Transposition

by Gregory Ashe

  For a time—five seconds, maybe ten—Hazard’s momentum and his frantic, animal-like scuttling kept him clear of the worst of the blows. Then he ran out of room. He crashed into the basement wall, hitting with his arm before rocking back to the floor.

  Luck, or Providence, or maybe even karma spared Hazard once again. The next kick landed, but instead of taking him in the back or in the head, the blow struck his upper thigh. It felt like someone had driven a small truck into him, but it was better than what it might have been.

  The pain made Hazard wild. He’d been beaten by bullies before. He’d been beaten by Mikey Grimes and Hugo Perry and John-Henry Somerset. He’d been beaten by his first boyfriend, Alec, beaten for Alec’s sick amusement. All those years of being hurt, all those years of being helpless had given birth to something feral inside Hazard. Most days, the wildness was caged and kept in the darkness. Now, though—now the cage swung open.

  Hazard scissored his legs. He drove his heel backward, aiming for whatever part of the big man he could reach. His front foot found the basement wall, and Hazard shoved, adding to his momentum. Glass screeched under his weight as it skidded across the concrete.

  Then he felt his foot connect. There was a brief moment of flex, the feeling of connective tissue stretching and turning, and Hazard had the mental image of twisting the bones in a chicken wing until they came loose. Then he felt, more than heard, a pop that ran up his leg. Even through the savage fury filling him, Hazard felt a flicker of fear that he might have damaged something inside himself permanently. His leg rebounded from the blow. Hazard spun, scrambling to his knees.

  As Hazard moved, he found himself facing the big man. The big man let out a shrill cry and folded forwards, hands moving for his knee. A vicious thrill—

  —snap, bite, tear—

  —raced along Hazard’s nerves. He had hurt the man. He had, most likely, crippled him—by luck, true, but that didn’t matter. A blow like that to the knee was devastating. The big man landed awkwardly, trying to catch his weight on his good leg. He was still shrieking, and his hands hovered around his wounded knee, as though he couldn’t quite bring himself to touch it.

  Hazard wobbled. His vision darkened. The pinpricks of glass and light swelled, first to the size of a grapefruit, then like birthday balloons, and then enormous, solar spheres that blotted out everything else. He was distantly aware of his own breathing, of how labored it sounded as his lungs struggled to get enough air. The gas. That goddamn gas.

  With his vision clearing by inches, Hazard lurched away from the crippled man, who was still screaming. One hand on the wall, Hazard shuffled forward. He couldn’t feel his feet, but he hoped he was doing a good enough job of knocking the slivers of glass out of his way. He had to find the gas shut-off. It was no longer a question of surviving an explosion; at this point, Hazard would die from suffocation before the house had a chance to blow up.

  For what felt like an eternity, Hazard felt only the cool concrete slab under his fingers: porous, slightly damp, gritty. It felt very far away, like he was touching the moon. And he could see the moon too. It swelled in his vision so bright that he couldn’t see anything else, and more than once Hazard had to stop, sucking in lungfuls of air to make the moon shrink. His head was pounding terribly, a steady pounding like someone was trying to chisel his way out of Hazard’s head from the inside. The man in the moon, Hazard thought, wavering for a moment, bracing himself on the chilly grit of the—

  —moon—

  —wall to keep from falling. Then he staggered forward again. For a moment, he lost the moon’s rough texture. Instead, something smooth and icy cold lay under his hand. Hazard retreated to the moon.

  Not the moon, he thought, sucking in another lungful of the air that was smothering him. Christ, man, it’s not the moon. Metal. You touched metal. He groped for it in the darkness. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing but more of the moon, no, damn it, the wall.

  Then his fingers brushed it again. Copper piping. Hazard let out a sound, and he wasn’t sure if it was a sob or a laugh. Lurching forward, following the pipe’s length, Hazard heard his own footfalls as a far-off clumping, as though someone were treading on his heels. But that was silly because there wasn’t anyone else on the moon, not tonight.

