Lydia was having what could only be a nightmare.  But then, she’d had so many recently.

“Better check her vitals first.”

Who was that?  Never mind.

First there was the nightmare where her drunken boyfriend, who never drove…always saying, “I don’t drive; I drink,” actually got behind the wheel.  Just because she, Lydia, had had a few.  Then there was the nightmare accident, obviously a nightmare because it was such a tired cliché with them flying off the side of the BQE into thin air, then falling, then her leg being crushed.  And now…

She couldn’t help screaming.  But that bloody stump where her right leg had been couldn’t be real, especially because she could still feel the agony of her crushed leg.

“The hell with her vitals.”

A different nurse, middle-aged.

“Stop her!  Stop that screaming!”

The patient in the other bed, holding her head with just one hand, because the other was handcuffed to the bed.

“Know somethin’, Blondie?  You’re changing!  I’m beginning to like you.”

The middle-aged nurse again, heading toward Lydia with an injection.

“I’m out of here.”

The other nurse, staring at the injection while shaking her head and rushing out of the room.

The remaining nurse prepped Lydia’s IV for the injection.

Recoiling, Lydia saw her right-leg stump move, felt a hideous throb of pain course through it that no nightmare could mimic, watched its bandaging turn bright red with fresh blood, and reached for it…only to discover that one of her hands was handcuffed to the bed too.

“Noooooooooooooo!”

Racing through her scream was the realization that it had all been true, even the part where her boyfriend died.  Even the part where checking her license plate against her ID had resulted in them arresting her for that hit and run with that kid splattered all over her windshield from the week before.

Karen had never been so mesmerized by such a bright light.  She remembered something about a summer’s day as she rolled toward that bright light, gathering momentum as if rolling down a grassy hillside.

A summer’s day…

Sunlight.

Flowers starting to bloom as she remembered a Shakespearean actor’s elegant voice speaking of “the darling buds of May.”

Faster.

Closer.

Tumbling toward the light now, head over heels.  The light became so bright, and Karen longed for it so.  She strained to reach it, to reach the sun, her feet seeming to leave the earth behind her.  So much more comfortable.  All pain, all anguish gone.  For a moment a chill spread over her.  There was something strange about that light:  it wasn’t warm.  But it was peaceful.  She would never, ever have to feel any pain about anything again.

A jolt like electricity intruded, jittering through her body. Not just warm but hot.

“Phew. Thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, for adrenaline.”

Who was speaking?  Karen felt shooting pains from everywhere.  The light she’d been tumbling toward was gone.

“That was close.”

Again, who was speaking?  Karen’s eyes fluttered open as her head pounded so badly she feared it would fall off.  Her hands fluttered up toward her head, but only one made it.  The other was stopped by something around her wrist that sent more pain shooting through her.  Metal clanged, pounding through her head with an agony so unbearable Karen started to scream.

“You’ll have a teeny little headache.  Nothing to scream about.  Lord Jesus Christ, don’t make me have to inject you again!”

Each word throbbed through Karen’s head like a locomotive.  Next, like thunderclaps, were the footsteps.  Karen’s eyes snapped open to see the middle-aged nurse walking across the room to the door.  Something seemingly gargantuan thundered down the hall and through the door, turning out to be only a gurney with a new roommate on it who was unconscious, but seemed to be missing a leg.

Karen screamed from the pain.

The nurse raised an eyebrow at her and started preparing an injection.

Karen remembered:

Frank!

Dead!

Karen screeched in the face of an agony she simply couldn’t endure.

The nurse headed toward her with the injection.

But just then the seemingly impossible happened:

Her new roommate screamed even louder.

The nurse, still holding the injection, changed direction.

Martin was playing with a fluffy pink stuffed animal while listening to the soundtrack of a movie his parents must have been watching in another room.

The Music Man.  The part where Marion the Librarian tried to keep the second sleazy salesman from going after the first sleazy salesman, who she’d fallen in love with, by flirting with the second sleazy salesman.  The second sleazy salesman kept calling her a strictly G-rated “girly girl.”

But there was absolutely nothing bloody G-rated about what his parents were calling Marion the Librarian, or their suggestions about what the second sleazy salesman should do to her.  And were those even his parents watching The Music Man in the other room?  There were a whole lot of male voices and no female ones in the audience.

Where was he?

