The House at the End of the World

by Madeleine Marsh

  That day at the hospital they got their own stash of extra-strong meds, pills which had Matt whistling folk music and seeing pink elephants for thirty-six hours until he could walk without pulling his stitches. They kept those pills for emergencies only. That attack, and the time a baby alligator bit Luke’s left little toe off in Big River, were probably the worst injuries they’ve suffered. They've known others who’ve been killed doing what they do. They considered themselves extremely lucky. Now Luke isn’t so sure it was luck.

  In the kitchen, Joe is making more coffee and what looks like hot chocolate, frothing milk, working the espresso machine like he was born to it.

  ‘You're a natural,’ Matt tells him as he takes possession of his second steaming mug of caffeine.

  ‘Don't leave it to go cold this time,’ Joe scolds him and Matt looks suitably chastised, playing along.

  Joe hands Emilie something that definitely isn't coffee and her eyes mist up like she's going to cry.

  ‘You are the best,’ she tells him from the heart, then, ‘Oh, you don't have any of those....’ she trails off and both she and Joe turn pointedly to look at Matt and Luke.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Those little coloured marshmallows they had at the diner?’

  In the storage space at the back of the diner, they found huge bags of little button mallows – ice cream toppings – along with bags of freeze dried coffee for the machine and a chest freezer containing more frozen burgers and sausages than they could possibly eat before dying of heart disease.

  ‘Second cupboard on the left,’ Luke tells her, and is mildly surprised to watch Joe reach in and pull out a packet.

  ‘That is somewhere between utterly brilliant and creepy as fuck.’ But it doesn’t stop her pouring as many mallows as she can into her drink before it spills over the rim of the mug.

  Matt blows warm air over the surface of his coffee as Luke dusts the last of the snow from his shoulders.

  Joe asks them, ‘Did anything the landlord said make sense to you boys?’

  Luke doesn't mean to ignore him, he never means to exclude them but sometimes it’s just habit to tune out everything but Matt. He meets his brother’s querying expression.

  ‘You said he looked familiar? You think you've seen him somewhere before?’

  ‘Yeah, but I can't get a handle on it. Something from way back.’ Then Matt answers Joe’s query. ‘No, nothing he said meant anything.’

  ‘So what now?’ Emilie poses the question between sips of very hot chocolate given the wisps of steam rising from it.

  Luke looks pointedly at her. ‘We’re supposed to know?’

  ‘I mean, what do we do? I don’t think I should lie around making snow angels all day.’

  ‘I have no idea.’ It’s the God’s honest truth but they all just look at him. ‘Honestly, I can’t remember ever having nothing to do. We never just sit and read a book or watch pointless TV and no—’ He holds up one finger, a warning sign to Matt to keep his mouth shut. ‘Cable porn doesn’t count.’

  ‘Of course not because you never just sit and watch it. You're always... doing something else at the same time.’ He looks away and Luke grins at him. They spent many a post-puberty hour watching chicks with huge fake tits suck off guys who should otherwise have been so lucky.

  ‘Maybe we should go after Rick,’ Emilie suggests, but Luke’s never had time for drama. The only person he’s ever run after is his brother, on the very rare occasions that he’s needed to.

  ‘He just needs to calm down about whatever’s got him wound up. He’ll come back. Where else is there to go?’

  Emilie looks as if she’s got something else to say, a different opinion, but she doesn’t offer it up. ‘How about a board game?’

  Luke glances at her with the enthusiasm of drying paint. ‘How about not?’

  ‘Come on, don't be like that! What about Scrabble?’

  ‘We quit school at thirteen and eleven respectively. What makes you think we even know what Scrabble is?’

  ‘Bet you're real good at Jeopardy,’ Joe puts in, and Matt laughs.

  Luke glares at him while admitting, ‘We could probably hold our own against Zimmer Frame from Delaware and Corpse McCrumbly from Texas.’

  ‘Thought so. The tough life of a tracker.’ Joe's taking the piss and Luke lets it slide.

  ‘Monopoly.’ Emilie tries again.

  This times Matt rolls his eyes. ‘The most boring game ever invented. You have to spend all your time planning a bank heist because it's the only way to win!’

  ‘Cluedo?’

