Dream County

The van tears through the backroads of Alabama. From an open window a beer can is tossed out, and you can hear “free bird” playing loudly. Inside the van sits a gang of filthy, smelly thugs. “We’ll show em’ tonite’ ” one of them drawls. “We’re gonna raise some real hell down there” he continues and stumps the cigarette butt on his boot heel. In the back of the van someone picks up a guitar and starts to strum along, while others starts lighting up some cigarettes that clearly isn’t your regular light cigarettes.

“Hey bartender pour me another beer” the already drunk man shouts at the bartender “either I die of heart break or I’ll die from drinking myself to death. And to be honest I fucking prefer the last one. If I’m lucky I’ll fall off of this bar stool and break my neck” he rants. “Oh, and what was the name of that band playing tonight? Lucifer & the True Fallen Angels? What the fuck is that shit about? There’s no true Fallen Angels, the Fallen Angels died with Gram Parson, fucking losers. Lucifer? Could that dude come up with a worse nickname? Hey bartender! Throw in a Jack and Coke for a chaser too!”.

The van pulls up into the backyard of the bar, and the band rolls out of the back door. A half empty bottle of Jack Daniels is passed around, while the road crew starts hauling the equipment into the bar and onto the stage. Lucifer pulls out a pack of Lucky Strike from his shirt pocket. “Yep, raisin’ hell, that’s what we do” he mutters underneath his breath as he lights the cigarette. “You know in one of thousand cigarettes there’s a real joint, that’s why they’re called Lucky Strike!” one of the road crew shout while passing him. “Yeah I know, that’s why I smoke two packs a day” he reply with a sly grin.

The stage light turns on and the band enter the stage. “Ooff, are they trying to blind me?” the drunk man at the counter mutters. “Hey bartender, pour me another beer, and a Jack and Coke chaser. Maybe I can stand this fucking band if I get drunk enough”. Feedback screams out from a Marshall stack as the guitar is plugged in. The guitar player hits a power chord and the amp roars with overdrive. “We are Lucifer & the True Fallen Angels, I am Lucifer and this is our first song: Straight to hell” Lucifer screams into the mic. “I dedicate this song to the gentleman over there in the bar”.  The drummer kicks in and it sounds like he’s trying to crush his drum set, and a surprisingly warm and weeping steel guitar falls in alongside the rest of the band.

“What did you say? Dedicated to me? Are you mocking me?” the man in the bar screams once the song is finished. “No I’m not,” Lucifer replies “I really am Lucifer, and I’m here to pick you up. It’s time for you to follow me down where you belong. You wonder why you’re sitting here heart broken? Let me tell you one thing: To have lived but to have loved none but yourself is the greatest of sins. You know that’s why I got thrown out of Heaven in the first place; because I loved myself more than God.. Can you blame me? Well, after spending eternity in Hell, I learned to love. And you? You’re not really heart broken, you just feel sorry for yourself because those girls didn’t love you as much as you yourself do. You never loved a single one of those beautiful girls who left you. You just loved how good they made you look, and the power it gave you to give em’ a good beating. Hell! You didn’t even love your own children, the ones you left for getting pissed on Christmas day. You’re alone and bitter now because you never gave your love away. You kept it all to yourself, and we both knows nothing grows from nothing. Anyways, I won’t preach more fire and brimstone for you, I got better stuff to do. Travelling around where it suits me, sipping whiskey and smoking my lungs black, playing loud rock n’ roll, dancing with the women at the bar, playing poker in the woods and basically doing all the things you hypocrites think will send you to hell. On top if it all I get the pleasure of weeding the world of bastards like you.  It’s time for you to follow me down to the lake of fire. This gig is over, let’s leave. Take my hand, your eternity long lesson in love is about to begin”.

The band on the stage is halfway through “hickory wind”. The lead singer croons: “Keeps calling me home, sweet hickory wind”. A handsome gentleman leads the old drunkard out the door. The barman wipes another glass, staring out over the crowd enjoying the band without the bitter rants from the barstool next to him.

