Pseudoreality Prevails

Monday Morning

 

One Monday morning, in a two-storey suburban house on a cul-de-sac surrounded on three sides by a meandering and babbling creek, one of the co-owners, Pat Melaney by name, came downstairs, straightening his tie after his shower and shave, to see at the dining table not just his wife, Nancy Melaney, but also their son Lucas, and the latter's twin sisters Melanie and Catherine. The radio was on, but soft, with the seven o'clock news broadcasting. Lucas was shoving a piece of toast in his mouth; Melanie was scraping up egg yolk; Catherine, with knife and fork, was sawing through a pancake; and Nancy was looking at him with a smile on her narrow-chinned face. Pat made a sound like a sound of relief, kissed his wife, and patted his kids on their heads. He sat down at his chair nearest the window and said:

"Well, here we are, all of us, once again, on a Monday morning!"

The other four smiled smiles despite whatever they had in their mouths, and Catherine raised knife and fork in the air. "Hoo-ray!" she said quietly.

Pat continued: "Let's make this week the most special week ever!"

All was well, and all were contented. Pat poured himself some coffee and put his hand on the newspaper, yes, wasn't there something.... He yanked two flaccid pancakes onto his plate and scooped up with his fingers a piece of bacon. He scanned the front page as if expecting to see something mentioned.

Nancy said: "Lucas has a late baseball practice tonight, so we're putting off dinner till seven."

"Perfectly fine by me, perfectly fine." He opened to pages two and three, then four and five, all the way though to page twenty-eight, then said: "There's nothing about Friday's terrorists in here."

"About what?"

"Terrorists bombed an open-air mall downtown on Friday: something called Mittsommermarkt. Don't you remember?"

"Nope, not at all. Are you sure?"

"Well, yes, I'm ... sure." He took up his fork. "Maybe nothing significant developed."

Nancy touched his arm lightly. "Or maybe you dreamed it."

He scratched his head, shrugged, and smiled impishly.

Melanie, smart, clever Melanie, took her plate to the sink, saying: "It must have been something from your unconsciousness. Something from deep within your ... dibido."

Pat and Nancy burst out laughing. Lucas and Catherine did not.

The family had been living in the two-storey suburban house for going on six years now. Pat and Nancy were friendly with the neighbours, and the kids had other kids their own ages to play with, until the streetlights came on. Everything was perfectly normal, what with Pat as middle management at an insurance firm and Nancy a home-working niche jewelry crafter and wholesaler. All was good.

Pat, ready to drive to work, went into the garage through the internal passageway. A noise startled him. A woman in a black shiny raincoat was crouching slightly in the corner.

"Hello?" Said Pat, not sure she was real.

She replied: "Nothing is what is appears to be."

"How'd you get in here?"

"And, on top of that: You know it's not true."

Pat opened the car's driver-side door. Uncertainly, he said: "You should get off my property, whoever you are." He then drove to work.

 

 

Monday Evening

 

Their garage door could be opened remotely, through an encrypted radio signal. It was like magic. Pat pressed the button attached to his keychain, and voila! the garage door pulled up and over to allow him egress.

He was backing in when he saw that there was a person in a black shiny raincoat standing in a dark corner of his garage. It was a woman.

He stopped the car and got out. He pressed the magic button to close the garage door. Then and only then he turned to her to say: "Who are you? Why are you in my garage?"

She said: "You probably don't remember me, but I was here in your garage this morning, and we spoke."

"No, we didn't."

The strange woman laughed low and said: "If I say it enough times, it'll sink in eventually. Listen: Nothing is what it appears to be, and you know what I say is true."

Pat opened up the door leading outside, to the side of the house. "Get out."

The woman left, and Pat went into his house, albeit a little uneasily.

Nancy greeted him warmly, mentioning that Lucas was at baseball practice and that the girls were up in their room playing. Thus, they had time for a couple martini cocktails. They sat on the couch and felt warmed inside, not that it was a cold day or anything. They could hear the girls upstairs, talking away loudly, probably playing house or something like that. Then one of them cried out, and feet could be heard running down the stairs, and then at the door to the den stood a little girl Pat didn't recognize, and she had little tears on her face and she was rubbing her elbow.

