by Rio Youers
Feels so good, I said. My chin was slick with drool and beads of sweat glistened on the bridge of my nose.
Next came my formula. Fifty millilitres of Jevity 1.2 Cal, loaded with protein and calories to keep me from wasting away to bones. With a steady hand Yvette poured it into the barrel of the syringe, not wasting one drop. I groaned again and Yvette smiled.
“You like that, huh?”
Feels so good.
She moved her hand up and down, raising and lowering the syringe, controlling how quickly the formula flowed into my stomach. My fingertips tingled and my left leg stretched out, shaking, toes still curled.
You’re . . . amazing.
“Almost there, Wes.”
Eyelid still flickering, I stared at her while she finished off—at that sheaf of hair, the set of her mouth, and the splash of colour that had risen from beneath the collar of her blouse. I longed to touch her there, in those bright, pink places, but all I could do was stare. The last drop of formula rolled down the tube and into my stomach, and she followed it with the secondary flush. More water. Cool and strangely refreshing. I imagined kissing the sweat from the shallow pockets beneath her eyes. Licking the taste from my lips.
Yvette removed the syringe and plugged the adapter.
“We’re all done,” she said.
Tingling throughout my body. Toes uncurling.
Amazing, I said again.
My head rolled on its loose hinge, facing away from Yvette now, but that was okay. I sighed and listened to my heartbeat. Proof of life, and of feeling. Sunlight poured through the window and I watched Yvette’s shadow—as unlikely and thin as my body—flicker against the wall as she cleaned up. Hypnotic movement that lured me into sleep. When I awoke the sunlight had shifted but Yvette was still there, rubbing calamine lotion into my reddened cheek. I willed my eyes to close so that I couldn’t see my crippled body, or the Wall of Achievement that reminded me so often of what I had lost. I thought—with eyes closed and Yvette stroking my face—that for just one moment I could feel normal. Wasn’t to be, though. I looked at my trophies, and at the photo of me and Patrick Swayze grinning unknowingly.
So I released. Again. My version of running away, refusing to face reality. I flew in wild circles, venting passion and rage, and by the time I returned Yvette had gone home, the sun had dropped into a pool of red colour, and the vein in my left eyelid had finally stopped ticking.
11. The Bad Guys.
There is no warning. No sudden cold feeling. One moment life is bopping along as always (bizarre but steady), and the next I am fighting Dr. Quietus, wondering if the next breath will be my last. He came for me Tuesday morning—the day after Yvette let down her hair and bolus fed me like I’d never been bolus fed before. 07:13 AM. I’d just woken up, staring at the ceiling while the pain of sleeping in one position eased from my muscles. I could smell toast and coffee. Dad was getting ready for work. Mom was half asleep, one hand on the alarm clock, ready to hit the snooze button the moment it started beeping. Niki and Hub were curled up on the same bed, equally lost to their dreams. Outside my window, nature turned its reliable face toward the sun, while commuters busied roads, sidewalks, and drive-thrus. Wings of mist lifted from the fields surrounding Hallow Falls. Trains shook their rails en route to the city. Early flights out of Lester B. Pearson marked a sky the colour of new eyes.
Just another morning in the Golden Horseshoe.
Dr. Quietus wrapped his hands around my throat and jerked me from this world so hard that my body didn’t even move. Galileo’s concept of inertia at work. Kind of like that old trick of pulling away a tablecloth and leaving everything standing. Morning light—everything natural—disappeared, along with the smell of coffee and toast. He threw me onto the roof of a burning tower. I landed hard, spitting blood. Through columns of black smoke I saw him move toward me. Sometimes he walks upright and tall, almost human. Sometimes he is on all fours, his muscles moving liquidly beneath his skin and his deathly head low to the ground. Now he skulked, somewhere between the two, his mysterious face hidden in the shadows of his cowl.
Did you miss me? he asked.
Dr. Quietus can’t be defeated. The best I can do is keep him at bay. When he comes back, he’s always a little stronger than the time before. One day, obviously—same for us all—he’ll be too powerful. This wasn’t going to be that day. I was determined. Yvette Sommereux had just flowed into my life and, amazingly, we were connecting. My family was in turmoil. They needed me. It was not a good time to lose everything.
And so, as always, I fought.
If you think I’m just going to roll over, I said. Think again.
