The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) (12 page)

He wasn’t getting any answers anyway.

Jack wrote himself up to the present just as the sun began
sliding down in what might have been, in a more conventional reality, the
western sky. What began as a journal turned into a story constructed around
himself, the outlandish plotline simply a mirror of his life over the last
forty-eight hours—it was too implausible to be a journal, anyway.

He saved what he had and pushed away from the keyboard, his
stomach reminding him that breakfast was a long time ago, and beer, coffee and
snack crackers were no substitute for a meal.

He went downstairs, hoping to test a
theory. He concentrated on a boiled Maine lobster with melted butter. He
visualized the details as vividly as he was able: the bright crimson shell so
hot it burned his fingertips, the fishy, briny aroma of the tender, dripping
meat in the claws, the moist, flaky white meat in the tail, the nutty smell of
melted butter for dipping. Until now, the Saloon’s reality had altered of its
own accord; he needed to know if it could be deliberately controlled.

What he found for his efforts was a cellophane-wrapped, lukewarm lobster
roll in the vending machine. That, half a carton of cold-milk from the
refrigerator, and a box of butter-flavored crackers he found behind the bar was
as close to a meal of whole Maine lobster with melted butter as he would come
tonight.

He ate the meal on the third floor,
sitting on the false front of the Saloon where he could watch the sun settle
over the horizon. It was strangely comforting, the sun turning from orange to
red, the sky fading behind it into deeper and deeper shades of blue. It was
almost possible to forget he was watching it set over an endless wasteland
blemished only by a single saloon perched upon the very edge of reality and
madness, and him the sole inhabitant. As the last sliver of the sun edged below
the horizon, Jack decided that a cup of coffee might be better than sitting
here on the rooftop contemplating his predicament.

He turned, and found himself staring
at a creature that was the spitting image of the gargoyle he’d seen earlier,
the statue now conspicuously absent from the rooftop! The gargoyle bristled
with fur and horns and tusks, staring at him with its black-in-black eyes like
a dog would a stranger, head tilted in wonderment.

—
Nail
—

And there it was again, that word
whispered inside of his skull like a thought too loud to be denied. Only it was
not a whisper or a word so much as an impression. Jack stared back uncertainly.
“Nail?”

The monster responded by padding over
and climbing up on the false front where Jack was sitting. For all its fearsome
appearance, it had the non-threatening gait of a dog approaching its master,
wanting only a scratch behind the ears, and perhaps a treat. It stopped within
arm’s reach, staring first at him, then at the half-eaten lobster roll between
them.

“Go ahead,” Jack offered.

The gargoyle plopped down, serpentine
tail wagging, and picked up the lobster roll, consuming the entire thing in one
mammoth bite that exposed sharp rows of teeth reinforcing the more visible
tusks. Nail, if that was its name, chewed and swallowed the entire half a
sandwich with no effort whatsoever. Then it looked expectantly at Jack.

“There’s crackers if you’re still
hungry,” Jack offered, sliding the box over.

Nail sniffed curiously then upended
the box with an experimental shake, crackers flying everywhere. The gargoyle
came instantly to his feet, leaping at the crackers and scooping them up from
the rooftop in handfuls, chewing them down as quickly as he could pack them
into his mouth. A moment later, he was calmly inspecting the false front for
the few remaining crumbs and broken bits which escaped his first assault.

“Your name is Nail, isn’t it?” he
asked.

The creature looked up at him and
nodded as if the issue had been plainly established already.

“Are you part of the Saloon, or did
you come here like me?”  It seemed unlikely that Nail wouldn’t belong here; it
was difficult to imagine anyplace other than here where something like the
gargoyle
would
belong.

Nail only looked back blankly then sat down and began grooming its scaled
tail with both hands.

“Nail, do you understand what’s going
on? Do you know what it is I’m supposed to be doing?”

The gargoyle looked up briefly at the
mention of his name then returned his attention to his tail.

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t. But I’m
glad you’re here. I was beginning to think I was going a little crazy.”

Nail hopped down suddenly and walked
to the edge of the roof.

“Where are you going?”

The small gargoyle turned back to him
and blinked, reminding him of the expression a dog would give when presented
with a particularly interesting smell, and can only look back at its clueless
owner as if to ask, why is this so hard for you to understand?

Then Nail stepped off the edge.

“Wait!” Jack shouted, running to the
edge of the saloon, certain he was about to hear the deadpan thud of the small
monster smashing into the packed desert sand, self-destruction preferable to
being trapped here with the saloon’s new Caretaker. Instead, he heard only a
faint flapping sound as the gargoyle sailed quietly away into the darkening sky
on small, powerful wings.

