Julia Dream

Verse 2: Waiting For The Velvet Bride

Every night I turn the light out

Waiting for the velvet bride.

Will the scaly armadillo

Find me where I'm hiding?

Part 2

8

The streetlamp, Lincoln Street, and his dark home, all as it should be. The tug from Harvey the armadillo starts it all off. Jake can’t see much change in the animal since the last time he saw it, except for eyes that are darker and more naturally angry. Resting bitch face, eh, Harv? Jake laughs out loud and begins his walk.

He decides to play it subtle, though, because letting go of the leash really seems to disturb Harvey. There are the roses in Bob’s strawberry garden, maybe a dozen where there were only a few. Althie’s pot hanging from her porch is still overflowing with the roses, but now there is a second pot and a third pot hanging from the road-facing side of the porch, also full to overflowing. Jake pauses in stride and begins scratching the seven o’clock shadow on his neck. He uses this maneuver to turn around and check the dark sky above.

“Right where I expected you to be. But not how…” he trails off. The star’s spikes are now long enough that there is no question about what is happening to it. And, strangely, the light from the two elongated spikes seems to be reflecting off of something beneath it. Jake can’t even begin to guess what the star is shining on.

He stares at it a few moments longer until Harvey grunts impatiently and pulls him along. Alright… alright! Jake has to take a few quick steps to get some slack on the leash and then slows. Ricks Street is dark and eerie, the handful of streetlamps seem dull in midnight air. Then he turns his head and looks to the streetlamp that is now to his right. Jake’s jaw drops as he sees a medieval half-timber house where there was only an empty field. He stops walking and the leash goes taut again. But this time, Jake doesn’t allow Harvey to pull him along. The armadillo is strong, but not stronger than he is.

The small home stands in the darkness, seemingly lit by some other means than the streetlamp, quiet and dark itself. But Jake can feel it calling him. He turns back to look at the bright star in the sky and sees it twinkle. Dropping the leash and all thoughts of the armadillo, he nearly runs to the home. The grunts and protestations of Harvey follow him, but he doesn’t hear them.

The home’s perfection makes it seem almost cartoonish. The white of the wattle and daub is a stark contrast to the dark brown studs, braces, and posts. Jake feels like he has been transported to a little Swiss village. There is no ornate decoration on the sill beam, just simple timber. Approaching the stairs to the door, Harvey interrupts Jake with a hard nudge and a loud grunt.

“Go away, you little shit,” Jake commands.

The armadillo nips at his ankle. Mildly enraged, Jake sweeps the same foot across the animal’s snout. He is sure that it’s not too hard (he doesn’t want to hurt it, or does he?), but the armadillo barely moves. Its beady black eyes flare with equal rage at him. This time, Harvey pushes out a growl that borders on a roar. The noise startles Jake, but more than that, it appears to make the entire dream world shutter. Jake freezes and lets his eyes dart to and fro, ensuring the dream remains stable. Then he has an idea.

“Fine, we’ll walk!”

He picks up the leash and begins leading Harvey back to the road. When they near the streetlamp, Jake moves like lightning and wraps the leash around the pole. He is aware of the armadillo preparing to charge him, the grunts and growls accompanying a scratching of the grass. As Harvey begins his charge, Jake whips his head around to glare at him. Harvey sees that his master is flush with anger, and he stops short. Satisfied, Jake returns quickly to the front door of the little medieval house, armadillo cries following him the entire way.

The butterflies flutter in his belly as he knocks on the door. Jake has no idea what to expect, but no answer at the door is not one of them. He pushes on the door, and it opens with a slight creak. The back of the room is home to the fireplace, where a small fire smolders in the night. There is not much room in the small space. The walls are lined with a random assortment of baskets and a small round table tipped on its side. Upon the mantle lean several metal plates of varying colors and a store of fruits and vegetables. A basket of wheat sits next to the fireplace waiting to be made into bread, or perhaps some other pastry. Three stone steps run into the wall on the left which anchor the stairs going up to the second floor. Though, by the looks of it, the stairs are more of a ladder. Whatever it was that beckoned Jake into the house is now beckoning him up those very stairs.

Though they appear flimsy, the stairs hold Jake’s weight with nary a sound. On the upper floor, slightly larger due to the jettied construction, he sees the diffuse light of the streetlamp shine through the two windows and onto a simple bed of straw and coarse woolen sheets. Two simple tables are arranged on either side of the bed, each with its own candle. Behind him is a sitting space with another small, round table and a window. Yet again, he feels a pulling. At the foot of the bed is a rough, wooden chest. Kneeling in front of it, Jake sees no lock on the hasp. He places his hands on the corners of the lid and begins to lift.

