To his left, blonde and beautiful Elaine sat in the eggplant-colored chair with her hands over her mouth, tears streaming down her face. She was torn between sobs and laughter. “Oh thank God, Dad! You’re alive!”
* * *
Julian awoke when someone wiped his mouth with a crusty cloth. I smell smoke, he thought, only better. Salty. No… woody, with a hint of spice. Whatever it was, it didn’t smell like a hospital, and it didn’t smell like Death. Oh hallelujah, I smell a barbeque. Barbeques meant home. Or at least, somebody else’s home.
“Pretty strong those drugs, huh?” A man’s voice.
I’m still here? It’s been weeks. Months maybe. He recalled being moved around, being washed, being laid in bed, but this felt like the first lucid moment since he’d left hospital.
Little Isabel screamed as she toddled into the kitchen, holding her head. Four year old Eddy followed, protesting his innocence. Julian expected Janine to join in with all the royal omniscience of the family’s firstborn, laying blame and demanding justice. But Janine didn’t follow. Must be at school, Julian thought.
Then he frowned. Curtained behind painkillers and exhaustion, a black memory lurked.
“They have to be powerful drugs.” Elaine had to raise her voice over those of her children. She picked up Isabel and held her on a hip. “He’s in a lot of pain.”
“He’s still in pain?” the man asked. Carl, Julian thought. Carl’s here.
“Yeah,” Elaine answered, “but at least he’s alive.”
Something’s missing. Why can’t I remember? But his heart could remember; it was his mind that refused to recall the details. He could only recall a clap of thunder and a sense of sudden, terrible loss, the day Death abandoned him in the hospital.
Carl grinned. “How you feeling, old man? You ready to get up and go to work?”
Julian tried to move, but his extremities were numb and unresponsive. The kitchen was askew, because Julian couldn’t centre his head on his neck.
“You hungry?” Carl asked. “It’s all right, Elaine, you do what you have to do. I’ll look after him.”
Eddy ran out of the room heedless of the kitchen chair he’d toppled, and Isabel screamed in her mother’s ear. Elaine rolled her eyes heavenward.
“Go,” Carl insisted. “It’ll be like old times for him and me.” Carl winked encouragingly and watched Elaine leave the kitchen. “Come back to us, Julian.” Carl gripped Julian’s hand, squeezed it. “People at the shelter have been asking after you, wondering how you’re doing… Weird, seeing you like this again. Feels like we’ve come full circle.”
Julian was strapped into a large black chair, with cushions on either side of his head. What do I look like to you now, Carl? Like Stephen Hawking? Or like a deformed baby in a high chair?
“Do you even remember what happened?” Carl spooned orange goo out of a bowl. “You had the stuffing knocked out of you.”
Julian heard the sound of a child asking a question. Janine? Julian turned his head enough that Carl left a smear of baby food across his cheek. But it was Eddy’s impatient voice that had posed the question.
Patiently, Carl wiped Julian’s face and applied the spoon where it best served its purpose. “They say when that van hit you, you flew eighteen feet and landed smack against the broadside of a cement truck.” He inserted more food into Julian’s mouth, and with bushy eyebrows raised, he added, “It’s a miracle you’re alive.” He inserted one spoonful after another into Julian’s mouth. At least Julian’s tongue still worked.
Little Eddy returned, took command of his favorite chair, and demanded hot dogs. He didn’t look twice at the disabled old man who’d taught him how to fish and how to assemble a race car track. Elaine followed, with Isabel in tow, dragging her heels. “My husband called,” Elaine said. “He won’t be home until late. Work.”
Carl lifted an eyebrow. “He’s been doing a lot of overtime.”
Elaine averted her eyes. “We have a lot of hospital bills to pay.”
“And like I said, Elaine, we’re happy to help.”
Julian watched the suntanned features of his grandson. Eddy wiggled and shouted, made his demands and sound effects and his declarations, and he made a general mess of his food. Isabel screamed two word sentences when the food was slow or dissatisfactory. Still, there was no sign of Janine.
