by Jeff Gelb
On the back of my hand.
It sizzles and crackles, but for only an instant; then dark, rolling clouds churning with thick clots of ropey gray and black descend across my vision. All colors fade, and once again I am clutched by the sensation of being frozen into immobility. My muscles go rigid. My bones feel like iron spikes.
I can feel the touch on the back of my hand for less than a second, and then the dull leadenness seeps like poison throughout my body.
“Oh, my God! Look!” a voice suddenly cries out. “He … he’s bleeding!”
I am so lost in my own internal agony that I can’t distinguish whose voice it is.
I no longer care.
It sounds so impossibly far away I would cry … if I could.
“It’s true! The chest wound is bleeding again!”
“But that’s impossible,” I hear someone say. It might be the judge or it might be the man who claims to be my lawyer.
“A corpse can’t bleed!”
I am past caring as darkening waves engulf me, pulling me under with powerful surges. All of my senses are dimming. The last thing I hear before everything resolves into pitch black again is a faint, echoing voice.
“That will be all for now. Thank you, Dr. Murphy. You may return Mr. Sinclair’s body to the morgue now.”
Pyre
Th. Metzger
Quinn sat up in bed, gasping. 3:30, by the throbbing orange numbers. Dark and silent. The whole world was asleep and Quinn had never felt more awake.
“It’s happening again. I can feel it.”
Melanie stirred beside him. “Go back to sleep. It’s nothing.”
“No! I can feel it. I’m on fire.”
He touched Melanie’s shoulder—cold, so cold. “Go back to sleep,” she groaned, rolling away from him. “It’s just the flu. Take some aspirin.”
“This time it’s real. I can feel it.” He sat helplessly on the side of the bed, sure that at any moment he’d burst into flame. No thermometer was needed; the mercury would shoot out the top like a liquid bullet.
“Go back to sleep.” She sounded so far away. “Don’t think about it.” Which was like telling him not to breathe.
He felt his way to the bathroom, closed the door, and turned on the light. Melanie was probably back asleep already. She didn’t believe him, just as she hadn’t believed him the last time and the time before.
He splashed water on his face, expecting to see steam shroud the mirror. Nothing. Just his bleary face staring back. He studied the eyes, the mouth, the flushed skin, as though trying to see through a mask.
He got in the shower and let the cool water run over him. Eventually the feeling grew weak. Once more, he’d sent it back wherever it came from. But he didn’t know how many more times he had until nothing would work.
He toweled himself off and slid back into the bed naked. Melanie was still on her side, facing away from him. He stared at the curve under the sheet, the blond halo of her hair, until the first sign of dawn shone in the window.
When he woke, the house was empty. As usual, Melanie had slipped out of bed, dressed and escaped from the house without waking him.
He took his time getting to work. He was late, very late, but no one seemed to notice.
He stared at his screen and saw only a chaos of tiny stars, no pattern, no meaning. He tried to concentrate but could barely make his fingers move.
It wasn’t just the fever. The new woman—Jeanette—was there. He sensed her presence in the next cubicle. He heard her fingers tapping her keys, the occasional soft groan when she made a mistake.
Quinn logged into the immediate mode of the company’s E-mail system and sent Jeanette a message. “How’s it going? Are you sorry you transferred yet?”
Her answer came back quickly. “No. But maybe Waterson will regret it.” He pictured her smiling.
It seemed ridiculous to be communicating through their machines when he could just as easily walk around the divider and speak. But it was safer to keep it on this level. Let her stay hidden, one more disembodied presence in the system. He found it difficult to reconcile the two forms she took: the string of syllables, commands, architectural data that appeared occasionally on his screen and the woman of real flesh.
He inhaled deeply, trying to calm himself. He went through one of the breathing excercises he’d gotten from his doctor. But with each repetition, he got another whiff of Jeanette. Not perfume. Something more basic, some nameless scent exuded by her flesh. She’d only been in the department a few days and already the climate there had been completely transformed.
