Chapter 3: The Gods Come Down to Earth (Possibly)

When the mysterious stranger opened his eyes, my brain was flooded with strange unknown hormones and my mind was sent on a journey across the soul network. What is the soul network? That is the name I give to the invisible, intangible connection we all have, all of us humans. Think of it as a spiritual internet. I am not saying it actually exists, but I am saying it would explain a lot.

Anyway, in that single 0.8 seconds before I looked away, I had a very real experience of things that were happening around the city. Here is what they were.

The First Thing

A little boy was asleep. He had his superhero pajamas on, and he was clutching a stuffed tiger. A dimmed night light was casting yellow stars onto the walls, the bed, his face. He was maybe six years old, I am not sure as I have no experience with children. Anyway, the scene was pleasant, but I had no idea why I was there and why I was looking at it.

Until the boy woke up and saw his mother standing at the foot of the bed. She often checked up on him when she woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. She smiled at him, and gave him a playful wave. She said, “Go to sleep, Matthew.” Then she stepped backwards so that her face was just outside the circle of light.

I knew she was not the boy’s mother. I wanted to scream to warn him, but I was not really there, only looking in. Suspended in mid air, unable to move, I stared at the mother-looking creature, wondered if it was just a tiny part of a larger organism, most of which was not visible.

And then the mother impostor looked at me.

The Second Thing

The fear yanked me out of that place and made me realize myself in a tiny underground room. A basement turned into an apartment, currently occupied by a man named Stan Warbinsky.

Stan was the super of the building and he chose to live in the dark basement. “It’s cool in the summer,” he would always say, “And in winter the pipes keep the room nice and toasty.” Then he would throw his head back and chuckle.

He was in his sixties, gray-haired and wrinkled, but still in pretty good shape. He was the son of a Polish immigrant and a beautiful Asian dancer who met back in a different era, when everything was more romantic. He grew up to be strong and thoughtful, if a little unlucky. He made a living as a travelling salesman, going door to door with vacuum cleaners, or encyclopedias, or whatever else sold well. He had a wife and two boys. Then, three days after his fortieth birthday, all of that ended.

His wife and the boys were in a car crash. The wife was killed on impact. The boys died at the hospital, four hours apart. Stan was on the road at the time, he did not find out until the evening when he got into a hotel room and checked his messages.

It seemed he would be okay for a while. He was grieving, going through all the stages, lingering on depression a little too long, but that was fine. But then, in the middle of a sales presentation, he suddenly collapsed to his knees and began sobbing. The housewife he was presenting to wanted to help, offering a glass of water and paper tissues, but that was not helping Stan. He sobbed on the way to the car, in the car, at the hotel, and all through the next few days. He could not sleep.

He was admitted to Red Pines Asylum and diagnosed with acute mental breakdown. After six months of successful treatment (and becoming everyone’s favorite patient), he got back out into the world. He could not get back on the road, though. Just being in a car made him feel sad. Also, he wanted to be a new man from now on. So, he took up the job as the super and has been here ever since. More than 20 years now.

Presently, he was lying in bed, reading. He slept very little but he did not mind. He enjoyed late nights with a good book and I enjoyed a few minutes with him. The room was nice and cozy, the rough grey walls were covered in old movie posters with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn,  Liz Taylor and Montgomery Clift. Apart from the bed, there was a small metal desk and a bookshelf. I wondered about his bathroom arrangements when suddenly there was a stir.

The posters fluttered in the wind, like there was a strong gust suddenly. Only there was now way that could have happened, as we were indoors and underground.

Stan noticed it and his eyebrows lifted up, indicating he would be with it soon. He finished reading a paragraph and he lifted his head.

”Hello,” he said, “You’re back.”

There was another gust of wind and a whisper.

”Yes, yes, I’ve missed you. It’s been a while.”

He got out of bed, he was wearing a white t-shirt and shorts. He walked over to a calendar on the wall and flipped a few pages back until he saw a blue X on one of the days. “It’s been a while since June 16th,” he said, and he turned back to present day, made a mark. Then he turned towards the center of the room with a pleasant smile. “How have you been?”

There was no gust of wind this time, but there must have been some response that he could pick up because he nodded his head. “Good,” he said, “You want to look at some pictures?”

He took a National Geographic album from the shelf and put it on the desk. “Come on, take a look now. See this? These are people of Sumatra in their traditional garb. Garb means clothes. See how rich and colorful they look? I doubt anybody wears this kind of apparel anymore. They probably dressed up like that for the picture. Apparel also means clothes. What? What is the matter? Something is bothering you, isn’t it?”

He swiveled in his chair to face the middle of the room. He sighed, “I wish you could speak. You would tell me what it’s all about and maybe I could help you.”

He closed the album and shook his head. “Never mind all that. I cannot help you, I cannot listen to you, but maybe I can tell you a story. About thirty years ago, there was an astronomer named Barry Walsh. He worked at an observatory and his job was to measure the distance to stars. He was very good at it, and as he measured more and more, he began noticing a pattern. All the distances were divisible by six, seven, or nine. Those three numbers were stuck in his mind and he could not stop thinking about them. Six, seven, nine. He deviated from the program and started measuring the distances between stars. He found they were not divisible by six, seven, and nine. They seemed completely erratic. After a few months, he then realized another thing: they were not erratic. They were consistent for each star. For one star, all the other stars would be at a distance divisible by three, four, six. For another it would be five, six, eight. And so on.

