“Now listen close, okay sir? We’re gonna roll you onto your back. Just to be safe, we’re gonna do it nice and slow. We don’t want to move you too much but we’ve got to get you onto the board so we can carry you, all right? Does that sound okay to you?”
Matthew said nothing but did open his eyes. The light was very bright, and it did hurt, but it wasn’t so bad. He could make out shapes, blurry legs and a blue sky.
“There you are. Stay with me, okay? Stay with me. You’re gonna be fine. We’re gonna roll you... Phil, you ready? Yeah? Okay, we’re gonna roll you now. Just let us do everything, you lie still and try to relax.”
Gary felt his body roll, and the relief was trumped only by the intense pain. He opened his mouth to scream, but could only gag.
“You’re shittin’ me,” the second man said, and Matthew wondered what he was upset about.
“Uh, okay, Jenny, strap him down, yeah? Uh, okay, let’s cut the rest of this off.”
Matthew thought he heard someone gagging.
“Jenny, stay with me. Carla, you got this? Okay, let her go. We’ll do it. Get that fucking thing off him.”
Matthew felt something lifted off his skin and a soft thump from where it must have been thrown. He wondered what it was. My wallet? he thought, then forgot about it as a mask was placed over his nose and mouth and clean fresh oxygen was pumped into his lungs.
“Gary...”
“I know! Keep it together. We’ve got to bandage this. And the foot. Christ.”
Matthew opened his eyes, looked around. He could see better now. He saw the young man’s face that was bent over him, staring at his now very naked body.
The young man was wearing a white shirt and pants. Like an angel. He looked right at Matthew, met his eyes, smiled. His eyes were brown and wide. He had a crew-cut and he looked young and strong, so clean and whole.
“You’re awake, that’s great.” Gary said. “We’re just gonna bandage up some areas where you’re, uh, bleeding. Looks like you’ve been through hell, my man. But we got you now.”
Lying on the smooth, hard board, Matthew felt layers of bandages going firmly around his midsection, a cold pack of something resting on top of his stomach. Someone bound up his hand and was now wrapping down by his foot.
“What am I wrapping here...” the second man said.
“Just do it, he’s awake.”
Gary turned and looked into Matthew’s eyes.
“We got you now, we got you. We’re gonna get you to a hospital and they’ll fix you right up.”
Matthew nodded, feeling a little strength returning to him with the sun on his skin and the IV doing its work. He could feel the fluid racing to all points inside him, cleansing him, filling him with vital moisture.
After a few more moments, they strapped him firmly to the board. He was wrapped like a mummy in blankets and felt a chill run through him despite the warmth.
“Okay, here we go, sir. On three, guys. Yeah? One, two...” and then Matthew was lifted into the air. They were taking him away. He was saved.
As they walked him carefully down the hill of broken concrete, Matthew had a moment to reflect on his last hours buried in the dark. There was something nagging him, something he was forgetting.
Dee.
Matthew’s eyes sprang open, and Gary noticed right away. Matthew searched left to right, almost in a panic. He saw the other medics, and they looked back at him with sickening glances, as if he were too horrible, too monstrous for them to look at for more than a second. He turned back to Gary, tried to move his good hand but was strapped down. He tried to talk, but the mask was in the way. He began to convulse, shaking his body, pleading at Gary with his eyes.
“Hold on, damn it,” Gary said, but looked at Matthew calmly, with the patience and fortitude of a saint. “What is it?”
Matthew pointed with one finger, and Gary turned to look.
Someone said, “The woman.”
Gary looked back to where Matthew was pointing. Matthew used his new-found strength to lift his head and see the spot where he had lain dying. With Gary turned, he had a clear view of three other rescue workers lifting a frail woman from the rubble.
Her head, Matthew saw, was caved inward. Almost flattened. The way her legs hung he knew they were shattered. The cornflower blue dress that clung stickily to her body was entirely crusted over with blood. One of the workers tried for a better grip and her head lilted backward limply, and he saw what was left of her face as her long black hair hung downward off her sagging skull, the neck nothing but stripped muscles as the head rolled and dangled in an impossible position.
