A Life On Fire Read online

  By some blessed coincidence, the sun started to set shortly after he drank the water. Between the extra energy and the lack of sun beating down on him, he felt as if he could go all night.

  And there was an idea he hadn’t given much thought: nighttime in this place. Given that the sun setting was out of his control, he tried not to worry, but pictured the vulture-gators swooping around overhead, and god knows what else he hadn’t seen yet . . .

  He stopped walking, opened his pack, and got out the two flashlights. He tested them both and put them in his front pockets. Just in case. He also made note of the foil blanket and figured it might be a good idea to build a small shelter with it before it got too dark. He knew it wouldn’t do any good as real protection, but it would likely make him feel better.

  He continued walking and, like a ton of bricks, all of his energy dropped away. One moment he was fine, the next he felt dead. “Sit down for awhile,” he said. He knew there was no real point in speaking and that, hopefully, no one was listening, but it helped maintain his sanity.

  Dropping the backpack and removing the flashlights from his pockets, Gerald sat down in the middle of the road. He dug around for one of the cigarette packs, got one out and lit up. Good thing I started smoking again, he thought. He had unintentionally guaranteed he’d have a lighter with which to start a fire. The weather was definitely way too warm for one, but most animals were repelled by fire and he’d feel better with one going when he finally went to sleep.

  Sleep proved to come before the fire. He didn’t even finish his cigarette. After he’d drifted off, it fell from the corner of his mouth, rolling into a divot in the road.

  Chapter 11

  What the hell is that noise oh my god quit screaming, Gerald thought, as he was woken up by the blaring car horn. He snapped open his eyes to see a car barreling down on him, horn blaring, tires screeching.

  Gerald screamed, rolling out of the road.

  The driver slowed without stopping completely, rolled his window down and yelled, “What the fuck is the matter with you? Get a job you fucking bum!” then sped away. Gerald stood up, thinking about how he’d almost been hit by the car—

  A car!

  Was he back in his normal world? He looked around, seeing only road and trees, but noticed they looked a little more familiar. Up ahead, he could see a stop sign with a road name sign adjacent to it. He ran full tilt, got to the road, and found he was within a mile of his house. He cut through some woods, across a field, and was back in his own yard within the hour.

  He felt like a sailor who’d been in a lifeboat for weeks, falling to his knees and kissing the ground in front of his home. He almost stood up and screamed “Hallelujah,” but managed to stop himself. He wasn’t so sure of his sanity any longer, but didn’t think there was any reason to convince the neighbors he was crazy.

  He unlocked the door, walked inside, and went straight for the kitchen, pulling a box of cereal from the top of the refrigerator and pouring it into his mouth. He saw a bag of potato chips on the counter, dropped the cereal, and went for them. After that, he stuck his mouth under the tap and drank greedily, slurping and gulping until he thought he would vomit.

  Hunger satiated, he wanted a shower. Discarding his clothing on the way to the bathroom, he stepped into the shower, cranked both the hot and cold wide open, and rejoiced in the blast of water. He didn’t even bother to adjust the temperature for five minutes, content with the water beating down on him. Once the initial euphoria wore off, exhaustion set in, and he sank to the tub floor, shivering in the now cooling water.

  He got out, grabbed a towel, half-heartedly dried himself off and went to his bedroom, collapsing onto the queen-size bed. He didn’t move a muscle for the next 12 hours, didn’t hear his phone ringing when Matilda called to see where the hell he was, nor did he hear her knocking on the front door a few hours later. He didn’t hear the police calling to say his car had been found, wrecked and abandoned, nor did he hear the officer pounding on his door to tell him the same thing a few hours after Matilda had been there.

  Worst of all, he didn’t hear the gator-faced creatures enter his home, pick him up, and carry him, naked, through the field behind his house and into the forest.

  Part 2

  The body is a damn hard thing to kill.

