Munmun(25)

“So you’re going to live with tiny Mom just wheeling around your house like a pet,” I said.

Her face went funny again and she said, “Well atfirst she won’t be living with us.”

I felt big caves yawn open in my heart and I had to leave.

“I tried, Warner,” she yelled as I left. “I tried. Paddy just isn’t ready yet. I’ll keep trying. He’ll change his mind. Warner, don’t be mad.”

I found Usher in a trashpit, raising tiny fireworks from a tiny cityblock in a puddle of garbagejuice.

“Usher,” I said, “we never should have brought you and I feel sick about it.”

“This hurts,” he admitted.

I sat there and he bathed his hands in the glitterblooms.

“But look,” I said. “I have a plan.”

“Is it revenge,” he said.

It wasn’t revenge. My heart hurt but I turned it into dreams.

If you wanted to show someone you could change their life with your dreams, you could dream that water is a clay, blocks of water sitting in the street, swimthrough wallless waterhouses, bridged with watertunnels, lit with fish.

You could dream bricks are liquid, also liquid are metals stones woods clay and everything, Sand Dreamough collapses into an oceantop, buildings cars fences billboards are wobbling jellies beneath the ripples.

Dream the palmtrees twirling, uncorking the ground and foamy oilchampagne fountains out. Dream the middleroads shriveling, shrinking, the houses creep closer and kiss.

The stadium is a pokebowl,

the reservewar holds cowsoy and joggers circle it stirring with oars, the bank is a hive of angels leaving every door, big, middle, tiny, golden whirring helicopters and hummingbats, the Metro is a winking eel,

windmills catch the air and paddle into space,

cleaningcars float and pop like bubbles,

clouds halfdress a sky of faraway screens and fabrics, rippling paisleys and murmuring news.

It was twenty dreams in one, way too many really, but it did its job. Finally I spotted Chess floating through the whole thing, blissfull, a littlebit crying.

“Hey, what do you think,” I said. “Too much, or what.”

“Warner, ohmygod,” he said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“Just, I mean, to think that you’re dreaming this for all of us, despite how we’ve treated you and your sister,” he said, and couldn’t continue.

“Yeah, well,” I said. “I guess, yeah.”

He recovered and said, “I literally can’t imagine a more beautifull parting gift. So thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

Then I said, “Wait what.”

“I’ll never forget you,” he told me.

“What do you mean, forget me,” I said.

We looked at each other a little fuzzy.

“I mean,” said Chess. “The police are looking for you. So, you must be leaving for somewhere else, right? I mean, you’re not planning to stay.”

“Well, I wanted to talk to you about that,” I said.

And I told him my whole plan.

The whole time he was shaking his head.

It made me tell the plan worse and I knew if he just started listening, if he just for a moment took it seriously, I could tell it better, but he was shaking his head with closedoff eyes and I didn’t even get through the whole plan to be honest.

“Warner, you know I can’t do that,” he started, and I said, “Nono, forget it, it’s fine,” and left the dreamstuff to dry up on its own, slowly wither and leave behind its skeleton, the way big dreams do after their dreamers have left them behind.

I found Usher still fireworking over the tinyblock.

“My plan didn’t work,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I have another plan, though,” I told him.

“Is it revenge,” he asked.

“This time yup,” I said.

So for the last few hours of night Usher and me made law school a hellscape, mostly with demons, also with big oily peens bashing through doors and windows, squeezing struggling straining to get in and batter you. But more than peens just a crapload of demons, invisible screaming ghosts, shadows, nothings, holes in the world skittering round the room like spiders, flickerings of time and air where the space in front of you hiccups, a window shudders, and you can’t see it but you know you are staring at a demon, and it all goes dark and cold.

Some lawstudents were terrorized into waking up and disappearing. Others got so upset, they started dreaming worse revenge on themselves, like their friends and parents showing up and wailing, being on fire, banging each other, getting banged by animals, all kinds of crazy crap.

I looked for Ken, couldn’t find him, found Glen though in a stairway, dropped him in a hole, locked him in a peenforest erupting from all sides, writhing, flexing, vomming pearly gallons.

He wasn’t happy but he wasn’t too upset either. Because his dreaming was weak and murky. So he didn’t really get the point of what was happening, nomatter how hard I tried to educate.

“You did this to my sister, now it’s happening to you, jerk,” I told him. “Complain all you want, it’s the exact definition of justice. You’re bad to someone, someone’s bad to you. Not so great now, right.”