Sixteen Small Deaths

by Christopher J. Dwyer

  She’s dead, Kylee said. She’s fucking dead.

  Kylee’s voice always sounded much sweeter in person, her words more genuine. On the phone, she sounded surreal, like dialing zero and letting the operator tell you that your girlfriend’s sister just died. Like a voiceover before the movie ends, the final words that sum up the film’s theme in just a few words.

  The hair on my arms stood up and I looked outside. The sun shined with uncertainty and I could smell the rain before it began to fall, the hint of death in the air. My legs refused to stand up at first, the trepidation in my chest had spread throughout my body. Even though my heart was broken, Kylee’s would be much worse. She was the one who died that day, not Tuesday. Tuesday had it coming, I had it coming. Kylee was the angel, the one born to absolve our misfortunes, the one good person in our lives.

  Tuesday’s body would burn into ashes but it would be Kylee’s that would feel the pain.

  #

  The raindrops hit me harder than expected. Tuesday’s apartment was a long walk away, enough time for me to think of what to say to Kylee. Enough time to think my own life over before it was destroyed it even more. Scattered people passed by me on the sidewalk, each with their own destination, each walking in hurried steps and long strides. Stopping under a canopy of a small Italian restaurant, I lit a cigarette and watched a young couple at a table. The man, short black hair and sympathetic eyes, held his beau’s hand, stroked it while she smiled at him. The scene gave me goosebumps.

  I continued the walk to Tuesday’s apartment, my soul stung and jacket sopping wet. The key in my left hand, I stood in the center of the lobby before starting up the stairs. So many times I jogged through the area in a rush. So many times that Tuesday would be waiting for me upstairs, waiting for the one thing she treasured the most.

  When the heart’s treasures are gone, it dies. My heart passed on a long time ago.

  Kylee was most likely with her parents, so it didn’t worry me to bump into her there. I walked up the stairs one-by-one, each step creaking, calling me out. It took me five minutes to reach Tuesday’s door and I knocked out of habit, expecting her to quickly unhinge the locks and let me in, giving me that tight hug that I was used to.

  I turned the key and opened the door, the sweet waft of oak moss and regret. So many times the soft light of the hallway lamp was turned on when I came in. Tuesday was afraid of the dark, afraid of what would happen to her if she was left alone with the absence of light.

  The one time I slipped was in this hallway. My body couldn’t resist Tuesday and we both gave in and added another notch to our belt of sins. The hundreds of times I made love to Kylee I was thinking of the one night that I was with her sister.

  The illumination of Tuesday’s past in my vision, I sat on the floor of the kitchen. This kitchen, the one where too many times I forced her to give in to her addictions, too many times I gave in to my own.

  The world is only what I had made of it, a self-mocking spiral of disgust. It was only a matter of time before Kylee left me. Only a matter of time before she realized that she was dealt a bad hand.

  I fumbled through the magazines on the kitchen counter and pictured a strung-out Tuesday trying to read them all at once, trying to pardon the feeling in her chest. Her bedroom door was open and I found myself sitting with my back to the bed. The first of my tears came easily. The rain outside was unforgiving and I knew that I couldn’t stay in this room forever. Legs stood up when my face was dry, my body starting to feel warm again. I smoked three cigarettes and left the apartment, looking back before heading down the staircase.

  Bye Tuesday, I said.

  My fingers clenched the small bag of brown powder in my pocket. I picked it out and tossed it into the garbage can next to the doorway. Outside of the apartment complex, I stood for a minute and closed my eyes. Tuesday’s ghost walked past me and into traffic, then she floated away. The colors of the sky bled before me, the hum of rain in the background.

  #

  The whine of cars screamed past me as I approached the house. The rain was steady, rampant. A breeze of violent, burnt wind at my back. The lonely white of the wooden fence in front of me.

  It was only when I took my first step inside the house when the sound of a gun clicking caught me. Kylee was pointing it at me, tears hurriedly falling from her eyes. She looked beautiful, my love with a gun. My love with the intent of putting a bullet anywhere it would kill me.

  You killed her, she said.

