Revival House

by S. S. Michaels

  I could break his neck in a fraction of a second.

  ...oxygen...

  “Lot of good that’s doing us now,” I say. “Postmortem photography has a rich tradition of its own. It’s the farthest thing from disrespect. And,” I called up the Forever Hollywood website and swung my monitor around to face him, “if you’ll just look at what others are doing to honor the dead now, you might understand how things are changing...”

  “Nonsense! There is no room for change in this business. Change. Ha! Look what ‘change’ did for this country, electing that secret-Muslim president when he ran on his slogan of ‘change.’ Well, son, change is not what this business needs. We need more dead people, pure and simple. The way people live now, with their antibacterial soaps and their jogging and damned gym memberships, deaths are just more spread out. Naturally, some of the funeral parlors will be run out of business— there just aren’t enough stiffs to go around anymore. Survival of the fittest— they teach you that at your fancy Yankee school? We’re not big enough to compete with some of the other powerhouses in town. And it doesn’t make much sense for you to go monkeying around with fate.”

  He does not see the potential for success here.

  “Just leave it alone, boy.”

  I shove myself away from my desk and stalk out of the building, slamming the door behind me. I walk over to Forsyth Park, stalking the perimeter as I mumble to myself about the state of my personal affairs.

  “Crazy ass,” a low voice says from a cluster of azaleas as I pass by.

  I freeze and turn my head to see who had spoken.

  Two males laugh from the foliage. “Yeah, I’m talking to you, stick boy.” Two burly frat boys, each clutching a can of what I presume to be beer (the cans are encased in University of Georgia foam can coolers), step into my path.

  “Excuse me,” I say, stepping around them to the right. One of them pushes me off the curb and into the street. He does not see the blur of my fist fly into his zygomatic arch, but I guarantee he feels it. I know I do. Oh, the delicious sensation of my own skin meeting stubble-covered elastic skin, followed by phalange and juncturae tendinum penetrating the thin sheet of muscle, the Zygomaticus minor, to land in a satisfying crunch against the sharp unyielding bone beneath. That dull cracking sound. The natural lines in my knuckles open like little red mouths, leaving a trail of my blood on his high and fractured cheekbone. His eyes squint shut, his teeth fall together with a click. I recoil my fist, cock my leg, and place a perfect round kick square into his ribs. My shoe scuffs, the laces dig into the top of my foot, the sound of an air-filled paper bag popping fills the azalea-scented air. The boy doubles over and falls into the bushes.

  In case you’re curious, Georgia state law allows citizens the right to commit simple battery if provoked by ‘fighting’ words. This is how I stay out of the state prison system.

  A fist glances off the middle of my back and I turn to face my other assailant.

  “Dude, what’s your fucking problem?” he asks.

  Hydrogen, helium, lithium...

  “Sir, I do believe it is you who has the problem.” I throw my hands behind his square head and pull it down to meet my upward thrusting knee. The plane of his forehead bounces off the upper edge of my patella with a resounding smack. He stumbles backward, hands flying to his cranium.

  “Okay, okay, holy shit, man, sorry,” he says, holding his head.

  The funniest part is he’s still clutching his beer in one hand and hasn’t spilled a drop of it. He looks at his friend rolling into the bushes.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here. Buncha freaks in this fucking town, man.”

  I take a Hermes handkerchief from my pocket and rub the scuff off my shoe before wrapping the cloth around my bloodied knuckles. I straighten my tie and continue my walk around the park with a renewed sense of peace.

  After a single mile-long lap, I head back home. I let myself in the back door and go downstairs to my basement lab.

  ~

  Why do people have to die?

  It is the question that has haunted me my entire life. I don’t know if it’s because of my parents’ murder, my family’s business, or just some in-born curiosity. I sit down at my lab table and open up my notebook computer. Along the far wall, behind glass, in the cabinet, mice scratch in their cages, hamsters run in wheels, lizards sleep on rocks.

  Some vague memory from half a foggy lifetime ago drives my brain, stabs it, spurs me on to search for an answer to this damned eternal question. Maybe something from school? I can’t quite remember. The thought dances just out of reach of my memory.

