Soma
By Derrick Sanders
Have you ever awakened from a dream and been unsure if it wasn’t actually reality you had left behind? And what, then, when that other existence won’t remain in slumber, but leaks through to speak, to guide, to demand your attention…and action? Jason Harrington discovers that neither friends, lovers, nor enemies are likely to be what they outwardly seem.
Oh! obstacle remover, bestower of all wealths,
Oh! the Ruler of all worlds,
Sri Rama, to thee my repeated salutations
I dug into the chair, reeling. My fingernails pulled back little, green balls of polyester fungus. The room spun and faded. Manas surrendered, retreating a dimension as his skin blued, his voice echoing in my head.”You have a duty, Jason. You’ll die with or without it.”
I woke up in my own bed. Well, on my own couch, in my shitty, little one room apartment. The temperature was well over ninety degrees, worse because the blinds were open and I was right under the July sun. My head throbbed. I was sweating from every pore in my body. I felt like a raw sore, oozing out into the room. I checked the time on my cell phone and winced. Almost four-thirty. If I didn’t hurry, I’d miss the beginning of happy hour.The walk to the store would have been pleasant, but the hangover made the sunlight into a weapon. I still felt sick, and my hands shook: from dehydration, hunger, and a little tremens. In the store, I grabbed a Slim Fast, some Ho Hos, and a pack of cigarettes. The clock behind the counter said five-oh-five, and I cursed. I was late already.Patrick rang up my purchases with a smile and a casual greeting.
“Not bad. And you?” I responded. I started writing a check, hoping that there was still some money in the account. I was out of things to hock other than my couch, and had no way to get that to any of the pawnshops.
I walked out of the shop, packing my smokes. I swore under my breath-at the hangover, at the sunlight, and at my sorry ass for not being on time. I had a date, and since she had only been in town a few weeks, I figured I had a fair enough shot with her.
On my way through the parking lot, Patrick came running out, a piece of notebook paper in his hand. “Dude, you left this with Jan last night. She told me to give it to you today.”
I do so much pointless shit in blackouts that I just thanked him, took the piece of paper, and stuffed it into my pocket. I needed to go meet Kate.
Slamming the diet shake in about three gulps, I walked as fast as I could to The Joynt, the bar where we were supposed to meet. I tried not to break a sweat. I didn’t want to show up all funky.
But, of course, Kate wasn’t there. I asked the bartender-a young, mousy brunette-if she had seen my rendezvous. She said, no, she didn’t think so, and no one had asked for me. I ordered a glass of water and a pitcher of beer. I paid out of my dwindling supply of cash. They would have taken a check from me, but I was leery about writing one there. Bouncing it would have meant finding a new haunt, some other soulful dive where beers were a quarter during happy hour. A hard find. And Springsteen on the jukebox. An even harder find in a college town full of punk kids and their Yuppie professors.
I took the wadded-up piece of paper out of my pocket. The writing was hardly legible, but I recognized it as my own. I deciphered it slowly. It made no sense.
| That Nazi fuck. He has to die. Not at all who is what is he is. Fuckin’ dog. Yours is the sword, do it. Your journal is here. Manas doesn’t want you to read it. But do, do. His skin is blue, blue. |
That last line sent my memory back to the night before. The hallucination, blurred by the intoxicants, watching Manas become a figure in one of his own tapestries. The rest of the note made no sense at all, but I decided to bite. The hangover had me a bit addled, and I was bored.
I motioned the bartender over and asked her if I had left anything in the bar. She ducked down, nodding, and came up with my bag, a tattered ammo-pouch from the army-surplus store. In her other hand she had a glossy new notebook. The cover was in dark blue, and someone had drawn on it, a big hand with middle finger extended. Well, I had drawn the hand-I knew the second I saw it. But I didn’t remember the notebook at all.
“Heya, I think that notebook is mine too.” She had started replacing it under the bar.
“Oh, really? I thought it was Manas’.” She brought it back up to the bar, and opened it. The first page bore a caricature of her, naked, an enormous phallus heading toward her mouth. I smiled.
“Nope, see, it’s mine.” She looked horrified. Blushing, she closed the notebook, and pushed it toward me, avoiding eye contact. I couldn’t tell what combination of embarrassment and rage she had going on. Instead of trying to figure it out, I just picked the notebook up, along with my beer and bag, and headed to a table.
