His unwanted guest smashed into his unconscious mind as soon as his eyelids shuttered reluctantly closed. It came in splinters. Shards. Sharp fractures of memory.
Or was it imagination? He could never tell.
He only knew that they cut deeply.
The rain drummed incessantly on the corrugated roofs of an early monsoon morning. Far away, across the iron and wood, strains of sleepless, intoxicated karaoke wafted across the silent desperation of a neighbourhood perched precariously on the edge.
Yelling. Loud, angry, oppressive yelling.
Screaming. Deep, anxious screaming.
Pathways that splashed and sloshed around his feet, soaked with the tears of scandalised heaven. Heavy, heartless boots stomping and crushing those tears into the dust.
Narrow, nervous alleyways. Unbending, but always leaning towards him.
Threatening.
Snarling.
Lying in wait.
Onward his boots pounded. Others before. Others behind.
Anxious gazes of terrified locals staring at them in stony-faced, bleary-eyed disbelief from the empty window frames of their fragile dwellings. He could read the pleading of their eyes. ‘Not here. Not now. Not us. Not this time. Please. Be someone else.’
He ignored them. As he always did.
A wooden door, thumped insistently. A demand to enter.
Met with fearful silence.
The crash and smash of a shoulder on plywood. The door swinging on one rusty hinge then crashing to the floor. Yells. Insistent, furious yells. Pointed gun sights. Left and right. Frightened wayward souls backing against bare wooden walls, hands raised in terror.
Screaming. Howling. Almost visceral. Children wailing at the end of their hellish world, mourning its demise, traumatised at the thought of a worsened future.
Hope lying bleeding on the floor. And no-one paying it heed.
The smell. That horrific smell. Of trash. Discarded detritus. Thoughtlessly disposed of. Next to human beings who knew how it felt, and lived from what they could scavenge.
The heat. The burning. Combustible waste, its flames the only light in the darkest of places, brighter than the incandescent bulbs that danced and swung in time with every flinch of their twitchy, trigger-happy muscles, but whose glow had long dulled.
The crackling and the spitting. Getting closer and closer. Fanned by a pitiless wind.
Unheard through the yelling and the screaming and the clicking of handcuffs. And the rough, heavy-handed shoving of protesting suspects past wafer-thin walls and appalled neighbours. And the rapid, panicked snatching of laptops. Cameras. Phones. Modems. Anything.
Anything out of place in a house such as this.
The crackle became a crash. A wooden wall crumpled. Succumbed to the flames. An iron roof slid hopelessly into the filth.
Weapons were drawn. Gun sights twitching. Reeling. Spinning. Scanning for targets.
Boom!
A gas canister blew. A nearby house was engulfed in heat and a heartless orange glow. Screams of guttural terror tore through the night. Cries of deepest longing for help. For hope. For rescue.
But what did they care? They had what they needed.
Those boots splashed and sloshed, marched quicker, more intently, away from the fire. Before it spread.
Before it spread to them.
A wiry old man, his form sinewy from an undernourished diet of upcycled food disposed from fast food restaurants, blocked their way like Balaam’s donkey.
He ordered them back.
They yelled at him to get out of the way.
He ordered them to help.
They marched towards him. Away from the rapidly spreading flames.
Away from the pitiless fire.
He stood firm. He barked his desperation for them to do the decent thing. To be human.
A weapon discharged. The wiry man slumped to the floor. His blood mingled with the rain. And the oil. And the urine.
And the abandoned humans on the edge of despair fought back the flames.
On their own.
Frank Diggory gasped desperately for air. He awoke with a start, caked in sweat, despite the steady refrigerator hum of the expensive air conditioner under his window.
Beneath him, in the exquisitely manicured courtyard below, crickets chirped their chorus, frogs croaked their refrain, but the ever-present cockerels and dogs lay sound asleep.
Frank Diggory, however, was wide awake.
And in deep, deep shock.
Was this who he was? Who he really was?
He shivered to his bones.
It couldn’t be. No way. No way that was him.
The very thought filled him with deepest horror.
He slumped back into his pillow, and let the quiet symphony of nature and his antidote to its oppressive heat lull him back to sleep.
And back to the dream.
They were headed out on the NLEX towards their headquarters. He was seated next to the driver: a local who knew these streets like the veins on the back of his hand. They were jubilant – high on the mirth of their victory. Beneath their seats were bags containing the bounty of a successful raid. Behind them, in their unmarked van, three poorly-clad men suspected of trafficking sat slumped in shame, cuffed to officers who yanked their hands from time to time to do idiotic things like scratch their nose or comb their hair – not because they needed to, but just to mock their captives.
