Department of Bad Dreams

New York City, 2020. After surviving 9/11, the transit strike, blackouts, floods, and college theatre productions, the city still looks much the way it did in 1920. People inside cubicles inside buildings, all of them crushed together in order to maximize income and space. People rushing everywhere in what, from the 20th floor, looks like rivers and streams built of human bodies.

Jasen liked it best on the ground. Grey sidewalks and buildings so tall it felt like there were no horizons. Only this: being boxed in between doors and windows. A courier zipped by on a bicycle. Mike’s Bikes, the yellow swatch of fabric attached to its side declared: We get it there fast, guaranteed!

The tag line was underwhelming, as was the courier: a sallow-eyed man with monkey-long arms and huge legs, hauling packages in saddle bags attached to the seat of his bike.

On a whim, he called the number on the side of the bike. No answer. So much for guaranteed service and overnight anything: this was the modern age of over-promise and under-deliver. Which was a good thing, in his case.

He pulled his dark wool coat a little tighter around his waist, re-wrapped his oversized scarf, and managed one step off the marble stairs leading to his office building before the phone rang.

In a dead language intelligible only to those he worked with, Jasen answered:

“Cosmos. Jasen. Department of Bad Dreams.”

“I need you, Jace, where are you?”

“Not far.”

“Out walking again? Regretting your life choices? Embracing them? Watching our clients live their lives?”

“About that—“

“I need you. You have one hour.”

“Or I’m fired?”

Epiales laughed with more humour than necessary, a sound that lived in his throat but extruded from his nose, the way horses nicker and donkeys bray. Jasen thought of a donkey as he spoke to his boss, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

“Jasen. You know what the retirement package looks like.”

The image of a braying donkey was replaced by the one that always came back in these small moments of freedom, stolen from the company. His predecessor (literally), slumped in a desk chair. Lifting his head from the desk, and finding...

“Are you having a bad memory, Jasen? Jasen! What are you seeing?!” The sound of the God’s heavy hand thwacking the desk. “Why can’t you be closer. I could see your thoughts! It’s so frustrating!”

“What would you do with them? We have a contract.”

“You know what we do with them.” No humour now. “Get to the office.”

Jasen waited for his boss to hang up before removing the phone from his ear. Slowly, like a piece of string from a scabbed wound. He checked the screen. One hour. 2pm. He was right outside the building, with 55 minutes before he needed to return and only two places he needed to go.

There was a sandwich stand up the street. At least it had a clever moniker: United Wee Stand. A hand-written sign declared it the best in NYC.

He thought you and everyone else, my friend, but not unkindly.

The stand, with its blue and grey striped overhang, sold pastrami on rye, pork buns, bacon and cheese on a roll, and a plain ham sandwich, all of them wrapped in greasy waxed paper. No gentrification here. Jasen smiled. “Hey, Marco!”

The Marco in question popped up under the grey overhang, not unlike a puppet appearing on stage in a mini-theatre. Indeed, his oversized shirt hung from his already fleshy arms like puppet-sleeves. It was hard to say where the arms began and the Yankees jersey ended.

“Jay-sen! Still spelling your own name wrong?”

“I’m Greek, Marco.”

“Well. It’s not your fault. You’re too skinny! You been eating? That boss of yours working you to death again? Cuz I got a new sandwich, and I ain’t packing it to go. So you’re gonna hang out with Marco, or you’re gonna eat a pastrami!”

“I’m ok,” he lied.

“Look. Look at him!” He shouted, to a gathering lunch hour crowd. “My boy here used to look like Clark Kent. One year at BDO and he looks like Lex Luthor. Black hair, blue eyes, all the wrong places. He’s a mess!” With swollen, red hands that moved at the pace of New York City (but faster), Marco assembled something loaded with various kinds of meat, some spice blend from an unmarked jar, and cheese. He grilled the whole thing, wafting the aroma into Jasen’s nose.

It was spicy and sweet, cheesy and full of bread. His nostrils opened wider to take in more, and the sandwich obliged. And he thought, not for the first time, that whatever apocalypse was coming had already happened, and this place was the aftermath. Heaven and hell colliding in an instant: the hedonistic smell of such a sandwich and the knowledge of the pain it would bring, the lure of love and the knowledge it would end, human closeness and the fear of death. It was the space where nightmares lived. Here, in his nostrils.

“βλασφημίες, I cant stay. I’m sorry.”

Marco fanned the sandwich at him.

“I’ll come back before closing?”

Marco chuckled. His belly near-exploded out of his jersey. “You won’t.”

Jasen hung his head, defeated. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re not.” Deft fingers, wrapping the head-sized sandwich in wax. Heads and sandwiches. So many nightmares had those themes. Marco was right. He HAD lost weight. He was finding it hard to eat, these days.

“I am.”

Marco tossed the large package between his hands before handing it over. He leaned down, coming down close enough that Jasen could smell the grease of a thousand sandwiches and the man’s scent underneath. Briefly, he wondered what it would be like. Being his boss. Smelling fear.

Under his breath, he whispered, “Take it anyway. My stand is always dead until you get here. That pretty face draws the ladies in. Take it, and promise me you’ll savour it. Don’t let the vultures take it from you.”

Jasen smiled. A real one, ear to ear.

“Cut it in half, then. I have an appointment.”

“Not Sudsy?”

Jasen nodded.

Marco rolled his eyes, cut the sandwich, and said nothing.

But he cut Sudsy’s half smaller.