Studio Scordatura • Reginald E. Bloom • I Am the Cage

Excerpt from I Am the Cage (1998)

Invariably, the dreams came. Everything, in shades of gray, only the cracks in the microcosmic landscape withdrawing into deepest shadow. He avoided the cracks, afraid, even though he didn't know what could conceivably lay in wait within.

The young man sat steadfast, perched on the back of a rickety chair, nude, staring through a small window spider-webbed with cracks. Outside, within the fog, faint outlines flittered past, swallowed up by the mist just as fast as they appeared. The light that forced its way through the grime clinging to the pane was dim, but enough to illuminate the confines of the small L-shaped room in which Jared sat, waiting.

The walls were bare, nails riddling their surface at waist level. The uppermost corners of the tiny hovel were obscured by cobwebs, forgotten by victim and prey alike. The symmetry of the oversized closet was broken by the underside of a staircase; since he had never heard footfalls traversing the stairwell above, he assumed that either it was abandoned, or led nowhere. And to his right, there was a single door, locked from the inside.

Jared waited, for either the dream to be interrupted prematurely, or for the inevitable effrontery that punctuated these netherworldly episodes. Occasionally, he would turn to look upon the desiccated corpse of a slumbering cat curled up in the crook where the underside of the steps met the water-stained hardwood floor. Even now, he could hear it purring, each exhalation of dead air whistling through the tears in the papyrus-like skin pulled taut over brittle bones. Being the only sound to reach his ears, Jared had come to find it comforting.

But then, the purring would stop, and the young man would instinctively turn his attention towards the room's only egress, towards the sound of his father's meaty knuckles rapping on the pine door. Predictably, the unwelcome visitor would pause just long enough to try the doorknob and--finding it secured--would continue his incessant knocking.

The boy refused to move, even when the smell of fresh urine began tickling his nose hairs.

The rapping would persist, much to both his and the cat's chagrin. Before long, the cat would begin stalking the periphery of the closet-like room, its hollow eyes never leaving the single door, a trail of dead skin in its wake. And then it would let out a howl, a rasping cry that Jared could feel in the marrow of his bones.

Eventually, the commotion would force the young man to clamp his hands over his ears, trying to muffle both the persistent knock--keeping in perfect rhythm with his own flustered heartbeat--and the escalating caterwauling of his only companion.

Every night, since his father's death, Jared was visited by the selfsame dream.

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