Something like that, yeah, I thought.
“No more time, Don. No more time to wallow in Satan’s playground. The scraps the Lord left on the table for your measly soul’s nourishment were gifts sent in vain. Today is not for you, or your kind. It’s for the truly enlightened. The blessed few. You’ll burn just like all the others, and then, Don, then your soul will burn. It’ll burn until time ends. And you’ll scream and you’ll scream and no one will hear your call. The Lord won’t hear your call!”
I was having a very hard time grasping what she was getting at, (it was getting to be a habit), but I think I got the gist of it.
Anyway, on she ranted...
“You really are a fucking idiot, aren’t you? This is no global anomaly! This is no terrorist attack! There's no help coming and there's no help needed, you imbecile. The Lords wrath has been loosed upon mankind, and the burning will continue until every last one of the sinners, fornicators, liars and blasphemers is little more than ashes blowing towards Hell. And you, my husband, are all of the above.”
While she ranted, I managed to gather just enough strength to pull myself upright. My head was spinning and my guts rolling, yet I made a spastic reach for the leg of the table to try and hoist myself up.
And that's when she reached into my pyjamas, grabbed a handful of balls, and began to squeeze.
In that moment, I would rather have been dead.
Waves of nausea swarmed through my body. The centre of my being became that small sack of skin between my legs and the two crushed balls therein. My bladder loosed and I pissed feebly down my own leg and still she clenched her fist tighter. She squeezed them so tight I thought they would explode in her vice-like grip, and just as I was beginning to pass out, she stopped.
“You’ll listen when I'm talking, honey.” She said, quite calmly.
My world became torment - timeless and unimaginable. I was as helpless as a new born babe. She had defeated me utterly.
She went on, “Did you think the Lord’s gaze wouldn’t fall on you, Don, as you scuttled around like a rat in your pissing little life - pretending to seek grace? How many days did you think you'd have to enjoy before the Dark One came to claim you, huh? I bet you thought it would go on forever. Living under a falsehood and betraying the sanctity of marriage.”
Through blood and puke, I grunted, “Uck oo!” It was the best and only rebellion I was capable of at the time.
Kate was laughing. “Yeah, fuck me, Don. Fuck me! That’s all you ever wanted from me anyway. You took me before marriage, tainted me, and tainted my soul. And now after all these years of deceit and lies and betrayal, you turn around and offer up your soul to the devil by insulting the good Lord on his returning day.”
It’s not like she was a virgin before we met, but I guess in the throes of full-tilt madness, these little details become irrelevant.
I tried to state something to this extent, but managed only a high pitched whine.
“Save it, Don. Today is the day of reckoning for all mankind, and your time is up.”
And with that, she got down on her hands and knees, put the blade to my left eye, and said, “Beg for forgiveness or I’ll take your sight before you die. I take your fucking eyes before Satan takes your soul.”
I struggled once more to find my voice, and managed a whisper, “I-I'm sorry, Kate. Please.”
I hated myself for saying it.
She smiled.
It was more of a grimace actually.
What you would imagine a great white shark would smile like, before it bit your head off.
“Don’t apologise to me, dummy - apologise to God. It is He who is ever watching. It is He who condemns you. It is He who has brought this whole rotten, sinful world to its knees and it is He who will take all the children into his sacred embrace and carry us into Heaven this day.”
Fucking crazy bitch, “Sorry Jesus”, I mumbled, feeling like a fucking idiot.
“That’s better. Now you can burn in hell knowing you done one good thing in your short miserable life.”
I fought to get up, but the pain shooting from my testicles and into my brain had all but crippled me. The cramps that clenched at my stomach had me doubled over and my mind and body were not as one. I was at the mercy of her. I was at the mercy of her knife.
I was gonna die here on my kitchen floor, stewing in a puddle of puke and blood and warm piss.
She raised the knife above my heart, positioning herself to plunge it in deep.
“Any last words?” she asked.
I didn’t have much pep left in me, but what I did have I pushed to the surface
“Your mom’s a fucking Atheist, bitch.” I wheezed.
“Nice try, Don. Time’s up. Give my regards to your family.”
I tried to close my eyes. I didn’t want to watch that gleaming six-inches of stainless steel plunge into my heart. I tried, but I couldn’t close them.
All I could do was stare, like a deer into an oncoming four-by-four as it bore down upon me with death behind the wheel.
She gave me one last shit-eating smile, “Bye Donald.”
And then it began to happen...
***
The knife dropped from Kate’s hand. It fell to the floor, blade first, almost taking my ear off in the process.
Yet my mind wasn’t on the would-be murder weapon at that particular moment.
It was all on Kate.
My wife had frozen mid-plunge, as though every muscle in her body had turned to rock.
Veins throbbed in her neck and bulged from her rigid arms, as she tensed so violently that I thought her bones may snap.
The feral rage that had painted her features only moments ago had been replaced with a terrible expression that traversed some harrowing canyon between the twin peaks of absolute terror and blind anguish.
In the beginning assault of her agony, her eyes met mine, and in that moment I could swear I saw a desperate pleading there. A need to be saved - from God only knew what.
