Death and the Dream

By JJ Brown

“Subtle, soul-touching horror.”
14 haunting tales from contemporary New York make up this dark and thrilling short story collection. Death suddenly becomes an inescapable part of life in scenes set in the Catskill Mountains, Brooklyn, the Lower East Side, Greenwich Village, City Island, and the City’s science research labs.

A child left home alone plays with matches in a deserted rural valley on a hot summer day. A college student searching for love in New York City gets trapped in a dream of a lost boy. A young scientist accidentally gets locked in a laboratory room with her research mice in an experiment turned nightmare. An aging hitman confronts the murderer of their childhood trauma in a Lower East Side park one fateful spring morning. An abandoned German Shepherd bolts in front of a newlywed couple driving home for Christmas in a blizzard.

J.J.Brown expertly weaves lyrical and poetic stories of psychological terror reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JJ Brown
• Release date: Aug 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9780983821113

JJ Brown

J.J.Brown is a published author of 10 books including mysteries, speculative fiction and noir fiction infused with a passion for nature, science and family. Her books are published in print, ebook and audiobook editions.The author spent her childhood in the Catskill Mountain region of New York. She continued writing fiction during her career as a Molecular Biologist and Public Health Advocate in Philadelphia and New York City. Her fiction subjects often address current medical and mental health issues, and environmental concerns.J.J.Brown has a PhD in Genetics from earlier research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory with Nobel Prize winner Barbara McClintock. Brown’s genetics, medical education and public health works have been published in leading scientific and professional journals.When not writing, J.J.Brown enjoys reading, Tai Chi, and time with her companion rabbit, Belinda, and parakeets Sweety and Penelope. She has two daughters and lives in New York City.

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Readers’ Praise for J.J. Brown and Death and the Dream

About Lab After Dark:

A sterling, evocative piece. There is this mixture of the stark elements of the reality of this highly specialized environment, with the human drama of the two participants, all wrapped in poetic gauze, luminous and transcending the physical objects…–Wayne McEvilly, Classical Pianist, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

About Spring Awakening:

A story about life, living and dying, forgiveness and divine justice. The author engages you in conversation by weaving a tapestry of rich texture, color and depth of character. Spring has never looked so beautiful… –Kumud Ajmani, Aerospace Engineer, Cleveland, Ohio

About Mouse Chimera:

In Brown's story Mouse Chimera, Anya Minskova unlocks a door, allowing a glimpse into the scientist heart. There, the reader discovers a strange redemption that comes at a price not everyone would be willing to pay. –Courtney Cantrell, author of Colors of Deception

About Rabbit Nightmare:

Soft and smooth like a thin smoky line between sleeping and waking, or lingering undecided. –Costis Demos, Poet, Athens, Greece

Death and the Dream

Stories

J.J.Brown

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 J.J.Brown

ISBN-13: 978-0-9838211-1-3

This book is also available in print at most online retailers.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication

For my daughters and in memory of my parents and grandmothers.

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to my editor Susanna Leuci Rosensteel and to Lillian Rodriguez, Sophia Rodriguez and Dr. Sean Hayes for critical reading of the stories. Appreciation to Kristin Jannacone and Catherine Pfister for their encouragement. Gratitude goes to teacher Swami Shivendra Puri of Haridwar, India.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents are the products of my imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or to people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Underground

Summer Off

Brooklyn Song

Mother’s Love

Before the Funeral

Rabbit Nightmare

Mouse Chimera

Lab After Dark

Way to Heaven

Shepherd’s Night

Good Neighbors

Spring Awakenings

Rain Dream

Rose Death

About the Author

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Stories come to me in dreams and in quiet times like during train rides. I feel compelled to tell the stories or write them down. As a child, I lived in a secluded rural area but my parents kept a tremendous library at home. The solitude and the company of books helped encourage a love of literature. Little children were to be seen and not heard in my family and writing became the way to express myself. Now I take every story that comes to me and try to write it down, catching it before it vanishes. Every tragic moment in life, from childhood to my days as a scientist in the research labs of New York City, can turn, unfold, and shape a story. This is how I deal with, and come to enjoy the strangeness of, my life experiences. I hope that you, reader, will enjoy a few of these stories. And tell us a story of your own whenever you can, won’t you? I do love a good story.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? -Edgar Allan Poe, 1844

UNDERGROUND

"What will you tell them about it? What will they understand? I ask myself this as I tell myself the story again and again over the years. The extreme heat was searing down on Brooklyn that day. The power of the white morning sun was radiating back from Flatbush Avenue in the thick traffic. The dirty feeling of exhaust clung to your face—and the thought something awful will happen today" passed through your mind. You will remember this. But when you remember it, what will you say? What will you tell your daughter and your sister? Could you even tell the family about it? No, you couldn’t. But if you did, what would you tell them?

You know what you will not say. You won’t talk about the smell of pigeon excrement and stale alcohol evaporating from the pavement in the morning sunlight. Better not to mention the sound of your step crunching on broken glass along the uneven curb. And don’t talk about how the hot subway air rising up through the grates surrounding your feet felt like Hades reaching up to claim you. No, they won't understand. They won't want to hear about it.