  - Anne Sexton

  Tracy lies in the bathtub, numb, but not from the cold water. She can’t remember ever having felt this low. Highs and lows. What she used to have. Now just the lows, with the lows becoming increasingly lower. When she’d first met Gerald, no matter how low she was, she knew she’d bounce back, the high making it worth it. There was always a light, sometimes unbelievably dim, unrecognizable to anyone but her, but still there. Now . . . no high.

  No light.

  No anything.

  A memory: The two of them together at the county fair. They’d gone to eat the deep fried food, ride the nausea-inducing rides, and play the games to win the crappy prizes. It was hot, dusty, noisy, and generally chaotic, but they were having a wonderful day. They’d eaten the food, ridden the rides, and won the prizes.

  As they were leaving, a girl, seemingly close to their own age, said hello to Gerald. He stopped and responded, giving her a quick hug. Tracy immediately disliked, no, hated the girl.

  “This is Sara,” Gerald said. “Sara, Tracy.”

  “Hi,” Sara said, smiling a genuine smile. Tracy couldn’t manage the same. Though they’d never met previously, she knew Sara. Sara was Gerald’s high school girlfriend, the one he’d been with for almost five years. They had stayed together through most of college, were each other’s first loves, had lost their virginity together.

  And Tracy was supposed to shake this bitch’s hand and smile? No fucking thanks.

  So she’d responded, “Oh hi, great to meet you,” dripping with sarcasm and a purposely fake smile before turning and walking away.

  Gerald apologized to Sara and ran after Tracy. Gerald caught up with her and, before she could stop herself, before she even knew what she was doing, she began screaming “That fucking bitch” repeatedly.

  Later that evening, Tracy had collapsed to the floor, sobbing. She had no idea why the jealously had struck her. She’d never heard Gerald say anything to indicate he was still interested in Sara. Never heard anything bad about their time together to give her grounds to hate the poor girl. She apologized for hours and, though he assured her it was okay, she knew it was definitely not okay. That it would never be okay.

  She’d felt low in her life many times before, but that was the night she realized she wanted to die.

  She still holds the razor and begins drawing it up her other leg. She stops at her inner thigh, applies a bit too much pressure and the razor slips a little, drawing blood. She watches as the slight trickle drips down, turning pink in the water. Nothing dramatic like she might see on TV, but several small drops, enough to discolor the water a bit.

  So strange that pink was the color normally associated with little girls. Happy little girls with Barbie dolls, bows in their hair, and dreams of rainbows and ponies. Happy little girls who should never grow up to lie in bathtubs, hating themselves, fascinated by the sight of their blood in the water.

  Chapter 12

  Everything was upside down. Gerald opened his eyes to see trees growing down from the dirt sky. After the initial disorientation of sleep wore off, it occurred to him that he was probably the one who was upside down, not that the sensible explanation was the prevailing one as of late.

  The next thing he realized was that he was tied up, hands behind his back, gagged, and hanging from a tree limb. It didn’t seem like he was more than three or four feet off the ground, but that was more than he’d like to drop with his hands bound. He couldn’t remember how the hell he’d gotten here, couldn’t remember anything besides walking for what seemed like forever, finally getting home, and crashing. He couldn’t remember any obvious segue from passed out in bed to upside down in the tree.
r />   He didn’t get long to think about it before someone (or something) poked him in the back, spinning him around. The someone (which proved to be more of a thing) poked its face into Gerald’s, baring its teeth at him. Gerald had never gotten such a close-up look at the alligator-faces before. Up close it looked less like an alligator than he’d previously thought, but no less disturbing. The thing’s breath, stinking like putrefied rotten death, was the worst part. If this was a movie, I’d ask if it wanted a breath mint, then punch it in the face, or some other clever shit like that, Gerald thought. As it was, he was content to hang and hope the ugly bastard didn’t chew his nose off.

  The creature turned to another of its kind, cried out, and gestured toward Gerald. One of the nasty fuckers chuffing that rot breath had been enough. He didn’t think he’d be able to choke back the vomit if there were two of them. Gerald forgot all about the bad breath when the second creature walked toward him with a wicked-looking weapon. It held a stick with a rock tied to each end, one sharpened like a large spearhead, the other blunt and round. Bash their brains in with one end, then stab them to death with the other.