And once again, Jack was alone.

*     *     *

Washed out and empty, Jack went downstairs. He didn’t want to write or
explore or know anything more about the Sanity’s Edge Saloon; he simply wanted
to sleep. Morning felt like forever ago. Without another living soul, no
reference to time but the sun overhead, it became meaningless, a simple medium
eroding the future into the past.

He went to the second floor hallway,
staring in the rooms at each of the beds in turn. Exhausted, he could have
collapsed on either one. The bed with the canopy looked dreamlike, as if
dredged up from some distant memory or unfulfilled desire. A part of him wanted
very much to try sleeping in that bed. And for that reason, he was afraid to.
The smaller room he liked even less. It reminded him of the guest bedroom at
his grandmother’s home, the room she always maintained in a kind of informal,
empty, cleanliness; a room that lived in perpetual anticipation of guests who
never came, and were not necessarily welcome when they did. In the fading
daylight, it conjured only images of an old hotel room where shades of past
occupants haunted the place in which they took their own lives.

Neither one was right. Or maybe they
were
too
right, too much like something he expected; the Corona and the lime. Jack had never gone out of his way to be fanatically well read, but
he’d read his share of fairy tales and they all shared a prevailing theme: the
acceptance of a new reality led inevitably to imprisonment within that new
reality. Since coming to the Sanity’s Edge Saloon, he had eaten its food,
consumed its spirits, talked to its inhabitants. All that remained was to sleep
a night in its bed, and he would be the hapless victim of an old-world
folktale, one that he would never escape.

Instead, he chose the wooden bench in
the waiting room, line of sight for any arriving train. It was a better place
to be in for when the others arrived, both the ones he was waiting for and the
ones he should guard against. Besides, the big bed was too big and the small
room was too small and darkness made the Saloon a little more threatening than
daylight, a lonely place that seemed too eager to have him come along and stay,
stay for awhile, stay forever.
And ever and ever and ever…

He took a blanket from the closet and stretched out, the candy machine
buzzing and flickering incessantly, forever on the edge of death. The large
chewed hole in the wall loomed blackly at him like the gaping maw of a
disinterested beast. And still he liked it better down here in the waiting
room. Better a restless night’s sleep than yielding too quickly to the rampant
insanity of the Saloon.

Or is the true measure of insanity
your resistance?

Before drifting off, Jack—not
religious by nature, or even much of a believer at all—offered a silent prayer
for forgiveness to whoever might be listening.

ELLEN MONROE

Ellen awoke on the floor, the dusty
smell of ancient foam rubber layered with disinfectant—a thin concealment for
the sour stink of sweat, old urine and fresh vomit—prickling her nose. The
world floundered in a thick fog of surreal faces and impossible forms
pretending at reality, a half-dream state, the residual slime of some unshed
skin clinging to her body and rotting around her.

The Dreamline did that sometimes.

It began with mescaline and Demerol.
After that … well, who could say after that? Mescaline turned the whole world
into a waking dream of light and darkness, voices through the walls, half-seen
images; too real to be anything but reality cleverly hidden from the eyes of
the unenlightened. The Demerol kept you down long enough to enjoy the ride, no
intrusions from the other reality upon this new, shadowy underworld, the wizard
behind the curtain. The Demerol kept the dream going.

At least, that was what Lenny
claimed. As it turned out, the Demerol also had a way of keeping the nightmare
from ending.

She tried to pick herself up, but her
head felt as thick as concrete. For a moment she worried that she might not
actually be awake at all, just a dream of waking, caught in the confused state
of half-sleep, dreams and reality indistinguishably mixed, left shaking,
screaming soundlessly from lungs empty of air. It sometimes happened after
flying on the Dreamline. She had tried most of them. Ecstasy and the sub-genre
of rave-culture, chemical knockoffs were little more than candy, strictly for
lightweights more interested in getting laid then getting enlightened. PCP was
a good ride, but it usually made her throw up. And marijuana … well, marijuana
was beneath contempt. It belonged on the shelf next to extra-strength
pain-relievers—over the counter, five ninety-nine, thank-you and have a nice
day. LSD was the other end of the spectrum. It dragged you down deep—too
deep—and it hated to let go. Frankly, it scared the hell out of her. The
hippie, counter-culture panacea lasted too fucking long, and liked to come back
uninvited and without warning. She tried it once, scored a really good ride on
the Dreamline, and thought she might try it again. A week later she flashed
back, no rhyme or reason, just off taking a ride. She woke up in a jail cell,
not for the first time. Her father quietly bailed her out and dumped her into a
discreet, out-of-the way rehab clinic, also not for the first time. But she swore
off LSD all the same. Never again.

