Dolls
John Matthews
Fiction
 
I don’t know what my previous lives were like. I only know that I have awoken. I have emerged from a shell while others continue to sleep. I travel in the half light. It’s dangerous out here. There are animals. Sounds. Things that will attack. The early morning seems safest, so I travel then, slowly, just a bit each day. For days I have traveled, seeing nothing——no animals——but now each day there are more. Some crawl, some bound, some glide, gallop or fly. Sometimes things change before my eyes. A mountain appears or disappears in the distance. The ground beneath me changes from sand to rock to grass. I eat what seems to be edible from the plants around me. I’m lucky there has been water. When I sleep it is a more structured world that I enter. Things are not under construction like here. I close my eyes and I see other people——people who claim to know me, who I have some kind of relationship with. These people speak to me familiarly. They have shelters lined up side by side in rows. In this dream world, I am clothed in fine clothing. There is a woman close to me. My heart pulls at the sight of her. But I don’t know her name. The world builds itself——usually as I look askance. Roots tunnel and intermingle. Entire fields turn to dust and then forest. The sun is the only constant. The huge glob in the sky burns me into the shelter of caves and hollows. Days ago I knew less. When I first awoke I stumbled in a stupor. I’m not sure I could even walk. My knees were scabbed. I may have crawled. It is fortunate the animals came later. I would surely have been prey by now. But I am learning things. Somehow, things come into my head. The rate is ever accelerating. I have used tools. I have learned to trap animals. I have discovered fire. But this is not really true. I woke up one day and I knew about fire. I knew how to kill and clothe myself and how to build shelter. I cannot take credit. I just knew these things. I’m learning all the time. Recently I am seeing new things. In my wanderings, I’m seeing structures, amazing unnatural things——not just in my dreams——I’m seeing rigid forms build up before my eyes. I know some of their names. There is a half-finished playground. Iron bars, a slide, a swing set. Some bars stretch out to nothing. Some chains dangle without a seat. Some things are invisible. Other structures. Buildings. Brick and glass, half-formed. A police station, a library, a prison, a deli. These are new concepts to me but I know them like I have always known them. For two days, maybe longer, I was seeing signs. Billboards on roads that stretched themselves into limitless distance. I was not able to understand them. And then, overnight, I knew what the word symbols mean. Number One Relief Medicine. News Radio 780. Helzberg Diamonds. The next day, the city is more here than ever. An immovable lake. Bridges, post office, elevated train tracks. No people yet. Just these things sprouting up. I know about an important fire. A legend involving a cow and lantern. Who is whispering to me while I sleep? Can you tell me how I learned to read? To add? Can you tell me how I learned about Einstein and Thomas Jefferson? Yesterday there was no Van Gogh. Now, how could anyone not know who he is? I am not in Europe. Have never been to Europe. But I know all about Europe. About World War II. I have never seen a war. A haze settles on the city. I know this is pollution. There are cigarette butts and smashed paper cups along the expressways but no one here yet to have thrown them down. I miss people I have never met. I miss my wife, who I have never spoken to, never held. Andrea. Life is not necessarily better with penicillin and mirrors but it is certainly more comfortable. Television fills in the gaps. It tells me all about this world yet to be born. I would have learned about it anyway without television. As I’ve said, things come to me. But television speeds things up. Song lyrics. A comic book I cherished. My first girlfriend. A trip to Wyoming. Books. Birthdays. All this comes crowding in without introduction. This is my life, I’m finding out. I’ve just learned my own name. It’s Michael Pyke. I’m half German, one quarter English, one quarter Czech. I’ve lived in Chicago for ten years and yet I’ve just arrived. There are no deadly animals here, but I am wary of eyes anyway. I understand that maybe I have escaped something or have been released but shouldn’t have. So I stay indoors mostly. In the city it is easy to go from building to building or to travel underground until I find out where everyone else is. Meanwhile, the pyramids are 4,000 years old and the Sears Tower is nearing completion. Hitler is dead and there’s an oil embargo. The murder rate appears to be dropping. At Union Station I find some answers. Or more questions. Here I am miniaturized by the cavernous hall. An American flag the size of a house hangs near the glass ceiling which lets in entirely too much light. I find humans lined up like dolls in Cellophane leaning against marble columns and long wooden benches. All ages. All sizes, all waiting to be born. I understand that I was loosed. My box was opened prematurely. I was not meant to see all this. Not meant to roam like this. The past is just finishing up now. The library shelves are full. It’s almost time for the future to start. Why it doesn’t occur to me sooner, I don’t know. Maybe I like exploring other people’s empty houses, picking through their closets and photo albums. I find a telephone book. I look myself up. I live at 4600 N. Winchester. On my way, I think I know what I’ll find. A modest home with a small, manicured lawn. A Ford Escort in the driveway. In the last day or so, while the paint has dried on the parking spaces and the carpets are getting tacked down, my identity has come crashing through. I’m a systems technician for a candy manufacturer. A perfect evening to me is dinner and a movie. I’m a Sox fan. I enter my home with a key I suddenly have and I think how I have to get the WD-40 and spray the hinge on that creaking door already. How the bathroom tile needs replacing, how I should stop putting off getting that wisdom tooth pulled. I fill up my future dog’s dish full of food and crawl into bed next to my wife who stirs but does not awake. * * * At 6:20 a.m. the world is blisteringly alive. Sirens are screaming, traffic is hissing, there are voices, an electric hum in the air. I shave the beard off my face, the last of the old world goes spiraling down the sink. I only have a moment to kiss Andrea before I have to dash off to catch my train, a coffee clenched in my fist. At work it is Monday, December 2nd, the first day of everything. No one notices how fresh the world really is because somehow it is coated up in ages of grime. Kids are obese. Nuclear rods are unsecured. Space flight is routine. The ozone is half gone. Newspaper microfilm reels go back to the 1700’s as if anyone was around to do anything of the things that got reported as news. Dead celebrities are wound up on films that never got made. JFK was never shot. JFK did not exist. All day long my coworkers say I look different. Is there something different about me? They have no idea.