  All I could do was shake my head. This life was a tragedy, a disaster. I slid off my jacket, my soaked t-shirt exposed.

  Kylee, I wasn’t there, I said. I didn’t know she was going to do that.

  She shook her head twice, then closed her eyes. She probably thought about the time I carried her into our bedroom, only stopping to remove our clothes. Or the first time I kissed her. Or she thought about her sister, that one that I killed.

  Kylee, I love you, I said. Put down the gun and let’s go inside.

  She shook her head again. And then fired.

  #

  The sky opens up and my body feels warm. My wet t-shirt burns my skin. Clumps of clouds break apart, the rain stops. The sun looks like it’s dying, an orange glow fading into pink. Kylee stands over me, the gun still in her hand. I’ll never have the chance to ask her to marry me, never have the opportunity to fall in love all over again.

  My home is blurred in the corner of my eye. The dry and cool air cycling inside, a place that Kylee will go once my eyes close, once I stop breathing. I can’t think of my family right now, I have no recollection of my mother, my father. My memory lies within the house thirteen feet away from my body.

  Home is where my memory is and my memory is bleeding to death.

  Midnight Souls

  She moves like a crimson ghost. Every motion flutters with the glittery viscera of a million shimmering butterflies. Hair as black as ash swims in a sea of endless auburn and for the fifteen seconds it takes her to saw through the nameless man’s arm I’m sure I’ve never loved anyone as much as her. A crimson geyser sprays plasma the color of broken rubies and a single miscible scream penetrates the layers of the dank hotel room, lost somewhere between the moon and the stars.

  Penny takes a breath and sits at the edge of the bed, the weight of our world pressing into her shoulders like an angel’s fists. The man falls forward, clasps the fresh stump with white-knuckled fingers, and softly moans until a thin layer of saliva escapes his lips and collects into a mirrored pool on the carpet.

  I stand up, dig my soul out of chest and kiss Penny’s forehead. A trail of comet dust spins between our bodies when she looks down at the unconscious man. I collect the thirteen-inch blade from the center of the bed and wipe it clean with a beige hand-towel. Penny crosses her legs and removes the small makeup container from her purse on the side of the bed. She checks her eyeshadow, blinks three times, and smiles with cheeks the color of Christmas morning.

  The man squirms beneath me and when I place a pillow under his head, he looks at me with eyes of desperate abandon. Neither of us knew his real name and he paid the full three thousand in crisp, unmarked cash that was housed in a briefcase that smelled of whiskey and regret. Penny reaches over for the phone on the mahogany nightstand and hits the button to reach the front desk.

  “There’s been an accident in room 217,” she says, and leaves the receiver disconnected to hang from the side of the nightstand. She takes my hand, immediate warmth and comfort spinning in my veins like fiery heroin, brings her lips to mine.

  I grip the small of her back and bring her body closer to mine, dewy lavender scent of her tingling the edge of my nose. “Let’s get out of here,” I say.

  She smiles and nods, blush of her dimples radiating the dark light streaming from the silent black-and-white television in the corner of the room. We walk past the dead limb separated from its host and as I flip the duffel bag over my shoulder, I silently hope that I forget the momentary look on our clien
t’s sodden face as he awakes from the foggy nightmare of a dry October evening.

  #

  Penny sips her wine as if she’s never had a glass before this evening. She licks her lips every few seconds as if to savor the years the liquid lived in the opaque green bottle. “You’ve never wondered what it feels like? What it means to experience it?”

  I shake my head, down another gulp of Guinness. “Not for a second.”

  It’s when she smiles that I picture the first time we met. The balsam forest-green of her eyes twinkles with stray moonlight and for a moment I’m a child again. “I can’t believe that for a second,” she says. “After all we’ve done together, you must want to know what lies on that other side, you know, the words and thoughts and visions they all claim to have after we’re done.”

  Another long sip of beer, another cool burst of autumn wind from the open window in the corner of our kitchen. “No. I can’t. I never have, Penny, and I never will.”

