Next thing I know my dick-hole’s gonna fart with rage and my ass will try to piss out the fire, I vacantly thought.
More of that sound. I was growing evermore certain they were gunshots, because I was fairly sure I’d never had that many brain cells.
Then I felt something tickling my feet…
Distracted, I glanced down and saw that the carpet I was standing on had, like the sofa, gone up in flames. Whether they’d been that way after my episode in the kitchen or if it was a more immediate reaction, I also saw that the edges of my boots were beginning to melt.
Hell, I thought with absolute certainty. I am in Hell.
Then, hearing a pained grunt behind me, I turned to face the kitchen and the aftermath of the small battle going on therein. Danny was teetering, looking not unlike he had the few times I’d seen him utterly plastered on cheap beer, and T-Built was gaining ground on him, his Saturday night special leveled and ready. This would be the part in a dramatic scene where the eyewitness would say that the small revolver’s barrel was smoking—some sign that there’d been shots fired from it already—but with absolutely everything in the place belching dark, reeking clouds of stifling smoke there was little chance of identifying the source of one wisp against the other. One would have an easier time identifying the source of a particular fart in the middle of FREE FRIED ONION-PLATTER-night at the Fry-N-Bye.
But there was no question in my mind that T-Built’s gun had been recently fired…
And it looked like Danny had taken most of the punishment while I’d been wrestling with the flaming couch.
The big man—one of my oldest friends and the most loyal member of the Crows since my old man had founded them decades earlier—went down on his knees. The entire apartment seemed to tremble with the impact. It was as though the very foundation of what our lives had become was sobbing.
And still T-Built wasn’t satisfied.
A leering grin spread across his face.
“… SENDS HIS CONDOLENCES…”
I wasn’t sure when my swimming mind had remembered the gun I’d been clever enough to bring with me; couldn’t be positive when my body had decided to act on that realization. There was a lot that happened in Hell—a lot that would continue to happen in Hell the next time I was cycled back into this horrible, recurring scene—and I’d come to peace with the fact that I’d never fully grasp a great deal of it. I couldn’t recall the ‘B’ of the ‘A-B-C’-sequence that came to pass then, but I do know that there was a gun in my hand, my index finger horny and ready to fuck that trigger into a stupor, and a roar in my heart that I can only hope made it past my lips.
I knew I could die happy if the last thing T-Built ever heard was the sound of my rage bellowing out across the fiery chasm of that Hell that he and his blown meth lab had brought into existence.
BLAM!
I saw my old home, lit with a flurry of red-and-blue; five-oh and EMTs parked everywhere except the driveway.
BLAM!
I saw a gurney, covered with a blood-stained sheet, carrying a slab of meat with a painfully familiar mound protruding from the middle, roughly the same size and shape as Anne—roughly the same size and shape as my wife—when she was sleeping beside me at night.
Except there was no peaceful rise-and-fall of breath then.
BLAM! BLAM!
I saw my life carried away in an ambulance, remembered morbidly thinking that it was too late for all that—that she should be tucked away inside something blacker; more final.
But hearses only roll in Hell…
Ambulances belong on earth, where the living still crave illusions and flashing lights.
BLAM!
The shots of my gun were echoed by the memory of another—the memory-echoed bullet actually burning fresh in my shoulder as I went on squeezing the trigger—as I saw one of T-Built’s cronies pull a piece on me on my own lawn, amidst a sea of cops and paramedics.
“T-BUILT SENDS HIS CONDOLENCES, PRESLEY!”
The number of shots got lost in the haze of toxic smoke, stifling flames, and the endless sea of rage that washed over me at that moment. I just kept on shooting, kept on roaring and cursing and sucking in cloud-after-cloud of poison. My skin felt like it was drawing ever nearer to levels of burnt known only in extra-crispy recipes, and if my hair hadn’t cooked down and fused into a single, carbon-caked mass of nastiness I’d willingly eat all that was left. I could hear the sweat sizzling like overdone bacon on my brow, my ear canals felt like boiling swamps, and my testicles were hanging so low I was sure they’d decided to finally leave.