  Luke sighs. ‘Carry on like this and it’ll be me in the kitchen with the lead piping.’

  But Matt's suggestion is worse than any of Emilie’s. ‘What about a Ouija board? Do you think we’d reach lots of people or no one?’

  ‘I don’t think having a séance in the afterlife is a spectacular idea.’

  ‘Fair point. How about a walk?’ Now Matt’s doing it, excluding the others simply using the tone of his voice. It sounds like a much better option than standing here until he punches someone, so he nods and follows, leaving the rest of them presumably staring at their backs, unaware that the conversation was over until the moment they left it.

  They go out again and walk around to the back of the house. The Mustang is still there and bizarrely it’s free from snow, a big black patch of shining metal in the otherwise completely white landscape. The rust bucket is covered too, so that only a hint of blackened chrome is visible.

  ‘The Chevy used to belong to Dad’s friend, Bill.’ Matt recalls. ‘This really is all us.’

  Luke nods, sitting up on the hood of their car. ‘I think so.’

  Matt slides up next to him, careful not to spill his coffee. Their shoulders touch, elbows jostling for a comfortable position like they’re fighting over a cinema armrest but they quickly get comfortable, pressing against each other the way they’ve always done.

  ‘Remember that tracker, Jess or Joan? A guy with a girl’s name. Used to hang out at that ruin of a roadhouse outside of Reno; Angie’s place. Drove a battered old Skyline with a fantastic engine. Used it to street race for cash.’

  Luke remembers. He tilts his head to look at Matt, wondering where he’s going with this. ‘Jane.’

  ‘That's it. Ridiculous name for a guy. He used to wear the T-shirt with the marshmallow sailor on it?’

  In his lifetime Luke’s seen enough to drive any normal person to suicide but the only thing he's ever despaired of is Matt's inability to soak up popular culture when he himself manages it simply by spending an hour or two in a public place. ‘The Staypuft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters, moron.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘How can you not know that?’

  Matt shrugs like he couldn’t care less. ‘The point is his T-shirt had that phrase on it.’

  ‘Quote! It's a quote from Ghostbusters! Zool, the demi-God says it when they're on the rooftop, 'Choose and perish.' Ray thinks of the Staypuft Marshmallow Man who appears and tries to kill them.’

  His brother’s staring at him. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘How do you not know it? Everyone knows it!’

  ‘But how do you know it?’

  ‘When you were young I used to sneak out to the drive-in once you'd fallen asleep.’

  Matt's mouth drops open, his eyes widen. ‘You left me in the Airstream alone to go watch movies?’

  ‘Yeah. So what? Nothing happened, did it? You weren't kidnapped by Old Man Paedophile and sold into slave labour. So shut your cake hole.’ Matt rolls his eyes. ‘So what about it?’

  ‘What about what?’

  ‘Jane's T-shirt, the Ghostbusters quote.’

  ‘I was thinking, although now it's been built up too much....’

  ‘Get on with it!’

  ‘'Choose and perish'. I think that might be what the landlord was saying, in a roundabout way. We have to make the decision to leave.’

  ‘And then we perish?�
�

  ‘I don't know.... I'm just saying, that's kinda what it reminded me of.’

  ‘That's a stupid choice. Why would we walk away from this if we thought we were going to be dead the moment we left?’

  Matt looks around them. ‘Boredom?’

  He has a point. They've only been here a day and they're already wondering what to do with themselves. The new facet to their relationship hasn't changed anything. It's good to finally be acquainting his dick with someone else's hand but they're too used to one another, to being around each other twenty-four-seven, for it to be a permanent distraction. Besides, they're both too exhausted, mentally and physically, to be doing it more than twice, three times a day, tops. Now they've stopped chasing things Luke thinks he can feel each and every old injury finally demanding if not attention then definitely acknowledgement.

  ‘Anyway, we're not dead.’ Matt states it with feeling, with certainty. ‘We would know.’

  ‘How would we know? We haven’t died before. How can we know what it feels like?’

  ‘What we've been doing? I don't think we'd feel that good if we were dead. Then again, if it's all in our minds and our bodies don't really exist we’d imagine sensation. It wouldn’t have anything to do with our physical forms.’

