When the blackness faded, Brian found himself under water unable to breathe. He scrambled for the surface with arm strength only; something about his legs was painfully wrong.
Panic struck in his search for oxygen. Ahead, the surface remained hidden and hopeless. The Arizona sun would never stroke his face again.
And Brian thought that he was dead.
He feared that he'd flap his arms forever, bound for an eternity to God's own customized redemption. He'd copied one test answer during finals. Just one. Anatomy was the hardest subject he'd ever encountered; and Professor Chutney was an asshole. This one sin would forever damn his soul, never to smell sweet oxygen again, the warm, southern air.
Then, his lungs exploded.
As he broke the surface of the water, his lungs filled so quickly that his chest felt unable to withstand the sudden inflation.
Brian Poletree was alive. He'd jumped, he'd survived, he was no chicken. But the victory was fleeting. The river was deserted. Night had fallen.
Brian waded, looked for the shoreline in the pitch black, felt his arms quickly tiring and decided on a direction. His first stroke brought his hand down on the inflated surface of a large truck tube. He hoisted himself into the doughnut and waited for his lungs to still.
The Arizona desert, in its strange way, had turned the bright blue, infinitely visible day into a black sheet of barren mysteries and reptilian fears. The Salt River seemed motionless in the heavy ebony. Somewhere, something hissed, something howled; a predatory scream erupted far ahead of Brian's blindness.
It didn't make sense, Brian thought as he searched the dark sky for a constellation, a star, any comforting point of direction. He'd fallen, hadn't he? Where was everyone? Why hadn't anyone helped? His right leg was broken. He couldn't really see it, but he knew. The cool river rushed through the toes of his left foot only.
And where was that "brother-to-brother, anything for a brother" fraternity of his. In particular, where was Jimmy Peters? A score needed settled with that idiot. Brian had given Jimmy Peters trust. He'd dropped his summer classes in Flagstaff to "take a little vacation from it all" with the brothers. "Drive down to Phoenix with us," they'd said. "We'll blow a few brain cells in the desert." Brian had sacrificed three months of valuable pre-med study time and the promise that he'd amend his cheating by giving anatomy extra time. He'd been stupid...not chicken. The Jack Daniels had juiced his courage; he would have jumped. That damned Jimmy Peters. Brian smacked the water with both fists.
"Brian. You're dead." From behind, Jimmy Peters' voice broke his thoughts with sinister undertones. Jimmy's voice had lost its matter-of-fact inflection and now hissed with nasal congestion. "Follow the S·S·Styx to Hell, Poletree. It is your only s·s·salvation."
Brian spun the tube quickly, searched the darkness. "Jimmy. What happened? Where are you?" he asked. From behind, something tickled his ear like the soft tip of a wet tongue. "You're s·s·soul give it to us·s·s," Jimmy whispered.
Brian slapped at his head and empty air. Again, he spun the tube and spied a retreating image as it paddled into the darkness. A skeleton in a tube. Its white rib bones and curved spine were barely visible. Long, white arms propelled its fleshless self from sight. Jimmy Peters?
Perhaps.
"Jimmy?" Brian said aloud, then mumbled, "shit no, Brian. What the hell are you saying?" He cupped some river water and slapped his face with one hand. Skeletons didn't talk; they didn't lick your ear. Like Professor Chutney had chuckled a week before finals, the skeleton, the backbone of human flesh. Nothing more and nothing less. Professor Chutney, the poet; what a joke. A pompous ass and a flesh-hacker, yes. At these, he brilliantly shined. But to begin every dissection with his own poetic didies?
The skeleton, the backbone of human flesh.
As Brian stared at the spot where the boney tuber had disappeared, he heard the professor's saw as it had resounded in the 300 seat lab that day, as the dear professor had begun his lecture by displaying the spine of a donated female corpse.
Nothing more and nothing less.
Brian flowed blindly through the warm night bouncing off trees and rocky barriers as the river snaked its way around hidden turns. He had begun to believe that his crumpled, nearly dead body still laid at the bottom of the cliff he'd been pushed from. This whole scenario was his final vision before heavenly transfer. Most people saw the faces of loved ones and a slide presentation of cherished memories. But not Brian Poletree. Uh-uh. Some unearthly being had been feeling a bit jocular when his fate had been unsealed. Skeletons on tubes, uncertain darkness, a broken leg that painfully throbbed and prevented him from swimming or walking; these were the wonderful visions he'd been sanctioned for, thank you very much.
