A gust of wind blew off my hat. In seconds, the cap had traveled far enough that it was no longer worth my time to chase it down. It was, after all, just band merchandise. There were thousands more where that came from. The winds had been acting up for days now and were expected to intensify. Evidence of their fury could be seen all around as I climbed over shredded white bark and discarded branches, some the size of small cars. I didn’t want to imagine the damage that tonight’s predicted eighty-mile an hour winds would bring to my personal oasis. The old majestic Eucalyptus trees were already whimpering from the effort as the punishing gusts tested their aging balance. But it wasn’t until I heard the sound of splitting wood that I raced out of the grove. Of all the ways to die, getting flattened by a falling branch seemed the most undignified.
I spent the rest of the afternoon by the expansive pool. The unusually hot temperatures were great for sunbathing, but not so great for everything else. I alternated between lying out and taking dips in the pool, and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t worry about paparazzi climbing over the shrubs to snap a picture. As I saw it, if the photographers were willing to scale the walls surrounding the fortress, they deserved a half-naked shot of me.
The wind eventually messed with my relaxation when a strong gust blew a lounge chair right into my leg. A welt appeared and, swearing up a storm, I gathered my stuff and ducked into the safety of the sprawling one-story mansion. Too bad my father hadn’t pitched in extra cash for a wind-free week.
Still, I couldn’t help but be impressed with how well the man knew me. He’d found a place that had enough stuff to keep me busy for weeks. The arcade beckoned me to the promised land of male-driven fantasy. But my stomach growled, so I headed off in search of food. Finding the kitchen in this place wasn’t as easy as turning a corner.
As I ambled through expansive rooms and sweeping hallways, flipping switches along the way, I had to wonder why a house this large didn’t come with an instruction manual or, at the very least, a map. Because if I was going to be here for five days, I needed to know where to drop a deuce.
The gleaming kitchen came into view a few blocks away, like a beacon of light calling me home. Starving from the hike, I grinned when I opened the refrigerator and found it stocked full of prepared meals. Of the healthy variety, of course. A clear sign from my father that I shouldn’t consider my five-day break an excuse to slack off on my exercise routine or eat like shit. Although, I had to admit, the first thought that popped into my mind as I perused the wide variety of fruits and vegetables was the box of Twinkies I’d laid waste to last week. Something told me I wouldn’t find any surprises like that in the pantry.
After heating one of the meals in the microwave, I plopped down onto a stool and scarfed down a large serving of spinach lasagna. Just as I was swallowing the last bite, a set of keys hanging on the wall caught my attention. I hopped to my feet and wandered over, immediately identifying the keyless remote hanging by the silver band. A Range Rover. Even more impressive was the fob, labeled with the word Nanny.
“They give their nanny a Range Rover?” I mused to no one. Impressive. It occurred to me then that I was holding freedom in my hands. Oh, the things I could do with the Nanny’s Range Rover. Yes, I’d promised my father I wouldn’t leave the premises without calling for a bodyguard, but that was only because I didn’t think I’d have the means to escape on my own. Now… the possibilities were endless.
Grinning, I kissed the cool metal. “Well, hello Twinkies.”
Not that I dared step foot into another grocery store. At least not while preteen girls still found me attractive. Twinkies were merely a metaphor for the wide variety of snacks that could be mine if I found this magical Range Rover. Hell, maybe while I was stuffing my face with tater tots and deep-fried apple pie, I’d drive to the coast and watch the waves roll in. Of course, if the winds didn’t die down, I could just step outside and be blown to the beach, no car required.
“Don’t let me down, nanny,” I said as I took the keys for a walk. My strategy for finding the hidden treasure was simply to keep pushing the lock button until the beeping alarm gave away the car’s location. When I stumbled upon the second of three garages and laid eyes on the gleaming SUV, I let out a whoop of joy. Dayum! The nanny traveled in style.
And first thing tomorrow morning, so would I.
