THE MONA LISA INCIDENT

A dream I had. No exaggerations.

I saw him slumping by the fountain. It was night, so the brightness came from the outdoor lights, which went straight to the water, then to the pennies, then to him.

“I’ll usually pocket those when I need a few extra cents” I tell him, walking over, “or luck…”

He looks up at me, then at my shoes with a tight smile. His jacket comes up to his chin and he holds it all in at the chest like James Dean in cold weather. Or maybe that’s just what I want to see. He squints up, “When the hell do you ever need a few extra pennies?”

“I dunno, arcade games?” I say.

“You need 25 cents for those. Pennies’ll get you nothing.” 

“Okay, they’re useless. Okay? That’s why people throw them into fountains. It’s not because kid’s dreams are coming true, it’s because their parents are sick of having their fucking pockets weighed down with pennies. Okay? Jesus fucking Christ!” But I snap out of it, as soon as it’s out of my system. Is this how I flirt? What the fuck is wrong with me? 

“Is that what you tell yourself to sleep at night?” he smiles, “Taking money from kids and all that—”

But I’m not finished: “Speaking of dreams—man, you won’t believe the dream I had the other night…”

—

This was the first red flag: 

It was all very unlike me to host a house party. And to throw said house party in my mother’s house. On a school night. 

The only logical conclusion was that it was a dare, although I always back out of those. 

I’d much sooner be seen throwing a potluck. Maybe it was a really out of control potluck. Someone misheard and accidently brought a kegger. It might turn into an orgy later. Something involving the roast beef—technically borderline bestiality and necrophilia. 

At least, that’s the best I could describe it: all these idiots with my childhood plastic cups, filled with beer, against my mom’s comfortably ugly wallpaper.

Speaking of my mom, where was she? She couldn’t be asleep, not with all this noise. I’d try to sneak in some nights at 2 AM and she’d wake up because of the lights. Not the brightness of them, but the sound the switch made when it flicked up.

She didn’t go out. She couldn’t just be “visiting a friend,” she didn’t do that. She read Dostoevsky with the cats. The world needed to only exist in her hands or not at all. Always hide behind the couches when the doorbell rang. It was the way of the world.

She should know about this. Flicked switches bothered the woman but breaking glass didn’t? And oh—from some angles, it looked as if the orgy could’ve already been starting. I was fucking joking! 

Something was very off—if she was not here, then it meant I was truly all alone wherever I happened to be.

So, I’m with my two “friends.” They’re two girls I think I’ve seen once before, so they look almost exactly the same. I don’t think I could describe them beyond that. I’m bad with faces. Two different people with brown hair were the same person. Even if one was black.

We’re on my catwalk. It’s a nice catwalk to put it simply, one where I, the king of the house, can survey my subjects, bumbling about in alcohol and various potluck entrees that I think is actually just food from my fridge, but I block that part out.

But there’s only one guy I’m interested in, and I’m absolutely terrified when I first see him.

“Um, so, yeah...who the fuck is that?” I point. I have the right—it’s my house. Although, this point is one of admiration. This freak is the kind you’d watch a TLC special on, with a rerun of every Honey Boo Boo episode beforehand to get you excited. It might be wrong to be so morbidly fascinated by someone, but you can’t help it—you just have to know in order to educate yourself on the danger you can sense, radiating off of this person. It’s purely instinctual. 

To be specific, this man is not a man, he is a goblin. A four-foot, disgusting son of a bitch. Green and brown, hair in the ears, slimy and drooling from literally every opening (and onto my floor! My floor!). A defected grandpa; a walking, overripe grape; a gross, creepy little man, he was.

I suppose anything the guy wore would look bad on him, but what he had on as I was looking at him was just ridiculous because it just seemed to reject his entire species due to its over the top sophistication. A Monet painting, printed onto his blazer and slacks. The one with the bridge, the lilies, and water. The other odd thing about this man was how he held a glass of red wine. We had no wine or wine glasses in the house, meaning this freak had to have driven here with the thing in his hand.

Back to my question:

The girl to my left gasps. I am about to join in when I look at her—it was a gasp not of disgust or humor, but of—

“You don’t know who that is?”

I felt like a fashion designer or actress at a big premiere (I designed medieval men’s tights and acted in skating montages where the mistakes weren’t edited out), or better yet, a young Victorian woman dressed in a sky-high wig, fanning myself from all the gossip.

“Oh, great,” I go.

The girl to my right joins in. Her drink sputters over the brim in excitement. I realize then that I’m sure I’ve never seen her before. I thought I had, but suddenly I can’t even recall how I got into this conversation. 

I hoped I was just drunk out of my mind. 

