Apnea

by Nathan Tackett

  "If you want me to stay tonight I will." Neil spoke instead, looking her over for the last time.

  "No, it's ok." When she spoke it always sounded like an obligation." You should get on the road. You don't want to be caught in the storm."

  Neil waited until she disappeared inside the building before putting the car in reverse and pulling out of the parking lot. He followed the roads out of town and onto the highway. The world a blinding white around him. Kate was long gone now.

  The city had swallowed her whole.

  Inside her kitchen, Kate found a bottle of wine and cracked it open. She poured a glass full of the deep red wine and swallowed full, letting it stain her cracked lips-letting it calm her ripped insides.

  Neil was gone.

  She stared through the kitchen window that had frosted over.

  Outside a fresh snow was starting to fall.

  Sick Day

  Miss Sullivan said she would call in sick today herself.

  Refreshed, that was how she felt. Surprisingly so ,given the liquid events of last night. By 'events' she was referring to the near empty bottle of Raspberry Smirnoff lying dead at the foot of the couch.

  For the past week or so she had woke up this way.

  She had her own bedroom. She had her own kitchen, bathroom, living room, and occasional access to the laundry room downstairs. She had her own independence.

  Yet, the couch was just so comfortable.

  Katherine sat up, kicking her legs free from the invisible blankets that drinking an entire bottle of vodka will sometimes slip over you in the middle of the night. She decided that this was going to be one of those days when she didn't look at the clock-ever. Clock watching had become one of her replacement addictions as of late. It was supposed to take the place of the drinking.

  Oops.

  Her body ached in a good way. She felt as if she had run the Boston marathon overnight and won. It was the pain of accomplishment. Her toes unwillingly kicked a small plastic bottle and sent it rolling across the living room carpet. It made that familiar rattlesnake sound. She plucked it up, turning it in her hand to inform herself.

  SLEEP-EZ

  Shaking it, she was relieved to find it still full. She fingered the foil hymen - in tact.

  Silly girl, Kathering giggled, haven't we had enough of playing princess.

  A wide chunk of sunlight fell through the balcony window-spreading over her naked figure.

  Being 35 was no 21. She sighed, well aware that she was lucky to pass for forty these days. It was more than just the fading crimson split ends hanging dry over her shoulders. It was more than the curse of gravity or the wandering mole. It was the petrified liver. It was the miscarriage or three...

  Still, it was no excuse for this-the bottle of sleeping pills cold in her hand. True, it had seemed the nights were turning harder and harder to get through and she was running out of things to keep her brain from bouncing back. Back to old bad habits.

  Back to her eighteenth birthday and that bathtub full of pink water -her wrists open like sad little mouths. Back then it was all for attention. The truth had gripped her by the hips.

  Her audience had left her.

  But today-today was beautiful! How foolish had she been to want to play out such a cowardly performance. Her heart fluttered with the relief knowing that she had not gone through with it. She would of missed today, and a whole row of days like today.

  Days to have great songs stuck in her head....

  She started humming Satellite of Love as she placed the bottle down on the coffee table next to her fresh pack of Marlboro Ultra Lights. She had played the shit out of that song last night. Lou Reed had been singing for her and only her. Honestly, she thought Lou was gorgeous in that ugly kind of way. If a junky plain as him could survive for years then a lonely night should be a piece of cake for her.

  Bum Bum Bum Satellite of Love, she chimed over and over, fishing out a cigarette.

  Today was a day for smoking naked on the couch.

  When she called the restaurant she didn't get an answer - only endless ringing. By now, it would be smack dab in the middle of the breakfast rush. All the other waitresses would be running around like heads with their chickens cut off. She felt sorry for them, but only slightly. Her absence would ultimately mean more money for the rest of them. So what if they had to be covered in syrup and sleazy old man slime at the end of their shift.

  She would stop by later in the afternoon. She would tell Walter that she had some kind of medical issue, and had spent the morning in the emergency room. Walter was a scumbag anyway-typical male management material. She did not like the way he looked at her, let alone working an entire shift for him.

  Maybe she wouldn't go in today after all. There was no doubt that she could just walk down the street and get another job.

  Turn and burn baby.

  A cramp of a good idea hit her gut. Down the street there was a pleasant little artsy cafe. Not the kind of establishment that would hire a second-hand plain Jane like herself, but they had an eggs benedict to die for. Clock or no clock her stomach was starting to get fussy.

  Her next adventure planned, Katherine stepped into the shower.

  She didn't exactly remember walking down to the cafe. Come to think of it, she didn't remember ordering or paying for her eggs benedict either.

  But it was sitting on the quaint classy bone white square plate before her all the same.

  Her first memory -soft golden goodness -the hollandaise sauce the soothing consistency of warm snot and the taste of delight. Katherine shrugged off her lack of short-term focus and forked out another bite, wiping the drip off her chin with a smile.

  She had downed damn near an entire bottle of vodka last night for Pete's sake. That had to account for some of the fogginess of the day. Through the wide slab of a window beside her table she took in the trendy shopping district outside. In the center of the square of one of those abstract granite fountains sprouted out from the red tile ground. It was dry. It was probably still too early in the spring for them to be pumping water up through it, she supposed.

