by David Wood
The voice on the other end was low and ugly.
But sure as fuck it was Danny’s. “What do ya say we chase the dragon, Craig?”
Xavier draws a picture of his mother. He doesn’t mean for her to look angry in the picture but she does. Her eyebrows point inward, and her mouth is set in a snarl. It is how she looks when Xavier doesn’t do exactly as he is told.
Sweat drips from Xavier’s head onto the picture and he tries to wipe it away, but he only smears the lead. It’s hot in the flat, hotter than he can ever remember. His shirt is drenched, soaked to the skin. The heat must be from the nearby fires.
Xavier wonders whether the fires will reach him. They are getting closer. He knows that from looking out the window.
Next to his angry mother, Xavier draws a man. This makes her happier, so he replaces her snarl with a smile. Only it doesn’t look like a smile because of the snarl underneath. Now it just looks as though Xavier’s mother is yelling at him.
She does that often. But better that than when she lifts her hands. On the man, Xavier draws a frown. Maybe the man is his father.
He is unhappy and that is why he leaves Xavier and his mother behind. Xavier’s mother must have made his father unhappy. Yes, he left them, and that must be why.
That is also why Xavier is alone now. Because his family split apart. Xavier picks up the piece of paper and rips it in half, leaving his father on one side, his mother on the other. Then he crumples both sides up because neither his father nor his mother are around. Not now, not when Xavier most needs them.
The boy is lonely and it hurts, feels as though a dagger has pierced his empty gut. If only his mother had been nice to his father, his father would have stayed. Then they would have been home together the morning of the quake.
Then Xavier would not be in this alone.
But he is alone, and certain that every other tenant has fled the building never to return. He is alone with the noises and shadows at night, alone while the building continues to shake from aftershocks and the smoke continues to rise. And the fire is coming for him. He feels it in his bones.
Xavier rises to his feet and runs at the front door, slams into it with his shoulder, but is only knocked back to the floor. His face is glowing red; he can feel the heat in his cheeks. He gets to his feet again and moves toward the window. He looks for the dog but is sure that the dog is now dead and buried somewhere under the rubble.
He screams for help but knows no one can hear him. If he opens the window the smoke will come in. The smoke will throttle him by the neck and strangle him.
The window must always remain closed.
Chapter 29
“Welcome!”
Craig lifted his head from the table then slowly raised the lid of each eye. The laptop had been doing that all night. Coming to life, welcoming him, then as soon as he moved for the keyboard bellowing, “Goodbye!” He had finally moved them out of the bedroom where most of the activity seemed to be taking place. Where Amy had been smacked around and he had gone a few rounds with the weighty wooden bookcase. Where the temperature seemed to be rising at an even faster rate. And where, of course, he’d encountered that...
(Click clickclick click)
... fucking thing.
He had started writing while Amy slept on the couch, but he’d felt irritable and exhausted, been sweating and short of breath. His vision was blurred. He had lost much of his desire to write and felt depressed, so he’d put his head on the table and fallen asleep.
He went to the window where the first light of morning was now beginning to spill in. The dog lay curled up in a corner, partly hidden by the shadows. Craig tried opening the window yet again.
How could he figure a way out if he couldn’t even think straight?
He moved toward the kitchen, having to rub out sharp cramps in his calf muscles as he went. When he hit the linoleum he pulled himself out of the fly on his boxers and headed toward the sink. He looked up at the bleak kitchen light and began to pee.
His urine was the color of copper. “You’re dehydrating.”
Her voice startled him. It was a low throaty rasp, the same sound she’d made last winter when she came down with a bad case of laryngitis. He stared down into the sink and nodded. “How are you feeling?”
His throat burned as he spoke, his own voice resembling hers. She didn’t respond, only stood there blinking at him. Her pupils had eaten up most of her irises so that she looked like she was ridiculously high, as though she were rolling on a half dozen hits of ecstasy.
“I have an idea,” he said. “But it’s going to require some strength.
More than I think either of us has right now.” Her head tilted toward the icebox.
“I already checked that last night,” he said. “It’s all gone. Melted.” She lowered her head. “That’s all we had.”
“What about paper? We’ve got plenty of that.”
“No,” she said. “It’s nondigestible. No nutritional value. It’ll make you feel full but it won’t give you any calories or energy.”
He put his hand on his stomach. Now that she said it he realized he already felt full. He was weak but he felt no hunger whatsoever.
“You’ve lost your appetite,” she said, as though she were reading his mind.
He nodded. “How’d you know?”
“I’ve lost mine, too. It’s another symptom of dehydration.”
For the first time since his agent sold Libations he thought of suicide, of ending it all with a knife along the wrists or a bedsheet around the neck, something, anything to keep from dying of thirst, from being overcome by the heat, from having his organs shut down one by one and being helpless to stop it. If he had to die he at least wanted to take the easy way out, to control it.
“What was your idea?” she said.
