Westlake Soul

by Rio Youers

  Either way, it is done. No more tube. No more nutrition or hydration.

  “Let’s hope it’s quick,” Dad said.

  I’m on my own.

  I have spent the last thirty-one hours fighting my condition. A relentless battle that brought no gain. Time to sleep, and hopefully rest. Find a dream with no fight, no pain, and no Dr. Quietus. Tomorrow I’ll do it all over again.

  Before I sleep, though, I’m just going to hang a while. Endure the pain. Niki is sitting in the Mork chair, doing something out of character. She’s singing. Loud and unabashed. Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released.” So apt I could cry. At least it’s not “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.”

  I listen. Unresponsive. My throat dry and sore.

  Her voice carries me. Like the sweetest arms.

  She finishes. Sits silently.

  I think I should close my eyes. And I do.

  20. The Fucktard Strikes Again.

  I haven’t forgotten about Wayne. I’m still going to get that son of a bitch.

  Four days since my life support was cut off. I have spent most of that time fighting. I have rebuilt the Soulmobile, and drive regularly through the motor cortex, leaping chasms like frickin’ Knight Rider, crashing into weakened buildings that separate in spinning pieces. Pedal to the metal. Nothing but speed. I have discovered new terrain but it is just as barren as everywhere else. I drive until the tires are smoking. The headlights uncover a lifelessness that could be measured in light years. One time I popped the hood and ran jumper cables from the battery (a billion volts—that sucker is juiced) to deep in my brain: the thalamus—a kind of signal box for sensory and motor function. I gunned the ignition. There was a bang and a curl of blue flame. I expected my body to jerk upright in bed, eyes wide and alive. Returning to the groovy room, I found nothing but a breathing corpse with dry blood on its lips.

  I find thin relief in my daydreams, and rest in what sleep I manage to get, which isn’t much. It is broken by pain. My muscles ache from trying to work. My stomach, which I imagine hissing and bleeding like a collapsed lung, stages violent demonstrations from head to toe, toppling cars and throwing petrol bombs. My throat is so dry I can feel the lining crumble as I breathe.

  My family are doing their best. Staying as strong as they can. There are fewer tears now that they have made their decision, but the distress is a storm. They just want it to be over, and who can blame them? Until then they exhibit cracked smiles and operate on 3% of the iceberg. They’re aliens in pretty skins. I float with them sometimes, and study their distraction. Dad is trying to carry on as normal, but keeps missing the mark. Little things. Pouring milk instead of cream into his coffee. Backing the car into the garage door. Too many to mention them all. Niki is out most of the time. Or sleeping. When she’s home (and awake) she’ll often sit in with me. Curled into the Mork chair, like a chick in an egg, reading something for school or—her new thing—singing. It’s crazy how much she loves me. I always knew it . . . but I never really knew it, you know? Mom is a cardboard cutout with a distant expression, placed randomly around the house. She graduates, occasionally, to animation, and with short-lived gusto. I watched her drop and do three push-ups on the kitchen floor, then fill out an online application to appear on Mantracker. She vacuums in bursts. Designed a tattoo.

  And then there’s Hub.

  He’s just so sad all the time. Pooches around the house, eyes down. It’s like he knows, Dad said to Mom over dinner. No appetite. Not a flick of the tail. He’s like a different dog—hasn’t said more than a dozen words to me since the tube came out.

  Not cool, dude, I said to him. I could really use your support.

  I know, he whined. But I’m not there yet.

  He’s such a tragic little character. The quintessential pining dog.

  Yvette comes every day. Other than not feeding me or having to change my man-diapers, her duties are pretty much the same. My condition is monitored and documented, and I usually get a sup of fresh air while my bedsheets are changed. I’m shaved, washed, and dressed in clean clothes—not for comfort, but to keep my deteriorating body from smelling too bad. She talks to me, like she used to, as if nothing has changed. Sometimes she strokes my hair.

  She still stars in my daydreams, and I still wish she were mine. Yeah, for all those lovelorn reasons (I may be wilting, but I can still feel), but also because the one man who is with her—who can share himself and accept the things she shares—does not deserve her.

