Unkillable

by Patrick E. McLean

  If I had been driving a few weeks ago, I would have turned the radio on and up all the way. I would have listened to music that seemed now, incomprehensibly angry. I still don’t know what Marie had done to me back there, but I didn’t feel the same.

  Maybe it’s that I was close now, very close, to death. Or death part two. However you wanted to look at it, just because the clock had stopped on my life didn’t mean that time wasn’t going to eventually and inevitably run out.

  At a stoplight, I looked over at the car beside me. There was a young girl, maybe twelve, riding in the passenger seat. “Smoking’s bad for you,” she said. I took a long pull on the cigarette and tightened my chest so the smoke leaked out of the tears and rips in my dried flesh.

  I caught her mother’s eye above her head and slapped the side of the hearse. “Yeah baby, but smokin’s good for business!”

  Then I ran the red light. It made me feel good to be whatever I was.

  When I got to the nursing home, I parked the hearse right out front. That made me feel good, too.

  When the automatic doors slid open, I smelled antiseptic and slow death that, for once, wasn’t me. There was no one at the front desk, so I just kept walking. Around the corner, they came into view. They were lined up along both sides of the hallway, as if in parade formation. Gibbering and slobbering and drooling. Some were ancient, others were young, strong enough to need to be tied to their chairs or heavily sedated. Here they were, airing out in the middle of the day.

  Rest home. What an innocent name. I didn’t think it possible, but those poor bastards were deader than I was. I shambled on into the well-medicated heart of the place.

  My mother’s room was in the back. They never did figure out what went wrong with her. After Dad left, it all fell on her. I think it was the strain that did her in. Some days she was there, and some days she just wasn’t.

  I stopped in the hallway and looked at her. She sat, in her tiny little room at her tiny little table, looking out a tiny little window. The tiny little window was open and I could see the breeze moving her stringy, unwashed hair. This was the hard part, the part where I looked at her husk and saw my Mom.

  I’d had this moment many times before. Sometimes I had walked away without even speaking to her. It was the kind of thing I used to feel bad about -- for the brief moments before I remembered to plaster over my feelings with all-purpose, industrial-strength anger. Jesus, I had had feelings and hadn’t wanted them. Now, they were gone. Or, at least, way, way off in the distance.

  Mom was eating something. Orange bits of processed, blow-molded cheese stuck to her fingers. But she ate them slowly, calmly, as if she was at peace. I thought about walking away. Hadn’t I already made some kind of peace with this woman? Wasn’t death supposed to get you off the hook with your family?

  It looked like Mom sitting there, so I said, “Hi, Mom.”

  “You stay away from my Cheezies, you bastard!”

  Nope, it wasn’t Mom. It was some angry hag wearing a mom suit. I wanted to slap her. I wanted to punch her. I wondered why I came here. I searched back through the memories of the feelings of visits past. All the memories were set to the same note -- soaked in the same flavor. The sharp tang of anger ran through it all. And in that moment, I realized that what I had been feeling hadn’t been pity for my mother, but rather pity for myself. Anger that this could happen to me.

  Angry that I had to drop out of school, take a shitty job to pay the bills. To take care of Mom the way she had taken care of me. That I was forced to spend my time arguing with insurance companies, all the while trying to care for a person who not only didn’t recognize me, but hated me. Hated me without knowing me. Her mind had broken and all that was left lying on the floor of her skull were shards of fear that she couldn’t put back together again.

  I said the words, without any malice in them at all. “Life’s not fair, Mom. It’s just not fair to any of us.”

  I could see that the words didn’t quite register. She clutched the tube of puffed Cheezie snacks to her shoulder and turned her body away. “My Cheezies.”

  The echo of anger was so strong that I wanted to force the snack out of her hands. To pour the bits of puffed cheese over her head and grind them into her hair. To knock her into the floor for taking my mother away from me. But it wasn’t the real anger. It was just the echo of the anger.

  I couldn’t figure out why I had gone to see her. So I turned to leave.

  “Danny? Is that you?” she asked.

  I turned around and I saw fear on her face again. “What happened to you?” my mother asked me.

  For a moment, I couldn’t speak. What was to be said? How to explain? And why? For an instant, my Mom had returned. Hair unwashed, smelling of rest home chemicals, her blue eyes washed out and watered down by the exhaustion of mental illness, but still, my Mom.

  I went to her and took her hand in mine. I wiped the particles of processed cheese from her fingertips.

  “Danny, what happened to you? Are you sick?”

  “Nah, Mom, I’m just dying, like everybody.”

  She gave a little frown. She never did like my sense of humor. Then she asked, “Can we go home soon?”

  Those words almost broke me. I almost told her everything. That the home she worked so hard to make and keep was gone. That the life we had was gone. That she couldn’t even remember who she was.

  I felt at that hollow spot inside me where the anger used to be. Before, I would have yelled at her. I would have blamed her for getting sick, for being so crazy, for ruining my life. I had thought it through a thousand ways, and always came up with the same answer. It was Mom’s fault, all of it. If she hadn’t gotten sick, I could have stayed in school. I could have gotten a decent job, and had a normal life.

