i'm standing in the middle of an empty swimming pool, and bex is next to me. she isn't deaf, but her giggle is the same. there's nothing distinct about her speaking voice, i can't pinpoint how it sounds, but i know she's chattering excitedly about how she hopes we won't get caught. i start wandering around the concrete hole, which is far deeper than a normal swimming pool, kicking at dead leaves and your usual bottom-of-the-pool grime. somehow it leads into my grandparents TV room.
i haven't seen it in ten years, but it's the same old room: small, yellowy, with a doorway next to the strobe light above the boxy TV. it flashes whenever the phone rings so my poppop will see it when he's not wearing his hearing-aid. the door leads down a narrow dark hallway lined with cupboards where he keeps VHS tapes and batteries for said hearing-aid. i don't go down the hallway, but i know it's the same and i think about the VHS tapes for a long time, but all i can remember is this laurel & hardy skit where they work in an assembly line (n boy do they muck it up somethin awful!); i just gaze into the mildewy room. i'm inches away from the collision of different flooring - usually i'd be standing on red hardwood right before it runs up against the carpet but instead i see my new skate shoes planted on concrete. erica is sitting in one of the recliners watching a different episode of laurel & hardy, where stanley bites into that wax apple. i know it's that one even though the screen looks dark to me and there's no sound. she doesn't acknowledge me. i can feel the desire to sit down and watch with her in my body, a longing pull, but i know i'm not supposed to. so i turn around back into the swimming pool.
now, instead of leaves and dirt, there's a layer of dead rats along the bottom. their heads are all separate from their bodies and bex is crunching skulls underneath her feet. her face has changed (it looks like the annoying lady's from doctor who), but her body and clothes are normal. her hair is itself times a thousand, with a frenetic energy, almost like a live thing - multi-toned brown ringlets reaching out away from her head in a frenzy.
"can you hear that?" her voice is back to normal, and i can understand her even though she's not signing. "that's what i mean when i say brain waves."
i can hear it.
"i know."
when the brains squash against the soles of her shoes, the noise is coming from inside my head. the splitting of each bone is similar to the sensation of cracking my back. i can feel the rubbery friction before fluid seeps out of them. it's dark grey-black-maroon, a color that doesn't exist except in this dream, the color of rat brain juice, and it spreads out quickly. she's only stepped on a few skulls before i'm standing a few centimeters deep in the color, it spread out so fast. i see glowing ripples as the fluid pulses like the water in jurassic park. lapping up against the tip of my toes. i'm nervous about my shoes; they don't feel wet but i suspect they are.
"i hope they dry out before we leave tomorrow"
my eyes open and the neighbors are blasting reggae. it is 8:20am. why. why. why. why. why.