  I’m not the only one in need of a saviour.

  She came in with bruises on her arms yesterday.

  It’s difficult to equate this bruised girl with the detached, assertive woman who removed my life support. Shit, everybody is multifaceted. It’s the reason Dr. Phil can’t count all his money. I just wish Yvette would rotate the geometry of her character and show Wayne the strength she shows me. If she would, the bruises would stop.

  But she can’t. Or won’t. Which is why I need to step in.

  I don’t have much time between work and rest, but I give what I can, and have seen Wayne continue his acts of unkindness. Nothing as brutal as punching her in the eye. A cruel word here. A sneer there. One time he flipped the bird behind her back for no reason other than that he’s stupid and mean. On another, he wiped a booger on her pillow. So much anger inside him. I know because I felt it—a cold and solid block of anger. He either doesn’t know how to deal with it, or doesn’t know it’s there.

  I follow Yvette. I lay on her like a blanket and try to absorb her unhappiness, that I may spirit it away to wherever I am going. And, like Wayne’s anger, I can feel it. Pebbles of discontent. I gather what I can, but it’s not nearly enough. Prevention being better than the cure, I follow Wayne, too. In glimpses. All I can stand. I ride shotgun in that APPETITE FOR CONSTRUCTION pickup and study the man behind the wheel. His aura thumps as darkly as the music from the stereo. The muscle in his jaw jumps as he grits his teeth. Over and over.

  Wayne lives in a two-bedroom apartment in Mathias. I thought it’d be a rundown shithole, but it’s actually clean and modern. Real hardwood flooring (son of a bitch always kicks his boots off at the door), a sixty-inch 3D TV, a closet full of cool threads. I guess he’s not always a thug. Doesn’t mean he’s not always a fucktard. He just knows when to keep it hidden. Like when he’s working. I have to admit, he knows how to run a business—works hard and has a knack for keeping his customers happy. When not banging his hammer or spending time with Yvette, Wayne pumps weights, plays hockey, and hangs with his buddies. He watches UFC and goes to strip clubs. Just an all-Canadian guy, but with a thick strip of meanness.

  I can’t watch him with Yvette all the time, but with every slight I have heard, every upturned lip I have seen, I feel my emotion swell. It’s exhausting, but I fight. I gauge his biofield and draw from it, computing the minutia, recreating it inside me.

  I didn’t see him bruise Yvette’s arm. Didn’t see her ease the swelling on her shoulder with a packet of frozen peas wrapped in a hand towel. I was there, though, when he called her a dumb French whore and made her cry. I was there when he slapped her ass—playful, perhaps, but hard. Way too hard. He grinned and flowed through me, and I collected the bricks of his anger, stacked them inside.

  She can go from happy to heartbroken in next to no time.

  This is Wayne’s superpower.

  Like me, you’re probably asking how Yvette could ever have been attracted to someone like Wayne. Everybody makes mistakes, I guess, and she met him when she was vulnerable, and alone, having recently moved away from her family. She recognized early on that Wayne was damaged, and dangerous, but ever the caregiver, she thought she could fix him. And there were moments, particularly at the beginning, when he shone in her eyes. When he showered, shaved, and dressed in his cool threads, he was handsome enough to have stepped from an Abercrombie and Fitch ad. He’d walk into a bar holding her hand, and she felt protected, and he was so strong that he could scoop her into one arm, and all the vu
lnerability of being away from her family was swept away. Even when things weren’t good, which was often the case, she saw hope in Wayne. She felt she could connect with him in a way that nobody had before—that she could pluck the diamond from the rough, and they would both shine.

  She couldn’t reach him, though. That’s what it came down to. Couldn’t help him. Sometimes people think they have a bond—something special and enduring—when all they have is a trail of broken pieces.

  Like I said . . . everybody makes mistakes.

