“Stop!” He screamed at the top of his lungs and ran at Melanie. Arthur tuned out the rest of the world and kept his eyes on her. He made sure to wave the grenade and pin around so everybody could see what he had. If they tried to tackle him or restrain him somebody was going to get blown the fuck up.
Despite his scream, she didn’t hear him. She was so wrapped up in her own little Satanic rite that she kept on. The blade started to fall just as he reached her. Arthur kept his arms up and bumped into her with his chest. The knife slipped from her hands and clattered against the stone table before hitting the floor. Melanie and Arthur fell together, their faces miraculously lining up in midair. Time slowed and the atmosphere went solid as they drifted to the ground. Her eyes danced their dazzling dance and her lips turned upward in a bemused smile. She was ecstatic to see him and in that dizzying, free falling moment she even seemed to mouth the words “love You.” Arthur’s gray heart flooded with color.
But then they hit the ground and reality forced its way back in.
Sense caught up with airborne fantasy and Melanie’s lovestruck eyes darkened. Her smile waned. Arthur’s head bounced against the stone floor, hard, but he blinked away impact stars and focused on keeping his grip on the grenade and pin. It looked like she was going to scream at him for screwing up her sick birthright, but instead the fire died and her eyes flashed brilliantly. Her lips didn’t retain a smile, but they held even, relaxed. They laid side by side, facing each other for an extended second, both wishing their lives were different, both wishing they could remain just like this, never moving, gazes locked, breathing one another in.
The crowd moved in. Melanie was pulled from the ground. Arthur watched her feet whisk away. He felt hands on him, but they quickly relinquished their grip as voices warned the grabbers away.
“Watch the grenade,” a frantic voice yelled and the crowd gave Arthur a bit more room.
There was a distinct ringing in his head and an unbearable sting in his foot. He didn’t know how much more trauma his body could take. There wasn’t any time to think about it now. Rather than wallow he pulled his aching body from the floor and faced the black-robed mob.
He held the grenade and pin before him and pointed it at the surrounding crowd. Men, women and children alike glared back at him from behind their hoods. Melanie was leaning on the man with familiar eyes. The man held a reassuring hand out, “Relax Arthur, we’re not gonna hurt you.” Melanie stared at him. The magic was gone. Her eyes were angry, her lips downturned.
Arthur swung the grenade for effect and backpedaled to Connor and the stone altar. The crowd fanned accordingly. “Untie him!” he screamed.
Nobody moved.
Connor echoed the request, “U-U-Un t-t-t-ie me!” His chest was a bloody mess. The monsters had carved a pentagram into it. He looked so small strapped to the table. Arthur felt a flush of embarrassment for his friend’s nudity. The poor guy’s twig and berries were on full display.
“I will blow as many of you motherfuckers up as I can if you don’t untie him!” Arthur surprised himself at the volume and command of his voice.
Sandy Hair Familiar Eyes, Melanie’s dad (yes, he was slow, but at long last the realization flowered), was whispering to another man. They both shrugged shoulders and raised hands until they motioned at a few men in the crowd. These men folded their arms across their chest and stood their ground until the man besides Melanie’s dad yelled, “Now!”
The two men huffed in protest but obeyed. They untied Connor’s bonds and then disappeared back into the crowd. Connor rolled off the stone table and rested on his knees for a moment before crawling toward Arthur for support.
“Now get the fuck out of the way!” Arthur screamed and gestured toward the antechamber.
The crowd parted.
Arthur pointed the grenade at a boy of about eight. “Give the robe!” The little boy didn’t wait for permission from an adult. He hiked the robe over his head (thankfully he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt beneath) and tossed it to Connor. Connor put it on and reclaimed his dignity. “I-I-I’m gonna b-b-burn you all!” The words ripped through his throat and attacked the crowd.
Arthur and Connor backed slowly out of the chamber. They moved in reverse, one cautious step at a time, up the stairs, through the warehouse and into the night.
11. PRETENDING THE FUTURE
Adrenaline fueled their escape. It surged through their bodies and tinged every careful, determined step with electric fire. Thought became anti-thought, a swell of ideas melted into movement—walk, run, climb, limp, run, until…the night.
