Garden without Birds

I was nineteen years old when given the opportunity to try Radionuclide therapy. My lover was shipped away to Cyprus last year, I hadn’t been able to pull myself from the mud. I’ve always been taught to wipe the shit off my face and get up one more time. That time seemed impossible. I was a waste disposal site in every sense of the term.

There’s a draft here. Each year we enroll in a work program and are assigned a job. A new spot every year. That year I had been chosen to work at a heart shaped locket factory. I loved hand engraving lockets. I could go for days working on one smaller than an inch, with enough detail to fill a renaissance painting. Atlas had gotten the opportunity to mix cement in Cyprus, extracting limestone straight from the caves, grinding it up by hand.

Our split tore us apart. Nonverbal communication was banned years ago. If you didn’t see somebody on a regular basis, you were both fucked. Pardon my French. Swearing has also been banned, but we are inside of my head, right?

A doctor friend of mine told me about Radionuclide, a form of medicinal therapy in which both parties take a pill, and are able to share dreams. It was an experimental drug with subtle side effects. Distorted reality, convoluted emotions and thoughts. Atlas and I would dream of exploring underwater cities, forests in which the wildlife itself was alive, deserts with sand made of glass, skies with clouds in which you could stand on, but you always felt as if you were falling. We explored abandoned medieval castles, fresh eyes to beautiful, otherworldly oddities.

When we resorted to getting pills from the underground market shit started to get peculiar. Under every pothole in the city there are winding markets selling anything one could possibly dream of. That steak you tried one time when you were little, with just the right marinade. The bracelet you lost last week, and ten others you might like even more. Pictures of those you missed, their smiles, their tears. Memories. Anything could be bought or sold.

The black market pills had some weirder side effects in addition to the previous. Something always had to go wrong in our dreams. Atlas and I would always laugh about it and try to find it to get it over with. An Easter egg. Sometimes the glitches were funny, like we’d each be blind in the opposite eye, so only together we could see clearly. Sometimes they’d be a little more painful, like our mouths being sewn shut from the inside. The combination of prickling pain and discomfort, with our love for each other and longing to spend some time together.

Tonight, our dream was a perfect combination of mutation and bliss. Both a few thousand feet tall, heads poking through the clouds. Tops of hair frizzy and damp with condensation. Rain drips down the tip of Atlas' nose. We were walking along something rocky and unstable, I kept tripping and almost falling, she laughed and tried to trip me more. I kept feeling crunching under my feet. Must be leaves, it seems to be autumn down there. I check out the bottom of my shoe. Blood soaks through the sole, stains creeping up my socks. There’s a little hat stuck to the toe of my boot. A little shoe, there’s a lump in my throat now. Atlas is laughing at me, You’re way too nice, they’re just people. She smiles at me. Well I’m glad I’m not a person then, I guess. She runs her finger along the bottom of my shoe and licks it clean. See, they taste like Pop Rocks. Her smile is so charming and teeth so sharp, how could I feel anything other than admiration.

We end up coming across a clearing that opens up to a crystal lake, begging us to swim. Without words, we both walked towards the lake, step into the water. Weightless and airy soaking our pant legs. Warm, feels as if I’m walking through air. We continue walking until our bellies are submerged, then our ears, then the tips of our heads. Under water is a completely different world. A barren stretch of highway, dim yellow streetlights, tumbleweed, vast desert on either side. A low generator hum fueling my ears. Never ending infinite potholes.

When the pills start to wear off is when everything becomes eerie. Atlas is somehow fifty feet behind me, standing and staring. I can’t move my head, as if I’m wearing a horse fly mask. I look back again and she’s another fifty feet away, a blip on the seafloor. I think these pills might be wearing off, I suddenly feel so dizzy. Another side effect, the constant feeling of falling.

I will remember the next day, forever like yesterday. That day it started raining. I should have remembered that nothing ever goes according to plan. I decided to take a walk through the park. It has been raining all day, in my city it always rains. Today something was off. The buckets of water pouring down onto our heads smelled a lot like urine. I figured it was due to air pollution, but who knows anymore. As I rounded the corner to my usual park bench, my usual willow tree, I noticed the clearing seemed to be flooded.

Small fish that were swimming around my feet. Well, they looked less like fish, and more like grossly inflated tadpoles. Sticking to my boots as I walk, one sticking to another, trailing off of one another, then trailing off of me. A train caboose of sucking, pulling, swallowing, and I am the captain.

