The Mountain

     I first saw Asphodel Meadows in a dream. A rundown American mountain town, once having been or sluggishly approaching its advent as a WASP�s nest. On every lawn was half of a car, paint and purpose stripped from it, and in every living room glued to the television 2.5 children. There were as many liquor shops as there were churches, each serving its own brand of holy wine which was unquestioningly drunk up by the huddling, apathetic masses. The state penitentiary lay less than twenty miles down the road. Seclusion such as Asphodel Meadows� encircling mountains offered was a necessity for the security of most other towns. In my dream I saw the Town Hall meetings, the red faces of swollen men bulging in outrage. Their town, they would bellow, would not be the sacrificial lamb. But they saw as my disembodied dream-self could that prosperity sat on the horizon watching and waiting for the time that it could rain down on their fallow fields. God was already in the cathode-ray tube, the DSL line, the Blackberry, cloning their riches like a virus lodged in less necessary cells until the time came when they would burst open and spill God out again.
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             The town�s reality differed very little from its dreamscape, save for the color I now beheld with my waking eyes. Three years had passed in the interim between my rather pleasant awakening and stepping foot on the Meadow�s sallow soil. In that time, God had spilled forth in a spurt of yellow, suffusing all inhabitants with the telltale sickly, golden blush that tabloid reporters has begun to call �Yellow Fever v2.0�. No one scientifically inclined knew quite what to call it, I had learned, and more surprising than that, no one seemed to fault them for their ignorance. A volcano began to pump sulfur into the water supply, poisoning all aquatic life; it spewed yellow toxins into the air which hung like prehistoric spores, which only on the occasion of their extinction could man thrive. It drove them mad with its bacteria and marginality. Everyone pitied the scientists, even the children in the makeshift hospital I frequented with my tape recorder.
     They�re trying so hard. What else can they do? They can�t go on up to the mountain, say, �hey, mountain, just exactly what you think you�re doing?� It must be hard not being able to ask questions like that.
     As far as I heard, no one blamed the geologists, volcanologists, biologists or doctors for the town�s high mortality rate. It was the Yellow, they said. If God wanted to wash it away, He would. Sickness had a granite fist around the heart of every person in every borough of the town and still there was hope shining through their lethargy. This was what I had come to preserve, the half-hearted optimism of a modern-day Pompeii.
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     Get that s**t away from me, I don�t need another f*****g saltwater drip. You see me f*****g crying? I got enough f*****g tears to last until I f*****g die so go give that to one of those weepy b*****s by the window, shut up, and just let me f*****g die with arms like a normal person and not a f*****g junkie.
     This is the first of what I can recognize of David Sanger, age 16, on my recordings, though I can recall other things he proselytized by memory which my machine failed to take notice of. From the first day of my stay in the hospital to the time when he was shuffled from sterile sheets to a black leather body bag, he was hooked into all manner of equipments, some which beeped along to his throbbing, erratic pulse, others which mainlined him something that might treat the mountain�s sulfuric exhales.
     Let me die, let me die, let me die, let me die a human color, hahaha.
     Stop crying, what the f**k do you got to cry about that I f*****g don�t? That he don�t or she don�t? [�] Selfish b***h.
     Stop crying! You look ugly when you cry, bet you want to stop crying no- STOP CRYING!
     Anybody know how to play Texas hold �em? Well, f**k you, too.
     This is taking too f*****g long.
             David spent the majority of his time barraging the welded edges of his hospital bed sheets with his swiftly skeletonizing legs, raking a hand through his matted inkblot hair, or heckling the patients in neighboring beds. I remember his eyes most of all, black like tar and huge in the waning yellows of his eyes. Every day his pupils grew larger until few could meet them.
     Hey, Ms. Crommit, not gonna be getting that History paper into you, that okay? Gonna probably need an extension. You�ll get it in another life.
             His teacher sobbed in response. Of all the patients in this ward, only David appeared not to care about his foreseeable death. It was, in fact, his favorite subject of conversation, along with the mountain.
     Bet we blew a gasket or, uh, a gas pocket or something up there mining or drilling and now all that toxic, dinosaur-day s**t is come spewing out, you know? Ain�t f*****g God or The Devil, they don�t give two f***s about this redneck shithole. It�s us. We f*****g let it loose and now it�s eating us. Or maybe it just happened.
     How f*****g lonely.
     That�s it, how f*****g lonely, it just happened. Wasn�t even an accident, it just f*****g happens. That�s all ever happens. No causes or lead-ups or warnings or jack-offs with their thumbs up their asses breaking into a mustard gas pocket somewhere and killing everybody. Hear that, Ms. Crommit? I disproved History.
             Raving was not what David�s speeches were considered at first, though as his treatment wore on, it became abundantly apparent that that was what they were.
     God�s in the grape juice, in my grape juice! Purple grape juice! God was in my blood when it was red and blue.
