Thalo Blue

by Jason McIntyre

  A little while after scolding himself, as he had been prone to do for the duration of his memory, he fell away to a warm and embracing sleep.

  Now, he was awake again. And the curtains were orange.

  His body was wracked with a blaring ache, particularly up and down his left arm. It screamed in him. The pin and needle warriors had brought their big brothers and their dads into the fray, it seemed. In his shoulder there was a splintering tumult of blows and the nerves carried the sparks of them up and down. His neck was a throbbing, blistering wreck of pain. He actually felt like it was measurably expanding in diameter with each throb, like he would be able to look in a mirror and watch his neck fill and contract, fill and contract.

  The room was dark, illuminated only shallowly by some light from the hallway. It was night, or morning. Very very late, or very very early. But those curtains stood out in gaudy color as if they existed in a full-out lighted day while he lay there in an opposing nighttime world—the difference of which could only be measured when you saw the curtains, the seemingly glowing orange curtains. He shifted slightly, thinking that it might help the pain some, but it only made it worse. There was a sharp shot from his chest down to his crotch and through his legs. It couldn’t go any further so it ended at his toes. It crawled throughout him, stopping where he did and not before, gnawing and chewing at pieces of him as it went. Doctor Rutherford had been on top of his game, yet again. A day and a half. Give or take. And Sebastion was wishing the old fellow in the too-white coat could take these feelings away.

  Another shot of pain. And this one was accompanied by pronounced music in his ears and a sharp blast of light, titanium white, that blotted out everything—even the disease-orange drapes to his right. Behind the light was a flash of his bedroom ceiling in the Vaughan house, or maybe the ceiling of a church from long ago. Or maybe it was the ceiling of another, far away place where the roads didn’t have names. He wasn’t sure which ceiling he was looking at from this spot on his back but it was there, plain as anything else he had ever seen or touched. There was a halo of soft yellow on the white paint of that ceiling, a widely-drawn arc that touched down the wall in a long lop-sided triangle. And to his left in that world, those drapes were orange as well.

  It all came back to him then, with the vivid exactness of a filmstrip. Full color. Twenty-four frames per second. Full-surround soundtrack. It was real and it actually happened. And he had forgotten the horror nearly as quick as the horror had taken to be made real. Green means go. Yellow means wrong and orange means hurt...but green means go...

  <> <> <>

  It was all there. Laid out like a banquet of rotting food. In the kitchen, among fragments of that tan plastic, there were those dirty white pills all over: the Adams he had gotten from Dad’s personal ‘pharmacist’. He had considered downing a couple of those but instead threw them across the room just as he had the phone—he wanted to sleep instead. A long empty sleep would solve more than wired-open eyelids pointed at the bursting TV screen all night. Again.

  In the living room, it was blipping and flashing, that TV— like it always did these nights. It held images of fast-food chains and commercials for nasal spray and foreign cars. Above its turned-down volume was the roaring of speakers to either side. The sounds echoed hauntingly down the hall to the bedroom and the bathroom. Pearl Jam ended, The Dark Is Rising, a tune by Mercury Rev, played, and then the shuffle feature found a Radiohead one. Exit Music (For a film) swelled and Sebastion’s eyesight started flailing like a drowning rat in melancholy waves of dark maroon liquid. Muddled in the maroon, there were lazy swarming grays and deep greens. Music of this sort always did that for him. Music always held colors. Still did on this night, and, he hoped, would do so forever.

  He came from the steamy bathroom, fell to his bed in boxers and one of his dad’s white tee-shirts. People always hit the bottle in times of trouble, in times of unparalleled difficulty. Was this one of those? He thought it was. But how can you be sure? There was only one bottle in his whole house, one of dad’s Black Labels above the stove, so he had started into that but there was only enough left for two stiff rounds. A drop left after them but that was it.

  When he came down on the mattress with a flop there was a buzz in his head. But not a strong enough one. Out of situational misfortune, he couldn’t even become an alcoholic successfully. His second-to-last thought, swimming somewhere within the lyrics of his exit music, was of a tin pop can, red, rolling down a gravel incline.

  Tink, tinktinktink-tink-tink.