  The brushed metal pane top of the window cut off the names of the various shops. But she did not need such knowledge to guess their business. There was an open shop front full of overpriced 'vintage' clothing. Women's shoes were spilling out of another. Directly across from her half-eaten breakfast was a bookstore with squares of various colors and sizes plastered to the windows.

  She couldn't make out their titles.

  Again, she didn't have to. These mass-produced shrines to consumerisms were spreading throughout the city. It seemed you couldn't walk through a neighborhood without crossing one. Each one was made of the same stores. Nothing was ever on sale, not really.

  Katherine's stomach was now full. She washed down the traces of english muffin with her chilled 32 ounce ice-tea (no ice). The single lemon wedge rested dead on the bottom of her red plastic glass. It had drowned some time ago-releasing its seeds to the surface.

  Her eyes clicked back on to the square outside. It was vacant -too early in the morning. The atmosphere was soaked in the colors of 8 a.m.- everything tinted a deep aqua blue green. The mood of the day was almost…lonely.

  Her head throbbed with the slightest sensation of guilt one feels when they shuck their tedious responsibilities for a lazy day such as this. She glanced at her wrist to catch the time.

  She must have left her watch at home. It was probably sitting next to the bathroom sink, but it could be anywhere.

  Then Katherine saw her.

  A little girl was running across the square. She was wearing one of those old blue and white starched school uniforms like you always see in Japanese porno films. The pony tailed child was probably no more than nine years old and she skipped across the stones with the careless freedom that comes at such an age. Her book bag was bouncing off her hip as if it were empty.

  Katherine twitched, causing her fork to scrape across the now-empty designer
plate.

  The girl was moving backwards.

  She must have knocked over her oversized plastic cup of iced tea in that brief snap of realization for Katherine now felt the soggy splunk of the lemon upon her sandals. She bent down and plucked the puckered relic from off the exposed skin of her toes.

  Sitting back up, the scene outside the window had changed. The courtyard was now full of people flocking about like true sheep of commerce.

  Katherine shook it off and dropped a hefty tip onto the table, the thick tablecloth was hemorrhaging from it's open ice tea wound.

  It was time to go.

  Heading towards the already open doors of the cafe, she passed a man sitting alone. She stopped , noticing that he was halfway through his own eggs benedict.

  "To die for." His voice was more than slightly exotic.

  His eyes were up on her. The man's overall appearance-the dark olive skin, the slicked back coal black GQ hair-the square cut of his expression-gave him away as a foreigner. He was most definitely a traveler of sorts. She'd place him in Italy, or Greece, or Spain-but not in some bastard strip mall in this city.

  There was something about him that caused her throat to clamp shut-cutting off the oxygen to all her rational thinking. It wasn't the uber creepy way he was staring at her that bothered her, nor was it his wide toothed grin that looked almost reptilian. She could even get accept the fact that his suit (most definitely some sort of pricey European piece of work) seemed to change colors first from blue, then to a deep brown, and finally a bright shimmering red.

  For some sickening reason the man seemed familiar.

  She had dreamt about him before.

  Katherine took to the cafe doors at the appropriate speed for such awkwardness.

  Stupid vodka.

  Katherine Sullivan actually did decide that she would by some flowers.

  She would get them as a surprise for her mother. Her mother was one of those warhorses that was never surprised by anything. But, a fresh arrangement of lilies would definitely be a good start -especially since Katherine was buying them with her own money.

  They hadn't talked in months.

  She wasn't going to mention that she had blown off work and was doing absolutely nothing with her life. Hopefully the flowers would be a good enough distraction from the current state of things.

  Katherine figured she would cut through Tory A. Grup memorial park. It was the quickest way to get to the flower shop from the cafe. Then, from there, it was a fifteen minute bus ride uptown to where mother was.

  The grass was thick against her ankles -swollen with the night's rain and bleeding an almost artificial green. In fact the park, with its ancient crooked trees and winding stone paths, took on the scene of an old movie that had been poorly colorized.

  A warm cramp in her stomach signaled her to look up into the sky. The clouds dipped in yellow-sick with storm. It reminded her of that suspended moment just before a tornado touched ground. This was a phenomenon the one time mid-western girl was all too familiar with.

  Something nasty was on its way. The wind picked up slightly as if to reassure her that bad things do exist. Her pace quickened, her direction became more determined. But not too much. She didn't want to seem too foolish out here in the open. She didn't want to seem so....

  BUM BUM BUM... SATTELITE OF LOVE...BUM BUM BUM

  Her cell buzzed. She clicked it open. It was her mother.

  "Kat darling." The woman's voice was still firm amidst the static cutting in and out. " How's my baby girl?"

  "I'm...actually, I'm having a great day today." She felt twelve all over again. "Funny thing is I was just thinking about coming to see you this afternoon."

  The first few drops were slipping out of the clouds and catching Katherine's vulnerable self. Subconsciously she was trying not to sound rushed with her mother.