Then Gary stepped back in front of Matthew, blocking his vision.
“You can’t help her, sir. She’s been gone a while. I’m sorry.”
Matthew settled back and let his eyes travel to Gary’s face. His mind went numb.
He tried to find answers in the faces of the medics, but they were looking away from him, toward the oncoming ambulance he could hear backing toward them, a steady beeping alarm coming from it as they moved closer.
Gary was talking to another medic who had just approached, and they were using hushed tones so Matthew couldn’t make out what they were saying.
While the two medics exchanged notes, a tall, haggard man walked into Matthew’s field of vision. The man looked directly at Matthew, expressionless, then nodded. He patted him on the shoulder.
“Atta boy. It’s all over, you hear? You take care now. You take care.”
And the tall man turned away.
As Matthew waited to be loaded into the ambulance, he lifted his head once more, trying to see the ruined building that had been his prison.
Standing at the foot of the board, just past his feet, was Diane. Her face was just visible over the shoulder of one of the medics helping to carry him. She was holding a wrapped bundle in her arms. He saw gray skin, a sagging weight dangling from her. She was smiling at him.
Matthew wanted to smile back, but as his brain started to kick into higher gears and reality infiltrated his senses, his desire to smile fell away, replaced with something close to dread.
Why was she here? Was she a hallucination? None of them are real. Robbie was dead. Diane was... Diane was...
Sullen, he forced himself to stop thinking. He wished he could hold Dee’s hand again, but knew that was impossible. That hand wasn’t warm at all, was it boy-o?
He let his head rest back against the board, and the voices surrounding him faded away, the world slipping into a cone of muffled quiet.
A firm, cold hand rested on his forehead and he knew it was his dead friend back to save him. His guide.
Matthew closed his eyes, breathed in the fresh oxygen, his brain sparking to higher plateaus of life with every inhalation.
It’s not real.
Breathe.
Nothing is real.
You’re badly hurt.
Everything is going to be normal.
Just breathe.
Something clicked loudly from deep inside his brain, like a metal switch being flipped. His ears were flooded with a rushing sound, as if he had been plunged underwater.
He forced his eyes open. The medics were gone. Diane was gone. He was no longer being carried toward the waiting ambulance. As he breathed into the mask, the sound of his pumping heart throbbing in his ears, he focused his eyes upward.
Impossibly long, spiraling black serpents filled an endless pale white sky, the host of creatures like a writhing plague corroding every inch of the expanse.
Shuddering, panicked, he pinched his eyes closed. His breathing quickened, his heart raced. Both eyes spilled a rush of tears, as if he had looked directly into the sun. But there was no sun. No clouds. Just that pale sky and the beasts...
His heartbeat slowed, his breathing steadied. His body felt light, so light. He waited.
He heard the lapping of dark waves as they slapped lightly against the sticky bark of impossibly tall trees.
Did
my parents really say they loved me?
And, one last wish, if his wife and son were truly there, he hoped, against all hope, that his boy could meet his namesake, or perhaps that was just a sweet fragile dream, like everything else in this shattered world.
He felt movement, as if being nudged awake. He heard muffled, faraway screams. He shook his head, clenched his good hand into a fist of prayer.
He prayed that when he once more dared to open his eyes, the sky above him would be blue.
Bio photo: Bethany Gilbertson
Philip Fracassi lives in Los Angeles, where he works as a screenwriter and author.
His screenplays have been distributed by Disney Entertainment and Lifetime Television. He is the author of several chapbooks and a literary novel, and his debut collection of horror stories is due out in 2017 from JournalStone Publishing.
He can be reached via Facebook, Twitter (@philipfracassi) or his website: pfracassi.com.
Bonus Material
Death, My Old Friend
I won’t lie to you. It’s strange growing up with Death as your best mate. Lots of explaining to do, hard to keep friends and all that. Tough all around, I’d say. One exception. No bullies. Free and clear are the close friends of Death. No one wants to be on his bad side, do they?
