I Will Rise (30 page)

“Motherfuckers,” Lumpy’s gruff voice rings out.

“Your turn, Officer,” Eddie directs.

I sink deeper into myself and return my eyes to the table. I especially do not want to look at Lumpy. There is no question that I killed him, there is no question of responsibility here. Lumpy isn’t having it though. He wants my attention.

“Look at me,” he shouts, and when I fail to comply, he yells it again and punctuates with his favorite adjective, noun, verb, “Look at me, you motherfucker.”

So I suck it up, raise my head and look the poor bastard in his dead eyes. It’s the least I can do, having killed him and all.

“We all make choices, Baxter, and I’m dead because of one of yours. What we do impacts everyone around us. If you weren’t so fucking selfish, maybe we wouldn’t be here! We are all fucking dead because of you!” Lumpy jumps out of his seat and reaches for his firearm.

I raise my arms in defense, but before his weapon is completely drawn, I hear Eddie’s little fingers snap. Lumpy dissolves and is replaced with an impeccably dressed Mr. Shithead. Snazzy suit, slick hair, he looks as suave as ever. With a finely manicured pinky finger he smooths over his perfectly coifed mustache and says, “Charles, how are you?”

I manage a weak smile and Mr. Shithead unbuttons his suit jacket and sits down. “Now then,” he begins, “I am here to discuss respect. I have always valued you as an employee. True, your track record is less than stellar and we have had some shaky moments, but we have always treated each other with a modicum of respect. Does this sound reasonable?”

“I, I, I…” Mr. Shithead has always made me a bit nervous. The thing about him is he commands more respect than I am able to give. Even though the words aren’t coming, I would have to agree with him. Despite my poisoning attempts at destroying his career, I do respect him.

Mr. Shithead raises a hand and lets me off the hook. “No need to speak, Charles. I think we understand each other. I just want to offer you a final piece of advice before you go off and do what must be done.

“I have respect for you because I look harder and longer than most. I see the struggle inside and respect your attempt to live decently. It is fair to assume most people do not put forth such effort. They won’t take the time to figure you out. Nor should you expect them to. The key to circumventing such lies within yourself is that you have to respect yourself first. People see what you project. If you feel sorry for yourself, how can you expect people to believe in you? You have to stand tall and declare your worth. Not shaky ascertations of self-respect, but strong assertions. Perhaps this is too little, too late—perhaps you already know this, but it is important just the same. Respect yourself and the world will have no choice but to follow suit.”

“Well said,” Eddie shouts and then snaps Mr. Shithead away. He is replaced with a crying woman. I don’t recognize her at first, but then she looks me in the eyes and I see a variation on Eddie’s face. It’s his mother.

“Murderer,” she rasps through tears and spittle.

Eddie snaps again and I am no longer looking at his mother. In her place sits Jim—bearer of the suit, taker of my hand.

“We jumped the gun, Chuck. Had I known, I would have come up with another plan, but I was hasty, you know? I wanted to stop you so bad I didn’t think. I let my emotions get the best of me. Not only did I fail to stop you, I provided you with a damn fine-looking suit. Bastard! It just takes a little time to explore all angles, you know? Just a little well-spent time. Well, at least I got your hand!”

Snap.

Paunch sits before me, still mangled, still turned nearly inside out. He snarls and chortles and seethes with doggy contempt.

Snap.

My first intentional kill, the lady from the gas station who mistook me for some sort of religious freak and asked me to bless her baby, smiles at me from the chair. She says, “God bless you, Charles. God bless you and my dead baby.”

Snap.

Clarence, big and righteous and grinning from ear to ear, appears. “Charles,” he exclaims with quiet joy, “we meet again.”

I try to return his grin, but come up short.

“There’s no need for that now. It’s time to shine, boy! It’s time to take all of that goodness stored up inside and kick evil’s ugly ass!” He reaches into the surface of the table, which no longer looks like the surface of a table but the pink-gray slimy surface of my brain, and scoops up a large chunk of glumpy matter. “See this? It’s time to take responsibility for your actions and turn your life around. It’s time to take this shit back. Responsibility, baby! No one owes you and you don’t owe nobody, man. Don’t let them control you.” Clarence lets the glop slop from his hand. The brain becomes a table and his brain-speckled arm goes clean and dry. “Control, Charles. That’s what this whole mess comes down to. Stay true and make your own decisions. Strength, brother! It’s God’s way. It’s man’s way. We shall overcome!”

Snap.