  It’s the paradox of my existence: I want the key to immortality, but I need death in order to survive.

  Somewhere in the wasteland of my head lurks the answer.

  Chapter 12 – Sterling

  Foreclosure notice. Bah. I found it stuck in between the double front doors when I opened up this morning. It’s a twin to the one I hid in the safe. That one came about two weeks ago.

  I do not know how I ever got this far behind, how things got so desperate. Billie always handled the bookkeeping. Utilities, supplies, automobiles, equipment. And the big bill that she’d never see: the second mortgage. I’d had to borrow money against the parlor when she went to The Home.

  My poor, sweet Billie. That boy... that boy took her life, our life. That boy killed her. He was too young and inexperienced to be driving a float. Too young to be drinking. Those things might have been under my control, but he’s still the one who killed her. And, when he did that, he killed the business by shoving this boulder of a debt on top of everything.

  I knew we should have never sent him up north. I knew he’d want to change everything once he came home. Damn Yankees and their change and progress. That’s not our way down here. We are far more genteel and civilized. Tell that to a bull-headed college graduate, though, who knows everything.

  I don’t know how I’m going to afford to keep Billie in that Home. The borrowed money is nearly gone and Mark Cosgrove down at the First Chatham Bank has declined to lend me any more. I lay awake at night, crying so the boy won’t hear me, remembering the smell of her hair, the curve of her body in the bed beside me. Seeing her in that institution... I don’t know how much longer I can stand it. My eyes tear up just thinking about it. When I walk in the room, she doesn’t even know I’m there. Not even when I’m touching her most intimate lady parts, whispering in her ear how much I love her, how much I miss her. I cry and she doesn’t even feel my tears drop on her flawless face and neck.

  I struggle to keep the boy from finding the bills. He’d pitch a fit, maybe even beat the tar out of me. He scares me sometimes. He thinks I don’t notice the rage in his eyes, the holes he punches in his bedroom walls. The way he looks into nothing as if he sees something there. If he knew we were going to lose the parlor, I’m afraid to think of what he might do. I had to quit sending him to that shrink. There just wasn’t enough money for that quackery. Maybe I made a mistake.

  I lock up the books in the safe every time I have to leave the front office and keep my computer unplugged so he can’t get at my financial information. I’m sure he’d do something to me if he saw the books. He hates the way I run the parlor. Hates me for taking his parents away.

  He hates me.

  The feeling is mutual.

  Maybe I’ll run away, let the lawyer break the news to him that we’re flat broke and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. That boy would have one hell of a job on his hands if I weren’t around. I can’t help but laugh at what misery he’d find staring him in the horsey face. But, he is blood, and I hope he would have sense enough to sell the parlor before they can auction it off. Then he could go off to do something admirable with his sorry excuse of a life, carry on the Exley name with pride. I hope to Christ he stops hanging around haunting Savannah with those ghost tour ghouls he runs around with. Life is too precious to waste on such trivial pursuits.

  I don’t know how I’m g
oing to pay The Home for keeping Billie this month. I don’t know how I’m going to keep the lights on in the parlor, or replenish my inventory of various products and supplies. That body lifter’s broken now— idiotic boys and their bright ideas. I reckon it’s all in the Good Lord’s hands now. I don’t know what I’m going to do.

  Or maybe I do know but I’m not ready to give it a name.

  The anxiety is wearing a hole in the lining of my sour stomach. It’s too much. How much can one old man with an idiot nephew take?

  Come on, Savannahians, you’re killing me.

  Start dying so that I might live.

  So that we all might live.

  Chapter 13 – Caleb

  “So, um,” she blows out a cancerous blue-tinged white cloud, “are you gay?”

  Scarlet just mule-kicked me in the balls, blindsided me with a double fist to the back of the neck. I physically double over, sitting on the bench in City Market. My elbows dig into my thighs and I stare at the ground. A broken bottle stabs my temple. My bowels loosen. My stomach and esophagus spasm in a covert dry heave. A violent arrhythmia shreds my heart into the goriest of confetti. I want to sprinkle it over her green tipped spiky black hair and puke in her lap. I want to ram my fist into her pug nose like I’m going for the heavyweight title.