Pat said: "Hello, are you one of my daughters' friends?"

Nancy looked at him funny, then turned to the girl to say: "Come on, Cath, what happened?"

The child presented her elbow to Nancy, who proceeded to rub the pain away. Pat looked at the child with a diminishing sense of confusion. Finally, he managed to say to the little girl, who was apparently his daughter Catherine:

"Did you change your hair colour today?"

Nancy again looked at him, and frowned. So, Pat gave up, and decided he'd have to accept the fact that one of his girls now looked like a different person, and that he might as well get used to it.

The boy, Lucas, got home at about six-thirty-five, and the final meal preparations at that point were made. The five of them sat down, and laughed and joked, relating all the highly amusing events of the day. After that, and after some cleaning up and dish-washer-loading, they found a film version of Astro-Boy for the sake of light amusement, and then all together they retired to their respective bedrooms.

 

 

Tuesday Morning

 

In the middle of an afternoon, Paul is walking down Miravel Street, and he just so happens to pass an apartment building in which he used to live. It has been renovated somehow, but it is quite obviously the same building. On something of a lark, he goes into the lobby to talk to the manager.

The manager (who is in his little office with a 2003 calendar tacked to the wall) says: "Ah, Mr. Pat, you're back! It's been quite some time, during which we had newer, more modern locks put in. Here is your new key."

Pat takes the key: YALE. He knows his apartment number (510), so he takes the recently-renovated elevator to the fifth floor. The door looks much the same. He turns the key in the lock and goes inside.

Nothing is the same, but everything is familiar. There is a couch where his couch used to be, and there's a desk likewise. He goes into the kitchenette (which is of course where it used to be), takes a familiar glass, and fills it with cold tap water. He goes back into the living room and sits down.

He feels back where he was supposed to be. Everything else had been simply not true. "I can plan for my future," he says. "What should I do?"

Then there's a shout from the street outside: "A bomb's exploded!"

Pat woke up, in his bed, having dreamed it all. He put the glass of water down on his bedside table, stood up, and stretched. It was a Tuesday morning in the summer, and it promised to be a wonderful day.

After breakfast, and after bidding farewell to the wife and kids, he went through the interior door into his garage only to see a woman in a black shiny raincoat in the corner ahead of the car, on the passenger side. Pat said: "Hello, what are you doing in here?"

The woman said: "You're still not remembering me, I see."

"No, I can't say.... Actually, you do look a little familiar."

"I was here yesterday morning and afternoon, and also last Thursday and Friday."

"That's ... odd. How did I get rid of you? How did I get you off my property?"

"You asked me to leave."

Pat opened the driver's door and said: "Okay, then. Get out of here."

"I will. I want to tell you things aren't at all what they seem to be."

"Oh? Such as what?"

"Do you recognize the people in your house as your family?"

"Yes, certainly. I'm pretty positive of that."

"I suggest you take a crash course in being paranoid and suspicious. You're going to need it if you're going to survive the rest of this week."

"Enough's enough."

"Before you go," she said: "Did you put the glass of water any place special?"

A little surprised, he answered: "On the table beside my bed."

She nodded with a slight smile. "Let's hope it's safe until this evening."

"Well, I have no idea."

"You'd best hope it's safe until this evening."

 

 

Tuesday Evening

 

Pat was quite late getting home on Tuesday evening, and there was a simple reason for that: he'd been involved in a massive auto accident down on the highway that connected his city office to his home in the suburbs. Police were kind enough to get him driven home, and he was still shaken and confused when he came in the front door. (He'd phoned his house beforehand, so Nancy and the twins knew what to expect and how to express their concerns.)

Nancy came running. "Well, look at you!"

"Yeah," said Pat: "It was a real mess. Super-noisy, too." He patted Lucas and Melanie on their heads. "I'm okay, kids. We'll have a fresh new-smelling car soon enough."

