The Laundry Room Tango

a work in progress by Aaron Louie

Jeremy Salmon

"What is this place?" Jeremy Salmon asked, knowing he would not receive any satisfying answer.

"This mind is Buddha," said a voice in reply.

"Since when did I begin having conversations with myself?" Jeremy said to no one in particular. "And what does Buddha have to do with anything?"

"Nothing and everything," said the voice, "not necessarily in that order." Suddenly Jeremy became aware that it was dawn, and the sun had risen upon a canyon, which yawned before him.

"Good morning," Jeremy Salmon said to himself.

He walked out to the edge of the cliff and stared down into the abyss. The distant floor of the canyon was barely obscured by the mists. Somewhere carrion birds cried their throaty calls. Soon he would be the subject of their conversation. Without hesitation, he leapt off the precipice into the air. Salmon did not fall, as always. He merely coasted for about 100 yards and then slowed to a halt in the viscous atmosphere. He flipped about to see the rock from which he had jumped. A woman was standing there, dressed in white, the thin fabric of her dress flapping in the wind. Her long dark brown hair blew in the wind, obscuring her face. She opened her mouth and from out her lips came a ribbon of mercury. On it was engraved the notes of some lost symphony, and it played in ghostly notes as it twisted through the air, over his left shoulder. He watched the ribbon float past, and it became transparent and then faded, the sounds fading with it. He turned back to the cliff, but the woman was gone.

Salmon began to worry that gravity would again take over as he looked down at the depths of the canyon. He was surrounded by thick, dark, warm clouds, which gasped and echoed with the distant rushing of some great river beating itself against the cataracts. He resolved to find that waterfall and plunge into its thrilling crash. With great effort he twisted himself about, grasping at the thick vapor, willing himself to move deeper into the dismal gray mists. He swam in slow motion. Soon he found that he could achieve forward movement by sucking in sharply ahead and exhaling forcefully behind. He began to gain momentum with each breath, moving closer and closer to the din. He was now completely enveloped in the mists. There was no up or down. Only the sound of rushing waters directed his movement. At last he came upon the great torrent. He could feel the tortured water leaping against his face before plunging into the dark pool below. He reached out his hand and was drawn downward with the falling water. Through the viscous pane of liquid he could see a depression in the rock behind. He dove through.

The woman was standing there again. Her eyes were fixed on the world beyond waterfall, and she ignored him as he floated past, just above and to the left of her head. Suddenly, she spoke.

"Watch out for the-"

Crunch.

Salmon awoke in the darkness, pain rushed through his scalp in burning pulses. He felt for the epicenter, then for the culprit. Toolbox. Cold floor. Dusty. The garage? He stood up and groped blindly for a wall. He could hear the faint humming of a freezer to his right. Slowly, now. Box. Work bench. Plastic bin filled with wood scraps. Table saw. Funny, seems to be laid out just like -- there's the freezer. Wall should be to the right. Metal storage shelf. Can smell the herbicide and car wax. Wall. Light switch. Click.

"Holy shit," he said out loud.

He looked at the garage which he had just navigated in the dark. It was his garage. Not the garage of the present, because he lived in an apartment on the fourth floor. The only garage really was a parking place. This garage was the same. Same as the one at the house on Tiran Way, where the homemade wooden food dryer was often groaning away in the corner, and the office with the putrid yellow and vomit green carpet hiding inexplicable plastic gadgets and enigmatic porcelain salt shakers tucked back on the outer limits of consciousness. Wooden shelves with jars of pickles made with cucumbers he had picked in the itching sun and sinking mud. The freezer would be full of plastic bags tied with ribbons of plasticked wire, bulging with blueberries, raspberries, peaches, strawberries, petrified for some dreadful Saturday when they would be defrosted into a shapeless mash for spreading on bland, dry, burnt buttermilk pancakes with salty pockets of baking soda because they hadn't been properly mixed.

He turned about, scanning the room for memories. On the floor was a block of wood bristling with bent nails. A boat? A house? The shapeless work-in-progress brought back a flood of images. Grey, overcast, drizzly afternoons running through the sleepy neighborhood to the park, where a fetid ditch held stagnant water, barely enough to attempt a maiden voyage of the wooden craft, which sank immediately, its plastic bag sail drooping, filling with swamp. He had crashed in after it to save it from the reeking depths. His shoes always smelled of that ditch from that day forward.

