Matthew jolted awake. His eyes were crusted closed, his ears ringing, canceling any sound from the outside world. He listened to the constant soundtrack of his time in the dark: the blood flowing through his body, the pulsing throb in his temple, the discordant thuds of his pissed-off heart.
An odd verse sprang unbidden to his mind. A prayer he had no memory of learning.
Blood will let blood, on my lips, on my tongue. The spark inside me is yours, the lift of my soul, that energy, yours to feast upon. My flesh is yours. I am without hope. I am without love. My humanity has been stripped from me and hangs in tatters before you, ready to accept your gift, my sacrifice. Your paradise awaits me, because all I am is gone.
He opened his eyes to slits, careful to keep his head down.
A tiny, soft hand patted his brow. “Da-da,” his son’s voice said. “Da-da, love you.”
Tears sprang from Matthew’s eyes, but he did not move. Did not dare to. His nose, though broken and clogged with cartilage and dried blood, could still catch the faintest trace of his son’s smell. Baby powder and purity. Matthew wanted more than anything to bury his face in the child’s hair, hear him laugh one last time.
The tiny soft hand rubbed Matthew’s head absently while he wept and wished. When he could stand it no longer he reached his fingers outward, hoping to touch his baby boy one last time.
There was nothing, nothing but the emptiness.
Matthew breathed in harshly, sucking large gulps of air, trying to right his mind. The digging. The light. He raised his chin, the effort causing his head to tremor, his neck to stiffen. He looked where the light had burst through the dark.
He heard... digging. Someone, or something, was pushing through the debris a few yards away.
“Hello!” he yelled, his voice slurred wet gravel. He waved a hand in the dark. “Hello! I’m here! I’m here!”
There was no sound of rescue, no movement. Desperate for reassurance, he turned his strained neck to look toward the area where Dee lay. He reached out his hand, and after a few brief moments of scrambling panic, he found hers, still warm.
“Dee! I think, maybe, we’ve been found.” He waited, but Dee was silent. “Dee?”
Then, “Yes, Matthew. I hear you, I’m sorry, I hear you.”
Matthew was so relieved he nearly sobbed again, but kept himself together, kept himself hoping.
“Did you see the light? Did you hear?”
There was a pause, and then Dee spoke. “I heard it.”
Matthew was very still, he clutched furiously to Dee’s fingers. Something was tugging insistently on his exposed foot, but he felt no pain, so ignored it.
His shirt was soggy with blood. He rolled his body, trying to slowly release his injured hand. He could feel it squelching beneath his stomach, as if he were lying face-down in a puddle in the middle of a muddy beaten road.
“Dee? Do you think they’ve come for us?”
“How is that possible, Matthew?” she said, her voice toneless. “You’re not thinking clearly.” He heard a rustling. “Here, boy. Don’t let go of my hand now. It’s coming to get you.”
Matthew squeezed her hand more tightly. “Dee, we’ll be saved soon. C’mon, I believe now. You should be thrilled. I believe.” He waited for a chuckle, or a chiding. He received neither. He swallowed. “They must be digging toward us. Yes, yes. They’re coming.”
The movement seemed to come from all around. Something was tunneling through the spilled guts of the building, straight toward them. Matthew laid his ear to the vibrating concrete. In the pitch black of his world, Matthew heard something break through the rubble just in front of him, palm-slapping sounds smacked the ground, glass broke and iron twisted with a high-pitched groan. There was a shifting sound as the thing filled the space directly before him.
Matthew pulled his hand away from Dee and reached for what had come. His hand plunged deep into some writhing, jelly-like substance, which immediately shot up his arm and sprayed itself onto his face. He gasped and felt something wiggle down his throat.
He gagged, clawed at his lips, but felt nothing. He threw up, the stinging tang of vomit somehow bracing him.
There was an upward swell, and although he felt no pain it seemed as if his eyes were melting down his face, cold and slick. He felt his body lift then spin in a barrel-roll to one side, although he knew, somewhere in his subconscious mind, he had not physically moved. It was dizzying and he clawed at the chunks of destruction around him for purchase. But the pieces of the structure were gone, the whole of the physical world had fallen away. A blast of warm stale air gusted upward.
