I try to control the weapon, steady it somehow, my only hope its deadly mechanics, but a pain cutting through my body forces my hand to jolt open. I can’t hear the gun hit the ground, but the lightness in my hand tells me it’s gone.
I nearly fall from my knees to my chest when a fresher, colder sharpness digs into my chest like a drill eating its way into the ground.
For a moment, I give in. I let what’s happening happen.
“We gots to eat,” I hear again as the talons twist and grind and my eyesight turns to flashing glimpses of what’s around me.
My weapon gone, my strength lost, my edge dissipated, I can feel death teasing me, seducing me, flirting with me. I flirt with her back, a large piece of me nearly convinced this is not a bad way to go.
More talons dig their way into my flesh and they’re sharper and even colder this time. My shoulder screams as the voices grow into an echo and something digs deeper and deeper into me, gnawing on me, fighting its way through raw flesh to my shoulder blade.
I feel a warm wetness make its way from the shoulder to my chest and stomach.
“We gots to eat,” I hear, quieter now, not from my attacker, my monster, but someone else. I am helpless and paralyzed.
Death’s embrace is warm and seductive. Her sweetness touches my lips and she’s far more tempting than any smoke the world offers. I nearly go limp and let her take me when my eyes scan their way up and I catch Jody, meekly crawling away. My teeth grind and my muscles contort and the fire in my belly grows hotter and louder and reminds me there’s still something to be done before I can join the rest of the lucky dead.
My eyes move their way down and dart across the ground until they find it — salvation.
I drop my hand down, the monster behind me screaming in predator-like victory. I can hear others joining in. My hand slams against the pistol, and I shuffle it around until the it is one with my hand.
It takes what feels like minutes, but can’t be more than mere fractions of a second in time.
My blood boils warmer and faster now. The hand grip massaging my palm and fingers, the gun is in its rightful place.
I reach with my empty hand around me, my shoulder sending screeching, intense vibrations to my neck to stop, my hand grabbing only air.
“We gots to eat! We gots to eat!” it hisses again and again, claws continuing to dig, creating new sensations of pain where one would think pain could be felt no more. I reach once more, screaming now, feeling only air slip through my fingers once again.
“We gots to eat!” I grab again and again until something slips its way between my fingers. I hold the stringy, thin strands as tightly as I can. My sides clench in pain, the claws twisting every which way, frantic and relentless in their movements.
The gun swings around, the clenched hair steady in my other hand. The barrel touches something, someone. I pull instead of squeeze, knowing whatever I’m holding will die anyway.
The world is a blur and I’m on the ground, the pavement harsh and unforgiving, but inviting. A deafening ringing takes hold of the world, my senses more jumbled than before.
Feeling the warm 1911 still in my hand, I swing my body around, dizziness stabbing at my head.
A body, little more than a black blur on the ground, lies ahead of me. Senses a jigsaw, I look ahead to see shadows against the sunlight. My eyesight becomes broken glass as I squeeze the trigger firing at blackness again, again, again, again, again, the sound of each shot hardly registering through the screaming in my ears and head.
When I’m free, I move myself to my feet, nearly toppling to the ground after the first try, swallowing a small bit of bile. The shadow on the ground next to me is revealed through a thin layer of gun smoke to be brain spilling out of the broken skull attached to my green tongued friend, his smile and rotted teeth gone.
Another lump of skin and red lie ahead on the road. The cloudy gun smoke dissipates and I can feel a ringing clawing at the inside of my skull like nails on a chalkboard.
I fire three more shots into the wood line, reloading another full clip from my back pocket. I move to the road, the two bodies as lifeless as ever.
“We gots to eat … we gots to eat,” I hear faintly, thinking my mind is playing tricks on me again, the ringing still a storm cloud, every other noise a lost ship fighting against the tide. “We gots to eat.”
I move to my first victim, his head like a fallen puzzle. I put another round into his chest because it makes my heart pump harder and feel alive. I move to the other, the shadow who caught a frantic bullet.
It’s hard to tell how old he or she is, bony and skewed on the ground, its back arched like it hasn’t stood straight in years. It smiles and crows, “we gots eat,” as best it can, but it’s only a feeble version of the animal-like screams that came before.
It smiles, its teeth as rotted and green as my friend from before. It smiles and says again and again, “we gots eat!” I stand over it, feeling good and strong and freed from the prison of certain death.
The small front sight post to the gun lands squarely between his eyes. It keeps smiling and hissing, the mixture of the two bringing back the fiery pain from before. I squeeze the trigger with the meat of my finger slow and steady and watch as a bang turns the thing into another version of its friend, the smile now mincemeat and the hissing only a fucking memory.
I drop two more rounds into him to see if it subsides my pain, but it doesn’t help much. I turn to see the sun beginning to disappear behind grey clouds. Jody continues to weakly crawl across the ground, having made it only five or six feet ahead of me.
I walk over to him, my chest crunching and grinding with every step. I’m mulling the dropping bullets into his back and watching his insides flood out, but the grenades of pain going off in my shoulder reminds me I need more. I grab him by his collar and thrust him to his feet.
