elimae

From The Levitationist
Brandon Hobson

The city he dreamed of subsisted on nature's ubiquitous desire to remain calm; this was a city without storms, without earthquakes or blizzards or anything causing danger or destruction to electricity. The traffic moved slowly and was often congested, yet there was no traffic noise. There were no angry pedestrians or verbal arguments among motorists. Automobiles moved soundlessly as he floated lower within the yellow lights in tall buildings. He felt no wind but heard a deep rumble in his ears, much like the ambient engine noise heard when traveling in an airplane. As he got closer to the freeway traffic, he noticed that the people walking around on the streets were actually beasts dressed in human clothing.

After hearing of the boy's levitation, the devil fled the northern regions and arrived in the town due to the warmer climate, for the devil was old, and, although as sinister as ever, had a tendency to be superstitious that getting his hoofs wet from the snow would make him suffer‹if he remained too far north‹from whooping cough.

They grew easily afraid of the neighborhood. Someone told them many people believed the devil lived under their house, where strange noises came: things clanging, voices, knocking sounds. Each night the man and woman lay in bed, unable to sleep.

"It must be the plumbing," he said. His wife put on her robe and opened the hallway door leading down to the basement. The man remained in bed and waited for his wife to return. After a moment he heard a horrible crash, followed by his wife's scream. Then there was a long, painful silence.

It was never a question‹he knew his pain was self-inflicted due to "a childhood of horrible misfortunes." He was convinced he was possessed by evil spirits, therefore he thought a great deal about suicide. It wasn't that he felt unhappy with his life, or his job, or his wife and son. He wanted to make sure his wife understood this. Many nights he locked himself in his study and practiced explaining it to her when she wasn't in the room. It was there he handcuffed himself to the desk after drinking cherry cough syrup and taking several valium. When his wife and son found him in this position, on his knees, he was unconscious. Later, they told everyone he was praying for guidance and humility.

His world, she'd said, was so small that he could dismantle it with a knife, the same way he shredded truth and silence, a long time ago, when they drank dark wine in bed.

They were envious of their son's ability to communicate with the animals. When he got older, as a teenager he taught his own dog to play the banjo. They got drunk long after dark and sang country and western songs on his uncle's porch.

Many of the other animals gathered round to listen. Even Uncle Dimitri stomped his foot and clapped along. "You see?" he roared drunkenly. "Life out here on a farm isn't bad at all!"

They all went for a piss by the fence. The boy tried to argue that the sky was growing lighter, but nobody was listening. The night was very still.

His dog, meanwhile, was howling in laughter at the site of a mule.

He spent his days teaching the dogs how to sing and pray. Later he followed them into the woods, where wolves built a campfire and told him strange tales of little children who fall into temptation. The wolves could sense that the boy was not afraid, so after the sun went down they began playing their flutes‹a sensible, melodic music, which soon put the boy to sleep. He dreamed of beasts fighting to their death. He dreamed of eating raw flesh, devouring it and spewing it in the wind. These were not nightmares; even in the dream he understood that he was, in fact, actually dreaming. Several hours later, when he awoke, he discovered that the wolves had gone, and that he now had a tail two feet long.