Subterranean

(For a newer draft of this story, click here.)

When some people lose their minds, it is in the sense of misplacing them. Like a juggler who attempts to toss too many balls, their minds roll off into an unseen place when everything crashes and scatters. When other people lose their minds, it is in the sense of intentionally hiding them. Like a desperate man who tosses a set of keys into a field of tall grass, their minds become needles thrust into a haystack. James Griffin had thrown his mind into a thicket at sixteen and had not thought of looking for it until he was twenty seven.

He sat numbly taking in the obscure shapes of women's bodies undulating in the blurred glow of black-lights. The view was further distorted by the haze of smoke that seemed to cake on the surfaces of objects. The movements drug behind them a trail of the past, making everything quick seem slow. His legs felt heavy with the weight of alcohol and his ears were stuffed full with the sound of disorientation. Deep, persistent bass massaged his temples while squeaky tweets reverberated inside his ear canals. Abruptly, he heard the unmistakable sound of glass shattering somewhere behind him. On the fifth consecutive night of the twelfth consecutive month he sat staring forward doing his best to stay lost. With the sound of shattering, his mind called out to him like a baby elephant orphaned from the herd. The sense that something was amiss was so strong as to seem tangible. He turned his head to scan the periphery, expecting to find a little girl who had tugged on his shirt in a show of attention-starved pleading. All he found were other men slumped in chairs with greasy hair pasted onto their skulls with slight smiles on their faces and forlorn women scurrying between them. Some action was occurring around the scene of the accident. The sight of swept up glass spurred him to recollect himself.

"Need to leave," he thought as he wobbly arose from his usual spot two tables away from the stage. Unsure footing caused him to slip back into the chair he tried to rise from. The atrophy of inaction bound him to the reclined position. The fuzziness of every perception gave his setting a pall of irreality. He felt lost in a dreamworld of shadows and echoes. He was unsettled by how absorbed the countenances of his fellow-patrons appeared. He struggled concertedly to arise again. One foot in front of the other, he shuffled away from his lonely table. Concerned he yelled, "Come on!" over the noise of the room as he motioned towards the exit. "Shut up!" "Get out of the way!" "You wanna brusin'?" "Sit down!" all shot out at him from different directions. He felt something strike between his shoulder blades with a dull thud and heard again the sound of glass breaking behind him. The prod of pain heightened his senses further. "What am I doing here?" he asked himself as he stumbled further out of the doomed room.

The redish glow of the word "Exit" hooked him and drew him reeling forward. Imbalanced, he placed his left hand forward desperately. His wrist was compacted as he collided with the wall to the side of the steps that lead to street level. Additional pain sprinted through his nerves when he could not prevent his head from striking the wall. He bounced off it like a ball and crashed backwards in a drunken heap. The back of his head plummeted onto the dirty floor of the seedy subterranean establishment. Confused, he stared upwards and tried to make sense of the reflections of purple neon lights. "Where am I?" he wondered.

The tinny taste of blood trickled over his tongue. He had lacerated his cheek when his teeth shut upon striking the old wood planks of the floor. No one took notice of his tumble. No one came to his assistance. The back of his skull pulsated reminders of his accident. Vanquished, he squinted at the criss-crossed lines of the drop-ceiling above him. The bass again tickled his ears as it shook the ground. Laziness covered him like a blanket and his eyelids drooped. "Business is great. Never been better! Escapism is recession-proof." a gruff voice explained nearby. "The owner?" James wondered as he forced his eyes open again. "My customers are sheep and I am their shepherd. I lead them to the pasture they need after running through the maze of this city. Sheep are more lucrative than you'd think. The trick is sheering them just short enough so that they come back to you for shelter cold and desperate every night after wandering around. If you shorn them too short, they freeze. You gotta keep 'em cold, not frozen. I know just when to pull the plug, flip on the lights, and sweep them out into the world." the voice bragged. "Must be," James thought. The image of lemmings following a leader off a cliff came to him as his eyes shut again. "It's all a mirage. Think they're going home but they're going to hell. Need to leave." He thrust his lids open.