Should he kill her first? It would be cruel, he thought, to leave her here to die in the flat alone, to kill himself without so much as saying goodbye. It would be cruel, too, to kill himself in front of her, to make her deal with a dead body in the final hours or days of her own life. Cruel to make a pact, to let her in any way know what was coming when her death could be quick and fairly painless, when it could be delivered without any notice, without warning, so that she wouldn’t experience any further fear, any further suffering. But how should he do it?
“What was your idea?” she repeated “Forget it.”
He stepped past her and out of the kitchen, much different ideas now flooding his mind. He could get them out of the flat after all. Not in the way Amy thought, not in the way he had originally intended. But at least he could end the waiting, the unknowing. At least he could end the pain.
“Tell me,” she said, following him. “You said you had an idea, I want to hear it.”
A pillow, maybe. That was humane. But he wasn’t sure he had the strength. What if she fought him off, clawed his eyes out or kicked him in the nuts?
“Just tell me.”
The television. He could unplug it, hit her on the fucking head. That would put her right out. Then, if she were still breathing, he could finish the job any way he’d like. But did he even have the strength to lift the goddamn thing high enough to crack her skull with it?
He rounded the corner and stepped into the bedroom. “Craig,” she said, still on his heels. “Craig.”
He could take her in his arms, comfort her, then toss her on the bare mattress and break her neck. That wouldn’t take much strength. Her bones had to be brittle by now, and anyway, how hard was it to break a human neck? Couldn’t be that difficult; it was just that not enough people tried.
“It can’t hurt to just tell me,” she said. “Maybe it’ll give me another idea.”
He cracked open the bathroom door, breathed in the thick horrible stench.
“Please, Craig.”
He could grab her by the hair, hold down her head, drown her in the toilet. Have her bob for his fucking Vicodin. Yeah, that kind of turned him on. Had a certain poetic
justice to it. That was something he could definitely get on board with.
He turned and brushed past her out of the bathroom. “You’re scaring me.”
He could spin around and punch her in the mouth right now. Knock her down and just beat her to death. Maybe drive her nose up into her brain.
He reached for the lamp, hefted it up and felt its weight.
“I’ve got it,” she said.
He looked at her, trying to hide his disappointment.
“I know what we can eat.”
Grudgingly, he set down the lamp. “You do? What, you’ve been saving a bag of candy corns in your luggage?”
She was staring down at her feet. For a moment, Craig pictured himself sawing them off.
“I wish. This isn’t going to be as tasty as that. Let’s go back to the kitchen.”
This wouldn’t be easy; she knew that much. She could do it, she thought, but she wasn’t sure about him. He wouldn’t even eat the ice, wouldn’t even suck on a few specks of dirt if it meant saving his own life. She had to handle this right, had to take all she had learned from him and persuade him as he would her. She had to make this work. Because he was falling into too deep a despair, and if he wasn’t already thinking about killing himself, he would be soon. And she didn’t think she would make it out of the flat without him.
“You’ve got to trust me,” she said as they stepped into the kitchen. “Remember that I’m a professional nutritionist.”
He grunted, an awkward attempt a smirk.
“We don’t have any conventional food,” she continued, “so we’re going to have to make do.”
“Make do?”
Her knees made an audible popping sound as she lowered herself onto the kitchen floor. She set her hands on the cool linoleum. Felt the grime stick to the sweat on her palms. She put it out of her head and tried to concentrate. How to do this?
How to lure them out?
He could do it right now, snatch the icepick off the counter and stick it into the base of her neck. Bleed her like a fucking pig. Or he could close his hands around her throat, he could tell her how sorry he was as he strangled her, profess how much he loved her as he squeezed out the last of the life left in her. That he could do, and it would be a sweet ending for his
For my what?
“Can you look in the drawer,” she said, “and find me something long and thin?”
“Long and thin?”
She nodded. “Something that’ll fit under the fridge.”
He slid open one of the drawers, the one in which he had found the icepick. There were some rusted utensils inside, some bent forks and spoons, a couple knives. He considered sticking one in her eye.
On the bottom of the drawer he spotted a twelve-inch wooden ruler. He dug his hand in and pulled it out. The pulse in his ear began beating.
“Here.”
He handed it to her and she slipped it beneath the fridge, seemed to fish for something, then pulled out a litter of dust bunnies. She shook some off and tore the rest free with her hand. She slipped the ruler back under the fridge.
After some fiddling, a small brown roach scurried out from underneath. She trapped it beneath her hand, going dizzy with the effort.
Craig gaped. He took a step backward, feeling faint.
Amy looked up at him, her face a blank slate. “Would you prefer yours dead or alive?”
He turned up the left corner of his mouth. “Are you shitting me?” “Craig,” she said. Her tone was matter-of-fact. “We have to eat.
And these little guys are all we’ve got.” She scooped the insect up in her hand, pinched its skeleton so that it couldn’t skirt away. “It won’t hurt you. Just close your eyes and hold your nose, chew a bit and swallow it down.”
He felt sick with revulsion and gagged. “I can’t eat that,” he said. “I can’t even look at it let alone put it in my mouth.”
“It’s a source of protein.” “Protein?”