             He opened a vein with his IV. The blood stained his sheets with iodine, filling the room with papermill stink.
     What�s in your hand? What�s in your hand? You, yeah, you, what�s in your f*****g hand? Show me it, show me it, show me it.
             I showed him my tape recorder.
     What the f**k is it? I can�t see it, what is it?
             A tape recorder, I said.
     Why would you do that? You�re recording us? Stop! You can�t record us, I�ll f*****g kill you, you can�t spread it, you can�t let it out! [�] You won�t get it, they can�t see us like this because they won�t learn anything. They won�t learn f*****g anything AND THEY�LL WANT US TO TEACH THEM! YOU CAN�T TEACH ANYTHING WHEN YOU�RE DEAD! LET US GO, LET US GO!
             The nurses took me out of the room after David�s blood bubbled to the surface, suffusing his yellowing skin with pressure�s pink glow. They would not permit me to ask after him. His name headed the list of the day�s dead on the dry-erase board outside the commissary later that night. It was an aneurysm that killed him, I believe. I dreamed that it was my response trapped in his bloodstream, the size of a quarter, rippling the roll of his skin as it traveled upwards to his brain. If only I had said it he could have died like all the others.
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             On Sundays I walked the clogged arteries of the town�s streets, watching its inhabitants watching the mountain. Glass-eyed, they would clutch whatever was in their hands tighter as the mountain spewed its load of cocktail carcinogens into the air. This was the people�s only notable reaction, clinging to what they still had, hoping that God would wash the Yellow out. I took photographs when the lighting was good. Through the tinted lenses embedded in my gas mask, I could not properly observe the tide of combating colors that showed so vibrantly on film. It appeared almost like the atmosphere had been spliced into two layers: the blue of the oxygenated sky and the yellow fog which Asphodel Meadows breathed. There was never a green to be found between them.
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     No, sorry, it looks super good, but� I can�t eat it. I promise I�ll eat it next time, �kay? Yeah, I know, I said that last time, too�
             Flora Burke, age 11, I approached directly. In the hospital, I neglected to wear my gas mask, so I was free to smile at her. She obligingly smiled back. Her face hollowed when it moved and I could scarce stand to watch her as we spoke. With my gaze focused on her thinning hair, I offered my tape recorder to her. She examined it, fiddled childishly with the buttons. When she handed it back to me it had absorbed no heat from her flesh. I flipped it on.
     My momma says this is all going to go away soon. All the dust. She says it�s �cause we can�t go to church or nothing, �cause Pastor Greenlee died. I think she might be right. But I think God wouldn�t gyp us like that, punishing us for not going to church when there�s no one in church to go see anymore. You know?
     No, sorry �gain. It smells nice, anyhow. Maybe somebody else�ll eat it.
     Where you from, Mr.? You sound sorta British? You British?
     Why�d you come here?
     Momma said anybody that comes here is looking to die.
     You feel alright, Mr.?
     It�s funny, I hear everybody talking about� talking about dying, you know? How they�re gonna die. But I�m not super afraid like them. [...] They think I haven�t lived long enough to understand what not living�ll be like. Like life grows on you or something, like life�s like brussel sprouts or something. But I think�(sigh) I don�t know what I think. I wish I was hungry.
             These children said more than their parents ever managed to through their sobs. The optimism I had been seeking to conserve was already fading away in everyone but these children. They understood more through their ignorance than I understand with reels and reels of primary sources, first-hand accounts.
     Wait. You feel that?
             The ground shuddered like the chest of a girl, too sick to eat, when she takes a breath. I found myself gripping the tape recorder as hard as I could. I dreamed the mountain was tired of giving for so long and receiving nothing. It was preparing to devour us all.
     I think my tummy growled�
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             Flora died a week after the last earthquake. She had asked me to play back her portion of the recordings, which I refused to do. She asked if I would put my hand on her chest because it was very cold, which I also refused to do. It was the first time I�d heard her cry, tears dribbling over the ridges of her wrinkled, yellow face. Flora looked as if she�d spent a thousand years laughing and I told her so. I put my hand over her heart. She asked me to describe myself. I turned off the tape recorder and did so. She died 17 minutes later.
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             Now that I am counted among the pre-dead, the brackish souls of the spore-devoured multitude, I see that it was a mistake to come here. The blissful apathy I sought in these people never existed, not even in their children. The panic of the citizens of Pompeii is the panic of those mired in Asphodel Meadows, only their panic must be stretched thin over time. An outburst might snap that taut terror, unleashing the chaos everyone fears more than death. Fears as death, stranded from their god.. I myself wish to be delivered into entropy as soon as humanly possible. I wish to splay my veins open, paint the walls with my urine-blood, the silt in my Yangtze arteries. I wish to dwindle into nothing, refusing food as I refuse preservation. I wish that someone would rest a pink hand on my heart and learn nothing from the dream I would recount.