Flesh Wounds, page 7
The second inch was easier, and the inch after that easier yet. What drove him was the desire to see the end of his suffering. Any pain required to reach an end to all pain was therefore tolerable.
“Quitting again? What a pitiful wretch you’ve become, Bernie.”
It was his father’s voice. Victor Dewitt. High school and college all-star. NFL quarterback. Advertising and sales representative for the largest retail sporting goods chain in the US. Dead these past six years.
Bernie rapped his head sharply against the hard ground. He couldn’t allow himself to slip into delirium now, not with his goal so close.
“You always were a pussy, Bernie.”
“Shut up, Dad.”
A boot caught Bernie in his side and flipped him over. Bernie didn’t have the strength to gasp in astonishment at his father standing over him. The old man was naked and gaunt, his pale flesh stretched taut over a framework of disjointed bone, but he was whole. He was wearing some kind of boots to protect his feet from the scorching ground. It took Bernie a few seconds to realize the boots were made of human skin.
“I see you’ve got your balls in your hands. Pity you never used ’em when you were alive.”
“Fuck you.”
“Maybe if you’d used that expression on your boss when he said you had to go to Orlando, maybe if you’d kicked the shit outta that SOB who’s been dorking your wife, maybe if you’d stayed in shape and—”
Bernie caught his father by one skinny ankle and jerked him off his feet. Bernie tried to grapple with him, to hold him down, but the effort was too much. The world spun around him and he must have lost consciousness for a moment, because next thing he knew his father was standing over him again.
“He’ll be back soon, Bernie.”
“Help me.”
“You’ve got to help yourself.”
“Throw me in the river.”
“That’s quitting, son. I love you too much to help you do that.”
It was the first time Bernie’d ever heard his father say he loved him. He tried to look up at the man he’d spent most of his life hating, but the six suns seemed to get in the way. They spun like fireflies about his head, burned nova-bright through his eyes and into his brain, then faded to black...
By the time Bernie reached the welcome sign, he’d almost changed his mind. The heat from the river, now less than five yards away, was suffocating. He was having trouble remaining conscious.
He leaned against the sign and began to work it back and forth. It took what must have been an hour, during which he blacked out at least twice, before the sign pulled free.
The lower end of the sign was a chiseled point. It’s edges were jaggedly sharp, worn and polished by the rock in which it’d been set. Dragging it behind him, he crawled to the bank of the river.
The heat coming off the lava removed what hair he still had left. It was all he could do to see as the heat dried out his eyes.
The first thing he did at the river’s edge was throw away that part of himself he’d lost. The river swallowed his testicles with barely a sound. Then Bernie thrust the heavy end of the sign into the glowing flow. It took about five minutes to burn away the upper part of the sign. The pain in his hands as he gripped the heated iron shaft would have been unbearable had he not already endured so much.
He was left with a four foot blade of rusted iron. Using it to get to his feet, he stumbled away from the river in search of a place to rest and heal.
And wait.
The ground continually scorched the soles of his feet, leaving him virtually crippled. Father, he remembered, had worn boots.
The jagged metal of his makeshift blade tore the flesh from his palms. He needed to wrap the handle in something.
Material for both was within easy reach—once he’d steeled himself to take it.
There were some physical laws in Hades which hadn’t changed.
He had to eat.
Time passed, unmeasurable. Wounds healed, scarred over. Bones mended. His strength returned, slowly at first, but in time he was fitter than he had been since college. Hades proved to be an effective diet program. Bernie shed his excess weight quickly beneath Hades’ six suns. His hair grew back, bristly-short like an Army grunt’s.
He spent his time wandering the unchanging wasteland in search of others who’d refused to quit. He found no one.
He had no way of knowing if his father had really been there on the riverbank or if it’d been an hallucination.
Eventually, Skaaven returned.
Bernie spotted the demon first as a distant imperfection against the uniform red sky. It wasn’t until the black speck grew that Bernie realized he was seeing Skaaven in flight.
