(Governor Tom's Note: I wrote this short story in February 1995, during the second semester of my freshman year at Temple University, for consideration to be included in a student-run literary magazine. The gal who ran it was an English major named Jennifer. I think she was an English major. If memory serves, the office where I first met her was the English department's main office. Anyway, she was quirky and all, decked out in what looked to be a Salvation Army dress with pastel colors and these huge black boots that reminded me of Frankenstein.
In thinking of a story to write, I recalled a dream I'd had recently. The vast majority of the dream is lost to the ether, but I remember the end of it. This tall bony fortysomething guy named Sal, who worked in the same department store I did at the time, was walking down the middle of a small town main street in the dead of night. A traffic light loomed ahead. I think he was pushing a cart or something. The only thing I remember him saying was, "My life's after the light." And then I woke up. This story is, I suppose, an extrapolation of that dream, my attempt to fill in all the stuff I can't remember. Sort of. I reassigned Sal's line to the main character Terry Ship.
The punch line is that Jennifer rejected the story. When I went to pick it up at the English department main office (again, I think that's where she and this magazine were based), I read the comments on the back. I'm not sure if she wrote them or if one of the other student editors did. Anyway, I'll never forget how the editor said my story was another clichéd Catholic parable. They didn't expand much on that.
Now I have a punch line of my own that I never told Jennifer: I'm not Catholic. Indeed I'm the least religious person you'll ever meet. I wish Jennifer or whoever read it had expanded on the Catholicism they saw in this story because, truly, that fascinates me. Of course I could've just asked her. But nah. Truth is, I didn't have the time. I took full course loads and worked at night at that department store I mentioned above. Jennifer said I'd still get a copy of the inaugural issue when it was published. I never did. I never saw or spoke to her again or submitted anything else to her.
If I were to judge my story now, I'd call it a flunkie Twilight Zone episode. Nonetheless I hope it entertains you.)
__________
Terry Ship didn't want to admit it, but he had to. He was lost. He'd been wandering the city for an hour now, trying to find his friend's house, doing his best to remember the directions. Of course the party was probably over. If Terry ever got there, all he’d find would be people passed out, perhaps pairs of plastered lovers scattered about the house in their secret hiding places, asleep after the sloppy making of drunken love. Or maybe not. It was only one-thirty in the morning. He’d been to plenty of parties that went until sunup.
That still didn't change the fact that he was lost. While stopped at a red light, his wipers set to interval speed to keep the drizzle at bay, Terry reached over to the passenger seat and sifted through the mess of unfolded maps. He didn't know how many times he'd done this by now, but it was quickly becoming annoying to look at all the symbols, the lines, the dots. He picked up the one he'd gotten at the gas station a few miles back, the only one with residential street names, and glanced up at the street sign on the corner: Church St. Spreading the map across his steering wheel, Terry scanned it several times before admitting to himself that Church St. wasn’t on it. "God damn it.” He threw the map aside. Where the hell was he? He hadn’t eaten since lunch twelve hours ago. Each of his stomach’s growls seemed louder than the last.
While contemplating his next move, the wipers squeaking across his beleaguered gaze every few seconds, his attention was suddenly caught by rapid footsteps. He whipped around for the source until discerning a figure running along the sidewalk. The grimy amber street lights weren't strong enough to reveal much about the figure. Maybe this person could help, though. The silhouette started crossing the street. Terry hopped out and hurried over to the sidewalk to cut it off. As he came nearer, he saw it was a male, probably sixteen or seventeen.
"Excuse me," Terry said. The kid didn't answer. "Excuse me!" He ran onto the sidewalk to block the teen's path. "Wait a second."
The teenager stopped abruptly, panting heavily and staring at Terry with wild eyes. His skin was remarkably pale, the lips dark blue, almost black in the gloom. His expression was one of anger, as if he couldn't believe Terry would dare stop him. What stood out more than anything else, however, was a putrid stench, a marriage of rot and feces. Terry backed up a few steps while his stomach churned.
The boy’s eyes watered, the murky amber sparkling in them. "What are you doing?" he shouted. "Why are you here?"
Terry was caught off-guard by the boy's shriek. He didn't know what to say. The first thing that came to mind was, "I'm lost."
"Why won't you let me play? I'm only trying to play."
"Excuse me?"
The boy continued on, this time not walking so much as lumbering, his arms dangling at his sides while he sobbed. "Why can't I just play?" he asked himself. "I can't do anything anymore. Why won't the suffering just end?”