The first few pages of the book were filled with more obscene pictures and some dirty haiku poetry. After the poetry, there was a drunken scrawl again, a barely legible note that made no sense once I did manage to decipher it.
| Manas says he’s got her, even though she seems to hate him. Maybe she hates him more, more now. What tits. What great tits. Tomorrow, he says he’ll start showing me how to get rid of him, fuckin’ Nazi. |
Underneath, there were pictures of cups. They were little chalices, and not done by my hand. The bowls of the cups had been colored in with green highlighter and each one had a number underneath. As the numbers got larger, more green in the chalices. A calendar, I imagined. The last number was circled. It was a fifteen. Today was the twelfth.
The next page, more notes.
| Rama Rama. Rama longa ding a dong. Headless, probably. He showed me to him as a skeleton, as a fat bodied dog, and then as the decrepit spirit he really is. Whatta fucker. Manas is right, he’s got to go. |
I turned the page. The next note was totally legible. It looked like it may have been my handwriting. It simply said:
| After she leaves, look in your bag. And just play along. It’s Heather. |
By far the strangest note so far. The rest had been at least half-incoherent rambling. A sober man wrote this one, and I still didn’t remember doing it.
My thoughts were interrupted by a woman, all in red, sitting at my table with a glass of soda in front of her. I had never seen her before in my life, but she was a hottie all right. Long, black hair and wild hazel eyes sat in a pretty, apple-shaped face. She filled out her red tank top to the point of bursting. Her lips were painted just as red as the shirt and skirt, a hot, fire-engine color that made me think of candy and cinnamon. All curves and attitude.
“Hi, how are you today?” she asked casually, in a voice as sweet as how I hope her lips tasted. She seemed to know me, or this was about the most forward come on I’d ever seen.
I looked down at the notebook. Just play along.
“Hi, Heather,” I tried. She smiled back at me, so I guessed I had the right name. “I’m good. Why don’t you grab a glass and join me for a beer?” I laid the charm on as thick as I could, holding her eyes with mine the whole while. She laughed out loud.
“Still trying to get me to drink? You and Manas should both quit, find out what it’s like on my side.”
So, she knew me through Manas? I was getting very anxious to see the man, to find out what the Hell had been going on. How often and how much had I blacked out?
Heather grew serious. “Well anyway, thanks for chasing that asshole Brian off of me last night. I thought you two were going to go at it right there. Look, uh, don’t take this as a date or anything, but would you like to come have dinner with me right now? I would really like you to-not just as a thank you. But you’ve gotta slow down on the drinking. Really.” She looked at me plaintively, and it was just about enough to stop my heart. But still not enough to overwhelm my curiosity. I needed to get back to my journal.
“Thanks, but I can’t.” Disappointment washed across her face, and when her lips went all pouty, I almost changed my mind. “I’m really sorry, but I’m supposed to be meeting someone here. It’s kind of a date.” I added the last bit, hoping to see a spark of jealousy. Nothing, though, but the pout.
“Oh, well, some other time then.” She smiled a little. I caught her eyes again, and smiled as sincerely as I could into them. Like a child, it took only a split second for her to go back to her own beaming smile. I was smitten, truly.
She walked out, and I dove back into the journal.
| After she leaves, look in your bag. |
I grabbed my bag, sweating and trembling. This was getting to be too fucked up, even for the king of fucked up. A half a pack of smokes; not my brand. Two tapes; compilations. Three condoms; unused. And something wrapped in black cloth. I decided against taking it out of the bag, lest it turn out to be contraband. I stuck my hand into the bag and tugged at the cloth. The bottle was plain glass; inside was a cool, green liquid with little particles swirling around.
I replaced the cloth around the bottle, head spinning from too many questions to even start asking. I turned my attention back to the journal.
Rama sounded slightly familiar, like the name of some celestial body. Or something, I just didn’t know. What Nazi? I didn’t know any that I could think of. Was I on the verge of discovering some new fascist astrological system?
I had seen Manas every night for two weeks, and now he was gone. Of course, from all those nights, I had only vague memories of designer pot, Persian rugs, and a bottle of something that tasted like rot and licorice.
