Sixteen Small Deaths

by Christopher J. Dwyer

  There it is, she says. Nearly thirteen or fourteen ounces of heroin, I think.

  She hands me the scalpel but I fumble it and it pierces the tip of my thumb. I bring it to my chest and blood oozes onto my shirt. The pain is constant and sharp, a blanket of black lightning throughout my bones. Chloe stands up and I wave my hand. I’ll be fine, I say.

  Chloe removes her gloves and throws them on the floor. She leans down and rubs the bottom of my ear and her touch removes the sharp tinges of pain for only a moment. Hank snatches the package from the naked man’s chest and points in the direction of the doorway. You can wash up in the bathroom, he says.

  The prongs are still in the body’s wound and I pry them out of the opening, wrapping them in a small brown towel that was next to the mattress. Chloe and I leave the room and before we get to the bathroom, she mouths three words that I haven’t heard since she’s been back in town.

  The bathroom is unusually large for the size of Hank’s apartment. A stack of yellow towels adorn a small cabinet next to the shower. Chloe turns on the water and a steady stream washes her hands. I clean the prongs and hand them to Chloe, who leaves the bathroom. It’s usually at these moments that she’ll ask for the money and I always feel uncomfortable listening to the exchange. A splash of water on my face feels like heaven.

  I walk into the tail end of Chloe and Hank’s conversation. His last name was Viscomy, he says to her. He hands her a small black trash bag and I can see that she’s forcing a smile. This must be the way that a strict business mind works. Chloe takes my hand and we leave without saying goodbye to Hank. The hallway smells different than before, more like a morgue than a mix of culture.

  Chloe speaks first when we leave the building and reach her car. This next part is always the hardest, she says. I’m sorry.

  I remain silent and lean into what’s left of her sweetness, place a single kiss on her forehead. Don’t worry, I say.

  She removes the briefcase from the trunk and dumps the contents of the trash bag. I won’t ask her the amount but I can tell that there’s probably at least ten thousand dollars there. The dirty orange glow from the moon above, we stare at each other for a few seconds before Chloe starts the engine.

  #

  It only takes twenty minutes to get to the airport. Even at this time of night, the rumble of taxis and shuttle buses are prevalent at each terminal, the mechanical noise of beeping horns a near symphony in my tired mind. Chloe pulls the car into the short-term parking garage and sighs.

  She holds my hand and rubs a finger against the wound. A few days and that’ll heal up, she says.

  I nod and pull my hand away. She sighs again and opens the door. The parking garage air is heavy and my lungs feel like balloons filled with motor oil. We walk to Terminal C without saying a word to each other. Chloe keeps her messenger bag tight against her chest while I hold the steel briefcase.

  The bright lights burn my eyes for a few seconds then quickly adjust. Eager people watch the vast array of television screens next to the opening gate, all waiting for that special person to land. All gazing at flight numbers and letters like light to the flies.

  You never pick me up at the airport, Chloe says. I always have to get a taxi and come to you. That should change the next time I’m here.

  My blood eases into veins and arteries and I smile. I promise the next time you’re here, I’ll pick you up, I say.

  She rests her head against my chest and I can feel the memories seeping into her brain, every night that ended with the two of us in the middle of the airport, every night that she would tell me that crying wasn’t necessary because she knew that she’d eventually see me again. The sound of people rushing to their gate as they pass by, I push Chloe away and take her hand in mine.

  She opens her messenger bag and folds the ticket in half. My flight leaves in less than an hour, she says. Maybe I should start to pass through security now.

  A deep breath stuck in my throat, I let it out and walk to the end of the security line. An elderly couple in bright clothing lift their bags onto the conveyor belt while a twenty something security agent asks them both to remove their shoes.

  Chloe looks up at me, eyes that might burst with water at any moment. I’m sorry it has to be this way, she says. I’m sorry that we keep doing this to each other.

  Hair stands on edge and I can’t say anything to her, can’t find the words that could define the depths of my heart. All I can do is wrap my arms around her, smell the tinges of lilac and cinnamon in her hair.

