up ahead he spied a house, windows blackened, siding stripped. Then another. A third with sheets slack on a clothesline. He passed rusted cars, a post office and tavern and general store, their windows black. Sun-beaten Victorians lined the threadbare main street, their porches thick with furniture and bottles and milk crates.
        He slowed past one porch where a naked baby doll hung from a beam. Beside it, a bony woman sat in a rocker. She wore a bathrobe and dangled a cigarette between her fingers. He asked her for an auto repair shop. She eyed him, her pupils cold little stones. Finally she extended her cigarette hand, the orange ember a demon pointing the way. He glanced back at the hanging doll and continued on.
        He found it: a shop with a lone pump and jalopies heaped along the edges. He parked his smoking pickup and stepped out into air laced with tar. A small-framed man hunched over the engine of a Toyota. He grinned at Dylan, wiped greasy hands on his overalls, and sauntered over. He had unruly black hair, wispy whiskers and smile lines.
        “Those boots are sharp, bro,” he said.
        The boots Dylan wore were made of a leather so soft they felt like they could melt. They were too large when he got them. Since then, he’d overshot them. “They’re Varvatos.”
        “What’s that?”
        “A brand.”
        “Sounds expensive.” He pulled a coin from his pocket. “Flip you for ‘em.”
        “No. They were Kyle’s.”
        “Who’s that?”
        “My brother. Was. Is. Was.”
        He pointed to the Texans cap on Dylan’s head. “Kyle give you that, too?” Dylan shook his head. “Good, let’s flip for it.”
        “I don’t want to flip for anything.”
        “You gotta.”
        “Why?”
        “Because there’s always a price.”
        ​Dylan looked at his sickly pickup, the bleached houses, the neglected cars. He didn’t want to be here. Or in Plano. “Whatever. Sure.”
        The man held out the coin. “Your choice, bro.”
        “Heads.”
        “They always pick heads.” He flicked the coin with a dirty thumbnail. It tumbled onto the oil-stained concrete. He inspected it, then leered up, hand extended. Dylan passed him the cap, suddenly ashamed of his high and tight.
        “Double or nothing for those boots.”
        ​“You’re never getting them.”
        “We’ll see.”
        The shop door swung open. A squat woman with gray braids leaned out. “Freddy! What’re you’re doing to that boy?”
Dylan whispered the name Freddy. It felt important.
        Freddy raised his hands as if busted. “Not doing nothing, abuela.”
        “Don’t call me that. I’m nobody’s grandmother.”
        His mouth twitched an aborted smile. “Old crone witch,” he muttered.
        “You just gonna to stand there, or are you gonna do your damn job?”
        Freddy flashed a grin and popped the hood. He grunted for several minutes before poking his head up. “The radiator’s kablooey.”
        “Can you fix it?”
        “Gotta call Odessa for the part. Tomorrow. Maybe.”
        ​“I need to get to Plano.”
        Freddy stared at him plaintively. “You sound desperate. Too desperate.” A vulture swooped overhead. They watched it pass. “Careful, bro. They’ll smell it on you.” Freddy shoved the hood closed. “You really should get out of here.”
        The old woman locked the door and strode over in her denim shirt and trousers. She eyed Dylan for a moment too long.
        “No,” Freddy said softly.
        “Sun’s almost gone,” she said.
        “No,” Freddy repeated, softer still.
        Dylan fished out his phone. No signal. Panic and relief wrestled in his mind. “You got a phone I could use? In the shop maybe?”
        She took Dylan’s hand. Hers felt like wax against his skin. “There’s a phone at the house.”
        “What house?”
        Freddy grunted. “I don’t think he’s the type--”
        “I can see it in his eyes,” she snapped.
        “Listen, abuela--”
        “I said don’t call me that.” She softened her tone for Dylan. “It’s Veronica’s nineteenth birthday. A special night. You’ll love her. And she’ll love you.”
        Freddy jumped in front of Dylan. “Tell her no.”
        “Shut it, pendejo,” the woman said.
        “Useless old prune,” Freddy told her.
        The woman stroked Dylan’s hand. “Useful still. Well, boy?”
        “I really need a phone,” he told Freddy apologetically.
        “He’s made his choice,” she announced.