The three of them had already eaten, but there was a plate in the oven waiting for Pat. The kids went off to play while Pat and Nancy sat down at the dinner table.

"The accident, as I understand it, started a whole quarter mile ahead of me. Can you imagine it? There must have been two hundred cars and trucks involved, or maybe more. Guy behind me hit me, and I got pushed into the car in front of me. Some people died, too."

"Oh my!"

"That would have been way up front. In any case, Nancy, I don't know how it happened, or started, or why it started; only thing I know is that it did. I'm going to have to call my boss in a while. Maybe the company has some car service. Or, what, maybe the commuter train."

He did, in fact, call his boss not that much later; amazingly enough, the company did have a car service available in emergencies, and that was that: It'd be waiting outside the house at 8:15 next morning.

Pat and Nancy didn't spend too much time watching television that evening. Instead, they simply tucked in the twins and went off to bed.

In the darkness, Pat, who was staring at the ceiling, heard Nancy say: "An accident, you think? Do you think it was all by chance? Don't you understand that something wanted it to happen, for some reason, as a kind of simile? Was its intention to keep us apart? Do you still have that water? Even if you don't, more can get made. Nothing is what it appears to be. I've told you that, but I don't think you remember.

"Pat, do you hear something?"

Startled, he said: "What?"

"I thought I heard a noise downstairs. There it is again! Oh God I think there's someone in the house downstairs."

Pat got out of bed and said: "Stay here, and keep quiet."

Pat crept down the stairs. There was just enough light to see the banister, the table, the chairs, and so on. He stood still and listened. There it was again: the noise. It was coming from the garage. Pat opened the door, and entered the garage.

 

 

Wednesday Morning

 

"But, Dad, you think everything's all normal and stuff, but we all got it all wrong." Lucas, all of eight years old, and at the breakfast table, was explaining something to his father Pat. "This is what our teacher said in science class. That things, the tiniest things, that you can't know where they are and where they are going at the same time. So, everything we believe about the world is completely wrong."

Pat rudely reached over the table to get another half piece of toast because he was a bit fed up with everything for a Wednesday morning. He shoved half of it into his mouth and, with it full, and spitting a little, said: "That's such a load of, of over-reach. Everything's perfectly solid, and we know, going beyond your terminology, which is suitable only for someone in the third grade, that this table, here, that I paid for with good money, has location here, and a velocity equalling none."

Lucas was shocked, and shrank back, not willing to contend against his father's violence. It was no way to start a Wednesday. We can believe it was the fact that father-and-son hadn't had the chance to bond the night before, at the decent hour of dinner-time, in a reasonable manner, that had caused the breakfast-time scene, but we don't have to believe that. The subject (of sub-atomic physics) had arisen out of thin air, and had been taken up with more heat than light; the child was frightened, and the parent knew immediately that he had gone too far.

Nancy had moved into the living room to get away from it all, and her eyes were looking out the front window, and she said: "Oh, Pat, there's a car out there in the driveway. Looks to be your company car here to take you to work."

Pat got up quickly, embarrassed by himself. He joined his wife to look out the window and said: "Yep, that looks about right."

In the front seat of the car some five minutes later, he found himself beside a clean dark-haired lad in his twenties, the driver. Pat said: "Good morning."

The driver said: "Good morning. So, we're off to the city! Do you think I should go left or right?"

Pat looked left and right. "I think to the left is the quickest way."

"Sounds good to me."

The car went to the left, then south, to the highway. The conversation: the driver was part of an independent syndicate, hireable for any occasion, but he himself was moving up in it. He didn't know what was to come, nor did he know how he'd ended up doing what he did.

Pat asked: "Things could've turned out differently?"

The driver shook his head. "Nothing in these parts is what it seems to be. For example, did you hear about Friday's terrorist attack?"

"I think so; yes, I did; then it vanished from the news."

"That's because it didn't happen. It was invented, for political gain. However, the results they wanted didn't pan out, so the event, let us say, 'unhappened.'"

Pat thought about the driver's wacky idea all the rest of the way into the city.