  Soon, I say. And I let her go, refusing to look back. I’ve never once looked back at this point. I usually keep walking until I’m back in her car, the urge to unleash an apocalyptic scream fading with each step.

  I pass by the men’s restroom and figure that I should stop in before beginning my ride home. My reflection in the bathroom mirror reminds me that there’s blood on my t-shirt. I unzip in front of the urinal and stare ahead. The man standing next to me peers over with a casual gape, eyes pinpointed at the various stains on my shirt. He has the look of someone who wishes the world would end.

  Is that your blood, he asks.

  The Ghosts of Things to Come

  Her gumdrop eyes glisten in the rogue moonlight beyond our bedroom window. My mouth reaches hers and in a matter of seconds her switchblade tongue caresses mine. She pulls back, finds my hands and pushes them around her waist. Another kiss, another minute where the world stops spinning. Dark sky bursts into a haven of pink and green, the illusionary deception of too many milligrams floating through tired veins.

  She opens her mouth and words flutter from her teeth like butterflies caught in the grasp of a hurricane. My vision caves into an avalanche of quick blurs and voices. She floats away from me, past the ample purple clouds in the distance and into the twin suns dancing beyond the horizon.

  I close my eyes, watch her tiny frame dissipate into a pale convergence of ice and snow. It’s only when I wake that I remember she’s gone.

  It’s only when I open my eyes that I realize that she was taken away from me.

  #

  I sift through the little plastic baggies adorning the corner of the coffee table. I find the one I need, take a quick breath of apartment air, and lay back into the comfort of the couch. A cigarette burns into forgotten smoke somewhere in the kitchen. I stare at Evie’s picture, finger the edge of the photo that’s frayed and yellowed. Her eyes look up at me as if they’re real, as if she’s living and breathing in another world beyond the physical. If I stare into the black sky outside, past the broken stars and bloody moon, it’s almost as if I can hear her sullen voice between the absence of wind and sound.

  I dump the contents of the baggie into a small metal plate in the middle of the coffee table. The mixture’s powdery aroma eases the jangles in my muscles. Tip strike of a match and it cooks while I contemplate my life and everything that went wrong. I fill a needle with the white liquid and raise it to the air, feel my pupils widen as I let a miniscule amount drip from the edge.

  I blow a kiss to Evie’s picture, visualize her plump red lips doing the same, and say three words before plugging the needle into a healthy vein between my bicep and forearm. The first of a dozen imaginary fireflies lands on the coffee table and for a moment I am everything and nothing all at once.

  #

  Evie’s blonde hair ravages the supple wind gracing the soft tips of our noses. Her eyes and mine are connected, hers as green as fresh holly. She leans in for a quick kiss and this elates me, makes me forget about the poison running through my body nearly 20,000 feet below. We’re on a shiny black surface, reflections of our bodies spinning and stretched below our feet. Evie’s wearing a tight black skirt and a white baby-doll v-neck t-shirt, hint of freckled cleavage peeking from rosy lace. She shakes her head when I reach for her hand.

  “No,” she says, then smiles.

  Fingers brush the wheeling dust of ash and smoke colluding from behind her. The black surface is slippery and a
lthough my body, bones and muscles are at ease, I’m afraid I’ll fall back to earth. I mouth “Why?” and only hear the tone in my own head before a thunderclap of static pops somewhere in my chest.

  “Not yet,” Evie says, blonde-and-black locks nearly frozen in mid-air like tentacles.

  A jolt of dark light pierces the black surface below and in moments all I can hear are the disparate voices of violent angels.

  #

  Numbers. I can hear numbers. Three, four.

  “Again.” A single word radiating from all sides of my mind.

  Three, four.

  Fade to white. Shapes that resemble faces above me, a constant string of electricity burning throughout my skin as if my bones were made of wire and aluminum. A spinning slosh of red and blue lights easing from the corners of my eyes and I hear the voices of two men. My body is as light as a summer morning and the shapes carry me from comforting warmth into a rash breeze of chilly air. My tongue is dry and when I let it free of my mouth I’m greeted with a dollop of snow. It tastes like the city, cold and distant.