  Luke presses his fingers into his eyes, massaging his eyeballs behind the lids. He’s tempted to nudge Matt’s elbow and spill his coffee. He wonders if dead people get headaches. ‘Have you always been like this and I've been too caught up in you to notice?’

  He can feel Matt pouting; he doesn’t need to see it. ‘You're no longer caught up in me?’

  ‘Of course I am! It's just, well, different. You know, now nothing's trying to tear you apart on a daily basis.’

  Matt takes a deep breath in and lets it out slowly. ‘And you were asking why we'd ever walk away from this?’

  Luke's still thinking about that, about how to respond, when they both sit up in unison. Something’s coming. They can hear it, shifting through the deep snow covering the path along the side of the house. Habit has them tensing for a fight but it's just Joe, striding through the white stuff with determination, hands in his coat pockets.

  ‘Hey,’ Luke calls out in greeting.

  Joe stops and smiles, shouting over, ‘Notice how it's warm out here even though it looks cold and there's enough snow on the ground to embarrass the Arctic?’

  ‘I don’t like being cold,’ Matt explains, the reason for the weirdness.

  ‘I keep coming out here expecting to find a Starbucks on the other side of the road.’

  ‘You know how much I hate those chains. Besides, no one makes coffee like you do.’

  ‘Well, I'm glad I'm good for something around here.’ He hasn’t come any closer. He’s staying within shouting distance. Clearly there’s something on his mind.

  ‘What's up?’

  ‘Rick's not back.’

  Luke shrugs. ‘I assume he’s at the roadhouse cooling off from whatever got him going in the first place.’

  ‘It’s not like him to lay into someone like that. And it's only eleven in the morning.’

  ‘Feels like the afternoon,’ Luke mutters.

  ‘Are you worried about him?’ Matt calls out.

  Luke watches Joe shift his weight onto his other leg. ‘Maybe. Something's going on with him. Emilie says he thinks he died in the battle.’

  They both know she's right. They were right. They confirm this with a single glance at one another. Here, now, it's trivial, but in the past this ability to communicate without words has saved their lives.

  ‘I don't know what to say,’ Luke responds. ‘He seems the same as he's been since we picked him up.’ Joe nods and obviously it's not the reason he's out here. ‘Something else?’

  ‘Emilie wants to know if there's any chance of getting something by Tess Gerritsen on the bookshelf.’

  The words 'I'm not fucking Santa Claus' are right on the tip of his tongue but Luke bites down on them at the last possible moment and just nods. He’s probably narrowly avoided a never-ending string of bad jokes about red velvet from his brother, the comedian.

  Joe shrugs. ‘I said I’d ask.’

  As he turns to make his way back, Matt calls out, ‘Joe? Thanks for all the coffee. I'd never dream of replacing you with a franchise.’

  Joe waves back at them over his shoulder, and as walks away they hear him say, ‘I wouldn't mind some culture, possibly a theatre?’ It sounds like he’s talking to himself. Luke hopes so, he hates the theatre.

  ‘If we gave them everything, do you think they'd be happy?’ Matt asks him idly.

  He seriously doubts that and Matt already knows the answer. ‘It's not that big a place. If we gave them everything, where would they put it?’

  Matt smirks. ‘Very funny.’

  ‘Listen....’ Luke gets serious, sliding his hand over Matt’s palm and pushing his fingers up into the loose sleeve of his coat. ‘I’m still so caught up in you I don’t know where I end and you start. The two of us... we're all tangled up. We always have been and we always will be.’ It's difficult to say this stuff but he needs Matt to know that some things won’t ever change. ‘You're here and that's all that matters.’

  Matt's smile assures him he understands what it took to say that. His eyes promise Luke that it’s all mutual, that he loves him too and won’t ever leave him. But Matt’s also good at knowing when a situation needs defusing. ‘You’re so the chick in this relationship.’

  Luke sits back but doesn’t retrieve his hand where it’s warm inside Matt’s coat. ‘I’m the chick? You’re the one with the long hair.’

  ‘You need to get over my hair. I've worn it the same way for fifteen years.’

  Luke hesitates, but there’s still something he needs to say. ‘I don't ever want to get over you. I don't ever want to be without you. If you go, I go.’