”He knew that made no sense. His rational mind rebelled against it, but he kept collecting the data. A year into his private project, he would not speak to others, he would not go home, he would just work and work and work. He kept working after the government shut down the program and all the telescopes were disconnected. He kept working in the dark, scribbling numbers on pieces of paper.

”I met the man when I was getting my treatment. He was a real grump, but he would really light up when he got a chance to talk about the stars. They were his only friends in this whole universe. Or so he claimed. I think the stars would have been his friends if he was another star, but he was not.”

Stan got up from his chair, stretched a little and walked over to the book shelf.

”Well, if you are not in the mood for pictures or stories, would you like me to read to you? Heh, you like that, don’t you? Okay, what would you like?”

He moved his hand over the books, waiting for a signal. Then he stopped and pulled out a small green one. An old one. “Pinocchio is your favorite, isn’t it. Okay, let’s do it then.”

The Third Thing

I do not even know when that happened, but I began to realize I was no longer in Stan’s room. I was in an expensive hotel room, high above the streets of downtown. It was dark, the only light coming from the windows. I waited for my pupils to adjust but I guess I did not have any pupils, so I waited in vain.

Then a phone began to ring. A man stirred in the bed, cursing the phone, hurrying to pick it up so as not to disturb the woman sleeping next to him. He made the ringer go silent and went into the bathroom without switching on the light. He answered it there.

”Hey, what’s up?” he said quietly. “No, I was sleeping, my throat is a little sore. Yeah, it’s past midnight. Yeah, you got your time zones mixed up again, honey. Right, sure. Right. I will. Right. Okay, I love you too. I love you too, good night.”

He got back into bed. The woman was awake, she turned hes way and put her hand on his chest. “Was that your wife?"

"Yeah.” He was rigid. Stiff.

The woman took the hand away. Crossed her arms. “Are you ever going to leave that bitch?"

"Yes, only now it’s not the best time."

"What is it this time?” she asked.

”She is changing jobs. She is under a lot of stress. I don’t want to add to it. Plus, her brother might be dying. I mean, she might be overly dramatic, but there is a definite possibility there is something wrong with him."

"You’re such a nice guy, Steve Walters. Such a nice guy who travels around the country screwing other women."

"Come on, Linda,” he said, “Don’t be like that. I don’t screw other women. I love you.”

She was quiet for a minute. Then she asked “Are you sleepy?” and I could tell from her voice that she was smiling.

She rolled on top of Steve and started kissing him. She lifted her nighty and took it off over her head. Steve sighed, but then stopped her. “Linda, I have to get up early tomorrow.”

She slid down to do something around his crotch. I could not see in the dark, but it involved either her breasts or her mouth. Either way, I wondered what was so special about Steve that this woman wanted him so badly. I could relate, being a desirable male myself.

”Linda, please,” he said.

”Are you thinking about your wife?” she asked. “I want you to think about her. I want you to think about your house in the summer time, her just having finished the laundry and carrying it in a basket. She is wearing a flannel shirt and jean shorts. She is still young and pretty. She is a little sweaty, he cheeks are rosy. She smiles at you. You want her, but she won’t give it to you. She will never give you what I can. If you do get her into bed, she will just lie there and let you do it to her. That is all you can count on. You can do things to her. She will not participate. So you lick her vagina, lap up her juices like a dog, you choke on pubic hair from time to time. She will never shave her pussy for you. Are you imagining it? Good. Now imagine I walk in on you. I am wearing sexy lingerie, my breasts are exposed. I pull you away. I start sucking your dick in front of her. She is shocked. She cannot believe it. Then you fuck me in front of her. When you are all ready, I drag you over to her and make you come on her face. On her plain suburban wife face with rosy cheeks, with Christian indignation painted all over.”

Steve moaned.

I was falling and falling and falling. I realized the entire universe keeps falling all the time because those are the laws of nature, I was just lucky enough to notice. I kept falling towards nothingness, until I saw a speck of light in front of me. The speck grew as I fell until I could see it was a ball riddled with lights. It was like a planet where it was night all the time and the lights are always on. It rotated slowly.

As I fell closer and closer, I realized those lights were people. Each person a brilliant light, like a lantern in the middle of black non-light. They all lived and loved and dreamed, but I was not looking at their lives now, I was looking at the lights of their intellect.

Then I fell into a cloud of heavy purple alien intellect which surrounded the Earth. It was not human, it was not animal, it did not contain thoughts. It was choking me.

All I could make out of it was that it was hungry and it would eat all those lights, if it only could. But it had to wait until the moment of their death when they shone the brightest. Only then could it swallow them.

I was a light like that as well, falling through its choky purple mist and it noticed me lazily. It reached an organ out towards me to devour. Devour. Devour.

I wanted to get away, either fall through to the earth, or get back out there into the dark. I focused my will on escape and I was able to defeat gravity and drift back into the black. The cool dark black.

Then I noticed other lights. Far, far away, some as measly as Earth, others grand and powerful. I suddenly became very scared that they would see me.

I am not sure what the hell all that was. A vivid dream? All I know is I came to on my couch, looking that the mysterious stranger. He was naked, he was perfect, he was wrapped in one of my towels. He was smiling like an idiot.

Posted by: Paweł Kowaluk