Prophecies of death - the Magreets

So I'm on this train and the concession waiter goes by.

"You guys need a drink?"  I shake my head, no.  No all around the table.  We thank him, he leaves. 

Look around, everyone's here - beside me there's Nick Nolte or at least an actor that looks like him, he's talking about his latest movie, he's wearing a cowboy hat.  Nick takes the hat off, his signature move, cocks his head, all blue eyes, Southern drawwwwwl, now THAT'S acting, am I right?

The mafia is here - a Russian guy.  I'm not being a dick here, a stereotyper, ok, he's the real deal and he makes no bones about it, tells us about people he has killed without hesitation, and it seems so rational because of the accent.

The conductor pokes his head in to our booth - you know what I'm talking about - it's like a sleeper without the cots, this little conference room on the train while the landscape dissolves into one green line outside our private window, disappearing as fast as we can approach it.

"Tickets?"  We produce the proof we're entitled to our tiny piece of moving real estate and he chunk-chunks them so it's official, then leaves.

The two people across from me are slightly built, I notice it because on my side it's Nick and the Russian and both of them are those tall meaty men, they know how to take up space.  The two people I'm facing barely take up one butt cheek's worth of space each.  I think the one on the left is from NATO and the other one is Korean; he/she (I can't tell, I keep settling on one then moving to the other) this person speaks no english but NATO is interpreting.  It's not as distracting as you might think, you get used to it, the delay like you're talking to someone on a satellite phone.  I briefly imagine the conference we could be having, all the stakeholders calling in remotely.

At the head of the table with her back to the window is a major network news anchor; people are forever shaking her hand then furrowing their brow to recall what romcom they last saw her in.  Her name is Sally of all things.  She does not look like a Sally.

"The Magreets were the guide dogs of Pompeii, owned by the elite," she reads to us from the morning newspaper.  "The foot traffic was bad in Pompeii - by afternoon when the sun was at a more reasonable angle and everyone - servants, nobles, pickpockets - was heading to and from the market there would be lines that stretched across town - it could take you two hours to fetch some seafood and bread, not to mention the time to haggle a reasonable price."

"Snacks?" The concession waiter is back. Russia orders some peanuts.

"I'll take a soft pretzel" I tell him.  "Oh - and that nacho cheese sauce, too."  Nobody else is hungry. 

Lacie continues.  I can't call her Sally.  She's just not a Sally.

Lacie: "And there the Magreets patiently forged a path for their wealthy owners, cutting lines, finding the right vendors.  White, sleek, regal, they were trained so early, they never barked but just pointed their heads and led the way to a faster meal, a better seat at the coliseum.  They were the ultimate portable symbol of wealth. Everyone deferred to you if you owned a Magreet."

We all start talking at once.  Patiently Lacie - no that seems wrong too.  Fine.  Sally.  Whatever.  She  answers every question.  Yes some survived Vesuvius.  They became street dogs, the sleek white coat turned matted and filthy.  They raided trash heaps, slept in abandoned buildings and continued to breed, for centuries, expanding the original population of well bred, trained guides into a mixed horde of thousands, then hundreds of thousands.

The pretzel and and peanuts arrive.  Russia and I tip our waiter.  The pretzel is perfect - warm but not too hot, salty.  Dipped into the creamy tangy cheese, it's arguably nature's perfect food.

"For most of the last thousand years," Sally says, "Magreets have been considered pests.  In the last century, over 90% of the extant population died of starvation or were hunted and killed for sport.  About twenty years ago food shortages led to the remaining thousand or so Magreets being reconsidered as useful; their scarcity led to increases in price and they have become prized as delicacies at exclusive wealthy dinner parties."

"The last of the Magreets was eaten at 645pm last night according the AP."

Sally/Lacie folds up the paper.  We all take a breath.

It's time for someone to call this meeting to order.