We begin to walk again. After a few steps together, I stop and turn back to the wood line, which are as empty as before.
“I’m leaving!” I scream, my voice sounding like little more than a whisper to my own ears. “I’m leaving and no one is stopping me! You can have your friends when I’m gone!”
I wait. A second. Two. Three.
I turn and walk as fast as I can, pushing Jody ahead, my arm and shoulder electrocuted with a pain that threatens over and over to bring me to my knees. When I make it to the pavement of the main street, I nearly run to the car.
I throw Jody against the side of the vehicle, grabbing the keys from my pocket and opening the trunk. I holster my gun, a modest relief flowing through my injured side, and grab Jody by the arm, his body toppling into the trunk. He mumbles still, louder now, screaming almost, but I can’t hear a damn thing.
I watch my fist land against him again and again and again and again. I know I should stop as I watch him scream and quiver, but it feels so damn good to hurt him.
I stop when my hand is cramped and my shoulder is sore and crying and ready to fall off. Jody winces and moans louder now, my hearing slowly returning, the pain likely pulling him out of whatever cloud of high he’d been in before. I watch him for a moment to make sure it’s really him. It still doesn’t feel real. It doesn’t feel like anything I had imagined.
I want to hit him again, but instead I slam the trunk shut before temptation boils my insides too much. I walk around the car and get in the front seat. I sit for a moment, feeling a cold sharpness swim and stab at my insides over and over. I don’t look to my chest or shoulder because I don’t want to see the ground beef they have likely become.
I close my eyes and without warning or explanation, Sarah and the last time I saw her run through my mind. The way she said, “I love you” the day before. The flatness to the words echo through my mind. There was nothing special about it. It was meaningless, mechanical, just a habit more than an expression of passion.
I’m not even sure I said anything back. Still, those final moments carve their way into the dark cave of my brain and re
fuse to leave. I should probably force them out, but they help to drown out the rest of everything currently fighting inside of me.
I flip the stereo on and Dwight is singing about being a thousand miles from nowhere. I turn the knob up until it combats the voices in my head and my screaming ears and the banging from the trunk of the car.
“I got heartaches in my pocket. I got echoes in my head.”
He somehow manages to do it. A smile crawls across my face listening to Dwight sing.
I put my foot against the gas pedal, the roar of the engine alleviating most of what is left of the ringing in my head. The pedal is scratching the floor and the sun is rolling itself behind clouds before I take the ring out of my pocket and let it move around in my hand.
The touch of it is like a bandage to whatever pain I feel.
“I’m a thousand miles from nowhere. Time don’t matter to me,” Dwight lets out, the banging and screaming from the trunk providing a wonderful bass line.
302 days left
The seductress wrapped her arms around him and told him everything would be ok.
She whispered and said everything he wanted to hear.
Charlie wanted to respond. He wanted to put his lips to hers and accept everything she had to offer. The stone silence he responded with clawed at his heart and stomach.
“What did she ask you?” Hardy’s voice plummeted Charlie back to reality, back to the diner and the clinking plates and the zombie patrons and the screeching television set in the corner.
“What?”
“You asked me if I wanted to know the first thing she asked you,” Hardy said, raising his mug to his lips.
“She asked if I had been drinking,” Charlie said, meekly reaching down for his black coffee and pulling it to his mouth, closing his eyes and trying as best he could to get lost in the smell and taste of it.
“Are you?”
Hardy pushed his flask forward.
“No.”
Charlie averted his eyes and dropped his coffee back to the table. He tried distracting himself with the television. Hours after and they continued to talk about everything as if there were something new to say. They were still catching up to a world that had already been blanketed in an inevitable truth.
Charlie could see the flask disappear back into Hardy’s jacket from the corner of his eye but he kept his attention on the television, hearing less and less of what the people were talking about.
Hardy made what must have been half of his mug disappear and then let out an exhale, one that showered Charlie’s pores and made him now feel the seductress’ thick thighs squeeze his waist as they wrapped tightly around him. She wanted him and he wanted her.
“Oh well,” he heard his friend say. “People are a little crazy these days, Charlie.”
Charlie watched as Hardy reached into his coat. He was nearly ready to leave the table until he saw that what he was reaching for was a half empty pack of smokes.
Hardy pulled out two cigarettes and rolled one across the table to Charlie, a ritual of theirs when they’d had these emergency meetings in the past. It was a gesture that slowed Charlie’s heart enough to allow him to focus again on his friend.
The smoke was good and burned his lungs and reminded him that there were still pleasures to be had in the world. He enjoyed the fiery orgasm even more knowing he could enjoy the things guilt-free now.
Even after he quit drinking, Candace would constantly berate him over the cigarettes, saying he was marching himself to an early grave and setting a bad example for the kids. Her words made him smile now as he savored the nicotine while the seductress took a short break.
“Want to know what my first thought was?”
Charlie continued to take slow drags off the smoke between his hands and began focusing intently on Hardy. This was the first thing Hardy had said all morning not in response to Charlie.