One minute he was strapped to a stone altar, the next Connor was breaching the warehouse walls. Everything in between was a blur.
As they shambled through the maze-like streets of the industrial complex, heavy breathing, mile-a-minute mindset, Connor’s eyes alighted upon the grenade clutched in Arthur’s hand. He gestured toward it and the two stopped for a much needed breather. Arthur looked at his hands, the grenade held firmly in one, the pin dangling from the other. In the mad dash for freedom it seemed he had forgotten all about the explosive and its safe-keeping friend. Surprise raised his eyebrows. He nodded at Connor and then carefully eased the pin back into place.
Driven by pure urge, Connor grabbed for his most prized possession. “It-It-It’s m-m-mine,” he stammered like a selfish child and snatched it away. An awkward moment hung between them as they locked eyes. Arthur’s stare flashed with anger and Connor felt like an idiot (though the heft of the grenade felt good in his hands) for letting his base desires overtake him—there were much more important things to worry about right now and it didn’t matter that Arthur was carrying his grenade. It didn’t matter that the knobby little wonder was his world. There were more important things.
Right?
The silly standoff fizzled and they gave each other a look that said we-gotta-evade-these-psychotic-bloodthirsty-Satanists-before-we-can-hash-shit-out.
* * *
They walked for as long as they could.
Connor would’ve guessed hours, but his conception of time suffered along with the ever-aches that made his shoulders throb and his knees burn.
They didn’t talk. There was too much to say. Connor kept looking behind them, expecting pursuers, but there were none and after forty-five minutes of limping, Arthur leaning on him for support, they hid beneath a freeway overpass and tucked themselves into a shadowy juncture of concrete.
Sitting side by side they listened to the cars whooshing by above. Connor wasn’t sure what to say. He tried to kill Arthur. He didn’t mean to. It was The Flame, but since The Flame didn’t exist in a physical, see it, touch it, taste it sense, it didn’t really qualify as a valid excuse. Did it?
Connor gripped the grenade tightly. “A-A-Arthur?” he began still uncertain of where he was going to take it.
Arthur was staring at something at the bottom of the overpass. He didn’t answer.
Again, “A-A-Arthur?”
This time he came round. Snapping from a daze he answered, “Yeah?”
“T-T-T-hanks.” Though he owed an apology and an explanation, this seemed like the best place to begin. The guy saved his life. Despite trying to burn him to ash, Arthur jumped in and saved his life. He truly was the best friend he had ever had and it made Connor’s stomach feel funny to think that anyone could care about him like that. The sacrifice seemed a fitting enough fate for a fucker like him. Tied to a slab, the world stabbing away until he was dead—it made perfect sense and justified all of his fucked up explosive desires. A planet of Satanists and liars and insensitive fucks fit for burning. Arthur’s heroics shifted perception. There was some good in the world, something above The Flame, something worth saving.
But other than Arthur (who The Flame almost destroyed) how was Connor to distinguish between the good and the bad? When he released The Flame again, soon, Cottonwood set the plan into action and there was still so much to burn, there was no telling who it would eat. It
didn’t differentiate. It consumed indiscriminately.
Arthur shrugged and stared off. He was probably struggling with the attempted murder as well. Connor could tell. There was a coldness about him that said “I am only sitting by you because I have no choice.”
“I’m s-s-s-orry.”
He shrugged again.
“I-I-I c-c-ouldn’t s-s-see. The F-F-Flame…” Connor didn’t know how to explain. Tears welled in his eyes and he felt about five years old. “I-I-I...”
“It’s okay” Arthur said.
“I-I-I…”
“Really, Connor. It’s okay. I know.”
The tears began pouring. “B-B-But I-I-I d-d-didn’t m-m-mean…”
Arthur patted him on the shoulder. “I know. I know.”
The bastard was making it worse. He was too understanding. It made Connor feel like total shit. Why couldn’t he just yell or punch him? Why couldn’t he threaten to kill him back? Why couldn’t he have just left him there to be sacrificed to a false god?