“D-Don? What’s happening to me?”
I was speechless.
Swimming in the muck of my own mortal terror.
I had no desire to help her, but her question was pretty darn valid.
Her skin was blackening from the inside out.
A sickly bruising was engulfing her flesh like a black cloud over a clear field.
Every inch of her once-porcelain flesh was blackening at an alarming rate. And as I watched in horror, her ashen, corrupted skin began to rapidly blister; her body now thrashing wildly as more and more rippling bubbles stretched her skin and split,
Her skin was boiling.
Lesions were forming all over her body as her skin continued to crack and split wide open. Thick red and white pus oozed from her like vomit.
The larger blisters erupted one by one, spewing warm cooked muck that patterned the kitchen milieu like some nightmare Jackson Pollock canvas.
As I lay there, beaten half to death, I watched in horror as Kate slowly transformed into a mess of melting, viscous flesh.
In her horror she somehow found the strength to reach out to me, whether to strangle me or plead for help I’ll never know.
As she reached out, the nails dropped from her fingers, and the skin began to slough off her hands in bloodied sheets. By the time her arms was outstretched in front of my face, the bone beneath was showing as her muscles liquefied and dripped to the floor.
I crawled back from the hellish vision that had once been my sweetheart.
It got worse.
Kate was looking directly into my eyes and I met hers with my own.
Those tender orbs that had gazed at me so many times, in both love and hate, slid from their sockets and ran down her cheeks like two half-cooked eggs.
They hung there on red fleshy stalks, dangling momentarily before the stalks too began to melt. Her char-black lips peeled back for a second then split at the corners. Within moments they too slid down her chin, leaving behind a hideous
grin as her face drooped into an unspeakable mask that seemed to express her despair, and slowly oozed from her skull
She tried to scream, but managed only to gargle as she drowned in her sloshing, bubbling flesh. Chunks of meat hit my face as she coughed in great hacking sputters.
Her teeth clenched together so hard I could actually hear them grinding on each other, and in her agony, she bit down so hard her molars cracked against each other and spewed from her bloody mess of a mouth. Some rattled to the floor, others slid down to her now pendulous, distended breasts.
And then after a merciless eternity, the fire that had been burning my wife alive from inside her, burst forth from her skin and she went up like a fucking firework on the fifth of July.
The cooking, unrecognisable creature of exposed bone and stinking meat that had been my wife, somehow managed to scream in those last moments. Really, really scream.
***
What came immediately after my wife’s demise is something of a blur.
I recall a time passing before the immediate danger of our house burning down took hold. I vaguely recall stumbling around on drunken legs searching for a blanket, a hose, anything to put the flames out.
I needn’t have bothered though. By the time I arrived back at the scene of this unexplainable carnage, Kate was little more than a steaming puddle spreading across the linoleum.
Amazingly, the fires that burned within her had died out as quickly as they had engulfed her, and the puke, tea and piss had done the rest. No need or the fire brigade.
I upturned one of the fallen breakfast chairs that had valiantly remained intact, and I sat down wearily amidst the wreckage of our marriage home, surveying the desolation before me.
Exhaustion had taken hold so absolute that even the smell of poor Kate couldn’t force my ass from that chair.
And there I sat, dazed and more than a little confused, staring into the vastness of space like the half-crazy person I was clearly becoming, until the phone rang.
Mumbling to myself, I picked up the receiver.
“Hello?” I stuttered.
“Jesus fuck, Donny! You’re alive, man! And the phones are back up! Can’t believe your still with us, bro. I've been trying to get through to you for hours!”
I couldn’t help but smile at the ever jovial, ever reliable sound of my best friend.
“Derwood.”
“In the flesh, brohiem! Although it’s been touch and go for a while. I almost got blindsided by a huge fucking explosion. We won’t be shopping and Penny’s All-Night Petrol Station anymore bud, that's for sure.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, “You’re a madman, Der”.
“That's as may be, hombre, but I’m a live one. How’s things at your end? I take it your aware the fucking world has ended and whatnot?”
It was a rhetorical question. I hope it was a rhetorical question.
“I’m alive, Der. That's good enough for now. You any idea what the hell is going on out there?” I asked, knowing full-well what his answer would be.
“Not a clue, my man. Everyone’s got their own bead on what’s causing this thing. The holy rollers are calling it Judgement Day, the tree huggers are rolling with an extreme side effect of global warming. Fox news are claiming it’s the Muslims.”
“Figures.” I added.
“All I know is that we’re all on our own for the time being. From what news I was able to gather before the cable went down, it’s the same shit the world over - people and animals are bursting into flame. No rhyme or reason for it. No pattern at all, supposedly. Fuck, man. I watched that little fucker Bentley burning up like the wicker man not twenty minutes ago. How’d you like that shit!?”
Der seemed in good spirits, and I had to admit, he was really cheering me up.
“You never did like that guy.” I said.
“Hated the fucker; goddam little thug ran around like he owned the place. Well, no more, poncho! No more.” he laughed.
“Glass half full, huh?”