  Helium, hydrogen, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, neon, sodium, magnesium, aluminum, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, chlorine, argon, potassium, calcium... Oh, fuck it, it’s not working.

  I pull a knife from the sheath I wear beneath my Brooks Brothers jacket. It’s hidden behind my back. I whip it around and draw it across Scarlet’s bloated throat, slicing it like a ripe peach. Passing tourists point and scream as Scarlet gets up and stumbles around, spraying her hot lifeforce onto the gaudy Hawaiian shirts and cheap khaki shorts of gaping bystanders. She turns to look at me, her hand fluttering at the gash I made. Her eyes don’t look so cerulean now. Just a typical muddied blue, full of shit and questions. I shrug my shoulders and tighten my lips, putting my knife away. People run around City Market in a blind panic. Someone snaps my picture with their cell phone.

  “Well, I mean,” she continues, still sitting at my side, “it’s okay if you are. I just, I’m not sure why you asked me out on a date the other night, you know?”

  Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen...

  One more try before something terrible really happens.

  My head throbs. Rage still roars through my body.

  “You know, because I thought, well,” she half laughs, “I thought maybe you and Four were, like, you know.” She laughs.

  Aluminum, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, chlorine, argon, potassium, calcium... Ugh.

  She lays her ringed fingers on my arm. I recoil as if it burns like hell fire. I stand up and straighten my tie with shaking hands. I walk northwest, across Franklin Square.

  “Hey,” she yells after me, “wait, I didn’t mean...”

  I am so angry and humiliated that I have tears sliding down my cheeks. Rage courses through my veins, affecting my eyesight. A black circle floats on the periphery of my vision. I cut across Congress Street, nearly getting hit by a passing car, and pound through the door of The Rail Pub. I walk past the infamous donkey with the circle-slash painted on it, lean on the crowded bar and ask for a Long Island iced tea, the drink of the month. The first one burns my gullet— way too much rum, but the others taste almost virgin. I stand across the bar from the ‘medicines’ sign which hangs above rows of colorful bottles. I watch guys get their hearts squashed, I watch women being felt up, and I watch the bartender sprout a lizard head from his shoulder as he pours shots. How could he not notice that? How could anyone in the place not notice? And doesn’t that hurt? The lights flicker for a second, distracting me from the emerging reptile. I wonder if the place is haunted, as many in town believe. Who cares? I’m sure Scarlet would care. My head throbs with the thought of her name.

  After downing about four or five drinks, I walk up to this beautiful blond girl in a tank top and micro-skirt and ask if I may buy her a drink. The young man behind her, wearing a rugby shirt with the number nine on it (indicating his position as hooker, which I have always thought hilarious, but not so much now) overhears me and spins around.

  “What do you want, Lurch?” He wraps his arm around the girl’s waist and her hand goes to his chest.

  “I just asked if I could buy her a drink.”

  “She’s with me.” He steps toward me throws his hostile mug in my placid face.

  “I see.” I smooth my tie and tilt my chin toward Mr. Hooker. “Would you care to continue this conversation outside?”

  He looks at his friends, the crowd of similarly dressed ruggers surrounding him. They all burst with laughter.

  “That’s all right, buddy,” Hooker says, laughing, showing his girlfriend what a gentleman he is. “Honest mistake, right? Hey, can I buy you a beer?”

  Outside my body, I’m on auto pilot once again. There’s no time for the elements.

  My brain’s motor cortex sends a message down my ulnar nerve, my palmaris longus contracts, the interosseous muscles in my palm tighten, and my perfect fist flies straight into Hooker’s wide-open and astonished left eye. He falls back into his teammates’ heavily muscled arms.

