The Pastel Prairie

Regaining consciousness was like swimming up through thick sludge. After a long struggle, the old man finally opened his eyes. He thought he had been dreaming something terrible; he was shivering, his sweat-soaked pajamas clung to his bony frame.

God. He felt awful, so sick.

The clock on his wall read 7:00 p.m. Nearing sunset, then.

He coughed and fought for a deep breath--just one. Just. One. He tried feebly to sit up, but he was too weak. He attempted to call out for help, though he knew it was useless; he was alone and had no breath to voice. Gasping uselessly, he could feel himself being pulled inexorably back down into that horrible dream state. Unable to fight any longer, he let himself again be drawn down. Down into, then past, all his secret terrors; down . . . down . . . down . . . until . . .

He landed on his bony ass with a thump. Dazed, he sat there for a long while, staring at his skinny legs, unable to pinpoint what was wrong with them. He hugged himself, rubbing his arms, and stinging, burning pain ripped across both palms. The man looked down at them and froze, staring. His torn hands filled his vision, but it took long moments for him to grasp what he was seeing. His hands and wrists were covered in cuts and scars. Absolutely covered, scar upon scar, layers of healed wounds with fresh, bloody ones gaping atop. The layers looked like they went back many years. Aghast, the man searched for something to bind them with, if only to remove them from his sight--they horrified him. He closed his eyes again; he didn't want to look at the horrific state of his hands. How had that happened? What did I do to myself?

He moved to take off his shirt--he'd wrap his hands in that, for now. That was when he discovered he didn't have a shirt to remove. He was stark raving naked all of a sudden. Where are my pajamas? Wasn't I wearing pajamas? Struggling to remember, he decided he must have thrown them off in his feverish state. Yeah, must be that. I took 'em off because I was too hot. They're probably on the floor next to the bed. Neither warm nor cold in his newly discovered nakedness, he nonetheless shivered. What the hell is going on? Eyes still closed, he reached down to feel for his pajama top, but his hand struck something yielding and strange instead.

That was when he noticed a new sensation. Beneath him, he felt a soft springiness, unlike the mattress he'd been lying on. It felt stringy, lumpy--like grass. An odd, rhythmic noise drummed in his ears. Feeling the first stirring of fear, he glanced about himself. In every direction, as far as the eye could see, was grass. What the fuck? Weird grass, pastel-hued in every color, possessing an ethereal beauty his growing terror would not let him appreciate. The odd drumming sound persisted, but he saw no source. He turned his attention to the grass again, studying it. It seemed to bend and sway in a wind he could not feel. Its motion and odd coloring scared him deeply, though he could not say why. He squinched his eyes tightly and sat there for a long while, praying for the courage to open them again so he could see if this vivid hallucination had left him. He feared it had not because his ass still told him that whatever he was sitting on was not his bed. Paralyzed, he stayed motionless in this position for an unknown time.

It was the curiosity of distant hoofbeats that opened his eyes at last. He identified them as the odd noise he'd heard before but much fainter. He couldn't guess why it took him this long to understand they were hoofbeats. Suddenly, he needed to see and snapped his eyes open, looking frantically around for the source of the fading sound. There! He saw them in the distance, two tiny blots racing up a slope to the horizon. One was pale, and the other a deep brown. Even from here, he could see that the deep brown blob was his horse, Jim. Somebody was riding off with his horse! But I've never owned a horse in my life let alone one named Jim . . . what the double-damned hell is going on? As much as he tried to convince himself that he had never owned a horse, that stubborn part of his mind that insisted that he did, in fact, own a horse--and he was getting away-- grew stronger.

The moment the two faraway dots disappeared over the horizon, taking the hoofbeats with them, terror morphed instantly into rage. Some rat bastard had stolen his horse! Come back here with my horse, you son of a bitch! he tried to shout, but no voice came. The naked man found himself on his feet without knowing how he got there. He frothed! He raged! He allowed the feeling to consume him completely and he bent, tearing wildly at the grass, flinging clumps in every direction. The resulting agony in his mangled hands drove his fury to unimaginable heights. Wavery, ghostlike images flickered faintly in his consciousness--rooms of his dingy apartment, strange faces, and familiar ones, the rapid flickering of light and dark burst across his inner sight, and vertigo swept him. Occasional faint voices came to his ears and fled just as quickly. None of them mattered. He heeded none of them, nothing registered upon him except the exquisite rage at losing the only thing that mattered to him, the only thing he had left. Jim.

The smell of burning sage brought him up short. The red veil over his vision slipped away. He could see that he had been raging for quite some time--strangely, it felt like years. He'd been at it long enough that an area roughly the size of his apartment had been shredded almost to ground level in the tough grass. He sniffed again. The smell of sage smoke was even stronger. He searched every horizon for smoke but could see nothing. The reek grew stronger still, choking him. Okay, okay, time to get out of here. He didn't fancy getting caught in a raging brush fire.

He spun in a circle, trying to decide which way to go, and his eye fell on the trail of the horse thief. That way, I'm going that way. That son of a bitch and I are going to have us a little reckoning when I catch him.

The trail will be easy enough to follow, looks like. The grass had died in the path of at least one of the horses. A thin brown thread ran up to and over the horizon. The naked man stood, staring uneasily at the beautiful grasses seemingly waving about on their own. It still creeped him out a little, and he was hesitant to move off his cleared spot into it.

The stench of burning sage intensified yet again, and he thought he could hear--faintly and faraway as a childhood wish--a whisper enjoining him to move, to go, it was time to move on.

Uneasily, the naked man glanced around once more. Now that he was at the turning point it seemed hard to leave. The voice grew louder and the stench grew thicker until he gagged on it. The fear of fire finally overcame his fear of the waving grass. Fine, fine, I'm going, I'm going. With a breathless attempt at a sigh, the naked man moved off down the trail of his stolen horse, carefully staying in the middle of the dead portion so the living grass would brush him as little as possible.

Sooner or later, he would catch up to that miserable rat of a horse thief, and then there would be hell to pay. The first thing was clothes. He would need those. He didn't think he would present the proper gravitas if he faced down the thief with his dingus hanging out. He moved off into the grassland, heading for the horizon and whatever fate awaited him over it.