Eddie is sitting in front of me. “We could go on…”

“No thanks,” I mumble.

“I know, I know, like I said, it’s no White. Right? It lacks a certain grace, a certain whimsy, a telling simplicity, but that’s life—real life—and you have to dig for the answers. Things only amount to what you make of them and you will only find the value if you look for it. But unfortunately, it’s not that easy because you have to look for many things and just when you think you find them you have to piece them together and then, when they don’t fit you have to start all over. The point, if there ever is a point, is that everything you need is inside you waiting to be found and arranged. Success is earned by not giving up, and as shitty as you think your life has been at least you haven’t thrown in the towel. Who has gone through forty-eight jobs without giving up? Who gets ridiculed and laughed at and stared at each and every day and still strives for some sort of acceptance?”

I blush. “Me.” Should I be proud of these things?

“The proudest. Whatever happens I am proud to have known you, Charles, and I am sure if I were really Eddie and not your dreaming mind, I would say the same thing.”

Snap.

Chapter Twenty

I Will Rise

Coming to, swimming through the tranquilized mess that Allen’s dart has made of my cognition, I hear idle chatter and distant sirens. Breaking the surface, eyes doing the jitterbug, eyelids doing the hop, I see muted movement and whirls of color. My consciousness expands, weaving connections like thread in a loom and by the time I am aware that I am awake, I feel like absolute hell. Imagine your worst hangover. Now, imagine that you are dead. Now, imagine that you have been filled with an unfathomable evil. Got it? Good. Now, multiply that by a thousand and you are still nowhere close.

“He’s coming to,” a sweet voice, a voice of restoration, a voice of absorption and healing, rings out and brings me completely round to the land of the living.

Annabelle.

My heavy eyelids roof themselves and my filmy eyes fight for focus. Three long seconds pass before the blurred vision finally clears (well, sort of). Annabelle is leaning over me, head cocked, listening for me to wake up, and I am afraid to say anything for fear my voice will drive her away. This is the closest we have ever been physically (barring our dream) and I don’t want to screw it up. I want to enjoy this moment for as long as possible.

And what a moment it is.

She smells like what I imagine heaven must smell like and though she is much too close for me to discern features, my clearing eyes fight valiantly nonetheless. They focus in and lose it, focus in and lose it, focus in and lose it. Burning, giving up, they blur out, accept defeat and fall blissfully and fuzzy into her dress (it’s new, or rather, different, given to her by Allen Michael, I presume—Stop! Not now).

Keeping silent, enjoying Annabelle’s lean, I roll my eyes to the side and try to get a bead on the situation. I am lying on a couch in Allen Michael’s suite. A couple of goons are standing at a gargantuan glass window (it stretches from nearly one end of the room to the other, making up most of the fourth wall). They are intently staring down at some sort of ruckus—lights flashing, sirens blaring—taking place in the city streets below. Just then, Allen Michael appears in my limited field of vision from an obscured part of the room. He is fast-walking toward Annabelle. Before he gets any closer I whip my eyes shut and feign sleep.

“He’s awake?” Booming, show-bizzy and slick, Allen’s voice never lets up.

“I thought so,” Annabelle trails as she moves away from me. “Guess not,” she sighs and I feel the far end of the couch, by my feet, sink down as she sits.

“We have to wake him. It’s begun and we don’t have very much time.”

“Can I?” Annabelle responds anxiously. It makes me feel good.

“Go ahead.”

Footsteps shuffle (Allen retreating?) and I feel the couch shift as Annabelle stands. I crack my eyes in time to see her get up and start moving back toward me. Through slits I see her sit on the edge of the couch cushion. Her thigh presses against my stomach and for a millisecond I center in on the contact. I am filled with an explosion of warmth. The warmth builds momentum and is close to spiraling out of control, close to attaining something like pleasure, something like ecstasy, when realization undoes me and drives my mind downward. Dive bombing, the black hole opening, death’s hungry void screaming—panic rises.

I bolt upright, knocking Annabelle back.

“No!” rips from my throat and explodes out my mouth.

The word stretches and contorts and drags sharp Os over my slushy lungs. Annabelle rights herself and thrusts her hands in an effort to grab me. I roll bakcward over the arm of the couch putting more distance between us.

I can’t believe it.

I’ve touched her.

She’s done.

It’s over. In twenty-four hours, regardless of what happens, she will be dead and gone and I will be alone. Inside I liquefy and curdle. Inside I die all over again. Inside I pray for a way out.