“There’s a choice to be made in openin’ that chest, Jake,” comes a voice from behind him, British.

Jake shrieks at the sound and sits and turns to see the voice’s owner. Standing in front of the table is a creature he had only ever seen in movies. Cloven feet and furry, goat-like legs rose to a shirtless and muscular torso. What is staring at him is human(ish), though. Jake sees the man’s close-cropped beard, deep green eyes, and dark, curly hair. But where human ears should be are those of a goat, which are less prominent than the two ribbed and curling horns jutting and tightly curling from the top of his head.

“Pan?” Jake asks, bewildered.

“No, mate, people in these parts call me Jason.” The smile Jason gives is both trusting and mendacious.

“Jason, right,” Jake says, his confusion not any better. “Is this your house?” Of course, a million questions are running through his mind, but this seems the most pertinent at the moment.

“No, it’s not, mate. It’s yours. Consider it a gift from Her Majesty, the Queen. Considerin’ who she says you are, though, it’s a fairly drab gift. Wouldn’t you say?” The satyr takes a couple of steps towards Jake as he speaks. “You’re due to be the King Consort, and all you get is a tiny home on your old street.”

Jake sits entirely confused, now, as he watches Jason dig into the old, weathered leather pouch cinched about his waist. After a few moments of rummaging, he pulls out two strips of jerky and dangles them in the air before him.

“Care for a snack?” he asks.

Jake can’t get past what he was just told. “King Consort? Of the Dream World?”

“That’s right,” Jason answers. “And no, I’ve no idea why she chose you. Lord knows that I wouldn’t’ve.” He says this last with a wink of his eye and goes on happily chewing his jerky.

It is an obvious character dig, but Jake can’t wholly concentrate on it. King? “Why does Julia need a king? And why me?”

Straight and to the point. But Jake also realizes that he doesn’t have much time. This dream sequence is much longer than the others, so he could wake up at any point. He needs to know, and he hopes that the British satyr, full of jerky and snark, can help him.

“’Cause you have somethin’ she needs, mate,” he swallows loudly (he loves attention) and gives Jake a raised-eyebrow smile. “The story goes like this. Wayyy back in the day, before your kind settled into the large city-states of Mesopotamia, Queen Julia didn’t have much to do. She was the Queen of Dream World, right. But the dreams of men were, shall we say, shallow and a bit mindless. The Dream World was weak, compared her brother’s kingdom.”

Brother? Realizing that he is now caught up in a family affair, Jake’s heart begins to race. But just the thought of Julia and the feel of her lips against his steels his heart for the rest of the story. He is eager to open the chest at the end of the bed. He’s quite certain, though, that Jason won’t let him do so until he finishes his historical account.

“Yes, Julia has a brother,” he continues, seeing the expression change on Jake’s face. “His name is Jeron, and he’s the King of the World of Death. I’m goin’ to assume that your imagination can fill in the gaps of what Jeron’s purpose is. I’m not comfortable, at all, speaking about Death. It’s creepy. By the by, Julia was bored, and a bit jealous of her brother’s power. So, Julia devised the Gods of Mesopotamia. There was creativity in agriculture and war and the like, but it was nothin’ that gave our queen a whole lot of power. The gods, Enlil, Nabu, Marduk, Nergal… those deities gave the people real fear and hope in the waking world. That translated to a much more diverse and energetic World of Dreams.

“Now, the fact that Julia and Jeron were sister and brother, it was quite clear that there were similarities between dreams and death. Through either one, a certain amount of control could be garnered over humans in the waking world. And with the advent of Julia’s gods, the race was on.”

“So, Julia created the gods? Did she also create God? Capital G God?” Jake, hand still resting on the lid of the chest, is preparing himself for monumental mental trauma. He was never one for talking religion, he hated it, to be honest. Even here, though, in the World of Dreams, he finds it.

“The God?” Jason chuckles at the idea. “No, no, mate. God, the big guy, is quite real. And there are others, like Julia and Jeron, who serve Him, ultimately. It’s quite complicated after all this time, so I won’t go into it.” He swings his head back and forth in the gesture of ‘no’.

Then Jake blurts out the obligatory question in every religious discussion, “And God allows this? He allows these two to fight over control of us? Doesn’t that make Him jealous?”