I look down at my watch for what seems like the tenth time in just five minutes. The bus did not magically approach this time either, so I continue to pace the bus stop. Rush hour is up and the traffic moves like a paper ship on a slow running river. All the people around me are busy trying to look busy, or just plainly staring out into the air with their best thousand yard stare. If I ever try to catch their eye they just try to look even more busy, or stare even harder at the concrete building across the street. I give up trying to connect with these people and go back to my own world, where a heartfelt and emotional song plays on my MP3 player. I  really can’t keep myself from smiling, thinking about the contrast between the emotions in the music, and the grey bus stop and the total expressionless people inhabiting it. Is this how it’s supposed to be?

Finally I can see the bus approach in the distance. Slowly, oh so slowly. As it pulls into the bus stop all the thousand yard stares around me desperately try to be the first one aboard, without looking like they are trying just that. I squeeze myself aboard the bus, and throw a glance behind the people stopping up and making a crowd in the front. I can’t understand why they stop because there seems to be a lot of free seats in the back. I ignore the gathering masses and aggressively push my way back to a free seat next to a young girl. She tries her best to look so grumpy that no one would ever want to sit beside her. I try to catch the girl’s eye to ask if she minds me sitting there, but she is way to busy looking bored, glancing lazily out the window. I let her be and dump down on the free seat.

As the bus moves along I take a look around me and the sight is almost comical. Right in front of me is an old man and an old lady sharing the same seat. Both have incredibly motionless faces, and they consistently stare away from each others. Most people have, just like me, shut out the outside world with ear plugs and music, but none look like they are listening to anything they enjoy. In fact, it seems like they are all listening to the most boring muzak ever caught on tape. They would probably all drop dead if they ever tried to smile. I cast a glance at the girl next to me, she has the perfect “girl with guitar” look. I imagine her as the kind of girl that sits in her own window sill, drinking herbal tea (or whatever tea is healthy this month), while writing overly cliché poems on pink paper. She even wears one of those silly home-knitted and shapeless hats that all those girls seem to wear.

After a while she starts to make the restless, overdone moves that are supposed to show me that her stop is next. She grabs her bag from underneath her seat and moves to the edge of her seat. As the bus slows down, I stand to let her off at the appropriate moment. Rising from her seat she catches my eye, and I see a spark of something there. The spark extends to her face and she cracks open a smile with thousand times all the emotions I’ve seen so far this day. “I know exactly how you feel” it tells me, “and besides … you look kinda handsome.” I fall back into the bus seat feeling all warm inside, smiling sheepishly at all the stone faces around me. The bus pulls out of the bus stop and I catch one last glimpse of the girl, smiling and feeling oddly out of time with the world around me.

At first he had barely noticed anything. He was forced to go to store and adjust his glasses, but that wasn’t such a big deal. The first time he knew something was wrong was when his hat was dangling around his nose. By the time his head looked like a pea balancing on top of a magic marker, he knew he had a serious problem. He also knew he had another problem, namely how to fix it.

He spent countless sleepless nights walking back and forth clutching his shrinking head. “How can I make my head grow back the way it was before?”. He talked to the best doctors in the world and he bought weird pills on the black market. They gave him lots of funny effects, but none of them made his head grow back. At one point he even tried to blow up his head with the aid of a bicycle pump. Nothing ever helped out.

By the time his head actually was the size of a pea, he had more or less given up. Because of the size his head, and mouth, he had to spend most of his waking hours just on eating. Imagine for yourself how slow you would eat with a head the size of a pea. He barely left the house anymore, and grew sadder by the day. Most of his friends had left him too, since he insisted on keep on talking, instead of writing notes or learn sign language. To his small ears his own talk made sense, but to his friends it was more similar to an annoying mosquito buzzing.

One day, you may call it his lucky day, he walked past a man hanging up a tiny poster. “We need weird looking people for low budget horror movies. Give us a call at 555-B-MOVIES!”. He tapped the poster guy on the shoulder and let out his tiny mosquito sound, while he tried to communicate with his hands that he was really interested in this job. It so happened to be that the poster guy was running a one-man business and he immediately understood what a gold mine he was facing. “I can’t hear what you’re buzzing about, but you’re hired for sure!” he said.

