Dream Journal 2021-07-29: Notes From An Unconscious Road Trip Through The Middle Of Nowhere
Batesville is a tiny town at the very edge of the Yazoo
Mississippi Delta. Not technically part of the Delta due to its
unfortunate founding on the wrong side of the Yazoo River, but it’s
close enough for my purposes. Batesville is the crown jewel of Panola
County, an honor that bestows upon it the title of city despite a
population of less than 8,000 a location in a forsaken borderland
between cotton fields. Dear reader, I’m going to go there, but not
in the way you might think.
I have already beheld the vast and unending agricultural expanse
that is much of Mississippi with my own two eyes, and have no desire
to consciously revisit the experience. And yet, there is a call in
the darkness of my slumber. An unraveling hand that pulls upon the
threads of my psyche. There is a house that rests alone in a tomb of
trees, and I must go there.
What follows is a mostly-true accounting of my journey to
Batesville through an ethereal world unburdened by geography and
logic, though not a entirely so. The white clapboard spectre of the
house in the trees beckons to me through an emailed receipt for an
Airbnb rental. My presence is requested at this house with no known
address nor expected date of my arrival.
But I know where to go.
A rental car I didn’t explicitly request is waiting outside my
house. I can only assume it was sent by the house in the trees for
matters of expedience. I am not to go directly to the house; as I
must first collect a key from someone to gain access. That is all the
knowledge I am allowed to possess during this stage of the journey.
Time compresses and expands simultaneously as the rental car
travels down the lonely highways. It is a sign that the keyholder is
near. The road plummets downward as though painted on a vertical
cliff face as I near the outskirts of Batesville. All four tires
cease their hum as they lose contact with the asphalt and the car
glides through the air like an Olympian ski jumper descending onto
the slope below.
As long as I’m going the speed limit during this fall, the slope
at the bottom of the cliff should allow the car to touch down
relatively gently, though gently in this case merely means “not
exploding on impact.” At the bottom of this roadside ravine sits a
scruffy dog. This must be the keyholder, and behind him is a major
water park with a giant twisting water slide.
Real Batesville does not have a water park. Nor do the surrounding
roads have sudden drops of a hundred meters built into the near flat
landscape. But that’s not important; the key is. The dog moves his
front paw to reveal a lanyard with an empty keyring resting
underneath it. Alas, this dog is not the keyholder; but he knows
where the real keyholder is.
I stare into the dog’s eyes and see a scene that is not my own
reflection. The scene is of myself approaching the largest slide in
the water park. An attendant is standing there at the top of the
slide, assisting everyone in the final step of their slide-based
journey. I am to present the lanyard to the attendant, who will in
turn provide the key to the house. I excuse myself from the dog and
leave my mangled silver sedan on the roadside as I enter the park.
Things do not go according to plan at the slide. The man in front
of me in the line was a professional dolphin smuggler, and had an
adult dolphin underneath his arm like a pool toy. Officers from the
Department of Fish and Wildlife were about to apprehend him for
possession of an illegal dolphin, so he asked me to hold on to the
dolphin “just for a little bit” until he could get down the
slide.
Before I could protest, he tosses the dolphin to me and disappears
down the slide. When it’s my turn to stare into the curving void of
the slide, the attendant notices the lanyard around my neck and
clandestinely passes the key to me. I can’t put the key on the
keyring without holding up the line or dropping the dolphin, nor can
I reach my pockets, so I do the next best thing and hold the key in
my mouth while hopping into the slide.
Water sloshes around the dolphin and me as we speed through the
bends and spirals of the slide. My grip on the dolphin fails as I hit
a bump in the slide. The dolphin flails. I gasp in surprise.
And I accidentally swallow the key.
Having just angered the house with my carelessness, I skid out
from the bottom of the slide and try to cough up the key before
things get worse. Predictably, the key continues its descent to my
stomach, and I can feel every sharp angle on the key as it is drawn
deeper into my guts.
This is prime time to seek emergency medical treatment, but I have
no car and am not some sort of millionaire who can afford to go to
the doctor for things like swallowing the key to a potentially
haunted house. So I do the next best thing and walk to Wal-Mart to
buy every emetic and laxative I can find in hopes of passing the key
one way or another.
I chug two entire bottles of milk of magnesia at the checkout
counter and await an explosion in my bowels. Although my clothes are
presumably still wet from the water slide, I have no desire to allow
a brownout to happen in my pants because these are the only pants I
have at the moment. Such an event could strike at any time, so I
disrobe at the checkout line and start waddling with great care
toward the toilets.
Did you know that Wal-Mart does not allow nudists in their stores?
That’s a store policy you can learn about real quick when you are
naked in the checkout line. I am asked to leave the store, despite
the potential bomb in my bowels.
The house laughs at my plight as though this was the plan all
along. It is a purveyor of existential terror that delights in the
misfortunes it brings upon those who answer its call. And misfortune
arrives in the form of an intestinal blowout in the Wal-Mart parking
lot. Specifically the type of misfortune that does not result in the
recovery of the key to a rental house.
It is here, dear reader, that I admit defeat and pledge to never
visit Batesville again. The houses there are full of schemes and
malevolence.