I rushed through my beer, going over all this. I wanted to get up and walk away, find anyone who could explain some of this to me. I emptied the last of the beer from the pitcher into my glass and opened my bag to replace the journal. Just as I looked up, shouldering my bag, a fresh pitcher of beer was set on the table.
Manas and Matt-another friend-stood at the table, wide grins on their faces.
“Thought we’d save you the hassle of getting another one,” said Manas, picking up the empty pitcher.Matt shot me an inquisitive look and gestured at a chair. I nodded, and returned the gesture. We’d been friends for over ten years and we still went through all the polite rituals. Manas was headed back to the bar, digging through his pockets. I decided to take advantage of his absence.”Matt, what the Hell is going on?” I guess I had enough confusion and panic in my voice to keep the question from sounding casual.
He looked at me, concerned and confused.
“Well, for starters, what the Hell am I writing drunken journal entries about a Nazi for?”
“Brian? You’ve been getting drunk and egging him on for a week now. You don’t remember?”
I shook my head slowly. The name rung a little familiar, like someone was telling me about a dream I couldn’t quite remember.
“Brian. Maybe. I don’t know. What about Heather?” I smiled just saying her name.
Matt shrugged took a sip of beer. “I don’t know. She just moved here, from Madison or St. Paul or somewhere. She comes out every night, but all she does is hang out with you and Manas and drink Coke.”
A vague memory, an arm around her waist, tapping out the beat of a song on her full hips. I was about to ask more, but Manas returned with two cardboard boats of peanuts. He took the chair across the table from me.
Some people took them for brothers, and I always got a chuckle out of that. Manas was from Bengal and Matt was Chippewa and Mohican; the Indian and the Indian. I guess in a small college town full of German and Scandinavian descended Europeans, any two brown people could be related. Both had polite, outgoing, affable manners, were of medium height, and had slight paunches. Manas had a black-as-black-could-be goatee, and they wore slightly different hairstyles, medium length, Manas’ parted in the middle and Matt’s-when he remembered to brush it-slightly to one side. They both laughed a lot. Manas because he was perpetually high, and Matt because the tragic irony of everyday life amused the Hell out of him.
Breaking the silence, Manas chuckled, and asked me how I had felt this morning.
I laughed with him. “Nothing that a Slim Fast and two pitchers of beer couldn’t fix.” He laughed a bit more, and I found it unnerving. Today, it seemed that he was laughing at me from a distance, at some private joke I was playing into. I wanted so much information from him, but didn’t want to look like a jackass getting it.
I decided to start with the obvious “So, ah, how did I get home last night?”
Now it was Manas’ turn to look confused, for just a second, but I caught it. Then he looked directly into my eyes, like he was reading something. Briefly, the neon blue beer sign caught in his dark brown eyes and flashed like little bolts of lightning, two stars going nova at the same time. “I drove you home, remember?”
And I did remember, a crystal-hard memory of sitting in the passenger seat of his Land Rover, talking about the Packers. Strange, in July. I nodded slowly, just as confused as I had been. Later, the memory would peel apart on me and be even more confusing.
“Yeah,” I offered lamely, “Yeah, I remember.” I poured another beer, turning the memory over and over in my mind. It was rock solid, as sober and clear a memory as I’d ever had in my life. Could it really have been a memory from the night before? I asked myself.
“Hey, Manas,” I asked, curiosity overcoming confusion. “What was that stuff we were drinking? With the really nasty bitter must and licorice taste?”
“Pernot. Absinthe. It’s a homemade recipe. Wormwood in anise whiskey. You like it?” He grinned slyly, lips curling up around a cigarette.
“No. It was fuckin’ awful. But, uh, what does it do?”
Twice in one day, I managed to confuse Manas. I should have marked my calendar.
He shook his head. “Okay, okay. You don’t remember any of it, huh?”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t. That’s why I’m so fucked up today, I guess. It’s pretty scary having two weeks disappear on you.”
Matt snickered, and I felt better.
“The absinthe is two parts, the wormwood and the booze. The booze you know, it gets your brain, your body drunk. The wormwood, it’s like hash. It gets your atman, the eternal, drunk, like hash. But it also opens the third eye. Right now, all those memories are spirit memories, and it’s giving the rest amnesia. But your atman won’t sleep forever. It just needs a little while to recover. After all, you’ve been getting it really fucked up.”