He found a suitable corpse-puddle and concealed his weapon. Then he waited.
Skaaven came in low and fast, effortlessly coasting on Hell’s thermals. It circled once, silver insect-eyes sweeping the area, mouth split in a shark’s grin.
“You’re looking good, Bernie-boy,” the demon said. Its great black wings folded. Its barbed tail lashed about its ankles. “Nice boots. Lost your balls though.”
“Found them actually.”
Skaaven laughed. “Think so? Guess I need to remind you of your station in Hades.” The demon started forward. “You’re still just one of my fucks, Bernie-boy.”
Bernie knelt and plunged his hand into the bubbling ooze about his feet. As Skaaven closed in, Bernie brought the iron sword around in a low sweep that he’d practiced till his muscles ached. Trailing fluid that had once been a human being, the sword struck the demon in the second joint of its right leg. There was a brittle crunch as the blade shattered chitinous exoskeleton. Black juice sprayed and Skaaven dropped to its knee.
Skaaven’s arms, tipped with those six gleaming razors, slashed out. Bernie rolled past them, feeling their bite at shoulder and ribs, and came to his feet just behind and to the side of the demon. The sword arched up and down in his second and final practiced stroke, one that shattered both the demon’s wings.
Bernie scrambled back, shaking off the pain where Skaaven had cut him. Warm blood was pumping from the deep wounds, but the pain was negligible. Pain, Bernie had learned, is relative.
“Crippled and grounded,” Bernie hissed. “Now who’s fucked?”
Skaaven screamed in rage.
Howling like a demon himself, Bernie raised the sword and charged forth. The iron blade split Skaaven’s skull open like an overripe melon. The demon crumbled, writhing as black blood and brains gushed out across the ground.
But Skaaven was far from finished. Its tail lashed out and caught Bernie’s leg. Hooks locked deep in flesh and muscle and Bernie went down, losing his sword as the demon drug him toward four sets of clashing razors.
The razors flailed at him, stripping away flesh like it had no more consistency than tissue paper. Blood sprayed and skin flew. He heard a snick! and half the fingers on his left hand skittered across the ground. He struggled to get away, but the hooks set in his leg held him fast. A blade opened one eye. Another plunged between his ribs, puncturing a lung.
Choking on his own blood, Bernie caught Skaaven’s tail and wrenched the hooks from his leg. Clumps of bloody flesh remained behind like bait on a trotline. He scrambled away, taking several cuts across his back and buttocks, then he had his sword again.
Though the sword was unwieldy now with his one hand half gone and the skin-wrapped handle slippery with his own blood, Bernie went after the demon with relentless desperation. Several well-placed blows destroyed the thrashing tail. He hacked at the demon’s arms until all four lay detached and broken. Then he stood astride the wriggling carapace and chopped at the remains of the skull until nothing distinguishable remained.
Though Skaaven had ceased struggling, Bernie didn’t stop. He hacked off the proboscis and pounded it until the iron sword broke in half. With his bare hands he pummeled what remained of the demon’s corpse, relishing in the thick juices that welled up around his fists and splattered hot across his face and naked body. Finally, exhausted, he collapsed, not caring that the ground burned his back.
“No retreat. No surrender,” he gasped at the unwavering suns.
The smell and taste of his own blood was overpowering. He lay on a beach of pain, the pounding of the waves like thunder in his skull. Soon, the pain faded to cold and a welcome black tide washed up about his neck.
All wounds heal, he thought just before he went under.
“Winning,” his father told him, “is up here.” Victor Dewitt tapped his head.”It’s an attitude. You’ve got to want it. You’ve got to be hungry for it. You’ve got to convince yourself that nothing less than victory will suffice.”
He handed the football to his five-year old son. “Do you want it bad enough, Bernie?”
“...Bernie?”
Pain, dull and distant. His throat was dry and sore, his bones ached, and his head felt like a bowling ball, but the wounds he’d suffered battling Skaaven were silent. The cadaverous reek of hell had been replaced with bitter disinfectant. The hot rock beneath him was now cool and soft.