Yet it is here, it persists. The feeling dizzy from the heat, and walking and walking and wanting not to breathe, it stays with you. Knowing you have to breathe creates that awful tension between what you have to do and what you don’t want to do; it remains. Walking, breathing. The sad face of the clock on the tallest building in Brooklyn is still showing 9 AM. No one will care what time it was when you talk about it later, if you talk about it. But yet this detail, this one thing, this photograph you will file away in memory. You will remember this. Can you see it?

Three tall black women are crossing the street slowly in front of you, graceful as new vines swaying in the hot breeze. Their long skirts swish in the rich, spicy smell of incense floating across Flatbush Avenue. A street vendor's white tablecloths are billowing in the wind, his white cotton robes and white crochet cap shining in the sunlight—and the ominous thought: Yes, this is the moment before the accident. This smell. This incense. Yes, you will remember this. Can you smell it?

Sound waves scream from sirens on a blue truck, and headlights, and the bright sun, and you have to stop in your tracks. You and the tall women in the long skirts all back up onto the dirty curb just to avoid being run over. A police truck U-turns by your feet and rolls up over the sidewalk. You lower your head and turn away from the policemen who climb out of the truck. They flow toward you, dangerous, like a disturbed nest of wasps. A small brown car pushes by you, between you and the police truck, and all the people rush to get out of the way. The car fender presses along your thigh. You will remember the fear of being dragged under the truck, the car, crushed. Can you feel it?

Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues are blocked completely by police cars along the entrance to the underground subway. Police in trucks, police in cars, they move in and occupy the congested street clotted like failing human arteries. The tunnel where you planned to catch the underground train to the Bronx and up to the Metro-North railway floods with police. You were on your way to work. You will remember this. Can you believe it?

A young, blond policeman plants himself solidly at the head of the stairs that lead down to the trains like he is some great tree. He has a smooth face, big shoulders, short sleeves; his hairy forearms are crossed in front of his massive chest. He is a young, untroubled man in the face of disaster. He doesn't move when you approach.

Which train is down? you ask.

I don't know, all of them, I think, he says without looking down at you. He shrugs his big round shoulders and looks away down the chaotic street. Ask downstairs, I don't know, he says evenly. This sound—you’ll remember the sound of his smooth and untroubled voice. You will remember this. Can you hear him?

You look down the stairs trying to see but can't pick out anything in the hazy air over the dark staircase. The stairs emanate heat, like the inferno below. Yes, it is, it must be Hades. A demonic older woman with fat arms and gold bracelets bounces around you awkwardly. She is trying to get by you. Her chemically reddened hair floats like a cloud around her and you. You will remember this, the color of her hair. Can you see it?

Downstairs! All the way downstairs, the woman shrieks, Why don't he just tell her? Why I got to go all the way downstairs! She reaches over you, clawing at the policeman. She shakes her puffy hands at him, her bracelets clanging. Behind you, the screaming woman thrashes insanely. The sound of her voice, you will remember this. Can you hear her?

In front of you no rushing commuters fill the stairs. It is very still. The quiet air vibrates with only heat. Down the hot concrete stairs, through the stench of urine and stale alcohol, slowly you descend into the subway station. A haggard man climbs painfully up the stairs toward you, begging. You avoid looking into his ghostly eyes because you have no money to give. This man, mute in the dark, his bare skinny arms crooked around an empty paper cup; you will remember how he looks at you. Can you see him?

You walk in slow motion, melting in the heat. You pass the train schedule boards, pass the magazine stand, pass a mass of silent people jamming the entrance to the number 4 and 5 subway lines. You press up against a crowd that stands looking at the tracks, their backs to you. You are compelled to press up against them. A young black woman turns away from the tracks to look at you. You are both dripping with sweat. Her face is awash with oil, shining in the heat. Her short, gelled hair gleams. Her pointed red nails scrape the black metal bars of the subway track entrance. Can you hear them?

Somebody on the tracks, she says. You see in her broad, red, lipstick-covered lips the horrible, blood-smeared mouth of death.

Flashlight beams move back and forth on the quiet train tracks. Policemen walk on the platform, beyond the yellow tape. Another walks down along the tracks, only his head visible. He bends down, reappears and throws a heavy, black, knotted plastic bag up onto the silent platform. It lands, sounding wet and heavy. Can you hear it?

That's the head, the young woman says, turning to you again, your guide in the macabre scene. She points with her crimson-painted nails to the large bag sinking into the platform.

The policeman on the tracks throws up two more knotted plastic bags that land heavily, sodden. His hands are visible in the beam of another policeman's flashlight searching over the dark tracks, the empty tracks. A third policeman, young and obese, stands on the platform shaded by a pole. He laughs suddenly and loudly, his mouth agape.

The stench of machine oil, of urine, of sweat is overwhelming. You are saturated with it, drowning in the hot, stinking air. The three bags are there, collapsed, wet and weighty on the dark platform, but you will try not to remember this. As you walk away from the tracks you don't look back. But as if they are being pulled along, people continue to move slowly past you in a stream toward the tracks, toward the accident. Can you see them?

Back up on the street, the sun has burned off the morning haze. You wind your way along the packed sidewalk at the entrance to the subway and look for the next entrance at Nevins Street. Approaching Nevins it is crowded. And then the stairs, the fear of walking down there, here is the fear that plagues you for weeks, for years, because you relive it. Can you feel it even now?

Take the R line at DeKalb; all the 4 and 5 trains are down, a tall man behind the subway booth window repeats in a monotone over and over to the confused people who pour past him. DeKalb. You have never been to