Daniel Beauregard
A Trip to the Oscars
I.
I woke to my wife shaking me.
Sweetheart, she shouted.
I pushed her arms away and propped myself up on my elbows.
You were howling, she said.
Howling?
Howling.
Again?
She nodded.
I sat up and switched the light on. We stared at each other for a moment. She handed me a glass of water and I was just about to say something when our daughter entered the room and jumped onto the end of the bed.
What are you doing up? I asked. Did you have a bad dream?
Did you have a bad dream? she said, mimicking me. Because you were definitely making noises again.
My wife rolled out of bed, grabbed our daughter and ushered her out of the room, tickling her as they walked to the door.
Don’t let the bed bugs bite, I called after her.
A few moments later my wife returned.
I need to stop saying that, I said.
Saying what?
Don’t let the bed bugs bite. It’s gross.
It is.
She got in bed and pulled the covers up.
I switched the light off and clasped my hands behind my head. It was the second night in a row I’d woken myself up—or my family rather—howling. I haven’t actually heard it myself, but my wife tells me it’s terrifying and needs to stop. When I ask her how I’m supposed to stop something I’ve no control over she says, Figure it out, you’re the psychiatrist.
See, that’s a little joke that we have, I’m not really a psychiatrist.
*
The dreams begin like this: I’m on the set of a Nicholas Cage film. Sometimes I’m aware of which film, others I have no clue. In any case, the film itself is inconsequential. I’m walking towards a table where Cage sits, surrounded by other cast members, directors and production staff. They’re live-reading a script. When I’m within a meter of the table, Cage looks in my direction. Immediately, I’m frozen in my tracks and can't look away. Cage stares at me and I can tell he recognizes me somehow—that we know each other, although from where I’m unsure. I try to force myself to speak and at the very moment I manage to open my mouth, Cage does as well. It’s as if we were mirroring each other, except that as he opens his mouth his jaw drops down, overextending grotesquely as if he was a snake preparing to wolf down a mouse. There’s a loud crack; his mandible detaches. Still, I’m unable to look away and my eyes are focused, staring straight down into the blackness of his gullet, an inescapable, all-consuming maw that sucks me in, devouring me. In the terrifying depth of this darkness I’m being deconstructed.
I awake drenched in sweat, more often than not amidst the forceful shaking of my wife. The echoes of a howl seeping into the room from the remnants of the dream.
*
Earlier I mentioned our little game—my wife and I—about me being a psychiatrist. It’s a game that's more fun for her than for me. She throws it in my face whenever she can that I never made it through med school. I settled for a stable but much less lucrative career as a high school grief counselor instead, working for a small private school on the outskirts of Hollywood. I’ve accepted it, she hasn’t. Although maybe it’s our life she hasn’t accepted yet, rather than my average career. But I’m content. I like my job and the students I work with, and they seem to like me. I am a grief counselor, but I seldom serve in that capacity; only when some sort of tragedy befalls the little school do I don the grief cap, usually to help students cope with the loss of a student, teacher, friend, or mascot.
I deal more with the deaths of mascots than with anything else. The high school—though its main facilities are rather small—has quite a few acres of land that over the years has become home to a large assortment of exotic animals. Many of the children, through a program available at the school, have developed a knack for training and caring for these exotic animals. Several years ago, the state of California granted the school non-profit status to serve as a zoo of sorts on weekends to raise money for extracurricular activities, field trips and stuff like that.
Some students⎯the better trainers⎯have even steered the animals they train into show business: not long ago one of the school's emus was cast in a buddy flick alongside a dog; some sort of Homeward Bound-type of feature.
*
Peacocks roam the school grounds, their multi-colored feathers peppered amongst the grass of the football field and stands, which fill up with spectators for home games on weeknights. The bird sanctuary is situated adjacent to the football field and on any given evening, as the sun goes down, one’s liable to see parakeets, cockatoos, toucans, little chickadees, pileated woodpeckers, snowy owls, and other birds of all shapes and sizes take to the sky, in league with the pig skin on breezy fall evenings.
Further on lays the safari section, beautiful and brilliantly designed by one of the valley’s leading landscaping companies that does most of the yards for Hollywood’s rich and famous. The path leading to the safari section is decorated with varieties of long grasses, scrub, and thorny bushes found on the vast plains of Africa. However, the dry and arid California climate matches quite well with their needs. After several hundred meters, the path opens onto a large creek bed, flush with water only at certain times of the year to simulate the flood season. The school’s groundskeepers pick the times to irrigate in a somewhat random fashion so one really ever knows if they’ll be greeted by a bathing rhinoceros or herd of thirsty water buffalo; or the dried, cracked mud so characteristic of the drought-ridden climate of North Africa.
There are all types of animals in the safari section, my favorite being the gazelle—only one—that never stopped running.
I think it was terrified of children.
*
For safety reasons dangerous animals were kept to a minimum. But there are a few predators that live in enclosed areas of the grounds, the first being an old Bengal tiger; beautiful but harmless. Most of its teeth had fallen out due to a rare gum disease it picked up while in the circus. Its trainer is a 17-year-old heartthrob from West Palm Beach with a smile that made him a fortune in his tweens, Bagel Bites commercials mostly.
There’s also a family of coyotes, although no one’s really sure if they were brought there or if they just showed up one day to take advantage of the mice, rabbits, and other rodents, which are periodically released onto the grounds to provide a source of sustenance and emulate a more native environment.
In addition to these, there’s also a Cayman, a gift to the school’s first principal. It’s housed in a segregated swamp area with ample fencing to keep students out and the Cayman in. They had to hire a bona-fide zookeeper for that one.
Then the ground slopes upward toward the timber wolf enclosure on the hill, my favorite area. I often walk up there to clear my mind on more stressful school days, always winding up at the end to marvel at the majestic old wolf.
*
While working late the other evening, something strange happened.
After filing my paperwork and closing up the office, I decided to take a stroll up to the timber wolf enclosure to collect my thoughts. It was a beautiful night: the moon shone brightly upon the path, illuminating everything with a warm, incandescent glow. I'd hoped to catch sight of the wolf, maybe even snap a selfie with it and the moon in the background.
As I neared the end of the trail, I could just make out its silhouette in the distance when a rustling in the bushes drew my attention. I stopped, startled, then quickly shrugged it off. After all, there were a lot of animals in and out of the area—rodents, birds—nothing to worry about.
I continued up the trail, observing the beauty of the timber wolf in the distance. Out of nowhere a much larger wolf emerged from the bushes. I had just enough time to cover my face and neck before it lunged at me, biting into my forearm. While I struggled to keep the beast from tearing out my throat, I remembered the stocking-stuffer bottle of pepper spray on my keychain, retrieved it from my pocket and managed to spray a good deal of the bottle into the animal’s face. The wolf released me, shaking its snout as if it had stuck its face in an anthill.
Before disappearing into the night, it tilted its head towards the sky and issued a blood-curdling howl that echoed across the school grounds into the surrounding hills. I felt strangely comforted as the chilling noise issued forth from its muzzle, but I was at a loss as to why.