He gripped the grenade even tighter, its bumpy surface digging squares into his soft palm. He looped one of his fingers through the pin. What if he pulled it? What if he gritted his teeth and pulled the sucker and let the blast carry him away? What it he pulled it and threw himself on top of too-good-Arthur and took him with him? That was the solution wasn’t it? There was no need to discriminate between good and bad because both needed to be freed.
Imagine the clink, the slide, the wait—the explosion.
Dropping the pin, the safety lever thrown, the striker rotating to detonate the primer, the primer setting the fuse—tick, tock—tick—tock—the fuse burning down and activating the main charge.
The MK2 was a fragmentary grenade. It was filled with TNT or EC blank fire powder dependent upon when and where it was manufactured. Upon detonation its metal casing would blow to pieces, propelling fragments in all directions. Rather than blowing him to pieces, as Connor imagined, the grenade was more likely to pepper him with metal and open some nice-sized holes within his vital organs. It could blow a hand off, or, if positioned perfectly perhaps any other part of the anatomy, but it stood little chance of doing the destruction he dreamed about.
Nevertheless, Connor saw his entire body coming apart, blown into the atmosphere piece by glistening piece, while the torment plaguing his thoughts (always, always, always) misted into sweet, sweet nothing. Nothing. Bone and blood sizzling, vaporizing, coating the concrete walls with a rainbow of earth tones and knobby chunks. Nothing.
Or maybe something? Maybe a new world?
A world of white? Like on TV with angels and puffy clouds and a guest list?
Or a world of fire like those idiot Satanists worshipped. Not the fire he adored, but hellfire and damnation and all of that superstitious bullshit.
Stupid.
Connor didn’t even care. In his fifteen years he’d been to hell and back. The only thing he feared was his mom and she was long gone.
But what if they were reunited in some twisted afterlife?
A shudder racked his spine. He pictured his mom with her bony, worn skin, saggy bra and panties, floating in a snowstorm (coke storm). Her eyes glowed red and her cracked mouth twisted into a jagged smile. She held her arms wide, Jesus Christ pose, and her hands were on fire. Dark shapes writhed behind her, their eyes blazing, their skin sallow and sunken. Fiends. In unison, the addicts and their bitch-mother-lord rasped his name.
Connor closed his eyes and shook the image. He let go of the pin and settled in against the concrete. Arthur was still patting his shoulder. “It’s okay man. It’s okay.” He comforted.
Connor sniffled. “I-I-I’m s-s-s-orry.” He reiterated.
“I know.” Arthur nodded.
For most of his life Connor felt that the world owed him. He was fucked up and malformed and had been cheated out of a happy childhood so he figured the world owed him and if it didn’t give him what he wanted his fiery actions were justified. Part of him believed it. To the core. To the bloody, gut biology of him. But another part knew it was crap. Forces beyond his control gave him a raw deal, but nobody owed him (except maybe his mom). His attitude, his armor, his hate, helped him cope, but in the end, when death descended, he feared it would come back and bite him. If there was nothing, good, great, hallelujah, that’s what he was banking on anyway. But he was scared that his beleaguered soul would carry on and the cruel joke that was existence would extend into infinite. Upon death his soul would float away and he’d learn that life was a test and that he failed. Guess what idiot? Now you have to do it all over again. And the promise of salvation would linger just beyond his grasp.
He pictured his mom in her best business suit. The lines in her face were gone, her skin smoothed to a golden glow and she floated atop a billowy cloud. “Connor” she called in her soft, pure, sober, heaven voice. She reached out and embraced him in a magic hug that aligned his spine and calmed his shakes and eradicated his stutter. The hug grew him a head taller and unscrambled his brain and put him in general education, no, in advanced classes.
Arthur gave him a soft shove. “You okay?”
Connor wiped away his tears and nodded.
“Look man, I gotta go.” He looked around nervously, “But I’m not sure what to do.”
Gotta go?
What was he talking about? He couldn’t go off on his own. Connor gave him a quizzical look.
“I can’t stay. We can’t stay together. It’s not safe.”
“B-B-But we d-d-ditched th-th-them.”
