by Jeff Strand
"Seriously, Todd, what's wrong?"
"Nothing. Really."
Amy leans over and turns on the bedside light. "Is it because I talked about dying tonight? Todd, it's not going to happen, I promise you. It would be too cruel of an irony. I've got time. I shouldn't have made that joke."
"Do you know when most old people die?" I ask.
"When a bingo hall explodes?"
"It's a serious question."
"No, I don't know when most old people die."
"After their birthday. They see it as a goal to achieve, and once they've made it, it's not as important to hold on for another year. People also die after the holidays, because they've seen their family, they've had a chance to tell people that they love them."
"So what you're saying is that you think that once I see the final episode of Exit Red, I'm going to drop dead?"
"I wouldn't say it in that harsh of a manner, but..." My nose is running, and I don't think I should wipe it on this luxurious pillowcase, so I get out of bed and hurry into the bathroom. I blow my nose into a Kleenex, wipe my eyes, and return.
"First of all," says Amy, "I'm not sure your science is accurate. I've heard about people dying after birthdays and family visits, but that phenomenon wouldn't really be relevant in the case of a brain aneurysm. Your body fights disease. It doesn't really fight an aneurysm."
"Okay," I say.
"Second--and I don't think I should have to explain this--seeing the end of Exit Red is not my ultimate goal in life. It's a television show. The best show of all time, one that will never be topped, but still a TV show."
"I understand. I wasn't trying to say that..." And the tears begin again. Crap. I should have brought more Kleenex with me. I walk back to the bathroom, blow my nose, grab a handful of extra tissues, and return. "I wasn't trying to say that..." No good. I succumb to another crying fit.
Amy gets out of bed and gives me a tight hug. "Sweetie, what's wrong?"
"I don't know. I just feel like this is the end."
"Of me or of us?"
I can't say the truth. "Of us."
"It's not the end of us," Amy assures me. "Not unless you want it to be."
I shake my head. "Hell no."
"Then that's not something you need to worry about." She kisses me on the lips and smiles. "You can say 'I love you.' It's okay. I won't get freaked out."
"I love you."
Amy hesitates, only for a split second but still a hesitation, and says, "I love you, too."
And I realize that I'm okay with her hesitation. There doesn't have to be an equitable distribution of feelings. This doesn't have to be a love story where we know after a week that we were meant to be together for the rest of our lives. We're together now, and that's good enough for me.
She's going to die. She's going to die soon, and I've known that from the beginning, but suddenly it absolutely terrifies me, because now that our adventure is almost over, I'm no longer convinced that I can handle it.
Amy is going to die. I'm going to be alone again. A week ago I was perfectly content with having only Craig for company, but now...
"I have a lot of other goals," Amy tells me. "I need to help you find a new job. A good one. I can't die with your unemployment on my conscience."
"You don't have to help with--"
She puts her index finger over my lips to shut me up. "I accept fifty percent of the blame for you getting fired. So I will help you on your job hunt. Is that understood?"
"Yes, ma'am," I say. My words are somewhat muffled since her index finger is still on my lips.
"You no longer have an apartment. Staying with me is a fine short-term solution, but I'm not ready to officially move in with somebody, I have a lot of quirks about my living space that will take you a long time to get used to, and I live in a tiny little studio apartment where we'd strangle each other. So my next goal is to get you into a new place. Unless you want to follow Craig to wherever he's living."
"I'll pass."
"Also, I want to go to Spook Hill."
"Spook Hill?"
"It's in Florida. Lake Wales, I think. It's a hill where you drive up to the top, put your car in neutral, and roll backwards, but it looks like you're rolling uphill."
"Really?"
"Uh-huh."
"How does that work?"
"It's either an optical illusion, or the gateway to another dimension. I intend to find out. And it's not that far, so you won't have to use any vacation days from your new job."
"All right. We're now both committed to a trip to Spook Hill."
Amy extends her hand. "Shake on it."
We shake hands. Then we hug. And then we kiss. We continue kissing, and I slide my hand up her side until--
"Under no circumstances are we going to fool around tonight," Amy says.
"We could--"
"Not even in the shower."
"But we could--"
"Nor under the bed."
"I wasn't going to suggest doing it under the bed. I don't think this bed has an actual 'underneath' part. But behind the couch there's really no--"
"Not a chance."
"If you look--"
"Not a chance in hell."
"Okay."
Amy kisses me again. "Nothing for you tonight." Then she whispers in my ear. "When we get home? Anal."
* * *
When I wake up, Amy is already out of bed and dressed. She's sitting on a chair, looking a bit troubled.
"Good morning," she says.
"Good morning. What's wrong?"
"Just thinking."
"About...?"
"I'm not sure I want to do this."
I rub my eyes and sit up. "Seriously?"