He flew at me and I burst left, through a curtain of flame, but he was quicker—wrapped one arm around my waist and pulled me close. His breath crawled over my face and throat. I thrashed and managed to get away, then ran across the crumbling roof and threw myself over the edge. I didn’t fall; I soared, and with altitude saw that it was not just the building I’d leapt from, but the whole city in flames. Trees and billboards. Roads and walkways. I watched a bridge collapse in a riot of burning pieces. Buildings—from bungalows to skyscrapers—crumpled and exhaled great mushrooms of smoke and fire. Everything was coming apart.
What’s going on here? I said. Usually, when I battle Dr. Quietus, I set the scene. It is, after all, my life—my fight to lose. But this was all wrong. A feeling of helplessness slowed me down. Was I losing control? Or was control being stripped away? Both possibilities filled me with dread.
I stopped flying.
I fell.
It’s coming apart around you, Westlake. Dr. Quietus bolted after me, so quick and strong, and so dark it was difficult to distinguish him from the rising smoke. Piece by piece, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
I hit the ground hard.
THWAAMM!
Smouldering debris. Flames like threatened snakes. A nearby structure collapsed with a deafening roar, throwing a pocket of heat that flipped me onto my back. I lay there, searching the sky for a seam of light—my escape—but all I could see was smoke, lit from within by the glow of the flames.
Dr. Quietus touched down beside me. He laughed coarsely, then dragged me to my feet.
It’s all too easy, he snarled. All the hard work is being done for me. Can’t you see that?
I hung from one of his fists like a wet jacket. So close to his face—monstrous breath, spitting embers—but I caught only a glimpse. His sharp mouth. One diseased eye. I reached up and clasped his arm. The flexed muscle reminded me of the trains I had seen shaking their way into the city only moments before.
Not so smart, after all.
Sparks drowned my eyes. He drove his other fist into my stomach and threw me aside. I tumbled through the ruin like a hat in the wind—crashed through a burning wall and into a room I recognized at once. My old bedroom in the house I grew up in. We’d lived there until I was fifteen years old. I knew it as well as I knew the groovy room. The furniture was in flames but it was all there. My crazy-cool loft bed with the Godzilla comforter. My little desk with the computer on top, next to my collection of Toronto Blue Jays bobbleheads (I watched as the monitor exploded and Carlos Delgado melted into a creamy puddle of goop). My bookcase with its haphazard arrangement of books and comics. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Where the Wild Things Are and Maniac Magee. So many more, stacked until the shelves were sighing, but all in flames now, their spines buckled and peeling. And, of course, there was Westlake’s Wall of Achievement, version #1, adorned with paintings and crafts, certificates and badges, and two small trophies. One for hockey, the other for skateboarding. Flames licked across the wall and the corners of the paintings curled and blackened. I leapt to my feet, crying out, forgetting Dr. Quietus for the moment and trying to rescue the mementos of my early life. I plucked the certificates from the wall and quelled the flames with my bare hands. I grabbed ugly pottery, daubed permanently with my little thumbprints, only to have it crumble between my fingers and
fall in dull shards to the ground. A painting of planet earth (WESTLAKE SOUL AGE 7 scrawled in one corner) began to blister—broad brown holes—as if it were being struck by asteroids. I snatched it down and blew on the spreading flames, but it only quickened the destruction. Within seconds it was engulfed. Clumps of ash rained down on my dandy superhero boots.
It’s the end of the world, Westlake, Dr. Quietus said, stepping over glowing rubble and timbers burned to a velvety texture. The end of your world, at least.
I looked at him, emerging from flames, his shadow dancing everywhere. Smoke rippled from beneath his cowl. I imagined him exhaling it from lungs like bullet casings.
It’s all over, he said.
My helpless feeling deepened. I sagged, fell against the wall. Watched my Godzilla comforter go up in flames. My computer keyboard buckle. My bookcase collapse and spit a mouthful of charred pieces, like crows flying into a fan. Dr. Quietus laughed as my hockey trophy hit the floor and broke into three burning pieces. I caught my skateboarding trophy before it could do the same. The column was scorched. Too hot to hold, but I held it, anyway—gripped it. The figure had melted. No longer a silver-toned dude pulling a handplant. More like a stiletto heel, or a spearhead with the tip snipped off.
There’s no escape this time, Dr. Quietus growled.
I thought of Dad, drinking coffee and brushing toast crumbs off his tie, unaware that his only son was dying in the bedroom down the hall. And Mom, one hand on the alarm clock, dreaming hazily while her firstborn breathed his last.