For a moment he saw the bars and the trail of blood leading toward him and realized he was on the floor again, and that he wasn’t alone.  An unbearable despair, far deeper and more painful than the most acute pain, forced an endless moan so unfathomable that it seemed to erupt from his bone marrow.  A consummately cruel and oily voice breathed directly into his ear, “Beginning to like it now, aren’t you…”

Then he was playing with his fluffy pink stuffed animal again, a pudgy-cute T-rex that was winking furiously at him.

“Little boy…”

That consummately cruel and oily voice!  Where did it come from?  Didn’t matter.  Couldn’t matter.  Martin concentrated on the undulating patterns in his little-boy wallpaper, clutching the winking T-rex.  Desperately he tried to calculate how long until the end of The Music Man, knowing all the overly loud movie soundtracks drowned out and concealed…other sounds.    

Imogene couldn’t stop giggling.

^URSunPC&proud:  But wait…there’s more!

WTFwasImogeneCoca:  ?

^URSunPC&proud:  “It” now so cray cray u can hear it screaming.

WTFwasImogeneCoca:  Hahaha.

^URSunPC&proud:  Blonde bitch gets hers cuz it called u pregnant.

A long, like really horrible moan interrupted.  Imogene knew she was dreaming, but she didn’t want to wake up.

WTFwasImogeneCoca:  U there?

Another moan.  Close.  Like in her room.

^URSunPC&proud:  I’ve always loved you.

WTFwasImogeneCoca:  ?

^URSunPC&proud:  I’ll always love you.

Mumbling.  Like in her room.  Imogene tried to ignore it, but could feel herself waking up despite herself.

WTFwasImogeneCoca:  Who R U?

^URSunPC&proud:  Your mother.

Imogene’s eyes snapped open, just as a drop of water from the leak in the ceiling hit the bridge of her nose, rolling both ways to cloud both her eyes.

“Were you dreaming about your mother?”

Like, it was an old person’s voice from the other bed in her room, all stiff and formal and all that cray cray shit.  Imogene smirked.  “That’s like not possible, because I never had a mother.”  She turned to look at the woman who’d like messed with her dreams, somehow getting all her cray cray shit in them, and realized she hated this gray, hairless monster even more than that blonde bitch down the hall.

The Storage Space considered the occupants of its lobby.  Most assuredly a lesser-evil choice of where to squander its attention but at least a shred better than watching some cop interrogate a drunk.  Or worrying about those now-only-occasional slithers.  Or…

Hadn’t anyone the least grounding in the theatre these days?  Did it take an inanimate object, a building no less, to spot the jealousy all over he of the rainbow shoes and remarkable collection of suitcases?  Or that the object of that ridiculously overacted jealousy was the pregnant teenager’s father, who had his arm wrapped around that equally ridiculous Fifi of the Pink Hair?

Who the fuck cares?

The Storage Space was no longer aghast at such language.  But it was determined not to squander its attention on such.  Or…

None of them dumb shits ever played their cards right!

The Storage Space ignored the slithering.  Or the temptation to deign to squander its attention on a sharp response.  Or…

It reattached its attention firmly to the occupants…the still-alive occupants…of the lobby.

That Fifi creature was chattering away madly to the teenager’s father about, as far as the Storage Space could tell, absolutely nothing.  The smile plastered to the father’s face looked like pancake make-up dissolving under bright lights.  Finally he snapped out something about letting him go, that he had something important to do.  Then he jerked back from Fifi, telegraphing to such an obvious degree that he was about to hit her…or him, or whatever Fifi was…that any director would have told him to find a new job in vaudeville.

Didn’t any one see it?  Other than…just maybe…Rainbow Shoes?

But then the teenager’s father caught himself, plastered his smile back on with an apology to Fifi, and left her in the lobby as he clattered up the stairs to Unit 38.

I repeat, who the fuck cares?

The Storage Space was caught off-guard this time, its attention broken.  It’s better, it found itself answering, than thinking of you.  Or…  Or…

And then it all came crashing down, like that beloved tea room long since gone, and the Storage Space knew what that “or” it had been avoiding was.  It was better than thinking of Karen.

Hank choked back a few sobs, a sure sign that he needed another drink, and fumbled for his bottle with shaking hands.  That data stick he’d found after they took that pregnant teenager out fell out of his pocket first.  It clattered all over the floor just as a cop showed up.

“Who’d you steal that from?” the cop spat in disgust, scooping up the data stick and sticking it into…what were them things called?…a tablet.

