Dread

By Jeff Wade

Have you ever gone days with no water? Weeks? Have you ever spent the night with a dead man?

A heinous nightmare. Frank bolts up in bed. Except he's not in bed. His head slams into what feels like ten-million tons of solid rock. He rolls right, then left, only to be foiled by more rock. Like a stone coffin. What is this place? How did he get here? Maybe the dream was real, and this is the nightmare. His heart pounds with panic as he stares into the darkness.

Something has happened. Something terrifying. But the harder he strains to recall the event, the deeper it retreats into the labyrinth of his mind.

A stalker in his dreams. Horror when he wakes. A passage. A password. A vanishing snake. What does any of it mean, if anything?

No light. No water, no memory. And he's out of time. He must remember. If he wants to live. His amnesia is fading, but so is his hope. And perhaps his sanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeff Wade
• Release date: Dec 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386032731

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Dread

Jeff Wade

Copyright 1990

All rights reserved

201901040818

This book is dedicated to my brother Rico.

Do madmen know they’re insane? Logically, it seems a comprehension of sanity would be requisite for such knowledge, and so in recognizing their insanity, surely they would be in the same moment cured. That I question my own sanity suggests the absence of it—yet also the possibility of enlightenment.

Something has happened. Something terrible. The harder I strain to recall the event, the deeper it retreats into the labyrinth of my mind. Perhaps it’s like that word on the tip of your tongue, the one for which you pound your head against a wall—never with any success. Then later, no longer needed, it blasts before your mind’s eye like a neon billboard in Vegas.

Because you’re no longer thinking about it.

And so I allow myself to drift away, to hover at the edge of delirium. Acid dreams flood in, distorting my perception of what is real. Have you ever gone days without food or water? Weeks?

Have you ever slept with a dead man?

This is…bad. This was a

~~~

bad decision, one I could never take back. I will pay with my life. I stand between the rails, legs apart, hands fisted—facing down the steel Leviathan.

There will be much pain, hopefully not for long.

And how long will their grief endure? How long before my memory dies, before it will be as if I’d never existed?

Sweet Veronique's screams punctuate the rumble of the beast. She is coming.

It is coming.

From the corner of my eye, I can make out my little family, atop the hill not fifty feet from the tracks. Veronique gestures wildly. Bellowing. Our one-year-old girl sits on her hip, impeding her progress. The baby cries because her mother cries. She knows only that something must be terribly wrong.

But my attention is fixed on the wall of steel bearing down on me. I shudder in awe, overwhelmed by the sheer size of it. I've never seen one at this close proximity.

In my periphery, Veronique slides comically down the grassy hill. We earned our black belts together once, in another life. She can kick with the best of them, but she never really learned to fall. She shrieks her love and forgiveness as she stumbles. Begging me to stop. Does she not know that some things are unforgivable?

Stepping over a rail, the tracks now between us, I turn to face her.

And my heart melts.

I find myself kneeling—then bowing into position—slowly, formally; my stomach churns, and I wonder if perhaps samurai felt this way during pre-hari-kari rituals.

A startling roar, as if from an angry mechanical dragon, rising in pitch as it rushes toward me.

A quick burning pinch.

Everything numb.

Tumbling. Just my head, for it’s all I am now.

I come to rest facing up. My bangs flutter as the belly of the beast blows by above me.

Grain car.

Slash of light.

Tanker.

Slash.

Darkness.

Slash.

On and on, seemingly forever.

Clanking. Clashing. Another wail of the horn in the distance, now falling in pitch, lamenting.

By moving my eyes, I can make out my body, laying outside the path of destruction. The knees jerk. Running on autopilot.

On the other side, Veronique collapses, hands to the ground, desperately searching between the passing wheels—hysterical, praying to God I'd changed my mind. She should not be so close with the baby.

Movement in the chunky gravel, inches from my face: The fingers of my right hand, held together by the knuckles. Purple and swollen. I'd been gripping the rail.

There’s the scar on my index finger, where I cut myself carving a slingshot as a kid. This is also the hand that slid a wedding ring onto my lover's finger. Amazing things, hands. Mine could smash through concrete—or caress Veronique's hair, locks gilded gold in the predawn glow. They were good hands.

Through the blur of clanking wheels, I realize it's a beautiful day—a great day to take Angie to the park. She loves feeding the ducks. What a lovely sight that would be! A little family, a healing broken home, visiting the park in an effort to lick the wounds inflicted by betrayal. Maybe there is hope; maybe we could work it out. Maybe