 

 

Wednesday Evening

 

The same driver was waiting for Pat in the evening, too: the engine was already warmed up. The driver asked commonplace questions not dissimilar to questions one could put to an old acquaintance. How was your day? Did anything interesting happen? Whatever happened to?

The driver then told Pat about a friend of his from high school who was fulfilling what she said was a long-time dream of hers, and that was to have sex with as many men as possible in as short a period of time. The event itself had started on Saturday afternoon and it had continued until Sunday morning. The driver didn't know the official tally, but he imagined it had involved some three hundred men, that's if each man lasted for ten minutes. Pat did the math in his head and said the number would have been half that. The driver replied his old friend had taken them two at a time. Pat didn't know if he should believe or not believe the driver. He decided he might as well believe.

The cul-de-sac was quietly going about its business, but what's this? A new car was sitting in Pat's driveway, and it looked almost exactly like his old car. He was surprised his insurance company had come through on its promise so goddam quickly, though he couldn't recall getting any promise.... This thinking made his head hurt, so he stopped.

He opened the garage door and got into his car. It wasn't exactly the same car, in case you're wondering; it was slightly, subtly, different. He drove into the garage, closed the garage door, and went into his house through the interior passageway.

The house was supremely quiet. He poured himself a drink, pulled a couple frozen pizza out of the freezer, microwaved them, ate them, and then waited for the phone to ring.

He picked it after the first ring. On the line, of course, was Nancy, calling as arranged, from a rented cottage somewhere to the north. She asked him how he was, and he said he was the same old same old. He, on the other hand, wanted to hear about what she and the kids had been up to. Swimming? Yes, in the morning, and just now. We're just out. Any boating activity? Yes, certainly. Lucas was becoming very good with the old canoe paddle; almost as good as the girls, in fact. Yes, Pat knew, they'd been off to summer camp, so they had something of an advantage on their younger brother. Well, he was happy to hear they were having a fine time, but he could hear the tiredness in her voice, and so they ended the call. They'd be back Saturday afternoon, in any case, and they missed one other and he missed the kids too. Hugs and kisses to them all. Nighty-night.

 

 

Thursday Morning

 

Next morning, Pat came downstairs, straightening his tie after his shower and shave, to see at the dining table his wife Nancy, their son Lucas, and the latter's twin sisters Melanie and Catherine. The radio was quietly broadcasting the seven o'clock news. Lucas was shoving a piece of toast in his mouth and Melanie was scraping up egg yolk; Catherine, with knife and fork, was sawing through a pancake, and Nancy was looking at him with a smile on her narrow-chinned face. Pat made a sound of relief, kissed his wife, and patted his kids on their heads. He sat down at his chair nearest the window and said:

"Well, here we are, all of us, once again, Thursday!"

The other four smiled and Catherine raised knife and fork in the air. "Hoo-ray!" she said quietly.

Pat continued: "Let's make the rest of this week the most special rest-of-the-week ever!"

All was well, and all were contented. Pat poured himself some coffee and put his hand on the newspaper, yes, wasn't there something.... He speared a pancake and two pieces of bacon. He looked over the front page as if expecting to see something mentioned there. He opened to pages 2/3, then 4/5, all the way though to page 28, then said: "There's still nothing about the traffic accident in here."

"About what?"

"The traffic accident from Tuesday, down on the highway. Don't you remember?"

"Nope, not at all. Are you sure?"

"Well, yes, I'm ... sure." He took up his fork. "Maybe there haven't been any significant developments."

Nancy touched his arm lightly. "Or maybe you dreamed it."

He scratched his head, shrugged, smiled impishly.

Melanie, smart, clever Melanie, took her plate to the sink, saying: "It must have been something from your unconscious. Something from deep within your ... lidibo."

Her sister and brother laughed out loud, but her parents did not.

Breakfast over, and everything in order, Pat got his briefcase together and went through the passageway leading to the house's vehicular garage. He closed the door behind him, then noticed he was not alone. A woman in a black shiny raincoat was crouching slightly in the corner.

