by J. Thorn
Samuel’s fingers lumbered around the keyhole, becoming numb in the process. He cursed at the cold air gnawing at him and then swore at the battery in his keys, which were no longer able to open the locks with the magic of infrared rays. He used the tip of the key to scrape the ice crystals from the lock and managed to push it inside. The tumbler surrendered with a click. Samuel shoved his frozen fingers underneath the handle and lifted, dispensing the foggy haze from the dome light into the frigid air. He sighed, blowing plumes of mist before pouring himself into the driver’s seat. Samuel shut the door and leaned back on the headrest. The world ramped up on a conveyor belt that started turning everything in a clockwise motion. He opened his eyes and focused on the steering wheel until the car stopped spinning.
“The cold air,” he said.
Samuel placed the key in the ignition, and the car turned over, coughing and wheezing with mechanical influenza. The radio came alive, and he thrust a finger at the presets. Some nameless vanilla hard-rock song came on, which made Samuel’s churning stomach even worse. He punched the power button with his right hand while hitting the power window button with his left. The subzero air poured into the car. Samuel felt it burn his lungs before putting the window back up.
He gunned the gas pedal several times and released the parking brake. Samuel thought of Kim, but their conversation was an ink blot, dark and formless. He decided she would want him home on a night like this, where he could spoon with her, both of them staying warm. That thought brought a smile to his face.
I can do this. Been drinking coffee all night long.
“You fucking dog,” he said to the empty car. “You have, but you’ve been dropping whiskey with it.”
Samuel laughed at his own dishonesty before putting the car into drive. He had already pulled from the curb before he realized he hadn’t cleared the snow. The hard, white precipitation covered his windows and protected him from the reality on the other side. Samuel put the windshield wipers into motion. The motor hummed and then rattled, but the wipers remained buried in the snow piled at the base of the windshield.
“Dammit.”
He reached under the seat for his trusty ice scraper and came up with the broken bottom half of it. Samuel tossed it into the back seat and opened the door. The wind tore at his face and whipped his hair into maniacal formations. Samuel pulled his coat sleeve over his hand and used his arm to clear as much of the snow from the windshield as possible. With a round porthole cleared, he stepped back into the car and set the defrost fan to the high setting.
Samuel’s bladder decided he did not have time to wait for the defroster to clear the window. Departure, and urination, was imminent. He bent low and craned his neck to look through the hole he had scraped. It wasn’t much, but Samuel thought he could navigate the car for the ten-minute drive to his house. He would stay under the limit, and he would stay alive.
Samuel navigated by alternately sticking his head outside the driver’s side window and then looking through the porthole, which allowed him to stay on the road. He successfully avoided parked cars, sidewalks, and garbage cans awaiting pickup.
The first car passed with its horn blaring and then fading into the distance like a locomotive in an old western film. He thought he may have heard the driver yelling, but he couldn’t be sure. Samuel pulled the vehicle hard to the right, assuming he had drifted into the oncoming lane.
“Couple more turns and I’m home,” he said to no one.
He followed the plows and salt trucks through Detroit’s wealthier suburbs as they made their rounds, the last ones before the shift change and a watery cup of warm coffee back at the garage. Samuel concentrated on the blinking lights while the salt pummeled the front end of his car like a localized hailstorm. When the truck turned right toward city hall and the truck garage behind it, Samuel remained on the road. He looked into his rearview mirror and saw black, the narrow secondary streets not equipped with the streetlights like the main thoroughfares. The cold and the darkness closed in, and Samuel felt the need to leave his window all the way down. The bitter, winter air seeped in like a shot of insulin to a diabetic in shock. He sat up straight and blinked. Samuel looked at the street sign and then recalibrated his bearings, figuring he was only three or four miles from his house. In one more mile, he would take a right onto Route 24 for the one-mile stretch that would dump him at the foot of the development. The snow relented, but the chill did not.
As Samuel turned onto the local highway, he saw headlights approaching, the first since he left the party. He glanced down at the gauges and felt for the seatbelt strap, hoping to avoid getting pulled over and then having a seatbelt fine on top of it.
In an instant, the headlights doubled from two to four. He saw the first set snap out into his lane and then wink as the car slid sideways, fishtailing on the slick roadway. The driver regained control and pulled the vehicle back into his own lane. But it sent the second set of headlights into a spin of its own and into a collision course with his car. Samuel became so enamored with the scene, he didn’t notice he let his vehicle drift.
Samuel’s vehicle struck the oncoming car, creating an impact that crumpled the other car’s hood, sending it into an upside-down V, like a cheap accordion. He felt the brunt of the impact, which threw him toward the passenger side and then the seatbelt snapped him back. He felt his car spin and strike three more times, unsure what he was hitting. The sound of crunching metal made him wince. All he wanted was for the car to stop moving, even if it meant slamming straight into a tractor-trailer. Samuel waited and waited, the seconds feeling like lifetimes. When it finally stopped, he was facing the opposite direction on the highway, his passenger side door stuck to the guardrail.