  I reached Yvette, however. I know I did, despite the cool efficiency with which she removed my feeding tube. I inspired her. Quite an achievement from the midst of my vegetative state. (Imagine what I could do with the full use of my body.) She had admired my Wall of Achievement—recognized that pride is not a sin, after all—and had made her own. She took the two framed diplomas from the back of her closet and hung them in pride of place. Then she put up shelves and lined them with the gymnastics trophies she pulled from a box that had been hidden in the same place. They glimmered in the soft light of her living room. Figurines in postures that depict the grace with which they were won. It was a splendid display, and Yvette would often look at it, always smiling, recalling, perhaps, the occasions she had been awarded those accolades. You can imagine how this made me feel, and at a time of such helplessness. I would look at her wall with pride for us both. Achievements should never be lauded, but always noted. Take it from me, you never know when the ability to achieve—even something so small—will be stripped away.

  Wayne didn’t see it this way.

  “The fuck is this?”

  “Some trophies I won. That’s my college diploma. That’s—”

  “Dancing?”

  “Gymnastics.”

  He sneered, tested the shelves for sturdiness, gave his head a little shake. I could sense his meanness boiling just beneath the surface, ready to spill over. Yvette’s Wall was a challenge to his alpha role—something he didn’t have, and which (in his own small mind) demeaned him. Guys like Wayne don’t appreciated being demeaned.

  “The shelves aren’t level.”

  “I did the best I could.”

  “Did you at least screw into the studs?”

  “Of course.”

  “You surprise me.”

  She smiled, as if he were making a joke and not being mean. He sneered again to assure her he was. Hoping to diffuse the sudden spike in tension, Yvette stroked his arm, sat on the sofa, and patted the seat next to her.

  “Sit with me, baby,” she said. “We’ll watch a movie.”

  But Wayne wasn’t interested in watching a movie; he wanted to reestablish his alpha role. I could see what he was going to do and tried to stop him. I threw my useless ghost in the way but his arm passed right through. He grabbed one of the trophies and, with no effort at all, snapped the little figure from the top.

  “Plastic,” he said. “I thought it was real gold.”

  The argument that followed was brief but ugly, culminating in Wayne breaking three more trophies and thumping Yvette’s college diploma with the side of his fist, hard enough for the glass to shatter in its frame. She cried and dropped to the floor, hands covering her head. Wayne stood over her. One hundred percent alpha. Showing his teeth. His fist bled.

  Yvette’s Wall of Achievement was in pieces behind him.

  His aura glimmered like the trophies he had just destroyed. Not gold, but miserable flashes of black and red. It emanated from inside him. Sick energy. I could hear his teeth grinding. The crazy drum of his heart. I moved in front of the door and waited. The TV chirped in the background, ludicrous commercials that couldn’t have been more out of place. Wayne made a sound like he was clearing his throat, told Yvette to go fuck herself, and then left. But he passed through me on his way to the door and I opened my arms wide. I took his anger. A hard and heavy haul. Not one brick but dozens. Enough to build a wall. I added them to the pile—now a towering, teetering stack—and went to Yvette. Ghost hands stroked her hair, her face. I flowed through her, gathering blocks of anguish.

  I went home with all of this inside me. I listened to Niki sing, and her voice soothed me. Healed me, almost.

  My left eye blinked in time with the melody.

  Work. Deep in the motor cortex. Screaming into emptiness, losing track of time as my body deteriorates. But no, I haven’t forgotten about Wayne the Fucktard. He is one supervillain I will get the better of.

  Soon . . . I’ll get to him soon.

  And I think I know how.

  21. Rainbows.

  Blood oozing from my anus. Not very superhero-like, huh? You never read that line in The Amazing Spider-Man, did you? My bedsheets had to be changed three times yesterday (I’m back in my diapers today). The tip of my penis is as dry as—and somewhat resembles—dead fruit. Hair falling out. Armpits clogged with flaky skin. Veins I didn’t even know I had showing in my face. Stomach a broad dip, like something that could catch water. Hip bones poking up. I breathe like a cat hissing.

  Nine days without food.

  Everything—everything—hurts.

  Tomorrow is the first day of October. Always my favourite month, when the colours come to life and the night draws in close and cold. There’s a real feeling of change in the air, more so than any other time of the year. Spring in Ontario moves quickly. Nobody can quite believe the snow has stopped, and before we know it the sidewalks are baking and we’re drinking beer on the patio. Autumn is different. It’s patient; it fades in and out, a considerate season. The colours begin in September, but in October they burn and fall. Kind of like me, all engines blazing. Forgive my lapse into poetic metaphor, but to think of a leaf, once healthy, quickly withering and burning, falling to the ground . . . it’s appropriate that October should be the month of my death.