The satyr steps slowly towards him, taking another bite of jerky. He leans over ever so slightly but is close enough to Jake to allow him to smell his peppery breath. “Let me let you in on a little secret, friend.” Jason point to the sky and continues, “God doesn’t know the future. Destiny, fate, God’s Plan… it’s all mostly rubbish and hogwash. But He does have a near infinite sense of empathy and intuition, He is the creator after all. And it didn’t take Him long to realize exactly what He had created when you monsters came along. There is no Devil… Leastways, not one that I am aware of. You fuckers created that one on your own. Bravo.

“Anyway, God cares nothing for you. And I can’t say as I blame him. After all, look at what you’ve done to His world. Look at the creatures you have become. You revel in death while saying you support life. You are capable of studying the cosmos to its very beginnings, yet you kill each other at the drop of a hat over a pair of sneakers or believing in something controversial. You watch as the poor struggle day after day, feeding off the table scraps, and you gleefully continue to make things easier for the wealthy and the powerful. You are both beautiful and disgusting creatures. Those seven deadly sins feed your kind on a daily basis. But while God has no need of it… Indeed, He is an ‘absentee landlord’, as Al Pacino once described it in that fantastic movie. While He has no need for it, Julia and Jeron have found much power in it. And so, their ‘arms race’…” Jason makes air quotes at this, to which Jake flashes a small smile. “… for power continues to this day. You see, the dreamlife and the afterlife are not so different. And the human obsession with death provides a link between the worlds.”

“But what does this-” Jake begins to ask.

“I’m not done yet. Don’t interrupt.” The admonishment throws Jake back to fifth grade, when Mrs. Welsh, who he swore hated him, would climb up on her high horse and yell at him for being disruptive to the class. Could he help it if he was a gassy eleven-year-old boy? “Julia needs a husband. A king. That’s where you come in. See, Jeron can’t have a queen. Not only does it appear that human women don’t want to rule over Death, but once a person is dead, then the World of Dreams is cutoff to them. Not so for the road going in the other direction. Julia needs your power to connect to the World of Death. Once that connection is made, feeding off of the power of human dreams will expand her power immensely.

“’Tis true that humans dream of death all the time. Whether it’s their own death or the death of someone close to them makes no nevermind. But her goal is to pull real death into the World of Dreams. What will happen in that case, I couldn’t possibly give you an answer to. I’m not sure Julia could, either. But she continues to try.”

“Why are you telling me this? You work for her, don’t you? You’re trying to scare me away. I don’t get it.”

This time, Jason shakes his head slowly up and down. “It does seem like I’m giving away the game, doesn’t it? But in all the millennia that Julia has been at this, she’s come to understand that the suitor must understand his upcoming role. To be thrown into it with no knowledge has resulted in quick and certain death. You must choose to do this and hope to survive.”

“Choice…” Jake says, his eyes full of wonder at what Jason has told him. “It all comes down to choice.”

“Without fate, or destiny, or a divine plan, what else is there?” Jason asks with a shrug of his shoulders. “But with choice comes consequences, mate.”

Jake furrows his brow and says, “What consequences?”

“Ah, bollocks! What’re you askin’ that for? You know the consequences; you’re already starting to feel them. But you’ve already made your choice, haven’t you?”

Without a thought, Jake turns back to the wooden chest his hand still rests on. Yes, he has made the choice. He made it when he first set eyes on Julia the Dreamboat Queen. He would become her king, come hell or high water. He opens the chest and sees only a single garment inside. Jake stands and pulls the garment out. It is a blue velvet dress that shimmers like the prismatic roses. He knows it’s Julia’s wedding dress. She is the Velvet Bride.

The shimmer of the dress intensifies, and Jakes realizes that he’s no longer touching it. It has become a dream within a dream, and he watches as the dress fills out with the image of Julia herself.

“Find me, Jake! I’m waiting for you, my love!” says the phantom.

Then it disappears, and the rest of the dream around him fades with it.

9

Gwen laid there staring at Jake when he opened his eyes. It was dark and quiet. He had no idea how long he had slept, but he didn’t really care. The waking world was losing its fascination, and that included his job, his kids, and his wife. And now that he had made the choice, it all mattered that much less.

“What’s happening to you, Jake?” she whispers.

“I’m on the verge of something incredible, Gwen,” he answered, trying to sound civil but coming off as irked. “You need to let me handle this.”

