by Eric Shapiro
“Excuse me,” I say.
Nobody hears or sees me. I clear my throat:
“Excuse me!”
Silence. All eyes on me. Just like the Meditation Circle. I must be some sight to see: scratched face, bloodshot eyes, spit-drenched pant leg, twitching appendages.
I say to the room, “I’ve got a dead lion outside on the hood of my car.”
Joel aims his baby blues at me. He’s too focused on his goal to wonder what I’m doing here. He smiles and says, “Thank you, son.”
30
Less than sixty minutes to the fall. I volunteer to help carry the dead lion to the backyard. They’ve got the yard doused in gasoline, so the plan is to plant the dead animal on the grass, wait for its friends (three of them altogether, according to Larry), and then throw a lit match on the lawn. Goodbye lions. While Joel, Larry, and I pace toward the front door, I ask them if the tamer can prevent the lions from entering the trap. They assure me that the tamer won’t know it’s a trap.
“I can’t believe I’m going through with this,” Larry says to Joel.
“Stop complaining. Would you rather be on your knees waiting to die?” Joel says to Larry. “Be a mensch.”
Joel opens the front door. The Wolf lies broken on the grass. The mane-less cat is right where I left her two minutes ago. Part of me feels bad for her, but the other nine-tenths of me is pleased.
We move quickly. Joel and Larry step to opposite sides of the animal. I guess that leaves me with the middle.
“We’re gonna get bloody,” says Joel, lifting the corpse, “so we’ll toss our clothes in the back, too.”
“Good idea,” Larry groans, lifting his end.
I step to the center and hook my arms under the lion’s ribcage.
Then Joel snorts. Or was that Larry?
The lion’s face is in mine. I see its teeth and throat. Its roar burns my cuts.
We drop the lion and run toward the porch. The animal lands on its feet. It shakes its body the way a dog does after a bath. Blood sprays on the door as we slam it.
31
The books and plates have been cleared off the kitchen table. Joel, Larry, and I throw our bloody clothes on its center. We stand in our underwear: Joel and Larry wear boxers and T-shirts; I wear only boxers. I feel Katherine eyeing my torso, and I cross my arms. Joel shakes his head and says, “It’s not enough. We need lots of blood.”
“Cut me,” I say. No contemplation.
Joel shares my enthusiasm for time management. Without a nod or a glance, he moves to the utensil drawer. Whispers and sighs abound. Katherine groans to Larry (she knows that addressing Joel is useless), “This is beyond belief.”
Larry turns his palms upward and shrugs.
The utensil drawer clatters as Joel tears it open. He produces a sizeable carving knife. The blade’s teeth twinkle: a drooling smile. I see myself dying on the kitchen floor. Joel’s breath is in my eyes: “You sure you wanna do this, son?”
“I’m the youngest one here,” I say.
“What kind of answer is that? Just because you’re able doesn’t mean you’re willing.”
My mind is fogged. I can’t tell the difference between willing and able. Where does one end and the other begin? I was willing to kill Paula’s captors, but not fully able. I was able to help with Baby Selma’s birth, but apparently unwilling. My shoulders tense up. This reminds me of Algebra class; too much noise in my head. “Cut me open right now,” I say, my bare body quivering.
“First you gotta tell me you’re sure,” Joel grins.
“Why? So you don’t feel guilty?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Have I ever been sure about anything? The only thing I know I’m sure of is that I want to see Selma. And I can’t get to her if there are predators outside. Desire to see Selma … plus blood donation … equals ability to see Selma. Willingness begets ability in this case.
“Yes, I’m sure. Do it now.”
“Where?”
“Right here in the kitchen,” Larry deadpans. Nobody laughs.
“I don’t know where,” I breathe. “You’re the one with the books.”
“The books don’t go into that,” says Joel.
“Someplace fleshy,” says Katherine.
Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Katherine? How ’bout I get out of these uncomfortable boxers?
“Your calf,” Joel exhales. “What about your calf?”
I lift my foot off the floor and slam it on the tabletop, right above the clothes. Joel circles around me and grips my flesh. I laugh a little. (Now I know why Selma’s legs were always ticklish.) Joel holds my calf with his left hand and aims the blade with his right. We make eye contact. I see no pleasure in him; he feels for me. And I feel for him feeling for me.
Until the metal teeth bite into my leg. Then I only feel pain.
I throw my head back and see a window in the ceiling. The glass reflects my blood spilling everywhere.
32
Fifteen minutes later.
All lights are off. The senior citizens and myself stand before the kitchen window, which is open a crack. I’ve got a torn towel wrapped around my calf. Our bloody clothes are in the middle of the pool of gasoline out back. Nobody else seems to realize that the room is spinning.
We look and we wait.
“How long will this take?” Larry frowns.
“Will you stop with the complaining?” Joel moans.
Everybody stirs and shouts. Joel hisses, “Ssshhh.”