Terry was too baffled to block him again. What the hell was going on? "Hey!" he managed to call out by the time the boy was at the end of the block, his whimpers still audible. "Hey!" The boy wandered out into the middle of the dead quiet street.
That was when Terry noticed something he swore hadn't been there before. At the intersection through which he'd just driven minutes ago was what appeared to be a crude swing-set. Crude because the bars that formed the frame were badly warped, and the seats were uneven, creaking back and forth in a phantom wind. "What the hell?" Terry whispered. Adjacent to the swings stood a curved slide. Because of its substantial sideways tilt, anyone who tried it would probably fall off.
Terry couldn’t take any more of this. In the past minute he'd been bombarded by enough weirdness to make him dizzy. He hurried back into his car and slammed the door. The light was still red. "You've got to be kidding." He was about to drive through anyway, but before he could shift gears, the street lamps, as well as the traffic lights, flickered out.
And then his engine died.
The darkness and silence were all but complete.
“No!” He turned the key but got no response. His engine didn’t even have the juice to struggle. It was flat dead. Terry sat back and chuckled in disbelief. The only light came from the feeble glow of the moon behind the thick clouds. The drizzle accumulated on his windows.
Now what? Hitchhike? No one else was on the road tonight. But wait, he had his cell phone. Maybe he could call his friend. Terry chuckled as he pulled it out. He knew the battery would be inexplicably dead before he confirmed as much by pressing the unresponsive power button.
Something slammed against his roof. His heart must’ve jumped higher than he did. Through the rearview mirror he saw it wasn’t something, but someone. A boy, no older than ten, giggled as he scrambled off the back and ran away, his form distorted through the wet glass.
Terry jumped out and was about to chase him when someone shouted from behind: “Hey! What are you doing on our playground?"
He whipped around to meet the glares of two girls, also about ten, standing in front of his car. The stench punched him again, stronger than ever. He placed his hand on his stomach. One of the girls spoke. "I said, what are you doing on our playground?” Their faces were masked by the murk. He barely made out the outlines of their dresses and shoulder-length hair.
"What happened to the lights?" was all he could think of saying.
"Never mind that. Who are you?"
"Terry Ship."
"Well listen, Terry Ship," the girl said, very mature for her young age. "You're on our playground, and we'd like you to leave now."
"Playground? This is a God damned street."
"Look behind you."
Terry hesitated, then turned. In addition to the warped slide and swings, a carousel and what looked to be a sandbox had joined the setup. People swarmed the playground, at least twenty or thirty, some of them kids, others, adults, the latter clearly distinguishable in the darkness by both their larger silhouettes and deeper laughter.
"This doesn't make any sense." He turned back to the girls. "This doesn’t make any God damned sense."
"It’s our playground," the girl said louder than before, clearly frustrated at having to repeat herself. "We come here at night when the living are asleep."
Terry was about to ask her who she was before he grasped what she'd just said. When the living are asleep? The girls approached him, their faces revealed only a little by the moonlight, as if the moon were teasing him. Like the teenager from the sidewalk, their eyes were saucers, their skin white as the crosswalk.
Her manner and tone abruptly became much more consoling. "You have to go. I'm sorry. But you don't belong here. It's the rules."
"My car... My car’s dead."
The girls just stared. The only noise came from the playground throng.
And then the girl who hitherto hadn’t spoken leaned over and whispered in the other’s ear. “She says you should talk to Sal."
"Sal?"
"Our guardian."
"Sal."
"Sal!" she called out over her shoulder.
Terry squinted into the darkness. Sure enough, someone was approaching from behind the girls. The first thing Terry noticed about this guy was his height. Even at thirty yards in the darkness, this guy Sal was obviously a tower, seven or eight feet tall, and quite slender. His strides swiftly closed the distance. His peanut-shaped head had very little hair, just a few strands on the pointed top.
"You still haven't gotten rid of this guy?" Sal said. Despite his ominous stature and the nature of the question, his voice was soft, almost soporific. "He's not supposed to be here."
"He says his car broke down."
"Then he'll have to stay."
"What is this place?" Terry said.
"It’s a playground, Mr. Ship," Sal said. "When the world goes to sleep, we wake up. This is where we come to play."
"Who?" Terry asked. "Who comes to play?"
"The dead," Sal said. "Every night we come down the street to play here. It's how we entertain ourselves. As you can see, even grownups like to play."
Terry rubbed his heavy eyes. "I must be dreaming.” He laughed again. "This is just one huge nightmare--"
"No," Sal interrupted. "This is no dream, Mr. Ship."
