CROWS MC SET-TO LOAD

by Bloom, Cassandra

  What if he doesn’t wake up?

  What if he doesn’t want you after all this?

  What if he thinks you aren’t worth the trouble?

  I frowned at all the “what ifs” that swam through my mind and I could feel myself heading towards another breakdown. Danny, ever the (seeming) psychic, wrapped his arm around my shoulder and helped to steady me. We walked the rest of the way to Jace’s room that way. I couldn’t find the words to say just how thankful I was that he was there, so I just leaned against him and hoped that it would be enough.

  Then, finally, we stepped into his room.

  I saw Jace lying on the stark white bed. The peaceful look on his face helped to relax me and I stepped forward, walking around the IV station and glanced down at him.

  “Jace…” I croaked.

  “Want me to leave ya alone for a minute?” Danny offered.

  I nodded and didn’t look back, knowing he was already leaving and moved one of the hospital chairs beside the bed. I sat down and took Jace’s hand, squeezing it gently as I looked down at him.

  “Jace,” I whispered. “I’m… it’s me. I-I don’t know if you can hear me—I hope you can—but… fuck,” I whimpered and hung my head, whimpering and shivering; holding back a wail of sobs. Much as I wanted him to wake up, I hated the idea of that being what he might wake up to. “Please, Jace. Please, come back to me soon…”

  Nothing.

  He didn’t move; didn’t show any sign of acknowledgement. I frowned, continuing to fight back the tears that threatened to fall. It had been two days already and the doctors didn’t know what was wrong. It was just like he refused to wake up and I couldn’t fight the wave of emotions at the idea that he would never wake up.

  “Come back, please,” I repeated. “We need you here. I know it’s not fair, but we need you, Jace. I need you.”

  I looked up into his face and thought I saw his mouth twitch. I blinked, watching to see if it would happen again.

  Nothing.

  He didn’t move, and I looked down again, wondering I had just imagined it. I clenched my eyes shut, working to get a grip. I needed to stay strong. Jace would come back to me and I had to have faith in that alone. I looked over as a nurse walked in with a chart and bit my lip.

  “How is he doing?” I asked her.

  “His vitals are fine,” she offered a kind smile. “The doctor said it’s only a matter of time.” Then, pausing to look around, she whispered, “Men have a way of milking things like this to get a few extra days of lounging. My boyfriend, every time he gets a cold, acts like it’s the end of the world and just lies around for almost a whole week playing Playstation and eating Ramen. It’d be cute if it wasn’t so annoying.”

  I forced a giggle, deciding I didn’t care much about her, her thoughts, or her idiot boyfriend, but knowing this was just her way of reassuring me. The act served its purpose and she offered a “it’ll be okay” before excusing herself to continue her rounds.

  Annoying as they were, her words had relaxed me, though. I took another deep breath and nodded to myself.

  A moment later, Danny stepped in.

  I gave him a smile, sincere in its emotion but an effort to show all the same, and nodded to the unspoken question. I knew that he knew I should leave—just like he’d known the night before. It was a theme that wasn’t yet done running its course: “Danny is right; you need this.”

  Knowing that nothing would get done just sitting around the hospital, I stood up and planted a small kiss on Jace’s forehead. I thought I might have seen another twitch as I did, but passed it off as a trick of the light. If he was about to wake up then it would happen, but if I kept standing around and waiting after every little “maybe” I’d likely never go.

  All the same, I held my breath, watched him, and counted to five.

  Nothing.

  Sighing, I turned away and followed Danny back out.

  “He’ll be awake soon,” Danny assured me, “but it’ll be when yer not around.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked, glancing over.

  “’Cuz he’s the sorta guy that likes to be on stage before the audience takes their seats,” he explained.

  I raised an eyebrow at that. “You saying Jace is dramatic?” I pressed.

  Danny chuckled at that. “All guys are dramatic, girlie,” he assured me, “but Jace… that boy’s all about showmanship.”