“How about lunch?” Quinn keyed in.
“Maybe tomorrow. Got to get these variances cleared.”
“Okay. Tomorrow.”
His screen buzzed and hissed at him. None of the colors had names, as though the fever had given him the power to see above and below the visible spectrum. He wondered if this was what he looked like inside—a seething stew of heat and light.
He went patiently through the magazines. 1967, 1966, 1965. Old Lifes and Looks. They reeked of mildew. A patina of blackish grime coated his fingers. He might have been eight years old again, squatting in his parents’ basement.
Finally he found the picture he was looking for. Three Buddhist monks sitting cross-legged on a sidewalk, engulfed in fire. Their faces grinned through the billowing flame, like skulls seen through diaphanous veils. The men looked so happy, utterly consumed, set free. The flames and their robes were indistinguishable. Their pain and their ecstasy too.
Melanie came home well after seven and found Quinn poring over the magazines.
“You see what I mean?” he said, as his wife kicked off her shoes and began rummaging in the cupboards. “It’s happened before.”
She ignored him.
“I’m talking to you, Melanie.”
She gave a quick glance at the photo. “Come on, Quinn, you know they did that to themselves. They poured gas on themselves and lit it. It was a protest or something.”
“I could blow up right here in front of you and you still wouldn’t believe it.”
“It’s not a matter of believing. Look, it says right here.” She pointed to the caption. “ ‘Self-immolation.’ It was a protest. A religious thing.”
“I know. But every night, when I get in bed, I feel it getting closer. I’m going to go up, Melanie. Just like these guys. Up in flames.” He tapped the picture. “Last night was close. I could smell the smoke. My hands were shimmering, you know, like pavement on a really hot day. My blood was starting to boil. I mean really boil. It was turning to vapor in my veins.”
“You had night sweats, Quinn. It’s the flu. Everybody’s got it these days. Half the people in my office were out today, or dragging around like zombies.” She paused. “Didn’t you get my message?”
The light on the answering machine winked at him.
“I had to put in a couple of extra hours to cover for Ralph,” Melanie said. “If you’re sick, why don’t you go to bed early? You need some sleep. I’ll be in later. I’ve got a ton of work to catch up on.”
“I’m not a baby. I know when I need sleep.”
“All right, fine. Sit here and stare at these stupid magazines. But you’re not going to catch on fire. It just doesn’t happen. It’s impossible.”
“What about those Vietnamese monks?”
“Jesus Christ! You’re not listening to me. They poured gas on themselves and lit a match. That’s the only way you’re going to catch fire.”
“Feel my forehead.”
“You may say you’re no baby, but you certainly are acting like one.” She grabbed a carton of ice cream and fled down the hall to her office.
Quinn went to the kitchen sink and wet the dish rag. He held it to his face, picturing the image of his features—eyes, nose, mouth—seared into the cloth.
He dropped it and looked out the window. It was dark outside. He saw himself running down the empty street, like a ghost of flame. Orange, red, yel
low, and all the nameless shades in between. Racing through the night air.
He went to Melanie’s office and tapped on the door.
“What?”
“We’ve got to talk.”
“Look, I’ve got a mountain of work here and I—”
“I’ve got something I need to tell you.” He looked at his wife and his vision blurred. He was close, getting closer. His joints ached. His mouth tasted of ash and sulfur.
“This has been a bitch of a day, Quinn. I have a splitting headache, Olsten wants the whole casebook on his desk tomorrow and I’ve had about all I can take of your idiotic spontaneous human combustion bullshit.”
He put his hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off as if it were toxic. Her look was unbearable. The contempt was familiar, but there was something else. Guilt? Pity? She couldn’t even look him in the eye. He put his hand on the side of her neck. He brought his lips close to kiss her forehead. She’d always liked that.
“Please, Quinn, I need some time by myself.” She squirmed out of his grasp.