Was he falling? No, that familiar, constant pain was still in his back, a part of him now. Would I miss it, my murdering lover? he thought. But it wasn’t gone. It was there. Solid and heavy. He was still trapped, but there was a gulf beneath him now, a space wider than a canyon blown open where there should be bricks and glass and dirt. A giant’s dark heart beat somewhere in the abyss and he found himself staring down into it, searching. There was a flare of color, and another, erupting from the sides of his vision. The world came into focus.
There were trees, sweating slime-covered smooth black monsters rising a thousand feet into the air, reaching for him, their sappy perspiration running freely down their sides, tracing through faint veins of stone-hard bark, splashing into their gray roots. They plunged upward from an impossible distance, their bases surrounded by a fetid swamp that went as far as he could see, a black horizon. The sky was pale and dead, but he knew that it was eternal, like space. An eternal emptiness. Home.
* * *
“It’s a letter,” his grandfather said, dropping the thick envelope on his bed.
He left and Matthew swiveled away from his desk, watched the door close. He stood, walked to his neatly-made bed, studied the envelope; it was dingy brown, soiled, old-looking. The handwriting on it was scrawled in an imprecise manner, jagged and spearing, peaks and valleys of black ink thin as an old woman’s hair. There were stamps bearing language and prices he did not recognize slapped across its surface.
He picked it up, studied the front. It bore no return address, no name of sender. Turning it over he saw the envelope had been previously used. It was frayed and torn, spotted with something dark. Dreary tape held the flap closed, as dingy and browned as if its contents had been sealed for hundreds of years.
He ripped it open, pulled out two hand-written pages of scribble. Many of the words were hard to make out, but once he got a feel for the author’s form, the words cleared, came into focus:
I write this in the hopes of finding you well.
This night is a terrible night, one that will be remembered only for its misery. Nothing of consequence has taken place and nothing of note has been accomplished. The price I ask for living is a harmonious sequence of knowledge that turns the wheels of the clock to tomorrow, diversion that makes daytime turn to night and allows me once more to close my eyes on the world which has deceived me until such time as I am forced to open them.
War is rampant and civilization is holding firm on sandy beaches of past moralities as wave upon wave of hatred, corruption and bloodshed splash against the shore. I fear I don’t know of anything but what is before my very eyes. The people I think I love are deceivers, those who follow me whisper corruption behind my back and friends are true only as it suits them. I’ve lost the willpower to pick myself up time after time, exhausted from being knocked down by indifference, selfishness and lack of honor. We chase gods and act like children. It’s pathetic.
Old friends are shadowy memories, ghosts that talk to me in the night and conjure distorted images of the way things once were. The way things could have, should have, been. They exist as passersby, breathing shallow confidence of the boy’s life, of the boy’s happiness. I tell them to get the fuck away, to leave the past buried. But it returns in my sleep. It haunts me.
I believe that love is a bauble held only by poets. It exists only in words, on paper, in songs and through acting of all kinds including the most devious. It doesn’t exist any more than hope, trust, conviction, honesty or faith. Lost ideals of a racist generation, mistaken concepts taken to heart by the weak and overly sensitive, tossed aside by the strong, the survivors, the leaders. Strength lies in appearance. Appearance of person, of religion, of stature, of wealth. Gone are souls intertwining, coupling energy. Gone is romantic ambush.
We are ravaged. We are followed. We are dying.
I write you because there is no one else to write and I’m alone with these thoughts. It is haunting.
I write you though I know you won’t understand it any more than the rest, any more than I. I know you don’t want it. I put my heart into words because I have not the strength to put it back into the world. I’m weak. I’m a coward. I’m ashamed of myself and everything around me.
Do with my thoughts what you will, what you want. Send my prayers back to the Christian God.
No one is left to wonder what will become of us when we’re gone. Not you I, nor I you. I wonder if it would help if I told you I missed you.
Okay then, I miss you.
I miss you like I would miss a pleasant daydream I cannot fully remember. Was there sunshine? Was I happy?
You are just that to me. A wonderful idea I had upon waking. An idea I will realize fully once aware, best left to a dream.
What we follow will surface and you will know all truth. It is what we seek, what we have given everything to seek. And now we have failed, and that means nothing to you. But know that our failure is complete, with you and with the chase.
You will never hear from me again. That is my gift. That, my son, is love.
Matthew read it twice, then burned the pages in the fireplace. His grandfather never spoke of it. Matthew never forgot the words.