I never want to go to Thailand

The minivan pulled up to a roundabout outside the resort and my family piled out - there were 10 of us, a rag tag assortment of cousins and aunts and uncles, plus me and my sister.  My parents were already here somewhere, having taken a flight to Pukhet earlier in the week.

A team of bellboys stood in a line.  As each one was introduced, he would run to the back of the van and add a suitcase to the growing collection on the baggage cart. I wondered if we were supposed to tip them, and how much.  I wasn't prepared, having failed to exchange currency at the airport, and it stressed me out to be waited on, by an army no less.

I glanced over at my sister, Alison, lounging at the back of the group, in a plaid red minidress, sandals, hair long and sleek down her back.  She'd been to Thailand half a dozen times, as well as numerous places in Mexico, South America, eastern Europe, western Europe, Australia, Japan.  At this point I believed the only continents she'd failed to at least set foot on were Africa and Greenland.

Ali tended to travel by learning the language and arriving with only a loose itinerary.  I imagined her moving through a country like a ninja, engaging on the fly in complex negotiations for out of the way accomodations.

The rest of the family swirled around me, in tourist shorts and walking shoes, looking rumpled and sweaty and definitely not capable of conversing in the local language.

We were instructed to board a small electric shuttle which took us literally half a block, then we were herded onto a smooth wooden platform, that began whisking us down a canyon.  It began like a mobile sidewalk at the airport but as we picked up speed the surface came apart in discrete squares.  My sister and I were at the front of the group so we ended up alone on the first section, with just the baggage cart, separated from the rest of the family.

It all happened so fast that I barely had time to register that there were no safety rails and no discernible steering or brakes.  The canyon got deeper, the drop off the side more formidable. 

We slid smoothly to a stop and waited, suspended over train tracks.  About a hundred yards to the left, children splashed in a giant rock water pool, their squeals echoing faintly off the canyon walls.  Another hundred yards ahead the canyon dead-ended and the tracks led to the wide loading dock of an immense complex.

My sister was at the very front edge of the platform, when it suddenly lurched forward.  She stumbled and I had only enough time to begin the "what if, oh shit" thought before she was off the side, the platform sliding past her body, hundreds of feet below, lying unnaturally arranged and still.  The red dress framed her like a mannequin.

I screamed, "stop," but the platform sped ahead to the loading dock without unloading, then continued briskly through gleaming white corridors, like a gurney ride, and I was crying now, hyperventilating, would have been screaming but couldn't catch enough air, huge hysterical sobs, in that cartoonish way all movie moms receive the news of their son's death at war, and I felt simultaneously like my chest had been crushed, and I was drowning and it hurt so much, just kept getting worse, my mind racing through flashes of the stumbling, her body on the ground, did I try to reach out as she fell, what if I just reached out now, could I still save her

I woke, heart hammering, breathing hard, the light on,  I am in bed.  I'm in bed.  It's 4am.  It was a dream.  Take a breath.  Just a dream.

Political scandal

The familiar chime of the eleven o clock news.  "Good evening."  Like the half dozen solo drinkers, I looked up to see the the vaguely familiar face of a woman with shoulder length brown hair fill the flat screen hanging over the bartender station.  "Grace Hailey, of CBN, filling in for Tom Donovan."  It was a slow night at Joe's Tavern.  Light conversation continued around us, from those lucky enough to have drinking companions.

"Tonight, a disturbing turn in a story we've been following since early this morning.  The two ice chests abandoned at around 6AM on the baggage claim at O'Hare airport, originally believed to contain explosives thanks to an anonymous phone call made to Chicago police, have now been confirmed to contain the remains of a woman."

Almost everyone was looking up now; conversation died.  I took a long pull of my beer.  "Authorities claim they have been able to identify the body, using genetic testing and dental records, but will not release her name until her next of kin have been notified." 