  Gerald tried to turn away from the creature, not that it would have done any good. He’d be no better off with his back bashed and stabbed than his face or chest. He grimaced, closed his eyes, and hoped the creature would finish the job quickly.

  “Shit,” Gerald said as he felt something slicing down (up) his chest. He opened his eyes to see it was the sharp end of the creature’s spear-thing. “Get the fuck off me,” he said in vain.

  The creature stopped for a moment, opened its four-cornered mouth, and shrieked at him. Gerald recoiled, and the creature made a staccato breathing sound. Laughter? Gerald assumed it was, then quit thinking about anything when it started cutting him again. He couldn’t see the wounds, but felt rivulets of blood flowing into his face. One of the streams flowed right into his inverted nostrils, causing him to choke before sneezing blood back out. The creatures stopped suddenly and laughed their choppy laughter. The one with the stick resumed its cutting.

  Gerald didn’t know how much blood he’d lost, was sure it wasn’t as much as it seemed like, but knew it couldn’t be good. As if it could hear his thoughts, the creature quit cutting. Both creatures backed away a few steps. Gerald tried to watch them through his blood soaked eyes, spitting out small mouthfuls. He saw the creature flip the spearhead toward its mouth, saw its tongue extend and lick the blood from the stone blade, moaning as it did so. Gerald didn’t know if the mouthful of blood or the creature’s moaning disgusted him more. The first creature stepped toward him again, extending its own tongue, and began lapping the blood from his chest and stomach. He winced and cried out as the creature’s saliva burned his cuts.

  “Get the fuck off me,” he said again, squirming as both creatures now traced their tongues along his sliced body. His chest and stomach burned in agonizing pain, nearly causing him to pass out. When the creatures began licking the blood from his neck and face, he wished he had.

  Once Gerald was either clean or they’d gotten their fill, they stepped back, and the creature with the spear raised it to the side. It looked fairly similar to a golf stance. Too late to even cry out in protest, Gerald realized what it was doing, and saw the rock swinging toward his head. Oh, sh— was all the further he got in his head before the swing connected, bringing first a million stars then utter blackness upon him.

  Gerald came to, naked, lying in a heap on the forest floor. He looked around, everything once again right side up. No sign of the creatures anywhere. His hands were no longer bound. He brought them to his head, remembering the five-hundred yard drive swing they’d taken at him. Unbelievably, he felt okay. A swing like that with a rock like that should have split his head open, yet here he was, not a bump, a bruise, nothing. He started to get up and his chest and stomach clenched, nearly seizing. He fell to his side, convulsing slightly. It felt as if he’d been torn inside out and reassembled with pieces left over. He looked down and saw that, even though the head blow hadn’t left a mark, the creature’s work with the spear certainly had.

  His stomach was a macabre road map of red lines crisscrossing each other, intersecting and continuing from chest to stomach. None of them looked serious enough to merit medical attention, but they still burned from the acid-saliva, and Gerald had a feeling they wouldn’t be healing anytime soon.

  Standing in the shower again, Gerald tried in vain to wash the burning sensation away from his body. Soap and hot water had no effect at all on the wounds, though cold water proved to dull the burn a little. After standing in the cold water as long as he could, he closed the tap and stepped from the shower. He stood on the mat, dripping dry before reaching for a towel. The cold water reminded him of a time he and Tracy had been showering together, deeply intimate with one another, totally oblivious to anything aside from themselves when the hot water had suddenly died completely. The temperature dropped from well over a hundred degrees to around fifty, ending their activities prematurely.

  They’d both screamed, and jumped from the shower, Gerald laughing. Tracy had blamed the whole thing on herself, some nonsense about how she should have checked something, or maybe she’d forgotten to pay the gas bill. Gerald repeatedly assured her the heater had just fucked up and she had no reason to apologize for anything. He’d eventually calmed her down and they made up by continuing their activity from the shower. He leaned back against the counter and closed his eyes, thinking about leaning in this exact same spot, Tracy dropping to her knees and taking him into her mouth, swallowing him completely.

