Search for Saturnight’s Day (pt. 4)

-4-

click here to read pt. 3

“Last night during dinner, I was chewing a chicken nugget.”

“And?”

The neighbor did not respond. Instead he led the newly made-over Mardoon out of the bathroom. Somehow, all the clutter that the neighbor had swept away with his feet seemed to have returned. Denser assemblages of clothing-piles. More grime and filth. Mardoon felt a chill, something brushed against his hand, neither warm nor cold. It was the neighbors hand. It had grabbed Mardoon’s and tugged him out of the bathroom. Mardoon cartoonishly fumbled over his own feet trying to catch up with the neighbor’s momentum. Beyond the bathroom door, the blackness ebbed and flowed. A tide of an iridescent, viscous ocean, undulating. Gently breathing. It swelled into the doorway and receded, rocking back and forth with a hypnotic rhythm.

The neighbor pulled him over the threshold. Instantly it drenched him, darkness which flowed perfectly clear: a sheet of laminar water. Mardoon breathed in the liquid-darkness air; breathing water in a dream. Maybe, he thought, this is just the lingering effects of the bathroom aerosols.

The shower of darkness soaked his hair as they moved back into the main room. He swore he could his void soaked hair dripping down his back. Darn, he thought, I really like this shirt.

Mardoon looked around. Every object in the room was somehow visible in the blackness. They emitted a dying glow. As he saw them, he remembered glow in the dark toys sitting in the corner of his childhood bedroom. Were they watching over him? Did the faintly glowing ceiling stars in his room keep him company? I should put them away, thought baby Mardoon.

“This place could really use a cleanup.”

“What is the end goal of cleaning but self erasure?”

“. . .”

“It is an act which says to oneself and to the world, ‘No, actually, I don’t exist. And I’m doing everything in my power to remind myself of that.’ Not I. I do exist. I am here. And our mess is a testament to that fact.” The way he said our made Mardoon shudder.

Then they were near the front door area. Mardoon couldn’t find his shoes. His eyes surveyed, identifying more glowing items: a open book laid face down creasing its spine; an empty water dish rested in a bed of dried flowers; a black blouse vacillated between being half folded/half crumpled; a caterpillar-arched sock looked ready to crawl; a mirror and double-edged razor blade lay crossed over a bowl; a pile of shoes shmurgled in a heap—do shoe-piles shmurgle? Mardoon wondered. This one seemed to.

Then the pile regurgitated Mardoon’s shoes. He was certain these were his shoes because they looked familiar. Shoes, as he recalled from his middle school textbook, were more than mere foot protection; they were “talismans—created for the dual purpose of protecting our feet from the elements and, crucially, as a barrier between our innocent soles and the forces of evil beneath the ground that sought to corrupt them.” And, notably, Mardoon’s shoes were individually handmade by a Florentine artisan, toiling in a hilltop village. A local hero who, according to legend, inspired capital ‘E’ events in his village whenever he completed a pair of shoes—ringing cathedral bells and hosting elaborate celebrations. As he pondered this, he tied his shoes.

The he looked over at the neighbor bent over, sliding on his shoes—black, covered in silver spikes, and boasting a somewhat confusing looking thick rubber midsole on massive 4 or 5 inch platforms. Mardoon was mesmerized by these shoes but something about them started to feel off. But by then, the neighbor had finished tying, stood up, and towered over Mardoon.

“Let’s go.”

Mardoon was tired, but they were going down the hallway anyway. Hallways lights smeared in his periphery. Lengths of hallways always seem to compress or lengthen relative to the urgency of the moment.

“How are we getting there? And where exactly is there, anyway?”

“I used a rideshare app,” the neighbor said, “they’ll be here in a moment.”

“And our destination?”

“Never changes.”

Mardoon turned the neighbor's words over in his mind. Was this meant to suggest that the journey mattered more than the destination? He wasn’t sure. The neighbor hadn’t said as much, and Mardoon was fairly certain that, but if he asked outright, he knew the neighbor would probably just say something more cryptic. Still, he asked anyway, just to be sure:

“I’m nervous,” oops, that’s not what I meant to say.

“I know. I can see your whole vibe has changed. Just remember: It is in the time when the future of the present moment finds itself most comfortable resting as now. Rest your head here,” and he gestured to his chest.

They were in the car apparently, already. Which was a bit jarring to Mardoon, who was worried that this was becoming a theme. Where is the time going? And then Mardoon, who had not even realized he’d been nervous until he said it so loud, took this chance to rest his head in the bosom of this stranger.

“Shhh—,” said the neighbor, “it’s okay.”

As he lay, Mardoon wanted to close his eyes, but he held them open. A little tune played in the car over the radio, it was a simple three note progression, each of which was long and drawn out.

The first note was just what it was and nothing more. A piano? A bass flute? It seemed deep but he couldn’t be sure.

Then the second note played. He was sure now: definitely a piano. But this one was even deeper than the first.

Then the third note played. This one fell somehwere between the two notes. This sequence it would repeat. He wondered what radio station would play this sort of song. But it kept looping the whole drive there. He thought maybe it was a lullaby that had been written for him to relax in this moment leading up to what was bound to be a—

What was bound to be a rather normal experience, he reassured himself. Most experiences were, actually. None of them particularly distinct from any other, and all of them bearing this sort of quality which, Mardoon felt, could only be expressed as a dream.

The neighbor took a hit off their dab pen and coughed profusely. The driver did not seem to care. Mardoon’s ear still lay pressed into the neighbors chest. The coughing bellowed through the neighbors chest and into Mardoon’s ear, thunder in the mountains.

Then the car stopped.

“We’re almost there,” the neighbor said.

click here to read pt. 5