She nods. "Maybe this isn't how I should see it. Maybe I shouldn't binge-watch the last few episodes by myself. Won't we enjoy the experience more if we watch it together, week by week? I might not live to see the end, but isn't it worth the risk?"
"That's a really good point," I tell her.
"So I'm not sure what to do."
"Do you want my perspective?"
"Yes."
"If you don't go through with this after the humiliation I went through to set it up, I will smother you with a fucking pillow."
"Okay. Point of view understood."
"You should follow your heart, of course, but I wanted to make sure you had all of the necessary information to make your decision."
"I'm going to watch the show."
"Cool."
* * *
We do a couple of interviews. As an interviewee, I fill a somewhat different role than I might have expected, in that Bernard pretty much answers all of the questions for us. Amy and I get in our SWK Entertainment-approved sound bites ("It really is the best show of all time." -- Amy Husk) ("Blake Remark's generosity literally brought me to tears." -- Todd Bryan.) but say very little else.
I suppose that on some level I should be annoyed that they're so blatantly using us as their publicity puppets, but I'm not. Not at all. As far as I'm concerned, they can shamelessly squeeze every last drop of audience goodwill out of this.
As Bernard is answering one of my questions, I wonder if Gigi will change her mind about firing me, considering that I now have a track record for dissuading workplace violence. Probably not.
And then the interviews are done, Amy is taken off to an undisclosed location for her private screening, and I'm free to wander PhaserCon alone.
It's only been a week, but I'd forgotten that I'm able to have a perfectly good time by myself. There's all kinds of stuff to see, even if I don't stand in line to get into any further panel discussions.
And it's not like I'm even experiencing it by myself, because quite a few people come up to me to shake my hand. Some of them offer to buy me a drink, although after my sixth can of soda I'm done for the day. I'm far from a celebrity like William Shatner or the guy who owns that farting otter from the YouTube video, but I might as well enjoy my tiny speck of fame while
it lasts.
PhaserCon even has an independent film festival, so I hang out in there for a couple of feature films and seven or eight shorts. All of them are pretty darn good.
I'm honestly not sure how well equipped I am to handle the fact that I'm going to lose Amy. I haven't had any real tragedy in my life. Maybe I'll have a nervous breakdown. Maybe I'll spiral into thirty years of depression.
Or maybe I'll just appreciate the time we had together.
This isn't going to end happily.
But, really, isn't that true of everybody's life?
Wow. That's way more morbid than the concept I was trying to work out in my head. Not what I meant. I'll try again.
We all have an expiration date. What matters is how you spend the time before that.
Hmmmm. Still not where I was trying to go with this.
Live for the moment?
Sort of, though of course I'll be seeking a new job and maintaining a sense of fiscal responsibility. I refuse to be a burden on our nation's taxpayers.
Ultimately, I guess the deal is that I'm going to stick with Amy for as long as we've got left (or as long as she'll have me), and we're going to have an absolute blast.
* * *
"So how was it?" I ask.
"Oh my God."
"Was that a good 'Oh my God' or a bad 'Oh my God'?"
"I'm not allowed to say and you know it. Just oh my God. You'll find out."
Seven And A Half Months Later
EPILOGUE
" So you're saying that none of this ever happened...?"
--Exit Red, Season 6, Episode 13
I'm kneeling in front of Amy's tombstone.
Amy Husk.
To our lives
She brought much love
'Til that anvil
Fell from above.
"Is it straight?" I ask. "It seems kind of crooked."
"Tilt it to the right just a bit," Amy says.
I adjust the foam headstone.
"Your other right."
I adjust it some more.
"Perfect."
We have turned our yard into the mother of all Halloween displays. There's no question that it's out of control, but, as Amy says, it may be her last Halloween, so it's her moral obligation to go nutzo.
Our decision to have separate apartments (in the same complex) lasted exactly one month, at which point we realized that it was kind of silly for me to pay for an apartment I hardly ever used. Amy was not kidding about having a lot of quirks about her living space, but most of them are kind of cute.
She did, of course, live to see the actual broadcast of the final episodes of Exit Red. Fan reaction was fiercely divided on the finale, which I thought was kind of lame and which Amy proclaimed to be "brilliant" and "the only way it could have ended."
Since nobody was actually shot up in a workplace tragedy, the Breath Mint Man publicity didn't last very long, and I wasn't able to use it to catapult me to fame and fortune. I did, however, score a temp-to-perm job doing basically the same kind of data entry I'd done at my previous job.
After a few weeks, I realized that I was going to go insane if I had to do this for the rest of my life, and I quit. (I did, of course, give the proper two weeks' notice.) Now I work in the marketing department of a mid-sized corporation. It's an entry-level position and way out of my comfort zone, but it's rewarding work so far.