We all laughed, although I think Matt was laughing at the explanation more than the joke. He was a fairly dedicated atheist, probably due to his punk rock heritage. Despite the explanation and the laughter, I didn’t feel any more at ease. The bottle in my bag, the fact that Manas had brought the bag and the journal here, it all smacked of something being wrong. I had still forgotten two people, and my journal entries were still a mystery.
We sat at the table for a while, a few more pitchers, bull-shitting about nothing in particular, baseball, bands and movies. Eventually, Matt and I got itchy feet and Manas wanted to play pool. The Joynt is really the only place in Eau Claire to play pool, the quality of both the table and the competition were excellent.
Matt and I meandered down the street. The sun was setting and a breeze brought us the rotting smell of riverbed and stale algae. It was a street full of bars; every college town has one, full of bier-gardens, loud boys, and underdressed girls. We pushed our way past the dance clubs and sports bars.
“Man, it sure is busy for a Thursday in the summer,” I observed.
“Thursday? Jason, It’s Friday.” Matt sounded really amused, and this time it pissed me off.
I almost fell over, realizing I was a day short. Matt just looked at me, and shrugged.
“Absinthe must be really good,” he let fall, flatly, without humor.
We walked in silence, down to the Grand Illusion. It was named for the Styx song, not any tenets of Buddhist philosophy. But it was dark, stinky, and loud. Abusive music was played at too high a level. In short, it was home away from home. Hell, I’d lived in five places in the time I’d been going there. It was home.
It was still early for the crowd I hung with. It wasn’t empty, but I had a hard time spotting familiar faces. The bartender, Tammy, scowled through too much makeup at the customers, like it was some curse laid upon her to serve them. She was a leggy, athletic woman with lots of tattoos and piercings and a mass of black dreds on top of her head. She smiled a little when she saw Matt and me.
Matt greeted her, and I just gave a little wave. I desperately wanted to leave, to find Manas back at The Joynt, and make him tell me what the Hell happened to Thursday. Instead, I ordered a beer and let Tammy charge me half, and then I tipped her double. That way we both came out ahead.
I looked around for more familiar faces and found one-a petite girl, still looking teenaged at twenty-four, with fake red hair, and clothes so loud that no one noticed. Kate sat at the bar, talking to some guy with a ponytail and goatee. Great, I thought, there goes my shot. I sauntered up and set my beer down next to hers. Sensitive ponytail guy just glared at me. She turned, and I leaned in close, so no one else would hear what I said.
“I’m disappointed, Kate. I disappear for a day, and you didn’t even call the cops.” She was amused, just for a second, and then put on a real hard face, one of those that say you’re just not worth her time. I knew I was in.
“Jason,” she said, “meet Phil. Phil Lowry, this is Jason Harrington.” I reached over and shook his hand.
“How’z it goin’?” He asked, way too friendly.
That’s right, I thought, you’re a little fuckin’ squirrel and I’m the tomcat, here to chase you back up the tree.
“All right,” I responded, as flatly as possible. After that I just ignored him. “Lemme get ya a drink.” I motioned Tammy over. “Give the pretty lady whatever she was drinkin’, and make it a double, please.” It was costing me, but I knew this girl would only be wooed by total jackass charm, and I had plenty.
She tried to split her attention between ponytail and me, but I had a four-pitcher head start on him. I would say something really terrible to her, like, “I’m surprised you’re not drinking something a little more low-calorie, the way your ass hangs over that bar stool,” and then I’d whisper some poetry into her ear, about how her eyes were so beautiful they could tear my eyes from the sky on a clear winter night.
I was another two drinks down when Phil just got up and left. I claimed the stool he had been sitting on. When I turned to face Kate, Heather was walked in through the door with a tall, muscular, blonde man. He looked like a combination between an ox and a panther-huge, ropy muscles, broad features. He was wore a t-shirt with the American flag and an eagle on it. His arms sported Iron Cross tattoos and a large SS. I recognized him, but again, from some dream or another. He was Brian; that much I knew. Heather spotted me and started made her way through the crowd that had gathered. I stopped talking in mid-sentence. In a dirty, smoky bar Heather shone through like a beacon, and I swear her lips shone even brighter, and her teeth even whiter. But maybe it was the beer.