“But what about us? What is so important in your dream that you forsake your family? Your life?”

That feeling of being irked morphed into sudden anger.

“Just imagine I’m not here.”

“You know I can’t do that, and neither can the kids. We know you’re up here sleeping, and we’re all wondering why.” He could hear the desperation and sadness in her voice.

Jake rolled onto his left side, putting his back between Gwen and himself. “I don’t know what to tell ya.” He said with the utmost restraint to keep his volume low, but he was already running thin on patience.

“Then maybe you should go somewhere else, Jake. Whatever this is, it’s straining the household.” This time it was Gwen’s turn to hide her anger. But why shouldn’t she feel angry? She was losing her husband to… what? A dream? A midlife crisis? She had no answer.

But her husband had had enough. He rolled over so quickly that she let out a small yelp of fear. His eyes stared into her soul as he spoke, “This is my bed. And my house. You wanna get away from this? Then you and the kids can leave. I have a chance to do something monumental, and I’m not gonna let you, or anybody else, get in the way of it. Get the fuck out.”

The tears had started flowing even before his words were finished. Jake had been her dream. Everything she had ever wanted in a boyfriend, a husband, and a father was all wrapped up neatly in Jake. At least, it had been. She didn’t understand what was going on with him now, and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to. But it was beyond painful having him treat her this way. She got out of the bed as quietly as she could, gathered her pillow, and left the room. Jake rolled back over and slung down two more Sleepinals and closed his eyes.

The dreams always began the same, walking the damn armadillo down Lincoln Street in the middle of the night. Harvey always seemed a little bit angrier and a little bit larger every time. He also kept getting harder and harder to control. Over and over again, Jake would enter the little medieval house, but neither the dress, nor Jason, were there to meet him. The more this repeated, the more enraged Jake would get. And every time the dream ended without progress, the further from it he would feel.

Every once in a while, Jake would get out of bed and shower, or eat. But the dreams, and Julia, were a constant clarion call. After using all of his sick days, he was forced to begin using his vacation days. Chloe granted his request with a certain amount of irritation and disdain, but he had earned his vacation time. “There’s no doubt about that,” she said to him, sounding somewhat defeated. Jake barely saw Gwen and never saw the kids. Before the dreams, such a thing would’ve killed him inside. The quest to find his queen, however, even as fruitless as it seemed to be at the moment, took away any concern for the problems of the waking world.

Then Gwen and the kids left. She explained to him that they just couldn’t take it anymore. The pain of knowing that he was right upstairs and just refused to interact with them would be more than just not being around him. The kids didn’t even come to him to say goodbye. Sad times, haus, when your kids won’t even say goodbye to you! There were times when Jake couldn’t stand that “sober” voice, and this was one of them. Fuck off! This thought didn’t help quell the voice, but the dream did.

Two days after Gwen and the kids left, Jake had to force himself out of bed and trudge back to the Ayerco convenience store. It wasn’t an easy drive, despite it being less than a quarter mile from home. The sun hurt his eyes and the heat stifled his lungs. But he was running dangerously low on the Sleepinal, and he still had made no headway in finding Julia. The coming night, though, things would change.

Jake laid back down after using the toilet, eating a couple of bananas, and brushing his teeth. Sleep took him almost instantly.

10

Harvey is in quite the mood this time. Each iteration through this dream has seen him get larger, little by little. His eyes have become more and more beady, and his grunts have become louder and more urgent. The armadillo yanks and pulls on the leash, almost separating Jake’s shoulder. He never imagined that an armadillo could be feared, but Harvey could run over him and kill him at this point. That’s why Jake dares not let go of the leash, for that seems to agitate Harvey to no end.

But the moment comes when the leash falls from Jake’s hand. He is looking at Althie’s porch, where the number of prismatic rose planters has continued to multiply. Now, fluttering among the planters, is a large butterfly. It’s a white monarch about the size of Jake’s head, and he swears, from this distance, that its body is human. There is no sense of surprise within him, after all, he did speak to a satyr named Jason not too long ago. No longer holding the leash, Jake walks slowly towards Althie’s porch, watching the butterfly flit from pot to pot. From behind him, Jake hears the expected grunt, growl, and roar of Harvey Wallbanger. He knows the animal means to charge him, but he is unafraid. As the armadillo charges, Jake simply throws his hand back and stops it in its tracks.