  They take me outside and pull me into the back alley. The rugby team forms a rough circle around me. They exchange glances. One player steps forward and punches me in the nose. The crushing pain that breaks my nose for the second (third, fourth?) time expands the black holes in my vision. A kick to the crotch sends me to the ground, breathless, and crying. I flash back to a beating I withstood in the BC locker room, years ago. Someone kicks at my head and misses, grazing my shoulder.

  Hydrogen.

  I jump to my feet, fueled by alcohol, Seroquel, and pure wrath. I assume a crouched fighting position, my balled fists in front of my face. They all laugh at me. I know they’re thinking I don’t stand a chance. That’s when I unleash the beast, as they say.

  My right foot flashes out at Hooker’s square head and connects with his square jaw, dislocating the temporal joint, his mouth spraying blood and teeth. I spin and backfist a teammate, cracking his nose. His blood paints my already stained white shirt. The rest of the team stands in shock, their faces slack and disbelieving. I whip my tie from my collar and loop it around someone’s neck. I twist it until his face goes pink, red, purple.

  “Stop,” the girl screams, cradling Hooker’s head in her lap. Her eyes track to his ruined jaw and I know she’ll never date him again. Ha. I probably saved her from a life of domestic abuse.

  Three players descend on me, one holding my arms behind my back as another slams his fist into my stomach. My breath escapes in an ‘uh.’ The one behind my back holds me up so I can’t double over. The third guy runs at me and plants an awkward kick just below my sternum. Somewhere in my brain, I am grateful they are not wearing cleats.

  Ten minutes after they go back inside, I still sit on the curb, feeling fresh bruises mottling my flesh. My silk Hermes handkerchief covers my broken nose and I close my eyes. I hear thumping footsteps. I open my eyes and gaze into the gutter. All I see are the shoes.

  Cherry red Doc Martens.

  I was hoping for a hooker, not of the rugby variety.

  “Wow,” Scarlet says, crouching next to me. “What the fuck happened to you?”

  I spit a tablespoon of blood onto the street, probing with my tongue the empty socket where my incisor should be. I taste the coppery sludge from the back of my nasal cavity working its way down my throat. I bare my teeth at her, squeezing blood through the spaces between my teeth.

  “Listen, I just took a walk and thought about our conversation,” Scarlet says, taking the handkerchief from me. She wears an expression of pathetic concern. “I’m really. I just really didn’t know, you know? I mean, I know Four’s, like, a male slut, but I didn’t know if he was maybe bi or something. I mean, you two
are always together.”

  I don’t want her pity. Nor an explanation.

  My lower lip is split and throbbing. But, for once, my head doesn’t hurt. It feels good. Maybe it’s the adrenaline. Or the serotonin. I don’t know much about the brain.

  “So, um, I know guys hate it when chicks say this, but do you think we could still be friends?”

  No, Scarlet, we can’t be friends. Why? Because I want you more than anything in the world and you just shit all over me.

  I’m sorry for your loss.

  Chapter 14 – Sterling

  When liabilities exceed assets, you have debt.

  The power company wants money, the telephone/cable TV/computer Internet company wants money, the garbage and biohazard guys want money. And the bank, of course.

  When you have this much debt, you don’t waste your time on hope.

  The boy walked in about half-an-hour ago, looking like he’d been hit by a bus. Again. That boy has been prone to fighting ever since we sent him to that ridiculous military school. But, as tradition dictated, Benedictine was where he belonged. Wasn’t my fault if he looked like one of those homosexuals and could not get along with the normal boys. Didn’t care if he fought then, don’t care if he fights now. Idiot. If he had wanted to fit in over at BC, he should have played football just like I did, like his daddy did. Maybe cutting off his visits to the shrink was the right thing to do. As far as I can tell, all she did was coddle him and encourage his sissy behavior, telling him it was okay to have ‘feelings’ and such.

  I click off my computer monitor as he walks past, but he doesn’t even bother to glance at the screen. I know he’s worried about the business closing down, losing his birthright and such. He’s got other problems, I know— those headaches, that awful girl— things he only mentions in passing on the rare occasions I feel like talking to him. Uncertainty breeds anxiety.