  And his last thought—his absolute last before shutting out the world—was of the fact that he never dreamed.

  He wished he could sleep forever.

  <> <> <>

  Behind that titanium white flash he saw what he hadn’t wanted to after coming back from death. After coming back from the icy precipice over the crashing waters where there had been blue-gray rocks and dead things on the beach. But in the flash of shocked white which obliterated his hospital room, the orange curtains, everything, from sight, that’s all that was left. It was focused clarity, sharp and uncompromising.

  There was the death grip from the man with the bronze skin. He had been covered by flecks of blood and his eyes were glazed and morbid. They seemed to look through Sebastion, and he could see something awful in them.

  He saw Shears’ snarled face and he saw the young partner’s gun barrel. He saw a flash of orange-yellow-white and felt the bullet. The sheet before him dissolved to become a foreign world where that hellbent mad man in maroon shirt tried to steal him away even further. Finally, it was the sight of that Thief hovering over him with his cold hands locked around him that took him up, over and out of that place. And he descended into a different place. Not a new one. But a distant and old one.

  II. Secret Languages

  The truth is that there were actually two reasons why Zeb left Vivian Leland’s living room the night of her sixteenth birthday party at Lake of Bays. One reason was the exploding white flashes of throbbing bass across the interior of his skull and down his spine—they arrived as his scalp flared with hidden flames that he could neither douse nor relieve.

  The other reason was an empty pop can.

  Several life-altering things happened that night. Call it a Turning Point, call it a Moment of Doubt, call it whatever. But following it, he was never again exactly the same person as he was before.

  <> <> <>

  To say Riley Fischer was responsible for everything would be a cop out. But to say it all would have occurred in exactly the same fashion had he never been somehow connected would be a lie.

  Everyone called him Fish. It was a name garnered way back at St. Vincent’s Academy, the private school Oliver fought tooth-and-nail for Zeb to attend. It was a Catholic school and Oliver’s parents had raised Oliver Catholic, though he hadn’t attended mass in who knew how long. The old man had downed many chalices of wine since then, but it had been years since he had a wafer and a blessing to accompany them. The issue of contention with St. Vince’s, however, was not his son’s religious upbringing. It was a question of net income. Oliver worked long hours but circumstances made it tight to have his son attend such a pricy school. Though he swung it, it seemed to Zeb that the following year of attendance always hung next to a discouraging question mark.

  Fish was actually a nice kid, lithe and powerful as he grew into his teen years, imposing if you got on his wrong side, but quick to smile and wildly popular with girls from the beginning. He was the one kid that the busdriver would wait on. Oh that driver would be honking and yelling and even cussing, but he would never draw the doors shut and pull away from the curb. Even as Riley Fischer, only eleven or twelve, sauntered lazily across the unspoiled lawn of St. Vincent’s, even as he paused and stooped to throw a clump of dirt and grass at another waiting Bluebird school bus, even when all the other kids had run full-out to make it in time, the driver would never rumble off. The schedule was ordained scripture and the after school bus w
ould wait for no child. But it would wait for young Riley. And that was an unspoken truth.

  Zeb assumed Riley’s callsign fit for more reasons than just a nick off his surname. Fish was able to slide into nearly any situation he pleased, and out of it with just as much simplicity. It was on account of his father’s wealth, his mother’s mouth and Fish’s own sense of charm and charisma, and of course, his good looks.

  But he actually was a decent boy. Misled, troubled. Driven astray, perhaps by familial wealth, and the ability to always get whatever he wanted. But he was harmless. He really was. From a physical standpoint, he would sooner offer a put-down than beat the hell out of you—though it felt clear to everyone he could do both. His abuse and his attitude caused riots. His was the most damaging sort of power and, perhaps out of boredom, he liked to flex it when he could—which was nearly always. By the tenth grade at Marin High School, Fish, a starting center on the basketball team, had secured himself as the one to hang your hat next to. If he gave you a wink and a smile, your life seemed like a charmed ride.

