Arvin - The Rest Is Illusion

Table of Contents

By Eric Arvin

Magical realism meets coming of age as four Verona College students are thrown together by choice as well as circumstance. When their lives and loves are threatened by blackmail and violence, they respond by using all the means at their disposalincluding some they arent even aware they possess. But will that be enough to prevent tragedy or even death?

Eric Arvins first novel is once again available, ready to set your heart racing and your mind reeling.

WAKE UP, Dashel. Break from the illusion. This is all for you.

The indistinct voice woke him up but faded from memory as soon as his eyes opened.

He rose from the carpet with a headache that could split the atom. In the days coming, Dash knew things would only get worse. He had made it as far as his room the previous evening before the pain claimed him, and hed crumpled to the floor. He rubbed his eyes to massage away the throbbing.

As he unburdened himself of the layers of clothing he wore, his thoughts turned to his night visions and dreams. They had been more acute lately. Almost like lessons, or augury. Dreams of flight were far from abnormal, but Dashels dreams sometimes felt too real. As if his soul did, in fact, leave his body and take on the form of a falcon or a hawk cutting through the air with magnificent wings and keen, observant eyes.

And he, Dash the Great Bird, would always perch on the massive, solitary tree that overlooked the river at the far end of Verona College. Students called it the Point. He would land on the strongest and largest limb of the great tree, ruffle his feathers, and look out onto the valley that sloped gently down to a vast river. He would only ever be allowed to catch a brief glimpse of the river, however, before a rushing breeze would come up from the valley, disturbing his feathers with vigorous gusts. And then he would wake. It was always like that. Dash was left wide-eyed and wondering. Upon waking, in that uncertain state where what one knows and what one thinks blend, he wondered if the college itself, the very grounds, had some quality, an ethereal air, trying desperately to tell him something.

And so as Dashel Yarnsbrook stood naked above his piled clothes from the day before, the frustration of unanswered questions gnawed at him. He was irritated that he never saw the conclusion of his minds repeating manifestation, but surely there had to be a reason. A grand and hidden finis. He had a resolution tucked deep in his subconscious, and it was the right ending. Dashel liked to think that every ending was the right ending. There was always a supposed to be. There had to be.

He looked up at the high brownish ceiling of the room as he stretched out kinks from muscles and bone. Why was his room so lid-like and tiresome? Like a shoebox used to temporarily house a captured amphibian. He could drown amidst the walls and carpet that very nearly matched the dragging, muddy color of the ceiling. Indifferent. Apathetic. He had, of course, tried to decorate and make the room more pleasant and livable. He had hung various mismatched embellishments to displace the boredom of the spaceposters, prints, party lights in the shapes of bell peppers, and a crudely constructed bar with empty bottles set in a diagonal design. But Dashel still choked on the brown color beneath. The disappointment was always there. Every morning as the sun tried to light the room, the blas paint and carpet fought it off.

Dash looked at his roommates bed, which was empty and unmade, the same as yesterday. Ashley was already in class, but he must have stayed out all night. If he hadnt, he would have found Dash on the carpet and immediately tucked him into bed, or at the very least, thrown a blanket over him.

Ashleys determination and perseverance appealed to Dash. Dashel had found in Ashley a great roommate and a better friend. They knew they were the two outsiders in their fraternity, Sigma Gamma, the ones set apart. Together, they challenged the quips and snide remarks of hypocritical bystanders at the tiny school. They had gelled, Ashley the Albino and Dashel the Fag.

Dash looked at his nude self in the mirror on the door. His penis stood erect, begging to be touched or stroked, though it was only the morning blood rushing where it would. Dash felt unimpressed with sex of late. He looked at his reflection with no more than a passing sigh.

He strummed his fingers over the ribs that were, day by day, more evidence of his illness, a steady drop in weight that could not be explained away by his once stellar track career. Since he hadnt run all year, his defined musculature was fading and his track team physique disappearing. He rubbed his abdomen in disappointment.

He wrapped the towel from the end of his bed around his thinning waist, tying it tight so hed have no chance of a hallway slip-off. A shower might make him feel more at ease. It might dissolve, just for a small time, the idea of the wasting away, his fathers dangerous genetic gift to him. That was the worst part of every day. The thinking of it. The idea itself. Symptoms passed, lingering for small pockets of time, but the perceptible reminders were the true villains of disease. They chipped away at hope.

Not until the previous summer had the terrible news come, but he didnt want it to matter. Hed had a few days of floating disbelief before he came back down, and then he continued with his life as he always had, using the illness as a prop, a rickety catapult to make sure he got something accomplished before it was too late.

Beside the bed, his desk leaned against the tacky fraternity wall, a hand-me-down from his fathers days at Verona. It was old, wobbly, and comfortable, with wood that had faded from a dark brown to a whispering tan. Above it, hed hung a poster of Berninis David slinging the rock at the giant Philistine, Goliath. His computer and piles of notes were strewn and unevenly stacked on its surface. There was not an inch to spare, and the research had spilled over onto the floor.

Every word was for an Independent Study course on the nature of God and truth, the structure of belief. Dash had decided on theology as his major not because he was a particularly religious person, nor because he was ill and needed some divine insurance. No, he had declared theology as his major first year for no reason other than some strange need and lack of interest in anything else.

He had set to work on his thesis, giving the proposal first to Dr. True for his go-ahead. Of course, Dash told the professor, the study of how the dying or the horribly ill curse or embrace God and their truth was all theoretical. Merely an interesting idea.

So, stacks and stacks of paper and books and charts and polls were everywhere in the dorm room. Dash was working and writing all the time. Since the News, he no longer participated in any of his sports, nor did he show up to meetings of Love Out Loud. He even shirked his fraternity house duties. He devoted his attention entirely to the completion of his paper.

Such determination, everyone said. You gotta respect that.

He used to be so much fun. Ill be glad when hes through with that paper!

They had no idea just how far he still had to go, how much writing and thinking and questioning still remained. Dashel had too much to say, too many big, thick words to proclaim, and a growing uncertainty of how to shout them.

He turned the cold knob on the door, walking barefoot and preoccupied down the carpeted hallway to the dingy shower.

This had not been a good year, he thought. Not by any means. Forces pulled at him. There was the sickness, but there was also what had occurred the previous spring with Wilder Rawls.