Frankentown (19 page)

The information stopped.

Someone had entered; invaded his mind.

When the thought was over, Frank awoke sitting on his father’s bed, with no memory of how he got there, getting nauseous and quickly spinning out of consciousness.
He felt deathly sick. Perhaps the best thing would be to sleep, Frank thought and so he did.

With a head full of webs being spun, he stumbled to the upstairs bathroom to brush his teeth and go to bed without taking a shower. From when his head hit the pillow he was fast asleep in seconds.

Chapter Twentytwo

The Long Flight

As Frank slept, the orange street lamps have long since revealed tapering shadows of trees that lined the streets. The fog rolled and crept, reaching with its curled miasmic fingers for drops of dew suspended from autumn’s red leaves. Wood construction of the houses swelled and creaked with the moisture in the air.

Then when the buzz of the street lamps fell dark and silent, the moonlit night came. With it arrived a stillness, rare to such suburbian neighborhoods.

A single crow soared down the street and landed on the maple just outside Frank’s bedroom window, closest to his head. Soon, two dozen crows gathered, all stark and hunching, looking into the windows with peaking suspicion.

Clouds up above signaled a heavy shower by the dawn, but that was still far away.
In fact, since his bedtime, an hour had not even passed before Frank got up to pee and to soothe his parched throat. He was running a fever and his shirt was soaked with sweat.

He couldn't recall the dream he had just yet. It was all within grasp, but it had just slipped his mind. A flip of the switch would have blinded him, so he never turned the lights on at night. Two pairs of small feet shuffled about
 
behind the breakfast counter. Frank looked over to discover his parent’s cat Luce. She was a white ‘chinchilla persian’ cat with a lifelong kitten complex indicating an early-leaver kitten, which, despite the attitude and scratches one harbored from her, was deeply loving.
 

When she brushed against his legs affectionately, it felt surprisingly comforting, considering Luce has been long dead; somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty years.
 

She was a contribution to Frank’s fonder childhood memories. She was a very loving cat, but she took no crap from anyone. but at the same time Affectionate; never ceasing to purr when shown the least amount of affection.

The absence of something can be stronger than a presence of nothing. The dead cat was a clear giveaway why there were no usual streetlamp tungsten glow. On the contrary, the moon shone very bright that night, strong enough to cast dim shadows even inside the dark rooms with no windows.

Frank knew he was dreaming,

because dead cats don’t
really
walk about.
Really.
It came with a shock to come to the realization that he was fully in control of his dream. With that came a jump and he felt himself lift off the ground, weightless, inertia pulling him toward the ceiling. Before he could worry about decelerating he hit his head on the ceiling and felt very real pain, and wondered just how the pain could feel as real as it did.Vivid dream indeed.

Shapes and contours of things formed worlds in the dark. Everything looked very afresh up from above, looking down from the ceiling.

His eyes acclimatized to the nocturnal landscape of his kitchen and he felt safe. Then the time lapse began bothering him once again.
How has he gone back in time?

And how can he wake up from this dream?
For a while all he could do is levitate in the dark, confused. All of a sudden, two very lanky, very opaque grays stood right next to him. They radiated no light whatsoever, and towered over Frank, who right then, felt very small and insignificant, but first and foremost, panicked to death. Which, in his case meant paralyzed.

Don’t worry
∴

It was the voice of his father. He hadn’t heard his voice in over 20 years but he could tell it anywhere, anytime. It was definitely dad, and he sounded very worried. It was the same kind of voice like when he got fired from his job at the university shortly before he disappeared in Peru.

It’s okay
∴

Frank was convinced that it is, in fact, not okay.

But then, he’s always been such a pessimist.

C’est La Vie
∴
He thought.

You’re ready
∴
the being opposite him said, once again in an undeniable voice of his father.

“Is that- you dad?” he asked out aloud.