How did I get here, Salmon thought. I wonder if my parents catch me in this garage, will they call the police? I've got to leave. The office has a door to the back yard. He turned and waded through the boxes of clothes and books toward the office door. He opened it and turned on the light. It was as he remembered it, cluttered with his mother's papers and bags of polyethylene kitchenware. The rolling file drawer with the colored pens in the bottom compartment she never locked. He stepped across the disgusting carpet and stood at the door to the back yard.

Clunk.

"Honey, why are the lights in the garage on?"

His father's voice rang from the walls like church bells -- not sonorous, but in a clanging cacophany, accusing itself over and over against the plaster walls, musty wooden rafters dripping with cobwebs and mildew, concrete floor. Frantically, Jeremy Salmon fumbled with the doorknob and slipped noiselessly through the back office door.

And into a bedroom. He should have stepped out into the back yard, but this was a dream, after all. It was his parents' room at his old house, with a threadbare white and brown floral blanket covering a queen-sized bed. It was daytime now. Salmon turned away from this scene to face the door, but it suddenly crashed open, and a screaming child burst into the room grasping at a muscular hand, which clenched scalp with a fistful of hair. The great hand was connected to Salmon's father, who now stood in the center of the room with a scowl on his face, staring with burning eyes at a corner of the room.

Salmon could not move. He could not run. He could not stop what was about to happen. They could not see him.

Jeremy Salmon's father, diligent and stern father of three, was thirty this year. He looked down at his son, Jeremy, who was quailing in fear on the bed. Disgusting. He was just like a girl, too much like his mother, yet as destructive as a whirlwind.

"So tell me again, son, what exactly were you thinking when you broke your mother's figurine?" he asked, knowing what response he would get.

"I - I - I ..." the child hiccupped. "I d - d - didn't break it on purpose."

A lie, thought the father. I lied just like this about the time I was throwing knives at the wall. My mother saw right through it. And I see right through this kid. He can't lie to me and get away with it.

"Then why were you screwing around with it in the first place?"

"I - I was trying to push the sofa out of the way and I knocked it over... I didn't meant to-"

"He didn't mean to!" Salmon shouted, but his voice made no sound.

"You broke it because you thought it was a toy!!" the father seethed. "You've broken all your sister's dolls. You've broken all your own toys. What makes you think I'm so stupid as to believe that you didn't break that figurine on purpose?" The father was shouting now. He would break this kid's rebellious streak before it had a chance to ruin him. "Don't try to con me, son. When I was your age, if I lied, I'd get knocked across the room with a baseball bat! I'm being NICE to you by only spanking you, Jeremy." He spat his son's name like a foul curse.

The father's rage was focused now. His ears buzzed with that holy fire that the Lord bestowed upon him when he was moved by the spirit, a pure rage, a white flame that would sear the demons out of this family -- and out of his own soul.

"I'm doing this because I love you, son," he said and lifted the belt over his head.

And, suddenly, the father saw himself. Reflected in the mirror above his wife's dresser, his arm raised, his face wrenched up in a scowl -- and his pansy of a son, sniveling on the bed. He turned away from the reflection and a young version of himself looked back at him, defiant, daring him to strike. He saw his own black anger, his own secret smile, his own rebellious intellect in this snotty little kid. The boy he had tried all his life to kill had returned. This boy was laughing at him.

Salmon tried to move, tried to scream, but he was paralyzed at the foot of the bed, forced to watch, forced to relive this scene.

The belt whipped down again and again. It whistled through the air and exploded on the twisting, rotten flesh, hardening it into smooth, glowing marble. the father could see the dense cloud of pride about the form of his son begin to dissipate. All that was left was love and humility. A pure spirit, cleansed by his holy anger.

"Pray with me, son," he said. "Ask God for forgiveness."

And suddenly, it went dark.

Salmon inhaled sharply. A phone was ringing somewhere, and something next to his head was beeping shrilly. He tried to speak, tried to move, but everything was tied down, cold, and dry. Everything smelled of antiseptic. A hissing, gurgling machine somewhere in the room. A green light on the wall. A faint, glowing rectangle on the wall -- a window? He jerked his arms about. Restraints. Clenched his teeth. Plastic tube. Hospital. Why can't I turn my head? God, need to scratch my nose, he thought. Then it went dark again.

It was a darker dark than that of the hospital room, and Salmon knew he was out. Never before in his short and unremarkable existence had Jeremy Salmon experienced such a loss of consciousness. Hundreds, possibly thousands of people black out every single minute, he thought, as he awoke to the sound of nothing. He remembered little of the minutes previous to his mindless sleep, and he felt no compulsion to retrieve those memories.