* * *
Julian had dozed off in his chair and awoke to Elaine sobbing.
Carl reached across the table and squeezed her shoulder. “It’s not your fault,” he said. The children had gone.
“I shouldn’t have said…” She sighed. “I should have been there, Carl. Brent was already late for work, and— and those things I said—”
“Shhh,” Carl whispered. “It’s not your fault. It’s not.”
Later, the two kids were bathed and put to bed. Where is Janine? Julian wondered.
Then he recalled the sound of the collision as Death’s scythe struck the floor.
Elaine’s husband Brent arrived sometime after Carl had left. Husband and wife exchanged terse words, and Elaine went to bed early. Cursing under his breath, Brent manhandled Julian through all the rigors of bed-readiness, rushing him through the mutual indignities of bathing and changing of adult diapers. At the end of the wrestling, Brent flung Julian into bed, snapped off the light and slammed the door between them.
Brent had been driving, Julian thought, remembering the red scars across Brent’s forehead, cheek and jaw. He’d been late for work. His feeble heart groaned. Where’s Janine?
Overhead, Elaine pleaded with Brent, who shouted and swore back. Julian couldn’t make out the words because the floorboards were too thick, but he could hear the emotions clearly enough. He heard his grandchildren crying in their beds, too. Abrupt footsteps boomed across the floor. Elaine called after her husband. Hard-soled shoes trampled stairs. She screamed Brent’s name. A door swung open and slammed shut, and except for three weeping voices, all fell deafeningly quiet.
Take someone else if you have to, that’s what Elaine had said. Take someone else, but don’t you take my Dad. But it was Julian who’d angered Death.
* * *
One morning, for the first time in Julian’s foggy memory, Elaine marooned him in the living room with the TV going. Normally when she cleaned the house, she parked him in his own room out of the way. Small mercies! he thought. Even soap operas were a breath of fresh air.
Hanging on the wall above the TV, there was a large school portrait of Janine. She was smiling and posed with her hands folded under her chin. The portrait was framed in black, and a track and field medal hung from the upper right corner.
Janine… In exchange for the life of her daughter, Elaine had taken home a living corpse.
Elaine re-entered the living room, exhausted by her labours. With the kids in daycare, they had the house to themselves, but Julian was no more company than the umbrella stand. At least the stand had a function to fulfill.
Elaine cleared her groggy throat and tossed her hair over her shoulder. She’d been crying. “Time for your heart meds, Dad.”
He opened his mouth obediently. She administered purgatory in the form of digitalis, dropping one tiny pill under his tongue. Another drug, another day.
“God, I can’t keep doing this,” Elaine muttered as she left the room with the pill bottle.
Neither can I, Elaine. With the few responsive muscles left in his body, Julian rolled the heart pill out from under his tongue and balanced it on his lip. Then, with a mighty effort, he blew the pill as far from his mouth as he could pitch it. It rolled across the hardwood floor and under the couch. I won’t be your penance any more, Elaine. I asked you to let me go. I’m going. Damned if you can stop me now.
* * *
Elaine’s husband had called in the middle of dinner to tell her he wasn’t coming home again that nig
ht, or any other night. She’d hung up the phone and sent the kids to bed early, then, forgetting all about her father’s presence in the kitchen, she sat at the table, poured herself a generous tumbler of rum and Coke, and began to cry. When she slammed down the emptied tumbler, Julian’s pill bottles jumped.
“I don’t know what it is you want from me!” she screamed. “You’re supposed to be so merciful, and this is what you do to my family? You kill my daughter, you drive my husband away from me, and you leave me with… with this thing that was my father?”
Julian turned his face away. Soon, Elaine. Soon. He could already sense the exasperated presence of Death. Come on, you bastard. Let’s talk face to face.
“Mommy?” Eddy clung to the kitchen door frame.
“Eddy, I told you to go back to bed!”
“But I’m not tired!”
“Go!”
“But Mommy—”
“Fine, you know what? Do whatever the hell you want. Go in the living room and play. Do whatever you want. I don’t care what you do.”