It’s over, Westlake.
Niki and Hub sleeping, curled together like a couple of horseshoes. My body would be a waxen shell by the time they woke up. As lifeless as the tube jutting from my stomach.
More smoke oozed from Dr. Quietus’s grin. He took another step toward me.
And Yvette . . . I thought of her, too. Hair covering one side of her face. Looking through my cracked window.
I pushed myself off the wall and squared my shoulders.
No, I said. There’s too much to live for. People who love me. Need me. I thought of the ocean. Pink and blue and orange and white. Roaring and breaking. Too many waves yet to ride . . . to tame.
Dr. Quietus faltered. His grin disappeared.
It’s not your choice, he said.
My life. My choice.
Not anymore.
He growled and ran at me, lowering his shoulders and swinging fists the size of warheads. His cloak flapped as he leapt a pile of burning debris, and I cocked my right arm, drawing the skateboarding trophy over my shoulder. I threw it as his boots clunked down, less than ten feet away. It whizzed through the air like a giant dart, flames flickering from the base, and struck him square in the middle of the chest.
SHHWUUMPP!
A scream—more smoke—bellowed from inside the cowl. Dr. Quietus staggered back. He grasped the part of the trophy that protruded from his chest and dislodged it with a sucking sound. I used the moment to strike again, kicking up a swirl of distracting ashes, then lunging forward and ramming my fist into the mysterious bone of his face.
KA-THUNK!
He turned a full three-sixty, toppled backward, and crashed into the utility space beneath my loft bed. Two of the posts crumbled and the bed—still burning—collapsed on top of him. An umbrella of sparks and ashes opened, marking my departure like a magician’s smoke effect. I launched myself though the damaged roof and into the sky. Going up . . . only up. I didn’t look down until the ruin was no bigger than my thumbnail.
The air cleared.
I found the seam. Opened my eyes.
I’d been gone for almost six hours. It felt more like fifteen minutes. Mom and Niki were arguing in the kitchen. Something about a cell phone bill. Hub was sneering at blackbirds in the back garden. Yvette had been and gone. I lay against the pillows, staring at my toes, perfectly still but shaking inside.
I recalled the painting of planet earth that I had done—and been so proud of—when I was seven years old. Burning in my hands.
It’s the end of the world, Westlake, Dr. Quietus had said.
No.
I tried to shake my head. Couldn’t.
In a moment I was gone again. Not battling Dr. Quietus, or releasing to some heavenly locale, but surfing the universal wave function. It flowed and twisted through my history, and with every trick I pulled—every door thrown open and memory seized—it collapsed and threw me back into the core stream. Imagine riding an escalator and stepping off at the top, wanting to head left or right into this or that department, only to have the ground move beneath your feet and whip you upward again. The inexorable passage of fate—my fate—but I twisted and kicked against it. Didn’t WANT it. A barracuda fighting on the line. A falling man trying to flip gravity. Yet an unkind truth occurred to me: if I were to find a branch point, and assume an alternate life, I would lose Yvette forever. She wouldn’t even figure in my thoughts. And it’s not like I could track her down and make her mine, because an alternate Westlake would have no knowledge of her existence. It was a no-brainer, of course—you can’t miss what you’ve never had—but still upsetting. I slowed down, flopped my face into my hands, then screamed at a billion closed doors.
My throat was burning by the time I slipped back into my fractured shell. It was nighttime. Everybody sleeping. The house ticked like a rheumatic joint. My eyes were wide in the darkness. A muscle in my thigh thumped weakly.
It’s coming apart around you, Westlake.
There has to be a way out of this.
Piece by piece, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Fuck Dr. Quietus. Fuck death.
It’s all over.
I’m not giving up.
The house groaned in reply. I stared at nothing, too shaken up to sleep, and so released. I found kindness and passion and love. Qualities to counteract doom. I absorbed them, and felt their benefit. Soon my throat had stopped burning, and I submarined into the ocean and swam with bioluminescent creatures—drawn like constellations—that latched onto my back like insect wings.
Or maybe I dreamed that last part. Hard to say. The next thing I knew it was morning. I could smell coffee and toast again.