I’m your friend
∴
Your neighbor
∴

Why was dad saying this stuff? Was this really a dream or was he actually seeing his dad for the first time in almost 20 years?
Fortunately Frank wasn’t quick enough at that moment to catch up to what was being said. No part of his mind was convinced that this wasn’t just a weird dream, even though it had real life-like qualities. After all, he could pretty much see in the dark like a cat.

The tall warped creature could see right through him. It could predict his every thought.

It knew him. It was an old and well travelled gray, and even wore some simple robes.

The younger one just stood and watched in awe.

I am a Gray
∴

“What do you mean ‘you’ people?” he said out loud in his bed.
Your generation knows nothing of it, but your ancestors have been friends with us
∴
We’ve lived with you on this planet for many milennia
∴

Men are not evil, they are simply driven by their nature
∴
What they wish to have and wish to not have, they will get no matter the cost
∴

You are our kin
∴

“Kin?”

You are one of very few who are true ancestors of those we called friends
∴
   

“What do you mean ‘neighbor’? Where do you come from?”

We live below
∴

Frank retained his nervous habits.

“Jesus Christ! Demons?”

We are sons of Atlantis. We come from its loin. A place governed by an almighty force of earth.
When Frank was nervous he got sarcastic,
just to defend himself. “Who is that? Satan?”

The birth
∴

This blew Frank’s mind, quite literally.

Processing this information and trying to readjust to all these new truths literally hurt. He was dead-frightened and his hair began turning white in strands. Each thought began before the first could even end. A few cycles of thought later, he started thinking in fractals and questioning the meaning of words like ‘the’, ‘on’ and ‘at’. Then, when it got too intense, he blacked out.

Shame
∴

It’s too early
∴

You’re not ready yet
∴

When he half awoke, he turned away from the being and made his way back to the stairs.

If only he could get up to his room.

He made a run for it and the being followed soon after. It made large steps with it lanky legs, catching up to him almost immediately. Just as he got into his room and saw himself dying in his bed, he felt pulled away by some other force.
The energy from the being behind him started pulling him away, so he struggled.
He tore himself free and fell back into his body, lying there, in the bed.

Suddenly he shook awake and sat up.
It was still night and there wasn’t yet much light outside. His eyes adjusted to the dark.
The time said 3:48am.

Birds gathered on branches outside the bedroom windows and peered in curiously.

With enormous effort, Frank got up to go downstairs for some coffee and right outside of his bedroom squinted around in the dark to recognize two shapes;

Two, 9 foot tall gray alien beings stood in his hall, in his house. In a standard fly-or-die, he got a jolt of adrenaline, so massive it caused Frank to faint.
 

Frank fell limp to the ground, as though dead and hit his head on the dresser on the way down. Out Cold; like most other creatures on earth fall as though dead. To protect themselves.

Frank regained consciousness in the downstairs kitchen and got up. He remembered everything that happened, and was now convinced this was all but reality, except his body lied in the hall . When he descended to the kitchen and cautiously peered over the corner, he was comforted by the fact that there were no aliens around, and to no surprise, Luce was gone as well.

Only a few hours remained until it would’ve been the time to get up, and there was no way he was going to be able to sleep those few hours off.
 

He put several big spoonfuls of ground java in his coffee cooker and raided his fridge.

Chapter Twentythree

Shame

In the morning Frank woke up at the foot of the stairs, though he couldn’t recall falling asleep. He was dressed and wrapped in his bathrobe.
The sun wasn’t quite out yet but the early waking fauna already sung it high praises for slowly returning from its slumber.

Many a thick strand of his hair had turned to an irreversible white overnight.
 
It came as a shock when he squinted at himself in the mirror of his bathroom, observing the damage from the previous night. Only a few of his wavy locks remained hazelnut brown.
The rest; gradations of gray.

To suddenly age at such a high pace seemed out of place. But then so did most things in his life. He was a hermit, and an orphan. With no role models or family to look to for guidance over the last decade and half, his greatest asset was ‘being cool’ to many on campus, at the expense of being socially maladjusted. Surely his recent and permanent hair-do will only support it. Either the drinking finally caught up with him, or he was being transported in time by aliens.