  Vision lightens and I can see the automatic doors of the hospital. It’s when a third face enters the scene that a stinging shock jerks in my spine and I’m left with the sweet euphoria of complete darkness.

  #

  “Bennie? Can you hear me?”

  Salt-and-pepper hair and a voice that’s cut with steel. He’s my father’s age and I half expect him to yell at me.

  “Bennie, open your eyes, my friend.”

  He pushes a straw to my mouth and I suck instinctively until my throat is coated with stale tap water.

  “How are you feeling?”

  A noise escapes my lungs that’s part human and mostly demon. It takes a few seconds before I can elicit real words. “Fine. How are you?”

  The man chuckles and scribbles something on a pad of paper. “I’m doing well, thanks. Bennie, I’m Doctor Harrison, and I’m not sure if you realize it yet, but you overdosed on a mixture of high-grade heroin and nearly twenty milliliters of fentanyl. You were lucky enough to pass out and smash the top half of your body on the glass coffee table in your living room.” He clears his throat, takes a breath. “The noise itself was enough for a concerned neighbor in your apartment building to call the police.”

  Heart beats slowly, waits for my words to speed its cycle. “Great.”

  “Yeah, you were lucky,” he says as bright tip of his tiny flashlight invades my eyes. “We need to keep you overnight, run some tests to make sure your system will be okay.”

  System, like my body is composed of mechanical parts. System, pieces of flesh and blood and bone without emotion. “Great.”

  Dr. Harrison taps the monitor above the bed. “You should be able to go home in just a few days. I’ll be by check on you later in the day.” And with that, he leaves the room, leaving me alone with a mess of tubes, blankets and my own jagged thoughts. I try to sit up but a filament of red-hot pain stings my back and chest. I imagine I almost died and for what it’s worth I held Evie in my arms for just a few seconds.

  I’d relive the nightmare in a heartbeat just to see her again.

  #

  The clock in the corner of the room died at midnight. I find the source of the wires and tubes connected to my body and shake them to see if I’m dreaming. My heart trips a painful beat and I’m shoved into full awareness. A quick tug on the clear tube and it pops from my wrist. The ones on my chest force me to grind my teeth until they’re off and on the tiled floor below. I find my clothes in the hospital room closet. Jeans, black t-shirt, and a leather jacket that’s almost as old as I am. I find my boots in the corner, tie them up and fish my wallet from my inside jacket pocket. Enough cash for a cab and maybe a pack of smokes.

  I peek around the corner, wait for two nurses to skitter into another unit before walking to the ninth-floor lobby. No one sees me before I press the ‘down’ button, and it’s only when I catch my reflection in the steel elevator doors do I see a ruffled set of black angel wings and quick halo glittering and disappearing before the elevator rings with delight.

  #

  I follow the moonlight from the taxi to the apartment complex’s lobby. An elderly woman walks out as I head in and in my mind she says good morning. Quick jog up the stairs, feel the pinch of whatever chaos has rained havoc within my chest with every single step. I fumble for my keys, find them buried amongst some hard candy and some loose change.

  My apartment seems foreign, as if someone’s replaced all the furniture with that of another residence. I drop the keys somewhere on the carpet, hope that I’ll never have to leave these walls ever again without the soft embrace of her hands, the voice that could send a slight shiver throughout every drop of spinal fluid. I toss my jacket next to the mess of broken glass and stale drugs in the center of the living room, forget for a second that I shot up enough juice to topple a demon just earlier today.

  The kitchen is damp and inviting. A quick flash of my past, Evie and I sitting and laughing and drinking wine, comes and goes without sound and in black-and-white. It could be a fictional memory that’s been implanted in my skull. Close and open my eyes, then silence and the same dark kitchen as before. The freezer holds a square container of ice cubes, a bottle of vodka that could be a couple of years old, and something else wrapped in a brown paper lunchbag.