  Matt turns his head but instead of another smart-assed reply, he reaches his left hand up to the back of Luke's neck and pulls him forward until their foreheads touch. ‘Yeah,’ is all he says before he tilts his head and slides his mouth across Luke's. It’s a quick, dry touch that doesn't become anything more but feels perfect. And it’s not weird, the way they both thought it would be. That’s the reason they haven’t tried it before but Luke wants, needs, to try it again and for longer because the possibilities are now crowding out every other thought in his mind until he's on the verge of begging for it.

  Matt's eyes suddenly widen and he sits back so quickly he almost breaks Luke's nose. ‘The theatre!’

  Luke stares at him, somewhat disappointed and slightly confused. ‘What?’

  ‘Oh my God, that's it, that's where I've seen the landlord before!’

  ‘What are you talking about? We haven't been to the theatre since the night....’ The same memory hits him with full force, so incredibly vivid that for a moment he can't see Matt or the surrounding snow scene, he can only see the stage, the cast of actors, the two characters who were supposed to be invisible, and the man made of clockwork.

  ~..~

  Rick pushes open the narrow door and steps inside. The bar looks the same as it did last night, right down to the same people drinking around the same tall, unstable tables and buying drinks from the same double-D barmaid in the tight Lakers T-shirt. He orders a beer and a shot of tequila and if last night was anything to go by he won't have to pay for them. He’s curious as to whose memory the barmaid came from, Luke's or Matt's, or possibly both. Maybe she did them together one dark night in some seedy motel in a two-bit town as far from the interstate as it's possible to get.

  He doesn't understand Matt and Luke. He's been grateful to them for saving him back in Michigan Bar but that gratitude is fading fast and with each passing hour he's starting to harbour a deep-seated regret about ever having met them, about following them to Five Points and finally leaving the relative safety of the diner for the battlefield in the park. Sure, that was the right thing to do at the time and yes, he owed them, no
t just Matt and Luke but all of them, and not just for Michigan Bar but for the other times in other towns since. Look where doing the right thing has got him.

  He picks up the shot glass, filled to the brim with golden liquor, and tips it down his throat so he barely tastes it, just feels the burn. He soothes that with half the cold beer. There's a television over the bar playing a recording of a Lakers game. It's the first television he's seen in months with a picture on it and it's just further proof that nothing here is real. Not the drink, not the barmaid’s breasts, not the other people.

  The concrete floor is sticky from spilt drinks and possibly other fluids. He doesn't know where this bar was originally or what it was like. He doesn't recognise it so it isn't somewhere they've been with him in tow and the others didn't say anything last night about it looking familiar. It's from happier times, he guesses, if Matt and Luke have such things in their past.

  The pool table's free so he gets another round of drinks and takes the glasses over to the raised platform next to the window where the table's racked, ready and waiting for a game. He doesn't want company and no one asks to join him. He picks out a cue from the set on the wall, positions the white and takes a shot. The balls scatter, a stripe falling in slow motion into the far left hand pocket. Finishing the last of his first beer, he lines up the cue ball. He, like Matt, is a born hustler. Matt's advantage is that he looks like he wouldn't kick a rabid dog while Rick looks like someone who's out to make a quick buck. He didn't always look like this obviously, or he wouldn't ever have been successful in his chosen career, but in the weeks he spent on his own between the incursion of Hell on Earth and being pulled out of a dumpster by a guy with a shotgun, he let himself go, less interested in personal hygiene than in simply surviving. He's been a conman most of his life, started out taking lunch money from his classmates and ending up parting vulnerable old women from their welfare benefits. He's always considered himself very good at what he does, one of the best he thought, until he met Gabe and realised the salesman was in another league entirely. Selling two hundred grand cars to idiots who lost half the value of their new acquisition the moment all four wheels left the forecourt is a real class act. Gabe has travelled all over the world, exotic trips paid for by money he barely lifted a finger to earn. The life of a conman isn't an easy or lazy one. Gabe hasn't done a day of hard work in his life, and he's happy to admit it, but he has made more money in a single hour than Rick's made ever. And now he's the one standing on the edge of Hell. Life isn't fair and death's no different.