I choke out, “Why?” as tears, big and shiny as marbles, begin to well in my eyes.

“It’s okay, Charles,” Annabelle says softly. She stretches out her right hand and begins inching around the couch with her left.

I back away and press myself against the expansive window wall. Allen Michael and his two goons have scrambled over. They stand on the defensive a few feet behind Annabelle.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Annabelle repeats and continues forward, veering off in the wrong direction.

“You touched me?” I ask, accusingly.

Annabelle instantly rights herself and moves toward my voice. Allen and his goons give one another looks and hold their ground. The way they are all lined up, Annabelle cautiously creeping toward me, Allen and company forming a loose, deliberate circle behind her, makes me feel like a cornered animal, like a beast.

“It’s almost over, Charles. It’s okay now. I want to touch you.” She clears the couch and shuffles closer.

I’ve got less than a few feet before Annabelle is in my face. There’s time to run. I could easily skirt by her, jam through the suite and burst out the double doors and into the hallway. Instead, I only think about running and I look past her. My gaze falls upon Allen Michael. We lock eyes. I am expecting hate or mad glee or the purest evil. To my surprise he looks friendly, sympathetic even. He gently nods his head and blinks his eyes as if to say,
It’s okay
. Just then, Annabelle’s right hand touches my chest and her left arm wraps around my neck and before I can evade or freak out or protest she is hugging me.

The force and passion of her embrace is numbing, stomach-tingling, jaw-dropping, heart-stopping bliss. It only lasts for a second or two—before it gets too intense she lets go, unafraid of absorbing my infection, but conscious that if she holds on too long, I will suck her dry—but man oh man, those seconds mean everything. They are everything. They are what that second back on the couch—before I freaked out, her thigh against my stomach—was trying to be.

The black hole still opens and my body still tries to drain her, but this time, instead of fighting it, instead of concentrating on the killing touch and death, I let go and close my eyes and bury myself into her living, breathing vitality. I center on the merging of our bodies. I get past the soul rending, the decay, and give in to what is supposed to happen, when two people who love each other hug, happen. I focus on the heat. Time stops.

I feel, with severe sensitivity, every fiber of her being. And for once I understand what people mean when they say that life is good. I understand what it means to love and to have unrequited love returned. At long last somebody truly cares about me and needs me and is proud of me and is here proving it, expressing it, pouring it into my starving pores. A thousand futures alight in my brain and I see myself somewhere, happy, perpetual smiles, buzzing from head to toe on the priceless knowledge that life shared, life spun through the eyes of the one you love, life discussed and challenged and tackled with the support and love of another, is life savored. It is life steeped in value.

My heart stutters in my chest as if it is gasping for air, overwhelmed with feeling, the hairs on the back of my neck rise and I sizzle with significance. All that could have been spirals out into infinity, a kaleidoscope of astonishment and desire and useless hope dances behind my eyes.

You are nobody till somebody loves you.

And then she lets go.

Everything in my head dulls, blackens, goes unplugged. She is smiling, tears streaming from her sightless eyes, which oddly enough seem to be staring directly into mine. Not past me, or through me, but into me. It’s almost as if she can actually see.

“I’ve been waiting for that,” she says, her eyes drifting slightly, breaking the illusion of sight, blindly looking toward mine, but not quite meeting them.

“Me too,” I answer.

“You are wonderful, Charles.”

I blush.

“And I knew you could do it. I knew you were special and this wasn’t some fantasy. I knew you would get us here. I knew you were the one to save the world and I love you so much for it.”

I blush some more and try to fight off the dark cloud brewing at the base of my thoughts. I just want to enjoy this moment and take these compliments in and maybe even give Annabelle another quick hug, but I can’t stop the burgeoning contemplation.

She’s dead, you fool
, my brain asserts.

You shouldn’t be happy, nor should you enjoy this moment
, it chastises.

You have, in effect, murdered the woman you love
, it reminds.
You are a complete bastard, asshole, fu—

A quiet thump rings out and shatters my condemning thoughts.

Annabelle’s smile fades and her blind eyes go extra glossy, extra empty. A shower of red has peppered the left side of her face. My brain goes speechless and my eyes dart with confusion. The side of her head, around her left temple, looks wrong. It looks soft and gushy and slick and dented. It looks—

And then she falls. My confounded eyes follow her descent.

They watch as her head strikes the marble flooring with a squishy whack and the contents of that lovely head slip and splash and splatter outward in a river of pasty pulp.