But even the fires of Hell itself couldn’t burn as hot as my hate.
And not a devil that darted or danced in this place could hope to match the levels of crazy that I’d set.
I can’t say how many shots were fired. I just kept on shooting, kept on roaring and cursing and inhaling poison to fuel my toxic roar. I can only say that, when I had sense enough about me to actually register my surroundings, my gun was clicking empty over and over and over and T-Built was long dead, sprawled like an abandoned, unloved toy at the other end of the kitchen.
I wouldn’t even offer him my condolences.
Spitting out the taste of soot and poison and replacing it a moment later with a ragged inhale, I tried to take a step…
Only to realize I was on my knees.
“Oh fuck…”
The ceiling groaned above me, issuing a warning that it could only hold on so much longer. My body issued a similar warning. The ceiling held out longer.
I collapsed to the steaming floor of Hell, staring out across a fiery wasteland that looked hilariously like a living room. I stared, thinking one name—a fresh name; a happy name—and wishing I might have a chance to do things over.
But I was the author of this dream, and so was I the only audience of the work; an asshole and a stubborn glutton for punishment.
I thought the name again, a name that was there on my tongue and yet completely gone from me. Like oxygen and cool, fresh air, it was near to me but not nearly near enough. I remembered both fondly, though; remembered both with love and the wish that I’d get to taste both again, even if just once more.
Why couldn’t I remember the name?
Why…?
“M-Mi-ah…” I croaked then, feeling a small sense of victory in uttering those two syllables.
And then I saw her…
But…
But it wasn’t the her that I’d called to.
No, the “her” that I’d called to was locked away—safe and sound—in an office back in Danny’s shop. Far, far from this place; far, far from Hell.
No, the “her” that I saw was the “her” that I’d seen rolled out that night; the “her” that I’d seen since then, a ghost, lingering at the end of every street; the “her” that waved back at me, pregnant and beautiful, just out of reach.
Anne…
She came to me. She lifted me like I weighed nothing. She chased away the heat with her presence; chased away the smoke and toxins with her very breath. She held me, body and soul—though I might be embellishing that “body”-part—and spoke without words to me.
Anne…
Jace, my sweet, silly Jace, she said to me, one pearly-white hand cupping my charred jaw while the other cupped her eternally pregnant belly, just what were you thinking coming here?
I wanted to tell her about Danny, about wanting to help my friend and finally tracking down her killer, but I couldn’t find my voice. This, I decided, was best; I was pretty sure she wasn’t asking about the burning apartment.
Angels don’t come to Hell, I thought.
She smiled, seeming to hear this. She needs you, Jace, Anne went on, still smiling, she needs you almost as much as you need her.
And I knew that she was right. She’d always been right, even when she was wrong.
I would have laughed if there’d been any air left in my lungs to do it. Ah, the unwavering truth of marriage: happy wife… happy
—
“Jace. Please… come… back…”
Go to her, Jace, Anne pressed, bringing her free hand away from her belly to cup my face between her cooling palms. Go—she tightened her hold, and the heat that flooded my body was unbearable—to—she sighed out the words, and my lungs filled with her breath—her.
“Goodbye, Anne…” I whispered.
And then, just like that, she was gone, and I was back in Hell.
But it wasn’t Hell. Not really. It was a burning apartment, one filled with deadly toxins, and she was in there with me.
“Anne?” I called out, but I already knew that wasn’t right. The ghost was gone, and that only left…
Turning my head, I saw a fresh beacon of hope—trapped in the same deadly spiral I was cycling in—and life returned to me with a vengeance.
“Mia?”
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.