I stood up to greet her, holding my hand out to shake hers. But it was no good; she moved straight in for the hug. Katie was not the passionate kind of jealous; I already knew that much from our conversation. Katie was the annoyed, bitchy kind of jealous that really turns me on. I could already feel her glaring coldly at my back.
I turned back to Katie, but ponytail, that clever little weasel, had already crept back into place. And she was touching his arm and laughing, a sure sign that my shift was done. After hugging me, Heather went immediately to the bar. That’s when I noticed Brian approaching, huge and pissed off. He was stared right at me, and I started looked around for reinforcements.
Matt was packed into one of the booths with “the band,” a group of five guys with whom he played aggressive, noisy music. They were good, but I didn’t really know any of them but Matt. Most of the other likely candidates hadn’t shown up yet. It was too early for my crowd to be out on a Friday night. But there were a few people I knew who I hoped I could count on for back up.
Brian smiled. It was as chilling as he intended. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Heather turn back to face me. I hoped she would scream in all the appropriate places.
“Hi, fucker,” Brian said.
“Eat shit, you fascist Neanderthal,” I shouted. I figured I didn’t have anything to lose. I wasn’t about to talk my way out of anything. My principles are just too damn strong to stand there and say, “Yeah, you know, maybe Himmler was right about a few things. . . .” Then I’d have to kick my own ass.
“Mother-fuckin’ piece of shit Nazi! We should fuckin’ kill you just for stepping foot in here!” Heads really started turning, and the bartenders and bouncer were moving. I reached for my bottle, but he was damn fast. He grabbed my collarbone in an intense grip. I took a cheap shot, kicking out at his shins. Before the kick went anywhere, he threw me on my ass.
Matt saved me, of course. Before Brian could “put the boot in,” Matt threw a bottle with perfect aim, the glass shattering against the back of Brian’s head. Amazingly, the brute didn’t drop. He spun around just in time to see another bottle fly from Matt’s hand. Casually, Brian raised a leg, and with a quick snap, the bottle exploded in mid flight. Then the bouncer was on him. I don’t think Brian would have had much of a problem with the bouncer, but he let himself be led out of the bar willingly, pausing to growl something at Matt and throw an obscene finger at me. When he went out the door, I started breathing again.
I didn’t have to buy a drink for the rest of the night, and neither did Matt. It’s not that people held strong political convictions; they just thought it was a good show.
I sat with Heather and watched her drink soda. We talked about nothing of consequence. As I got drunk, I started remembering more about her-where we had met, what she did. I also began to get little glimpses of that mysterious Wednesday night. Screaming at Brian through a drunken haze in a gyros shop, running into the kitchen to get a knife. Manas had pulled me out of that, taken me to his house. . . .
The more I drank, the more I remembered of the drunken life. The absinthe had really put me into a different world. I didn’t remember any green fairies, but I couldn’t ever pull up an image of Manas. I wondered if it was possible to hallucinate someone not being there. But he was there, and the reasoning, logical parts of my brain were shutting down. Heather took all this in, watching and nodding.
“Manas is dangerous,” she finally responded. “You really should know more about him and that absinthe.”"Manas,” I said, “is not trying to kill me. That Brian guy, who you came in with, is seriously trying to fuck my shit up.”"Well,” she said, looking a little embarrassed, “I didn’t mean to make it look like we came in here together. He was just telling me something important about Manas. Which I would like to try to tell you.”
Another memory, clear and cold as crystal, popped up. Manas had leaned over his coffee table, Wednesday night, and said, “Careful of her. She’s important to what we’re doing, but we’ve got to give her up to fulfill dharma. When she’s his, we can’t trust her anymore.”
“Now I don’t like Brian at all,” she continued, “but Manas has a long history of fucking with people. He gives them weird drugs, and gets them high and tells them the future. And you drink so much anyway that you just don’t need to be around him.”
As she gave the speech, I did think about what she was saying. My life had gotten very surreal over the previous two weeks. But I also knew that if there were anything I could do to piss off that skinhead, I’d do it.
