Chapter II - Perceiving Shadows

I went on for a long time, straight ahead, forging through endless drifts of trash. McDonald's wrappers mixed in with rags like burlap and a shattered piece of window with a bit of silver filigree and fish skeletons and old broken crockery and a little girl's doll with one eye and rancid food and who-knew-what else. And through it all the alley kept running on, never bending. The Dumpster had long since dwindled as I approached it, until I was simply walking down an endless tunnel from black distance into black distance.

Above, night fell. The narrow strip of sky I could see was black, and a few scraggly-looking stars shone feebly from on high. The two walls on either side of me kept on, and I was reasonably sure that no church was this big. No door or window marred the perfect blankness of those walls. There was a dim light, from somewhere, perhaps just a combination of meager starlight and the far-off daylight of the alley entrance.

I walked on. It became colder. I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt -- it was summer back in reality. I shivered. My breath frosted in the air, my fingers slowly became numb, and I shuffled on through the detritus of a thousand forgotten civilizations. The odd, off-putting smell of the alley grew more muted as the chill increased, and I was grateful for small blessings.

The light began to lessen, as the cold grew ever more insistent. I trudged forward, my feet crunching over picked-over takeout dinners, half-finished knitting, and shards of Ming vases, clutching my arms close to myself, teeth chattering. Soon it was utterly dark, black as pitch, and cold as pitch would be if darkness were coldness, if you follow me. It was bad. I began to hear things, skitterings in the corners of my mind, began to see flashes of movement at the corners of my vision. I heard the rustlings of rats -- I hoped they were rats -- in the junk heaps.

I dragged my feet forward, barely able to tell if they were still attached. I was numb all over. Then I tripped over a frayed jump rope and fell hard, face-first, onto the frigid ground. I lay there for a moment, idly feeling the last shreds of warmth in my body departing me. What a shame, I thought, that I should have come this far only to freeze to death. Pretty ignominious. My thoughts meandered on, and I wondered who would miss me. My mother, of course. Who knew where Dad was. A few friends, guys from school I hung out with sometimes -- they might wonder where I'd got off to these days. My ex-girlfriend had dumped me for...somebody; the cold deadened his name into incomprehensibility. Doesn't matter: she wouldn't give a damn unless I died in her parents' nice house. But dying here, out of the world, that was okay. I guess I was okay with that.

Then a light came on with a sharp click and a rough foot turned me over. "Welcome," said a voice, "to the Long Road. Get up, get moving, mind the step, keep your hands and arms firmly within your own feeble perception of reality, and shut your damn mouth."

---

Before I go on, a side note about perception. Every moment, your senses are picking up more information than the CIA gathers in a year. Every single piece of near-meaningless sensation is gathered in by hungry ears, eyes, noses, nerves, and taste buds. And what does the brain do with this boggling wealth of minutiae?

It heaves it into the trash. We simply can't process it all. Brains spend a good deal of effort culling their intake, picking through the remains, and dusting off a few choice perception-morsels to take home to Momma. Simply put, people are masters at self-deception. And then, even the choice bits that get past our hyperactive filters aren't filed away in memory like tax records -- no, they're tossed onto a pile, there to shift around, lose focus, zoom in or out or shift altogether. That's why eyewitness accounts are so unreliable -- people can alter their memories to fit the way they already (selectively) see the world.

That will to self-delude is both a shackle on our spirits and a shield upon our souls. We'd rather pretend the world doesn't change, constantly and fluidly and frighteningly. Crazy people can't do that. They perceive the dizzying slip and flow of reality. They can't help it. I'm not sure if that's the product of insanity or the cause. Wackos can do that -- wackos and wizards.

I can do that. Once upon a time, I was like you -- mostly. But it's that little bit of vision that can wedge the door of perception ajar, and then it only takes a little more to blow it wide open. Wizards go crazy all the time. It's just impossible to tell the crazy wizards from the sane ones.

---

I tried to get up. I really did. My breath caught and my heart fluttered and my frost-crusted eyelashes blinked up and down, but my arms and legs were numb like a giant had sat on my body and put everything from my neck down to sleep. I made a little groaning sound.

