34

MIKE COULD NOT stop the ringing. The side of his head resonated with a single high-pitched tone. It was as if billions of tiny cries had merged into one deafening scream that he could not stop. He felt cold, too. He couldn’t understand how the weather had changed so quickly. He imagined that maybe he’d been lying there like Rip Van Winkle, sleeping away twenty years, facedown on the street. He tried to focus, to move his frozen feet and break the crust of ice that encased them. He tried his fingers, wiggling them in their gloves of permafrost. It was incredibly tiring and he had to take a deep, bubbling breath before he tried to do more. There was something in his mouth. He realized a moment later that it was his tongue, now swollen to double its size, as if a balloon had replaced it. He groaned and tried to spit. There were jagged things that dug into his cheeks, and bright circles of pain on either side of his face. He coughed and spit again and pushed the bits of teeth out to dribble down his chin. He breathed a little easier then and decided to try and open his eyes.

It seemed like a day before Mike was able to get to his feet. He stood with his hands on his knees, wondering where his clothes had gone. Shoes, pants, jacket, vest, shirt, everything but his shorts was missing. He’d seen murder victims stripped like that, anything of value taken before the body had even gone cold. He couldn’t understand how it had happened to him though, thinking that perhaps he’d just managed to wander out like this. It made no sense, but he couldn’t deny that he was on a city street in this condition. Wiping blood from his eyes, he saw the bodies, lumps of flesh appearing oddly flattened, most of their clothes missing too. He had a vague recollection, a flash card image of shooting at them, of it happening so fast that it was more feeling than vision, bursts of sound and light that repeated somewhere in his ringing skull. He shook his head. He almost fell over, staggered sideways and caught himself, realizing someone was on the street coming toward him. The figure loomed in the darkness, his head appearing unnaturally huge until he stepped into the glow of a streetlight and Mike saw that it was a helmet the man was wearing. It was a cop. He realized at that instant that he was a cop too and that despite this man’s huge head he might be able to help. Mike began to stagger forward, hands outstretched, a liquid croaking coming from his mouth that he meant to sound like “Help,” but was really nothing like it. He tried to say, “Detective Braddock,” but should have known better. His balloon tongue couldn’t get around it. He sounded like a lunatic even to himself. The cop with the huge head must have thought so too, expressing his opinion with a sharp rap of his nightstick on Mike’s temple. The street came up to meet him again. A part of him was grateful for the rest.