The silence lasted for a few seconds. His ears rang and the adrenaline spiked his bloodstream. Samuel felt the warm, sticky blood flowing into his left ear, and he winced. He did a mental check and realized he was alive and without serious injury. The euphoria of that revelation lasted until he looked out the other side of the car at the discarded mess of steel balled up next to the opposite guardrail.
Samuel climbed from his car and limped over the frozen roadway toward the other vehicle. He thought he remembered two sets of headlights, but either that vehicle fled or the whiskey had created the extra set of lights. He smelled gasoline and burning rubber, while drops of sizzling liquid pooled in the roadside ice. He looked both ways and saw nothing but the dead of winter. Somewhere beyond his vision, a distant siren blared.
A groan from inside the mangled metal brought his attention back. Samuel approached, unsure where the front of the vehicle could be. He saw twisted steel, dark plastic and scraps of humanity thrown together inside the death cage. He walked toward the car and stepped over a hockey stick, followed by a book. The closer he came, the more personal belongings he stepped over.
The car’s dinging door alarm was on but struggling to maintain sound, as if it was covered in thick foam. Samuel saw the steering wheel contorted like a pretzel as he looked inside the gaping wound where the windshield used to be. He saw the small, delicate frame of a young woman, the seatbelt tight against her throat. Jet-black hair covered her face. Samuel shoved his face inside and heard the ragged, desperate sound of her lungs. He looked at her painted fingernails wrapped around the steering wheel. The smell of exhaust mingled with blood made him queasy.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
As soon as he spoke the words, he felt like a fool. He could not bear to ask the question he really wanted to ask.
“I’ll get help.”
He spun and remembered the Italian restaurant fifty yards up the highway. It was probably getting close to closing time, but an old phone booth stuck out near the guardrail like a beacon of hope. Samuel had just spun toward it when he felt the warm, weak grip on his hand. He jumped and let out a muffled cry.
The driver’s hand held his. He could feel her erratic pulse, see shallow breathing, but he could not move. The grip squeezed his hand as if
to say all was forgiven, accidents happen. Samuel felt the encompassing love, and he knelt low to see inside the remains of the car. He used his free hand to reach in and gently push the hair away from Mara’s face.
***
The memory advanced like a fluttering reel of film until Samuel sat at a glass pane, holding a corded phone to his ear.
Kim came into the visitation room and looked at him. She had not been able to apply her morning make-up over red, puffy eyes. Her face resembled the photograph hanging above the dresser, the one of her and Samuel in college. She loved that picture and the wispy memories of youth it represented. They both remembered the night that photograph was taken and always joked that Kim’s hold on her car keys was as strong as the one she had on Samuel’s heart.
“Kim, I thought I was fine.”
“There’s no point. After what we’ve been through, after what you’ve been through, I can’t . . .” Kim trailed off, fumbling through the conversation.
“I’m so sorry. I’m going to make this right,” he said.
Kim sat, her bottom lip trembling.
“The kids?”
“My mother’s,” she said.
“Now what?”
“Now you figure out how you’re going to live with this, Samuel. Now you have to ask God, or whatever demonic force that commands you, for forgiveness and hope he doesn’t strike you down.”
“What should I do about—”
“I don’t give a fuck, Samuel. You do whatever it is you need to do.”
He could hear the pain in her voice.
“I’ll deal with it.”
Kim laughed. “I’m sure you will.”
***
Samuel opened his eyes, returning to the cave where Mara lay at the mercy of the reversion.
“I’m so sorry.”
Mara squeezed Samuel’s hand just as she had on that cold night. She smiled, and the worry lines in her face loosened.
“I can’t believe that all this time you, you knew that . . .” Samuel shook his head, tears clouding his vision. “I’m the reason you’re here, stuck in this prison.”
“Come closer,” Mara whispered. Her eyes closed, and the life drained from her voice.
Samuel moved closer and bent down, taking her hand in both of his.
“I let you see what I thought you needed to see while you were here.”
He nodded, setting at least some of his guilt free. “Mara, I . . . I can’t believe I did that to you, and—”
She squeezed his hand again and shook her head as much as possible. “Life did that to me, not you.”
Samuel started to speak but Mara squeezed his hand, stopping him.
“There isn’t much time. Please listen,” she said.
Samuel dropped his head and waited for her to continue.
“I didn’t see your face at the scene. I passed before you came over to the wreck. But when you arrived in this place, I argued with Kole.”
A memory sparked in Samuel’s head. He remembered seeing the disagreement at a distance.
“We didn’t so much argue about you, although he claimed you were someone from his past. I guess you could have passed through both of our lives, but I don’t really know. I told him you were here for me, for him, for all of us. I explained you had a purpose and a mission to release us from this.”
“But he didn’t agree. Major didn’t agree either, did he?” Samuel asked.
She shook her head.
“They could have been here for other reasons,” she said, a wet cough thundering through her chest. “But I knew why you were here and what that meant for me.”
“What does it mean for me?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I wish I could say, but I can’t. You’ll have to figure that out.”