  The iron-flower shape of the shut-off met his fingers, and Hazard twisted. A hissing noise that had existed at the edge of hearing faded. Hazard continued to turn the shut-off, and a moment later the hissing had stopped completely. In the silence, the storm whipped itself into a frenzy, and a breath of cold, crisp air brushed Hazard’s cheek. He sucked in a fresh lungful. The pain in his head redoubled, pain so bad that it left an aurora in his vision, but Hazard’s thoughts began to clear. He had to get out of here. He had to get upstairs, open the windows, wake the others—

  The blow caught Hazard too low. Later, he would realize that the big man had intended to kill Hazard by breaking his neck. Instead, though, most of the force of the blow spent itself on Hazard’s shoulders. Still, the blow knocked Hazard forward, and his head cracked against the wall. He stumbled backward, turning in a circle. Proximity, more than anything, saved him. The big man couldn’t move fast enough, and Hazard’s movement brought him too close to the big man. The man carried a heavy length of rebar, and he brought it back for another blow, but without space and distance, he couldn’t put enough power behind it.

  Hazard crashed into the man, and they both fell. Hazard managed to land on top of the man, and he dragged himself forward, clutching at the man’s neck to strangle him. The wounded man let out a scream that was nothing more than a reedy whisper, but he didn’t let go of the iron bar. Instead, he whipped it up and cracked it against Hazard’s head.

  This blow, on the heels of so many others, threatened to send Hazard into that dark place. For a moment, everything brightened, as though outlined by the flash from a camera: every granule of snow spiraling through the air, every pore in the old cement, every shard of glass. Then the darkness poured in, and Hazard felt himself slumping forward.

  He reached out, by instinct and memory more than anything else, and felt his hands close around something jagged and cold. Even as Hazard slumped, struggling to keep himself upright, he knew the big man was bringing the iron bar up for another blow—one that would finish Hazard.

  But inside Hazard, that old, feral pain had burst its cage and broken its chains. With a howl, an honest-to-God howl, Hazard speared the big man with a piece of glass as big as his forearm. The translucent blade sank into the big man. It was like a stone going into water: it shimmered, slipping through the black fabric of the man’s jacket and into the hollow of his clavicle as though all that flesh were liquid.

  The man jerked once, and he made a gargling noise. Then he bucked his hips again, hard enough to launch Hazard off of him. Hazard fell heavily and rolled to lie against the wall.

  And somehow, the big man still wasn’t dead. He was thrashing, his big black boots scraping at the glass, one arm fanning out, as though he were making a snow angel. Then, to Hazard’s surprise, the man managed to jerk the glass free. It chimed as it hit the cement floor. A second, bass chime echoed as the iron bar struck the ground. The big man flopped onto his stomach and, to Hazard’s amazement, dragged himself towards the stairs.

  For a moment, Hazard watched. It was impossible for someone to take that kind of punishment and keep going. The glass, Hazard had been sure, must have nicked the brachial artery. But somehow the man was still moving, and even as Hazard watched, the man reached the stairs and managed to drag himself upright.

  Hazard needed to go after him. He knew that fact like he knew the times tables, like he knew his a’s and b’s, like he knew what Somers’s eyes looked like when he was angry, which was rare, and when he was sad, which was rare, and when he was Somers, which was most of the time. And Hazard knew that he needed to get on his knees, and then get to his feet, and then stop that man from escaping.

  But the storm spun sweet, crystalline air in through th
e windows, the sweetest air Hazard had ever breathed. And his head was really hurting now, pounding like somebody was playing a samba on every drum in the Western hemisphere. And it really was dark, even with the light reflecting on the glass, all that darkness rolling in, rolling in, lapping at his aching side and his stinging ear and a dangerous warmth along his hand. And it was a hell of a lot easier not to worry about any of that and slip under the darkness when it rolled in again.

  HAZARD'S HEAD WAS POUNDING, a dull, steady beat in time with his pulse. The pressure in his head from all that pounding was getting worse. Too much blood, that was the problem. All the blood was getting pumped to his head, straight up there, and it was trapped. And the blood was filling up all the space like it did in an aneurysm or a hemorrhage or a stroke, and that was how Hazard was going to die.

  “Jesus Christ,” a familiar voice said. “You left him like this?”