“No, fuck that, Heather. Manas hates Brian, and rightfully so. If he wants to spew that asinine bullshit, he’s gonna make some enemies. Besides, getting people high and telling them their future is an ancient, time-honored profession.” I smiled, and gulped down some more beer.
Another guy walked over with some shots for Heather and me. I thanked him and drank them both. That’s when the evening got a little sketchy. I thought I remembered Manas sitting there next to me, but then it was just Heather still talking about him. “Fine. Maybe you know who he is. And maybe he told you who I am. But that doesn’t mean anything, not anymore.”
I couldn’t follow her very well or for very long. Nothing she said made sense. “He can’t take care of something like that. You know that. It’s not his way. What is he gonna do? Inspire bad poetry until Bri gives up and leaves?”
He who does not see Rama,
and he, whom Rama does not see,
becomes ridiculed in the eyes of the people.
Even his own self taunts him.
-Valmiki Ramayana
That was it for Friday night. My dreams were surreal. I was in Manas’ apartment, sitting in the living room. Two of the walls were gone and I was looking down an enormous mountain. Clouds began to swirl below me. A giant face formed in them, winked at me. I turned, and where the table had been was a completely lifelike statue of an enormous man with blue skin and three glowing eyes. One pair of arms lay folded across his chest and another was at his waist. A voice rumbled out from the statue. “Nine have come already. You are not to be the tenth. But I will let you be Rama for a night. Soma wills this, as do I.“The statue sprang to life, hurled me into the sky. I fell, terrified-and woke screaming.I woke in Heather’s bed, next to her. I was fully dressed, and she was fully undressed. Fortunately, I felt awful. My head was pounded, and I was about to be violently ill. I scrambled out of the bed, barely able to keep my feet. The bathroom was right off of the bedroom, the door wide open. After finishing my unpleasant business in the loo, I crept through the apartment, hoping to find some water.
Her living room was decorated nearly identically to Manas’-all Middle Eastern art, focusing on Indian. The tapestry was of a woman, though. She was all in orange, with bright red lips and one eye closed. In the upper right of the tapestry was a face straight from my dream. In the upper left there was a full moon. I couldn’t make any sense of it.
Memories came back, of having been in the apartment before, Manas and Heather and me sitting up late with glasses of the absinthe. Heather cried and Manas held her, almost fatherly. We all cursed the dog, and I didn’t know why. “Nine days to the full moon, sweet one. And then we’ll set things right, Jason and me. We’ll set things right.” I heard movement from the bedroom.
“Jason?”
“Yeah, Heather, I’m here.”
“‘Kay. Good. You want some breakfast?” Her voice was just as sweet three seconds out of bed as it had been all night.
“I don’t know if I’m up to solids yet,” I joked.
She walked into the living room, naked. Had I found the water by then, I would have spit it all over the place. She was perfect, a real hourglass with plenty of time left on it. She had a sly, sexy grin on her face.
“I had better nurse you back to health if we’re going to keep our plans for today.”
She walked past me, saying this, keeping eye contact the whole time. I panicked, a reaction I’m not used to. She had always been friendly, even flirtatious. But she had never come on to me. She had always laughed off my advances as “cute.”
I looked around the living room for something to occupy my racing mind. My bag lay on a chair. Memories flooded back, a torrent. The chair was where Brian had been sitting the first time I met him.
Manas had picked me up at home one night, about a week-and-a-half previous. He just told me to get in his Land Rover and drove me, silently, to Heather’s home. I had only known her a few days. I thought it was odd to be here in the middle of the night, unannounced. But I had been drunk- drunk on that damn absinthe-and couldn’t argue with him, not even a little. I walked to the house and noticed that the door was open. On the chair sat Brian, facing the tapestry and yelling.
“You fucking bitch. I’ll fucking have you away from them yet.”
He noticed me standing at the door. I swear his eyes flashed green, and that was it.
The commotion of Heather starting breakfast in the kitchen startled me from my memories. I picked up my journal. It was open to an entry already. My writing again.
| Ask her how you got home Wednesday night. Go ahead, ask. |
So I did. “Hey, Heather, did I call you for a ride home on Wednesday?”
Without missing a beat, “No. Manas drove you home, and you talked about football.” She sounded stern.
