I was on an island with my mother and my step father, Robert. We all worked at a small island market managed by an older man, a WWII veteran who was on the island when the war ended and was still there. My mother and Robert were the entertainment, they played nightly as a musical duo in the market. There was no other work on the island for any of us, it was just this market for us. It was understood that without the jobs we would have to leave.
Out on the beach, in front of the market, a short round black woman and her physically identical nanny are playing a game with the woman’s small son, Franklin. The woman, the mother, hollers out “Wherrrrrrre’s Franklin!” with great seriousness while Franklin hides very nearby smiling and giggling. They pretend they cannot find him. They sit on the lush grass in the shade of an enormous tree as they play this game. The game repeats, and each time the nanny smiles warmly when Franklin cannot be found.
In the market we hear that my mother and Robert are to be laid off. We learn that a large company has purchased the island market and the company feels mom and Robert are too good, too upscale. The older man, the market manager, is being laid off as well. I was sitting with the bewildered group at a long white fold-out table. It was myself, the market manager, my mom and Robert, and Robert’s ex wife and her new husband, Ken. Robert was beside himself, defeated. From his expression I could see that this—being too upscale—was all that was left to undo him, and finally it had come. My mom was angry in the usual way—she, a victim of this awful world, powerless against its awful and nonsensical people. Still, the great sadness was that they would have to move from the island.
Somehow Pam, Ken, and I were able to keep our jobs. However, I was so upset by the sale of the market that I was going to quit in protest, to rebel. The rebellion would start with my use of the book. The book was a large book with many colorful illustrations. It described the rejuvenation of bodies with crystals—rejuvenation to a level of greater than normal strength. The older market manager had very bad knees and I remembered an illustration in the book of the human body with colorful glowing knees. The color came from the application of crystal power to the whole weakened body as it healed and strengthened the broken areas—the knees in this case.
I took the book and the market manager down the beach to an elementary school. The school was a large, solitary hall lined with identical doors, behind which were small dark rooms. I moved the market manager into one of those rooms and closed the door. The room was very small, no bigger than a double bed. Immediately to my left there was an extremely steep stairway that led down into a slightly larger room. Every inch of this room was covered in pale orange shag carpeting. It has the feeling, the smell, of being underground.
There were no objects in the room. Under the descending stairway, in a space only as long as the stairway itself, was a sunken space. In that space was the market manager, his health had worsened. Above me, above us, up in the main hall I could hear a man hollering and banging on the door. He opened the door to the small room above us but then said nothing. Then, after I thought he had left, he yelled down that I was suspended. I could then hear the sound of kids in the halls. The man shouted that they too were all suspended. Then he came down the stairway and leaned over to look down at both of us. He was very angry. He saw the market manager, now clearly in poor health, in the sunken space under the stairs. There was a tense moment, then the man recognized the market manager as a fellow war veteran, maybe even a friend. His anger turned to pity, somehow it felt like pity for both of us. He left us, and he closed the door to the upper room.
It was here that I realized I had left the book and the crystals somewhere. I felt a sense of defeat. This room beneath another room also had a stairway that continued further down. I looked at the store manager as if to comfort him that I’d be back. I went down the darkened stairway. I made great strides downward for what seemed like a very long time. At the end, the last step was into a dark puddle of water and sand. I moved toward the only light. The light eventually opened to a sunlit shoreline. I had come out of a cave onto a short beach with an impossibly tall cliff that shot up all around it.
There was no way off the beach except into the ocean. Well, there was an impossibly thin trail carved in the cliffside that zig-zagged up to the top. I knew I had to climb it but that felt doomed, doomed to fall off, or slide off.
The cave I had come from was now covered by a large fence and a gate. There was no way over or around it. The gate had a strange lock on it, sharp and thin. Deeper into the cave I could faintly see patches of shag carpeting on the walls, and there was a puddle at the entrance. The puddle was as wide as the cave floor. I had a feeling something bad would happen if I waded through.
I started up the cliff on the thin trail. As I did I could hear someone else behind me. The trail was too narrow to look backwards without falling off, but I sensed it was a copy of myself. Together, we climbed to a dizzying height where the trail opened up to a landing, a shelf in the cliffside. The path seemed to stop here. I was sickened with fear at the idea of going back down the trail. There was a man standing at the edge of the landing. As I approached him, he told us (very matter of fact) that he could get the Flash for us. The person I’m with, the other me, mispronounces Flash and there is some back and forth confusion. Finally, the guy pointed and we looked down to see two ball caps floating a few feet below the water in the ocean below. The hat on the right was a Flash hat. I only assumed this from the orange and red colors.
The other me said yes to the Flash hat. I turned to look at him thinking, why do we need that? When I looked back to the man he was gone and we were back on the beach below. There was no sign of the Flash hat, but I was grateful to not be up on the cliffside and to have been magically transported down.
The gate closing off the cave was now open. We both ventured in a few yards but the wide puddle stopped us. There were two things floating in the puddle, a piece of wood and an old suitcase. The other me used the wood as a stepping stone and made it across the puddle. I did not go. I gestured that going into the tunnel was a bad idea. The other me didn’t respond. He went anyway and was soon gone into the darkness. In my mind I was imagining him making it to the stairway and up to the carpeted room. I wondered if the market manager would still be there, and I remembered that I had misplaced the book and the crystals. I felt horrible about this.
I heard noise in the cave. I could hear someone running but I couldn’t see them. I ran for the exit, to the gate, without looking back. I closed the gate and stared through the bars. The other me came running into the light but he looked different, he was disturbed and kind of monster-like. I struggled with the lock—I couldn’t get it to clasp shut. It was so cold and stuck and of a foreign design. I positioned it so that if he pushed on the gate it would not open but I exaggerated my motion as if it had latched at the last second—I was bluffing. If he had the presence to mess with the lock he could obviously get it off. I ran for the trail head but when I got there I could see that the trail thinned out to nothing only a few yards from where it started. It was like it had been erased. I thought it might be a trust exercise, that if I just believed in it and started the journey the trail would materialize when and where I needed it. I looked back to the cave entrance.
The small round black woman and her physically identical nanny were sitting on the beach just past the cave. Where they sat there was neatly mowed green grass, like an island of grass in the sand. They seem very content. They were playing the game with Franklin. I heard the mother say, “Wheeeerre’s Franklin!?”
I then see Franklin. He is stuck in the fence that walls off the cave entrance. His feet are stuck in the bars. The gate is still closed. The other me, the thing, that I closed the gate on, is still running, now towards Franklin. I am horrified at what is going to happen. The other me now sounds more vampire-like than when I left moments ago. Before I can do anything, he reaches the struggling Franklin and grabs the bars. He bends the bars wide open—an obvious show of more-than-human strength. He watches Franklin run away.
The bars are bent so far open that he could fit through, but he doesn’t. He goes back into the cave. I stare at the opening, the bent bars, for a long time. I feel vulnerable and exposed that there is a hole there. He could come through it if he wanted to. Then I realize that he is not confined to that area by the gate or the fence but by something else.
Down the beach I can see that Franklin found another hiding place and the “Where’s Franklin?” game continued. The mother and the nanny were looking out toward the ocean, unconcerned with where Franklin was. I got the feeling that they always know where Franklin is—like spirits watching over a small human experiment.