"But it doesn’t make any sense."
"Here..."
Before Terry could react or defend himself, Sal stepped up to him and slid his lanky index and middle fingers into his mouth. Like a pair of snakes, the soft fingers slithered down Terry’s esophagus and into his guts. Terry grabbed Sal’s arm to push it away, but it was stiff and steadfast as a monkey bar.
Terry could still breathe while the fingers twisted and turned through his body. But then one of the fingers reached his lungs. It tapped and probed here and there before extending fully across the inner lining of his chest. The air cut off.
The girls started giggling. Their laughter seemed to get louder commensurate with Terry’s struggles to extract Sal’s fingers. Sal, all the while, remained perfectly tranquil. He simply stood there and probed every nook and cranny of Terry’s insides. Wait a second. Was Sal smiling now? His phone pole frame blurred behind the tears.
That's when the people behind him, the grownups and children alike, began to laugh. Their laughter got louder. Were they all heading his way? In no time their laughter merged with that of the girls. Tears streamed down Terry’s cold, ballooning face. He no longer had the strength to grip Sal’s arm. It was all he could do not to collapse. His head drummed. Through the dimness of fading consciousness he could just make out the throng of laughing dead surrounding him. Was Sal saying something?
Terry’s last thought before blacking out was that he’d never smelled anything in his life so utterly reprehensible.
___
When he woke up on the wet street, the first thing he knew was nausea. He turned over on his side just in time to puke all over the asphalt. Its greasy gleam told him the street lamps had come back on. The traffic light was green. The playground was gone. So was his car.
Keeping one hand to his sore stomach, Terry regained his feet gingerly. Without knowing why, he started for the intersection at which he’d stopped before spotting the teenager. The nausea ebbed. He stopped and waited for it to go away completely, but it wouldn’t. Terry renewed his pace towards the intersection, and the nausea grew yet weaker.
Of course he figured out why. Terry knew where he had to go.
Before he could reach the intersection, a drunk elderly homeless man bumped into him. "Got any change for coffee?" His breath reeked almost as foul as Terry's dead flesh.
He considered the old man's feeble grip on his cold forearm. "Let me go," he said, easily slipping out of the grip and continuing towards the intersection and the consoling darkness beyond. "My life's after the light.”
Terry disappeared after crossing the intersection (something the old man would attribute to the booze). He would have a new home now. But more importantly, he would always have a place to play.
In thinking of a story to write, I recalled a dream I'd had recently. The vast majority of the dream is lost to the ether, but I remember the end of it. This tall bony fortysomething guy named Sal, who worked in the same department store I did at the time, was walking down the middle of a small town main street in the dead of night. A traffic light loomed ahead. I think he was pushing a cart or something. The only thing I remember him saying was, "My life's after the light." And then I woke up. This story is, I suppose, an extrapolation of that dream, my attempt to fill in all the stuff I can't remember. Sort of. I reassigned Sal's line to the main character Terry Ship.
The punch line is that Jennifer rejected the story. When I went to pick it up at the English department main office (again, I think that's where she and this magazine were based), I read the comments on the back. I'm not sure if she wrote them or if one of the other student editors did. Anyway, I'll never forget how the editor said my story was another clichéd Catholic parable. They didn't expand much on that.
Now I have a punch line of my own that I never told Jennifer: I'm not Catholic. Indeed I'm the least religious person you'll ever meet. I wish Jennifer or whoever read it had expanded on the Catholicism they saw in this story because, truly, that fascinates me. Of course I could've just asked her. But nah. Truth is, I didn't have the time. I took full course loads and worked at night at that department store I mentioned above. Jennifer said I'd still get a copy of the inaugural issue when it was published. I never did. I never saw or spoke to her again or submitted anything else to her.
If I were to judge my story now, I'd call it a flunkie Twilight Zone episode. Nonetheless I hope it entertains you.)
__________
Terry Ship didn't want to admit it, but he had to. He was lost. He'd been wandering the city for an hour now, trying to find his friend's house, doing his best to remember the directions. Of course the party was probably over. If Terry ever got there, all he’d find would be people passed out, perhaps pairs of plastered lovers scattered about the house in their secret hiding places, asleep after the sloppy making of drunken love. Or maybe not. It was only one-thirty in the morning. He’d been to plenty of parties that went until sunup.