Turning to look at Harvey, Jake sees the hand that’s holding him back. Jake the Hulk has returned, but there is a new twist. The Hulk’s skin was never green like the comic book, but now it isn’t Jake’s usual skin color, either. Like the roses, the skin he sees is red with shimmering rainbow overtones. He is in control. With a smile, Jake studies his body; lean, muscular, shimmering red. He turns the smile on Harvey.

“You can’t break this leash,” he tells the armadillo.

The armadillo’s legs sink quietly into the grass, almost to its belly, then the grass solidifies into concrete. Harvey roars and thrashes to no avail.

“That’s a nice trick, dearie,” comes a voice from Althie’s porch.

Jake sees that it is the butterfly that is speaking to him. It hovers in the air, facing him. Though the creature may have the wings of a monarch, he can see that it has the body of a woman. Sort of. Long silver hair surrounds a face of pale, almost white, skin. Opaque, emerald eyes study him. The high cheekbones and slight nose give the creature (A fairy, maybe, Jake thinks) an air of nobility. It wears a sheer, body-hugging, strapless dress that barely covers its nether regions. It may as well be naked for all of the modesty this get-up denies.

“Who are you?” Jake asks, approaching her delicately. Beware the little things, he says to himself.

“Klytemenester is my name,” she answers. “I am the Minister of Roses for her majesty, and the Lady of Hosts.”

Her accent is not quite as thick as Jason’s, but her countenance is a hundredfold higher. Beware the little things, Jake. “Kly… tem… enes… I’m sorry, can you say that again?”

She repeats her name, but Jake just can’t seem to grasp it.

“Can I just call you ‘Kly’?”

She regards him with impatience while looking down her nose. “Suit yourself, boy. It’s nice to see that you’ve finally begun to acknowledge your power here.” Kly nods to the still thrashing Harvey. “What made you decide not to go to the house, this time? Her dress still awaits you there.”

Jake regards her with consternation. “It hasn’t been there since the first time I found it. Since I spoke to Jason.”

“Oh, dearie,” she replies, throwing a flick of her hand his way. “It’s always there, you’ve just decided to stop seeing it. You will need it.”

He shakes his head, the consternation growing. “What do I need it for?”

“It’s her wedding dress, you lummox! You must give it to her when you find her!” Kly’s head shakes back and forth as she speaks, as though she is speaking to a child.

“I don’t get it,” the consternation snapping into a bit of ire. “She found me. Why can’t she find me again?”

The fairy lets out a little laugh at his question. “That’s not how it works. She can only find you once, it’s how she chooses. Now, as her suitor, you find her and claim her. And so far, you’re not doing very well… though, you’re doing better than some. There’re far more superior suitors, in my opinion, but you’ll have to do for now. I’m not fully understanding her choice here. You’ve no real gumption, so far as I can see. That little trick with your pet over there was a good start, however.”

Part of him wants to reach out and snatch the fairy and crush it. The thought of it in the back of Jake the Hulk’s mind gives him a sense of justification. The only question is why? Is it her air of arrogance? He pushes the thought away and continues with his questions.

“Where is she? Surely, Julia isn’t hiding in my hometown. Yet, this is the only place where the dreams bring me.” He spreads his arms questioningly and swivels back and forth.

Kly sighs and rolls her eyes, at least, Jake thinks she rolls them. It’s not easy to tell when the creature has monochrome eyes. “Because you’re looking, not seeing, dearie. Where do you think the little cottage came from? And the roses?”

It starts to make sense to Jake. He had to find her world, the Dream World. His little piece of it was not enough. Opening himself up to the complexities of the Dream World was the answer. Kly sees the change in Jake’s expression.

“The spark becomes a fire, I see,” she says.

He backs down the stairs of Althie’s porch, taking each backward step carefully. To the fairy, it appears as though Jake is a thief backing away from the one he is stealing from. She watches him creep and stifles a chuckle, it’s not every day that one sees a shimmering red hulk of a human walking so gingerly. Then Jake stops and looks to the sky. The moment for Jake is jaw-dropping. Where he once questioned what the star was shining on, he can now see that it is a light, a beacon. He can see that the light is now a beam sweeping across the landscape like an airport beacon, but much brighter. And Jake can also see that the beacon is at the top of the tallest tower of the Sapphire City.

“I’m here,” he says in astonishment. Around him, the small town of Edinburg, Illinois fades and the Sapphire City begins to loom.

