Wretched Night Mare
"Fuck you, Dad," Michael whispered. "I didn't turn out like you. Cycle broken."
"Dad, what did you say?" Caleb asked, stirred awake.
"Nothing, son," Michael said through the crack in the door. "Just excited for your birthday tomorrow. Sixteen's a big one."
"Straight up, did you guys get me a car?" Caleb asked, sitting up in bed. "Mom won't tell me anything. I won't be mad if you didn't. I just want to know so I don't get my hopes up."
"Still a school night," Michael said, closing the door slowly. "Let's just say, don't waste your time staying up all night on craigslist." The door clicked, muffling the celebration inside.
"What happened to keeping it a surprise?" Dana said, kicking off from the hallway wall. She gave him a tap of a kiss. "Are you going to get the cake and the car tomorrow? Are you sure you have time?"
"Yep, already cleared it with the boss. I'm going to go in early at 6, leave at noon and should be back here ready to help decorate before two."
"Well, better get to bed then, dad of the year. it's almost midnight." She said. "Don't worry. I'll make sure you get up, that way you like."
"That's definitely not going to help me sleep." Michael chuckled, watching Dana sashay to the bedroom. She closed the door with a loud echoing slam. All the lights went out. No click or anything, just blackness.
He reached for his phone. It wasn't in his pocket. "Dana, do you have my phone, or your phone or a candle?"
He stumbled with hands out, trying to find the wall. He walked and walked and walked some more. "What the hell. Dana?! Caleb?!"
His yells echoed, as if off distant cliffs. He started running, mind desperate for anything to make sense of what was happening. He tripped and fell, ass over tea kettle. No soft carpet met him to break his fall.
He tumbled, sliding over what felt like roots. He landed with a thud he felt from toes to teeth. It hurt to breathe in.
He stared blankly, cured of his temporary blindness but unbelieving. He was in a forest, staring at a small mud hut. He stood, wincing.
"Hello?! Can anyone help me?" And what would he say if someone was there? How would he explain what happened?
"Come come, like clockwork you men, but I think you'll be the last." The voice was that of an old woman's, coming from inside the hut.
Michael grimaced as he stepped closer, seeing what looked like desiccated dogs, maybe coyotes, hanging from either side of the door. A waft of pungent herbs and oil hit him as he entered.
"Sit," the woman said without turning around from whatever she was working on at a table. She had no clothes, but was covered in red mud head to toe, layered thick enough to keep her decent.
"I'm sorry to trouble you but I'm lost. I don't know how I got here."
"Sit," she repeated with more emphasis. "Smell like a sugar drinker, are you?" She turned to face him, holding a basket of steaming paper. She did not look near as old as her voice, thirty maybe.
"Do I drink sugar, like Pepsi?" Michael asked, sitting in defeat at any hope of understanding a single aspect of this. "Yeah, from time to time."
"Bah," she said. "Take a piece, let's get you out of here fast."
"Where am I?" Michael repeated. She pushed her basket under his nose. He took one of the papers, more like a cloth strip, having to dance it between his fingers. It felt like she had been boiling it on the stove.
She took the strip from him, having no trouble herself. There was a crude drawing of a bear. She began wrapping it slowly around his head.
"Ow. What the hell, lady? If you're going to bandage me, I think I broke a rib, my head's fine."
"You know nothing." She threw her hands up in frustration. "All you men of the wetter world. You know nothing but you do not stop, you just talk, talk, talk."
She leaned in and used her teeth to rip off the end of the cloth, pressing her body against him as she did so. If his clothes hadn't already been ruined, he would have been upset.
He kept his mouth closed, waiting for her.
She smiled warmly. "Better, he might just survive if he always takes to lesson so quickly, by the Old. You are in the Land of Fathers, summoned by your father."
"I haven't seen my father since I turned 16. He walked out on my mom."
"I'm not a gossiping knitter to tell your stories to. I am classer. And I'm a quick one too for you are done, goodbye."
She pushed him back in the seat and he fell, fell, into some unseen pit. He crashed again and rolled again over roots. He stopped with a thud again, the dull ache in his rib now a sharp nauseating pain, branching out.
A group of men were gathered outside of a building. He was by the same forest but had clearly traveled again. They approached him. Even though he hadn't seen him in two decades, he recognized the man in front instantly but something was wrong.
"Why aren't you older?" Michael asked the man offering a hand to help him up.
"Because son, from my point of view, I've been gone a day and a half. My father, a day before that, a couple more for my grandfather, and you're great great grandfather has been here a week." Going to each of the men with him and turn, all looked to be in their thirties or fourties.
"So you didn't walk out on my mom, on me? Your ended up in this place, the same way I was. We can all find our way back together?"
His father pursed his lips. "It's not that simple, Mikey. Step inside where it's warm. Or if you want, you can lay there in that puddle all night. Take it from somebody who was in your shoes yesterday, it's a lot easier if you just go with the flow."
"I've made it this far in life without your help. I'm not listening to anything you say. Not until you tell me what this is." Michael stood on his own, staring at the men. "Where the hell are we? Why are we here?"
"It's a curse," one of the other men said, the one his dad had said was his great, great grandfather. "My curse."
"The Lord is long-suffering," he continued, looking down the road at an approaching wagon. "and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons to the third and fourth generation."
"Come inside, Mikey. I'll explain what we have to do." Michael thought his father was going to hug him then but thankfully he didn't try.