But let it also never be said that Jason Presley didn’t handle his business when it came time to do so. Whether it was out there on the streets or in the tedious cycle of a dream dreamt from a cushy hospital bed, Jason Presley handles his business. And so, once again—and likely not for the last time, either—I pulled myself out of the clutches of certain death, propelled solely by the love of a very special woman who looked almost as close to death as I was, and handled my business.
So what if we were both broken? We knew that of one another long before that fucking fire. But who said that two broken souls couldn’t build themselves into one decent one? And that’s just what Mia and I did, just like how we’d done it time and time and time again in this twisted, cycling dream since that one time we’d done it for real:
Together we escaped Hell.
Together we…
Together.
“Mia…”
****
“Mia…?”
The first thing I was aware of was the smell, her smell: sweet, flowery, and wonderously intimate. The next thing…
A pair of vertical, needle-like lengths of light cut through the dim and wonderful darkness of my oblivion. I was awake, only just barely, but—DAMN!—that was better than being dead.
And how great was it that I could finally think that?
How great was it that, in my heart and in my head, I didn’t resent being alive?
Both my heart and my head, however, cursed the sunlight that cut past the edges of my hospital room’s ridiculously useless little blinds and stabbed me like trained assassins through my pupils. The curse spread to my lips, and though I wanted to scream it I found myself grumbling something that was a distant cousin to “fuck.”
Even this, though, was deliciously familiar enough to keep me from truly resenting the rude awakening. Sure, my skull felt like it was a few sizes too small around a brain that was a few sizes too big, and I felt like I’d been the puck in a monster game of air-hockey played atop a field of sandpaper…
But I was alive!
I laughed, groaned, and laughed some more. And the next round of “fuck”s, though half-hearted at best, were more recognizable.
Consciousness—a fuller, more encompassing version of the keyhole awareness I’d woken to—glided back, and I found myself in the room I’d only caught phantom glimpses of over…
Over…
Geez! How-the-hell long had I been there?
Machines and monitors beeped and whirred and displayed all manner of nonsense around me. Seeming to challenge the assault of medical technology, a horde of flowers, stuffed animals—most wearing hilarious mockeries of motorcycle leathers and one even seated upon a big, plastic Harley—and all manner of “GET WELL” cards. The nearest card, stood upright and partially opened, offered enough of a view to let me read its handwritten contents:
need skin?
i gots a hairy kiester
COVERED in it!
har har har
M
“Marcus,” I said aloud to myself, recognizing the “trademarked” humor of one of the Crow’s more loyal new recruits. I could even hear his “patented” laugh—Har har har, indeed—chiming in my mind as I read it.
Similar cards surrounded this one, most likely containing similar sentiments, and I couldn’t help but smile at the combined effect of all the various sentiments. It was, admittedly, a truly beautiful thing to wake up to.
But wasn’t that the point?
“Finally awake, I—”
“SWEET TITTY-FUCKING CHRIST!” I cried out in alarm, nearly throwing myself right out of my hospital bed in the process.
My head swiveled. A fresh wave of dizziness traveled all the way to my guts. A heated deliberation arose about whether or not I should puke up whatever my stomach could find. Then, deciding I was too hungry to go puking up anything, my body went to work on my heart and lungs, trying to calm the two down so that I could fuel the lecture I was about to unload on…
The nurse was folded over, nearly toppling over, and crying with laughter.
“I-I’m… I’m so-sorry, Mi-Mister Presley,” she stuttered around her cackles, “b-but th-THAT was the… the f-funniest—” She left the sentence unfinished as she doubled over yet again with laughter, forced to hold herself upright against the door frame that separated my room from the rest of the hospital. “‘Sw-sweet titty-fuck—’” she tried to repeat before another bout of laughter interrupted her. “Hoh, boy, Mister Presley! That likely just made my entire day, I’ll tell you that much right there.”
“Happy to oblige,” I grumbled, still working to stifle the urge to die, pant, or outright murder the giggling woman. “Just call me ‘Mister Laugh-Riot,’ over here.”