He commanded his arms to push himself up. The spinning room sloshed him around, but he would not be deterred. James tentatively arose and moved towards the stairs once more. He cast a final, dejected glance towards the smoky roomed filled with his lost compatriots. The hot sting in his back kept him from urging them upwards again, and instead he moved on. His toe slammed into the first step. His hand caught the railing as he braced himself. He stood erect and looked at the mountain of right angles that barred him from escape. "Easy does it," he encouraged himself. Slowly but persistently, he ascended. Every time he flexed his quadriceps to lift himself, there was a commensurate decrease in treble ringing in his ears. The thumping bass accompanied him throughout, but the attempt to lull him into submission was futile. James was determined to be free.

Passerbys grazed him as they excitedly went down into the den of debauchery. "No! Don't!" he exhorted, but their euphoric laughs were too loud to be spoken over. "Like lemmings off the edge," he thought dejectedly. "Need to leave," he reminded himself.

Midway up the stairwell, the wood paneling started to gleam with the light that seeped under the exit he had entered so often before. "What time is it?" he wondered. He thrust himself against the door jam and spilled forward onto the street. Sunlight exploded inside James' pupils. The blow dealt by brightness made him dizzy with nausea. Again, he felt himself tumble to the ground. Rather than the hollow thump of hard wood, the sound of bone on concrete dissipated from his touchdown. It disrupted the otherwise quite early morning on the avenue.

Something about the sun made him sneeze. He snickered as a memory bubbled up into his consciousness. When he was a child and happy, he mother used to kid him about being allergic to the sun because he had the habit of sneezing every time he'd leave a building for the outdoors. His mother's face made him wistful and he forgot about where he had just come from. The smog of the city smelled clean to him when compared with the stale atmosphere of his hiding place. When he began to see again, he could discern the skewed shape of his shadow. His vision passed from the grey his forearm cast on the concrete to the plaid of his shirt. The colors had been tainted by a film of cigarette smoke, but still struck him with a vibrancy he had been without for what seemed like years. He focused in on the intersection of yellows and reds that formed wrinkled criss-crosses. The orderliness pleased him. "Beautiful," he though as he traced the fine lines of tightly weaved cotton.

The morning light lazily reflected off of the street surface. James again raised himself from his knees to his feet. He stood still to gain his bearings and squinted in search of familiar landmarks. Before him was a rod iron planter filled with pink and white geraniums and a maple sapling. He followed the trunk upwards through the dark green underbellies of leaves until it gave way to the brilliant morning mauve of sunrise shining upon the windows of a high-rise. The grid work of glass converging higher uplifted his sight until his craned neck stiffened above the top floor.

The picture was serene in its clarity, like the sight one receives upon poking out of the water after struggling to resurface. Wisps of cirrus clouds converged like a stratospheric doily. Up beyond the meddling reach of people lived truth untouched and untainted. "Yet it shines down upon and amongst us if we would have eyes to see it. Why?" James sobered. His mind burned like a newly ignited wick. He considered the image, its overwhelming size and the shame it put to shadows. The quality of his perception rejuvenated him. The serenity of the gently sliding shapes nearly overtook him and clasped him in a new sort of chains. The more he thought about what he was seeing and how moved he was, the more he felt he needed to tear himself away. "It's not too late." In a fit of compassion, James turned around to face the place he was freshly emancipated from. "I must save them."

He nimbly hopped downwards and reached the landing. "Hey! Everybody! Come quick and see the sun! It's daytime! What do you think you are doing rotting down here in the dark? This isn't real! Can't you see you're stuck in a trap, pinned down by your own appetites?" The fingers on his left hand fumbled for a light switch by the stairwell, but none was to be found. The patrons began to bark at him and the waitresses threw daggers at him with their scowls. A barrel-chested figure emerged from the mist of the flock and glided towards him.

"Come on buddy, no disturbin' the customers." the shape uttered as he lifted James up by the armpit and drug him back towards the day. His ankles clanked against the edges of the steps as he scrambled to regain his footing. The power of the mysterious man surprised him. "Would have been easier to have been kicked out before," James observed.

At the top of the steps, the strong man ejected James outside. In the midst of his flight, James reached for the man's lapel. Feeling the smooth fabric between his fingertips, he grabbed hold tightly and pulled the bouncer forward with him. They both crashed onto the sidewalk as the door shut behind them. The bouncer shielded his eyes, finding the morning rays oppressive. James rushed alongside him and raised the husky man who had been made weak by his new setting. He took him by the arm and pulled up slowly but firmly.

"See?" James asked with a smile. The bouncer blinked in disbelief.