Entry #5: Bright Lights
The ongoing serial follows Duke, a down-and-out screenwriter in Hollywood, who does the unthinkable to see his name in lights...
The lights are still off, and my thoughts still floating like clouds…
Puffy black nothingness. I try desperately to grab onto something, or someone. But it’s become a storm down here. I keep waiting for this wave of blackness to become a wave of whiteness. Or blankness. Whichever is preferable.
The little prick I felt in my neck seems like a lifetime ago. Didi, kneeling by the grave of his father, having fooled me again, seems like two lives ago. I hold onto the idea that I’m still lucidly wandering though this strange nightmare.
In case I never wake up, I feel inclined to tell you that my name isn’t actually Duke.
Duke was a nickname given to me when I was little. From what I was told, I used to march around the house demanding my royal subjects (my parents) make me Mac n’ cheese. I wasn’t particularly spoiled if that’s what you’re thinking. It was a phase, and I had even affected a snobby British accent to go with it. My mom wanted to name me King, but my dad thought living in Mr. Presley’s shadow would create some form of inadequacy. So, they decided on Duke.
My real name is unimportant. Only my doctor calls me it now that my friends are all gone, and my parents are passed. And there’s the DMV, of course.
God, it’s lonely in the dark.
There was a flickering that burned through my eyelids. A multi-colored refraction. I awoke, in a hospital room of sorts. Abandoned, with giant cracks in the walls. I was strapped down to a grey reclinable-chair. The chains around my wrists were rusty. My feet were without constraints. I was either in an old rickety psychiatric ward, or on set for a John Carpenter horror movie. Considering there were no crew members around, I assumed they had taken me to some off-the-grid location to dispose of me.
They. The Society. Why did I have to be born with big dreams?
I flailed, trying to free myself from the chains. My skin was on fire. My hands were clammy, and left sweat in the folds of the leather cushion. I shook harder, to no avail. The rattling got the attention of someone in the corner. A groan, half-asleep, half-in-pain.
I blinked and the blurry form came into focus. It was a body, tied to chair, with rope. I blinked again, and saw it was a shirtless man, with a tuft of black hair on his chest. He had his head hung low. It took me a moment to realize the shirt on the ground beside him. The shirt was a vivid red. I didn’t need to flip it over to know it had the Moroccan logo on it.
Didi…
A shadow blocked out the light from above. I swallowed a dry spit that barely went down, and craned my neck.
The figure that stood over me was no hideous monster. Not even close.
It was a woman. And when she leaned down past those awful blinding lights, I could say with certainty she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Porcelain features. Skin that needed no make-up, eyes that needed no liner, lips that needed no lipstick. Her platinum hair made a perfect halo.
She was an angel in this asylum.
The woman placed a hand on my forehead. Her touch was like ice, and the fire immediately subsided in me. The fever washed away, with the rest of my thoughts. I only had one question I wanted to ask. Who are you?
But I couldn’t get my mouth to deliver the message from my mind. The woman seemed to sense this, and whispered into my ear ever-so softly, enough to make the peach fuzz on my neck stand tall.
“What?” I asked, not hearing the angel-woman correctly.
She stared at me, with pupils dilated from the harsh lights. Mostly brown, with a green tint. They haunted me. With some sort of familiarity, I couldn’t quite place.
“What did you say?” I asked again; my voice had finally become clear.
“It’s me, Duke,” she said, and it hit me, like a thousand prickly needles, piercing my neck all at once.
“It’s your wife.”