        She led them into the night. The air cooled. Abandoned shacks gave way to stunted mesquite. A coyote howled. Dogs barked back. A grove of trees sprung up, and beyond them, ramshackle sheds and a two-story house with additions like tumors. Dylan glimpsed a shadowed figure in an upper dormer. A porch with a rotted banister circled the house. Paper lanterns glowed above the railings. Through a first-floor window he spied a bustle of bodies. A brindle mutt slept chained near the bottom step. It looked up with wet eyes. Dylan bent down to pet it but Freddy grabbed his arm. “Careful, bro. Get too close and he’ll rip your throat out.”
        “Don’t scare him.” the woman hissed. She yanked Dylan up the steps and set her hand on the doorknob. “Dearest Veronica will eat you up.”
        Before they entered Dylan heard Freddy whisper, “Remember, there’s always a price.”
        The door creaked open. Light flooded out, along with laughter and classic rock and smells both pungent and sweet. The woman led him through a dark wood foyer with a groaning floor into a long room packed with furniture and bric-a-brac and bodies sitting and standing and shuffling to music. Everyone stopped and looked at Dylan in his too-tight boots and soldier’s cut.
        “Oh, what a sweet toy!” a woman called out. She wore a daisy-print dress, rings on every finger, hair too black and makeup too thick. She sat at a table surrounded by five women who could’ve been her sisters.
        “Those are the aunts,” Freddy said. “Careful, they bite.”
        One covered her mouth in mock shock. “Oh, you imp!”
        The aunts cackled while a dozen men huddled, both looking and ignoring. Dylan caught the eye of one, salt-and-pepper mustache, Hawaiian shirt. He limped over and offered a crystal tumbler containing an offensively murky liquid.
        “Drink, mi hermano.”
        “I’m not your…” Dylan sighed and claimed the glass and swallowed in angry gulps. It burned.
        “I was like you. Once,” Hawaiian shirt man said.
        His breath smelled of anchovies. Dylan waited for someone to pull him away but no one came so he broke the man’s gaze and approached a breakfront packed with toy vehicles and action figures, all carefully positioned except for a single green soldier on its side. A line cut through its blank face. He righted it.
        A gnarled hand reached from behind and swiped a train engine off the shelf. An old man in a burgundy uniform turned it in his hands. “Since before I could remember I wanted to be on the trains. Then I got hired as a porter on the Eagle Express. What a beaut. Red velvet seats. Tables of the finest California redwood. We were all so proud of her. But then the line went bust. And I did too.” His eyes were wet. “I was different once. I had dreams.”
        “Oh, you!”
        Hawaiian shirt man pried the train from his grip. “Charley, quit scaring our new friend.”
        Charley snatched it back. He exchanged it for a boxer figurine. “This one....” He motioned to Hawaiian shirt man. “Ernie can tell you.”
        Ernie held it in his palm. “I was an artist on that canvas. They said I’d make Vegas. Instead they found a defect in my heart.” He returned the boxer. “I should’ve ignored them. I should’ve dropped dead in the ring.”
        “Oh, you!”
        Another man, late twenties, blond goatee, muscles, clamped Dylan’s shoulder. “Hey, I’m Stevie. So weird to see someone here who’s not geriatric or certifiable. Me? I used to ride dirt bikes. Then I busted a femur. Never the same again. What’s your story?”
        “I’m a soldier. Fort Bliss.”
        Stevie knitted his eyebrows. “That’s it? You gotta be here for a reason.”
        “My truck broke down. I need a phone.”
        “Weird. Whatever.” He held out a shot glass. “Here. Drink. And don’t think. Never think.”
        Dylan knocked it back. It had a metallic aftertaste. After a minute his limbs tingled. He wanted more. He did another shot. The men whooped and the women cackled and he felt unbreakable.
        “Sing us a song!”
        He stood tall and thrust out his arms.
        “I’m a little airplane, watch me fly
        First I rev my engine, then I climb high
        Lifting off the runway, up into the sky
        ​Watch me as I soar from low to high
        From way down low to up, up high”
        He raised his body as if he could levitate and never ever crash into the trees. But they always crash into trees. He collapsed onto the floor.
        Freddy nudged him. “What’re you doing, bro?”
        ​“I’m dead.”
        “Can I have your boots then?”
        “Fuck off.”