Up front, he had dictated the play list. The feisty British punk rock of The Clash boomed out the stereo, seven thousand miles from their place of origin:
‘Hey, pare! Do you mind changing the music? It’s giving me a headache!’ one of the beaten and almost bowed prisoners protested in his heavy Malineño drawl.
‘Think of it as penance.’ Frank Diggory replied in his mildly Glaswegian dulcet tones, threateningly rasped with the wildness of his lawless existence. ‘You did the crime. You do the time.’
‘Please!’ the prisoner pleaded.
Frank leaned back towards the man. ‘Hey, when you sit up here, you pick the playlist. When you sit back there, you suck it up.’
‘Who gave you the right to sit there?’ the prisoner moaned, as his arm was needlessly yanked so his guard could scratch the back of his own head. Again. For the third time.
Even if it wasn’t itchy.
The van passed an intersection.
Whump!
A truck zoomed from nowhere and struck them hard on the side. Which caved in. Instantly. Their van tumbled off the highway. Then it fell. Down, down, down.
While the Clash still sung out:
Before the van bounced. Then spun. They were tumbled. Like clothes in the drier of a cheap laundrette. Yelling. Screaming. Praying to some god, any god, to help them. To keep them alive.
The van rolled to a funereal halt. The Clash fell silent. The van lay forlornly on its roof. Frank Diggory hung limply into his seat belt. The driver lay slumped on the wheel. Blood dripped from both to a puddle on the ceiling.
Frank Diggory fell asleep.
And then...
And then the memory shards became shorter. Smaller. Just drops in an ocean of darkness
His eyes flickered half-open. He groaned. There was someone there. Someone living. Hands were scratching around the van. Searching for something.
Not helping him. Not helping anyone.
Not least the suspects. Who were long dead.
His eyes closed over once more.
They got what they wanted. He could not prevent it.
Or maybe they didn’t find it.
Who could tell?
Voices. Hopeful voices. He fought the weight of his eyelids, and the strain on his voice, and yelped to get their attention.
He could not find the words.
They said something. He could not understand it. But it sounded warm. He somehow trusted himself to it.
And fell asleep.
He stirred again under the brightest of lights. A circular light with many smaller circular lights. Beaming into his eyes and over every part of his damaged body. He felt a prick. Another comforting voice.
And then he lulled himself to sleep once more.
He could not recall a thing after that. Just the chirp of crickets, the croak of frogs, and, a few blocks away, the soft crash of waves on a palm beach.
And just inches away, the tireless hum of air conditioning.
Frank Diggory gasped himself awake. Again. How did he get here? Why was he here?
Who was he?
Really?
The questions plagued him. Bugged him like the occasional mosquito that endured the cool air conditioning to take a bite of his foreign blood.
He couldn’t sleep. Not now.
He arose from his bed, wandered downstairs with all the grace of a shambling elephant, clomped towards the back door, sleepily twisted the key in its lock and almost sleepwalked, stumbling slightly on a loose floor tile, out of his house and into his outdoor bathroom, where he slumped with a dull clatter onto the thinly fragile toilet seat and held his head in his hands.
‘Psst! Hey, Sir Frank! Are you awake?’ an insistent female voice, apparently of a similar vintage – though not experience – as his own hissed in sing-song Bisayan tones.
Frank spun around. ‘What? Who?’ he asked sleepily.
‘Through the wall. My CR backs onto yours.’ the voice told him.
‘And you are...?’ Frank drawled barely incoherently.
The woman introduced herself furtively, as if to avoid being heard by anyone but him. ‘Emet. Emet Grace Manalo. Your neighbour.’
‘Ah, Emet. Pleased to meet you. I think.’ he told her.
‘Listen, Sir Frank. You need to hear this. It’s really important.’ she told him, with a level of excitement that belied the late/early hour.
‘What?’ he moaned.
‘Nothing in this Subdivision is real. None of it. It's all fake. Something is really wrong here. And I think somehow it revolves around you. Any ideas?’
Frank thought for a second. Or at least, tried to. But it felt like his neurons had taken early retirement. ‘Yeah, I have one.’ he told her.
‘Maayo! What is it?’ she asked.
‘I’m going to wash my face, then go back to bed and try to sleep. You should too.’ he told her.
‘I can’t do that. My night cream will wash off. But you can.’ Emet replied. ‘Just remember when you wake up: none of this is real.’ she told him.
‘Oh, I hope so.’ Frank replied sarcastically, as his cheap plastic toilet seat clacked against the toilet bowl and he hauled his exhausted frame up to splash water on his face from the nearby half-filled plastic barrel with a small scoop. ‘I really hope so.’
Emet bade him farewell. ‘Okay, Sir Frank. Goodnight. And sweet dreams.’
The water stopped splashing for a second. ‘Not likely for me, but you can have them. If you want.’ he replied.
Before he headed back to the nightmare.
Comments