He turned and fled. Down the hall, to the bedroom, to the corner where his machine was set up on a card table. He made sure the phone was hooked in properly, logged on, then paused, muttering, “It’s okay, it’s okay.” He breathed evenly to calm himself, in and out, in and out, and he was back twenty years, squatting before a campfire, blowing a bed of coals to life.
He looked at the screen to see what he’d written. “I need to talk to you. You name the place, the time. Whatever you want. It’s important.” With the touch of one key the message would be gone. With another it would be instantly in Jeanette’s Email box waiting for her. He stared at the message a long time, knowing there’d be no turning back once it was sent.
He thought of the monks sitting in the pools of gasoline, waiting for the match to ignite.
He hit the send key. With one simple motion, one finger moving half an inch, the flame and the pain were transformed. He was one of the monks now. He’d decided.
Quinn met Nick Platt on his way to the men’s room. The two men had worked together until a recent company reorganization. Quinn had even invited Nick over a few times for supper, but that ended when Melanie said she felt uncomfortable with him in the house.
As usual, the first thing out of Nick’s mouth was about women. “What’s her name?”
“Who?”
“You can’t keep her all to yourself, Quinn. I saw her the other day. Short black hair, nice ass. Sound familiar?”
“Come on, Nick, I don’t—”
“What’s her name?”
Quinn sighed. “Jeanette.”
“She’s new here?”
“No, just transferred from legal. We needed somebody to cover the variances. You know, the codes get harder to understand every year. Waterson thought we should have her in the department.”
“So what’s she like?”
“I hardly know her. I haven’t said five words to her since she came on.”
“Introduce me.”
“I said I hardly know her.”
“You just want to keep her for yourself.” Nick gave Quinn one of his ridiculous smirks.
“What’s the matter?” Quinn said. “You’ve already gone through every woman in your own department? Why don’t you start over at the beginning again? Just leave Jeanette alone, all right?”
“Geez, Quinn, you sound mighty protective. Did you stake your claim already?”
Quinn turned. “I gotta get going. I’ve got a lunch thing in—”
“With her, right?” Before Quinn could deny it, Nick was grinning like a jack-o-lantern. “With her! Invite me, let me come along.”
“No. It’s just a—”
“It is, it is her! Jesus, you’re blushing like a house on fire.”
At one point, Nick had kept a chart in his desk: all the women at the office that he’d gone after, all that were still possibilities, all that were, as he called them, “direct hits.” Quinn didn’t want Jeanette’s name on that chart. “I really gotta go. See you around.” Quinn hurried down the hall. Luckily, thankfully, Nick didn’t pursue him.
Quinn paused at the door to his department, trying to calm his breathing.
He went in and Jeanette smiled, seeing him. “I’d just about given up on you. I thought you’d stood me up.”
Her face was open; there was nothing veiled or secret in her eyes. He’d spoken with her a few times at meetings. He’d watched her come and go. But until that moment, she’d been pure fantasy, an alternative to the pain he felt whenever he was in Melanie’s presence. He helped Jeanette on with her jacket. He caught a whiff of her scent, he felt a trace of her body warmth. She was real now.
They went down to his car.
The first half an hour or so was a haze of small talk: where they’d worked before, gripes about the management. But this soon petered out. They hinted and feinted, trying to figure out what was really going on between them. Quinn made no mention of his wife, and Jeanette let drop that she was divorced. No kids. Apparently no current boyfriend.
Quinn felt the spark, and he thought she felt it too. Perhaps it was mere biology, lunar cycles, pheromones. Or perhaps it was just dumb luck. She fit the woman-shaped void he felt and it seemed he served a similar purpose for her. It had been a long time since he’d felt this way. The old momentum built, the sensation that he was on a sloping plane, the angle growing steeper with each moment he lingered near her. First the small talk, then eye contact and a casual brushing of his leg against hers. Getting no sign of resistance, he upped the stakes. He took her hand in his, to supposedly admire the garnet ring she had on.
