Nightmares From a Lovecraftian Mind by Jordan Krall Read Free Book Online

crawl along the
floor and place the tape recorder on the windowsill. I press PLAY and RECORD.
It is as much for my neighbor as it is for me. I want to hear what they have to
say.
    “Do we have any
milk? Alcohol?”
     
    *
    At breakfast, I
play the cassette. As I eat my pancakes, I listen to my neighbor’s nocturnal
soliloquy.
    “The wallpaper
in his house curls up whenever I look at it. It’s as if my mind controls it.
It’s very bizarre. He’s always staring over here and I wonder if he’s checking
to see if my wallpaper does the same. No, it doesn’t. But why must he stare?
Ever since his mother died, he’s been creeping around. Yes, part of me feels
sorry for him but…he’s just making these meetings more awkward. There must be
something in the night table drawer that will….”
    Then there is
static. I don’t know where the static came from but when it leaves, I hear my
neighbor’s voice again but this time it is quieter, more conspiratorial.
    “Something like sleep, yes. Oh, the cold is still there of course.
We’ll capture it in due time. Just a few more things we need. It’s all in the
book.”
    And that’s when my
false dream kicks in. I start babbling about the weather and about the insects
and about how they might come back as monstrous creatures, mutated by the
talcum powder, ready to crush me beneath their feet. I also mention something
about my childhood, about my cat Humphrey dying, about how my mother warning me
about sex and how when you have intercourse with one person you are having
intercourse with every person they have ever had intercourse with. The false
dreams become more bizarre: I must have gotten really close to the tape
recorder’s microphone as I start to describe a giraffe on a bicycle and a man
dressed as an Indian chief who has a cantaloupe in his mouth. The cantaloupe
expands into a planet and the planet turns out to be a germ on my unwashed bed.
It envelopes me and sucks the health out of my body. The germ wants all the
dreams to itself and that is why I cannot truly dream.
    Then my neighbor’s
voice again.
    “Turn the tape
recorder off. Turn it off!”
    I nearly choke on
my pancakes.
    I turn the tape
recorder off and throw it down the basement steps.
     
    *
    Now I sleep in my
mother’s old room.
    The bedding is
clean (for now) and the wallpaper is neither distracting nor boring. In
addition to the change in rooms, I do not record my false dreams anymore. The
cassette player is in many pieces at the bottom of the basement stairs.
Occasionally I open the door and look down at it. I believe the small
mechanical destruction should be left there like sacred runes.
    So now my bedtime
ritual is this: I get a warm blanket and snuggle in bed with a pillow. The
patches of cold are in this room as well. That’s one thing I can’t escape. Then
I put on a foreign film on the television and I keep a watchful eye out for
invading ants. It is not the most comforting ritual but it has gotten me
through a few nights during which I believe I might have slept two or three
minutes. While trying to fall asleep, I can also smell my mother’s perfume:
Seven Winds.
    The films I watch
do a lot to distract me from the disturbing static I had heard from the tape
recorder as well as the fact that I no longer have the machine to explore my
archives. I find that the static still clings to my mind more than any other
sound. It’s like snow made of glue lingering around my head, attempting to
block my thoughts.
    Still, I
concentrate on being warm and following the butchered subtitles of the foreign
film. They are talking about a woman being sick with fever and a gong is being
struck. Someone is running through the snow.
    From the new room
I can occasionally hear my neighbor but the voice is very faint this time.
    “New
room now. The cold is going to take him now….just like his mother.”

ARGON
SEIZURE
    Someone once told
me the hotel was primed for demolition. Like always, I had responded