        “You sound pretty alive to me.”
        Dylan sat up cross-legged. “Kyle never gave them to me. I didn’t think he deserved them, so I took them.”
        ​Freddy clucked his tongue. “See?”
        “See what?”
        “This just proves that I’m better than you. I’d never steal those boots. I won’t have to, bro. You’ll end up giving them to me.”
        “Quit dreaming, asshole.”
        A clock chimed nine. A tremor of voices rose in the room. Freddy sucked air through his teeth. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
        Footsteps descended a staircase behind the wall. Conversations withered. From the edge of the wall her thin fingers emerged, then her olive-skinned arm, then the rest. She took the last stair and glided into the room, shoulders back, her black hair spilling down her shoulders. She wore a fitted emerald dress that nearly reached the floor and a cream-colored shawl that draped her shoulders. Dylan sensed some charge coming off her, like the air before a thunderstorm. She seemed timeless to him; she could have existed just like this fifty years ago, a century, even two.
        Dylan climbed to his feet.
        “Bless you all, gathered here, just for me,” she said.
        Her voice hit Dylan like a cool breeze on a hot day.
        “Happy birthday, my dearest Veronica.” The aunts grazed a kiss on each cheek. The men hung back, eyes on their shoes, except for Ernie, who led Dylan to her.
        “We got you a present.”
        She parted her lips. “You’re a new one.”
        ​The blood rushed to his chest. “I didn’t plan on being here.”
        “You seem troubled.”
        Before he could mention the phone call he needed to make, she ran a finger across a gold pendant that hung against her olive neck. “I...uh...wow.”
        The aunts cackled. “Oh, the state of him.”
        Veronica glared at them. The laughter stopped. “You’re a friend of Freddy’s?”
        “No way. He took my cap. Now he wants my boots. Soon enough there’ll be nothing left of me.”
        She let out a gentle humph. “Oh, Freddy.”
        Dylan motioned to Ernie. “Is he your father?”
        Veronica flicked her fingers. Ernie backed away. “No.” She took his hand and traced the lines of his palm, her fingernail barely touching his skin. “No children for you. Will you miss them?”
        “How can you miss what you never had?”
        Her glossy lips hovered near a smile. “My new one. My soldier boy. Come. Dance with me.”
        A slow song played. Dylan wrapped an arm around her waist and shuffled in his too-small boots. She smelled faintly of roses. Her hand was soft against his. His heart fluttered. He had to remind himself to breathe.
        “Tell me about your life, soldier boy.”
        He couldn’t. Not yet. Too raw. So he spun her lies and told her how all he ever wanted in life was to be a war hero.
        She pulled him closer. Their bodies almost touched. “Something’s changed in you. I can feel it.”
        More lies. “I keep having these visions. War. Horrible war. My body all mangled. Broken bones.”
        “So you woke up to reality and it killed your dreams. Is that what’s troubling you so?”
        Her shawl slipped to reveal her bare shoulder. He wanted to run his hands along her skin. “I hate my reality.”
        Her lips brushed his ear. His blood pounded. “You can let it all go. The disappointment, the loss. All of it. Forever.”
        She focused her dark jewel eyes on his. Deep within her pupils he caught sparks of orange. No past. No future. Just her and this moment. Some animalistic terror bubbled up, urging him to run. He flinched away from her.
        “You’re not ready.” She abandoned him for the whispering aunts. He stood there alone as if lost in the desert, hot and nauseous, and he wondered what they put in those drinks. He staggered off and bumped into Stevie slumped against the wall.
        “Where’s the bathroom?”
        ​Stevie looked up sad-eyed and thumbed the hallway behind him. Dylan found it. It reeked of sewage, toilet crusted brown, wallpaper peppered with mold. He splashed cold water on his face and stared at the mirror. Instead of his muscled body he saw his scrawny thirteen-year-old self, a boy too weak for the world. He wanted to smash the glass, to pulverize what he saw there. Instead he looked out the window at the starless black sky, wishing he could become a part of that nothingness.
        Finally he gave up and opened the door.
        Veronica blocked the hall. “You okay, soldier boy?”
        “My name’s Dylan.”
        She twisted the pendant. “There’s someone you need to meet.”
