Much like Ishmael, I have experienced a fair number of damp, drizzly Novembers in my soul. And I, too, have required a strong moral principle to prevent me from stepping into the street and methodically knocking people’s hats off. But unlike Ishmael, I can’t quietly take to sea because my lunch break is only forty-five minutes, which I usually spend getting a Starbucks and taking a walk past the Panda Express, the Jamba Juice, the McDonald’s and Burger King, the SuperCuts where I get my trims, the KFC, the Target, the Home Depot, before finally turning another corner and finding myself back at the office.

But today I’m very deep in a hat-knocking mood, so I cross the street.

After only a few blocks, I find a turtle garden, a sparkling pond bordered by cobble stones. Turtles paddle below the water, none larger than the span of my hand.

Have these always been here? I think I’ve come this way before, but maybe not. It’s a delight.

Free from the cubicle where my sense of adventure atrophies, incarcerated inside spreadsheet cells, I fill my lungs with clean air and cross another street.

Here, the pavement bears prints of things that walked in the cement before it set. I step inside one of the impressions—a huge human-shaped foot with claws. It’s stained with red paint or maybe rusty rain. I do love a touch of civic whimsy.

The street signs around here are in another language, one with an alphabet I don’t recognize. I’ll have to look it up when I’m back at the office. Maybe I’ll find an interesting ethnic restaurant.

Oh, look, it’s an antique doll shop. Am I going in? No, I am sure as fuck not going into the creepy doll shop, because I’m adventurous, not self-destructive.

A voice squawks “Enter” from the open door of a pet store. Who am I to ignore voices when I’m on a quest for novelty? Nobody’s at the cash register or working the aisles, maybe because this is a small mom-and-pop affair staffed by one person who’s in the back room. There’s everything you’d find in a chain store, just in smaller quantities: beta fish in plastic cups, a cage with preening parakeets, some mice, a few rats and hamsters, but also a tiny dragon. Barely four inches from snout to tail, it flaps its stubby winglets, generating only enough draft to stir the sawdust bedding of its cage. It coughs a whiff of smoke.

“You’re doing great,” I encourage before leaving the store.

See, that’s not something I was ever going to see in the company cafeteria.

I cross the street.

A few blocks down, I pass a record shop playing a song I dimly remember—maybe something my dad played on the car radio? I find myself humming the tune and murmuring a few words from the chorus, and then the whole song comes to me, even if I can’t remember where I’ve heard it. My gait gets jaunty and the muscles around my face relax. I’m not the only one. Standing on a corner, I’m in a group of half a dozen people, all tapping our feet and singing in happy reverie, even though we’re all humming different tunes and singing different words.

The light turns green and we go our separate ways.

The street signs change alphabets again. Compelling mandala glyphs draw me in, and I wonder if I’ve been standing here for years or centuries.

I check my phone. It’s only been ten minutes, phew!

Down a manhole, dark waters churn. Something pops its head above the surface. The face is human, except for the eyes—ancient and dark as starless space. We hold one another’s gaze, and I feel the patience it takes to lay low until the new, boiling sea grows cool enough to support ocean prey.

The creature dives, flicking water off its flukes before it descends into the murk.

In the window of a meat shop hang human corpses, flayed and limbless. This is the kind of sketchy neighborhood I hoped to avoid. Maybe it’s time to head back. I’ve got twenty minutes left on my lunch break. If I hurry, I can make it to my desk in time.

But the hat-knocking urge persists. I cross the street and continue.

I think I’m starting to understand the street signs. I’ve always had a knack for languages. In high school I took both AP French and Spanish, and those were my best grades. “Boltzmann Brain Boulevard” reads one of the signs. “The World Is a Sphere but Time Is Linear Avenue,” reads another. “Theories of Quantum Consciousness Are the Minimization of Mystery, That Is, If Consciousness and Quantum Phenomena Are Mysteries, Are They the Same Mystery Street.”

That last sign is long as a surfboard.

Between a building constructed of woven shark teeth and a three-story Victorian emitting screams stands a church. It’s old, any sharp corners softened by time and weather. You can see hammer marks in the door’s metal hardware. This place predates industrial machines. The door itself is thick enough to trap ghosts.

Inside the cool, dark space, human-shaped figures with paper coffee cups sit on folding chairs before the altar. They each have six wings, one pair covering their feet, one lying flat against their backs, and another pair covering their faces.

“Hi,” says one. “My name is Zerachiel, and I’m an alco…”

They notice me and pull back their wings to reveal the eyes of angels.

I scream and weep with awe when they ignite into flames.

Stammering and moaning an apology for my intrusion, I run outside to escape the seraphim.

Parking meters tell owners of parked cars how much longer they have left to live. I search my pocket for a quarter to help out a sniffling man, but these meters don’t take quarters.

I’m so sorry, friend.

I cross the street.

My iced grande two-pump vanilla latte is down to milky melt water, but I’ve gotten in a lot of steps and can afford the calories for another drink. There’s a Starbucks on the corner, but the logo features a mer-creature like the one I saw down the manhole, and the customers are on their knees, clutching their bellies and choking.

Jiggling the remaining ice in my cup, I start to cross, but pause.

Some kind of spiraling vortex encroaches into the street, like a horizontal tornado. The pressure differential is more than my brittle skull can endure. Swords plunge into my ear canals.

There’s a noise that my brain has not evolved to process.

A woman stands beside me on the curb. She’s a jogger in shorts and a tank top. Her ponytail spills out the keyhole of her pink baseball cap. Her shoes look like speedboats.

I point across the street. “Is that a portal?”

“Everything’s a portal. Every wound is a portal. Every conversation is a portal to a human connection. Every passing second is a portal to another time.”

“But more specifically?”

“It’s whatever you’ve always imagined is on the other side. It’s the alpha and omega. It’s the first word or the last. It’s what happens when you go too far. The great unraveling. Pandemonium. Reality and consciousness unzipped. Demolition and rebirth but no return. These are only metaphors. Pale reflections of the beyond. You can only know by going in.”

The light turns green.

“Are you going to cross?”

“I thought I was,” she says. “But listen. You hear that howling? It’s the shriek of gods burning alive on their pyres. Hell, no, I’m not crossing.”

She seems smart. I like her demeanor. But I can’t take my eyes off her hat. Nothing remarkable about it, just a baseball cap. And I have the urge to smack it right off her head.

I step off into the howling.

(Editors’ Note: Greg van Eekhout is interviewed by Caroline M. Yoachim in this issue.)

© 2024 Greg van Eekhout