  “I thought I should get you—” This voice, too, sounded familiar.

  “You said he didn’t look good. You didn’t tell me he’d been beaten almost to death. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Get me a first aid kit.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Get me whatever the fuck you can find!”

  A warm, strong hand touched the side of Hazard’s head. Hazard flinched at the spark of pain and tried to pull away.

  “Jesus Christ. Jesus the ever-loving Christ.”

  The fingers returned, their grip firmer now, turning Hazard’s head as though for inspection. The pain returned, and Hazard grunted, shifting away from the touch.

  “Don’t move. Ree, can you hear me? Don’t move.” The voice was closer now, and the smell of stale booze floated on his breath, but the words sounded sober. Mostly. “You awake? Can you open your eyes?”

  That was a very stupid question. Of course he could open his eyes. It was just—well, of course he could open them. It was just that he didn’t want to. Not right then.

  “Ree, open your goddamn eyes. Open them. Say something.”

  The hand still lingered on the side of Hazard’s face—not gripping him anymore, just pressed against the abraded flesh as though trying to hold the different pieces of Emery Hazard together.

  Hazard managed to get one eye open. Light stabbed in at him, and the pounding in his head redoubled. He squeezed his eyes shut again. His stomach churned, and a moment later Hazard turned his head to the side and threw up. It seemed to go on for a long time, and all he felt was the sick coiling of his gut and the knot in his throat and fingers running through his hair, trying to calm him.

  “All right,” Somers was saying. “Get it all out.”

  When the nausea had passed, Hazard was surprised to find that he felt marginally better. The pounding in his head was still there, but not as strong. One of his legs throbbed, and he could feel the sting of a few dozen nicks and cuts all over him, but he was alive. His hand, though—a flicker of memory washed through him: grabbing the shard of glass, driving it into the big man’s shoulder. Hazard tried closing his hand, and a wave of pain crashed into him. He let out a soft cry.

  “What did I say about not moving,” Somers grumbled.

  At those words, Hazard opened his eyes. Somers, bare-chested in a pair of jeans, knelt at his side. He still had one hand buried in Hazard’s hair, and his face showed fear tempered with resolve. Without meaning to, Hazard found himself reaching out with his good hand. His fingers found Somers’s bare chest and traced the first calligraphic letter inked onto his pecs. Hazard tried to remember; what had Somers told him the words meant? He tried not to notice, tried not to care at how Somers’s skin prickled with goosebumps at his touch. What had the words said?

  Somers let out a deep, empty laugh. He grabbed Hazard’s arm so tight that it hurt, and his eyes were too bright, like they were polished glass. “What the fuck did I say,” he said, still laughing, “about not moving?”

  Hazard didn’t mind. He didn’t want to move, not now.

  “I found this in the bathroom,” Meryl said as she trotted down the stairs. She froze when she saw them, and red flooded her fair features. “I didn’t—” She whirled, her back to them, and dropped a first aid kit the size of a tackle box. “I’m sorry.”

  Somers gave Hazard a wry smile—wry and, Hazard thought, a little sad. He wished, once more, that he could read Somers as well as Somers seemed to read everyone else. With a nod, Somers squeezed Hazard’s arm, and Hazard let his hand fall to his side.

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” Somers said. “My partner’s awake. Bring that first aid kit over here.”

  “I didn’t know,” Meryl said over her shoulder. “Are you—do you want to be alone?”

  “For God’s sake, Meryl. Bring that thing over here.”

  Meryl hesitated a moment longer. Then, scooping up the box, she hustled over to them. Her face, though, was still red, and she seemed to be having a hard time deciding where to look.

  Somers sorted through the box, his movements confident and controlled, and his face had lost the stark concern that he had shown earlier. “Any of you have medical training, Meryl?” His began laying out bandages, disinfecting wipes, and gauze pads.

  “What? No. I mean, I think Ran’s a Boy Scout.” Her voice grew thin and reedy. “Oh God. I’m so stupid. No, nobody.”