Don’t say that, Elaine…
Tears stood in Eddy’s eyes. He returned, dejected, to the living room where his toys had been put away for the night.
Elaine poured a second drink. She muttered and prayed and groaned over the melting ice, touching her forehead with trembling fingers.
Death’s stench pervaded the kitchen like forgotten garbage.
“Take this burden from me,” Elaine whispered.
Come on, you son-of-a-bitch. She can’t look after me and the kids at the same time.
Wood chimes clattered. Death was in the house, but he was not in the kitchen.
Oh God… where’s Eddy? One moment, the boy had been banging two cars together and making siren noises. Now, the house was eerily quiet. Elaine went to the washroom and returned to a third drink, oblivious to the unaccustomed silence of the house. Elaine, snap out of it! He groaned. She ignored him. He grunted at her and writhed in his seat. Elaine, wake up! Go check on Eddy! Wordlessly, he shouted.
“Oh shut up, will you?” She poured a fourth drink as if it was a long-awaited, fatal dose.
In the other room, Death sighed, as if satisfied. Oh God no! Julian remembered, his heart medication had rolled under the couch, out of the sight of adult eyes, but not beyond the reach of a child’s curious hands. Julian cried out and slammed his head against the rest, making his chair shake.
“Oh for God’s sake, all right! Fine! You want to go to bed? I’ll put you to bed.” She rose and jerked the wheelchair backwards toward the door. As tipsy as she was, she had trouble with the door, the wheelchair and her own balance, so she propped the door open.
She froze, eviscerated by cold, pale horror.
No, Julian thought. No, not this! His toes twitched. His tingling hand fell to his lap. “Eh…” he managed to say. A seatbelt buckled him into his chair. “Ehd…!”
“Eddy!” she screamed, running into the living room.
After all, Death whispered, she can’t look after you and the children at the same time.
Elaine rushed into the kitchen for the cordless phone. She dialled 911 and ran back to Eddy, begging for CPR instructions even before giving her name or address. She didn’t notice that Julian had unbuckled his seat belt and begun to slide forward in the chair.
Baby Isabel wailed upstairs; Death was still in the house. Drunk on determination, Julian fell to his knees close to the kitchen table. You won’t cheat me again, Death. He yanked the tablecloth. The wet tumbler of liquor fell and cracked, and after it came a cascade of rattling pill bottles.
* * *
Everything was shades of grey: the dead trees surrounding the fallow field, the nodding weeds, the shadows of those who waited for Death’s guidance into their final resting places. With his scythe poised, Death awaited Julian.
“Can you hear them, Julian? The people standing over your grave? They wonder why they hadn’t let you die with dignity.”
Julian shrugged. “They were hoping for a miracle, I guess.”
“A miracle?” Death laughed. “Lazarus was raised from death to life again, but does he live still?” Death’s smile hardened into a grimace. “As you said yourself: I am inevitable. I come to all, sooner or later.” He growled, “I thought you understood.”
Julian said, “You shouldn’t have done what you did. It was my fault. I pissed you off. You should have taken me. Instead you took Janine, an innocent kid. Did you take Eddy, too?”
“Why shouldn’t I take children as well? A child may live fully and vibrantly in only seven years, and a fool may suffer agony for a hundred— what does it matter? You all die sooner or later.”
Julian touched Death’s sleeve, causing the gaunt figure to hiss in disgust. “Please, did you take my grandson?” Julian asked again.
A moaning wind wove through the grey statues in Death’s garden, but Death himself did not reply. “You would know, if you hadn’t thrown your life away so quickly.” A gleam of light flickered within the cavernous hood. “With your restored life, you could have helped Elaine save the child.” Death sighed. “I had reserved a beautiful, comfortable place for you, Julian. A peaceful place.” He stretched his bony fingers from his wide cuffs and touched Julian’s chest, stopping him where they stood. “But you… First you pretended to befriend and understand me, only to insult me with your petty bargains. And then you took your second chance at life and flung it back at me like so much rubbish! As soon as your limbs had begun to invigorate, what was the first thing you did? Nothing like helping another, no. Instead, you took your own life!”