Now Mescaline, she liked. Mescaline
was a rocket, fast and clean. No flashbacks. No LSD demons creeping around,
stalking you for weeks or months, hiding out, lurking in the shadows of the
real world, the waking world, boiling forth through the filmy reality without
warning to drag you back down into Wonderland. It could be a good trip, but it
could also be very, very unpredictable.
And weird
. Fast and furious,
mescaline was a midnight ride on a roller coaster with a bag of fireworks: a
distinct beginning, a disjointed middle of pure sensory overload, and a
definite finish. And when the ride was over, it was over. No long, strange
trip, thank you very much. She left that to the
Grateful Dead
.

Lenny, who wasn’t so much a friend as an acquaintance who helped her
score her Dreamline tickets, was the one who convinced her to try combining her
mescaline with Demerol. The Demerol, so Lenny claimed, would make sure the trip
lasted a good long time and keep her in one place while she enjoyed the ride.
It would, as he put it, “keep her from walking in front of a bus, or playin’
fuckin’ superman off the rooftop.” Not that Lenny was her chemical Sherpa; he
was just a grease-ball who knew where to score a few drugs when he needed to—and
when he was paid.

She doubted very much that Lenny gave
a shit one way or another whether she got herself run down by a bus or threw
herself off a bridge. Lenny was her connection, and that was all. If he could
get her hooked on heroin, why then wouldn’t she be just the best customer from
now on—so long as Daddy’s long green didn’t run out?

The problem was she didn’t get
hooked. She’d experimented with almost every drug to one degree or another, but
nothing could keep her for long. She didn’t know why. It certainly wasn’t a
matter of willpower. Eventually, her body just lost interest in the little
traumas she was determined to put it through, and saw no need to make her want
more.

No, if Lenny was looking to string
her along, make her a good and loyal customer, he was wasting his time. She
bought tickets on the Dreamline because she wanted it, not because it wanted
her.

Nobody wanted her, really. She didn’t
look after herself because she was strong or capable or even particularly good
at it. She looked after herself because she knew she was the only one who
would. You had to keep yourself alive in the big rat race because no one else
was going to do it for you. Just get behind the wheel, slam your foot on the
gas and try not to hit anything. The rest you made up as you went along.

Lenny was a pusher. He didn’t concern
himself with her welfare so much as he concerned himself with where she spent
her father’s wealth. And since money was all her father would give her, she
could always keep Lenny’s friendship on retainer. But make no mistake, Lenny
was not her friend. If she tripped out, Lenny would steal her cash and run
before the cops showed up. Nothing personal. Lenny simply wasn’t paid to care.

Lenny was probably hoping to get her
spaced on mescaline and junk so he could grope her without her noticing. When
you’re made of lead and helium, the universe exploding in your skull, who has
time to notice a tiny little prick, especially if it’s only in you for a few
minutes. Nothing personal; he just didn’t care about her; no one did.

But Ellen did notice. She didn’t
expect Lenny to care about her, but neither did she expect to be treated like a
piece of meat. She looked after herself because no one else would, and that
included making sure some scabbed-up prick didn’t go down on her while she was
riding the Dreamline.

The details were still hazy,
slithering about the maybe-reality that pinned her head to the ground like an
anchor. She remembered blood, a lot of it, and a knife maybe, or a sharpened
screwdriver. Maybe. And definitely screaming. Hers. Lenny’s.
Others
.

She tried to get her arms up
underneath herself, wishing she could somehow get her head, thick as mud, a
fishbowl of buzzing hornets, to move. It felt like her hair had rooted into the
smelly foam-rubber mats below her, her skull planted to the ground like a tree.

… And apparently her arms were
planted in the same soil because they didn’t work either. She felt them
struggling, but could not raise them, or even get her elbows underneath her so
she could gain enough leverage to lift her head up, …

… and pull the roots free.

What if they’re broken? What if the
nerves are sliced, the limbs dead, or severed and gone entirely? What if, in
that black period between dropping the mescaline and waking up, you lost your
arms, a cripple snuffling around a urine-stained mat like a worm?

Panic burned through the haze like
lightning in the night, darkness briefly transformed into electric day by the
possibility that this might not be a dream. She started yanking and kicking
furiously, desperately. And then it occurred to her, what happened and why her
arms wouldn’t work.

Someone had strapped her into a
straitjacket.

She rolled over upon her back,
staring straight up at the ceiling, heart thumping in her chest, breath coming in
quick, short bursts. An impulse to scream boiled up in her throat. No good
would come of it, but the primitive animal taking over her brain hardly knew
that.