“Mr. Dewitt?”
Definitely not Skaaven’s voice.
His eyelids felt weighted down, but he managed to force them open. The room was white. The lights were fluorescent. The nurse was beautifully blonde.
“I knew it!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands across her breasts. “I knew you were coming around.”
“Where...?” It came out as a croak. He wondered that she understood it at all.
“Relax, Mr. Dewitt. You’re in the hospital. You’ve been in a coma for several days now. Encephalitis, Mr. Dewitt. Do you remember being bitten by a mosquito?”
Coma? Then none of it had been true. He’d imagined it: Dante’s classroom, Skaaven, Hades, all of it.
He raised an uncertain hand and felt his face. In need of a shave, but undamaged. And his hand was wonderfully whole against his fuzzy cheeks. He’d lost two fingers from that hand. Hadn’t he?
His head screamed like a tea kettle when he lifted it off the pillow, but he had to see. Peeking beneath the sheet, he found his body unscathed. No cuts. No burns. No gaping wounds. No bruises. His testicles lay warm and whole against his thigh.
Laughing hoarsely, he dropped his head back against the pillow.
“Are you alright, Mr. Dewitt?”
He tried to answer, but his throat was still uncooperative.
“Here,” said the nurse, and she slipped some crushed ice between his chapped lips.
“Better,” he rasped. Yes, much better. A reprieve. A second chance.
He decided to ask them to call Charlotte—if they hadn’t already. Dealing with his wife’s infidelity seemed a trivial obstacle to him now. He was ready to face her, ready to either toss her young boyfriend out the door and put their marriage back together, or toss her out on her ass. Though he wouldn’t make his decision until after he’d faced her, he was already leaning toward the latter of his two options.
There were some changes needed at work too. He was tired of being the one to do all the traveling for his office. And he needed more time off—time to get his life back together and get himself back in some kind of shape. Maybe he could read and ride an exercise bike at the same time.
“Nurse?”
“Yes?” she asked, not bothering to turn around from where she was arranging flowers on the bedside stand.
“I need—”
She turned swiftly, scattering flowers. “What do you need, Bernie-boy?”
She smiled and her teeth glistened wetly, row after row. Her eyes sparkled silver, multifaceted and cruel.
“Mind games are the absolute best!” she cackled. Bernie screamed.
Of a Darker Kind
Beneath oppressive clouds, the night possessed a cloying wetness that went beyond humidity and the recent rainstorm. Moisture clung to her face and hands, left her hair limp, and plastered her shirt to back, breasts, and belly. Rivulets of water, having assumed the crimson hue of the moon hung just above the river’s surface, glistened a baleful red on the weathered bridge.
She looked down at the water some fifty feet below, and it too looked red. Slow. Thick. Red. A wide, dark artery laid open, exposed beneath the surgical light of the moon, coursing sluggishly, near failing, through the corpse of the Earth.
The iron bridge support was cold beneath her hands as she climbed up on the railing. Though she’d traded her high heels for Nike running shoes, she almost slipped on the damp rail. Once she’d gained her precarious perch, she had to laugh at herself. Here she was, clinging knuckle-white to the upright, ironically careful not to fall—when she’d come out on the bridge for no other reason than to hurl herself into the water below.
She couldn’t swim.
She had, in fact, never even wanted to learn. Hers was an innate fear of water. For years, she’d been comfortable around little more than a bathtub. Swimming pools had left her weak-kneed, terrified that some prankster might push her in—or some John Wayne type might purposely throw her in the deep end on the premise that the threat of drowning would surely teach her to swim.
As a teenager she’d visited the ocean once. Coupled with her hydrophobia was a fear of anything that chose to live in the water: fish, crabs, squid, dolphins, jellyfish, stingrays... sharks. Pensacola Beach had left her physically ill. Faced with that encompassing expanse of water stretched flat and blue to the horizon, she’d doubled over and vomited on the blaring sand. Disoriented, she’d stumbled back down the dunes and knelt on the hot asphalt road, head cradled in trembling hands. With the dunes intervening between her and the sea she’d felt somewhat better, but the sand was insufficient to drown out the pounding of the surf. As long as she could hear it, she knew it was there—all that water struggling against the beach, fighting to reach her, clutch at her feet, shift the sand out from under her, pull her down, and drag her deep into its cold bosom.
