THAT DAY

My sister Althea calls. She says "My share of our inheritance has revolutionized my life! Dreams I deferred for years are coming true at last."

My share? I haven't done a thing.

That afternoon I bike to the San Francisco Fringe Festival to see Graffiti Highway, a cabaret piece by singer Megan Liley of Toronto and local composer Breakfast. A treat for a composer like me--the songs are mostly originals (my faves: the song of a Burning Man drug dealer, and the anxious Let's Fall in Love).

They use Dante's Inferno as a frame story--an apt image of the musical nightworld. In straight theater you mustn't break character, but I liked their asides like "true story, the band was Z---" or "this song's by my friend A--- in Toronto" and so on. Why not be openly autobiographical, and steal more friends' horror stories? Turned to art, they're pure gold.

THAT NIGHT

A teenage friend died and left me and my friend (my brother?) a confusing will--a riddle, really. We puzzle out that he wants us to go to a stone ruin in the woods on a certain day, but what's "mind the rightmost" mean?

We find the ruin all right--a wall nearly 3 meters high (9-10') enclosing a roofless square twice as wide. Like a fort guarding... nothing.

Not quite nothing. We're not the only ones summoned here. The dead boy's girlfriend is here before us, nervous fragile and small--no more than 14 I think. We've met, but rarely.

The only things we find inside the wall are two hulking armored statues stand in opposite corners, like monster chessmen or readed-up stag beetles. Low, broad, heavy crested heads, not rusty yet, but dulled by years of sun and rain.

The lefthand suit of armor seems to be empty; but the rightmost suddenly twitches and comes to life! Peels off its helm and cuirass, to reveal the head of a burly giant.

A giant with a knife. He chases us, roaring 'Give me the key!'

I guess it's to our friend's fortune, though where the lock is and what it guards, I still don't know. My friend has the key, but gets pinned in a corner. So he tosses it to the girl. The giant corners her, and she tosses it to me...

Whoever he is, he's forging us into a team!

We've been set up to play this game, but what are the rules? Ask the girl if she knows.

"Oh, yeah!" she calls back bitterly. "His letter to me said: 'In the game you're entering, there ARE no rules.'"

Set up indeed. As bad as Alexander the Great.

We climb the walls, run round the square. But so does he! And he slashes freely--doesn't care who he hurts. What to do?

My friend drops outside the wall and runs into the woods. Of course! Just hide the key. No matter what he does, if we don't have it, he can't extort it. We're not in medieval times, or miles deep in the wilderness. It's just a few hundred yards to a road. If he kills one of us, the others will escape and bring in the cops.

If we scatter, he can't track all of us at once.

I wake still scared... but burning to know what the treasure was. And why the kid endangered all of us like that! His so-called friends. Did he hate us, or was there no choice?

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Inheritance: my sister Althea today said the windfall's enabled her dreams. Not me, not yet.
• Fragile girl fearing bullies: 1: Vietnamese kids I saw living in the Tenderloin theater district! I feel nervous there, but to them it's home. 2: in Kelly Link's story Flying Lessons, June dares to enter Hades.
• My brother: I don't have one. He looked like Breakfast, the pianist in Graffiti Highway
• Enter a stone keep in woods: 1: the Exit Theater, where I saw Graffiti Highway. 2: the entrance to Hades in Flying Lessons. 3: Old photos I saw today of a hike with my dad had TWO square stone walls--Vogelsang High Sierra Camp, and a ranger's cabin crushed by a tree in the Little Yosemite Valley.
• Rusty suits of armor, one empty: emotional armor/baggage? If so, one is empty--I've dealt with it, I guess--but the other still has a bully I need to defeat. I suspect the empty one was sex; got over my shyness a lot in the last few years. But the other...
• Alexander the Great, set up to fight: as Alexander lay dying, his generals asked "Who do you name your heir?" He answered: "The strongest." Yep, just two dying words... killing thousands. Sadistic bastard.
• Flee thug: 1: in Kelly Link's Flying Lessons, June flees Hera's huge thug-birds. 2: The Exit Theater's bouncer grilled me before letting me in--acted as if I looked drunk or crazy. Just out of breath from biking in a hurry. Hmmm. What's he mean to me? I was battered and ostracized in school for years; I still feel like a social outsider. That bouncer caused a tiny flashback; one I consciously soon forgot. My dreams didn't.
• Cooperate about inheritance: our mom's lawyer told us horror stories of heirs who feuded over nothing, but we cooperated fine. Funny as it sounds, this nightmare's urging me to trust people more, not less.
• Together we can beat this armored thug (or at least call the cops): I'm not a kid battered by thugs twice my size, now. And is the dream only personal? Thugs ruled the Dark Ages, but contrary to media hype, violence rates are dropping worldwide and have been for generations. Societies do learn intelligent cooperation not predation. Eventually.
• ACTION: well, no wonder I haven't done much with my inheritance. I act and feel poor for a reason. Til I defeat this final fear--feeling suspect, expecting assault--I won't feel free to use it. I won't even really have the key.

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