greg gose

The Interlude of Passenger Dreams

The woman in cabin 4B sees herself as a child on a swing set in the front yard of a small house at the edge of town. It’s June, and the house is empty—the path from the driveway to the front door is adorned with little purple flowers and chalk drawings of frogs and chickens on the stones. Her mother’s in town for groceries and all around is the smell of cinnamon. It lingers pleasantly in the air, on the skin, but the ropes of the swing are rough on the palms of her dream-hands. 

The higher she swings, the more she can see past the clearing separating woods from the yard behind her house, the tighter she holds the rope. If she looks behind her, row houses and windows and ugly skyscrapers and smokestacks crowd around. The roads the cars. All the people, the noise that comes with. Instead she looks only forward, out past the clearing. Strains to hear faint voices from the trees. 

Loves the way they call to her so softly. Up in the air, she hears them clearly. Hears them begging her to jump. Promising they’ll catch her, always catch her and hold her and tuck her in at night, comfort her at funerals, wipe away tears, give her two parents that don’t have to pretend anymore. And since her mother’s never watching, she swings higher, higher, the highest she can—and lets go.

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The orphan kid has nightmares of a hulking beast on the ship stalking him through each darkened corridor and hallway. Believes it wants nothing more than to slip limbs under his skin to strangle bones, gnaw on the column of his spine. He sees gangrenous claws dragging on walls every time he looks over his shoulder—a mouth of trash compactors inching closer, reaching for the nape of his neck. 

The beast hobbles in uneven strides and drips putrid green saliva as it slurps at his scent. It follows, does not waver no matter how far he runs. Groaning past empty cafeteria tables, observatory windows, dull greenhouse glass, down into ventilation shafts. He cannot hide from the beast, but he’s compelled to try—knows what’ll happen if it closes the distance. 

The ducts get tighter the farther he crawls—narrow panic-scraped elbows and bleeding knees. It’s clanging after him. Howling. Immutable hunger echoes down the metal vents. The kid’s stuck at a junction too tight to pass; can’t go forward, can’t go back. Hears it sliding closer. Dragging its weight. He can smell the sulfur breath before he feels the claws snap vice-tight around his leg.

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Harold dreams he’s across from his dead wife having coffee. They argue about: the toilet seat, or kitchen sink—the recycling or whose turn it is to vacuum the throw rugs, or maybe the haphazard stacks of paper on his desk. 

He can’t stop arguing with her, but all he wants to do is reach out to hold her again. Feel the contours of her cheek and tell her he misses her. Tell her he has no direction and is tired of distracting himself with stamp collecting when all he wants is to feel her running calming fingers through his hair and kissing his forehead again. He just wants to have the warmth and the way she always smelled of cinnamon and hear her inflected vowels when she whispered I love you in his ear. 

But he just keeps yelling about: dishes, the piss-stained toilet seat, the clogged shower drain. It’s not what he wants; she’s unhappy. Frowns. She gets up and leaves without a word, face blurring into shadow.

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Sam dreams of the airlock. The small walls, how they press in around her. Threatening to crush life from her eyes. Dreams she’s been locked on the wrong side of the dim glass box—lured in by a signed copy of her favorite book, Annihilation, addressed directly to her, but the airlock’s closed behind her and there’s a towering figure on the other side with their face covered. 

She knows they’re smiling behind the mask, sinister, and ear to ear. Hears them cackling like a maniac. Each gap between laughter a notch on the countdown to ejection. Sam watches the figure’s gloved hand hovering over the red button, knows they’re relishing in her panic. She starts to laugh with the hooded figure, at the absurdity, at herself. 

They meet in the middle of a giggle, start to sync pitch and timbre with each fresh batch. They mingle laughter so well they become indistinguishable from one another. And suddenly she knows, more than she’s ever known the taste of fresh air she is the masked figure on the other side of the glass—locked herself in. The alarm sounds once, echoes loudly in the small space, and the room sucks out. The change in pressure fills her lungs with cold, dead air.

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I dream of a sunset over the ocean on a still-breathing Earth. The way the old constellations looked once the sun slipped behind the horizon. Enjoy the patterns as they emerge, trace them in the sky with dirt-covered hands. The ocean slops back and forth at the shoreline, but there’s no moon in the sky. 

I wonder, briefly, whether I’m dreaming, but convince myself I’d be dreaming of something much more fantastical—a rollercoaster through a mall filled with goats on the top of a mountain that’s also somehow under the ocean, or the one I always have where I’m on fire but don’t feel pain and go on a leisurely stroll down main street, ablaze in a town I don’t know enjoying lightning bugs floating in the air. Instead, I look for Cassiopeia, Hercules, Ursa Minor, and find them quickly. Remember their shapes like the pages of an old book I read once. Relish the moment. I smile wide, close my eyes. Feel their light on my face, but when I open my eyes, they disappear one by one.