Still, wasn’t all fun and games. I mean, he had a job to do and he did it with vigor and more than a little relish. In class – the both of us just wee and still figuring out the what’s and who’s of life – we’d sit beside each other in the classroom, as usual the last row, desks parallel, trainers kicking air.
“Killed Mrs. Haberdash last night,” he’d say, whispering it to me so Mr. Blackburn wouldn’t hear it over his lecture on the highlights of the Peloponnesian War. “Heart disease, you know,” he’d say, and I’d just nod and look forward, staring hard at the blurry saturated image of ancient Greece the projector was splattering over the white concrete wall of the classroom. “She was nice, eh?” he said lamely, quietly, as if to himself. “I mean, never a bad word.”
Mrs. Haberdash was piano tutor to both myself and Death, along with many other kids whose parents were keen on promoting the finer arts in their dullard children. I’d gotten no further than “Chopsticks” before quitting it, spending the time I was supposed to be in Haberdash’s parlor exploring the creek out by Westford Park for minnows and tadpoles. I had dreams of a frog farm then.
But Death always enjoyed the lessons, said they “rounded him out,” for whatever that’s worth. He’d brag about his knowledge of Chopin and Bach, how he’d all but mastered “Moonlight Sonata.”
“So then why’d you kill her?” I asked, not for the first time. It was a question that tended to rise whenever a similar set of circumstances presented themselves.
The conversation had leaked on into break. We were on the swings by then, shooting skyward parallel to one another, stomachs lurching on the backswing, feet thrusting forward on the return, trying, without making a show of it, to stay in rhythm.
“I didn’t kill her, dolt,” he returned, focused on propelling himself upward, shooting toward the sky, kicking his heels at the clouds, then bending the knees sharp, dropping away. “I don’t kill anyone, you know that. Don’t make a fuss. Is what it is, init?”
And I just nodded, feeling bad for vexing him. We all had our tasks. We were all just getting along. My folks, for instance, wanted me to be an athlete. Pushed me to sports every chance they could get, but it never took, primarily because I was small and weak and uncoordinated. Poor hand-to-eye contact and all that. Tried joining a couple teams after grammar school, never caught on with it. Lot of hassle over similar games you could play in the park with mates you liked versus the assholes they teamed you with at school. Still, wanted to succeed for mum and da. Failed, of course, but A+ for effort.
Death tried football but quit when a kid died during a match. Just dropped mid-field from an aneurysm. Fate, of course, everyone knew it. But Death was still there, on the pitch, in the forward position, actually, and had to go over there and send the boy’s soul on his way, right in front of his teammates and a bandstand full of onlookers. Not a pleasant task. Most of the opposing fans were jeering as it was their player. Parents crying, of course.
Death quit the team after that, told me it was for the best as the fellas tended to pace themselves during practice and warm-ups, keeper even taking on a helmet. Coach said it was affecting the intensity, overall effort was waning, etc. So Death acquiesced and bowed off but was distraught, to tell the truth.
What folks don’t understand is that Death doesn’t cause the inevitable, he simply handles the transaction, dresses it up, like. He manages, how do you say, the exchange, as it were, between this life and the next. His proximity to the killing itself having nothing at all to do with it. Hell, I’d had multiple sleepovers with the bloke, and I’m still right as rain. We even shared a cigarette once. Talk about tempting fate!
At least, that’s what I thought at the time.
Still, he made folks edgy and no lie. He was good about it for the most part, only at certain times becoming vexed, irritated or, on more than one occasion, severely depressed by the stigma which surrounded him. But we all had our problems at that age, teenage years being what they are, so his issues were no more dramatic than my own or anyone else’s. At least he knew what he was going to be when he grew up. Advantage, that.
For the most part, Death and I got along famously. We hit speed bumps, like most best friends will, but all-in-all we were great mates. Highs and lows, sure, but I was always there for him if needed and, to the best of his ability, he was always there for me.