They watch as the exquisite flooring is gored with a pool of gray and red and black and yellow.

They lose focus and pull away and roll up, and float aimlessly before descending and honing in on one of Allen Michael’s goons, the silencer-capped pistol held firmly in his right hand.

Mesmerized by the thin, anemic waft of smoke dancing and fading from the barrel of the gun, red streaks of lightning gather and shoot throughout my brain. They reach down deep—sighted hands, vision to fire—and ignite my heart with smoldering anguish.

I drop to a knee and move in close, but it’s no good, the lights have burned out. Annabelle is cold and gone. I want to cry and mourn and lament. I want to break down and for God’s fucking sake just die. The evil inside, however, has other plans. It roils. It takes hold of my guts and turns me into a sweating, shivering mess.

Crouching, I look up at Allen Michael and his goons. The world waves and blurs as if viewed through fire. On autopilot, like watching a movie, my left arm raises and extends. A legion of tendrils buzz and hiss and explode from my wrist. They waste no time obliterating the goon with the gun. One minute he’s there, macho, pointing his little pistol, the next he is nothing more than a two-foot pile of blood, bone and pureed flesh. The tendrils pull back and float around me in attack mode.

Amazingly enough, Allen Michael and Goon Number Two stand their ground. They look nervous and scared and strangely expectant: Goon Two closing his eyes, gritting his teeth, awaiting my wrath; Allen, arms out, something weird and prideful shimmering in his eyes.

Everything I am—organically, emotionally and mystically—burns and blazes. I feel it coming on, time bomb, the evil within ready to detonate, and for the first time I am sure that I am going to explode, that I am fated to erupt and take the world with me, that a lot of what I have been told by Clarence and Jim and a lot of what my own brain has surmised is correct. Time bomb. Tick, tick, tick. And the more I let myself think about Annabelle—the more I glance down and look at her dead body and grieve over what could have been—the more primed I feel. The storm is brewing, the pressure building, and I am apt to explode at any moment, but Allen Michael and Goon Number Two, their expectancy kills away the impetus. It’s like you’re in this great mood or maybe you’re laughing uncontrollably and then something—news, an image on the television, anything—bolsters its way into your head and turns you right around. I am able to get myself under control, sheath my tendrils, repress my sorrow, bury my anger and stand up. I will not go off on cue. I am not a puppet. I will not dance for the eager beavers bracing themselves in front of me. I will not play anyone’s game but my own. At long last (a little too late, I might add) I think I am learning how to be me.

Goon Number Two opens one eye and then the other and then looks at Allen Michael. He has dropped his arms and his eyes are no longer filled with pride; instead they look lost. I cross my arms and stare at the two of them.

Allen signals and Goon Number Two crosses the room and enters a bedroom. He shuts the door behind him. I ignore him and continue to stare at Allen. What now? As if to answer my thoughts Allen raises a finger, an indicator for me to hold on. I play along. He nods his head, gets down on his knees and fishes an arm under the couch. After a couple seconds he retrieves what looks like an umbrella and then stands up. Allen fumbles with it for a second and gets it into position and then it becomes apparent that it is not an umbrella but a mean-looking samurai sword. He unsheathes it and rotates the razor-sharp blade so it reflects shafts of light and casts them about the room.

Am I supposed to be scared? Tendrils creep from my stump and dance around me in menacing defense.

“This isn’t for you,” Allen says. He stares into the reflective blade, gives it a few more twirls (always the showman), and then sheaths it. “We have to talk, Mr. Baxter.”

“So talk,” I snarl. My tendrils tense and on the ready.

Allen takes a seat on the couch, lays the sheathed sword across his lap, and motions for me to join him.

“I’ll stand.”

“Suit yourself. Have a look out the window, Charles.”

I don’t want to turn my back on him. Allen senses this, grasps the sword in his right hand, walks to the window and stands a few feet to the side of me. “I’m not a threat. Look.” He points outside.

I turn and look to the city streets below. They are alive, teeming and rolling, jammed with a thrashing river of people that flows in every direction as far as the eye can see. The river—no, let’s call it a mob—trounces and tramples and fights its way through all visible sections of the city. Overturned police cars, ambulances, and civilian vehicles burn and slick the air with oily smoke. Destroyed storefronts crumble. Hollywood looks like a war zone. It looks like hell on earth.

“They are trying to get in here,” Allen says. “All of them. I have some men barring the perimeter, but they won’t last much longer.”