  If he disliked you, however, you were meant to rot through your remaining time at Marin. Pranks would be played, your books would be lost, your locker’s padlock would be removed and replaced by one you didn’t have the combination to. One of the famous stories at Marin was how he took pictures of a kid in the boys’ shower while he was wet and naked, then tacked them to a chalkboard in the kid’s homeroom class. All because this guy, the pep coordinator that year, had taken certain liberties as he introduced the boys’ starting lineup at the first basketball rally of the fall semester.

  And if Fish was indifferent to you, well that was a whole different ball of yarn. If he saw through you then so did the rest of the world. You disappeared. Your photo was left out of the year book. You never made any student council positions and you surely did not make any sports teams. His cruelty was legendary but his apathy was probably more damaging.

  Zeb only ever experienced two full moments with Riley Fischer when they attended Marin. And they were each monumental. One was during a phys. ed. class in the tenth grade. The Physical Education curriculum in the somewhat rigid Catholic School system dictated that those classes be divided by sex, so every class had both a male half and a female half. It was, Zeb found out, a crucial playground for the testosterone-driven male to establish and re-assert himself as the hunter-killer he thought he ought to be. The stupidity presented by the members of Zeb’s physical education class each Monday, Wednesday and Friday periods just before lunch, even surpassed the idiocy he witnessed when the girls were present—during his other classes and at outside activities.

  All the boys were standing on the multi-colored stripes of the hardwood gymnasium floor, polished to a squeaky shine. They were in clusters, at the half closest to the boys’ locker room and the coaches’ office, wearing their gray and yellow gym strip—shorts and a tee. Mr. Standish had not yet arrived to begin sorting out teams for baseball. He was late as usual and the anxiety was starting to arouse.

  For some, those were nervous moments—because they were unscripted and without an authority figure. On their faces were looks that said they wished Mr. Standish dead for having to hit the john before class or for talking with someone’s mom or dad out in the hallway so long.

  Fish had begun some rabble-rousing that was actually uncommon for him. He had found a towel and decided to line up his classmates and see who could withstand the most towel burns. It was no coincidence that the girls’ class was doing stretches on their half of the gym floor. They faced the unit of boys while Standish’s counterpart, Mrs. Elgin, oblivious with her back to the unsupervised male half, instructed them on proper stretching technique.

  As usual—though this contest seemed far beyond even Fish’s normal regime—everyone complied as he lined them up. Nervous or not, they all complied because the individual who decided this game was for fools or crowd-pleasers was labeled just that: an individual. And he would be singled out and sized up for future torment. Rudy Dunlop and Simon Caulder, as always, were in on the fun. They were Fish’s best friends and ever-present for his exploits.

  In Zeb’s mind, the whole episode was nothing more than a cavalcade, a farce, a circus-show in the middle ring of a bigtop. His distaste for these kinds of things ran deep, even though his actual aversion to Fish did not. He suspected it was that way with everyone there. No one hated Fish. They probably felt the allure of his personality and his magic, just as the girls always had. But they also saw the pointlessness in this stuff—or at least sensed there was something wrong in winding up a towel and snapping it against bare skin to establish a twisted hierarchy of superiority. They all just felt so powerless to deter it. Or maybe they thought the effort wasn’t worth it. Would anyone back up the classmate who stood his ground? Or would turning on that infamous individual become today’s new game? Did any of them realize that, standing around waiting for Mr. Standish that morning, was a group of young men who would graduate in two and a half years? They were supposedly joining the real world then—in just two and a half years. And here they were, playing follow-the-leader, snapping each other with towels so the girls in Mrs. Elgin’s class could see. The oddest part, the least logical aspect—which Zeb would discover in just a few years—was that this kind of thing wasn’t so far off in that real world. Only, out there it would be done with dollars and cents, fast and faster cars, and insider knowledge about spouses and dirty secrets.

  When Fish, Rudy and Simon came down the line to him, after most of the other kids had red arms, Zeb was still sitting at the bench looking vacantly at the opposite side of the gym where Mrs. Elgin was now dividing up her girls into teams for their period of baseball. In truth he was actually staring at Vivian Leland and, just moments before, thought he had been caught by one of her friends.

  Out zipped the towel in a snap.