  She sighs and finishes the glass of wine, downing the swirling purple remnants with a final swish of her tongue. She stares out into the midnight sky. “That man tonight, when he had called, it was almost as if he believed everything he heard. How he could one day see them, the ones all around us.”

  It’s right here that I stop drinking, grit my teeth together with the force of a thousand wild boars. I’ve heard it all before, the talk of their shadows, the way they dance in the empty matter floating above and below us within every step we take. The truth is that I don’t want to know what’s living next to me. The truth is that the amount of pain experienced in one of our sessions isn’t enough for me to believe that there’s more to this existence than the physical world around us.

  Penny’s cell phone rings and the warmth inside my chest dissipates into a broken silhouette against the celluloid behind my eyes.

  #

  His name, he says, is Kleyton Parker. Red leather cowboy boots, black jeans and an arrogant smile. His eyes slink back-and-forth as if they’re baby black garden snakes. He sits in the hotel bar and sips on a clear martini. Every few seconds he checks out Penny’s cleavage and makes it hard for me to forget that he handed us just over five grand in cash just ten minutes ago.

  “You’re a lucky guy, muchacho.” A wink and another gulp of his drink. I nod politely. “Yeah.”

  I can tell Penny’s getting anxious because she slides a black-painted fingernail against the edge of her glass, the other hand reflecting through the liquid like a patch of baby black widows. She looks at the neon orange clock above the bar and nods at me. “Let’s get this started,” she says, and picks up her purse.

  “You guys don’t want another drink? It’s on me.” Kleyton stands up from the bar and raises his glass to the air.

  “No thanks. What room number are you in?”

  He downs the last of his drink. “Two seventeen.”

  Penny leads the way and Kleyton and I follow her directly into hell.

  #

  The radiance of a dozen shattered rays of moonlight pierces the open hotel room air like a rainstorm of silver knives. Penny drops her oversized purse on the edge of the pine desk and fishes out a syringe and two small bottles. I pour myself a scotch from the bar in the corner of the room. Kleyton smiles as I drop an ice cube into my glass.

  “I see it’s your lady that does all of the heavy lifting.” A sharp chuckle and he leans against the window, facing my wife. “It’s okay, though. I like me a lady that’s a hard worker.”

  Penny draws a few milliliters of morphine from the first bottle and sprays the tip of the needle into the air. “I need you to sit down over there and be quiet.”

  Kleyton raises his arms up and scoots over to the other side of the room. He sits in the armchair next to the bar. “Don’t worry, little lady. I promise not to squirm.”

  “Good, because that’s a fantastic way of making this a lot worse than it could be.”

  I finish my scotch in two large gulps and place the glass at the edge of the bar, halfway on the edge of the pine and halfway into the rest of the room. I’ve done it enough times to know that if the glass falls, the evening won’t go as quickly as I’d like it to. Kleyton fidgets his fingers on the arms of his chair as Penny pulls up the sleeve of his designer flannel shirt. A crow on the edge of the windowsill catches my attention and in the ten seconds that its eyes dance with mine a sharp shriek pricks the calm, dewy air.

  The next black shape I see is a gun. Kleyton jams the weapon in my face and in a quick swirl swipes it across my cheek. The pain is nothing compared to seeing a near-stranger with his arm around my wife’s neck.

  “Don’t fucking move,” he says, pulls Penny to the other side of the room.

  I wipe the blood from my face and taste the rust of rage against the tip of my mouth. “Let her go.”

  Kleyton laughs, pulls the side of Penny’s hair so hard that I can see the hurt in her rosy cheeks. “I don’t know how many of these the two of you have done, but along the way, something like this was bound to happen.”

  “We’ll give you our money, Kleyton. Just, please, let her go.”

  He shakes his head, holds my wife tighter against him. “It’s not about the money, cowboy. Believe me, if I was short on cash, I would have never been able to pay that God-awful deposit the two of you required for this here visit. What I’m here for isn’t something you can give.” He pauses for a second and I swear his shadow dances in the moonlight. “I promise this will be quick.”