        She led him up the stairs and down a twisting hall to the last door. He followed her inside; The air was humid and sour. The room was strewn with shadows. He could make out a canopy bed shrouded by a curtain, a nightstand, and a dresser. On top of the dresser stood a statue of a robed woman flanked by candles and a wooden screen painted with snakes, vultures and roses.
        “Some call her the Virgin of Guadalupe,” Veronica said. “Others call her Tonantzin, mother of gods. One would save your soul. The other would claim your body. Which would you give, your body or your soul?”
        “I don’t know how to answer that.”
        “They never do.” She pulled aside the bed’s curtain. “Mother, I’d like you to meet Dylan.”
        Through the shadows he glimpsed a woman who lay smothered beneath the blankets, her face wrinkled, her lips parted.
        “Is she…”
        “Sick, yes, but very much vital.” She leaned her ear to the woman’s lips. “What’s that, mother?” Dylan peered as best as he could but he couldn’t detect any movement. “Of course I will.” Veronica plucked a brush from the nightstand and ran it through the mother’s black hair. “Mother, Dylan’s a soldier.” He fixated on the mother. Still no movement. “He dreamed of becoming a war hero, but then he realized the truth: that they’ll send him off die in the most horrible ways. But the only thing that’s died are his dreams. Isn’t that right, Dylan?”
        He shrugged.
        “No? Then what? Tell me.”
        ​The blood left his body. “Something was taken from me. I didn’t know I’d miss it so much. But I do and it’s awful and I can’t let myself feel it. I can’t. I fucking can’t.”
        “You don’t have to.” Her voice turned softer than the candlelight. “Ever.”
        “It’s not that easy.”
        Veronica leaned her ear close to the mother’s mouth. Dylan stared at lips that never moved. “Do you know what she told me? She said, ‘my dearest, you will stay like this forever,’ What about you, Dylan? Do you wish to stay like this forever?”
        He stared at the boots. “I wish I could go back and change it all.”
        She left the mother and went to him and took his face in her hands. “I can help you forget about all of that.” She grazed his bottom lip with her teeth. “Forever.”
        Bitterness laced his tongue. He swirled in a whirlpool of desire. He wanted so bad to just let go. “I can’t.”
        She frowned. “You’re still not ready yet. Go back to the party.”
        He felt chastened but compliant. Before he left he glanced back at the mother. Did her lips quiver, or was it just the flicker of the candlelight?
        By the time he reached the last step he remembered Kyle and Plano and his pickup and why he’d come here in the first place. He needed a phone. Before he could advance, someone yanked him around by his arm.
        Stevie glared at him. “What were you doing with her?”
        Dylan shook free. “Who the fuck you think you are?”
        “She’s not yours.”
        Freddy squeezed between them. “Actually, she’s no ones.”
        “Tell this clown to steer clear of her.”
        ​“Tell this asshole to back the fuck up.”
        “If you kill him,” Freddy told Stevie, “I get his boots.”
        “Shut up.”
        “Fuck off.”
        “Hey hey hey.” Ernie rested hands on Stevie’s shoulders. “You know how this works. You won’t be the only one.”
        “I don’t like him.”
        “Fuck you,” Dylan said. “I don’t even want to be here.”
        ​“Then leave, asshole.”
        “Come now, hermano,” Ernie told Dylan. “We must cool off.”
        He guided Dylan out onto the porch. Dylan wrapped his arms around himself and stared out into the starless night. He had a hundred questions but he didn’t care enough to ask.
        “I don’t want to go.”
        “You don’t have to.”
        Dylan scoffed. “My parents would kill me. ‘Typical Dylan,’ they’d say. Kyle was the responsible one. I was the fuck up. And now,” he glanced down at the boots, “look where I am.”
        “A paradise of sorts.”
        Dylan peered out toward the distant hills. “It’s not a river, like they say, or an ocean. It’s a sandstorm chasing you.”
        “What is, hermano?”
        “Grief.” He gripped the rotting banister, wanting so bad to crush it, then cursing himself for not being strong enough. “It’s coming for me, and once it does, I’ll be dried up and smothered. The hurt will set in and it won’t ever end.”
        ​“You don’t have to let it touch you.”
        “It’s not that easy.”
        “But it is.”
        A cold wind kicked up. Dylan shivered. He didn’t turn as Ernie left the porch. He didn’t turn when new footsteps came toward him.