* * *
As predicted, when the day turned to night, the winds intensified. But it’s not like I really noticed the punishing gusts since I’d been down in the windowless basement for hours getting my fill of its infinite awesomeness. A movie room, a full-size bowling alley, and an arcade featuring no less than twenty video games and pinball machines all conspired to keep me thoroughly entertained. More than once I’d wished the guys were here, but that would completely refute my father’s misguided assumption that I needed rest. I actually did need a break. But only so I could come up with new and ingenious ways to make his life miserable.
I was going on my third hour of total brain-zapping fun, when the lights suddenly tapped out, plunging me into inky darkness. There was always that moment immediately following a blackout where you waited for the lights to kick back on. And that’s what I did. Helplessly gripping the side of the machine, I swallowed hard and waited for the electricity to return. It didn’t.
Well, shit.
I wasn’t so much annoyed by the blackout as I was by the sudden end of my game. I’d been on track to beat my own record from moments earlier.
Checking my phone to reassure myself that I was still connected to the world, I gasped in shock. Eighteen percent charge!
Double shit.
This was bad… really bad. Nothing induced panic in Millennials quite like low battery levels. Never mind that I was buried deep in the basement of some increasingly creepy-ass mansion. Talk about horror movie fodder.
“This blows,” I muttered.
I had no choice but to use my remaining battery on the flashlight app just to get up the stairs. All I could hope for was that the power would be restored before my phone plunged me into total radio silence.
After a few wrong turns, I found my way to the master suite and settled in for a night of mind-numbing boredom. With no power, I really had nothing better to do than go to bed… at 9:25 at night. I hadn’t retired this early since Kindergarten.
But as it turned out, mother nature had other plans. The howling winds kept me wide awake as they raced through the trees at highway speeds, sending tattered branches to collide with the windows at full force. The house groaned and creaked under the weight of the monstrous gusts. If Santa Ana had her way, I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep.
Then I remembered the fancy airplane emergency kit complete with useless essentials that I kept in my bag. Well, useless until tonight anyway. Extracting the pillow soft sleep mask, I tossed it aside. And then I found them, tucked under the small bottles of lotion and mouthwash—earplugs.
“That’s what I’m talking about.” My voice echoed across the vast space. Here, alone in the dark, I was surprised to discover the isolation felt eerily familiar. It occurred to me then that, although people surrounded me on a daily basis, I never really connected with them. Even the security guards who’d been with us since the beginning were nothing more than strangers. Aside from their names, I couldn’t tell you another thing about them.
The thought bothered me enough that after popping the earbuds in place, I laid awake pondering just how much of my life I’d wasted in the pursuit of someone else’s happiness.
Enough is enough.
Tomorrow morning I’d do something positive for a change. Maybe I’d buy a bunch of sandwiches and pass them out to the homeless by the pier. Or I could just drive up the coast and stop at a roadside cafe and engage in conversation with real people. Yes, I liked that idea. Feeling positive about my future for the first time in a long time, I closed my eyes and, within seconds, was out like the lights.
5
Bodhi: The Devil Within
A sudden boom ripped me from sleep. The dream I’d been residing in now dangled on the edge of my consciousness and, for a moment, confusion hung heavy in the air. I checked my ears, because surely the plugs had fallen out if I was hearing this kind of commotion. But no, they were still in place. Prying them out, I was shocked by the sudden increase in noise.
A series of popping explosions cleared away the haziness, and I bolted to my feet, the sheets sliding to the floor. An eerie orange glow pulsated off the dark walls. The shrieks of what sounded like a train barreled through the house, sent me racing to the window. But before I could get there, a punishing blast shook the house, flinging me forward toward the glass. At the last moment, I caught myself, bracing my hands on the window frame. Staring through the fragile glass, a flickering flame caught my eye.
“What the…?”
While I’d slept, nature had set a blowtorch to the landscape, bringing a raging inferno right to my doorstep. A blanket of red crested the mountain, fanning out across the dry and delicate terrain. The utopian forest in the back was now fully engulfed in flames. Embers, carried by unearthly gusts of wind, settled amongst the branches, turning the majestic trees into brittle victims of a cataclysmic wildfire.