Within the year his grandfather told him of his parent’s death. His parents who were not. His parents who lived a haunted life, and who haunted his own.
* * *
This city is a fairy-tale. This city is a skeleton, chipped away and faded to gray.
Matthew knew he would never stop falling fallingfallingfallingfallingfalling through the abyss.
He did not know how long he’d been asleep. His consciousness was frayed, slippery. Dying, he thought.
Dying now. Dying.
“No... uh, no...” he stammered, shaking his head, seeking will, seeking a spark. “Dee!” he yelled out, panic boiling inside him, the last torn threads of panic that comes with death. “Dee... Dee, please...”
He heard her murmur, he heard her trying to dig through the rubble to find him, she was looking for him and her mouth was making a clicking sound that infected his thoughts with a fear so deep that he thought his heart would burst, his brain melt into syrup and drain away through his nose and ears.
“DAMN IT, ANSWER ME!”
And like that, it was all gone. The sounds of scraping, of something approaching him in the dark, of the visions of the morose landscape and empty sky. All gone.
Just black.
He touched his eyes with his fingers and felt their I’mreal solidity. He exhaled rattily, grateful for his broken nose because the smell of him was becoming rotten, and he was glad not to fully inhale the stench.
He reached, tentatively, for Dee’s hand once more, if for no other reason than to prove he could return to sanity, and to a world—albeit painful—that was real.
“I’d leave her alone, boy-o. You want nothing to do with that, believe me.”
The voice had come from right next to him. Matthew jerked his head around, wide-eyed, and stared at the blank expanse. “Who’s there?”
A hand rested on his shoulder. “Who do you think? That hot receptionist?” A pause, a frown in the dark. “Nah, she’s... well, she’s elsewhere. And trust me, she’s not so hot anymore.”
Matthew’s mind spun. He rotated his shoulder as best he could and reached his hand slowly toward the sound of the voice.
He touched flesh.
A face, an unshaven cheek. He felt the cheek muscle flex—the face was smiling.
“Don’t get fresh.”
Matthew smiled, then laughed. He knew the voice now, somehow could see the features of its face through his fingertips. “Robbie?”
“You are in a bad spot, my friend,” Robbie said, his hand caressing Matthew’s shoulder, then moving inexplicably to his side, where he was poking. He lifted the sport coat, slid his hand beneath, began feeling Matthew’s side through his dress shirt. He pinched his flesh.
“Ow,” Matthew said, chuckling. “Jesus, dude.”
“Sorry,” Robbie said, but he kept pinching, more lightly now.
Matthew’s mind quieted, it was so very dark, but he thought he could, just barely, make out Robbie’s features. His skin had a slight glow to it. A silvery luminescence that reflected, repelled the dark. He was smiling, Matthew saw, and rested his fingertips on Robbie’s face.
“God, I miss you, man,” he said, tears falling from his eyes. “I really miss you.”
Robbie grabbed Matthew’s hand but his hand is under your coat and squeezed it. He leaned his head closer to Matthew’s, their foreheads almost touching. He smiled, and then whispered, as if it were a secret between them, as if avoiding a thousand nearby ears straining to overhear them.
“I can get you out of here, Matthew,” Robbie said, his eyes bright and alive with mischievous joy. “I can save you.”
Matthew shifted, brushed something away from his face, focused on Robbie’s eyes.
“How?”
Robbie smiled more broadly, laughing with secret knowledge.
“Do you want to come?”
Matthew’s smile faltered. Reason, or sanity, tried to break through the thick webbing that had spun itself around his mind. Robbie is dead, he said to himself, but the words carried no weight, no practical application.
“Am I dead?” he said, genuinely curious. “Are you a ghost? A shadow of memory?”
Robbie laughed mirthlessly. “No, man!” He gave Matthew a side-long glance. “You know, you’re acting a little weird.”
“Yeah, well,” Matthew said, rubbing his swollen, stubby tongue with his fingers. “It’s been a rough week.”
Robbie laughed again, sounding just like he did in the old days. Matthew wanted it to be the old days. He wanted to be back in college, sorting through their clothes in the communal laundry room, heading out to a party at an off-campus apartment they’d heard about through a friend or a neon-colored paper flyer.
“I’m married now,” Matthew said, realizing his dead friend probably wasn’t aware.
“I know,” Robbie said, “and I’m happy for you. I always knew you and Diane were going to go the distance.”