Cold spread like branching tendrils through Julian’s limbs, rendering them stiff. “Do I at least get to see them again?” Julian whispered.
“No,” Death rumbled. With delicate, bony fingers, he cupped the face of one of the statues. The statue rolled its stony eyes, but the mouth was twisted open in agony, and the limbs were contorted and as stiff as concrete. Countless grimacing mouths issued forth a wailing wind of regret. “I have moved them far beyond your reach.”
“Not even for five minutes?” Julian asked, meaning it as a dry, if nervous, joke.
Flames smouldered within the empty eye sockets. “They did not spit back the gift of life.” Death walked on, but Julian found he could no longer follow. “Accursed ingrate.”
Julian clenched his hand over his chest as the bitter cold seeped into his immortal soul. He lifted his eyes and saw a vision of himself falling out of his electric wheelchair, crawling into the living room, administering first aid. He saw himself shouting at a seven-year-old Isabel, jolting her with his voice before she plugged a fork in an electrical outlet. He saw himself walking out with canes and braces to speak to a high school, a university, a rehab group. He saw himself a much older man, whispering encouragement to an intern, who would go on to save countless more lives.
Death swept his scythe through Julian’s visions, through what could have been. Julian saw Elaine kneeling by a gravestone, screaming at all who tried to comfort her. He saw the intern stuck in a cubicle, answering calls. He saw an empty high school gym. He saw a boy injecting dirty blue fluid into his veins, then laying down to die, his mouth warped into a rictus of artificial ecstasy, his body, shrunken by decay, forgotten in the dirty snow.
He focused on Elaine again, picking up the bottle of heart medication. There were some pills left. She twisted the cap and sat down behind a tumbler of rum and Coke. “Elaine, no!” Julian reached for her image. His arm froze, turning to stone.
“You were granted a second life,” Death muttered, “and you vomited it back at me.” He turned his back and walked on, using his scythe as a staff. “I wait for you no longer, Julian. Time was yours, in life. Now, it is mine.”
* * *
PATRICIA FLEWWELLING is the author of the science fiction novel Helix: Blight of Exiles, the dieselpunk
series The Fog of Dockside City, and Judge Not, a biography co-written with falsely-accused and imprisoned Jonathon Parker. She writes almost anything that can be labelled dark, action-packed, and ironic.
In a Moment
By Christine Steendam
The rain pounded like a deafening drum against the windshield of her car. Visibility had been reduced to the small red dots of the preceding car’s tail lights. Traffic still raced by as if it was a clear sunny day though, causing Carissa to grip her steering wheel even tighter, her knuckles turning white. She hated weather like this. All the idiot drivers out there that thought they were invincible in their metal death machines were more of a danger than the torrential downpour.
A car whipped by on her left, and Carissa shuddered. The next exit was hers. Once she was off this freeway she’d be okay, yet she couldn’t help but think she should have taken the long way home and avoided the highway.
The truck behind her pulled out and fish-tailed slightly on the slick road. “Just slow down, buddy,” she muttered as the driver pulled past her. The truck fish-tailed some more, this time just past Carissa’s car and she could see that he was struggling. She tapped her brakes. What was this guy thinking? What was his hurry?
All it took was an over-correction and the truck, barely holding traction, lost what little grip the tires had and was spinning across the slick concrete. Carissa slammed on the brakes, her tires squealing but continuing in their forward motion. She pressed harder on already completely compressed brakes in a panicked attempt to stay away from the out of control truck. She kept sliding right, towards where the truck was now; it still hadn’t come to a stop. All she could see was a rushing blur of red tail lights fading to the yellow glow of head light. And then the blur slowed. The drumming rain took a steadier, less frantic beat, and then stopped completely. Little spots of red tail lights and yellow head lights stood still all around her. Rain drops froze in midair. Nothing was moving. Even her car was still, the speedometer stuck at 60 Km/h.
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