Even through the window, I could feel the heat and smell the smoke. Or was it inside the house? Before I could fully wrap my head around the idea that the fire was closer than I’d first imagined, an explosion redirected my focus. As if doused in lighter fluid, the trees were detonating in fiery displays of rage. Nothing made sense. Where had the fire come from? When had it started? And why was it suddenly bearing down on me?
As I watched the scene unfold, too stunned to move, flames began to crawl up the windowpane. It took a moment for the enormity of the situation to hit me. But when it did, I whirled around and headed for the door. The steady crackling brought on a fresh wave of panic. The fire wasn’t just confined to the backyard or the side paneling of the house. The devil had made its way inside… and it was coming for me!
Dropping to a crouch, I blindly searched for the clothes I’d discarded before bed. Finding my shorts almost immediately, I yanked them on before continuing my hunt. My shirt was nowhere around, but my feet found their way inside the leather Rainbow flip-flops with relative ease. Not the best footwear for outrunning a fire, but then I hadn’t been expecting to awaken to Armageddon.
Yanking the pillowcase off the king-sized pillow, I ran into the bathroom to douse it with water, while trying desperately to remember what else to do in case of a fire. I’d never set foot in a classroom, so I wasn’t present for any official fire safety training, but I had played the son of a firefighter once on a made-for-TV movie. That should count for something, right?
No, idiot!
Chastising my inner voice, I wrapped the wet fabric around my nose and mouth, tying the ends in a tight knot behind my head. The sounds of exploding glass hastened my speed. With flames fully draping the window, the only way out of the room was through the door. If I was met with fire on the other side, I wasn’t sure I’d survive.
Maybe I hadn’t made my intentions clear to the karma gods, but I really, seriously wanted to live. Suddenly the past three months of struggle seemed inconsequential. Faced with my own mortality, I wished I could take it all back. The tantrums. And the acting out. Because none of it mattered. Not the letter from my long-lost mother. Or the feud with my father. I just wanted to make it to sunrise.
After a useless search of the shadowy floor for my shirt, I decided it could be sacrificed, as well as my suitcase. But what about my guitar? My mind flashed back to the person who’d gifted it to me all those years ago and I knew there was no way I’d leave it behind. Finding the leather strap, I flung it over my shoulder, and then crawled along to the nightstand to retrieve my phone and wallet. But in the darkness, I knocked them both to the floor. With the mounting smoke, I conceded defeat. Dammit! My phone deserved better. I could only hope its demise would be quick and painless.
Knowing enough about house fires to stay low and check the doorknob for heat, I was somewhat relieved to discover it was cool to the touch. Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe the crackling sounds and the breaking glass had been outside all along. But the minute I opened the door, I saw how wrong my wishful thinking had been. The beast was inside all right, and currently ravishing the entire right side of the mansion. Like a three-headed dog, the flames guarded the main entrance and exit to the home.
Every hair on my body stood at attention. I’d never been tested like this, nor had I ever been tasked with critical decision-making. I wasn’t sure if I could trust my instincts, but what choice did I have? If I was going to survive, I had to become the man no one had ever allowed me to be.
Sprinting through the death tomb, I wisely headed in the opposite direction of the fiery savage consuming my five-day wellness retreat. Thankfully, my earlier quest for the nanny’s car left me somewhat familiar with the general area of additional exits. With the guitar strapped to my back like a terrified turtle, I stumbled down the hallway, using my hands along the walls as a guide. An orange glow reflected in the glass, the only light in this part of the house. But it was enough to guide me to the safety of the courtyard.
Hope swelled the moment I flung open the French door. Yanking the pillowcase off my face, I drew in a healthy gulp of air. My relief was short-lived as I took in my surroundings. Instead of the safe passage I’d envisioned, I’d collided headfirst into the apocalypse. Not only was my vacation home on fire but so, it appeared, was every other house on the block. Some appeared to be in the very first stages of a scorching smackdown while others, like mine, had already been battered enough to have been assigned hospice care.