“Always, Don.” There was a pause, and then he went on, sounding markedly more cautious, “How’s the old ball and chain?”
I sighed, “She’s dead. She burned up this morning. It was pretty fucking horrible, brother”.
“Shit -”
“Yeah. Things got pretty heated before she died - no pun intended. It’s all water under the bridge now, Der. Over and done with.”
“I'm sorry, Don. I know things were tough for you for a while there, but that's harsh. How you holding up?”
“Good. I'm good. A bit battered and bruised, but I’ll survive. As long as I don’t go up like a stick of dynamite anytime soon -”
“You and me both, buddy. I was worried for a while but it seems like it’s dying down out there. Seems to me like all this spontaneous combustion nonsense is done, at least for now.” he went on, “I've been thinking about all this; what it all means, you know? And I’m thinking maybe it’s a purge of some sort.”
“Fuck sake, Der. Not you as well.”
“Yeah, man. Think about it - the worlds been going to shit for a long time - bankers robbing the people blind, illegal wars across the globe, those Monsanto assholes monopolising the food supply, fucking police states springing up all over the fucking place.”
“I’m with you so far -”
“I think it’s nature’s way of telling us to calm the fuck down and behave.”
“You frightened me for a second, there, man. Kate thought it was the rapture. She thought she’d ascend.” I paused, “She didn’t.”
“Of course not, bro. This ain’t any goddam rapture. I haven’t seen anybody beamed up into the cosmos, have you?”
He didn’t wait for my answer. “And anyway, I saw fucking dogs melting, bro. What kinda God would send a doggy to the big fire?”
I hadn’t thought of that. “Valid, Der. Very valid”.
“Damn right it’s valid! Anyway, whatever’s happened has happened. I'm thinking we’re in the clear. I'm also thinking that just in case we’re not in the clear...”
I laughed openly at that, knowing full well where he was going with this. “We should hang out and get high.”
“We should hang out and get high!” Der confirmed.
“Ah fuck, I’ll be over soon as I can.”
“That’s my fucker!” Derwood hung up the phone.
I pulled my shit together as fast as I could. Cleaned myself up and got some fresh clothes.
I made sure to pocket the knife Kate had been planning to skewer me with, just in case I ran into any assholes out there, and made for the door.
I took one last look back at the reddish, brown stain that had been my betrothed, and made my way out into the smoke-filled dawn.
***
It’s been two days now since the world underwent its forced cremation and there have been no more cases of spontaneous combustion since that first, crazy night and the following morning.
The powers still down, and the streets have gotten pretty dangerous pretty quickly. Lots of looting going on out there, of both products and people - women mostly.
Derwood has taken to calling the situation, ‘Humanity Uncut’.
I'm thinking he's probably right.
It’s looking like a very uncertain future for the human race, but hasn’t it always looked that way?
***
Some would argue that the human empire was destined to fall. Others would argue that it had already fallen long before the fire came.
Why some people burned up and others survived we may never know...
It may have been a genetic issue, or something to do with man-made Global Warming, or a reaping performed by Mother Nature, as Derwood suggested.
It’s even possible that Kate was onto something and that if there is a divine consciousness in the universe, it got sick of our shit. Derwood’s theory isn’t that far removed from hers – perhaps only in his humility.
That still doesn’t explain why some humans and wildlife surviv
ed though.
And if it was a God, it must be a real prick to kill all those innocents so ruthlessly.
Me - I'm not the world’s deepest thinker. This mystery is for better men than good old Donnie to fathom.
On a personal level; I’d lost my wife long before that sunny morning and whether she was chosen specifically, or the whole thing was a crap-shoot, she made the choice to leave the world in a less than noble state of being - that makes me sad, but in essence she’d died long before that day.
Feels like a part of me burned up too – a part that won’t be missed.
Maybe now I can rebuild myself from the ground up, along with everyone else that’s left in this brave new world we’re facing.
Could be we all live on forever in a cutthroat, post-apocalyptic world.
Could be we rise to greatness; now that we have this clean slate to work with.
Hell, it could be our gooses are all cooked by the coming sunrise.
For today, though, I'm spending time with my best buddy and living my life to the fullest.
It’s something of a shame that it took a Kentucky- Fried morning to make me realise how precious our time is, and how important it is that we be ourselves in the time we have, but I'm done with regret, and with looking back.
I’m done with being consumed by sorrow.
Derwood has gotten his hands on a generator. God only knows where from, but I woke up and here it is.
His aim is simple - get the Xbox back up and running.
I think he may actually manage it.
I’m feeling hopeful about the matter.
From now on, I'm a ‘glass half full’ kinda guy.
And I'm staying single...
TELEVISION EYE
She’s got a TV eye on me. She’s got a TV eye – Iggy Pop
It’s 8pm on the fifteenth of June, and as the evening sun shines its warming rays down on the residents of sandy shores, a small group of children kick a worn-down ball between them on the heat-softened tarmac that makes up the one-lane road on Filamore Drive.
Consumed - Volume 1: An Extreme Horror Anthology. Page 10