John Domini - Bedlam and Other Stories

He stayed in town for dinner, then stayed after dinner at the piano bar, listening to the songs. He set out for the house late, and couldn’t locate his driveway. After a while he realized he was driving with his lights off.

Later, he saw the young couple that had been babysitting his house. They were dancing, in his kitchen, between the uniquely-constructed counters, under the runners from which hung pans, serving forks, spatulas. He was very tired, but the noise of their dancing finally brought him downstairs. His wife had insisted they keep a revolver in the bedroom, and now Rucker came downstairs with the gun in his hand. This is how it’s done, he was telling himself anxiously; this is how I have to behave. Then when he saw them, dancing, he let his pistol hand drop and he leaned heavily against the kitchen door jamb.

Yet Rucker, such was his character…he believed there was a chance you could reason with these people. As he watched, the thought came to him, and he felt compelled to try. If you could call attention to their predicament, the dancing should stop. He moved into the kitchen, placing the gun on the counter that held the cereal bowls and unbreakable children’s cups, and he attempted to get between the two figures. Within their space the air was disturbed. The front of Rucker’s robe opened. He crossed his arms tightly over his chest to keep from shivering and peered into each face as it went past him. He called to the man, then the woman. The air grew colder. The long hairs on his chest and belly stirred. With enormous concentration, overcoming even his natural revulsion, his sadness and fatigue, Rucker persisted until finally a slackening and slight widening of their area let him know his presence had been felt. Immediately he asked if they knew where they were. Any telling question that came into his head, he asked. He asked if they knew what time it was; he asked if they knew who had done this to them; he asked if they knew the motive; he asked if they knew their way out; he asked if they felt any pain; he asked if they knew who they were. No answers were forthcoming. But the pair danced only haltingly now, and they were beginning to drift, mist over, quiver. Rucker sensed their unwillingness to complete the thoughts he’d started. He insisted. He asked if they knew who he was.

He would never have believed himself capable of such effort so late in the day.

The final trace to yield to him was their music. After that Rucker stood still a while where he was, in his silent and empty kitchen.

Then, though he had the thought that he must return to bed, he started to dance. He followed the rhythm of the couple’s music, which he found he could remember clearly, the notes rising uncalled-for to make the unshaved skin of his throat tremble. He danced a simple box step. In time his senses started to go dead on him, his feet numb, his tongue dry and thick. Nonetheless in another way he remained alert, as if some offshoot of his personality were permanently fired up by the idea of dancing. In this frame of mind Rucker recognized the couple’s song. He’d heard it before tonight. A popular ballad with an elegant melody, he’d heard it many times. And so the stockbroker understood that, since he’d already known the tune when the ghosts had first got him out of bed, the entire experience was cast into doubt. Yes he did have a mind — he glanced round his unusual kitchen — open to suggestion. Yet how could he stop dancing for this one prickle of uncertainty, when by his third or fourth refrain of the song Rucker had begun stepping through whole industrious colonies of tangled feelings, through swarms of emotion gathering close, close? Gently Rucker tried to sort these out. He identified the child’s exhilaration at being alone in his own house, the working-man’s relief and shame now like two file folders balanced neatly in a satchel, the grandfather’s desperation about the importance of rules, and the aging husband’s loneliness. But as Rucker pulled free each feeling from the tangle, others crowded into its place. Subtler creatures, crisscrossing masks and shreds of his inner life. With every dance step, more were felt pressing in round his cold legs, herded against his aching shoulders. At last Rucker understood that all the sensations of his long experience had this night joined together, in a motiveless musical triumph that was almost violent.

From time to time he caught his reflection in the polished cook-ware hanging overhead. He also looked out the kitchen window at the sky. He regarded the stars there. The light from those, he told himself calmly, has been traveling towards me since before my lifetime.

Much later on, long after Judgment Day, we remembered that a man had once passed through here and then returned, still living, to the world. Across the lightning and malefic smoke of Hell the news traveled. A human man! Only passing through !

Among all my fellow devils the one I most often conversed with, at this time of the news of the escaped man, was a polymorph named Miplip. I had no choice about talking with him. He was my overseer. In his natural state he possessed a hideous face: scaly, pendulous cheeks and a long nose with a circular tip and the nostrils on the tip. I had heard it said that the inspiration for his looks came from an ancient river turtle of South America, but this of course could not be, for Miplip had been created eons before either the turtle or the river in which, until Judgment Day, the creature had made its home.

He was my overseer. Still, still it rankles. In our Division there was Miplip and I, only we two, though there were visitors, and he — he was the one in charge. Everywhere devils work in twos; one must be in charge. Then why should it hurt so? Miplip, Miplip. Our relationship was oppressive.

Why did you argue with me, perpetually shaking your brittle cheeks? They made a rustling sound, and anyway I conceded every point, sooner or later. Why the heartless flaunting of your superiority? I concede: you have all the advantages. Don’t you think we have been at it together long enough for me to know? I concede that your tongue is longer than mine and that the inside of your mouth is a nastier yellow. I concede that your polymorphism dwarfs anything I am capable of. Then why should I be reminded, again and again? Mip lip . The nagging. The nicknames. The shapes you sometimes assumed, just to delude me. The jokes far over my head. The remarks to others. Everywhere devils work in twos, and one must be in charge. Therefore I needed you; I could never be in charge. But what did you need, to cause me such pain?

Yet Miplip and I, like all other devils, discussed this new development (or rather, this newly-remembered old development): a man who had slipped our grasp and returned to the world unharmed. On some occasions Miplip and I were lucky; our conversation would be more of a discussion and less of a harangue. On other occasions, unlucky, the reverse. But we did talk, like all the others, and we asked those demons who came by what they thought. The general response was confused, halting, even pessimistic. Some avoided the question altogether, darting away before we had finished so much as a single sentence about the escaped man. A troubling situation, especially in the light of all the other worries we had been suffering recently. Then came the day that one of our regular visitors, a sightless demon whom Miplip and I both regarded as a friend, rendered himself invisible in order to escape us. After that, Miplip made a suggestion — a suggestion, as it turned out, of monumental proportions.

He had his tail curled about him at the time, and he sat on the air, maintaining levitation by a gentle flapping of his wings. He seemed unusually subdued. The blind devil’s exertions in bursting out of sight had left a brown stain on the air, just over Miplip’s head.