Лоуренс Блок - Ariel

Caleb loves the music. His feet grow still and he puts his hands down at his sides and he just looks up at me and grooves on the music.

Then suddenly!

Everything changes.

I am the Pied Piper of Hamelin. I am still me but different. My golden hair is gone. Instead my hair is black and short and cut like Joan of Arc. And I am dressed like Robin Hood and I have leather slippers with pointed turned-up toes. And I am carrying a huge apple pie in one hand. I know that’s not what Pied Piper means but when I first heard the story years ago I imagined him carrying a pie and that’s how it is in the dream.

I am carrying a pie in one hand and I have my flute in my other hand and I am playing one-handed, playing fast scrambly music that keeps curving in on itself. And I am going out through the rathole door and all the little children are following me. Thousands of children.

And all of them following me. I can see from high up, I can look back over all of us, and the parade of little children goes on forever. We are going through a long tunnel that goes on and on.

The tunnel is a sewer. There is water in the tunnel and the little children are crying because they are getting wet. And I play my flute faster and faster. The pie is gone. I don’t know what happened to the pie, but I am holding the flute with both hands and playing as fast as I can, faster and faster and faster, and I am dancing around in a wild little circle and my slippers have hooves on them like a goat, and I play and I dance, and the children are crying.

And then they are not crying but squealing, and I turn and look, and all of the little children have turned into mice and rats. I turned them into mice and rats with my playing. And the water is too deep for them and they are drowning.

All of the little children are rats and they are drowning.

And I almost wake up.

In fact I think maybe I did wake up then but slipped back into the dream. I can’t be sure.

Again she stopped and capped the pen. She scanned the last paragraphs, started to close the notebook, then sighed heavily and began writing again.

I might as well write the rest of it. I’m scared but I’ll write it anyway. I can always tear it up later.

Just as the children were drowning and I almost woke up, suddenly I was back in the dream but I was also back in Caleb’s room. I had my own hair this time and I was me.

Ariel.

I didn’t have the flute anymore. I don’t know what happened to it.

Caleb was sleeping in his bed. And he just looked so beautiful.

Sound asleep.

And I was Ariel and Caleb both at the same time. I was him sleeping in the crib and me looking into it.

And I can’t explain this.

And my hands went in between the bars of the crib. Each hand went between a different pair of bars. And the part of me that was Caleb saw the hands even though my eyes were closed but just went on lying there.

And one of my Ariel-hands went over my Caleb-mouth.

And the other Ariel-hand went over the Caleb-nose.

And Caleb couldn’t breathe and tried to struggle and tried to move and couldn’t move because Ariel’s hands pinched his nose shut and covered his mouth.

And it just went on forever.

And then Caleb couldn’t move anymore. The Caleb part of me just winked out like a lightbulb and there was just the Ariel part of me plus the part looking down from the ceiling and watching.

It was a dream!

It never happened. Nothing like this ever happened. I don’t know where the dream came from. I don’t know where dreams come from. They don’t mean anything. Everybody has dreams and all dreams are crazy and they do not mean anything.

I had to write this down. I don’t ever want to read it but I had to write it down.

I can’t tell anybody about this. I couldn’t tell Erskine even.

I don’t know what to do. I’m scared.

No that’s silly it’s all right it’s just a dream.

She sat there for several minutes trying to think of something else to write. But there was nothing else to write. She capped her pen and closed her notebook and returned both of them to her schoolbag.

She got into bed, pulled the covers up. She reached to extinguish the lamp, then changed her mind and left it burning. She stretched out and closed her eyes but they wouldn’t stay shut. They kept opening.

The announcer on ORU, the Belgian overseas station, was commenting at length on the outcome of a recent OPEC meeting in Brussels. Erskine switched off the radio and yawned theatrically. “Boring,” he said, giving the word a singsong inflection. “Bow. Ring.”

“Maybe I should go home.”

“Maybe you should take off all your clothes, Jardell.”

She looked at him, shook her head. “You just have to be gross every once in a while to prove you’re alive, don’t you?”

“It’s not grossness, Ariel. It’s the heat of passion.”

“If I did take my clothes off you wouldn’t know what to do.”

“I’d think of something.”

“Your little old rheumatic heart would conk out and I’d have to explain it to your mother.”

“I told you I was willing to risk it. You could just tell my mother I ran up the stairs again.”

“She’d say, ‘I just knew it was a mistake to let him live in the attic.’ ”

“That’s what she’d say. Want to give it a try?”

She sighed. “You don’t even want to.”

“Then why do I keep asking you?”

“Habit, probably. You started off trying to gross me out and now you’re stuck in a rut. You don’t really want to, do you? With me, I mean.”

He started to reply, then took a moment to think. She watched his eyes through the thick lenses. “I guess not,” he said at length.

“Because we’re friends?”

“Right. We’re friends, and we sort of know each other, and all that. I know who I’d like to screw.”

“Who? Wait, let me guess. Carol Bahnsen.”

“Ugh.”

“Oh, I know. Veronica, right?”

“How’d you know?”

“Veronica Doughty. I just knew it.”

“How?”

“Woman’s intuition. Suppose you got to be friends with her first?”

“I wouldn’t get to be friends with her. (A) she doesn’t like me and (B) she’s stupid. But you’re right, I’d like to do it to her.”

“I knew she was the one.”

“And afterward I’d have to kill her.”

“Why?”

“Oh, because she’s so stupid, Ariel. And because she’s stuck up and a snot.”

She’s a snot, all right.”

“And to keep her from telling anybody. I’m just talking. I wouldn’t really kill her.”

“But you’d like to.”

“Sure.”

“Does it bother you?”

“What?”

“Thinking about killing people.”

He shook his head. “I wouldn’t really kill anybody. But there are a lot that I’d like to kill. Sometimes it’s fun to think about it.”

“Who would you like to kill?”

“Well, Veronica.”

“Who else?”

“Maybe Mrs. Tashman.”

“Tashman? Why her?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes she’s like my mother. The way she talks. You know, so sincere that you know she’s not really sincere.”

“I think she’s nice. She came to Caleb’s funeral.”

“Okay, then we’ll let her live. I’ll tell you who I’d like to kill. Graham Littlefield.”

“Why Graham?”

“Because he’s tall and strong and athletic and popular and stupid. He’s really stupid.”

“He’s not that stupid.”

“I think he’s stupid.”

“You’re jealous.”

“I don’t get jealous of stupid people, Jardell.”

“Veronica likes him.”

“So I’ll kill both of them. This is a stupid conversation, speaking of stupidity. Who do you want to kill?”