“Just because cockroaches aren’t eaten in our culture doesn’t mean they’re not food. Native cultures all over the world eat bugs as a source of sustenance. Grubs, beetles, roaches, too. I even read that with the world population booming, it won’t be long before all of us are eating insects, anyway.”
His hands started shaking and he couldn’t tune out the pulse in his ear. He should have fucking killed her in the bathroom. “Who the fuck eats roaches,” he said.
It wasn’t a question but Amy answered anyway. “You do. I do. Everybody does. I read somewhere that the average adult consumes around one-to-two pounds of insect parts per year, incidentally as part of their food. The FDA allows that much. So you’re already used to it!”
The roach was squirming in her hand. Craig knew that if there were anything in his stomach he would already have thrown it up. As it was, he just stood there and stared, waiting for her to say this was all a joke, she was only trying to lighten the mood.
“You can hold your nose,” she said. “Pretend that it’s a Frito or something.”
He gagged again, backed away, imagining the insect squirming in his mouth, over his tongue, lodging itself in his throat. Squeezing its way down his esophagus, building a nest in the pit of his stomach. Laying eggs…
“Oh, shit. I’m gonna be sick.” He turned an dry-heaved into the sink.
“You need to get over this fear. You need to eat this in order to live.”
Live? he thought.
(“I fucking hate you. You should’ve never been born.”)
“Please,” she begged. “If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for me.
I won’t make it in here on my own.”
(What does it matter? You have a tumor.) (Or an aneurism.)
His eyes welled up until she and the roach disappeared into a watery blur.
(With an aneurism you go like that!)
He squeezed his eyes shut, felt a warm trickle down the left side of his face. Crying away what little hydration he had left. Fucking crybaby.
They could do it. They could do it if they only had the strength. They could, they would escape. But not unless they ate. She was right. Right now simply standing here made him short of breath. But something solid in his stomach—even an insect—that could provide enough calories to do the trick. He didn’t need much energy, just a little. Just enough to carry out his plan. Just enough to get them out of the fucking flat.
(Or you could skip the roach and kill her and that would be that.)
That was an idea. But then he wouldn’t be able to finish his book. Wouldn’t even get to see Libations published. What the hell kind of ending was that?
He kept his eyes closed and dropped onto his knees, shuddered as they smacked on the hard linoleum. He savored the pain. It took his mind from what Amy held in her hand, from the small brown roach squirming for its own survival, writhing, trying to make its way to safety back under the fridge.
He flashed on the six days and nights he had been forced to spend in the basement as a child—what his mother called “solitary confinement” for pilfering a Mets hat from their store—when he would wake to find mulch worms crawling up and down his arms and legs, across his face and neck. He never could stand the fucking sight of insects after that.
“Now,” he said. “Now what?”
“Now!” He opened wide his mouth and stuck out his tongue. She placed the roach between his lips.
He felt it crawl toward the right side of his cheek.
Then he bit down. Heard the crunch. Felt the ooze. Swallowed it down.
And tried like fuck not to hurl it back up.
Chapter 30
Her hands bled onto the carpet where the bed had been. Onto a rust-colored stain in the shape of a foot, blending in drip by drip by drip, and she wondered whose blood hers was mixing with.
She dropped the metal fork onto the floor. “This isn’t working,” she cried. And Craig threw down the knife.
He had eaten the roach, that and three more. He’d gagged and vomited
the first one back up, but by the fourth, he’d chewed it as though it were cotton candy-flavored bubble gum. His head had tilted severely to the side and his eyes had gone dark again, as when he’d flung the broken lockbox at her feet. But then he’d seemed all right. He’d helped her through her own meal, aided her in capturing three more, in stunning them and cracking their carapaces while putting them in her mouth. Then they continued taking turns trying to fish the roaches out from under the fridge for later. He even made jokes.
But after that he was all business. He became that take-charge Craig she had met in the city and fallen in love with. The man who need only grab her by the hand to make her feel safe. He had laid out his plan and she listened, hung on his every word, impressed not so much by his thoughts but by his enthusiasm, his optimism, his sudden will to survive.
“We’re going next door,” he’d outlined. “We’re going to move the bed and break through that fucking wall, and then we’re going to walk out their goddamn door.”
“Why that wall?” she wanted to know.
“That’s where it all started--the music, then the pounding. What if there’s somebody or some thing in there?” He put his hands on her shoulders, the way he had when her grandmother died. “You said yourself, the wall in the bedroom must be paper thin. It’s the only wall in this flat that leads into another apartment. The walls that lead out into the hall are going to be thicker, stronger, probably reinforced with cinder blocks. The bedroom wall is the easiest to break. It’s our only hope.”
“Okay,” she said finally. “How do we break through it?”
It was then they started searching for tools, for something they could use to scrape through the stucco, to smash through the wooden laths. The chairs seemed too brittle, as though they would break apart in their hands. Craig passed on the table and went back into the kitchen and retrieved two utensils, a fork for her, a knife for himself.
Now he tied a tee shirt around her hand. There was a lot of blood but the cut wasn’t deep. They had barely breached the surface of the wall.