But it wasn’t the burning structures that had me in a frenzy. It was the blanket of red creeping up the ridge. The fire’s frontline had spread wide and was flanking both sides of the hillside road where I’d be expected to make my escape. As I weighed my options, embers whizzed past my head like flaming arrows aiming for their next target. This wasn’t just a wildfire. It was an uncontrolled firestorm. With no passable way out.
I could try my luck on foot, but it was a long way down the mountain.
I might actually die.
Memorial shrines with embarrassing pictures of me would spring up everywhere, maybe even one on the exact spot where firemen would find my charred remains. Little girls the world over would mourn, all because their teen idol couldn’t formulate a plan to save his own damn life.
I needed a car. The nanny’s car. And it wasn’t far away. The garage was on the other side of the courtyard in a structure that had yet to be touched by fire. Maybe I could save myself after all.
But all optimism faded when I thought of the keys on the counter in the kitchen – the part of the house that was currently up in flames. I looked down the street and then back at the house. There was no real choice. I wouldn’t survive on foot. I needed a vehicle, which meant, I was going back in.
Reluctantly, I stripped off the guitar case and reaffixed the pillowcase back over my nose and mouth. Before the rational half of my brain could talk me out of it, I darted back into the house. With the flames now ominously bright, I had no trouble seeing the nightmare in front of me. In minutes the place would be fully engulfed and if I miscalculated, the coroner would be identifying me through dental records.
Zigzagging my way through the house, I headed for the kitchen, which was now probably just a liquefying pit of stainless steel. But if there was still an intact island counter that meant there was also a set of keys just begging to be spared. Sprinting through a cavern of flames, the blazing temperatures baked my unprotected torso and I felt the little hairs on my skin melting from the searing heat.
Emerging into the kitchen, I zeroed in on the prize— the shiny metal ring on the counter. The roar in my ears was deafening. It was as if everything the fire touched shrieked in agony. Goddammit, I hoped death’s spindly hands didn’t get a hold of me because there was no
doubt in my mind I’d be a screamer.
Pushing the thought aside, I scooped up the keys. Holding the little lifesavers tight enough to cut off circulation, I retraced my steps. Somewhere along the way, the pillowcase had fallen from my face and was now just a useless bandana hanging limply around my neck. I tried to lift it back into place, but my arms were no longer functioning properly. The smoke. There was so much smoke. It seared my throat and with every step I took I could feel the thick fog closing in on my airway.
Still I forged on—each breath more labored than the last. The adrenaline rush had evaporated, and now I existed on sheer power of will. Although my dream destination had been the garage, I knew I couldn’t make it there, at least not without some fresh air. The courtyard loomed ahead, and I longed for its saving graces.
Stumbling out the door, I dropped to my hands and knees coughing up billowy white smoke. Where was the oxygen? Why couldn’t I get air?
Taking a series of shallow gulps, I finally drew in a deep breath, surprised when air filled my lungs. After securing the pillowcase once again, I grabbed my guitar and reentered the inferno for the last time.
The fire had now staked its claim on this half of the house and was swirling upwards in a powerful display. But I was no longer afraid of the bully. It could take the Eucalyptus grove and the house, but I’d be damned if it took me.
At the entrance to the garage, I searched for my salvation in the darkness. Fumbling with the buttons on the key, my shoulders sagged when the interior light flickered on inside the Range Rover. I tossed my guitar in the backseat, flipped on the headlights, and found the emergency tab so I could manually raise the garage door.
Once I was behind the wheel, I maneuvered the car out of the garage and down the driveway, only to come to a screeching halt at security fence. What the hell? How had I forgotten about the gate? With no electricity, I was stuck. Slamming my balled fists against the steering wheel, I swore as loud as my lungs would allow.
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