The Allnighter (a short story)

mottled, pocked surfaces. Hoists and wires and pulleys swung people about randomly, staircases buckled and shook, drum music and porn movie soundtracks were overlaid, blaring through hidden speakers, a dry ice haze covered the floor. There were doors and hallways everywhere. Parker figured the back of the bar must open into one of the warehouses he saw outside.

  In one corner, what appeared to be some kind of oriental stick fight was backlit by an enormous hologram of a naked woman, easily thirteen feet high. She was tinted a ghostly yellowish-green, and had one of her own hands snaked between her thighs.

  “That’s real nice over there,” Parker shouted over the noise.

  Clive shrugged. “We know a lot of dreams are about sex.”

  “Doesn’t this offend the female Allnighters? Or aren’t there any?”

  “There are plenty. There are things here for them, too. This isn’t about what’s proper, it’s about what goes on in the farthest reaches of people’s heads. It isn’t necessarily nice.”

  Parker pointed to the two men in the boxing ring. They were padded up, but swiping at each other ferociously. “Is that what it looks like?”

  “Face to face combat. Another strong trend in the dream cycle. Those staffs are made of hard rubber. They’re trying to vent off that pent up aggression.”

  “By hitting each other?”

  “You’d rather have them hit their wives?”

  Parker shook his head. “I’ve seen enough.”

  “There’s more. Stay for a while. We’ve got strippers here, machine guns that fire blanks. There’s a room that makes it seem like you’ve been pushed off a cliff. It’s done with mirrors and —”

  “And you help pay for all this?”

  “We need it. It’s not for fun, Parker. This isn’t just a party here. This is goddamn preventive medicine.”

  Parker turned to Clive. “I hate to be the one to break this to you, but it’s sick. It’s like a whorehouse in here. This isn’t therapy, it’s decadence.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  Parker ignored this and turned back to the door. His hand scratched at where the knob should have been. There wasn’t one. Parker turned back to Clive.

  “What the hell’s going on here?”

  “Easy, Parker,” Clive said. “You can’t go back into the bar, anyway. There’s an exit that puts you out in the alley, but I think you really ought…”

  Parker walked away from Clive and lost himself in the madness. He worked his way around the edges of the huge room until he stumbled across a tiny exit sign. He went through and found himself in a dark alleyway. He made his way back to Jefferson Street and, eventually, flagged down a cab.

  When he got back in bed, Parker passed the last few hours of the night considering his experience at the Allnighter. Like he had heard about dreams countless times, as the time passed, his impressions of the place faded. He made up his mind never to go back, though. Something about the organization, the keys, Clive’s leer when discussing the subject, reminded Parker of the Ku Klux Klan. Or maybe the Moonies.

  Chloe’s alarm went off as Parker considered all this. He got up with her, practicing his newly learned morning manners. The two had breakfast together, and after, Parker went to his car. It started with the now-familiar rumbling.

  “Goddamn,” Parker shouted to himself. He turned off the car as his wife appeared in the doorway. He got out of the car. “You said you were going to get this thing fixed, Chloe.”

  “I know, honey. I’m really sorry. I got tied up with a bunch of stuff yesterday, and…”

  “I can’t be driving around like this.”

  “I know Parker,” Chloe said. “I said I’m sorry. I’ll take care of it today, okay?”

  Parker reached back into the Mercedes for his bag. “Just get me your keys, okay? Christ, you say you’ll do something…” He scrunched himself back in the Volvo. The car started up with a purr. Parker rolled the window down. “I don’t ask you to do that much, huh?”

  Chloe didn’t respond. She just tightened the knot of her bathrobe around her waist. The garage was cold.

  Parker thought he’d be able to avoid Clive at the hospital, but that obviously wasn’t in Clive’s plan at all. He had Parker paged to his office.

  “I want you back there,” Clive said with Parker standing stiffly in front of his huge desk.

  “It’s weird, it’s ritualistic, and I’m not interested in it.”

  “Well you better get interested in it. It could save your goddamn life.”

  “You’re out of your mind, Clive. I can control my temper and I can control my stress.”

  “I thought I could, too.”

  “What are you getting at here?”