Hank didn’t care.  He’d only vaguely thought he might be able to sell it to someone in exchange for a few bucks toward his next bottle.  What Hank cared about was that this cop, who’d been sniffing around the storage space building all day, probably wouldn’t take kindly to Hank’s taking a swig of liquor.

“Elections R Us,” the cop read off his screen.  “Serving the greater good since 2001.  A Florida-based corporation.”  He yanked the data stick out of his tablet and threw it at Hank, hitting him square in the face.

It stung, just missing his eye, but again Hank didn’t care.  It didn’t sting anywhere near as bad as the memories of a lifetime of defeat that were his only reward for sobriety.

“Not possible in this fair land,” the cop snorted, still looking at the data stick.  “Bad joke.”  Now he was looking at Hank again.  “But you look like you’ve sobered up nicely since I first saw you this morning.  So I have a few questions.”

Hank now had his hand on the promised land, his bottle.  “I…I need a drink!”

“Not till after you’ve answered my questions.  Because of recent developments in San Francisco we’re re-opening an investigation into a disappearance and possible homicide here.  We’re in the process of ruling out homicide due to our failure to find any evidence of a body, but we need to locate a blonde woman named Karen for interrogation.”

Karen couldn’t stop screaming, even though they must have taken that man who’d been jerking off out of her room when she’d passed out, yet again, at the sight of…

Frank, her Frank!  All this time she’d thought she had to forgive him for a murder he hadn’t committed, because, somehow, that skinny, effeminate, little Brit Martin must have turned the tables on Frank and it was Frank who was…

Karen screamed and screamed until a nurse finally came in.

Frank!  Dead!  Endless memories of their making love in his apartment in Sausalito cut through her like a swarm of knives.  For all the pain of thinking he was mad at her, for all the pain of thinking she would never see him again, none of this was anything at all compared to the finality of his being…really, actually…dead.

She screamed one long, loud, endless scream.  Vaguely she noticed that the nurse was preparing an injection.

Dead!  It was only in the face of Frank’s death that Karen realized that no matter how convinced she was that she would never see him again there had always been at least a teeny chance for something she now realized could not possibly happen ever, not even in her dreams.

The nurse was fiddling impatiently with her IV and dropped something that shattered on the floor. “Will you please stop screaming?”

Vaguely Karen remembered something she’d read off her phone once about this being the worst hospital in the city.

“That ‘transsexual’ sick perv, who is an affront against the Lord Jesus Christ, is gone,” continued the middle-aged nurse.  “So you have nothing to scream about.”

Something must have gotten into her IV, a lot of something, because Karen could feel herself losing consciousness what struck her as way too fast.  She thought she heard herself mumbling something about how that wasn’t a real transgender person, only a “sick perv” of a heterosexual man.

“Okay, this time I’m going to get an injection in your IV, and this time it’s enough to knock out an elephant.  Not spending the rest of my shift listening to this nonsense!”

Karen felt like she was on an elevator that’s cables had just snapped and was now plummeting down a hundred stories.  Her last thought was for Frank.  Whether or not he’d ever forgiven her or she’d ever seen him again, how unbearable that he had lost his life.

Martin was six.

Was he dreaming?

His mum’s garden.  Kent.  All was as prim and proper as the primroses.  Even Martin.  It was years before he fell in with what his Daa called “that bad lot.”  Years before he was so desperate to fit in and impress the girls that he’d do anything “that bad lot” told him to.  Including all those hallucinogenic drugs…

His mum’s garden.  His Daa started watering with the garden hose.  For some reason the water coming out of that hose terrified Martin.  But his mum picked him up and swung him around in the sunlight, laughing.  Then she stopped, hugged him tight, and nuzzled his neck.  Martin could smell the scent of her soap, which she would also use when she scrubbed him clean.  It reminded him of fluffy clean towels, bed linens, and cozy bedtime stories.  Then they were on the ground, with his folks stealing a kiss over his head before they all three got busy weeding and patting the ground down around the flowers “just so.”  The earth was warm and wonderfully alive with the scents of the plants growing in it.  Martin was happy, surrounded by his parents, watching their six hands working in that warm, rich dirt together.  Making everything in their world all neat and tidy.

This was so much better than all those hallucinogenic drugs…

But with that he knew he wasn’t really in his mum’s garden, hadn’t been there for…decades.

Where was he?

He was on the ground, and there was dirt on his hands.  But this dirt didn’t smell good.  There were two bigger people surrounding him, but they were both men.  For a moment he caught a flash of his dirt and blood-covered hands buried in a foul littering of dirt and garbage scattered over a hard, concrete floor.  But then he spotted a pink and pudgy-cute T-rex winking furiously at him.  There.  That was much better!