As I venture over to my bench, I notice that the water is only getting higher. Something is pulling me to check it out further. As I wade further and further through the green tinted muddy water, rows of tadpoles trailing at my ankles, I can feel their pressure through the rubber. All of a sudden, the sky explodes, rain beating down so hard I can no longer see even a foot in front of me. Each step I take fills my boots with more water, tadpoles squishing in between my toes. I’m stepping on them, running away to safety. Slimy, wet fish guts in my boots.

Thank god I only live a block away from the park. The faster I run, the more filthy ground water splashes up onto my face, up my nose, and into my mouth. The comforting taste of dirt combined with disgust of being covered in mud. Something keeps poke poke poking my foot from inside my boot.

People are crouched under the safety of awnings, bodies contorted, shaping themselves in order to stay dry. Blindly bounding forward, herded by natural disaster. Only the water doesn’t seem to be coming from the sky, the sidewalk cracks are overflowing from beneath. Tiny tadpoles flickering in and out.

I dip into the corner store before returning to my depressing shit hole apartment. This is saying a lot considering the state of the outside world. It actually isn’t the place itself that is so hopelessly demoralizing, it’s my attitude. At least when I’m outside, the feelings aren’t squished into one tiny room. I grab four packs of Gushers for a dollar, one of the only heartwarming things remaining from childhood. Eating candy literally melts my heart. The deli man looks me in my eyes and asks me if I want to have sex with him.

The pure filth that comes out of these peoples mouths, enough to fill a landfill. I asked him if maybe I could crawl through his mouth, live in his stomach for the next couple days. He could eat all my favorite foods. What else could I say?

The water is past my ankles now. More splashing as I rip open the door to my building. The glass hits the wall with an all knowing crash. Linoleum hallway is slippery, water oozes down the walls, lights flickering. Packages are floating through the hallway. I pick one up, the cardboard falls apart in my hands. Inside: Chuck E. Cheese tokens wrapped in bright pink bubble wrap with a note, From Someone Who Thinks You’re Terrifying Terrific.

The rain can cause people to act in strange ways. Ever heard of ‘animal rain’? A rare occurrence in which flightless animals, animal parts, begin to rain from the sky. Sometimes small, hopeless animals are swept into streams, evaporate into who knows where, and are delivered right back to us, in their own little water eggs. Flesh and blood has been reported to rain down on the public many times throughout the years. In one instance, birds in Italy were torn apart in the sky, due to skin ripping winds of course. Bird blood rained down on the city, yet no bird parts this time. Rain doesn't always have to be evil though. There have been thunderstorms of periwinkles.

The inside of my apartment is a little too normal. I peer down at neighbors crawling like ants. When I peel off my shoe, a cracked and golden locket falls out. Inside of the locket is a tiny hat. I open a drawer. One with those embroidered button knobs from my last job. One knob has a scene of a river filled with snails and flying fish, wolves waiting on the shoreline for their dinner to tire out. The other knob pictures a gondola surrounded by cherry blossoms, each blossom its own tiny angry face. I take a hold of my pill box, it has an enamel covering featuring Gustav Klimt's Kiss. Empty. Silence so cold you could hear a pin drop. Frantically ripping up papers, pulling apart drawers. It’s nowhere. Hopelessness ensues.

The purpose of dreaming with someone every night, on black market chemical experiment drugs, is to be able to get a certain idea in your head. We go on these life changing adventures that aren’t even real. Who even knows what is considered real any more. My thoughts blend into each other like hot molasses. A sticky speedy molasses river that can be avoided. Sometimes, the things that I decide to do with my very own brain seem to have the same effect of plucking feathers off a dead bird. Pointless and oozing with discomfort.

This will be my first night alone in ages. I forget what I’m supposed to do throughout the night. I forgot that I’ve never been able to sleep. As I pick a book from my shelf, something pricks my finger. There’s a dart stuck in between some of the pages.

Don’t remember falling asleep, but when I wake up, it’s as if I am in an entirely different world. Outside there are no longer buildings. A single plane of glassy water reflecting a cloudless sky. That feeling of losing a wallet in an airport across the country.

Black figures float in the water. Not so much floating, but perched at the point of being just out of reach, almost out of sight. Taking a closer look, I notice they aren’t alive, they look like shadows. Permanent penumbras, bent out of shape, looking very similar to those I saw outside yesterday. I figured there’s no use in trying to get outside, the water is too high. All that screaming, those sirens wailing. I concentrate on water lapping against the building’s walls.