A horizontal silhouette saunters across the backyard. Nobody so much as blinks. Joel digs into his pocket and produces a box of wooden matches. He shakes open the box, picks out a match, takes aim, and stands ready to strike.
I can’t help myself. “The second they catch fire,” I whisper dizzily, “I have to run.”
“Suit yourself,” Larry nods, pumping my shoulder.
Another beast tiptoes across the yard. Both have manes. These may be my pals from the gas station. They circle around the soiled rags.
I think to myself, That’s right, motherfuckers. You’re here to stay.
Joel moves his match and matchbox toward the crack in the window.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” somebody mutters.
I nod my head. Miraculously, it stays attached to my neck.
The animals study the clothing. They lick their chins and noses.
(When I was in grade school, we took a class trip to the zoo. There were hundreds of students on that trip, but only one thought between us: We’ve gotta see the lions! I never thought I’d relive the same emotion.)
Joel has a wheeze in his breath. Sounds like he has emphysema. Maybe that’s why he’s unafraid of the end; he’s been preparing for it for a while. I place a hand on his back, behind his lungs. He says nothing, doesn’t turn.
“There,” whispers Larry.
A healthy female joins the two males. The animals examine the bait and make eye contact; the shoulder-free equivalent of shrugging.
“One more,” Larry grins, more with wonderment than pleasure.
All eyes on the backyard.
I turn around and see a male lion standing in the hallway. His tongue hangs and drips. He seems unnaturally patient.
I blink to make the thought go away.
When I face the window again, I see pay dirt: four lions—two males, one female, and one bleeding, glassy mess—surrounding the precious threads. Their feet are planted in the grass. I pat myself on the back for being the owner of the blood.
Joel begins to strike the match, then pauses. “Wanna give us a little prayer, Kathy?”
Katherine squints and thinks before saying, “Dear Adonai: Help us light up these fucking bastards.”
You got that, God?
Joel lights the match and tosses it out the window.
The lions’ ears twitch.
A line of mystical orange snakes across the grass. When it hits the clothes, it changes from a line to a circle. The kitch
en turns bright. The flames finger liquid from my pupils. I see the man in red race toward the flames (he must have been on the side of the house), then wave his arms wildly, spin around, and run away. No smile on his ugly face now. He leaves his whip to fry on the lawn.
The fat man grabs a water hose from the kitchen sink. Joel says, “Hang on a sec, Stan. Let them sizzle.”
And sizzle they do. Aching cries explode from their upturned mouths. They run around the yard in fiery circles. Lights switch on in some neighbors’ houses. I’m in desperate need of sunglasses.
One male’s front legs collapse. Then a female’s. They roll over on their backs and kick the air. The other male scrapes his side against a tree; the tree goes up in flames. Stan drags his hose toward the back door. Joel says, “Hang on. One’s still standing.”
The one that’s still standing is the one that got hit by The Wolf. Some trooper she is. I admire her endurance. But I smile nonetheless when she drops.
Stan runs out the door. The lawn is covered with flames and blackened meat. I hear the fire hose’s pressured hiss. I feel Joel’s hands on my shoulders. He whispers in my ear, “You’re an angel.”
I turn to him. His blue eyes reflect the flames.
I press my forehead against Joel’s and shut my eyes. Maybe a little of his essence will pass into me.
Joel pats the small of my back as I slip past him.
I head toward the front door. Seniors line the hallway, all of them staring and nodding. I suppose that I could walk to Selma’s house, but I don’t really feel like it.
It would be much more appropriate to run.
33
Selma’s family is huddled in the bay window. They’re little black smudges from where I stand. If I had more time, I would pause for a breath, but I need every moment I can get. Plus, I’m in no mood to encounter my friend with the red jacket. With any luck, he’s curled up under a tree somewhere, crying his way toward death.
I want Selma to open the door, run across the lawn to me, and smother me with her mouth, but she’s afraid of the lions, so I have to go up to the porch.
I knock only once. No locks turning or chains jingling—the door opens right away. If there’s a prettier girl on Earth, I haven’t met her. Selma’s face is pale with anxiety and exhaustion, but it punches me in the chest and nearly knocks me down. Her lips—always so smooth that, when my eyes were closed, I could never tell where they ended and where her cheeks and chin began—are on me, kissing my eyelids and forehead and cheeks and wounds.
She tells me I took forever. I tell her not to say words like forever. She warns me to step inside before I get attacked by a lion. I tell her it’s too late, and not to worry about lions from now on. Then I say to her, weakly, not to worry about anything anymore, because I’m here and she’s here and we love each other and nothing else matters. She touches my elbow and leads me into her chilly foyer. This is the last time I will step indoors. Before I know it, I am at Selma’s kitchen table, drinking cranberry juice. Selma’s father is forcing a smile and asking me what it was like out there. I tell him, “It was grand,” and sip my juice.
