Violent Dreams
Two
"I hate mud." Racetrack shifted his weight a little and felt the disgusting stuff cling to his boots, which were now thoroughly encrusted with it. He sighed, shifted his papers to his other shoulder, dug through a pocket and found the money he needed to pay for lunch.
"Yeah, who doesn't?" the vendor answered amiably, then accepted the coin and provided him with a cheap hotdog and gave him a little extra relish without charging for it. "It takes me hours to get this thing cleaned off every night." He tapped a hand against the stand on wheels, but it was an affectionate tap. The vendor enjoyed what he did, and like most people, he felt uplifted as each day became a little longer than the last, as more of the snow disappeared, and buds began to appear on the few sad trees that struggled to grow in the city.
Race nodded pleasantly instead of saying goodbye and began to munch as he walked away. The food wasn't great, but he'd had worse, frequently, so he wasn't going to complain about it. He'd stick to complaining about the mud, which was now coating the treads on his boots. It was going to take forever to get them clean.
Everything around him trumpeted the song of spring, and he didn't appreciate any of it. The birds who returned to the city to chirp annoyed him with their squawking; the children who were outside playing annoyed him with their crying. True, people desperate to be outside after spending the winter cooped up hiding from the cold were now flooding to the Sheepshead Racetrack and so his papers were selling like hotcakes, but the season also meant frequent thunderstorms and mud. Lots of mud.
He hated the mud, and he hated the thunder. He spent hours at night, the hours when everyone else slumbered blissfully, cleaning the mud off of his shoes, and he dreaded each and every thunder roll. It was ridiculous for someone who was nearly seventeen years old to shudder at each thunderclap, but he couldn't stand it. He hated thunder... and a glance up at the sky told him that there was going to be another storm soon. Sure, it would likely wash away the final mud-encrusted snow from the grass, but he hated the ominous clouds that gathered overhead, and he sped up a little in his walk, not bothering to try and sell papers as he went. For the moment, he could let that go; he'd sold enough to be respectable for the day anyway, and he wanted to make sure he had shelter when the rain finally started to fall, and more than anything else, he was exhausted.
He was so tired he was dizzy. Every muscle in his body ached from the effort of staying upright and he was certain a collapse was imminent.
He welcomed it.
So long as he was out of the way, somewhere where no one was going to rifle through his pockets, he wanted to collapse. It might not last for long, but if he collapsed, at least he knew his body would have a little time to recover--he didn't use it at night, but lying awake quietly or sitting quietly didn't restore energy the way sleep did--and if he went unconscious, he knew he didn't have to worry about the nightmares.
On the rare occasion he managed to fall asleep at night--generally every few days, though not as often in the springtime--on those rare occasions, he always woke up with nightmares. Some were worse than others, of course; some made him toss and turn uncomfortably until he woke, sometimes he'd just wake up in a cold sweat and out of breath, but there had been that one time...
Years ago now, he couldn't have been at the lodging house for more than a year, he hadn't woken himself up, he'd been woken up by one of the older boys. He'd been screaming in terror at the dream, screaming and shaking and raising hell without waking, and had woken the rest of the lodging house. He hadn't been able to explain the nightmare to anyone, it had been so vivid but faded the moment he'd been woken, and all he remembered was a hand wearing a brown leather glove, holding five cards, probably playing poker.
Just that hand. It was the only real, solid image he could pull from his nightmares and see clearly. Whose hand it was, why it terrified him to think about, he had no idea, but even just wondering about it to himself made adrenaline start to pump through him, and he got jittery and nervous every time he thought about it. So he didn't think about it.
But his insomnia had been worse since then, and had grown worse with time. So the thought of just collapsing, even just for a few hours, was pleasant.
He arrived at his destination and glanced around. The bleachers that surrounded the tracks at Sheepshead were fenced off, of course, and the area underneath them was also blocked off by wooden planks all around. Supposedly, no one could gain entry to the area under the bleachers.
But Racetrack could, and did, almost daily. There were a few holes and a few boards that had slipped out of place, spots that provided entry until they were found and repaired, but new ones always opened up. The area echoed with each footstep that pounded down from above, and the ground was freezing cold cement mixed with spots of mud, and the whole thing was a maze of support beams.