  I wouldn’t have been in that alley. I wouldn’t have been killed, wouldn’t have met The Rat, none of this would have happened. None of it.

  But now, without the anger, I didn’t see it that way. There was no normal, there was only life. And for the first time I could see a different story.

  After Dad left, she had tried to hold everything together and it had torn her apart. Without the anger, I could see how things really had been. As pissed as I had been, how angry would I have been with her lot? She worked. She took care of me. She worked. She dealt with my shit. And then she worked some more. Worked while I went off to college and had what limited fun I was equipped for.

  Had I really been so self-centered?

  She hugged me close and whispered, “I don’t want to stay here.”

  “It’s okay Mom, you don’t have to. Just a little while longer,” I said, knowing as she could not that we are all just passing through this life.

  “You’re so cold, Danny.”

  “No, Mom, not on the inside.”

  We hugged for a long time.

  I wish I could say tears streamed down my face. That would have been fitting. Such an inheritance of sadness in my family, but I had no tears with which to wash it away.

  When I let go of her arm, I knocked over the container of Cheezies. Balls of orange processed cheese scattered on the floor. The tube made a hollow sound as it bounced. Once, twice and by the third time my mother was gone.

  I saw her blink in confusion and then with comprehension. She looked at the food on the floor. She looked back to me. And then came the blame.

  “Those Cheezies are mine! You bastard, those are MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIiiiiiine.”

  As she slumped to the floor, her high, keening wail washed over me. I realized that I had missed my last chance to tell my mother that I loved her. Now she wouldn’t remember.

  How screwed was I?

  As I watched her gathering the bits of orange processedness off the floor, I realized that it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what I said. It didn’t matter what she heard. But I wanted to say it anyway.

  “Mom, I love you.”

  The cheese-hungry creature on the floor looked up at me and shr
ieked, “You CAN’T HAVE any!”

  “That’s okay, Mom. I forgive you.”

  “Mine.”

  In that instant, I learned something about the shape of my soul and its true nature.

  She huddled around the cheese puffs protectively and I stood there awkwardly for a moment. Finally I said, “Goodbye Mom.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 19

  As I walked out of the rest home, a duty nurse stood between me and the exit. I just looked at her. She said, “You need help for your addiction.”

  “I’m not addicted to anything.”

  “You’re on Meth. You used to be such a nice looking boy, now you’re a wreck.”

  “I am a wreck, but I’m not on Meth.”

  “Don’t lie to me. I’m a professional.”

  “No, it’s something else. Something new.”

  “I don’t care what it’s called, you’re on something, Mister. I know it.”

  “You want to know what it is?” I asked. And then I motioned for her to lean in, so I could whisper the name of my drug to her. The thought of approaching someone so tore up and sick – a strung out junkie – obviously filled her with some kind of disgust, but she wanted to know. She wanted to help the less fortunate, so that she could feel better about herself, so she came closer.

  “It’s called Death,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Death,” I whispered, “everybody’s doing it.” And then I grabbed the sides of her face in my cold, cold hands and kissed her on the lips. She let out a short scream, then a little laugh. She couldn’t process any of it. Then another laugh. Then she started crying.

  I’m sure someone else would have felt bad about it. I didn’t.

  I sat in the hearse for a long time before I started it. I just looked at my mangled hands on the wheel. I listened to the infinitesimal noise of the keys swinging in the ignition. Finally, when I could hear them no more, I started the car. The engine turned and as I pressed the accelerator, the frame of the vehicle shuttered and twisted in response to the unharnessed torque of the behemoth V-8 under the hood. It sounded like a soft echo of the apocalypse. How fitting it would be, I thought, that a hearse be powered by death.

  As I dropped my hand on the column shift, I could see that the scratch on my forearm was completely black. I was coming to the end of it. That’s okay. I was just about used up anyway. I felt my ribs where the car had hit me. It seemed like years ago. My ribs made a crunching noise as they gave a little. Dried bone ground against bone and gristle. One way or the other this would be the end of it. I was out of time and out of options.

  As I pulled my hand out of my coat, my fingertips brushed an entry wound from one of that crazy Slav’s bullets. I hated to think what the exit wound looked like.

  I put the car in gear. Power surged through the driveshaft, and the battered old differential slipped into place with a rusty clank. It sounded like the end of something. But when I took my foot off the brake, I had that strange lightening feeling again. An image of a corpse floating above me, carried away by the tides.

  The light was blinding. Somehow brighter and more direct than I could ever remember a sunset being before. When I pressed the accelerator, the hearse surged forward effortlessly. I put the windows down and let the beast roar down the highway, powering through the pillars of light. Somewhere, in those brief, roaring instants between the last rays of the dying of the light, I realized what I believed in. As ideas go, it was small, and maybe not much for a mind to wrap itself around. But as awkward and unlikely as it might be, I realized that this small idea was the bedrock that I had searched for, if only subconsciously, for my whole life.

  By the time I wheeled the hearse into the alley, I knew everything I needed to know. Yeah, it was that alley, the place where it all had started. This was where it would end, I was sure of it. Not now, not before midnight, that’s the way these things were done. I would say I knew this in the marrow of my bones, but I wasn’t sure I had any marrow anymore. It would have to be the last thing to dry out, right? I mean if any part of me was still even remotely alive, it would have to be the marrow, right?