  I snatch the package from the freezer and my muscle fibers are already shaking with anticipation. Cool gel between my fingertips, a divine lollipop that contains more fentanyl than I injected during the event in the living room. It tastes like rust and regret, the subtle hints of a life gone awry. I slide against the fridge until the kitchen walls begin to melt and the foundation of the house begins to collapse to make room for a hundred falling comets.

  #

  The shadows hold secrets and when I open my arms she feels real. She scoops my hands in hers and looks at me with eyes that dissolve the frosty layer of rock covering my heart. My head is locked into place and when I try to look down Evie tilts my head towards hers, forcing her lips to unite with mine until the sweet taste of amber and hope drips from the corners of my mouth. The black surface is now replaced by an endless blanket of gray grass, high stalks sway ever-so-gently in a calm winter breeze. Flakes of snow as violet as dying orchids drop from above.

  “Here,” I say, place my hand onto her chest. A soft return of tranquil beats soothingly twitches against what’s left of the skin on my hands, the pink of our flesh beginning to fritter away, replaced by a translucent covering that barely hides the glowing bone structure beneath.

  “Yes, and now, and forever.” Evie smiles and in just a few seconds the grass is gone, the sky now a hearty gold. I let go of her hands and close my eyes, picture the previous vessel slumped against a plaster wall, his eyes open even now. Evie holds my hand as I take one last look the world below us. The face of my body is smiling, even in death.

  We walk together past the flurries of winter, past the rolling hills and into the golden sky.

  Saffron

  I stare at the infinite gray cement and pretend I’m an angel. Sixteen hours in the basement of a man that’s been dead longer than I care to remember, the echoes of every ghost floating above me like a symphony in this mad new world. My spit tastes as stale as rust and soon enough my mouth will fill with the smoky taste of a fresh hot bullet. Cold metal in my fist like it’s a part of my flesh, I take a few deep breaths and remember what she smelled like, the salty wisps of lavender and a smile that could knock out a cowboy.

  Her name was Mandy and she was my wife. We were sleeping when it all first happened and now I imagine her soul is trapped in whichever dream was dancing in her mind at the time, the lush purple sky of an imaginary autumn afternoon. I sigh, bits of dust and blood spinning from my lungs like wet strands of red tissue paper. At any moment the moon will rise, a new day dawning over a dying world.

  I stand up, feel the tired muscles in my legs twist and whine. We fled from them as fast as we could, th
e hordes of the dead pacing just us as we left what was our home for the last ten years. The depths of my nightmares came to life last night and I’m afraid if I look into a mirror the whites of my eyes will be a mix of red and black.

  I silently count to fifty and close my eyes, hope that when I open them I’ll wake up next to Mandy. Maybe wake up with the bright sun shining, pale October clouds floating through a helpless sky. I open my eyes and the stench is the first thing to wake my mind from a momentary trance. They’re getting closer to me. I pick up the gun, hold it to the side of my head. Yesterday morning I couldn’t have dreamt of something like this happening, couldn’t dream of a day where everyone I knew would be ripped to shreds. I can still hear the screaming, the bloodletting of a million souls trapped in Hell.

  Yesterday was my last day on earth. Yesterday was the last time I’d see Mandy’s gunmetal-blue eyes twinkle with hope. Yesterday was the day God had an aneurysm. Yesterday God had a fucking heart attack.

  Yesterday seems like a thousand years ago.

  #

  It started with a flash in the sky, like a comet exploding into a million pieces of fiery silver glitter. The clock in our bedroom stopped at 4:14am. The crunching of metal filled the new morning air like a soundtrack from the apocalypse. It was only when I looked out the bedroom window that I saw the first plane fall from the sky like a bird hunted on a crisp fall day. It slammed into a house just around the block from ours, giant metal tube flattening the foundation like it was made of styrofoam. I gasped, felt the air draw from my lungs with one quick swoop. Blood rushed to my brain at the speed of a thousand blind horses. I stumbled backward until I could feel the soft linens of our bed, Mandy’s toes curled underneath.

  “Honey? What is it?” Mandy’s voice hinted at the lingering depths of slumber still hidden in her eyes.