“Are you sure? And how would you know what we talked about?”
“Well, you told me on Thursday.”
“I saw you on Thursday?” Incidents from that missing day definitely got my attention. I wandered into the kitchen. She wasn’t naked anymore. Now she wore just an apron, which was somehow worse.
“Yeah, we saw each other on Thursday. You don’t remember?” She was a rotten actress. As one of Eau Claire’s finest liars, I should know.
“No. We didn’t see each other on Thursday. Who drove me home Wednesday night?”
“It was Manas or no one,” she said, exasperated.
“Or me.” I damn near jumped out of my skin when I heard Brian’s voice behind me.
“I drove you home, remember?” An image of Manas in the truck, sitting next to me, bullshitting about running backs. The image cracked and, briefly, it was the blue-skinned man driving the truck. And then a skinhead, trying to warn me.
“He’s just fucking using you, man. Using you to keep Heather and me apart. You don’t even see it, do you? Man, you’re a good guy, but that damn Punjab is putting some screwed up ideas in your head.”
I had looked out the window at that point. The road had disappeared, replaced by a beaten jungle path. We were heading up the side of a mountain. Strange birds screamed at the intrusion of the vehicle. And then the skinhead was gone, replaced by a skeleton with glowing green eyes and a voice like a dog’s bark, yelling at me in a language I didn’t understand. As the fury of his rant increased, so did the speed of the vehicle. Suddenly, Heather was in the middle of the path. We ran right over her, a sickening thud as the truck trampled her body.
“I drove you home to save your life. Because if you go back to Manas, I’ll fucking-well kill you.” He took a step toward me, raising his hands. “Hell, I might just kill you right now. . . .”
I barely saw his hand move. Then I was falling, falling right down onto Manas’ couch, no idea of what had happened.
“You’re tough, man. Real tough.” Manas’ voice cut through the pain, deep and resonant. “Definitely the right guy for the job.” I looked out the window. One little last sliver of moon shone in.
“What the Hell,” I asked, “is happening to me? Where are the last two weeks, Manas? What the fuck did you do to me?” I was shaking, angry and afraid. Brian and Heather were right. I didn’t know this guy, not well enough by half now.
He smiled, black goatee parting over rows of even, white teeth. The wrinkles in the middle of his forehead opened into an eye. A nearly full bottle of absinthe was in his hand. The contents glowed. Where the green light fell on it, his skin appeared blue.
“Let’s drink,” he said, his voice resonant, booming. “Let’s drink down some Soma and I will show you, show you where you went for two weeks. Show why Brihani needs to kill you, and why he can’t.”
Manas took a long, deliberate pull from the bottle. The glow spread down his body, like watching a tear in film, leaving behind it the animate version of the blue statue from my dream. “Chandrarama, come with me.”
I followed him out the door, and again we were at the mountain head of the night before. I took the bottle he proffered me, and drank deeply. No scent of rot or nasty, hundred-proof licorice burn. It was the sweetest, lightest fruit nectar: orange blossoms and honeysuckle, with a vibrant, rich, earthy body. The pain left my face and head.
“Ten incarnations only. But this raksha, well he has violated your earth and only one can stand up to him. Chandrarama, you and Soma shall gather your strength tomorrow and drive the demon back to Hell.”
As he spoke, he dissipated. The moon gained in phases above us, from waxing crescent to full-huge and gaining size. As the moonlight became brighter, the blue figure in front of me lost coherence entirely. A silvery, magnificent bull took its place, the glow of ten thousand years of moonlight in its eyes. “I open up the land of the dead to you. Ramachandra will walk in you for a day, to see the sunlight again, and his beloved Sita.
“Come, man, come and ride the bull of the night.”
I leaped onto the bull’s back, sure I was hallucinating. All of it, from the blue-skinned Manas, to the mountaintop I was flew away from, to the talking bull, to the water we plunged into. All of those, plus so much more, were just random strings of electrochemical reactions caused by serotonin inhibitors playing out in my subconscious, acted out by characters I had seen in tapestries and as statues in Manas’ living room. And Heather’s-if she was even real.