That still didn't change the fact that he was lost. While stopped at a red light, his wipers set to interval speed to keep the drizzle at bay, Terry reached over to the passenger seat and sifted through the mess of unfolded maps. He didn't know how many times he'd done this by now, but it was quickly becoming annoying to look at all the symbols, the lines, the dots. He picked up the one he'd gotten at the gas station a few miles back, the only one with residential street names, and glanced up at the street sign on the corner: Church St. Spreading the map across his steering wheel, Terry scanned it several times before admitting to himself that Church St. wasn’t on it. "God damn it.” He threw the map aside. Where the hell was he? He hadn’t eaten since lunch twelve hours ago. Each of his stomach’s growls seemed louder than the last.
While contemplating his next move, the wipers squeaking across his beleaguered gaze every few seconds, his attention was suddenly caught by rapid footsteps. He whipped around for the source until discerning a figure running along the sidewalk. The grimy amber street lights weren't strong enough to reveal much about the figure. Maybe this person could help, though. The silhouette started crossing the street. Terry hopped out and hurried over to the sidewalk to cut it off. As he came nearer, he saw it was a male, probably sixteen or seventeen.
"Excuse me," Terry said. The kid didn't answer. "Excuse me!" He ran onto the sidewalk to block the teen's path. "Wait a second."
The teenager stopped abruptly, panting heavily and staring at Terry with wild eyes. His skin was remarkably pale, the lips dark blue, almost black in the gloom. His expression was one of anger, as if he couldn't believe Terry would dare stop him. What stood out more than anything else, however, was a putrid stench, a marriage of rot and feces. Terry backed up a few steps while his stomach churned.
The boy’s eyes watered, the murky amber sparkling in them. "What are you doing?" he shouted. "Why are you here?"
Terry was caught off-guard by the boy's shriek. He didn't know what to say. The first thing that came to mind was, "I'm lost."
"Why won't you let me play? I'm only trying to play."
"Excuse me?"
The boy continued on, this time not walking so much as lumbering, his arms dangling at his sides while he sobbed. "Why can't I just play?" he asked himself. "I can't do anything anymore. Why won't the suffering just end?”
Terry was too baffled to block him again. What the hell was going on? "Hey!" he managed to call out by the time the boy was at the end of the block, his whimpers still audible. "Hey!" The boy wandered out into the middle of the dead quiet street.
That was when Terry noticed something he swore hadn't been there before. At the intersection through which he'd just driven minutes ago was what appeared to be a crude swing-set. Crude because the bars that formed the frame were badly warped, and the seats were uneven, creaking back and forth in a phantom wind. "What the hell?" Terry whispered. Adjacent to the swings stood a curved slide. Because of its substantial sideways tilt, anyone who tried it would probably fall off.
Terry couldn’t take any more of this. In the past minute he'd been bombarded by enough weirdness to make him dizzy. He hurried back into his car and slammed the door. The light was still red. "You've got to be kidding." He was about to drive through anyway, but before he could shift gears, the street lamps, as well as the traffic lights, flickered out.
And then his engine died.
The darkness and silence were all but complete.
“No!” He turned the key but got no response. His engine didn’t even have the juice to struggle. It was flat dead. Terry sat back and chuckled in disbelief. The only light came from the feeble glow of the moon behind the thick clouds. The drizzle accumulated on his windows.
Now what? Hitchhike? No one else was on the road tonight. But wait, he had his cell phone. Maybe he could call his friend. Terry chuckled as he pulled it out. He knew the battery would be inexplicably dead before he confirmed as much by pressing the unresponsive power button.
Something slammed against his roof. His heart must’ve jumped higher than he did. Through the rearview mirror he saw it wasn’t something, but someone. A boy, no older than ten, giggled as he scrambled off the back and ran away, his form distorted through the wet glass.
Terry jumped out and was about to chase him when someone shouted from behind: “Hey! What are you doing on our playground?"
He whipped around to meet the glares of two girls, also about ten, standing in front of his car. The stench punched him again, stronger than ever. He placed his hand on his stomach. One of the girls spoke. "I said, what are you doing on our playground?” Their faces were masked by the murk. He barely made out the outlines of their dresses and shoulder-length hair.
"What happened to the lights?" was all he could think of saying.
"Never mind that. Who are you?"
"Terry Ship."
"Well listen, Terry Ship," the girl said, very mature for her young age. "You're on our playground, and we'd like you to leave now."
"Playground? This is a God damned street."
"Look behind you."