"Oh, by Nanam, may-he-live-forever, get up, you spineless oaf. Some of us have jobs." The voice waited a moment, then heaved a heavy sigh. "Damn it all, now I've got to waste my month's allowance on some dirtling. You owe me, you little tweeze." There was a snap, and warmth flooded my body.

You know pins and needles? The weird, unpleasant waves of pain that go up and down your leg when it falls asleep? This was like every creepy old hermit lady in Louisiana was using me as a voodoo doll. It hurt like fire and a thousand tiny cabaret dancers in stiletto heels jumping on my skull, beating out a stabbing rhythm in my temples. It hurt so bad I couldn't scream, just gasp and choke like I was drowning. Before I knew it it was gone.

I stood up, shaking, warm like sitting in a black car in a parking lot for half an hour. I felt strange spots of cold all over me, appearing and vanishing on my fever-hot skin. My vision was wobbly and clouded; I waited for it to clear. When it did, I sat down again, ungracefully.

Before me stood a vision from the ravings of a Sherpa wino. The Abominable Snowman, nine feet tall, long white hair, sharp, angry blue eyes set wide apart over a gaping black-lipped mouth ringed with hacksaw teeth, rubbing his forehead and grimacing. Bowler hat.

Bowler hat. The bowler hat was foreign, wrong, so out of place perched atop the mountain of yellow-white fur and fangs that I sat frozen, unable to flee or fight or speak, rendered insensible by the nonsensical. It was worse than the endless alley, the constant night. It was ludicrous. My mouth opened and closed, opened and closed.

The little spots of cold flashing over me were snow, falling from a blank night sky.

The yeti spoke, gruff, still with one paw to its temples. "Get off your ass, dirtling, nobody's going to eat you."

I got to my feet again, carefully. I looked at the yeti. Its bowler hat was huge, as big as a bucket to fit on its massive head. The creature carried a clipboard. A pen on a string dangled from its claw.

Oh, my God. It's the border guard for Fairyland. It's not a monster, it's just a customs agent. I nearly began to laugh, then realized I already was. I could almost see it now -- a tall, paunchy man with a weak chin and a wide, flabby mouth...

He looked at me, eyes widening.

My laughter became uncontrollable, hysterical with relief; I fought against it for breath as I saw him wearing a badly-tailored white suit. Uncut fingernails, long, unkempt white hair. Behind tiny glasses on the tip of his nose, little eyes -- little -- eyes...

The customs agent snarled "No!" and leaped at me, dropping his clipboard, tie flapping behind him. He smashed up on me in a shower of snow, looking eight feet tall and wild-eyed. He grabbed my collar, yanking me up with surprising strength for a fat guy. "Listen to me, dirtling, listen to me! You are in another world! I am a yeti! I'm huge and white with teeth like knives! I scare you! By Nanam, I scare you!"

"Like shit you do," I said, struggling in the man's iron grip. "Lemme go, jackass!"

He roared.

There is something about a yeti's roar that will rip through layers of delusion like a machete through Jell-O. Its lips peeled back and suddenly I saw its teeth, not long, yellowing human teeth but fangs, big two-inch razor fangs a foot from my face. The noise erupted from it like a waterfall, a huge rumbling bass avalanche of sound smashing into me. I closed my eyes but the blast of hot acrid yeti breath forced them open again, blew back my hair, the roar booming all around me and echoing off mountains.

Finally the creature stopped, deflated, dropped me like a used rag. I slumped, once again, to the ground. I looked up and saw the yeti again, towering above me. It cocked its bowler hat back.

"Do not," it said, "ever, do that again. See with your nose and smell with your ears and feel with your eyes, dirtling, or we will lose you forever. You must see what is or you will lose this world. And this world is all you have."

I got up, for the last time. "Thank you," I mumbled, not meeting its eyes.

The yeti looked at me. "You'll do." It squinted. "Say, you wouldn't happen to have any batteries on you, would you?"

Slowly I patted my pockets and shook my head. It heaved a sigh and began to walk away. "Oh well. Come along then, dirtling. You're already late."

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And that is all you get, unless you want me to email you more -- thurberesque at gmail dot com.