Abbreviated Magic Read online

  ***

  The first time it happened was a Monday morning. A typical, totally unremarkable morning. Shower, shave, get dressed, two cups of coffee, maybe a bowl of cold cereal, maybe plan to pick something up on the way to work, whatever. Eventually he opens the door to leave for work. Unsurprisingly, Charles is quite surprised.

  The first thing he does is turn and examine the door. As if somehow he’s managed to mistakenly open the wrong door. A different door. Not the one that goes outside, but rather some forgotten closet where he’s storing a jungle. A jungle inadvertently left here by a guest perhaps, or a previous tenant.

  Surprise dims to bewilderment. And natural curiosity. Charles crosses the threshold, closing the door behind, and steps cautiously but innocently into the alien environment. Amazed, and in awe, he touches plants, verifying their existence. He catches first sight of the altar and icon. (Not yet noting its Belushi-ness however.) He strolls in a sense of wonder, trying to construct some logical explanation.

  He strolls for less than a minute. Less than thirty feet. Toward the river’s bank.

  He hears something moving in the dense foliage to his left. Something large. Large, and approaching steadily. Steadily, and now with greater haste. Hastily, he turns to run. Immediately, something slams into his back, pitching him forward.

  The next thing he knows, he awakens on his own bed. Fully dressed and drenched in sweat; head throbbing painfully; left arm raked with dried blood scratches; and barely enough strength to make it to the toilet before puking his guts out.

  It is one o’clock in the afternoon.

  A quick visual peek outside confirms a return to normalcy.

  He calls his manager at work with an apology for not calling before, and the excuse of a sudden and violent stomach illness. Possibly food poisoning. No problem. Charles is a solid, if unremarkable, employee who is usually punctual and seldom misses work.

  By evening Charles is seriously questioning what really happened. Wondering if he really had been stricken by some extreme malady during the night, and jungleland was simply a slice of fever induced dreamscape.

  It is as logical a conclusion as any.

  The memory begins to fade.

  By Saturday morning the event is almost forgotten. He sleeps late. He arises at nine and opens the bedroom curtains. The grey sky and drizzling rain that has dominated the last two days has passed. The sun is shining and it looks to be a wonderful day. He thinks about calling a young woman he met recently, and recalls that the scrap of paper with her number is in the center console of his car.

  The second time it happened Charles was more annoyed than surprised.

  He stands in the doorway, looking out at jungleland, and shaking his head no.

  He quickly decides that it isn’t real. He is still asleep. It is only a dream.

  He closes the door. Locks it. (Even in dreams, it can’t hurt to secure your door.) He returns to the bedroom, with the intent to continue sleeping, finish the dream, and then actually wake up in the real world.

  Entering the bedroom, he sees the real world outside his window. His backyard.

  Charles has an ah,ha moment.

  He hurries into the kitchen, crosses to the back door, and throws it open.

  Jungle. A different perspective of the theme, of course, but still jungleland.

  He returns to the living room and opens the blinds on that large window. Everything looks good. He opens the door four feet from the window. Jungleland.

  Charles has a what the… moment.

  Now firmly convinced of the dream theory, he returns to the bedroom, closes the curtains, and crawls into bed. He hadn’t yet changed out of pajama bottoms and t-shirt so he has successfully reset the proper sleep scenario.

  After an hour he gives up the idea of falling asleep. Or waking up. Or some variation thereof.

  He gets up and begins to investigate the finer points of his situation. He discovers:

  All vital utilities are intact. Running water, electricity, gas.

  The television has power, but there is literally nothing on. He gets a ‘NO SIGNAL RECEIVED’ error message on every channel.

  Cell phone also seems to work, he has a dial tone, but after dozens of attempts he cannot get a single call to go through. He enters phone numbers and nothing happens. He can, however, retrieve the voice mail message from his mother, who called twenty minutes earlier. His phone never rang.

  Every window in the house displays a scene of normal familiarity. If closed.

  But if opened, even the tiniest crack… jungleland.

  All windows and doors remain closed.

  Being a Saturday, Charles decides that there is no urgency to leave the house today. No need to do so at all.

  He spends a quiet and unremarkable day at home. It is, perhaps, the longest, most boring day of his young life. His primary activity for the next ten hours is to check a door, or a window, or the TV, or the cell phone, or the refrigerator (the road to boredom is paved with hunger and thirst), or any combination thereof, every ten minutes or so.