  No change in the homestead, though. Apart from a few tender moments spent with me, Mom, Dad, and Niki shuffle around, pale-faced and brainless, like extras in a George Romero flick. The occasional smile or half-hearted attempt at conversation, but that’s it. Sometimes I think their life is as distant as mine. Hub hasn’t wagged his tail for over two weeks. He spends most of his time with Niki. She scratches his belly. His leg twitches and his tongue lolls, but the dude isn’t happy.

  It’ll get easier, for everybody, once it’s over.

  A matter of days now. That’s all I have. This narrative could—and probably will—simply end, without resolve. Which reflects life in general, I think. We rarely get the opportunity to tie up loose ends and finish neatly. We quite often end mid-sentence.

  I woke from dreams like clenched fists to see Dr. Quietus floating above my bed. This was two nights ago. He snapped his teeth and swirled but didn’t touch me. I waited to be dragged into what would surely be our final battle—and one he would win—but it never happened. I inhaled his thick stink and shuddered, and he eventually faded, soaking into the dark air like a puddle into the ground.

  He’s here with me now. He fades, but never leaves.

  Any moment, baby.

  I look like a scarecrow with all the straw blown from its shirt. I have sunken eyes and my teeth are too large in my face, projecting from gums you could strike matches off. There may as well be an hourglass poised above my head, the last grains of sand sifting through. Mom and Dad aren’t Catholic, or religious in any way, so there’ll be no Last Rites. Only their final goodbyes, which they have already made.

  Darryl came to say goodbye, too. A brief visit, and hard for him. I wish I could have leapt out of bed and kicked his ass out the door. Not because I didn’t appreciate the visit, but to spare him the discomfort. He didn’t want to be anywhere near me. Dad called him, told him that I was fading fast and that he should come and say goodbye. Darryl made some bullshit excuse about having to go to Kitchener with his boss. “Forget that,” Dad said to him. “Get your ass here and say goodbye to your best friend.” And so he did, and he stayed as long as he could bear. Almost seven minutes. He stood by the
door, biting his fingernails, glancing at me, then quickly away.

  “Dude,” he said, over and over.

  I jumped into his mind, converted the data. He was thinking about Michael Jackson in the “Thriller” video. The part where he’s a zombie, dancing in the street with a horde of equally nimble undead. Then he got to thinking about how he once dressed up as Michael Jackson for Halloween and moonwalked for treats.

  “Dude,” he said.

  So I looked like a zombie to him, one that might—at any time—begin body popping. I groaned and he backed against the wall, perhaps fearing I would spring out of bed and bite his arm. It was all too much for him. He pulled a grim face and looked down at his crisp white socks.

  “You’re a good guy, Wes,” he said. “When I remember you . . . I’ll remember the old you. The real you. We kicked ass, huh?”

  I tried to nod. To wink. Foul breath creaked from my open mouth.

  “Here, you can have this,” he said, reaching into his jeans pocket and pulling out something I’d coveted for nearly three years: Angus Young’s guitar pick—flicked into the crowd at our first AC/DC concert. Darryl had snatched it from the air, quick and accurate, like a frog catching a fly. “I figure it’d be pretty sick to be, you know, buried with it.”

  Cremated, I said. But yeah . . . pretty sick.

  He stepped forward, but then stopped and looked at his socks again. A deep breath. Another glance at me.

  It’s all good, Darryl, I said. I know I’m hungry, but I promise not to eat your brain.

  “Okay,” he said, as if he’d heard me. Three hesitant steps (you’d think a gigantic scorpion’s stinger extended from the collar of my pyjamas, hooked to strike), then at full stretch he placed the pick on my nightstand. I wanted to, and tried to, reach out and clasp his arm—what a hoot!—but couldn’t, of course. He scampered back to the door and puffed out his cheeks like he’d just successfully navigated a minefield.

  “Dude,” he said. “Be seeing you.”