Even this he took as encouragement. She wore the fire-red stone just for him, a sign that she’d understand anything he told her.
It was all moving too quickly for him. He was falling so fast he could hardly breathe.
“I want to show you something,” he said, pulling the quarter-folded picture from his pocket. This was the real test. If she shrunk back, stared at him blankly, then he’d know there was no point in pursuing this any further.
He brushed crumbs off the table and flattened the picture out. Three monks wrapped in robes of gorgeous flame. “It’s called spontaneous human combustion.”
He waited. He tried to see through her eyes. She didn’t shrink away. There was no sign of repulsion.
“When I was a kid, I saw this picture. It made a big impression on me. I couldn’t get it out of my head for months. And just a few days ago, I stumbled on it again. I was cleaning out my parents’ basement—they’re moving to a smaller place—and I found it.” There, it was all out. He’d opened himself up, shown her the truth. Now it was her turn. She could squirm and make excuses about getting back to the office. She could laugh and tell him he was a fool. Or she could—as she did—sit quietly, staring at the picture, winding her napkin in a knot, as though the image had as much power over her as it did over him.
She said nothing. She didn’t argue with him. She didn’t tell him that this was all kid stuff, no different than Big Foot or fish falling from the sky. No, she sat and listened as he explained it to her. All the way back to the office, she was silent, consumed by the beautiful, awful picture.
And her face wouldn’t leave him. It hung like a beckoning spirit the entire day. He saw it behind the schematics on his screen, in the fiery billows that surrounded the monks, in the throbbing crimson of sunset.
Quinn went to bed alone and lay there waiting for the fire. Fever was supposed to cleanse the body of impurity. But Quinn’s fever had the opposite effect, opening the conduit wider for new poisons, new shades of darkness.
Melanie came home late and slipped into bed without a sound. Quinn pretended to be asleep at first, and she pretended to believe it, though she must have felt the heat radiating off his flesh. The shadowy bedroom shapes swelled and swayed. Quinn and Melanie lay there, listening to each other breathe.
Finally, Quinn inched his hand across the sheets and touched
her shoulder. She drew back, but he didn’t care anymore. He rolled onto his side, snaking his arm around her waist. She squirmed, and he brought his lips to the side of her neck. There was a foreign scent in her hair. He grabbed her ear between his teeth and tugged.
“Not tonight, I’m not—”
His hand slipped upward and covered her mouth. “I don’t want to hear it,” he growled, and yanked on her nightgown.
She fought at first, as he kissed and pawed her. Indifference might have killed his lust. But her resistance only inflamed him further. He threw back the covers, pulled her nightgown over her head, and stared, as if expecting some secret to be revealed. Her skin shone dead white. She could have been a corpse, he thought. I’ve been sleeping with a corpse.
Then suddenly she held her arms up, as if to welcome him, or surrendering. It was an act, a sham, but it was good enough for Quinn. He descended on her, quenching the awful heat with her cold flesh. She pretended to want him, to like what he did to her. And he pretended not to notice the complete falseness of her every move and sound.
Now Melanie was the fantasy figure, taking the place of Jeanette. He rode her downward, through the fire, the smoke, the moans and cries and gnashing of teeth.
Jeanette didn’t come in the next day. And at first, Quinn was relieved. He actually got some work done that morning. But by lunch time, his mind had slipped its moorings again. He went past her cubicle twice, then ducked inside. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. In and out, in and out. Deep and deeper, expanding his diaphragm, just as his relaxation tapes said.
“She’s sick.” Nick Piatt’s voice pulled Quinn out of his dream state.
“Who?”
“Jesus, Quinn, what’s wrong with you? Who do you think? Jeanette called in sick this morning. She’s got the fever that’s been going around.”
“How do you know?”
“I asked Lorraine, in personnel.”