He glanced around to be sure that no one was watching, and slipped in through a loose panel. It was darker and chillier underneath, since no sunlight permeated the bleachers, and he braced himself from the hollow sounds of people stomping above. It sounded almost like a thunderstorm from down below, and soon enough, he knew, there would be a thunderstorm.
I hate spring, he thought again, as he found a dry spot against a support beam, set his papers down, leant against the beam and relaxed. He finished his hotdog and reached into his pocket. There were his cards; he carried them with him almost all the time, so that at free moments like this, when he could feel rising panic from the noise and the dread of the coming storm, he could sit and calm himself. No matter what, the cards calmed him down. He began to shuffle, the slight noise barely audible over the roar of the people above him.
His eyelids began to droop, and he didn't fight it. He shuffled the deck again, and tucked it away, then curled up on the cold ground. The noise was deafening now, he could hear the rain begin to pound on the bleachers and the people in them. They all began to scurry for shelter, and soon the tracks would be mostly deserted, at least for a time. People would come back after the worst of the storm was over, and a few wouldn't leave.
A few like Racetrack, who was protected from the rain, but not the sounds of the storm. He shuddered as the drumbeat of the rain grew louder, steadier, until it was impossible to tell drops from each other. Sheets of rain poured down, and then the thunder started. He was grateful that he couldn't see the lightning, but the thunder was more than bad enough.
As the first thunderclap of the storm died off, Race's mind and body had had enough. He hadn't had any real sleep in almost four days. He shut his eyes, tried to shut his ears to the storm.
He no longer knew or cared if there was a difference between real sleep or passing out. Either way, he lost consciousness.
He was shaking. There wasn't a lot of light and he didn't want to look around the room, but was afraid to shut his eyes. When he shut his eyes, he just saw it again and again... So he kept them open and scanned the room, squinting to see..
A table sat in the center of it, a low-burning lantern on the middle of the table, casting shadows around that made the place even scarier. A few chairs sat around the table, pulled out at random angles because the guys who'd sat there last night didn't care enough to push them back in. The floor was hard-packed dirt in the back and cement at the front, where there was a staircase. It led up six steps to a door which remained firmly locked. There were no windows, no air circulation, and a horrible thing in the corner that he couldn't bear to look at. He could smell it, but refused to look at it.
He pulled his knees up to his chest, buried his face in his arms, and let his shoulders shake as though he were crying. He wished he could cry, he'd already cried so much, but the tears were gone. He was alone now, he had to be strong if he wanted to survive...
Being strong meant he had to stop shaking. He knew that, he knew how important it was. The people upstairs, they'd know if he was scared unless he made himself look and act like he wasn't. That meant no shaking, no crying, no cowering in fear... No matter how much he wanted to.
He couldn't stop the shaking, though. The stench made him sick, but he'd already vomited up what they'd given him for breakfast, and he hadn't eaten since. He wondered how long it had been, but didn't care. He wasn't hungry, not really, just tired. He wished for sleep, but couldn't; he couldn't shut his eyes. He didn't dare shut his eyes or he'd see it, and that was scarier than staying awake in this tiny basement.
Slowly, resolutely, the boy pushed himself to his feet. His body protested, tried to knock him back down with its shaking, but he was determined. Things had happened, terrible things, and he wouldn't let them happen again. He wouldn't let them happen to him, not like they had...
No, thinking about it would do no good. He walked over to the table and leant forward, laid his hands on the table and let his arms support his body weight while he quaked. Slowly, it began to pass. He reached forward.
A deck of cards lay on the table, forgotten. He'd seen them playing the night before, when it had happened in the corner. Their game was forgotten after that, and still lay out. He gathered the cards, his hands shaking as he did it, and he made his way back to the wall. Sitting there, the table blocked his view of the rest of the room. There wasn't that much light, but Anthony didn't want light. He didn't want to see.
The cards felt foreign to him. His parents hated cards, cards were for gambling, and gambling was a sin. He had never been allowed to play with cards. But down here, there was nothing else for him. He knew sinners went to hell, but this basement was hell, so it didn't matter.
He pretended he wasn't scared, and carefully began to shuffle the cards, mimicking movements he'd seen but never done himself.
Eventually, his hands stopped shaking.