  “Get back upstairs. I want you to see if anybody has any prescription medicine. Start with Thomas’s stuff, then Ran’s and Benny’s. Bring me whatever you find. Then we’ll decide if we have to wake the others.” Somers hesitated, then said, “And Meryl?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t go in the room at the end of the hall. Benny’s been killed. I saw him on the way down. I shut the door; try to keep everyone out of there.”

  When Meryl spoke, her voice had rarefied to the point of nonexistence. “Yes. Of course.”

  Without another word, she disappeared up the stairs, her copper hair flashing in the lights. It was only then that Hazard fully noticed that the electric basement lights were on. Illuminated, the basement was no larger than an ordinary room. Hazard studied it with a kind of bemused amazement. It had seemed enormous in the darkness. The electric lights darkened everything outside the building, and snow sprayed through the broken windows in glittering trails.

  “Lucky you didn’t blow the whole place up,” Hazard said. “Why the hell did you turn on the lights? Didn’t you smell the gas.”

  Again, Somers let out that deep, hollow laugh that didn’t really sound anything like laughter. He pulled on disposable gloves, ripped open a disinfectant pad, and began cleaning the side of Hazard’s face. Hazard yelped and jerked back, but Somers caught his jaw and kept scrubbing.

  “That’s the first thing you say to me.” Somers scrubbed a little harder. “That. That’s what you say.”

  “Let go of me,” Hazard tried to say, but Somers held his jaw, and the words came out muddled.

  “Yes,” Somers said, abandoning the disinfectant and opening another. “I smelled the gas. It’s mostly gone, in case you hadn’t noticed. But I wasn’t the one who turned on the lights.”

  “Let go of me,” Hazard tried again, but it came out more as, “legggeme.”

  “Meryl turned on the lights, for your information. Either she didn’t care about blowing us up, or she didn’t realize the risk. She came down here,” Somers scrubbed even harder, “because she heard screams. She said it took her a while to work up the courage. And then, when she got to the main floor, she saw blood. A trail of it. I guess we’re lucky it was Meryl; I don’t know if any of the others would have been brave enough to come down here. You might have been here all night. You might have bled out.”

  Wadding up the disinfectant pad, Somers pitched it hard against the wall. He released Hazard’s jaw and grabbed the wrist of his wounded hand.

  “I wouldn’t have bled out,” Hazard said, massaging his jaw.

  “Then you might have frozen to death.” Hazard opened his m
outh to tell Somers that it wasn’t likely, but Somers spoke first. His tone was calm. Deadly calm. “Hazard, you’d better think very carefully before you say whatever you’re about to say.”

  Maybe it was because of the pounding in his head, but Hazard wasn’t quite sure what was happening. For the time being, caution seemed the better choice. He closed his mouth.

  “About goddamn time,” Somers muttered. In a stronger voice, he said, “This is going to hurt like a bitch.” Without waiting for a response, he began cleaning the cut on his hand. Hazard gritted his teeth to hold back a howl.

  The process probably didn’t take long—only a few hours. At least, that’s how it felt. Then Somers began cleaning the nicks and scrapes. When Somers finally tossed aside the last disinfecting wipe, he began bandaging Hazard’s hand and his jaw. The silence between them was brittle, and it had more sharp edges than all the broken glass scattered on the basement floor. Somers finished taping the bandage to Hazard’s cheek, grunted, and rocked back on his heels. For the first, time Hazard noticed Somers was wearing sneakers.

  “Your cheek isn’t too bad. I’m worried about your hand; it’s a deep cut, and I can’t tell if it damaged anything major.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “You won’t be fine if we’re stuck here another two or three days and infection sets in. You won’t be fine if that cut turns septic. You won’t be fine if there’s nerve or muscle damage to your hand and we’re here too long for them to fix it.”

  Hazard rolled onto his side and began trying to push himself upright with his good hand. It was more difficult than he had expected. He was tired, in the first place, and his wounded hand made every movement awkward.

  After Hazard’s third try, Somers grabbed him by the jacket and hauled him upright. “Would it kill you to ask for help?”

  “I was fine.”

  Again came that deep, false laughter. “You’re a joke. You know that right? You’re like a—a stock character in a bad Western.”

  Hazard forced his eyes upward, and he met Somers’s. “You’re angry.”