  The club was empty in the late afternoon. Without the loud music, it was obvious how foul the air was in here. It wasn’t the stench of death. Real death didn’t have stench. What people smelled when they smelled death was actually a lot of life -- bacteria mostly -- multiplying upon the feast of a corpse.

  Death, as I had come to know intimately, was stale.

  In the middle of the room Vlade sat counting money. He looked up and his eyebrows rose when he saw me. “I have killed you twice already. You have come back for a third time?”

  “Let’s talk about what you believe.”

  Vlade pushed a chair back from underneath the table with his foot. “Sit.” He commanded. “But this time, I really am going to kill you.”

  “Don’t waste your energy, I’m dead already.” I showed him the progress scar on my forearm. “Out of time.”

  “I cannot tell you how sad that makes me,” he said with a funny little smile on his face. He dropped a fresh pile of hundreds on the table next to an uncountable number of identical stacks. “You know, I believe a man should count his own money. Do his own accounting, so that he knows where he stands. Credits, Debits and at the end of all of it,” he shrugged and waved at the pile of money on the table, “he knows where he stands. This I believe. Even when I had no money, this I believe.”

  I sat down and smiled at him. I can’t imagine how horrible that expression must have looked on my torn and battered face, but the strange little smile on Vlade’s face did not disappear. “Well Vlade, let’s just talk about what you believe. And why a rat would want you dead.”

  Vlade’s face broadened into a true smile. “Is the same reason anyone kills anybody.”

  “Hate?”

  “No, no, no, hate is for teenagers and for movies,” he struggled with his English, “Your friend The Rat, as you like to see him, he is ambitious. That is why he wants me dead.”

  I smiled again. “It’s not some ancient magic? Some primeval grudge?”

  “No, it is a curse, a curse as old man. This rat, he is arrogant,” Vlade made a small rolling motion with his right hand, as if to dismiss the very idea of rats as a threat.

  “Then why does he want my soul? My soul of all souls?”

  “Maybe he likes collecting tiny things. Like stamps.”

  For the first time in my life and awkward death, my anger came out in a smile. “What about you Vlade? What do you like collecting? You seem to be immortal. It’s got to give you time for a lot of hobbies.”

  Vlade laughed. It was a strange barking sound, almost like a cough. The air seemed to tighten around us.

  “A man like you,” I said, trying not to show the fear I felt, “I would think a man like you would have a taste for exotic vermin.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 20

  By the time I got back to Marie’s place, the sun had died. The streetlights were attempting to drive back the darkness, but on a night like this, they didn’t stand a chance.

  Bruce opened the door before I could turn the handle.

  “Thank God, we thought The Rat had gotten you already, man.” Bruce gave me a big hug. Who better for me to have as a best friend than a guy who hangs around corpses? He had to be the only guy left from my life who wasn’t afraid to hug me.

  Marie stood up from the couch and walked over to us with a strange look in her eye.

  Bruce touched my arm, “How much longer do you have left?”

  I showed him. “Midnight.”

  “Midnight. That’s so wrong man. That’s so… It’s like, such a bad cliché,” said Bruce.

  “Clichés have power.”

  Marie stared at me as her wide eyes filled with tears. What was that about? “It’s okay,” I said, “I have a plan. But I’m going to need your help.”

  Bruce nodded. Marie said nothing. This was bad. I needed both
of them. I knew I could count on Bruce and I thought Marie would help because of what The Rat had done to her stepfather, but now – I tried again, “Can I count on you?”

  With deadly sincerity Bruce looked at me and said, “Yeah, brother, anything, you know that.”

  Marie burst into tears. When Bruce saw her his face twisted in revulsion. “Come ON!” he said without an iota of sensitivity. Guess the romance was over.

  I touched her arm and asked, “What is it?”

  “He offered me a deal.”

  “Who?”

  “The Rat.”

  Bruce’s jaw fell open. “The Rat?” he said in disgust. “The Rat! After all that, that, THING has done to you, you made a deal with The Rat?”

  That did it. Marie collapsed into full on sobbing.

  “Lay off Bruce, let her talk.”

  Marie pulled it together enough to say, “The Rat, he told me that I was…” then she made up her mind, “I don’t think you want my help.”

  “Marie,” I said, “Marie, I need your help. I can’t face him without you.” She rubbed her face against the cold of my torn and ragged palm as if it was something soft, something decent, something beautiful. “Now tell me, Marie. What happened?”

  “He came to me. He told me he would give my stepfather his name back.”

  “In return for what?”

  “If I helped him. If I helped him take your soul.”

  My face twisted into a smile. “You know he only deals for his own advantage?”

  She nodded.

  “What did you tell him?”

  Bruce said, “Man, why are you even listening to this bitch, man? You know you can’t trust her -- she’s already sold you out!”

  I turned to Bruce. I could see the anger and disquiet in his body. Was everyone this easy to read when you didn’t have emotions of your own roaring through you? All that noise and by-product of life messing with you? “Bruce, be quiet.”