Matthew waited, debating how much Robbie would want to know about his life. His mind drifted to his family. He tried to remember them. Diane. Little Robbie, the baby. His child. They’re lost, he thought. He drifted, his scalp tingling. White spots beat against his eyes like falling stars crashing silently by the hundreds, thousands... blinding light.
Robbie pinched him again—harder this time—and it brought him back.
“I have a son,” he said, trying to swallow, his throat too swollen, too dry. “We named him after you. I think I’m dying, buddy. I feel like glass. Like really thin glass...”
Robbie’s smile faltered, he caressed the side of Matthew’s face.
“They’re all with me now, Matthew,” he said quietly, his eyes wide and watery as black lakes. “I can take you to them.”
Matthew’s mind began to buzz loudly, his skin began to itch, his body felt cold as ice. He thought the thumping of his heart was slowing down, an erratic drum beating his blood out and away into the sacrificial earth, which drank greedily.
“Your mom and dad, they’re here, too.” Robbie shuffled closer. “They want to meet you. They’re really sorry, Matthew, and they said they love you. How great is that?”
Matthew couldn’t process, he tried to understand but nothing was coming to the surface. “You can save me,” was all he could think to say, his eyes leaking.
Robbie nodded. “Say the word, Matthew. Say the word and I’ll take you away from all this. I’ll bring you to Diane, to your son, your folks.” He paused. “I’m there too, bud. I’m there, too. God, even Stanley is there.”
“That old man?” Matthew said, and they both laughed. Laughed like they had as kids, when they’d lay in a backyard tent and talk all night, trading handheld video games, looking at comic books with flashlights. Carefree, Matthew thought. Nothing in the world but us. It was heaven.
Robbie broke through his memories.
“They’re coming, Matthew. We’re almost out of time.”
Matthew was startled, shaken by the urgency in Robbie’s voice. He barely noticed that Robbie had slid a heavy hand beneath his shirt, was burrowing into his belly with a wiggling force.
“Who... who’s coming?” he asked.
Dee. What about Dee? he thought, but didn’t know if Robbie could save her.
“There’s a woman here...” he said.
Robbie’s face fell. He heard movement from where Dee lay. A wild, scrambling sound, like she was suddenly fighting through the rubble to reach him. Matthew debated reaching out for her.
“Matthew,” Robbie hissed.
Dee was speaking, saying something in haughty, choked sounds, a language that Matthew did not recognize. He heard her grunting, cursing, writhing. She was breaking through.
Matthew turned away, reached out, found Robbie’s warm hand waiting for him.
Something heavy was crawling up his legs. He shifted his weight, tried to turn and see, but he’d lost control of his muscles and could only lie there, flipping his head side to side.
“What the fuck is that!” he screamed, bile surging to his throat.
“Relax, relax,” Robbie said, caressing his head. “It’s your son. It’s little Robbie. He’s here.” Robbie looked down where Matthew could not see, where it felt like a hundred small hands were pawing at his legs and back, reaching for him, tugging at him incessantly. A thousand desperate fingers ripping him away.
“He wants to be with you,” Robbie said. “It’s really quite adorable.”
Matthew smiled at this, relieved. His son. He was here. Little Robbie was here. A miracle.
Robbie moved his face closer, tilting Matthew’s chin to look at him. Matthew looked.
“Robbie?” Matthew croaked, his head flat against the concrete block that served as his death-bed pillow.
Robbie’s eyes were bursting supernovas.
Something long, cold and wet slithered around Matthew’s neck and squeezed, the tail of the thing flicking against his dry lips and crusted facial hair.
“Yeah, buddy?” the thing called Robbie said, his face exploding into light.
The hands were racing across his body, patting him, pinching him, slipping inside his clothes to reach flesh. His throat was being squeezed more and more tightly. A second cold scaly tendril slid down his collar and moved across his chest like wet midnight. His guts were a flurry of movement, a voracious bubbling dance of tiny bodies fighting to be inside him. He wanted to reach for Dee’s hand one last time and was devoured by an incredible regret that he could not help her. But his hand would not move, his body’s controls had been snipped away from the commands of his mind as neatly as a cut string.
“Robbie…” he mouthed, although little sound came out, just a trickle of ashen crimson drool and the ghosts of words tucked inside a weak billow of hot sour breath.
“Save me.”