Calmer. The sun pressing through the blinds. My family—although preoccupied with their own affairs—around me. I talked to Hub for a while, but didn’t tell him about Dr. Quietus. Didn’t want to worry the dude. Afterward, he jumped onto my bed and slept the way dogs sometimes do: four paws in the air, little teeth showing. Listening to him snore made me feel drowsy, too. I caught patchy but pleasant sleep, and was woken fully by the telephone ringing. It was Yvette. She was feeling under the weather and wouldn’t be coming in. Mom screwed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth, but said it was fine and to get better soon. I heard Yvette’s voice buzzing through the earpiece. She said she was sorry. I could tell she had been crying. Mom hung up, swore colourfully, and then called her part-time job to tell them that—so sorry—something had come up and she couldn’t make it in. The voice at the other end of the line snapped more than buzzed.
Mom was pissed off. She was bound to catch flak from her boss, and for something beyond her control. I was more upset, though. I had wanted—needed—to see Yvette. Her care, and her touch, would be so healing after my recent clash with Dr. Quietus. I left Hub with his paws up and flew to her apartment on Lilywood Drive. She was huddled on the sofa, dressed in Winnie the Pooh pyjamas. Alicia Keys playing on the stereo. Crumpled Kleenex on the floor. Her face was wet with tears and, yes, she looked under the weather. A touch of flu, perhaps. Then she turned her head to the side and I saw the bruise beneath her left eye.
And so we come to Wayne the Fucktard.
Ripped. Head shaved. A maple leaf tattooed on each arm. The first time I saw him, he pulled up outside Yvette’s apartment in a big-ass pickup truck, a toolbox in the bed and his company’s name—APPETITE FOR CONSTRUCTION—stencilled on the doors. I’d been chilling with Yvette, sharing the sofa with her as she watched Dr
. Oz. She buzzed him up. “Hey, baby,” she said at the door, and leaned forward for a kiss, but he brushed past her and clomped into the kitchen in his dusty workman’s boots. “I just vacuumed,” she said. Wayne rolled green eyes that were set a little too close together (a sign of untrustworthiness, according to the ancient Greeks, and you’ll get no argument from me), opened the fridge and helped himself to a beer. Yvette looked at the arcs of dirt left in the carpet as he stomped into the living room. He took no notice of her. Gulped his beer, dropped his ass onto the sofa next to me, and flicked the TV over to Sportsnet.
I’ve told you very little about Wayne, but I’m willing to bet you’ve a fairly accurate picture of him in your head. The kind of guy who has Kimbo Slice wallpaper on his cell phone, and who thinks The Expendables should have won ten Academy Awards.
This is your boyfriend? I said to Yvette, who was still looking at the dirt arcs in the carpet. We both wore mystified, somewhat hurt expressions. What are you thinking? I didn’t stick around for an answer. I flipped back into my body and pondered the age-old anomaly of beautiful, intelligent girls dating total asswipes.
Jealous? Yeah, a little. But if Wayne was a good dude, I’d at least be jealous and happy for her. He’s not a good dude, though. He’s a fucktard.
The second time I saw him was even worse.
They’d been out on a date (by which I mean, Wayne had watched UFC at Boston Pizza, while Yvette sat next to him, playing Angry Birds on her iPhone). He drank too many beers but drove home anyway—told Yvette to shut her fucking cakehole when she offered to drive. They got back to Yvette’s place and he came on strong. She pushed him away and told him that she wasn’t in the mood. “The fuck you’re not,” Wayne said. He wrapped his hand around her throat and squeezed. “I just bought you fucking pizza. New York Cheesecake, too.” I raged and swung invisible fists at him, wishing they had substance, wishing he could feel something. But I couldn’t even disturb the air. Yvette managed to squirm out of his grasp. She stood in the middle of the room and shook her head. The shape of Wayne’s hand was imprinted on her throat. I continued to throw empty punches at him. “You’ve had too much to drink,” she said. “You can sleep on the sofa or go home.” He growled and stepped toward her, one fist raised, knuckles scuffed. She said, “Please no,” and backed away and he grinned, lowered his fist, told her she was a lousy lay and that he’d rather jack off, anyway. I stopped swinging haymakers and tried the Scanners thing, but his head remained, regrettably, intact. I tried the Carrie thing, too—mining the iceberg for telekinetic ability, wanting to open the kitchen drawers and fling knives at him. Forks, too. I’d bounce the toaster off his head for good measure. It was a weighty appliance with four slots and a bagel function. It would hurt like a bastard. Couldn’t do it, though. And couldn’t do the Firestarter thing, either. I just stood there, frustrated as hell, feeling like the most useless superhero since Aquaman.