We descended further into the water and I began to shiver. I pulled myself down onto the bull to steal its heat. Finally, when the blackness of the water became the blackness of a moonless night, the bull and I ceased to exist. We were a giant, an enormous consciousness spanning millennia. I felt the greatness of all the heroes and gods that had ever drunk of Soma. We emerged from the water, a screaming giant.
It was my own screaming, in my own bed. I was naked, and Heather lay next to me, fully clothed. She was dressed in an orange sari. I finally saw the resemblance between her and the woman in the tapestry.
It was early in the morning and I woke up without a hangover, without a ball of tension and nausea in my stomach. I climbed over Heather, careful not to wake her. On my floor were a flower that I didn’t recognize, my bag, and my journal. The journal was open again this time. I bent to read it. Written boldly, soberly, in my own hand it said:
| You know what he is. Now you know what you are. You have a duty, and you will die with it or without it. |
I looked at the flower, picked it up and inspected the blossoms.
“Lotus,” came Heather’s voice from behind me. “It’s the most I can do for you. Brian has me now, firmly. I can’t help you, but, oh my love, I’ll never betray you.”
I turned to her, watched her unwrap the loose garment. I saw her there as my wife. And we stayed inside for the afternoon, doing what husbands and wives should do.
Evening came and I was holding Heather in my arms, wondering where all the strange images had come from. I was dazed, part of me was sure it was from the excess of absinthe. I had full recollection then, of the past weeks. But half of me wondered if I was the figure on the mountain-top, hallucinating being a man down here, cutting himself off from the absinthe to dream of being human. I looked out the window, to where the moon would hang. It was black, the first day of a new moon.
Wordlessly, I detached myself from the woman I knew as my wife and as a half-stranger. I dressed and checked my bag. The bottle was in it, full to the stopper now. I pulled it out and took a large gulp. Both flavors hit me: the foul and the divine. Both parts of my mind wondered at the contents. My vision briefly went double and I saw a spear in another hand. Quietly, I left the apartment for The Joynt, where I was sure Brian waited.
The night birds sang to me on the way, a strange hymn in a language I could barely understand. I was the Prince of Light, they told me, going to drive the demon out, going to hold the night against the enemies of the world.
I sipped from the bottle as I walked and my steps became lighter and lighter. I crossed the bridge. Beneath my feet the water sang in counterpoint to the birds, a praise for ending the pollution of the foul beast. After two more blocks I was outside The Joynt, the bottle empty. The lights all had haloes, and my muscles burned-mescaline high, drunk happy, and hashish calm.
Brian stood in the back of the bar, haranguing the black and Asian patrons. Most of them ignored him. Manas was behind the bar. As I walked in, he looked up at me, smiling. He nodded at me, and his smile broadened.
I walked to the back of that bar, keeping my eyes fixed on Brian the whole time. He saw me and locked his gaze onto me. I saw the skeleton underneath, misshaped dog’s skull on top, blood dripping from its fangs.
As I passed the pool table, I nodded at the Brian thing in front of me. He turned and began walked quickly toward the back door.
Fine, I thought, Let’s settle this outside.
His strides lengthened, and he began to run. He hit the door at a full sprint and I chased.
The back lot was a dimly lit alley, all gravel. He kicked at me with lightning speed. One arm shot out to catch it. The kick was fiercely powerful, but the energy in my limbs was ten times what he could summon. Off-balance, he flailed his fists at me. I caught them both with two more of my hands. My fourth hand shot out, and caught him by the throat. I lifted him above my head, easily, and stretched him taut. His muscles bulged. With a twist, I took the life out of them. I threw him to the ground. The dog-skull skeleton shattered, screaming.
At Manas’ apartment, I collapsed into the green chair again. I was exhausted from the mad dash I had made from the battlefield in back of the bar. On the coffee table was a letter.
| Jason, I’ve made some arrangements. You probably should go away for a while. I signed the title of the Land Rover over to you. There’s a few thousand in cash under the back seat. I owe you much more than that. Take Heather and fly. |
She and I were on the road an hour later, heading to Chicago at top speed. When I looked at her, I saw a princess riding next to me, atop a great elephant, and hoped it wasn’t just the wormwood.
Those who hear, or repeat and gladly assent
to the Divine Story of Sri Rama,
pass over the sea of birth and death
as they would a mere puddle.
-Lord Shiva to Parvati Devi
