Mike & Ike Mega Mix: Sours. Gushers Family Pack. Wiley Wallaby Soft & Chewy: Watermelon. SweeTarts. SweeTarts: Ropes. Sour Patch Kids - Theater Box. The hammer was coming now. Orbit: Bubblemint. Bright red blood returned to the brain. The head and neck of Golem Orem laid stiff in the frigid Puget water. The accident was written up as “carpenter’s error.” Carpenter’s error meant you were shit out of luck. Wet hands slapped Golem’s scalp, combing through his hair for any undiscovered wounds. Lost blood carried downstream. Mike & Ike Mega Mix: Sours. Gushers Family Pack. Wiley Wallaby Soft & Chewy: Watermelon. SweeTarts. SweeTarts: Ropes. Sour Patch Kids - Theater Box. Orbit: Bubblemint. That’s all he could remember, remember enough to write down later. The memory quickly faded - soon, the paper and these bizarre names was all he had. That, and the feeling: the cold air, and the bright, bright lights. Who made that place, with the stone floors and right angles? Why? Golem recalled what he heard about the Indians. Cursed forests - no-good spots - places where stillbirths and the like were dropped off. Dumping grounds, places where nothing grew, nothing good ever happened. Of course, “do not go here” was a command which white man couldn’t obey. It was the Harmont family, swash-buckling, felling trees and scooping up new topsoil that make easy marks. A family of six. The midpoint of the story never interested him. The ending - the famine of the Harmonts, the illnesses, the inevitable death - did. The Indians didn’t bother moving them, or going near at all. They ended up where they belonged. Golem, sitting alone, taking lunch before returning to work, would find his mind returning to ecstasy of that dream. This place where Golem had been struck by that idiot - was this place blessed? It had to be. Fortune was coming to a patch of land, a few steps outside Portland. Golem would make like a Harmont. Said sayonara-and-God-bless-you to the wife and made camp by where that moron hammered him. The unconscious mind was the open door. Or, rather, Golem’s consciousness was the door, flipping open when the man shut his eyes. As soon as the sun dipped low, Golem would skip out of the Orem house, and to his make-shift home. He purchased a dream catcher. “My mother thinks there’s another woman involved.” Of course she did. Mrs. Orem’s mother was a cold woman, Golem thought. “He’s a drunk. No good for my daughter. A drunk.” And yet his wife stayed. God bless her. Sleeping in the doghouse is hardly a punishment for Golem anyway. Admittedly, he did drink - a pint or two on the in-between to the tent. It’s the water to dream’s gouache. Not to mention, a zip of that peace-pipe floating up and down the river, sent Golem on one hell of a ride. The one-two combo punch left Golem out cold, laying in his tent. And a dream did come, whistling through the pines, in Dolby Vision this dream, through the catcher and into the brainstem of one Golem Orem. It appeared kaleidoscopic. Golem would write “Kaleidoscope.” The room Golem was in, surrounded by flashing lights, would come to be known as a discothèque. Golem was in the company of a man named Happy Adam. “Like the music?” Adam spun in the flashing light. Golem stayed mum. He needed a piss. No fun dancing when you’ve got to piss. Happy Adam only followed him so far when he made for a door. The backdoor, spilling out onto a rain-wet street. This business was known as The Cat Room, Golem gathered. The Cat Room was holding Singles Night. Golem found a brick corner already smelling like shit. Warmed up for him, he figured. A spigot, hyper-polished stuck out of the brick wall. It made an interesting enough target. Golem took aim, and fired. The thick, vivid yellow made-in-America stream shot out. And the club lights, faux-Berlin haze of red, blue and pink shone through like stained glass. He urinated in Technicolor. As it splashed down, over firefighters’ valves, out and up, some back on his knees, Golem Orem was stuck in bliss. This was no typical post-piss calm - a sort of nirvana washed over Golem as he watched the droplets dance in the light. Now he came to the realization, the one he’d been dancing around. That the Harmont family didn’t wander in to some hell, some cursed place that had been sitting there. It was manufactured, that place. And this place, the spot behind the Cat Lounge, could be manufactured too. And it was he who was commanded to do it. And, well, it had to be Heaven. He laid in his tent and it was cold outside. He never returned home. Tell the wife to come here. He had to build, build up so high as to reach Heaven himself. And it began with chopping wood. He had pissed himself.