The head shot of a high-cheekboned blonde with icy blue eyes slid across the screen.  "This news comes only two days after the highly publicized disappearance of former Miss American contestant Claire Porter, a long-time resident of Chicago's upper west side and half-sister to the President, and follows on allegations last week that the two were romantically involved while the President was still married to his first wife Marie.  The White House had no comment and police refused to say if the two cases were linked."

Hover cars and Faberge eggs

Last night I did something radical - I slept without my phone.  It may be causal or merely coincidental but my dreams were exactly the kind of thing you'd expect to fill a void left by an iPhone.

Early in the night I drove a hover vehicle.  I'm inclined to call it a hover car but for full disclosure must mention that it lacked almost every single distinguishing feature of a car - there was no combustion engine, steering wheel, gears, brakes; in fact there were no discernible moving parts unless you count the big black stick in the front that ostensibly acted like a rudder.  To be honest it most resembled a plywood box, something barely upscale from Calvin and Hobbes.

I rode it proudly, dipping and swerving over the urban landscape as if it was entirely normal to move about the country in a box operated only by a stick and the power of my mind.  I maneuvered through a giant outdoor market, a place I knew well, stopping to talk to friends, acquaintances and even attempted - unsuccessfully but without drama - to pick up a cute new girl on my way.

I also tried to take the hover car (because I refuse to call it a hover box and vehicle is too pompous) to the beach but kept running into residential neighbourhoods and powerlines which is entirely too much of a recently-returned-from-Hawaiian-vacation metaphor to be quite comfortable.

Next up!  I was a 20-something ne'er-do-well, engaged to a wealthy debutante, at an extrememly uncomfortable dinner where I was being introduced to as well as subtly and thoroughly despised by her parents.

Briefly we had a Freaky Friday / Sixth Sense gender moment, and I was walking across the dining room in a ridiculous gown covered with bristly fake lilies, enduring the cold entitled stares of the snooty family who clearly thought I shouldn't have come to the wake for their son.

A moment later I resumed my initial gender and socioeconomic status and my place among the living so that I could Tango with my bride-to-be at our engagement party.

As had been our plan all along, we officially broke off our engagement mid-song, which also happened to be halfway up the staircase, next to the extensive collection of Faberge eggs, much to the relief and delight of her family. 

However the dance was so moving that some of her relatives relented in their distaste and sat around me at my Consolement party later that day to listen to my thoroughly insincere tearful explanation of our parting.

The reason for the staged engagement and breakup was never revealed and my pretend-fiance and I remained good friends. 

Extinction dream

The giant arc shuddered and swerved.  Eighteen storeys of passengers clung to their seats, the adults unnaturally quiet, only the children screaming or crying.  We hit something.  A sandbar.  The ship tilted like a skyscraper going down and then magically righted itself and was still.

We'd had 72 hours of calm sailing, and now the artificial normalcy of travel  - the routine of meals and naps, of toilet lines, and pacing the perimeter of the sealed decks - was suddenly gone.  I sat, still in my safety belt, grieving.  All the people not on the ship.  My family.  My friends.  My lovers. 

Within minutes it was clear that other ships had grounded nearby.  A lot of other ships.  A few of the able-bodied and single were sent out to recon.  Stepping from the cool gun metal interior, blinking on the sand, in the sun, we entered a war zone.  Adults running, children lost and crying, men on motorcycles or on foot pointing guns and yelling.  We had traveled on an aircraft carrier, retrofitted hastily for civilian transport, so the few entrances were well armored, but many small yachts were being looted and destroyed. 

Bullets.  Someone was firing.  More than one someone.  My small group dove for cover in all different directions and I was pushed hundreds of yards down the beach, separated from the strangers who were my newest family, separated from the safety of the battleship. 

I ran blindly for minutes then crouched in the shelter of a long sleek grey vessel.  A hatch opened and I was pulled into sudden quiet.  Fluorescent white bounced off gleaming surfaces.  A long stretching hallway branched into nooks of equipment and computers that could have been anywhere in Research America.