The city is dirty and used, but it’s beautiful, nonetheless. Instead of the quiet and spacious Lincoln Street and Althie’s front porch, Jake finds himself standing in front of a medieval flower shop, The Red Petal. The street around him is bustling with activity and noise. He feels like he’s been teleported to a magical Swiss city in the Middle Ages. The small cottage where he had found Julia’s velvet wedding dress is now crowded by an inn on one side (where Bob’s trailer had been) and an apothecary on the other. The smell of dirt, horse dung, and ale fills the air.

Jake is drawn out of his trance by a roar. Harvey still stands behind him, stuck in what appears to be dried mud instead of concrete. But the armadillo is three times the size it was when the dream began. His eyes are a terrible shade of red, and vapor pours from his nostrils like a bull in a cartoon. Spikes run the length of his carapace, giving him the look of an ankylosaur. Harvey is deeply unhappy. The citygoers around him pay him no mind, though. Do they not see him?

“No, they don’t, mate.” It is Jason, standing next to him.

Jake’s eyes widen in surprise.

“Jason! How ya doin’?” Surprise gives way to joy, and Jake reaches to embrace him.

But the embrace never happens. Harvey’s roars give way to a humanlike scream, a scream that seems to shake the very sky above. The dream begins to crumble around him. He knows that there is somebody on the outside, in the waking world. Rage takes hold of him immediately. Before the dream disappears, Jason smiles at Kly, but Jake doesn’t see it, his eyes focus on the shattering night sky. Harvey’s roar sounds like victory and Jake screams at the animal uncontrollably.

11

He screamed as he awoke. There was no groggy time for Jake, and he was on his feet instantly. The bedroom went from pitch black to blinding light. The rage inside of him prevented his eyes from closing in the stark transition, and his sight was whited out and blurry as he tried to focus on the intruder.

“Jake, behind you!” The voice was Gwen’s, and she was terrified of something.

Turning around, though, was not an option for Jake. He couldn’t even wait for his sight to clear. From the Living Room below, his footfalls would’ve sounded like sledgehammers. In three steps, Jake was across the room and grasping Gwen’s throat. A wheeze of breath escaped her lips before her air was completely cutoff.

“You fucking bitch! I was almost to her! I oughta kill you!”

There are times when anger is controllable, like when your child talks back to you. “I already did my homework, Dad! Get off my case!” You want to smack them upside the head and make them see stars, but you realize that you don’t want to deal with the hassle of Child Protective Services being called. Kids are such whiny bitches these days. Then there are times when your anger is uncontrollable, like when a drunk piece of shit hits on your wife in the bar. “Come on over here, sugar! That huckleberry ya got with ya cain’t please you like ol’ Roy McCandless can!” Ol’ Roy’s hand grabs your wife’s ass as he passes by. The anger explodes like Krakatoa, and you grab the back of his collar, pull him toward you, palm his forehead with your free hand, and slam the back of his head on the bar, breaking a couple of half full pint glasses in the process. Never let another man screw with your wife. Finally, there is a level of anger that goes beyond all else. Usually reserved for those who suffer undiagnosed mental illnesses, or those dealing with severe PTSD, these episodes border on psychosis. Jake’s condition was neither of these. He was living in two worlds, but forsaking the one he was created for, for the one he now desired, had split him in two. Add in a steady diet of Sleepinal, and the break he was now suffering from came as no surprise to anybody, except Gwen.

Her eyes bulged from their sockets as she fought for breath. She pounded on the bedroom door, fear preventing her from having the awareness to pound on her husband.

“Why couldn’t you just stay away! I was so close to her! I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you!”

Jake raised his fist, ready to strike his wife a death blow to her face. In the commotion, he didn’t hear the footsteps hurrying up the stairs. But he felt the fifty thousand volts blast through him as the police officers reached the doorway. The white out hit his vision again, and he released Gwen from his death grip. Melville wrote about Captain Ahab, “He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.” Jake’s Moby Dick, in that moment, was the waking world, its ‘hump’ was the two officers in front of him holding the tasers, attempting to keep him at bay. In this world, the one he belonged to, Jake Chambers was not a big man. The tasers should’ve had him on the ground in an instant. But the strength of rage brought out Jake the Hulk, if only in mind and spirit.

He shot his cannon in the form of an out-of-control lunge at the officers. “I need to get back to Julia!” he repeated as he began wildly swinging at his subduers. The struggle continued and the moments felt like eternities. Until Gwen had caught her breath and fetched the baseball bat from the closet. She swung and all was darkness for Jake.

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