Not My Long Dream

Not My Long Dream




He really had to poop, and it was hard sloshwalking through the two feet of water that had pooled in the cruise ship’s foredeck ballroom. So far, all his tries to relieve himself in the men’s toilets had gone like this:

He pushes open the door, feeling like his butt is going to explode, and the restroom is crammed with high school kids dressed for prom. They are standing along the walls, and multiple pairs of dress shoes are shuffling within the stalls. The bathroom reeks of cologne. There is no toilet available to him. At regular intervals, a senior emerges from one of the stalls, holding up a tuxedo while smiling lasciviously at his reflection in the mirror. He says to his fellow students: “I’m going to get so much pussy tonight!”

The women’s toilets were locked.
As he splashed his way toward the atrium, hoping for relief, he wondered why he was alone on this cruise. He vaguely remembered boarding the ship with friends and family, but they were nowhere in sight.
The flooded deck was crowded with lovers, who floated in the shallow water, locked in embrace as they made out. One large woman drifting on her back against the stairs held a small man on her belly like a bear cub. She winked at him over her lover’s head, but he didn’t feel sexy right now and kept walking to an elevator.
The elevator opened automatically and it was dry. The lift attendant smiled at him politely.
“On which floor is the closest toilet?” he asked the attendant, stepping inside.
The man jumped out of the elevator into the water, turning around and reaching to push a button on a panel. “This will take you to the Public Restroom on shore.”
The doors shut and the walls and floor became transparent. A rotor blade popped out of the elevator’s roof and unfolded, spinning the car away from the ship. A helicopter tail grew from the rear and the craft flew towards a low, concrete building on the shore of the bay in which the ship was anchored. A DING! sounded from the operations panel and a tray with an empanada slid out of a hole. It looked good, and he was hungry, but he ate a meat pie from the buffet earlier, which he suspected someone touched after using the toilet and not washing their hands. Thus, his dilemma. He did a poopy dance as he watched the ship retreat, finally fully remembering his companions on the cruise. They were in the cigar bar, waiting for him. His sense of urgency increased.
The trip in the helivator was fast, and it landed on an oil-stained square of concrete at the top of a filthy stairwell that led down to the restrooms. The helivator doors opened and a gust of air pushed at his back, shoving him out. He tripped on a lump of gravel and fell down the stairs to the bottom, smashing face first into an olive tree, which sliced open his cheek.
“Dude, what the fuck are you even doing? That’s not how you take the stairs. You better hurry up, cause this is the last shuttle back to the ship before it leaves harbor.”
Grabbing the tree trunk, he pulled himself to his feet, worried that he’d shat himself.
A man in his late twenties sat in the bow of a small rowboat, grinning at him. The boat was hitched to a tiny dock situated across the way from the restrooms. A few teenagers sat in the boat facing him, laughing.
“Seriously,” the young man said. He pointed to the cruise ship which loomed in the distance beyond a cluster of trees that appeared a cross between mangroves and royal palms. “We gotta go.”
“Okay! Please, I just have to use the bathroom.” He ran into the restroom and ran out, feeling relieved but disappointed that he didn’t remember what happened there.
The rowboat in the small inlet had lost its oars and now had a tiny outboard motor, which was chugging along pushing the boat away from the dock.
“Wait!” he yelled, jumping into the water to grasp a steel bar welded behind the rearmost bench in the boat. The man and the teenagers looked at him silently. He pulled himself to the left, kicking his legs away from the propeller. He tried to haul himself onboard, but wasn’t strong. The blade of the propeller bit into his shin and he screamed.
“Please help me.”
One of the teenagers said, “You should be stronger. Try pulling harder.” All three passengers turned away from him to look ahead to the ship.
He grunted and was finally able to pull himself onto the stern. He rested for a moment with his face mashed down on the boat’s floor, then slid his legs inside. His right shin was cut deeply, but instead of blood, a thick white substance like caulk filled the wound. He settled on the back bench; the other passengers ignored him.
The boat shuddered and lifted from the water to fly into the massive canopy of strange trees. It drifted at an angle higher and closer to the cruise ship through branches the size of redwood trunks and flat leaves as large as basketball courts. The branches and leaves extended all the way to the ship, arching over and casting shadows on its vast foredeck.
The small craft landed on an enormous leaf several hundred yards away from the ship. Hanging from branches above the leaf were what looked like acrobat swings, a line of them stringing from branches in a succession down and down to the cruise liner.
The laughing captain of the rowboat-turned-aircraft and his teenage passengers got out quickly and immediately leapt to the hand bars, swinging themselves with great accuracy and power lower and lower towards the ship.
Swing. Release. Drop. Grip. Swing. Release.
He stepped out of the boat onto the spongy leaf and approached one of the hanging swings. A great roaring horn blasted from the cruise liner, signaling its imminent departure. He watched as the now tiny figures of the man and teenagers dropped from the last swings onto the deck of the ship. A large crowd surrounded them, but they were too far away and small to see if any of those faces were of his friends and family.
He glanced up at the hand swing.
“All this for a shit,” he said. “A shit I don’t remember.”
He jumped and grabbed the bar, swinging his legs back and forth to gather momentum. Terrified, he focused on the next swing below, throwing himself forward as hard as possible, letting go.
Falling, his chin clanged against the lower bar and he bit through his tongue. Blood filled his mouth as his head slipped off the swing and he fell, hands clutching at nothing, sinking, sinking, sinking through the branches and leaves.
He landed on concrete instead of water. But the concrete was soft, merciful, hugging his side and wounded leg like the gentlest foam. He rested there for several moments, wanting to sleep.
The horn roared again, and he stood, looking around. No water. No ship. He was in the middle of a parking lot that seemed to stretch miles in every direction, empty except for himself and a bus. He was behind the bus, shrouded in its exhaust. Coughing, he walked around and went up the steps.
The bus driver kept his eyes forward. A few extremely elderly women sat at the front of the bus, bundled in coats designed for the Arctic Circle. Their eyes looked him up and down, then ignored him.
The back of the bus was scattered with what looked like corpses, but they were mannequins.
Mannequins of people almost ready to die.
He sat in one of the back seats, next to the plastic re-creation of a young man on the verge of suffocating. Its eyes were a calm blue amid a face distorted by a desperation to breathe.
“Where is this bus going?” he asked the driver.
“One way to Evansville, Indiana. No stops.”
“Okay,” he said.

Dream Over