        “I thought I’d lost you, soldier boy.” Veronica looked up at him.
        “I should leave.”
        “‘Should’ isn’t the same as ‘want to’.” She lifted his chin. “You were never afraid of war.” He shook his head. “What, then? What’s broken inside you? I can almost taste it. Whatever it is, give it to me, every last drop, and you’ll never have to feel that pain, ever. All you have to do is say yes.”
        He looked to the endless black, the hills, the starless sky. All he wanted was that void. “Yes.”
        “Good. Now come inside where it’s warm.”
        She led him into the living room, now empty. On the table instead of food the statue sat surrounded by candles.
        Dylan’s heart pounded. “What’s this?”
        “Hush.” She ran a finger along his bottom lip. He licked it and tasted bitterness. “The world’s gone. Your pain is gone. It’s only you and me.”
        He stared into her eyes and caught those orange sparks, ancient and primal, only now he wasn’t scared. He lost himself in their pull and the pounding of his heart. She kissed him, then ran a finger along his lip, again leaving that residue. His heart fluttered close to ecstasy. The room swayed. He stumbled against the breakfront. The toy soldier toppled. He tried to right it as his world turned black.
        ***
        Dylan woke with a scream trapped in his throat. His hip ached. He felt something hard and cold beneath his head. He blinked at patches of sunlight on the floor and pushed himself upright. He was in a room with cinder-block walls, a thin window high up, and no exit except for a trap door in the ceiling. He inhaled the stench of his own sweat. He craned his head and winced. He ran his fingers along his skin and felt a wound on his neck.
        “What the hell?”
        Above him a slot opened in the trap door. Dark eyes peered down.
        “Lazarus comes alive,” Freddy said.
        Dylan tried to stand. His knees buckled and he sunk back onto the floor.
        ​“Careful there, bro. You’re still new. A baby calf.”
        “I need to leave.”
        The slot shut and the trap door opened. Freddy dropped a ladder and climbed down. Dylan’s head felt pummeled by a sledgehammer. “What time is it?”
        Freddy crouched beside him. “Morning.”
        “Shit. I’ve got to get back to Plano. The funeral’s the day after tomorrow.”
        “The day after tomorrow was two days ago.”
        “What? No. No. No.” Dylan banged his head against the cinder-block. “God I’m such a fuck-up. I can’t believe I let them down again.”
        “You know how many people tell me that exact same thing?”
        Dylan touched his neck. “What did she do to me?”
        “She’ll let you heal before she does it again. By the third time you won’t ever want to leave.”
        The residue of bliss lingered in his leaden limbs. “What is she?”
        “If I told you, you’d never sleep again.” Freddy’s gaze flickered around the cell-like room, then he sucked in air through his teeth. “Fuck that bitch. Listen to me carefully. One-time offer. Stay here, you’re good as dead. Nothing but a whole life of never trying, never changing.”
        “I don’t want that.”
        A smile twitched in the corners of Freddy’s mouth. “I’ll help you. For a price.” His eyes traveled down Dylan’s body. “There’s something I wanted the first time I saw you climb out of that busted truck. Are you gonna pay it, or are you gonna give yourself up to her? Choice is yours. But time’s a ticking. Sunlight won’t last forever. Once it’s gone, so are you.”
        ​***
        The sun beat high in the sky. Dylan shuffled down the dirt road, his limbs heavy with that lingering bliss. He vowed he’d keep strong but with each step that house of cast-asides called out for him, and the louder it called, the more his own pain swelled, that sandstorm of grief roaring closer and making him want to howl. His lips felt stitched, but eventually that thread would snap.
        He willed his stinging feet forward, imagining himself collapsing under the unforgiving sun, vultures crunching his bones into dust. He swallowed a sob and shuffled away from that house, down the scrub-scattered road toward windmills that ruined the horizon. He stepped on a jagged rock but didn’t wince, his bare feet growing accustomed to the sting, those boots he stole from his brother the price of his freedom and nothing ahead but the sharp teeth of grief.
        ###

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KEVIN SINGER is an army veteran and medical editor who loves snowboarding and writing. His fiction has appeared in several anthologies and literary magazines, most recently Folklore Review and Uncharted. He lives in Jersey City.

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