Only five other beings occupied this enormous space - a husband and wife who studied oceanography, a technician, the captain, the couple's eight-year-old son, and I wondered first why I had failed to leverage my research connections into this bomb shelter luxury and then why I had been chosen, from the masses outside, to be saved, if I somehow still gave off a scientist vibe detectable only to others of my kind.  Most likely it was this: a woman alone, still clean and nourished. 

I longed to stay but the hermetic safety felt like a trap.  They had food for a few weeks, maybe a month, and then what.  The world outside would still be in shambles, probably worse, and I had a panicky instinct that if I was going to survive I had to face that reality.   I accepted a snack, some water, then left, heading back to the ship, using shadows and the intermittent withered shrubs for cover.

Puppy love

I was on vacation in a department store called Woolco.  In the hardware section I found several puppies for sale.  The owners sat bent up inside the tiny cages offering their puppies through the open door to passers-by to try out.

I cuddled with a tiny tortoiseshell puppy; it had a miniature husky face and soft triangular ears.  After returning the puppy to its owner-cage I resumed shopping.  But I could not get the puppy out of my head.  I stalked the hardware aisle twice more, trying to resemble someone innocently shopping for light bulbs or screw drivers.  My heart soared every time I was able to verify that my puppy was still there.

After shopping I was due at a barbecue .  Inevitably I turned every conversation into a story about the puppy.  The puppy was so cute.  The puppy's fur was soft.  Did they want to see a creeper snapshot I'd stolen of the puppy when the owner wasn't looking?

Finally two of my friends insisted that I either shut up or show them the puppy.  We drove to the store.  I wasn't sure which floor I had been on when I first found the puppies; I scoured the first floor with no luck so we went up a flight of stairs.  We walked every puppy-less aisle, then returned to the stairs.  They were dotted with orange traffic cones so we had to swing and hop our way back down to the first floor.  No success; swing hop back to the second floor.  Search for puppies.  Still nothing.

I started to panic.  I couldn't find the puppies.  Finally I found two hardware displays that had flanked the puppy cages.  All sign of the puppies were gone.  I burst into tears.  My friends said I was foolish and that clearly this was a sign that I was not ready for a dog.

Shipping containers and med students

I park my van on a narrow gravel driveway next to Repurposes, a condo complex made of shipping containers.  My friend Craig comes out of the first house and waves me in.  "I'll make tea," he says, disappearing inside, while I wrangle my two cats out the side door of the van and in through his front door.

Craig starts the kettle and then opens the back door.  Both cats shoot through before I can say anything.

"They are indoor only," I begin, but Craig interrupts me, reassures me that his is a completely fenced yard.  He points through a small porthole to a skinny strip of grass with tall fences on both sides.  But the fence stops short of the ground and as we watch, both cats wriggle under it easily.

"Oh.  Sorry," says Craig.

I rush to open the back fence gate.  My fluffy orange cat is at the bottom of  a cliff; I have no idea where the other one is.  I call and he climbs towards my voice.  The cliff begins as a shallow slope at the bottom but the incline is negative by the top so that it is a mild overhang.  I have to close my eyes as the cat negotiates his way back; it's too nerve-wracking to watch.  I scoop him up at the top, heart pounding, eyes still shut, and shut the gate.  I stroke him and he feels sleek.  Opening my eyes I realize this is a short-haired black cat.

I leave Craig's.  It's darker now.  I've parked my van much farther away than I thought.  The neighbourhood seems much more urban.

I walk under a freeway underpass and a medical student in scrubs steps drunkenly from the passenger seat of a parked rusting car.  He's frantically emptying a hat onto the ground and somehow I know to hold my breath even before feces begin raining from it.  He takes a few steps then vomits copiously on the ground from the stench. 

I pass a sleeping bag with two bodies sleeping head to toe.  The bag is unzipped in the middle, so the heads at each end are covered but two mirror imaged white naked pelvises are exposed.  I wake exhausted, scared, and sad.