“Well alright, Mister Laugh-Riot,” she teased, taking a step inside and pausing to appreciate another of the no-doubt poetic sentiments scrawled within another of the cards. “The doctor’s on his way. In the meantime, can I get you anything? Some water, perhaps?”
But I could only think of one thing that I wanted at that moment.
THREE
~MIA~
I had decided that just sitting around Danny’s wasn’t doing me any good. Much as I was enjoying my time there—much as I needed the comfort it provided me with—it wasn’t doing enough to distract me from…
It wasn’t doing enough to distract me.
After a lot of convincing, Danny and Candy agreed to let me go out. I told them I had some errands to run, which, in my defense, wasn’t exactly a lie, and they agreed provided I stayed local and kept to heavily populated areas. This, I figured, shouldn’t be a problem, so I had no worries about agreeing and having it be a lie. Granted, I’d anticipated stipulations, but I’d also anticipated an extreme degree to those stipulations that would force me to lie in order to get out on my own.
As it turned out, I’d been a little overzealous with my pessimism.
And so it was that I was a free woman, so to speak.
I’d decided I wanted to go to the small town that Jace had taken to me on one of our first dates. Though it was admittedly not as local as Danny and Candy would have probably liked, I figured it still counted if public transit had it on their route. I moved onto the bus, clutching the folded page I’d printed out for the bus schedule. Yeah, it was on the public transit route—and, yeah, that meant it was local—but it did require a great deal of “take this bus to catch that bus and then run a few miles to get to another bus at this route so that you can be at that stop on time to catch…” and so forth and so on. The schedule said that it would be an estimated five-hour adventure just to get there, assuming that I didn’t miss this bus or ride for too long on that bus or, heaven forbid, not run fast enough. Sure, I could always just call D
anny if I got myself in a jam; he’d be quick to either ride out to fetch me or send another one of the Crow Gang’s members if he was too busy.
But then I’d pretty much be grounding myself to his house until Jace finally woke up.
If he ever—
I gave a small smirk—a “good for you, Mia”-gesture—for cutting off Depression in mid-sentence like that.
Good for you, indeed, I congratulated without a single shred of irony.
It was the little victories.
A man sitting across the aisle from me saw my self-congratulating and offered a strange leer of his own, one that would have been all teeth if he’d had any teeth to begin with. Just like that I was missing Jace even more; missing our rides on his motorcycle. There was peace and joy and freedom with him, and, on his motorcycle, there was flying. Here, on this bus, there was a stress-inducing labyrinth of routes and schedules and, on board, an overwhelming sense of being on display to the wrong sort of people. It was, unfortunately, not an unfamiliar sensation, I realized. Though it wasn’t a street corner and I was most certainly not hooking anymore, I couldn’t help but feel like a piece of meat on display. And, just like when I was hooking, the sorts of people that were prone to ogle weren’t exactly the sort I’d ever want to display myself to. Not that I was much for displaying myself for anybody else since I’d met Jace. Considering all of this, I remembered all the times Candy and I had taken the bus to our corner, already fully donned in our “uniforms.” I thought that anybody seeing us would have no problem figuring out what we were and where we were off to, but now, dressed in a pair of comfortable khakis and a loose-fitting tee, I imagined that anybody who might have ridden one of those late-night busses with me and Candy wouldn’t even recognize me now. It was crazy how much things had changed in only a week’s time.
All because of Jace.
Taking some comfort in thinking of him, I decided to close myself off from the outside world (inside the bus) and replay the fondest memories I had of him—of us. The relationship might have been young—a surprising reminder given everything we’d already gone through together—but there was no shortage of happy memories to dwell upon. After all, I was about to reacquaint myself with the small town we’d gone to together. I gazed out the window, replaying everything from start-to-finish and bringing myself back around to the present just as the bus reached the first of many stops for my journey.
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