Samuel looked up. Their bodies appeared to float in pure darkness. The reversion had begun to peck at their feet. Samuel could feel the power trying to dissolve the molecules in his body. The cave and the rest of the dead locality attached to it were gone, swallowed and consumed by the inevitable force of the reversion.
“How? When? Where?”
Mara let the single-word questions hang in the air without attempting to answer any of them.
“If you can figure out why you’re here, the answers to those questions might show themselves to you.”
“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked.
Mara nodded. “Yes.” It was all she said.
Mara’s eyelids fluttered, and Samuel felt her breath hitch in her chest. He wiped her forehead with the back of his hand and felt the cool, clammy touch of death descending upon her, challenging the reversion for the last spark of life left.
“This is my time,” Mara said.
Samuel closed his eyes and felt the oppressive force of nothingness closing in on him.
“How will I know? How will I know how I got here and what to do about it?”
Mara opened her eyes and looked at Samuel for the last time. He saw the forgiveness and sadness inside, the emotional turmoil simmering in the deep recesses. She bit her lip and spoke again, her words barely audible this time.
“I will show you.”
***
Samuel saw the inky blackness, like oil-slicked surf, the silent waves pulsing over her body. He felt weightless as the power of the reversion disassembled the atoms left in the locality. He screamed in helpless futility as he watched the darkness creep over Mara. It slid over her foot, and when it retreated it left nothing but empty blackness behind. He watched as the forces nibbled and bit at her essence like fish feeding on a floating corpse.
He knew whatever was happening to her physical body was a different experience than what was happening to her spirit. Samuel smiled, seeing Mara’s angelic face from the coffee shop in his mind’s eye, rather than the pasty, sickly face of her lying in the cold dirt of the cave and waiting for death.
Samuel watched as the last remnants of Mara’s body disappeared beneath the relentless pursuit of the reversion. With her body gone, he became a drifting ship amidst a horrific ocean of darkness and silence. The reversion began the same process on him, albeit at a much slower pace. He reached down to touch his knee and became queasy, uncertain of his bearings and feeling, like an astronaut tumbling through deep space, carried into oblivion without the slightest friction to stop it. He closed his eyes and opened them to try to stabilize his mind, but the attempt failed. Samuel opened his mouth to scream when a voice entered his head. He knew it was Mara before she even spoke.
I must show you what you can no longer access from your own memory. If I don’t do it now, the reversion will claim you forever.
Samuel cried, ready to follow her, ready to do anything to escape the fate perched on the threshold of his humanity.
Your final moments, those inaccessible to you since you arrived here. Those moments will enlighten you, provide answers to questions you have not asked. They will also explain your presence here, and once you have that knowledge, you will know what you must do.
“What if I don’t?” he asked.
All you can do is trust in what I have to share.
Samuel felt Mara’s essence dissipate. The energy in his body shifted, and he felt his mind snap back into the physical realm. The blackness of the reversion retreated until the fuzzy hole of a dream reality filled the middle, like viewing it through a telescope. The blackness surrounding the edges of his vision reminded Samuel this was something for him to witness, but the reversion still held him in its clutches.
The objects swam through his vision until they began to settle and form within the frame. A burning knowledge began in his stomach, and the pain blossomed outward as the scene materialized. When the objects stopped and the lens on the vision focused, Samuel cried. He remembered the scene, he remembered the cast, and even though the pain tore through his psyche, he also remembered his lines. Samuel was not sure he could manage to sit through the clip until he felt the inner strength of Mara, speaking to him.
&
nbsp; You must. And from your suffering will come your salvation.
***
Samuel slid the triskele from underneath the thin mattress that smelled of piss and disinfectant. He smiled and held the item in his hand, pleased to have been able to smuggle the talisman into his cell without hiding it within one of his body’s orifices.
The cinder-block wall stared at him from all angles, disguising up from down and inside from out. The stainless-steel sink sat next to the basin that functioned as a toilet. Both fixtures faced the bars of the open cell and anyone that happened to be walking the corridor of his ward. A black marker sat in the corner of the room, while a simple calendar hung from the wall above it. The air inside the prison hung as if it too was sentenced to a life of pure, dead boredom.
“I’m cold,” Samuel yelled.
He shuffled to the front of the cell and looked out. Samuel saw nobody.
“I need a fucking blanket.”
The sound of scraping metal preceded the methodical tapping of boots on the polished floor.
“’Bout time.”
Samuel stepped back and waited as the guard approached with a thin blanket folded down to the size of a postcard. He looked at Samuel and sniffed, turning his nose up at the stench.
“Flush the damn toilet, you animal.”
The guard tossed the blanket through the bars. It landed at Samuel’s feet. He bent down and picked up the linen. Samuel listened as the boots clicked their way back to the front desk, sealed off with the massive, steel door shrieking into place.
Samuel unfolded the sheet masquerading as a blanket and did the mental calculations in his head. He looked up at the heating duct burrowing through the cinder-block walls and hoped the sheet was long enough. He took the thin, felt slippers from his feet and knotted the end of the sheet around both until the ball of cloth outweighed the rest of the fabric. He looked up at the three-inch gap between the ductwork and the ceiling, and then visually measured the ball in his hand.