  “I’m not getting at anything. I’m just trying to help you. I’ve seen a lot of bad things, Parker. I know what we can do.”

  “I’m so sick of this ‘we’ crap. We’re on our own.”

  “That’s exactly where you’re wrong. Parker, will you please give me a chance to help you. I’m not asking for anything for myself. I’m concerned about you.”

  Parker sneered. “Look Clive. I was willing to just forget last night, not bring it up. That’s fine. You’ve done your job, what you think is your job. You’ve showed me what you have to show me, and I’ve made the decision from there. You can’t be responsible after that, so don’t worry. You’re off the hook. Even if I go and murder someone, you’re off the hook, okay?”

  “It’s not that simple, Parker.”

  “No? No? Well let me simplify it for you, then. We don’t talk about this any more, you and me. If you start bringing it up, I’m going to have to resign from the hospital staff.”

  “That’s a little drastic, don’t you think?”

  “I certainly don’t want to resign, Clive. But I can see you becoming like one of those Born-Again Christians. You know you’re so right, you’re so sure, that you have no problem hounding other people about it.”

  “The difference is, unlike the Christians, we have proof what we say is true.”

  Parker shook his head slowly. “Look, what works for you works for you, what works for me works for me. We’re done talking about this.”

  That night Parker followed his own ritual, the one that had served him so well for so long. He tried to put the Allnighter out of his mind. He dressed, grabbed an apple, went to the garage, and got in his car, just like he always did. Screw the Allnighter.

  Parker went through the kitchen door into the garage and got in his car. He twisted the ignition key and the Mercedes answered with a roar. The muffler, Chloe hadn’t repaired the goddamn muffler. He turned the engine off fast, but the windows of the garage were still rattling when he got out of the car. Chloe was a heavy sleeper, but there was no way she could have slept through that. Jesus, he thought, I’m caught, after all these years. Why doesn’t she ever do what I tell her?

  The door between the kitchen and the garage opened up. Chloe stood there, nightgown still have twisted around her body, eyes squinted against the light.

  “What’s going on, Parker?” she asked.

  But instead of going on the defensive, Parker attacked. “That’s just what I’d like to know, Chloe. That’s just exactly what the fuck I’d like to know.”

  His anger cut through her shroud of sleep like a snowplow. “It’s the middle of the night,” she said.

  Parker walked around the front of the car and over to his wife, talking as he got closer. “You didn’t get the car fixed, Chloe. You said you were gonna do it and you just didn’t.”

  She took a step back into the kitchen. “I…”

  “You what?” He whipped the apple he’d been holding at her. It exploded on the sheetrock wall next to the door, and Chloe flinched. Little particles of white dust and wet apple took to the air. “You were too busy, at your twenty hour a week, fifteen thousand dinky dollar a year job? Not enough time, or what? You forget?” He slammed his fist into his open hand. “You said you were gonna take care of it!”


  Chloe tried to assert herself. “Where were you going just now, Parker? It’s after midnight.”

  “It’s after midnight,” he said, mocking her voice, making it tremble slightly. He was very close now. Then, without even knowing he was doing it, he grabbed the nearest thing off the garage wall, which was covered with tools hanging on hooks. It was a pair of heavy-gauge hedge clippers. Parker pulled them down by the blades, the snout, and held them out in front of him like a gigantic slingshot. If he had grabbed them by the handles, Chloe probably would have run. As it was though, with the hedge clippers inverted like that, she was puzzled. His stance made him look like he was trying to ward off a vampire with an industrial-size crucifix.

  “What are…” And that was all she managed.

  Parker lifted the clippers and brought them down on her forehead. The handles were wrought iron, sheathed in heavy rubber, and one caught her square between the eyes. Chloe’s legs folded up underneath her, and she fell in the doorway, half in the kitchen, half in the garage. Parker lifted the clippers over his head in a two-fisted grip, and slammed them down again. Grainy, static-filled images skipped across Parker’s field of vision. He didn’t see what he was doing until it was way too late.

  The gate opened slowly, the bars rolling back in their tracks. The guard stood to Parker’s left, slightly behind him, and held him at the elbow. He was an older black man, tall but frail-looking. His touch was almost gentle. In front of them was a row of cubicles, partitioned off on three sides by safety glass shot through with