She was older now, had even learned to live within sight of the ocean, but the water still wanted her. Of that she was certain. She’d always known it. Waves were no more than grasping hands. Undertows and riptides were wet dreams of drawing her down. The myriad sea creatures existed only to receive her flesh. The only difference was she’d grown to realize the water’s limitations. And her own strengths.
Now she stood, toes hanging over the dark precipice, faced with her lifelong enemy. Below, the water whispered a mocking invitation, silent to all ears but her own.
A breeze picked up at her back, tickling her neck with damp curls. As if it were an accomplice, the wind pushed her gently, encouraging, nudging her toward the drop through empty air to the eager river. Despite the convictions that had brought her here, or perhaps because of them, she felt uncertainty crawl up her spine on scabrous claws. She held tight to the I-beam.
Begone, she commanded the wind, determined that if she jumped, it would be her decision. The water could call all it wanted—had done so all the years of her life—but she would go when she was ready. Not before.
With a dying sigh, the breeze surrendered.
Almost at the same instance, headlights flashed across the wet bridge, briefly sweeping over her like prison tower searchbeams. That and the sudden sound of approaching tires on the bridge surface startled her. She very nearly toppled from the railing. Regaining her balance, she molded her slender form into the fold of the I-beam and waited for the vehicle to pass.
Her own car was off the side of the road more than half a mile from the bridge, for all intents and purposes abandoned. She’d accepted the long, sticky-hot walk as insurance against some highway patrolman spotting her car near the bridge and putting two and two together.
The intruder passed indifferently, windows down, radio playing a soft, sad song she didn’t recognize. Without protest, as if passing from one realm to another were a daily event, the automobile was swallowed by the hungry night.
She was about to step away from the upright when she realized that although the lights had died, the radio had not. She heard the crunch of gravel. The driver had merely killed his headlights and was pulling off the side of the road just the other side of the bridge. Had he seen her? She caught sight of brake lights spilled like new blood across the wet highway. Then, darkness.
A second later, she heard a car door. The radio continued to play for the night.
In all her planning, she’d given no consideration to what she’d do if her suicide was interrupted. She’d selected a remote location, an equally remote hour—the pale glow of her Timex had read just shy of 3 AM when she’d first walked out on the bridge—and no one knew where she was.
Footsteps sounded on the bridge: the unhurried thump of hard-soled shoes, the splash of a misstepped puddle. She pressed herself deeper into the concavity of the beam.
A shadow extracted itself from the deeper gloom of the night, emerging as a tall man in a dark grey trenchcoat. The coat hung on him like diver’s weights, its pockets bulging pregnantly. He walked past her to the next vertical beam. There, he stopped and stared out at the night and the river. She watched as he ran a hand through unruly blond curls, around the back of his neck, and up across his face to press at his eyes. His arm moved in slow motion as if tied to his side with heavy elastic—the weight of the coat again. He stood like that for a long moment, face hidden, then let out a short decisive sigh, dropped his hand, and climbed up on the railing.
She studied him as he stood there, hands at his sides, face now revealed in the moonlight, albeit mottled with drifting cloud shadows. His features were soft, open, a face that could no more lie than it could turn itself inside out. His lips were full, jawline round and wide, forehead low and framed like the rest of his face in lively golden curls. His eyes were green, iridescent, retaining their color when everything else identified with the moon.
The stranger reached into his coat pocket and pulled something out. She tried to make out what it was, but other than its size—small enough to lay comfortably in the palm of his hand—she could tell very little. It caught the moonlight and threw it back, a quick flash of silver; then the stranger closed his fist around it and held it tight against his breast.