Terry hesitated, then turned. In addition to the warped slide and swings, a carousel and what looked to be a sandbox had joined the setup. People swarmed the playground, at least twenty or thirty, some of them kids, others, adults, the latter clearly distinguishable in the darkness by both their larger silhouettes and deeper laughter.
"This doesn't make any sense." He turned back to the girls. "This doesn’t make any God damned sense."
"It’s our playground," the girl said louder than before, clearly frustrated at having to repeat herself. "We come here at night when the living are asleep."
Terry was about to ask her who she was before he grasped what she'd just said. When the living are asleep? The girls approached him, their faces revealed only a little by the moonlight, as if the moon were teasing him. Like the teenager from the sidewalk, their eyes were saucers, their skin white as the crosswalk.
Her manner and tone abruptly became much more consoling. "You have to go. I'm sorry. But you don't belong here. It's the rules."
"My car... My car’s dead."
The girls just stared. The only noise came from the playground throng.
And then the girl who hitherto hadn’t spoken leaned over and whispered in the other’s ear. “She says you should talk to Sal."
"Sal?"
"Our guardian."
"Sal."
"Sal!" she called out over her shoulder.
Terry squinted into the darkness. Sure enough, someone was approaching from behind the girls. The first thing Terry noticed about this guy was his height. Even at thirty yards in the darkness, this guy Sal was obviously a tower, seven or eight feet tall, and quite slender. His strides swiftly closed the distance. His peanut-shaped head had very little hair, just a few strands on the pointed top.
"You still haven't gotten rid of this guy?" Sal said. Despite his ominous stature and the nature of the question, his voice was soft, almost soporific. "He's not supposed to be here."
"He says his car broke down."
"Then he'll have to stay."
"What is this place?" Terry said.
"It’s a playground, Mr. Ship," Sal said. "When the world goes to sleep, we wake up. This is where we come to play."
"Who?" Terry asked. "Who comes to play?"
"The dead," Sal said. "Every night we come down the street to play here. It's how we entertain ourselves. As you can see, even grownups like to play."
Terry rubbed his heavy eyes. "I must be dreaming.” He laughed again. "This is just one huge nightmare--"
"No," Sal interrupted. "This is no dream, Mr. Ship."
"But it doesn’t make any sense."
"Here..."
Before Terry could react or defend himself, Sal stepped up to him and slid his lanky index and middle fingers into his mouth. Like a pair of snakes, the soft fingers slithered down Terry’s esophagus and into his guts. Terry grabbed Sal’s arm to push it away, but it was stiff and steadfast as a monkey bar.
Terry could still breathe while the fingers twisted and turned through his body. But then one of the fingers reached his lungs. It tapped and probed here and there before extending fully across the inner lining of his chest. The air cut off.
The girls started giggling. Their laughter seemed to get louder commensurate with Terry’s struggles to extract Sal’s fingers. Sal, all the while, remained perfectly tranquil. He simply stood there and probed every nook and cranny of Terry’s insides. Wait a second. Was Sal smiling now? His phone pole frame blurred behind the tears.
That's when the people behind him, the grownups and children alike, began to laugh. Their laughter got louder. Were they all heading his way? In no time their laughter merged with that of the girls. Tears streamed down Terry’s cold, ballooning face. He no longer had the strength to grip Sal’s arm. It was all he could do not to collapse. His head drummed. Through the dimness of fading consciousness he could just make out the throng of laughing dead surrounding him. Was Sal saying something?
Terry’s last thought before blacking out was that he’d never smelled anything in his life so utterly reprehensible.
___
When he woke up on the wet street, the first thing he knew was nausea. He turned over on his side just in time to puke all over the asphalt. Its greasy gleam told him the street lamps had come back on. The traffic light was green. The playground was gone. So was his car.
Keeping one hand to his sore stomach, Terry regained his feet gingerly. Without knowing why, he started for the intersection at which he’d stopped before spotting the teenager. The nausea ebbed. He stopped and waited for it to go away completely, but it wouldn’t. Terry renewed his pace towards the intersection, and the nausea grew yet weaker.
Of course he figured out why. Terry knew where he had to go.
Before he could reach the intersection, a drunk elderly homeless man bumped into him. "Got any change for coffee?" His breath reeked almost as foul as Terry's dead flesh.
He considered the old man's feeble grip on his cold forearm. "Let me go," he said, easily slipping out of the grip and continuing towards the intersection and the consoling darkness beyond. "My life's after the light.”
Terry disappeared after crossing the intersection (something the old man would attribute to the booze). He would have a new home now. But more importantly, he would always have a place to play.