Arthur cocked his head, “No.”
Connor followed the gesture. There was a car sitting in the shadows about a hundred feet or so from the overpass. He didn’t notice it. He didn’t hear it pull up. It was probably there when they got here. It was just a coincidence, not the Satanists.
Arthur answered his thoughts. “They’ve been following us since we left the warehouse. I don’t know why they’re just sitting there.”
“W-W-We s-s-should run.”
“You should. I’ll stay and wait them out.”
Was he crazy? “N-N-No way. W-We g-g-gotta h-h-help each ot-ot-other.”
“You gotta go Connor. It’s not those fuckers I’m worried about.” His eyes stared off at some invisible point.
“Huh?”
“I can’t explain. You wouldn’t understand. But you have to get as far away from me as possible. I’m gonna sit here for a few more minutes. You need to crawl up there,” he pointed beyond the overpass to an overgrowth of bushes and shrubs, “and hide.”
Connor shook his head no.
Arthur went on. “Once you’re out of sight I’m gonna go down and meet them.”
“N-N-No.”
“They won’t kill me. I’m not exactly sure why, but they won’t. They would have already if they wanted to.”
“Y-Y-You c-c-can’t l-l-leave me.” Connor’s shakes began acting up. He couldn’t get them under control.
Arthur put a hand on each shoulder and stilled him. “Connor?”
Connor began taking deep breaths. His shoulders screamed from the barely-there weight of Arthur’s hands. Fucking restraints. The Satanist assholes probably screwed up his arms for life.
“Connor? Look at me. Look at me.”
Between breaths he looked Arthur in the eye.
“I’m not leaving you behind. I’m setting shit up. They won’t kill me. They will kill you—”
“F-F-Fucking bitch,” he muttered remembering Melanie.
“Yeah, well they are going to watch us or follow us or whatever until they decide to finish the job. Remember our plan?” Arthur let go of his thin shoulders and gave him a playful slug.
“H-H-Hollywood?” The very idea cleared the nervous fear. What the fuck was wrong with him? He planned on going it alone, guided by The Flame after he left Arthur at Cottonwood. Why was he feeling so scared and helpless now? The Devil worshippers must have shook him up pretty bad.
“Yeah man. Fuck yeah. So we do it
. All this crazy shit is happening for a reason right? Well, look at us now. A few years too early, but shit, we’re out and we gotta disappear. What better place to do it than Hollywood?”
Connor nodded his head. It made sense. It was a fifteen-year-old’s dream come true.
“I’ll go and handle this,” he hiked a thumb at their watchers, “You find a way to get some real clothes and we’ll meet back here.”
“W-W-What if—”
“I don’t come back? I will. I need two days. Tuesday night. I’ll be here Tuesday night.”
Two days. What was he supposed to do for two days? And what if Arthur didn’t come back? And why did it matter? He could do it himself. It only took one to burn. But the Hollywood fantasy, always a never, a dream, was actually a possibility. Maybe he could suppress The Flame for a time and learn to live. Maybe living in Hollywood with his best friend would settle the fire inside.
“W-W-Why t-t-two d-d-days?”
“I need to settle some stuff. Here’s what you do. You sleep at the park near the school. There are bums there and the cops won’t come around. Maybe you can trade the robe for some clothes. If not go to the Salvation Army a block over and beg. They couldn’t refuse a kid with no clothes. Same for food. Beg. We have to get used to it if we’re going to make it in Hollywood.”
“W-W-What s-s-stuff?”
“Just some things man. Don’t worry about it.” Arthur reached out and ruffled his hair. He shook his head and smiled. “We’re doing this man. Just like we talked about.”
Connor smiled back.
Arthur’s grin darkened. “You can’t get caught Connor. Whatever you do, you can’t get caught. You killed Leon.”
The building elation deflated. Connor nodded.
“I can’t believe it man. Why’d you do it? What happened?”
The Flame shifted inside. It smiled its ferocious crackling smile and hissed Tell him. Tell him why. Tell him Hollywood is going to burn next. Connor fought it down. “I-I-I d-d-don’t k-know.”
Lambs Page 20