  What happens next occurs in blocky, blurry shapes that radiate with a prismatic glow. A jumbling arrangement of sharp noises and metallic whirls spin in my head like a broken symphony. I ignore the tinges of pain beneath my skull and lunge at Kleyton but I’m greeted with a jagged whip of the pistol butt. Blood spools out of my mouth like a jagged spider web and when the first of Penny’s screams pierces the air, I can’t tell if I’m alive or dead.

  Fade into white and back to grey. Ten seconds or ten days passes and she’s lying next to me, her right hand on my chest and clenching my shirt with cherry-stained fingers. The other hand sits ten feet from her body. Kleyton backs away from the scene until his boots scrape across the floor and hit the edge of the opposite wall.

  Penny’s fingers release the fabric of my t-shirt and she lies motionless and pale. She rolls over to her backside and pushes her body away from me and into the corner between the bar and the window. Her eyes are as black and dead as a newborn demon’s and a comet streak of albino white dresses her once auburn locks. She pays no attention to the blood escaping from her new wound.

  “Look at her hair…” Kleyton’s lips nearly swallow his entire face. “Jesus.”

  Kleyton grabs the doorknob and struggles to swing it open. My last sight of him is the serene wrinkle in his forehead, the two morose eyes locked onto my wife as if his actions changed all of our lives.

  I stare at the various stains on the hotel room ceiling and within seconds our shadows have collected our consciousness and dropped us into a frozen slumber.

  #

  You were barely seventeen and perfect. Lips of an angel, dimples that could hold a man’s soul. You held my hand during the rainstorm and pointed at every shooting star, leaning in for kisses whenever there was a gap in time and space. You smelled of lavender and an autumn afternoon, skeletons of leaves as brown as dead pumpkins.

  “Look,” you said, and pointed to a fiery trail in the October night sky.

  I gazed above and when my eyes were ablaze with the reflections of glitter and hail you pressed your mouth against mine and sucked the memories from the back of my throat and swallowed them. Your eyes shifted from blue to gray and back again.

  Our fingers entwined, alpine purple nails trailing the edges of my palms, we let the rain beat down upon our hearts as if nothing could ever stop us.

  #

  Penny’s eyes draft from side-to-side as if she’s following a tennis match. I hold her hand in mind but it’s been at least a week since she last squeez
ed back. Her breaths are consistent and slow. The white steak in her hair remains cold, a reminder of the events before us. Every few hours she smiles and points behind me.

  “They’re right behind you,” she says. “Red eyes like fire. They’re all around us, baby. I don’t think you should be scared.”

  I can’t turn around, can’t bear to think of her this way anymore. I kiss the back of her hand, remember the days when we’d watch the geese in the Charles River and drink coffee and follow the moon back home.

  Another kiss on her forehead but she doesn’t look directly at me. She keeps pointing to the empty hospital sky. I leave her behind me when the night beckons and walk to the only place in Boston where the one person I need to see could possibly be.

  #

  I spot him walking in through the front lobby. Eleven hotels on this strip of downtown and I was bound to be lucky. I keep a distance from his back, careful not to let my reflection catch the rugged look he still wears on his face. He sips a beer at the bar across from the lobby and it’s only a few minutes into his first drink that his client walks over and sits across from him. I study the client’s mannerisms, the nervous twitch at the tips of his sneakers, the wavy cowlick that shoots into the sky with an awkward sway. I wait another ten minutes for them to get the small talk out of the way before I get up from the velvet couch in the lobby.

  Kleyton walks away first and the man follows suit within the next eighty seconds. I walk quickly until I reach the set of elevators near the bar. Kleyton is smart and gets on the first elevator but lets the man catch the next one. We’re the only two in the next ride and when he pushes the ‘four’ button a bright hurried pinch of light escapes from the metal panel.

  We reach the fourth floor and he exits first. A quick scan of the hallway shows there’s no one else breathing here except for us. It happens almost too quickly and when his windpipe slams against my knuckles it sounds like a popping soda can. I toss aside his cash and license and credit cards but instead grab the key ring from his inside jacket pocket and catch the momentary trance of golden light from the ‘423’ on the ring.