  He sounded so sure and I glanced over. He offered me a smile filled with confidence and I couldn’t help but return it. As we made our way out of the hospital, I realized I felt a lot lighter than I had for the past few days. Thanks to Candy and Danny, I knew I’d be able to stay strong until Jace woke.

  The stage is set, Jace, I thought. Now come back to me. I’m waiting.

  TWO

  ~JACE~

  Fuck…

  I’d been here before.

  More times than I could count—but, to be fair, that wasn’t saying too much—and enough to let me be sure I likely wasn’t visiting for the last time, but I knew I’d been here before.

  And why-the-hell-not? Let it never be said of Jason Presley, after all, that he’s not at least consistent with his insanity. At least, not in his dreams.

  Lately my madness was going through something of an identity crisis.

  Or something. Fuck, I don’t know. I wasn’t a shrink. If I was I likely would’ve never gotten into this mess.

  But then I wouldn’t have met…

  A palm made of pure, unforgiving flame hauled off and slapped me across the face. Another swept at my ankles, knocking me flat on my ass.

  Oh… right.

  I’d been here before…

  Fuck.

  Hell. I was in Hell. Not in any sense of “Here I am, paying for my sins,” or some hokey shit like that. No, this wasn’t a religious story—not unless I’m preaching the gospel of pussy and motor oil, though I wouldn’t disbelieve it if someone told me I was—and I certainly wasn’t dead enough to be going to the great Downstairs anytime soon. Nope. This Hell was the very Hell I’d escaped from—what?—a day ago? A week? Hard to tell; it was all just one big cycling dream, after all. I’d slide into consciousness long enough to know I was spread out on a hospital bed somewhere. Seemed nice. Somebody with the Crows must’ve put up some good money to make sure I had a private room all to myself.

  Place even smelled nice, but that was only because I knew a certain someone was visiting…

  But there was nothing so pleasant as that here. Here was the stink of a freshly blown meth lab, melting plastic, and the pungent stink of my life as I all-but threw it away.

  And things were just starting to get nice, too.

  The dream, like it always did, dropped me off just in the middle of the clusterfuck. I was already in the apartment—Candy’s and her apartment; or, rather, the apartment that had only just recently stopped being theirs—and the drug lab in the next apartment over had just gone off. That, I suppose, there was no rewriting in the cycling narrative of my mind. As an author of dreams, I was something of an asshole—an especially heinous realization when one considered that the only audience to such creative nut-fuckery was myself.

  You can tell a lot about an artist based on how they treat their audience, I’m told.

  Actually, nobody’s ever told me that…

  Maybe the nurse should have turned up my oxygen. I was in Hell and digressing; philosophizing and…

  And there was a fiery chunk of wall sailing through the air towards my head.

  Philosophize later, Jason, I scolded myself as I rolled free of the debris.

  A scalding mass collided with the back of my hip and I seethed, sucking in hot, toxic air through clenched teeth and feeling the sting through both time and reality. A shrinking sliver of my mind held onto the fact that this wasn’t real—that, sure, it had been real, but I was only reliving it all in the safety of dreams—but it did nothing to curb the pain.

  Nurse? I thought, hobbling through the sm
oke-filled living room and calling out to Danny, I think my morphine’s runnin’ dry.

  Still I called out to Danny, the part of my brain that knew this was a dream not on happy speaking terms with the part that was certain this was the first time all over again. I was there for Danny—had gone there for Danny!—and, dammit, I wasn’t going to leave him now, then, or ever!

  “MERC! MERCURY, WHERE—”

  A fresh burst interrupted my words. Wood screamed, splintered, and spilled out through the living room. I felt a swell of new air as the door exploded off its hinges; the gust blowing the rational bits of my dreaming mind into…

  The stink! Fucking hell, it was awful!

  I could practically feel the hairs in my nose curl; could almost hear them saying “FUCK THIS!” and preparing to evacuate my nostrils and head for more pleasant pastures. A nice manure patch or a perhaps a Florida landfill in the throes of summer.

  Christ, I wouldn’t be far behind at this rate!