Imogene had like two effin’ choices, stare at the still-wet, water-leak stain on the acoustical tile right over her head or stare at her ugly sleeping roommate with, like, gray skin and no effin’ hair.

Finally the door slammed open again.

Imogene prayed it was the super-sexy-cute guy again.  Or even that nurse that was always Draking…if she brought a TV.

It wasn’t either of them.

It was a cop.  Almost as old as her roommate.  He pulled a chair over next to Imogene, took out a tablet, and like blabbed a bunch of dumb preliminaries before getting down to it.  “I understand, little lady, that you came in with another patient?”

“Cray cray bitch from the storage space building?”  Imogene was wondering if she could get to Snapchat on that tablet…

“Excuse me?”

“That blonde bitch.  Cray cray.  Def not woke.”

“Actually the young lady in question is no longer asleep.”

“Like I didn’t mean like literally asleep…”

“And quite upset.  Won’t stop screaming.”  He rolled his eyes and looked disgusted.  “Thinks she saw a ghost.”

“Like I say, totally, like completely, cray cray.”

“‘Cray cray’?”

“Crazy!  Don’t you know anything?” Imogene snapped, then caught herself.  “Like, sorry, officer, but I like get carried away because like that cray cray…sorry…really truly totally crazy bitch is always at that storage space building, like works there, and is so def not woke…that means so definitely completely out of it…that she thinks all kinds of cray…crazy things and was probably so out of it that she thought she was helping when she like stabbed that guy with that scalpel!”

The officer didn’t respond, too busy struggling to take notes on a tablet he was obviously def not woke about using.

So there, thought Imogene, that should get that cray cray bitch locked up for, like, forever.  She turned away to look back up at the still-wet, water-stain on the acoustical tile right over her head.

“That poor, beautiful blonde…”

Compassion?  Understanding?  Those were like not at all the effin’ responses Imogene was expecting.  Or wanted.  She was about to look back towards the cop, and maybe think of something else she could say to make the cop hate that cray cray bitch as much as she did, when a drop of water splashed right into her eye.

“And in the worst hospital in the city,” said the cop sympathetically.

Imogene looked back at the cop.  He looked up from the tablet and clapped a hand to his mouth, like he hadn’t realized he’d been talking aloud.  She was pretty sure his sympathy over the effin’ hospital hadn’t been about leaky ceilings but about that effin’ cray cray bitch Karen.

Imogene could have screamed.  She opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t think of anything to say, so she turned back to the ceiling.

A water drop splashed into her other eye.

The Storage Space would have screamed with pain when its front door was slammed open against the wall, if only a building could…

Why was it deigning to think in human terms again?  Why could it not free itself forever from even the last vestige of association with those wretched, vulgar creatures?  Why couldn’t it concentrate solely on objects with dignity, id est inanimate?

The Storage Space thought of art, that upstart Claude Monet’s multiple paintings during different seasons of that bridge in Giverny.  It thought of architecture, that oddly sensuous new movement also coming out of France:  Art Nouveau.

It thought about how it could be argued that all these inanimate objects might in some vague way be associated with humans.  Such an insidious consideration was firmly swept aside.

“May I help you?”

That beautiful voice.  Human!  Well, yes, but some humans were…at least tolerable.

“Hey, sup?”

Unlike others.

“I beg your pardon?”

Amelia of the beautiful voice.  But did the Storage Space detect a hint in her voice of the revulsion it shared?

“I beg pardon,” the intolerable other mimicked.  “How are you this fine day?”

“Fine, thank you, young man.  That’s an awful lot of suitcases, even for a storage space.  You…believe in quick getaways?”

“Really!”

Another voice, forced high and dreadful, along with all the speaker’s pink hair.

“Fifi…you know this guy?”

The pregnant teenager’s father, with his arm around this…Fifi creature.

“I’m so innocent.  Really!” Fifi protested, squirming within his embrace.  “Rainbow Shoes, here, with all the suitcases?  I was just talking to him on the street when I was waiting in your car while you took care of…  What’s your daughter’s name?  Really!  I just can’t remember these things.”

“Imogene.  I can’t help it if it took a while.  My wife beat her up again.”

“But isn’t Emily, Imelda, Whoever in the hospital now?  Really!  I remember that!  So what are we doing back here?”

“Nothing you need to worry your pretty pink head about, so you wait here.”