Our biggest fight stemmed from what I guess you could call a misunderstanding. It was our junior year of high school, and I had a major World History test the following day, first period. It was late at night and I was fast asleep, having gone to bed later than I’d wanted because of a rugby match on television I just had to watch the end of (good guys lost, btw). Anyway, it was late, and I was brought awake from what I guess was a nasty nightmare, or maybe I just heard him sneaking about. Impossible to say.
But when I woke up he was standing near the foot of my bed, heading toward an open window. We kept them open all that autumn because of the late heat, and mum and da couldn’t afford air, so windows and fans it was on those hot nights. When I saw him, I didn’t know what to do, what to say. Yeah, we were best mates, but we certainly didn’t sneak around the other’s room at night. Don’t get that idea.
So it was startling, to say the least. “Hey!” I said to him, whispering as loudly as I could, not wanting to wake the folks. “What are you about?”
He froze, didn’t look at me at first, just looked at that open window, like he was gonna will himself through it without having to take another step. Finally, he did turn, his face caught the moonlight, and I could see he was shaken up. “I’m sorry, John,” was all he said, then he took three quick steps and slid out the window easy as pie.
“Sorry for what?” I said from the bed, talking now to an empty room, asking questions of shadows.
I got up, went to the window and looked out. He was my friend, yeah, but I closed the window after him nonetheless. I liked him, Death. Not sure I trusted him, though. Besides, everything seems creepier in the middle of the night, am I right?
Back to bed and the next thing I remember is waking up to my Da screaming. I jumped out of bed like it was on fire and ran down the hall to my folks’ room, saw the old man bent over the bed, hysterical.
Mum had died in the night.
Heart failure, just like Mrs. Haberdash, the piano tutor. Very rare, apparently. Unusual, they said after, when the doctors got to her. I thought but didn’t say, Yeah, tell that to Haberdash. It was becoming his specialty for those more sudden rug pulls, I suppose.
Obviously, I was pissed off. I tried to confront him about it, ask him why he didn’t at least warn me. Told him I thought we were mates. Told him what’s the point of being best friends w
ith someone if they can’t pull you a solid every now and then? Ain’t that what friends are for? Jesus, would it have killed him to do me one favor, and let my ma be alive? I missed her. Cried and cried for days, for fuck sake.
He showed at the funeral, and I couldn’t stay upset. It was big of him, and if I’m being honest, I was glad he was there. So I let it slide, and we came to an understanding about certain things.
“We all go alone, John,” he said during the viewing, when we was sitting in the car park tossing pebbles at the hearse’s hubcaps. “Ain’t nothing changing that.”
“Not you, eh?” I said, not even sure if I was right about that one. “Immortal, et cetera.”
He didn’t say anything.
“And besides,” I continued, “we don’t go alone, do we? You’re there.”
He shook his head, whispered to me quietly as if we were talking during a eulogy. “No one ever sees me, mate. See, I step in right after. Well, sort of. I mean, I’m there when they, you know…”
I nodded, not saying it aloud on account of it’d be bad taste, being Mum’s funeral.
“Anyway, we all go alone. Even me. My job is more along the lines of guidance, see? If it weren’t for me, fuckin’ souls would be stuck in a dead body for eternity, and who’d want that?”
I shook my head, frowned. “Not me, that’s for fuckin sure.”
“Exactly,” he said, and patted my hand with his cold one. I looked at him and he was smiling. I didn’t trust that smile, and I can’t say I rightly believed him about that “not being part of the dying” bit, but what was I gonna do? Call him a liar? He was my best mate. And ‘sides, we all got jobs to do, and not one of us likes ‘em. So I let it drop.
* * *
A year later he took cousin Bernie, who I used to play lawn darts with, and who’d once put one right through my foot after an argument about whether I had or had not seen his girlfriend naked when she and I played doctor a few years back (I had). When Bernie was killed, I was better about not holding it against Death. Helped that he didn’t need to climb through my room for access, but I also like to feel like I’d grown a little wiser.
Fragile Dreams Page 7