The course of the river slowed, and for a long stretch moved straight and slow. Brian plucked the cactus needles and twigs he'd accumulated from his bare upper torso. His broken leg had collided helplessly with assorted desert landscape and now trembled with urgency for repair. His head dropped backwards, settling on the cool rubber inner tube, and his shoulder length hair swirled through black water.
A deep breath to cleanse his lungs. A sigh as the oxygen sped to his wounds. When would it end? How far would the river take him? He wished this nightmare would have at least offered a starry sky. Stellar twinkles always comforted him, made him aware that he was not alone. And loneliness was the killer of the spirit as he'd grown to understand in nineteen short years. Besides, that's exactly what he was right now; a bodiless spirit; a wisp of afterlife gas; a toy for the gods of Heaven and Hell. Why should he let them have all the fun? He could end it all right now. There was the water. Here was his broken leg. He couldn't swim even if his spirit struggled for survival. Then Heaven and Hell would have to make a decision, cast him one way or the other, and Brian's loneliness would end.
Brian turned on his side, let his arm hang through the hole in the tube, and stared at the water. His vision had acclimated to the darkness. Tiny black ripples rolled away from the tube as he bobbed the water's surface, and he considered diving into them. The ripples pulled him down with wet hands. His eyes drooped, his body slid, and Brian tottered on the tube at the center of gravity.
Suddenly, the sky burst open. An orange ball of flame illuminated everything. The intense reflection off the wet ripples nearly blinded him. He jerked forward, nearly plunged into the water and fell back into the tube. His broken leg twisted. Bone grinded bone.
High above, like a comet from deep space, the orange ball revealed his true setting. There were no stars. There were no clouds. Brian was not outdoors at all. He was underground. The streaking flame bounced along the rocky ceiling of an immense cavern, twisted, rolled as if angrily entrapped, then slowly descended.
For the few seconds before it hit, Brian followed the fireball's reflection across the water's surface. A Jules Verne landscape flanked the river on both sides. Brian was headed toward the center of the earth, chaperoned by red jagged cliffs, groping leafless trees and bushes, the orange light from the underground comet, and the river.
It was like nothing he'd ever seen; sunset on another planet. The ball of flame dropped below a rock formation far ahead. Then a dazzling display at impact. The cavern shook. The river trembled. For a few seconds, Brian traveled upstream as the force reversed the river's flow. A thousand bands of light—red, orange, yellow—fanned the hallow horizon. Brian knew his irises were being cooked but didn't care; none of this was real...only a vision. Then, slowly, as the comet cooled, the brilliance faded as did Brian's surroundings. At the horizon, a halo of orange remained, tinted the cavern peach, reflected off of the winding river like a beacon.
In all the excitement, Brian had not noticed the tubers that had floated up behind him. "Sure was perty," the one with the cowboy hat said. "Don't know 'bout you, but I sure do wish I had some popcorn right now."
Startled, Brian jerked forward, turned around. A man clothed in tattered jeans and plaid shirt, wearing a straw cowboy hat, smiled big-lipped and wide. A
woman with long black hair, naked above the waist, stared into the glowing darkness beside him. Brian's eyes bugged.
"What the HELL's wrong with you, boy? Ain't 'cha never seen a cowboy on a tube before. Shee-it." The cowboy moved closer, paddling lightly with his fingertips. "You better close yer mouth there 'fore somthin' flies inside. You look like ya just seen a ghost or somethin." The cowboy tilted his head, laughed heartily, sent echoes through the cavern.
As the cowboy straddled Brian's tube, he saw on the man's face a horrible accident. From the center of his nose to his left ear, the cowboy's face was purple-black and puffy. The eye was nearly closed. When he smiled, or laughed, small tears of sticky liquid rolled from the misshapen pores of his cheek. Brian's leg throbbed at the sight.
"Name's Junior Dalton. This here's my sidekick. Don't know what her name is. She won't tell me." The cowboy offered his hand.
Slowly, Brian took it as if diseased. "Brian Poletree," he said. Junior Dalton strangled Brian's hand. "I'm, ah...glad to know you."
As funny as that sounded, Brian really was glad for the company. A cowboy with a half-crushed face and a bare-breasted woman was better than lonely. "Where you comin' from?" Junior asked.
"Flagstaff," Brian said.
"Flagstaff? What the hell is a
The Edge of Hell Page 2
