Which meant Darlene was going to bitch up a storm. His sister knew about his chunkies, of course, had come to accept the weird ability of her only sibling. But that wouldn’t stop her from reaming him a new asshole. These days she was touchy as hell, on his case about being always out of work and never far from a six-pack.
He returned his attention to the manifestation. At inception, it would have had typical dimensions. Like all chunkies, it would have materialized in midair as a gelatinous brown sphere the size of a child’s soccer ball. Snared by gravity, it would have dropped instantly. Had the chunkie landed on a flat surface, it would have spread into a thick pancake.
That hadn’t happened here, the toaster preventing such a perfect configuration. The bits that hadn’t fallen into the slots drooped over the sides. The impression was that the appliance had puked up its innards.
Aiden was nearly thirty and had been manifesting chunkies in his sleep since age twelve – the onset of puberty and a scant five months before his parents’ untimely deaths in a car accident. During the short period Dad was still around, they’d set up video cameras and hooked Aiden up to an EEG monitor to try figuring out what was happening neurologically when a chunkie appeared. Dad was no doctor, but he’d confirmed that Aiden was the cause. The EEG exhibited unusual spikes when a manifestation appeared, always during Aiden’s deepest stage 4 sleep.
But they’d never been able to figure out what those spikes meant. Even today, Aiden had no idea what chunkies were or where they came from, or why he had such a freakish ability. All they’d confirmed was that a chunkie originated no farther away from him than about ten feet in any direction.
Fortunately, none had ever formed directly overhead and landed on him. But, having lived with Darlene on and off in various houses and apartments, they’d always made sure their bedrooms weren’t too close. When Aiden had been fired from his last job and forced to give up his apartment, Darlene insisted he take the back room over the kitchen. It was as much of a separation as her old house could handle.
He peeled open a trash bag and eased the messy toaster into it, using moist paper towels to avoid touching the manifestation. A few bits of it might still be gooey. He’d once tried picking up a fresh chunkie and spent hours scraping the glue-like mass from his hands. The stuff adhered to flesh like Post-it notes from hell.
He twist-tied the bag and set it by the back door. About the only good thing about chunkies was that he knew someone who would buy them. Cash was tight since that idiot supervisor at Hardware Haven fired him just for taking a quick nap behind the shipping dock.
“Uncle Aiden, what’s that?”
He whipped around, startled by Leah’s voice. She stood in the doorway in pink pajamas clutching her favorite stuffed animal, Grumpy Cat.
“What’s what?” he asked, stepping in front of the bag in a futile attempt to hide it.
“The trash doesn’t go out until Monday night and it’s only Thursday.”
He loved Leah madly but didn’t like that she was already picking up some of her mother’s fastidious and rigid ways. What seven year-old was concerned about what day the goddamn trash was put out?
“I’m just getting rid of some smelly stuff,” he lied.
“Mommy uses the small white bags for the smelly stuff.”
That’s not how Uncle Aiden does things, he wanted to retort, but held his tongue.
Leah hopped onto her seat at the table. Her gaze went to the countertop, expecting to see her waffles about to pop. She frowned when she realized the appliance was gone.
“Where’s the toaster?”
“Broken. Sorry, kiddo, but no frozen waffles today. How about I mix up a batch of fresh pancakes?”
“OK.” She brightened into a smile, for the moment forgetting about missing toasters and proper methods of trash disposal.
He fixed breakfast. Leah poured an ungodly amount of syrup on her pancakes but he didn’t chide her the way her mother would have. Let the kid be a kid, he’d said to his sister in a similar situation last week, which had caused Darlene to go ballistic and pin him to the mats with one of her patented lectures about approved childrearing methods. He wouldn’t step into that takedown again.
Watching Leah eat brought up a new concern. This was at least the third nightmare his niece had suffered since Aiden moved in. Darlene said they’d been happening regularly over the past year.
He recalled having nightmares at Leah’s age. They’d ended around the time the manifestations began and seemed to have no connection to chunkies or his more benign green dreams, the latter plaguing him as far back as he could remember. Although nightmares might be typical of childhood, gooey brown messes and recurring fantasies of being in a verdant prison cell weren’t. And then there was the cryptic message from that female voice that always ended his green dreams.
Singularity beguiles, transcend the illusion.
He’d puzzled for years over those five words. They seemed endowed with significance at the moment of utterance. Yet the phrase regressed to caricature in the light of day, no more meaningful than a New Age bumper sticker.
Darlene believed the words represented Aiden’s subconscious expressing his true desires.
“It’s pretty obvious,” she’d explained in that annoying “big sister knows best” tone. “Singularity beguiles. That part means you’re too much of a loner and afraid to make a real commitment to a woman and start a family. The illusion you need to transcend is that life doesn’t have to be the cavalier way you live it.”
As much as he resented Darlene’s armchair psychology, her analysis might not be total crap. Still, he had a hunch the words bore a deeper meaning, one that didn’t lend itself to such simple interpretation.
His thoughts returned to Leah. Was his niece on a similar trajectory? Would her nightmares end only to be replaced by weird manifestations? Would chunkies become a curse on her as they were on him?
Aiden needed to talk to someone about the possibility. He knew just the person, the same man willing to buy his chunkie. A trip to Washington, DC could serve as a twofer. As an added bonus, it would get Darlene off his back for a day.
THREE
Aiden walked Leah to the school bus stop. After seeing her aboard, he sprinted down the pavement. He was serious about his daily run and tried not to let bad weather or getting wasted the previous night interfere. Today was a pristine May morning, the sky a fierce blue, the temperature and humidity mild. Besides, he hadn’t downed enough beers to get close to a hangover.
He passed vintage clapboard-sided homes similar to his sister’s and crossed the railroad spur that accessed a nearby quarry. The run felt good. It provided a temporary reprieve from dwelling on chunkies and green dreams, not to mention finding a new job.
He’d been looking. But anything that paid decent wages was hard to find. Birdsboro and the surrounding region were rust-belt casualties, most good manufacturing gigs long gone. And getting axed from one-too-many crappy jobs hadn’t exactly shined up his resume.
His lack of a college degree made any type of work higher up the food chain unlikely. He’d left college his freshman year after being berated one too many times by his roommates for leaving “gross-looking piles of shit” near his bed. A confrontation over the issue ended with Aiden punching a dorm proctor in the face, which prompted the school to “request” that he seek an education elsewhere. At the time, dropping out hadn’t seemed a big loss. He’d primarily been majoring in non-degree electives, such as beer pong, MMO gaming, and massively indiscriminate sexual couplings.