  Lost in the moment, he felt a stirring as he began to get hard at the memory. He gripped himself, remembering more and more of that day. His hand slid back and forth on his erection, remembering her hot wet mouth going up and down on him, her tongue licking and swirling. In sync with the memory, his body tensed just as he had that day, and he exploded in orgasm. Tremors of ecstasy rocked his body as he spasmed, again and again, feeling her greedy mouth sucking him dry. Breathing hard, he recovered and opened his eyes. Instead of his wife’s beautiful face he saw only his hand, covered in semen. Any sense of pleasure was immediately gone, replaced by sorrow and guilt for thinking of her like that. He washed his hands and cleaned up the mess, tossed the towel into the hamper and left the bathroom.

  Chapter 13

  Gerald belched, threw the empty can across the yard, and opened another. This is fucked, he thought. Even drunk out of his mind, he knew he couldn’t go on like this much longer. He hadn’t been to work in several days, the drinking was way out of control, and he couldn’t even begin to consider all the stuff with the alligator-faces, getting tied up in the forest, the alternate reality, Mr. Holman—

  Oh, fuck, Mr. Holman.

  Gerald had forgotten about the poor guy getting hit by the truck. ‘Hit’ wasn’t really the word for it. More like detonated. What was the deal with that? Gerald had never seen anyone get hit by a car before, but he was pretty sure they didn’t usually explode. Hell, plenty of people lived, even walked away from getting hit by a car. There hadn’t even been any recognizable remains left of the man. Maybe the guys in the truck had been going faster than it appeared. Gerald shook his head and downed the rest of his beer.

  Coughing, he thought about how he hadn’t had a cigarette in quite awhile. He patted his pockets but came up empty. Must have left them in the car, he thought. He stood up and remembered his car was wrecked in a ditch.

  “Fuck,” he yelled, throwing a full can of beer at his garage door. It hit the door, bounced off, hit a rock, and sat in the driveway, spewing frothy liquid. “Fuck,” he said again.

  He walked to the garage, opened the door, and looked for his bicycle. He knew he was too drunk to drive, but he couldn’t leave the car sitting there. Given the events between now and when he’d left the car, he couldn’t even remember why he’d left it. At the very least, he’d be able to get a cigarette.

  Getting the bike out required moving hal
f the junk in the garage to different spaces. Once unearthed, he discovered not one but both of the tires were flat. He didn’t even say fuck this time.

  What he did say was “To hell with it,” and decided to call someone. On his way to find the phone, he saw his pistol case opened on the table and, more importantly, empty. He looked out the back window, saw all the shot-up beer cans in the back yard, and remembered dropping the gun out past the field. Leaving a wrecked car in a ditch for a day or two was one thing, but leaving a pistol, one that he thought was probably loaded, was a whole other class of stupid. Some of the neighbors had kids and, for all he knew, they could have already found it and be trying to shoot apples off each other’s heads.

  “Fuck,” Gerald said for the hundredth time of the day, and headed out the back door to find the gun.

  Stepping off the back porch, Gerald tripped down the steps and almost went ass over tea kettle, landing flat on his face. He looked up to see Mr. Holman standing nine or ten feet away, trying desperately not to laugh.

  “What the fuck is so funny?” Gerald said.

  “You wouldn’t get it.” Mr. Holman polished his glasses and chuckled.

  “Well, at least you have some clothes on this time. What the hell are you doing at my house?”

  “Your house?” Mr. Holman said, an exaggerated look of bewilderment on his face.

  “Yeah, my house—” Gerald said, stopping abruptly as he turned and saw that his house was no longer there. He realized he was completely sober, as well.

  “What the fuck is going on here? I’ve been drinking all damn day. I was drunk as hell, stumbled into the house, came out to look for the gun, tripped over you, and now I’m straight edge sober and my house is gone.” Gerald looked around blankly and threw his hands up. “Why am I even questioning this shit any more?”