  And yet, despite the stink, I spun on my heels to face the doorway—turned away from the kitchen where I’d been headed; away from Danny—and caught sight of something I already knew to be waiting there: a tall, lanky silhouette—all hunched and heaving and already hauling ass through the opening it had opened up for itself.

  “YOU!”

  I could have lived this moment a thousand times—and, fuck me sideways, I felt like I already had—and I’d never, never know for certain which one of us said the word. Long as I’m being honest with myself, I don’t think I could say with any real certainty if it was even truly said aloud.

  But I want to say it was; want to believe I wasn’t just making that up.

  “YOU!”

  It seemed to hang there like a hot, smoky word balloon in some oversaturated comic panel. A shrink could tell me the word was written over our heads in smoke and fire and, yeah, I’d believe him. Time was certainly moving slow enough to up and freeze then and there, capturing us in an eternal “oh fuck”-moment to be paired beside other “oh fuck”-moments in a sequential tale of fire and friendship and…

  Fuck!

  T-Built!

  The son-of-a-bitch who’d haunted any number of prior nightmares.

  The son-of-a-bitch who ran the Carrion Crew’s drug and sex rings.

  The son-of-a-bitch who’d had my pregnant wife murdered.

  Oh boy… if I had to list all the reasons I wanted to see that son-of-a-bitch’s insides everywhere except on the inside I’d be writing ‘til my damn hand fell clean off my wrist.

  And this would be the part of the time-slowed, nearly comic book-esque scene where our brave hero, driven by the power of friendship and fresh love, leapt bravely into battle and valiantly battled the forces of evil before hauling his best buddy and second-in-command from the raging inferno. Man, a guy could practically see the dynamic illustrations for that one, right? It’d be a comic to end all comics, wouldn’t it?

  ‘Cept it ain’t how it happened, true believers.

  Nope. Our hero gasped—either on the word “YOU!” or maybe just a regular, old-fashioned too-sharp inhale—and sucked in a cloud of smoke that tasted dreadfully like cat piss. Heroics clocked out then and disgusted confusion started its shift; my world was all blurred forms backlit by a growing fire and a series of hacking, whooping coughs that seemed to propel me backwards. My feet worked to keep me upright only to have another wave of coughs try to push me down again. I imagined a cartoon doofus finding himself on a frozen pond without skates, feet kicking out comically and arms pinwheeling like a spas as he tottered back; a six-foot singed infant covered in soot and snot.

  When heroics abandon Jason Presley, boys and girls, they abandon him in a show of fireworks.

  Speaking of which…

  Sparks and flames crept along after me as T-Built’s entrance fed new oxygen to the mayhem. Everything—absolutely EVERYTHING!—was a mockery of its previous form, now built entirely of fire and promises. They were the same sort of promises pissed-off bookies and scorned ex-girlfriends came bearing.

  And this wasn’t even the predominant concern I had at that moment.

  Two bodies, one teasing the blurred veil of my vision and the other, hidden somewhere in the kitchen behind me, existing as a memory of why I’d brought myself here in the first place. T-Built was following me in my chaotic not-quite-a-fall act, his own motions seeming far more graceful from what I could make out. Back in the kitchen, I thought I heard Danny call “Kid!” but it could have just as easily been “Kill,” “Kiss,” or “Kim.” With no way to execute T-Built at that moment, though, no chance that I was being urged into a make-out session with him, and, near as I could tell, no big-bottomed Kardashian in the immediate vicinity, I thought “Kid!” was the most likely bet.

  T-Built seemed more motivated by Danny’s call than I was. With my coughing fit only then beginning to die down, I managed to catch my balance just in time to secure my footing so that the son-of-a-bitch could come crashing into me like a runaway snowplow.

  For a scrawny little fuck, the drug-and-sex peddler sure knew how to throw a tackle.