"Hello? Excuse me?" he said to the woman.

She stood up, and after a pause she said: "Have you listened to a word I've said?"

"Er, um, I," was all Pat could say.

"I've told you repeatedly that nothing is as it seems, or as you remember it. Do you remember last night? Are you aware of what happened last night?"

Pat didn't like her tone of voice. "Look, I don't know how you got in here, but I think you should get gone. There's a door right behind you. It'll lock itself on your way out."

The woman shrugged, smiled, and went out the indicated door, and that was the last Pat say of her. Finally, he felt free.

 

 

Thursday Evening

 

Free to what? asked Pat to himself as he drove that evening from the city to the suburbs. He recounted the day, as well as he could.

He sleep-went into his office building, then up the elevator to his office.

He sleep-answered his email. The easy questions he sleep-disposed of first; the harder questions he sleep-planned to answer in the next couple hours.

Having been alerted to a problem in the distribution centre on the outskirts of town, Pat sleep-contacted the manager to offer support.

There was an eleven o'clock meeting, which he sleep-attended. A new quarterly report was expected; Pat sleep-planned to sleep-read it as soon as possible.

The new girl, the one he'd been sleep-flirting with: he sleep-imagined her finally admitting with a smile his attraction. That had happened around one in the afternoon.

Bob dropped by, old college chum. Pat sleep-promised that yes very soon they'd go out to a bar to talk about old times.

He sleep-went down to the mailroom because he sleep-thought there was something important that he hadn't sleep-received the day before.

He sleep-consulted with the next office over, to get a better and more solid answer to one of the day's early queries. Then he sleep-answered the query via email.

He quietly sleep-played a bit of solitaire in a private window.

He sleep-watched the clock tick down to five o'clock, to the very second, on his computer's clock.

He sleep-went down to the parking lot, got into his car, and drove off.

His garage door opened with the press of a button, and he hadn't yet proceeded to slow-roll into it when he noticed her, in her shiny black raincoat, in the corner near the door to the side of the house. With a second button-press the garage door closed. He got out.

"You again," he said.

"You remember me this time, do you?"

"Yes, certainly. How could I ever forget? You've been tormenting for something like a week now."

"Yes."

"You with your malarkey about everything in the past being like a phantasy that's made up on the spot, in the now, and that even this here can't be trusted one bit."

"Now you've got it clearly."

"Well, now that that's established, I certainly hope you'll leave me alone!"

He went into his house and thought no more of her.

The kids came running up, and he hugged them all closely. "I missed you guys!"

His wife, his Nancy, came next, and they kissed with something of a passion.

"What did I ever do to deserve all this?" he joked.

The evening meal came and went, and they played as much of a game of Monopoly as they could stand before it was beddy-bye. Everyone went upstairs at the same time, and they called from room-to-room like they were living the life of an old television show.

"Goodnight, daddy."

"Goodnight, Melanie.

"Goodnight, mommy."

"Goodnight, Lucas."

"Goodnight, Lucas."

"Goodnight, Catherine."

"Goodnight, daddy."

"Goodnight, Catherine."

"Goodnight, mommy."

"Goodnight, Melanie."

"Goodnight, husband."

"Goodnight, wife."

(The latter two didn't go to sleep; not quite yet.)

 

 

Friday Morning

 

Pat went downstairs at a couple minutes before seven o'clock that morning, in a clean white shirt, an ochre tie, and black slacks, sharp as a tack. Breakfast was plain that morning, like on all Friday mornings, sparse to whet the weekend's appetites. His son and his daughters were all-a-gabble-gabble like chirping birds with their own interpersonal language, and Pat knew enough to not attempt to decipher. The only voice he paid attention to, the only one that used his language, was his wife, who said, in a sultry way: "Good morning, tiger."

Pat glanced at the kids before saying: "Good morning, tigress."

That was all that needed to be said.

As the kids babbled, she told her husband: "We've got a summer's day planned for us."

"Oh?" Pat said. "What's the plan?"

