Arcadia Burns

CALL IT A DREAM


SHE WAS RUNNING, IN human form, over the muddy bottom of the pond, running as fast as she could, although her feet sank into the silt with smacking noises every step she took. Sludge swirled around her in the water, blurring the green light in the depths.

Looking over her shoulder, she saw that she was being followed.

A yellow taxi, a typical New York cab, was racing after her over the muddy ground. Its tires kicked up even more dirt; brown ramparts of cloud drifted on both sides of the car. The windshield wipers washed waterweeds away, oscillating right and left, right and left. A rubber figurine of Simba from The Lion King dangled from the rearview mirror.

Rosa could hear much better than before. Not just her own footsteps on the bed of the pond and the engine of the car, but also the music coming out of its open windows. The song was “Memory,” from Cats. Another good reason to run.

The metal frame of a burnt-out baby carriage appeared in the darkness ahead of her, bowling along through the sludge and the aquatic plants on wheels made of spokes without tires. It crossed Rosa’s path. She could hear the axles squealing, a sound that grew louder and then softer again. As it moved away from her, she looked inside it and saw a bundle lying in the carriage, with arms and legs flailing in the air. The metallic squeals turned to the sound of a baby crying.

She changed direction and ran after it in the dim light. The headlights of the taxi followed her, and “Memory” turned into Scott Walker’s cheerful “The Girls and the Dogs,” its quick rhythm making her race with the carriage look ridiculous. Laughter sounded on the recording as she stumbled and grazed her knees. Clouds of blood swirled up, and the laughter swelled even louder.

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw who was at the wheel of the taxi. Tano waved at her and grinned. She recognized him in spite of his sunglasses and the gap left by the bullet wound that had blown away part of his forehead. Valerie bobbed excitedly up and down next to him in the passenger seat, wearing a T-shirt with the Suicide Queens’ logo on it. Michele was in the back seat, waving a machine gun in the air. There was a rose stuck in the barrel of the gun.

She tried to run even faster to catch up with the baby carriage. The sharp ends of the spokes threw up dirt until the taxi was barely visible in the drifting swathes of brown water. But Rosa kept running, even when the distance between her and the carriage increased, while the spokes rotated in a hectic time-lapse effect. That’s not fair, she thought indignantly. Tano turned up the volume of the music, and Scott Walker’s voice vibrated through the lake.

Tano tooted his horn in time with the song, until Michele hit him over the head from behind with his gun. Valerie laughed hysterically. The taxi began weaving around, and Tano took one hand off the wheel, put it into the hole in his head, and adjusted something displaced by the blow. After that, the car drove more slowly again.

Rosa looked ahead—perhaps she’d been doing that the whole time, yet she knew what was going on behind her. All that mattered was reaching the carriage. Its front spokes suddenly collided with a rock, and the carriage fell apart into separate pieces. The screaming bundle was flung up, and then it bobbed through the turbulent water at a leisurely pace, so slowly that Rosa was able to catch it as she ran.

She clutched the child to her. He was wrapped in a cloth spattered with paint and varnish. A pretty little boy. “My name is Nathaniel,” he said.

“I know.”

A cat’s paw shot out from under the cloth, and claws dug furrows in Rosa’s face.

Nathaniel laughed in Tano’s voice.

Tano in the taxi was yelling like a newborn baby.

Rosa let go of the child, and watched as a current carried him away. There was a haze of blood before her eyes. She heard the taxi behind her coming closer and stormed forward again, half blind in a cocoon of red.

Then, all of a sudden, she was moving upward. The ground rose more and more steeply. The tires of the taxi’s wheels stuck in the mud; the engine howled, so did Tano, and Valerie laughed louder than ever.

Rosa’s head came up through the surface of the water, through leafless branches. She slipped through railings much too narrow for her, yet they couldn’t hold her back. Light surrounded her, yellow streetlamps, bright white cones from headlights.

A taxi pulled up in front of her. She flung the door open and slipped in. There was a child’s hand dangling from the rearview mirror. Or perhaps it was only a twig.

She gave an address, and then her head fell to one side.

She dreamed, and everything was all right.