  By nightfall he’s about ready to surrender and take a walk outside. He throws open the door. Jungleland after dark. Thick, impenetrable dark. Darker than any city with a streetlight on every corner could ever be. Scary dark.

  He decides to drink his last three bottles of beer and the remainder of a small open flask of tequila instead. And then, sufficiently anointed, he goes to bed.

  He awakes in the morning with a mild headache, cotton mouth, and a renewed hope of an unremarkably beautiful day.

  He opens the bedroom curtains. He opens the bedroom window. He mutters the word shit four times and closes both window and curtains.

  He refuses to be held prisoner in his own home. Especially one without alcohol.

  Fifteen minutes later Charles opens the front door, dressed in durable, lightweight, jungle appropriate attire (the khaki, multi-pocketed pants were actually bought at Banana Republic) and armed with the biggest knife he can find- which is, unfortunately, just a six inch steak knife with a black plastic handle.

  He steps outside, pauses, his hand still on the doorknob. No, he doesn’t like the idea of leaving the door open. Inviting something to invade his sanctuary.

  He closes the door quietly.

  After moving a few feet, he pulls out his cell phone. Maybe the reception is better out here. He calls 911. Nothing.

  Knife at the ready (although he is unsure exactly where ‘the ready’ is), Charles advances without incident to the location of the altar and icon. He examines the copious display of apparent bloodstains on the altar with mounting unease and glances up at the icon’s visage.

  “Hey, screw you, Belushi,” he says, almost without thinking. “What are you grinning about?”

  The next thing he knows… repeat chorus… bed, sweat, headache, arm scratched (the other arm however), puke. The only real difference is this time he’s out one steak knife and half his face is painted white with some chalky crap.

  Charles begins to suspect that something is wrong with his mind. A brain tumor? A schizoaffective disorder? Too much violence on the tube and in his video games?

  Monday morning he phones to make a doctor’s appointment. The soonest they can see him is the following Tuesday morning. More than a week. Eight days. Not great, but it’s the best he can do.

  He doesn’t sleep well at night. He doesn’t concentrate well at work. The mornings, of course, are especially hard. Taking that first look to see what’s out there.

  On Friday he notifies the job of the Tuesday a.m. medical appointment and arranges a half day sick leave.

  The third time it happened was particularly aggravating. Charles stands in the open doorway on Tuesday morning, clenching his jaw tightly, and cursing the gods of abject inopportunity.

  He doesn’t have time for this now. Not now. He has a freaking mental defection to take care of.

  Charles has another ah, ha moment.

  Maybe he doesn’t have to st
ay out there until something bad happens.

  Pretend to leave. Go outside, take a few steps, come right back. Maybe that would be enough to trigger the reset button and make it all go away. At least for the moment. It’s worth a try.

  He steps outside. Closes the door. (It needs to look genuine, after all.) He steps off the welcome mat and the small concrete pad outside his door and down into the jungle itself. He takes two strides forward, turns, and races back to the door.

  The doorknob will not budge. Not one iota.

  “No”, Charles denies firmly, “no, no, no, no, no.”

  He is positive he did not lock the door. Positive. One hundred and, oh, okay, ninety-eight percent positive. No, he did not lock that door.

  Belushi did it.

  Damn Belushi.

  All right. New plan. Maybe, if he can get far enough away from the house. Maybe then… Charles takes a deep breath, lowers his shoulder, and begins to run. Away from Belushi, away from the river. The power halfback crashing through the green defensive line and the vegetative secondary. Racing towards… what?

  His foot plunges through the palm frond and loose brush covering a large, open pit. The rest of him follows accordingly.

  And… bed, sweat, head pain, ankle sprain, bloody nose, knee won’t bend, elbow won’t straighten, puke. Plus he’s missing one shoe and two buttons from his shirt. And he smells like three day old elephant dung. (Not that he really knows what elephant dung of any vintage smells like, but he’s fairly certain the comparison is not an unreasonable one.)

  He’s also missed his appointment by over four hours.

  He calls the doctor immediately after he’s done puking. He apologizes profusely and tells the woman on the phone precisely what happened in detail and why he missed his scheduled appointment.

  She listens politely and informs him that he will still have to pay for the office visit, and perhaps he should consider taking his problem to a different sort of doctor.

  His manager accepts his apology and his request to extend his half day absence into a full day, but with a lesser degree of graciousness attached.