She sipped a bit of coffee. "We're going off to that Mittsommermarkt we read about in the paper Wednesday."

"Oh, that's a crafts fair or something, right?"

"Something like that: artisans, wooden toys. It's all become de trop, so why shouldn't we check it out?"

"Right." He continued: "Like a winter market, but in summer."

"I'll find you a nice something, my man."

Pat laughed: he thought the kids were catching on, though of course they weren't: "You've given me enough, mein Gott. You gave me enough."

"Huh! Trust me: there's plenty more where that came from."

The kids chattered away as if they weren't being made to witness something they would have undoubtedly considered 'icky' if they'd known.

"Daddy, we're going to the fair!" cried Catherine.

"Yes, you are, aren't you?"

Nancy said: "It's a good idea; the middle of the summer, all the children are home from school."

Pat got his gear together, patted kids' heads, said: "Have a good time," and went into the garage.

A woman in a shiny and black raincoat was waiting for him in the garage corner. She said: "I heard what was going on in there. For shame!"

"Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"You should expand your horizons, and more."

She opened her raincoat to reveal ... well, nothing but skin; and what fine skin it was. Pat had never before seen such a fine figure, with alabaster curves in all the sublimely proper places. Pat wanted to approach this woman, who had suddenly become not unfamiliar at all, to see how warm she was in certain physical areas. He forced himself to look into her eyes. "I've known you for quite some time, haven't I?"

"You've known me longest of all. Since last night, as a matter of fact."

"Yes, that is a very long time indeed. Perhaps we could continue this discussion this evening? I'm sorry, but I really must get to work now."

"I'll be waiting, like this. Perhaps you could leave work earlier, if you know what I mean."

"I'll have to think it over, but I'm leaning to your way of thinking."

Pat got in his car, and drove down to the highway.

 

 

Friday Evening

 

Pat left work a half-hour earlier that day, though if one had asked him why, he would not have able to clearly say. Something important was going to happen, and he felt he was going to miss out if he didn't hurry home.

No lights were on in the living room as he drove up, which he thought odd before realizing it was the middle of the summer, and there was plenty of light available.

In the garage he closed the door remotely and got out of his car. A woman was in the garage with him, a woman in a shiny black raincoat beneath which he had the feeling there was nothing. He said to the woman: "What are you wearing?"

She dropped the raincoat, and then she was wearing nothing.

It came back to him, like something he'd known all his life. He went over to the woman and put his arms around her. This was something meaningful to him and to his life.

Afterwards, as she confidently re-assumed her raincoat and he abashedly re-set his trousers to their proper place, he managed to smile at her, and she smiled back.

He said: "Well, that was good."

She said: "Yes, it was."

"I think we should meet again, somewhere."

"Have no fear: We will."

"Do you think I could get your ... phone number?"

She laughed lightly and waved him away with her hand. "Don't worry at all about any of that. I think you want to go into your house now."

Pat went into his house.

He paused for a listen, and heard nothing. "Hello?" and "I'm home!" he called out. Nothing answered his call.

He figured: Well, maybe they've all gone out to do a bit of shopping. Then he remembered Nancy had said, yes, they were going off to some German market or something. Maybe they were still there, or on the way home.

Having nothing to do but wait, he cracked open a beer and turned on the television. Advertising was going through a renaissance. They were almost more engaging than the programming. Then the news started up. Was it six o'clock already? Yes, it was. He thought about the woman in the garage while the branding package played.

There's been an explosion of some sort, downtown, a big explosion, at something called the Mittsommermarkt. Pat recalled, yes, that's where Nancy and the kids had gone. He sat up straight and tried to understand. The numbers were sketchy‑"preliminary" they kept on calling them‑with confirmed dead twenty-six.

For the rest of the evening Pat waited for word but that never came. He called up the police and the likely hospitals, but either he couldn't get through, he got disconnected, or they didn't have time to give him information. They told him: You'll simply have to wait. You don't understand how big this thing was.

Pat managed to get some sleep, in a world that had changed for him for ever, or at least until Saturday morning.