  And even faster, out zipped Zeb’s hand. It seemed to catch the towel in slow motion and then, in a continued movement, the fabric coiled around Zeb’s wrist and arm, pulling Fish nearly all the way down to where he was sitting. Fish came off his balance in that quick second and teetered forward, but Zeb put his hand on Fish’s shoulder, steadying him before he could fall. They paused for a moment, eye to eye, only a little ways apart. And they just stared. Fish was clearly taken aback and Zeb was too, though he looked flawless and sober, fully empowered.

  “Look at this one. Redfield thinks he’s the towel snap champ,” Fish said, finally, with some spring in his words, but still nose to nose with one of his ‘subordinates’. He smiled, silkily, and so did Zeb, whose eyes were as clear and as blue as a chilled winter morning. The rest of the boys let out fake oohs and laughter, but were interrupted by Mr. Standish’s arrival, painfully late. He appeared at the office doorway and clapped his hands twice, loudly. “C’mon guys,” he yelled at the group, “let’s get this show on the road. Line up.”

  Zeb remembered, for a long time after, that he hadn’t said a word to Fish. Just stared him down until Fischer used a snatch of his award-winning comedy to step out of the confrontation. But Zeb had just stared. There was ego in that. And also fear.

  <> <> <>

  The second moment they had shared was at Vivian Leland’s sweet sixteen. In the living room of the Leland lakefront estate, among crowded pines and a few red oaks, which all pressed in like looming figures of darkness, the party was already rip-roaring. While some sat outside around a fire pit, yellow and crisp, shooting orange stars upwards and threatening to turn low branches into torches, Zeb remained inside as long as he could stand it, away from that comforting air, the groping couples in darkened coves of foliage, and the odd partier pissing into the lake from the boat dock.

  He was on a sofa-couch in front of a large plate window which framed a deck, then a murky courtyard, then a sloping patch of dimly lit flowers and a pristine, yet damp, stretch of olive turf. Then there were the englulfed logs and the sillohouette figures, phantoms hulking around the blazing pit and tipping bottles at
their lips. Beyond them, the moon hung with little to say for the moment. Its rippling reflection struggled to remain whole atop the surface of the water. It was cut like sets of streaking batwings were crossing between it and the reality of the Leland estate. Jackson was customarily missing in action. Likely, thought Sebastion, his closest friend, one of the few people he could stand, was busy with one of the girls in a shared “Understanding Visual Art” class, teaching her how to improve her brush strokes.

  Hardcore rap was hammering through the house, chatter was prevalent—though it couldn’t be understood beside the music—and in Zeb’s head there were a dozen conflicting sensations. The room of crowded guys and girls blotted out, becoming a blurry white cloud burst at every bass thud. And a tiny procession of ants tickled up and down his back whenever someone’s shorts brushed his knee or a bare arm. Under his hair, the flesh on top of his head itched and burned like it was being cooked to blackened ash. He looked down at the red-pink flesh of his inner arm where, a million years before, the lip of a boiling pot of water had marked him forever. He expected to see the long and familiar splotch blaring like the brake lights of a car in traffic. An old Beemer maybe.

  But the scar kept quiet.

  Small favours, he thought, then closed his eyes. He tried to think of something, anything, other than the fire in his hair. He just wished that some monumental event would ocurr, maybe that Vivian would saunter into the room and sit down with him. The night would be redeemed if that happened...It would be completely and graciously saved.

  Among his myriad of talents, Zeb discovered that he had a unique capacity to easily skip from social circle to social circle, an undertaking that would be difficult for most; pigeon-holes occur so quickly in a set of more than three people. Every school seems to have its core groups—plus or minus a few smaller, fringe cliques—and during the previous year, almost out of a need to remain predominantly anonymous, he had secured a connection to each of the circles at his school: the athletes, the alternatives, the artsies, the club geeks, and those that didn’t gravitate toward anything worthy of a title card. So on this night, as usual and accorded by his ‘acquaintance to many, friend to few’ approach, there were a lot of hellos and pleasantries. People came and sat with him, or stood nearby to talk for a bit. Then, after some chit-chat, they would generally mull back towards the kitchen where there were drinks and food, and a few souls closer to the core of their own crowd. People came and went. Not as often as he hoped, but truthfully, more often than he could deal with.