Running With Devils

Joseph Stieglitz walked by the same apartment each day, but he did not live there, nor did he need to pass by it to go to school. A girl lived in this apartment, her name was Frieda Milton. She was not pretty, cooked only decently, did not choose to live vicariously, and spent most of her life indoors. Which is why Joseph Stieglitz would always pass by the apartment where Frieda Milton lived, because he knew she would be there. The two never spoke a word.

One day Joseph Stieglitz was walking up a hill, the same hill he walked up every day. He was a very thin man, and lanky, with great bony joints that stood out at such odd angles that when he walked, he looked like he had two or three more joints on each limb than he really did. Which is all to say that he moved like a puppet, haltingly, and at odds with himself (except sometimes he would drink, and then his movements smoothed out considerably). On his particular occasion he was not drunk, rather unfortunately, because today he planned to knock on Frieda Milton's door. And he was nervous. The tall, lanky, bony man had a face that was constantly biting its own lip, with furrowed eyebrows forever in a parabola of doubt. The eyes were big and round, but never stayed fixed on one location for too long, and the cheeks were deceptively rounded. There was not a sure thing on this face, except for the nose, which was surely there. And the door was surely in front of him.

Knock, knock. The cruel rasping sound of reinvention. Joseph's knuckles had bruised themselves on the hard wood before he knew what he was doing, and all the thoughts he carried with him up that hill exploded into a white frenzy of panic. She might answer the door now, he thought. Footsteps. But wait, where they really footsteps? Nothing yet. She isn't home, she went out, she had to run errands and he would leave a note or better yet just leave and turn around and "Hello Joseph, what you doing here?" And she answered her door. Stammer. Silence. Silence. Silence.

This was all going horribly, not that Joseph had any idea how he wanted this to go. Why was he here anyway? And why was this room so bright? And why was Frieda smiling so much? But she kept smiling, her eyes narrowed, and at that moment both Frieda and Joseph understood. No one said anything still, yet the silence stopped. Frieda took Joseph's hand, and a warm tingle ran in between. She led him in, closed the door behind him, and made passionate love to him on the couch. Then Joseph woke up in his bed, sat up, and went to his kitchen to get a drink. That day, he walked up the same hill and did not knock on the door.

This was all about fourteen years ago. I know because Joseph told me. "Dreams," he said "are when the body separates from the mind. The body stays behind, but the mind wanders as a spirit, and whatever happens in your dream, wherever you find yourself, however cold or hungry or excited or scared you feel, you aren't imaginging it, your mind spirit is actually there, right there, experiencing it. If you dream about going to Paris, it means your mind really went to Paris."

"This is why you shouldn't wake anybody up too fast, unless you really want to harm them. You don't give their mind enough time to wander back. If the mind happens to be too far out, it might not make it back until minutes after the body wakes up, and those minutes can be terrifying."

I am a skeptic. "Does the mind ever get lost forever?" His probably did.
"No, the mind always makes it back."

Joseph was a wack job. He told me he dreamed every night, and he always claimed he could remember them. But he would never tell me about them when I asked. "When I leave," he said, "I don't want anybody to know where to find me."

It was a particularly bad dream that did it. Joseph called me at 3:30AM one night. His voice sounded strangled. He asked simple questions about himself "what's my name? Am I married? Why do I own so many pairs of socks and but only two pairs of pants?" He sounded more and more frustrated, then violent, scared, anxious, and then finally, he grew quiet. "All I have left are dreams," he said. "They're more real than me."

A few hours later he walked out into the cold morning air. It was still dark. I never saw him again.