The plan is to die in the living room, on the carpet, in a collapsed huddle, down on our knees, cheeks pressed together, palms touching backs. Well, they don’t go into that much detail, but that’s what I envision. I say that that’s a good idea, and through deep breaths I politely (as politely as possible) say to Selma’s parents that I know every minute counts but I would still—if it’s no problem—like to talk to Selma alone for just a moment.
In actuality, the moment is seventeen minutes—seventeen long minutes that fortunately feel like thirty—wherein I hold Selma in the shower of the upstairs bathroom. I touch her wet upper back and think of my mother, and wonder for a moment if my mother called Selma’s parents to see if I made it here okay, but I know that Mom’s too much of a realist for such a move. I wonder if they miss me right now, my awesome family, but I don’t have to wonder about that either, because I’m sure that they do. (And also, somewhere deeper, I’m sure that they’ll be fine.) Selma cries into the crook of my shoulder; her tears aren’t theatrical or mannered like they were back during some of our fights; they’re soft and slow and from somewhere deep; full of regret; oh, what we might have done if only we had had more time.
It’s like a funeral with beating hearts in the coffins. I enter Selma’s body briefly—too briefly, but long enough to feel that tender friction that makes me her and her me and us us—and she hisses through closed teeth and throws her head back; she’s not wet enough, but she wants me inside her so bad that she’s willing to go through pain. Just like I wanted to see her so bad that I was willing to go through hell.
I don’t know if we would have made it had we lived longer. Objectively speaking, she’s a little too loose and I’m a little too tightly wound, but maybe in the long run that would have made for vital chemistry. In any case, there’s no more long run. We’re cruising down the short run, and we’re the best each other can find.
When Selma’s eyelashes are wet, she looks like a mystical creature come from exotic lands, a mermaid or a sensual alien. Beads of water use her top lashes as hammocks; the lower ones droop and reveal to me her powerful eyes. She doesn’t look at me, she looks into me, as if there’s something in here, something soulful and true. By now, I should know whether or not I think the same. But I don’t, and I may not ever. The sublimity I witnessed after Baby Selma’s birth has slipped back into the woodwork, but that doesn’t mean I don’t sense an afterlife. Who says divinity must glow? Maybe it’s plain; maybe God is plain. For all we know, this whole paradise business is as banal as your corner grocer. No trumpets play when you arrive. You just get winks and nods from the established patrons, some of whom chuckle and say to you, “What? You were expecting a welcoming committee?”
And that would be okay. Anything would be nicer than nothingness. Except for hell, of course. But I don’t really buy into that shit. Something kind of melodramatic about the thought of red demons flashing their teeth. Besides, like I said, I’ve seen hell already, and as far as I’m concerned it’s quite beatable.
Selma stands in front of me. I towel her off: chest, belly, pubis. Till the very end, she never stopped shaving. (Perhaps she shaved after our morning phone call.) I’d like to chew gently on her for hours. Her nipple resting on my tongue would amply constitute paradise. We hug each other; bare flesh, her soft chest against my hard one, my hard waist against her soft one. The two of us.
“We have to go downstairs,” she says. Every word like mist. Even the consonants are soft. I don’t want to nod, but I do. She touches my hand. Time to go downstairs and meet The Man Upstairs. Or Woman, as the case may be.
We run. Selma in front of me; her legs, her shoulders, her back. I want to kiss the part in her hair.
I don’t know if I’m whole; I may not be. I’ve done my best. But I know my love is whole. As I put one arm around Selma and another around her mother, with her father’s forehead against mine, I feel a love so ferocious it belongs in a cage. I am sure that this feeling will last. As for everything else?
It’s only temporary.
About the Author
Eric Shapiro is a writer and filmmaker. Called "the next Philip K. Dick" by author Kealan Patrick Burke, Shapiro is the author of six critically acclaimed fiction books, among them the novella "It's Only Temporary" (2005), which appeared on Nightmare Magazine's list of the Top 100 Horror Books, and numerous short stories published in anthologies alongside work by H.P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Chuck Palahniuk, and many others. His nonfiction articles have been published on The Daily Dot, Ravishly, and The Good Men Project. His first feature film, "Rule of 3" (2010), won awards at the Fantasia International Film Festival and Shriekfest, and had its U.S. premiere at Fantastic Fest. His second feature film, "Living Things" (2014), was endorsed by PETA (People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals) and distributed by Cinema Libre Studio. In 2015, he won the 19th Annual Fade I
n Award for Thriller Screenplays. He is a founding partner of Ghostwriters Central, a writing and editing firm which has received positive notices from The Wall Street Journal, Consumers Digest, and the TV program "Intelligence For Your Life." Eric has edited works published on The Huffington Post and Forbes, as well as two Bram Stoker Award-nominated novels. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Rhoda, and their two sons.
Other books by Eric Shapiro
The Devoted
Days of Allison
Love and Zombies
Short of a Picnic
Strawberry Man
Table of Contents
IT’S ONLY TEMPORARY
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About the Author