"Hello, Salmon," said a voice from nowhere in particular. Salmon jumped, as much as one can when unconscious.

"What?" he said, trying to thing of a reason to be startled. He thought then, how does one talk when unconscious? Does my mouth move? Before he could answer himself, the greeting was repeated from nowhere in particular.

"Hello, Salmon." The voice did not echo, as one would imagine a disembodied voice would. The sound seemed to come from within Salmon's bones, conducting through his skull like a dentist's drill. Jeremy shuddered.

"Is someone there?" Jeremy asked the empty darkness. "Because I'm pretty sure I'm in a coma or something and, if you're looking for me, I'm everywhere, because this is my head, after all." But there was no reply. There was only silence, more silence, and then a long span of even more silence.

"Good riddance," said Salmon to himself, and began wondering again how it was that he heard things and said things even though he knew he was knocked out. He decided to call this unconscious world Blackout, since it seemed to be a reasonable name. Things in the world of Blackout are always silent and dark. Salmon realized that, when he heard things, he actually just knew them, in a startling, uncomfortable way. And he noticed that when things happened suddenly in Blackout, things just were, and they existed now in more loud, piercing clarity than ever. Or maybe they had always been that way. The world of Blackout is much like a dream, Jeremy thought, but I don't know what the difference is.

"Hello, Salmon."

Jeremy suddenly became aware of himself, standing nose to nose, scalp to scalp, skin to skin, guts to guts with himself. It is like a mirror, he thought. Except things do not have reflections in Blackout. Things are different here.

"Why do you keep referring to things?" said the voice, which, Jeremy now realized, was himself. Things. Good question, Salmon. Things are not what they seem. Things are small, but things can be large. Things you hold in your hand, and things hold you. All things in Blackout make up the overwhelming majority of things in your head.

"So," asked Jeremy of no one in particular, things are in my head? And things are in Blackout? Are the things in Blackout the same as the things in my head?" Yes, yes, no, Salmon.

"Are things in Blackout different?" From what? Than what? What things? No, Salmon, no thing is different.

"What does a thing look like?" Whatever you want it to look like, although some things have their way of looking a certain way, no matter how hard you try to change them.

"What are you getting at?" Now, getting is a completely different phenomenon. We in Blackout only gett what is not, whereas you most likely gett what is.

Jeremy grimaced in mental torture.

"What the heck are you talking about?" What would you like me to talk about?

"Who are you?" Salmon. I am you that never speaks. I am Salmon. You are Salmon. I am Blackout.

"Oh." It seemed so clear to him, for some reason. "What do you look like?"

Whatever you want.

"I want you to look like a beautiful woman." Jeremy smiled smugly as the most beautiful woman ever smiled down at him. She was dressed in white and had a name tag that read "Gettings, LPN".

She said, "Things are getting brighter all the time, aren't they, Mr. Salmon?" Jeremy was not amused, although he didn't know why.

"Where am I?" he groaned, suddenly aware that his mouth tasted like gravel and old copper pennies, which he had tasted at some point during his childhood. "Wasn't there a tube in my mouth earlier?"

The nurse smiled again and tended to something on Jeremy's forehead which was covered by a massive bandage, which he could barely see above his eyebrow in the corner of his vision. The throbbing, swollen mass of bruised tissue seemed to be growing by the second.

"You're in a hospital, dear," the nurse replied sweetly, "and that tube was for your sputum. We're going to have to give you a gargle soon -- your mouth probably tastes terrible right now." She was wearing blue nitrile gloves, which Jeremy found very disturbing, though he couldn't say why. They reminded him of anatomy class, prodding a cadaver, which smelled like beef jerky, with a nitrile gloved finger into the embalmed flesh, which looked like beef jerky.

"How did I get here?" Salmon asked.

"Oh, through the back door," the nurse said, giving him a smirk. "You probably don't remember the bike accident, do you?" She leaned across him now, tucking in the sheets and straightening his hospital smock, putting her full weight against his belly. He could feel warmth radiating from her clean, white uniform. He suddenly became aware of another radiating sensation, that of pain in his genitals from something that could only be a catheter. He tried to think of wrinkled naked old men and feces or something equally disturbing. Was this still a dream?

"Am I still in Blackout?" Jeremy suddenly asked, before he could stop himself.