  "Oh goody," Her mother rarely inflected emotion. "I heard you were coming home. I can't wait to talk to you Kat. We have so much to catch up on."

  "Coming home?" Kat stopped." No no mother, I'm just coming by for a visit. I'm doing real good on my own. Why don't you come over to MY place for dinner? We can catch up there."

  The response she got was the one she always got -her mother's hoarse two packs a day for forty years laugh. No, it wasn't a laugh-it was a cackle. Mother had the superpower to make a daughter feel both stupid and useless with that laugh of hers.

  "Silly....girl..." The static was slicing up her mother's words into poetry without meter." I'll....see you soon....soon...see...you......soon."

  And that was that.

  Katherine shut the phone, dropping it back into her purse.

  Her bowels instantly filled with ice. Her brain caught on fire.

  Mother had been dead for two years.

  The rain was at full force now. It was exploding from the sky in thunderous bursts -gallons of it. The drops swarmed about her body, cutting against her flesh, and sliding down her throat-choking her.She was standing oblivious in the middle of it, staring down at her now dead cell phone.

  Her brain was going through all the scenarios one often does when they find themselves waking from a nightmare. She was negotiating with the situation, trying to kill the fear with a little logic.

  She began the checklist.

  I can feel the rain on my arms. I am aware that I am standing in the middle of the park during an afternoon rain storm. There is wind whipping my face, and my stomach is turning over the contents of a rather delicious breakfast. This is not a dream.

  Katherine was scrolling through her memory, digging up evidence. Hadn't she heard of weird things like this before? Hadn't she read on the internet about how people were often contacted by dead ones through their cell phones? Didn't it happen over in Japan at least once?

  But what about earlier?The girl running backwards? Oh, that was just some stupid new fad the kids were doing these days. It had to be. Kids were doing all kinds of crazy shit. There were stories of teenieboppers strangling themselves for kicks. Running backwards didn't seem so odd now did it.

  But, instead of waves of relief washing over her soul, something else began. Her chest tightened. Her heart was racing. The bile started slipping out the back of her mouth.

  This didn't have the feel of a dream to it. There were no flying cars or handsome centaurs with foot long erections. She had been abandoned. She was slipping out to sea.

  She was miles underwater.

  One last attempt at salvation came her way. It lifted the pressure off her insides, if only the slightest bit. She remembered an event that took place a month after her first stint at being sober.

  It was the day after Christmas, three years ago when Katherine had been assigned to take down all the decorations in the clinic. The long strands of silver and gold tinsel had morphed into slithering serpents of biblical proportions.

  She had spent a good hour or two discussing the end of the world with them.

  A flashback, that's what Dr. Wilkins had called it. It had been nothing more than a chemical reaction due to years and years of 'experimentation'. The brain of a junky gets rewired somehow.

  But this was hardly an 'episode'.

  When she opened her eyes once again the man was standing before her. A dark contrast against the life giving foliage, he was somehow untouched by the rain.

  The suit, once stylish and expensive, had now taken the form of scales-covering his body and reflecting the color of the surroundings. Nothing moved. Those raping eyes -that cutting grin remained floating and focused on her.

  Forgetting about the flowers, Katherine began to run like hell in the other direction.

  She took to a speed that was unknown to her before. The rain whipped at her face, blinding her. Even the wind couldn't keep up with her.

  Yet, no matter how fast her pace was the man kept right behind her. His stride nothing more than a brisk walk. Those eyes and mouth fixed every single time she flipped back a glance.

  His fingers were tickling t
he back of her neck.

  A force unlike she had ever experienced before tugged at her insides. It was a magnetic warmth that was drawing her in a specific direction. Katherine was being pulled towards her destination -home.

  She would be safe there. She hoped. Yes, soon she'd be sitting naked on her couch once again. She'd be telling Dr. Wilkins all about this horrible event and he'd chalk it up as progress.

  Katherine decided that, right then and there, she'd go back to the restaurant and beg that douchebag Walter for her job back. He would scoff at her, but end up taking her back 'one last time'. By tomorrow afternoon the only torture she'd have to bear would be the wayward hands of white-trash customers.

  Nothing would make her happier.

  When Katherine arrived at her apartment, out of breath and bargaining for a single shred of sanity, she found that things were going to be far from normal.

  Slamming the door behind her she was greeted with the blasting sound of her shitty stereo cranked up. Lou Reed's voice -once soothing and so peaceful, was now the booming voice of God himself.

  SATELLITE'S GONE WAY UP TO MARS....

  Lou was being accompanied by a constant screeching ringing.

  SOON IT WILL BE FILLED WITH PARKING CARS....

  Every single clock had somehow been set to go off at the same time -the oven timer ringing from the kitchen- the cheap plastic radio beeping from somewhere inside the bedroom.

  The only alarm clock she actually used, the Hello Kitty piece on top of the tv, was glaring straight at her. It's red eyes burning the same numbers over and over...

  10:30...buzz...10:30...buzz...10:30....

  All she could see out through balcony windows were thick black squares of night. Katherine charged towards the stereo. She needed to think. She needed silence!