“My first thought after I heard everything,” Hardy said, taking a long swig from the cup in front of him, “was that the liquor store was only a three-minute walk from my apartment.”
The two sat in silence, the noises of the diner taking hold once more, Hardy’s words hanging in the air, neither man sure what to do with them. Hardy didn’t speak again until he finished his cigarette and stubbed it out directly on the table.
“I would have thought that my first reaction would be Gloria or the kids or my parents or one of a million other things. Instead, I just thought about where the nearest booze was.”
Charlie put his own cigarette out even though he’d only smoked half of it. His stomach was knotting and his mouth was dry.
He looked away from his friend again and back to the television. A pretty blonde woman was speaking seriously with a priest, but Charlie couldn’t make out what either person was saying.
He tried to force his mind to Candace and the kids, but it was no use. All he could think about was the flask in Hardy’s pocket and the various places housing liquor around them — there was the gas station just before the highway which ran a special on tall boys that was only a two-minute drive.
There was the grocery store which always had discounts on wine and that was no more than a three-minute drive.
There was also the liquor store Charlie knew Hardy was talking about which could not have been more than four minutes away.
Her legs were tighter now and she was rubbing herself against him fiercely but slowly. She whispered in his ear and told him more good things.
“What was your first thought, Charlie?”
He heard Hardy’s words, but he didn’t dare answer. He didn’t dare speak for fear of what might be said.
“Ya’ll going to order anything else?”
“Just more coffee,” Hardy said to the waitress with a smile. Charlie watched as the woman filled up both of their cups. He then watched his friend pull out his flask yet again and cut it into his coffee.
The whiskey danced across Charlie’s skin and massaged his nose and tongue.
When it disappeared again and Hardy began downing more of his coffee, Charlie excused himself and said he needed to use the bathroom.
He knew he should have left. He knew it was the right thing to do.
The sober thing to do was to walk out the front door and stay away from Hardy — but where the fuck else did he have to be?
Charlie made his way to the sinks in the bathroom and ran the water until it was steaming. He splashed his face again and again until he could feel his pores open and the muck of the morning begin slinking its way down the drain.
It was a blissful few moments, but they were fleeting. Worries about Hardy and memories of his wife came flooding back as he wiped away the dripping water with a handful of paper towels.
“Have you been drinking?”
“What?”
“Have you been drinking, Charlie?”
“You’re seriously going to ask me that right now?”
“It’s a fair question.”
“I’ve been sober two fucking years, Candace.” His wife responded with nothing. She went silent and crossed her arms and stared at him. She would do this until she got exactly what she wanted. It was a habit familiar to Charlie that ripped at his skin and made him crazy.
“No, I haven’t been drinking,” Charlie said, making fists with his hands behind his back. “I want to see the kids.”
“It’s not your day.”
“The fuck does that matter? Do you know —”
“Yes, Charlie, I know what’s going on,” Candace said, putting her hand out to keep Charlie away from her. Before he could say anything, the front door to the house, the house Candace and Charlie had bought long before they could afford such a thing, opened and Bill entered their scene.
He put his arm around Candace and asked if everything was ok.
“Everything is fine, Bill,” Charlie said, beginning to pace on the front lawn, the same front lawn he’d once mowed and played catch with Johnny on, the same front lawn he could remember waki
ng up on on more than one occasion.
Candace turned to Bill and spoke softly to him. Charlie didn’t care to hear what she was saying. He walked and tried to quietly do some of the breathing exercises Hardy had told him about. Slow, concentrated breaths. Inhale deeply through the mouth and out slowly through the nose.
“Charlie.” Charlie turned to see Bill had disappeared back into the house and Candace was alone again. “You can see the kids this weekend.”
Charlie opened his mouth to argue, to fight, to say something, but he stopped himself. It was no use. He would never get what he wanted from her.
“Can you just give them this?” Charlie said, pulling the note he’d written that morning and handing it to Candace. She took it and gave it a quizzical look.
“What is this?”
“Some things I wrote for them.” Candace put the note in her pocket and shook her head. Charlie turned to leave, but his wife’s voice stopped him. He hated that she still had that power over him.
“Charlie.” For a moment, seeing her from a distance, Charlie thought he was in love again. He saw the young girl who’d once smiled just looking at him. “Nothing has changed. If you start drinking, I won’t allow you to see the kids.”
Charlie nodded his head and turned again to leave only to be pulled back once more.
“And Charlie?”
“Ya?”
“I need you to sign the divorce papers. Bill and are still getting married.”
Charlie walked away.
Tell him you’re leaving.
You can’t be here.
No good will come of it.
Charlie left the bathroom and began practicing what he was going to say to excuse himself from Hardy’s company. He had made it halfway back to the table when he looked up and saw someone sitting next to his friend.
It took a moment to fully drink in, but Charlie recognized her short and curly hair as the same that their waitress had. Hardy’s arm was around her and he was whispering in her ear.
Leave now.
You can’t be here.
No good will come of it.
Nigh Page 11