Craig has a new apartment, a new gaming console, and a new friend with benefits. I've met her once. Without offering further comment, positive or negative, I can say that she's exactly what he deserves.
The police did not recover my money or find out who destroyed the rental car. I like to think that it was those kids who stole my car at the gummi bear tractor, even though that would be a far-fetched coincidence even by the standards of Exit Red. And it would also mean that they didn't take the path of righteousness after our encounter, which would make it a fail on my part. Still, I think it would be kind of funny if it had been them. We'll never know.
Also, it turned out that my existing liability insurance would have covered the damage to the rental car, so I got boned by purchasing the full coverage. Bastards.
We planted a kumquat tree in our backyard. Now I know exactly what they look, smell, and taste like.
Blake Remark executive produced a new serialized drama called Plummet, which started airing in September. We're watching it religiously. "Screw it," Amy had said. "Why not be optimistic?" Many news outlets have gleefully used the word "plummet" in their description of its week-to-week ratings (something the network really should have anticipated when approving the title), so Amy will almost certainly outlive the series.
When Amy tells me that she loves me, I know she means it.
I still don't think I'm mentally prepared for the unhappy ending of this story, but you never really can be. We're enjoying it for as long as it lasts. I hate to resort to saying something schmaltzy like "Every day is a gift"...but I just have, under the clever guise of pretending that I didn't want to say something like that. Now it's out there and there's nothing I can do about it.
Screw it: every day is a gift.
Oh, and you should totally go to Spook Hill. It'll mess with your mind.
The End
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Tod Clark, Terri Garey, Wendy Latham, Michael McBride, Jim Morey, Rhonda Rettig, and all of the awesome people who've helped (or WILL help--subtle hint) promote this book. You're all entitled to a great big hug, lasting just long enough to show my appreciation but without lasting so long that it becomes awkward and creepy. Maybe four seconds. Is four seconds too long for a book-appreciation hug? I should let you decide when to break away, shouldn't I? Yeah, that's how we'll work it. A great big hug and you pick the duration.
And I'm not saying that the hug is mandatory. Maybe that's just not your thing, or it is your thing but not so much when I'm involved, or whatever. It's your call. Thanks.
OTHER BOOKS BY JEFF STRAND
I Have a Bad Feeling About This. Geeky, non-athletic Henry Lambert is sent to survival camp, which is bad enough before the trio of murderous thugs show up.
A Bad Day For Voodoo. A young adult horror/comedy about why sticking pins in a voodoo doll of your history teacher isn't always the best idea.
Fangboy. A dark comedy fairy tale about the adventures of Nathan Pepper, who was born with a mouth full of sharp teeth.
Pressure. What if your best friend was a killer . . . and he wanted you to be just like him? Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best Novel.
Dweller. The story of a decades-long friendship between Toby and the monster that lives in the woods behind his home. Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best Novel.
Wolf Hunt. Two thugs for hire. One beautiful woman. And one vicious frickin' werewolf.
Suckers (with JA Konrath). Andrew Mayhem meets Harry McGlade. Which one will prove to be more incompetent?
Dead Clown Barbecue. A collection of demented stories about severed noses, ventriloquist dummies, giant-sized vampires, sibling stabbings, and lots of other messed-up stuff.
The Sinister Mr. Corpse. The feel-good zombie novel of the year.
Benjamin's Parasite. A rather disgusting action/horror/comedy about why getting infected with a ghastly parasite is unpleasant.
Kutter. Charlie Stanlon is a reprehensible serial killer, a vicious beast who cares about nobody . . . until he finds an injured Boston Terrier in the park . . .
Gleefully Macabre Tales. A collection of thirty-two demented tales. Bram Stoker Award nominee for Best Collection.
The Severed Nose. What would you do if you came home one evening and found a severed nose lying on a plate on your dining room table?
Disposal. Frank, a self-proclaimed scumbag, is hired to murder an old man . . . but the old bastard just won't DIE!!!
Elrod McBugle on the Loose. A comedy for kids (and adults who were warped as kids).
Out of Whack. A coming-of-age comedy about love, friendshi
p, and the realization that trying to yank somebody's panties off in a passionate manner can only lead to wedgies.
How to Rescue a Dead Princess. A ridiculous spoof of fantasy novels. Lots and lots and lots of jokes, but I'm willing to admit that it perhaps tries a bit too hard.
The Haunted Forest Tour (with Jim Moore). The greatest theme park attraction in the world! Take a completely safe ride through an actual haunted forest! Just hope that your tram doesn't break down, because this forest is PACKED with monsters . . .
Draculas (with JA Konrath, Blake Crouch, and F. Paul Wilson). An outbreak of feral vampires in a secluded hospital. This one isn't much like Twilight.
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