When he got to the doctor around noon, after waiting approximately hour and half, he was diagnosed with narcolepsy within minutes and put on medication to keep him awake. The line in the hospital pharmacy took about an hour. People were up on medications.

“The other stuff were just bad dreams,” the young MD who may have barely been out of his teens imperturbably said. It was obviously a dismissal. He didn’t take Frank seriously, claiming his hair just spontaneously turned gray and white overnight. To him, it was a long fabled phenomenon with little scientific evidence to support its existence. His doctor always had a way of explaining everything, even if the answer made no coherent sense to him or others.
He spoke down to him as to a hypochondriac, or a child.

Sure, there was a part of him that knew that going through 20 different patients a day draws one cynical and wary of making such outlandish conclusions, but it wasn’t an excuse.
Frank understood why, and while he couldn’t blame him for drawing on ordinary solutions,
he felt angered for going through the visit itself. Time waste. As if anyone could take any of the stuff he says seriously.
 
Pills can’t be the key to helping you think clearly or live your life right.
Although he was a frequent drunk, he didn’t want to be ‘just hooked on something’.
It was all too much for one day, so he decided to give up for now and retry later.
 

It would’ve been a teaching a day, but he wasn’t exactly feeling up to it. With everything going on, he kind of forgot about work altogether. His mind had shifted elsewhere.

After several seconds spent pondering about whether Allen will still understand him at all, or if he’ll think he’s crazy, he picked up the phone on the nearest corner, searched for change in his pocket which was always plentiful in jackets like the one he wore. His cell was smashed to bits.

Then he dialed Allen, who was just sitting by the phone, eating a sandwich.

They’d meet at Jack’s, their go-to bar.

“Should I call Steve?”Allen carefully asked.

“If you want to.” Frank said effortlessly.

“So I’ll see you there at 7?”

Neither of them wanted to call Steve.

Few hours later, the air had already cooled and droopy November clouds pillowed over the Hippy Street of Telegraph Avenue; Berkeley.

The bar, which was a second block down from the campus, was further from the beggars. Well, it couldn’t be too far; beggars were really scattered all over the street, squandering their lives away to squatter in front of busy restaurants and t-shirt stores; hoping, in vain, for a quarter from a passerby. There was no redemption. No resolution. Their lives got just went from bad to worse.

The 1960’s war, drafting and mind control propaganda was met with an equal reaction -
The Hippy Era, fueled by cocaine, heroin, meth, acid, benzedrine, weed and god-knows-what else. What more, it was socially accepted, as everybody used them back then. Even (and perhaps especially) those who wouldn’t admit to it anymore.
Many people who never lost control entirely but binged on various drugs were by now living legends, actors, rockstars; idols and gods. The ones that lost control were now Telegraph’s permanent residents; patrons, coloring the yellowing gleeful toothless smile of the collective hoboness.

They met up a few blocks lower from the bar. They were used to parking in the same parking lot, so Allen was already waiting for Frank, who never had an established reputation for tardiness,
 
outside of the events of late.

They commenced to hug awkwardly shoulder to shoulder, which to them both was an act just a little too unmanly to do in public, so it was preceded with a lame fist bump.

As they walked up the street at only 6:45pm, an older gentleman in ragged clothing, and few piercings too many, stood on the sidewalk smoking. The oncoming cloud of dirty smelling smoke whafted over Allen’s face as they passed.
“Fucking pacifier. Why would people smoke?”

That reminded Frank of a phrase.
 

“Do as I say, not as I do.”

“That’s what I tell my kids all the time.
Are you trying to say I’m a bad father?
Screw you. Jerk.”
Allen always put on this self referential offended facade when he saw Frank looking all serious. It almost always made Frank laugh, but he was still thinking about his dad and wasn’t quite up to laughter yet. There were no stops to his life, so he’d make them now.