  I was off my feet and corkscrewing sideways then, a bony shoulder planted in my sternum and driving me back towards the kitchen. The tears in my eyes evaporated from the unbearable heat, forcing my vision to approach something threateningly near to clarity—who in their right mind would actually want to see all this clearly?—and I watched the living room pass. I watched the flames eat up more of my surroundings. I watched T-Built reach into the waistband of his burnt, stringy jeans to retrieve the Saturday night special he had tucked away there. It was a small caliber pea-shooter, the sort of number that gets the guys giggling in the middle of gunfight until its muzzle’s buried into the meat of their guts. I felt the muzzle vibrate with the locking hammer as it was buried into the meat of my guts.

  I would’ve started praying then if I’d had the time. After all, getting shot sucks.

  “T-BUILT SENDS HIS CONDOLENCES, PRESLEY!”

  I should know.

  I would have started praying then, but, in Hell, prayers don’t need to be prayed to be answered. Not so long as the solution sucks more than the problem one’s trying to pray away.

  Gravity and physics tag-teamed me and T-Built then, deciding that his outta-nowhere tackle had run out of momentum and that my airborne body had enjoyed its weightlessness long enough. Down we went, cradle and all, and in the midst of our tangled fall the gun’s barrel lost its hold against my belly and went off harmlessly into a kitchen tile. The bullet, fleeing the deafening roar of its gunmetal womb, screamed at the sudden impact with the floor, and a split-second later I realized why:

  That motherfucker was hotter than five porn stars fucking in a stolen Firebird on the surface of the sun!

  It was my turn to scream, and I’m pretty sure I did. I’m pretty sure I cried, too; that, and let loose a stream of obscenities featuring an ongoing reappearance of one of my time-tested favorites.

  Maybe T-Built screamed. Maybe he cried, and maybe he even had a few “FUCK!”s to share with the class, as well. I’ll never know. A scalding-hot floor and the threat of being shot have a funny way of distracting a man from such things.

  They also have a funny way of getting that same man to rise to his feet in record time.

  Feeling a bit like a drunk phoenix, I was up from the proverbial ashes and teetering on uncertain legs. There was danger aplenty in this mysterious land, a land that had, only moments earlier, been a living space for hookers; a land that had quickly become…

  Fuck…

  I’d been here before.

  More times than I could count—but, to be fair, that wasn’t saying too much—and enough to let me be sure I likely wasn’t visiting for the last time, but I knew I’d been here before.

  And why-the-hell-not? Let it never be said of Jason Presley, after all, that he’s not at least consistent with his insanity. At least, not in his dreams.

  Because this WAS a dream!

&
nbsp; Only a dream!

  Only a…

  “GIT DOWN!”

  A pair of hands, each one the size of a ham steak and just as fiery-hot and grease-slicked with sweat, shoved me back. My tumble into the kitchen took an awkward reversal as I stumbled once again across the threshold—from carpet-to-tile and back again—and half-spun to try to catch myself before I could fall again. I half-succeeded. The first available surface my palms could find was the edge of a couch that was in its early stages of burning. I wasn’t sure if it was the jostle I gave it upon impact, or if I’d up and loosed a few weeks’ worth of trapped hooker farts from the cushions, but the moment I touched the damn thing it seemed to be reminded that, “Hey! There’s a fire a-blazin’ up in this joint!” and I was suddenly staring down a fiery mass that was poorly disguising itself as a sofa. I yelped and pushed away, scalding my hands in the process, only to have a dizzy-spell seize me at that moment and turn the room slantwise, sideways, and every ways in between. One foot went one way, the other went another, and I fell face-first into the burning couch.

  Fire licked at my hair.

  Smoke leapt up my nostrils.

  Fumes wrestled past my lips.

  I heard the sharp, violent pops of what could have either been gunshots or brain cells bursting in absolute resignation. Either seemed a reasonable source for the sounds at that moment. Not much caring which it was—who needed brain cells when your hair was at stake?—I fought to pull free of the flaming furniture. With the room still eerily tilted in my hazy mind, my steps away from the sofa felt more like a perilous, backwards climb up the side of a volcano. A few more gunshots-slash-blown brain cells echoed, and I tried to call out to Danny—I NEEDED to call out to Danny.

  No words came.

  Like the rest of my body, my voice simply wasn’t having any of this bullshit anymore; nothing of mine wanted to work the way it should.