"Where?" the nurse asked absentmindedly, checking something at the side of the bed, constantly adjusting, checking something on a clipboard, wearing those bright blue gloves. "No, Mr. Salmon, you're in Valhalla Lights Hospital. I'm the day shift nurse. My name is Tara Gettings. You had a bad bicycle accident and suffered a concussion. You were in a coma for a while, but you're not out of danger yet. The doctor will be in to examine you in a bit. He should be able to answer all your questions." These last few sentences Salmon did not hear, mesmerized as he was by her impossible beauty. He restrained himself from complimenting her, fearing he would say something unacceptably lewd.

"Well," he said instead.

"Well what?" She prodded as she refilled his water pitcher and set it on a small table next to his bed. She stood next to him, looking exhausted already, as nurses always do. Ms. Gettings spent more than her fair share of hours on her feet, tending to wounds, to catheters, colostomy bags, IVs, O₂ tubes, vomit, piss, shit, blood, and any other bodily fluid imaginable. The life of a nurse is a mostly thankless one, since patients are rarely in any shape to show proper gratitude, especially in the ICU.

"Well... I..." Jeremy tried to think of something complimentary and witty, but to no avail. "I... I'm glad we're in the same... same... universe." He could feel himself fading, and wondered if she had slipped something into his IV, which he now noticed penetrating his wrist and perched near his bed, dripping silently into a vial which emptied into a tube which snaked into his veins. The nurse frowned a little and fixed him with a mock expression of worry.

"Where else would I be, Mr. Salmon?"

"It's actually about where I would be..." As Jeremy said this, the room began to dim. "Don't turn out the light yet, Tara Gettings," he mumbled. "Unconscious an all. Talking to strange people and not seeing things as they are but how I want them to..."

"Hello, Salmon."

Jeremy nealy leaped out of his skin in fright, as much as one can leap when they are unconscious.

"What?" he barked, noting how much like a seal one could bark when startled by voices from nowhere in particular.

"Glad to have you back."

"But..." If you would stop trying so hard to try so hard, you wouldn't have to try so hard.

"But..." Where's the beautiful lady? Is that what you were going to ask? She's where you left her. In the so-called Real World.

"But it is real!" Salmon cried. "More real than this surreal bullshit. More real than talking to myself in complete darkness or floating through waterfalls or reliving my childhood." Only as real as this. They are the same. One and the same.

"What?" This is as real as the Real World and vice versa. Blackout is real. Only in your.

"My what?" Jeremy asked the emptiness. The voice had simply stopped midsentence. "My what?" he repeated.

"Exactly." said the voice. Jeremy moaned in exasperation, shaking his head and walking away, wherever that was, since direction and motion had no meaning in Blackout.

"That's another thing," he started to say, meaning to complain about the nonsensical answers and complete lack of physics or logic in this void. But the voice answered,

"You're absolutely right."

Elsewhere in the hospital, Tara Gettings decided to eat. The hospital cafeteria was mostly empty at this time in the morning. She took her place at a table next to a wall and facing the room, which was illuminated by a host of sallow bulbs, which cast a faint orange hue on the mauve walls. Not conducive to digestion, she thought. Her eyes wandered to a cosmetology surgeon who was devouring his bagel and coffee while reading a discarded newspaper, left behind by some thoughtless patron last week. It was six days old. Tara had checked.

The surgeon unhinged his jaw like a python about to swallow alive some unfortunate slow and dying member of the wildebeast herd. Of every thousand of the reeking cattle that would wander through this place, one would lag behind and seek the damp warmth of the serpent's maw. This surgeon would be waiting, eyes in dollar-shaped slits.

Thousands of thousands walked the white halls and tasted the bland and bitter venom that sated the hunger yet slowed the blood. In went the morsel, and the teeth bit down. This is where the diabetics came to overdose on doughnuts and soda. This is where the colon cancer patients came to surreptitiously cram beef steak and mayonnaise into their coffins. Those who were not dying sped their way to a quicker doom with the repast served daily in this cafeteria.

White coats, blue smocks, oxygen tubing pinching noses filed by. This illusion of car and of sanity that blinded the patients to the nurses who slap the ill and dying about like slabs of chicken. Doctors whose dreams of humanitarian aid and medical progress were left steaming in a puddle in the backyard at a frat party in college. All that matters now is the paycheck, said Nurse Gettings to herself as the surgeon washed his breakfast down with blackened serum.