“Oh my god,” she says, coming in closer. “He’s like, a total Mona Lisa freak—just a freak about the painting.”

We gaze.

He walks to and fro, socializing, or at least trying. Nobody seems to find him in any way odd but doesn’t exactly go out of their way to talk to him. He just bobs around, back and forth, like a little old man in his first year of college.

“Oh, is he?” I lean over the catwalk, my nose almost touching the chandelier like I’m catcalling from a car, except I cup my hands around my mouth and instead of yelling something sexy I scream:

“THE MONA LISA WASN’T EVEN THAT GOOD!”

They laugh. I smile. The goblin cocks his head back so fast that I jump.

“Ohmygod,” I say.

“Ohmygod,” the girls say, immediately ducking off the catwalk and into one of the other rooms, hands brought up to their heads, shaking, like he was only fascinating in a nature documentary type way: interesting on screen, terrifying off it. And he had just come to life. The glass between you and the giant silverback gorilla at the zoo was just shattered. I was quickly alone in the full house.

When he starts sprinting up the stairs, that’s when I start fucking screaming, and everyone starts staring.

What the fuck is wrong with this guy? It’s a fucking PAINTING!

I throw my cup in his direction like it’ll do something. The liquid (iced tea? That crossed “drunk out of my mind” off the list of options) sprinkled his jacket ever so slightly, and the plastic cup drifted down the stairs wistfully.

Everything escalates, my thoughts, my legs, his sewage legs, his heavy breathing, which makes it sound like he might collapse from asthma any second because he doesn’t know his limits, which is somehow even more terrifying.

I slam the door once I get into my brother’s room, throwing my back against it with my arms out on the frames like I’m an awful dancer in an even worse musical. Maybe that’s what this is.

I lock the door as soon as I realize I forgot, and a second later feel his little body slam against it, relentless, to the point I’m afraid he’ll knock himself out. This one insult has just taken him over like his life depended on whatever he was protecting.

“Jesus Christ,” I say to myself, then to him: “Get off my ass! It was a joke!”

“HHHHHHGUUUGHHHHUUUG,” he retorts, pushing and tugging hard on the knob and sticking his gross little fingers under the door frame like the baby you try to leave alone for five seconds to use the bathroom.

I’m done with this. I unlock the window. I kick out the screen and not so carefully make my way down by way of jumping around like an absolute madman. 

I’m in the driveway. It’s dead quiet and there’s no one, not even parked cars. I can’t hear the party from out here, and the windows have gone dark. He should have disappeared along with it, but somehow, I know he’s still around.

I start jogging down the driveway.

It hits me: I’m actually fucking terrified.

He’s coming for me.

Over the fucking Mona Lisa!

I start laughing.

I’m running back and forth across the street in front of the house. I can’t go far either way without what feels like a rubber band pulling me back, and I’m becoming convinced that the neighborhood doesn’t go on two mailboxes down. I remember the times when I would wake up in the mornings as a kid, foggy as fuck outside, and I couldn’t even see the tree four feet from the window—the one the birds would make weird love in when they thought I couldn’t see—and I thought that was it. It was over. All that existed was the house. I’d panic, knowing I’d be stuck here forever with my awful family, at this awful age, in this awful house. My worst fucking nightmare was coming true. 

—

“And then I woke up, adrenaline coursing through my veins, drenched with sweat—cold sweat. I jerked up in bed, just like a movie. That’s a pretty cliché ending though. The point is, it happened…” I turn back to him for the first time since beginning. He’s staring into his drink. There’s no light bouncing back onto his face.

“I bet you haven’t heard anything like that before, hm?” I’m unique. Very special.

“It sounds unfinished.”

“What do you mean unfinished?”

“Like, you started on with that whole thing about your ‘awful family’ then just blue-balled the ending.” 

“Um, I think it’s called a cliffhanger.”

“I don’t actually think it is. Anyway, it could use more work.” 

“What do you mean ‘work?’ That’s what happened. No story there.” 

“Okay. Well I don’t believe you.” 

“Well, my dreams are pretty fantastical. I see what you mean though. Maybe the goblin was a metaphor for my dad, or something. Don’t worry though, I’m in therapy. Eight years and counting.” I stare off into the bushes now.

Well, that’s the end of that conversation. 

“I gotta piss,” I tell him, before he can say anything of the sort to me. “Nice shoes by the way,” I add like it’s the reason I came over. They’re Converse and dirty with a penis drawn on in sharpie. Fucking animal.

I walk along the fountain to the sliding doors and pause to scoop up three handfuls of pennies, which I stuff into my pockets still wet, going on as it bleeds through my jacket.