From this day on, the man with the shrinking head has starred in a lot of b-horror movies. He got himself a quite decent pay, and rumors says he even got married to a woman with supersensitive ears. Even though he still had to spend most of his waking hours eating, and no one could understand his buzzing, he had turned his worst handicap into his biggest opportunity. And by the way: If you ever saw a headless zombie run after the hero in a b-movie.. Chances are you’ve seen this guy too!

As he flings himself from one trapeze to the other, his red cape flapped like the wind behind him. He flies like there is no tomorrow. He is on fire tonight. He takes a look down. All he can see is the popcorn machine spewing out rancid popcorn, and the circus manager hurling back yet another shot from his hip flask. He thinks for himself “I’m way to good for this dump”. He does a lazy backflip and lands perfectly on the platform. The crowd cheers at him.

As the light goes out and tonights performance is done for, he throws his cape on the floor and walk over to the lion’s cage. The lion looks like it has been drugged down and dragged through the mud for miles. He kicks a stool towards the cage and sits down. As the lion stares lazily at him, he starts to talk; “You know, once I was a big hero. Saving the world, and fighting crime. What am I now? A silly trapeze artist in a silly costume. I even wear my underwear on the outside. Once my name had a meaning; “Look, it’s Superman!” people shouted. What do they say now? “What’s the next number in this lousy circus? Some dude named Superman? Could he possibly find a worse name?” The lion let out a yawn in response.

“Yeah, you just yawn!” he shouts at the lion “but what good am I now? What did I do wrong to end up here? People talk about karma. They talk about getting what you deserve. I have saved the earth more times than you can count on your paws. I have fought evil all my life, struggling to make this world a better place. Where is my karma now? Where is all the good stuff I should deserve? Life isn’t fair! The world should bow to me. I should ride in limousines every day, drinking champagne with my arms around the most beautiful girl in the world. But here I am! In a circus on the verge of an economical disaster, earning a few dollars every night on jumping from one rope to the other”.

The lion let out another yawn, and rolls over on it’s back. Superman leans over and starts rubbing it’s belly. “Oh well” he says “at least I can scratch a lions belly. I guess life isn’t too bad after all”.

He put his foot down onto the wire, fully focused on the task he has to accomplish. He cast a glimpse over to the other sibling. The other twin tower. He can feel the fresh morning breeze of New York against his face. There’s a calmness to it all. Balance. Focus. Grace. Order. He puts his second foot down onto the wire. The point of no return, the only option is to keep on moving. He’s a slave to the rope. The dream is about to come true.

He had grown up with stories of the “french daredevil” Philippe Petit, and his amazing dance on the line between the Twin Towers. Now it was his turn to show the world spectacular moves on his own high wire. As he moves out on the wire he can feel the perfect balance of himself and something bigger. Everything moves at the same pulse. Order. He dances along the wire, high on this feeling. Everything is perfect.

Suddenly he become aware of engine sounds in the air. Suspecting it to be police helicopters getting ready to arrest him as soon as he set his foot back on safe ground, he takes a look around. For a moment his heart stands still. The pulse is no longer beating. It’s not a helicopter at all. It’s a fucking jet plane, and it’s headed straight for the North tower. He can’t belive his eyes. This is just abstract. Surreal. Chaos. The first thought that go through his head once he regain his consciousness is “I guess no one will remember my high wire stunt”. He watched in amazement as the plane crashes into the North tower full force. He can feel the shock wave propagate through the wire, and is unable to hold on to it anymore.

He falls tumbling towards the ground. He can see the first firetrucks and police cars arrive. It is total chaos down there. The world is falling apart as he falls thundering towards the ground. As he continues his flight towards the ground the towers collapse around him. Chaos rules.

When the fire and the dust has settled and the emergency personnel starts to clean out the rubble, no one even notice a 50 meter long steel wire and a cape clad body.