Come on, Ellen
, she thought furiously, reason
swimming hard through a ripping current of panic and confusion. But the words
only echoed endlessly inside of her brain until they lost all meaning, a
cacophony of sound devoid of sense.

Okay, fuck reason. Try something a
little more primitive.
Pleeeeeaasse! Don’t lose it on me!

No answer, but at least she didn’t
hear her mind screaming. She laid there, teeth clenched so hard her jaw ached,
staring up at the ceiling and the too-bright light high overhead. The walls
were padded and white, the floor spongy beneath her. No furniture, just walls
and a floor and a door with a narrow window.

Oh God
! she thought, pieces finally fitting
together.
I’m in a padded cell
.

She closed her eyes, the light
pounding through her eyelids in an overwhelming sheet of red and vibrant green,
and tried not to get sick. She had been jailed before, waking up in a cell or
sometimes in restraints, but they had never used a straitjacket on her before.
No one did. It was something out of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
. It
was Medieval. They might as well drill a hole in her skull to let the evil
spirits fly out, or perform an exorcism. This kind of thing wasn’t done
anymore.

Or was it? Maybe Gabriel Monroe had
them put his daughter in a straitjacket. He might do that, or get someone else
to do it for him more likely. He might do that and say it was for her own good;
a lesson to teach her that she shouldn’t ride the Dreamline; that she should
straighten up and fly right; drop the drugs and get with the program. Daddy
spoke in catch phrases and power slogans, sayings that appeared on inspirational
posters in motivational shops in the mall. He never said what he meant, but she
knew. She embarrassed him. Bad enough she existed at all, but that she should
be a dropout and a drug-addict and a petty criminal; well that was too much.
Especially for a man who didn’t care about much—much besides himself. The
product of an affair he paid well to keep quiet, Ellen’s wellbeing was of
little concern to him. The proof of the blood kept the support checks coming
in, and the need to keep it from ever getting the attention of the press meant
extra support for legal issues that were best contained lest someone dig too
deep …
and find him
.

She wasn’t daddy’s little princess.
She was his little problem, his embarrassing little secret.

Sometimes, she would close her eyes
and think really hard, trying to remember a time when her father actually might
have loved her. But no matter how long or how hard she tried, nothing ever came
to mind. He never talked to her; only yelled. And he never pushed her on her
bike; only pushed her into rehab clinics. On some level, she knew that he still
believed himself a good father for insisting she receive top-notch care in good
clinics with people who would care for her and help her kick her habits and
lifestyle choices: the booze, the pills, the Dreamlines that she liked because
they were a trip outside of here. He told himself he cared for her and that was
why he did these things.

Daddy was nothing if not an
experienced liar.

Clinics and detox programs and the
hospitals that looked after her when she came a little too close to ending it
all were simply Gabriel Monroe’s way of passing his problems off on someone
else because he was too rich and too important to give a damn about anything he
didn’t really care about in the first place, including her—maybe especially
her. And if he sprang for the best clinics, it served only as bragging rights
for his conscience.

But somewhere along the way, she
apparently pissed him off. She had never woken up in a straitjacket before, or
in a padded cell, for that matter. Whatever she had done, it had obviously been
pretty serious if he was mad enough to incarcerate her in Bedlam Hospital. Or had he finally had enough?

She might never know for sure. She
hadn’t seen him in two years. Not since her last court appearance. Daddy kept
his distance, and he made sure that she respected that. He kept her in money so
that she would never come close to him, or draw an association between the two
of them. Likely there were those who knew that Gabriel Monroe had a daughter,
but they didn’t find out from him. Unless she made a spectacle of herself, she
was forgotten. And on those occasions when she did, she was remembered the way
one remembers a nail head sticking up from the floorboards to slice open the
skin of your toe: she simply needed to be pounded back into place.

Ellen lay on her back, slowly easing
out of the residual effects of the Dreamline. Around her, the world gained
solidity, reality less likely to slip away between her fingertips; fingertips
incapable of grasping anything very tightly at the moment. She simply lay there
and listened to herself breathe, her lungs expand with air, her eyes opening
and closing with a weighted heaviness that felt like coins glued to her lids.

Minutes passed. Or maybe hours; it
was hard to tell. Was she ravenous or junk-sick? It was hard to tell, but she
wanted to throw up either way.

And why had no one looked in on her
yet?

“Hello?” she ventured, voice weak and
dry. “Could someone bring me a drink of water, please?” She also needed to pee,
but one hurdle at a time.