Phoenix (2 page)

The
image
gradually
faded
,
like
a
window
fogging
over
on
a
cold
winter’s
day
,
and
then
it
was
gone
.

A steady murmuring had been coming from the
television for the past hour, ever since the Late Late show had
wrapped up and was replaced with useless infomercials peddling
useless bullshit. The man reclined in his Lay-Z-Boy took no notice;
he was passed out drunk. This happened often, though admittedly it
had become more frequent over the past couple months. His eyes
fluttered beneath their lids, his breath came in short gasps, and
his heart pounded within his chest. It always happened this way
when he dreamed. Most would call it an active imagination. Some
would blame the booze. Drunk or not, it didn’t matter.

Nothing stopped the dreams anymore.

Suddenly his body went rigid. His breath
caught in his throat. Brad’s eyes moved faster now; the second
dream was beginning.

The
city
was
burning
.
Sirens
blared
near
and
far
.
The
sky
was
red
,
the
streets
were
red
,
everywhere
he
looked
,
Brad
saw
red
.
He
witnessed
people
being
dragged
from
their
homes
,
from
their
cars
,
from
their
beds
.
Above
it
all
,
hovering
in
the
sky
over
the
flames
,
were
six
spectral
figures
.
Larger
than
life
,
filling
the
heavens
.
Watching
over
all
they
had
created
.

This one always followed on the heels of the
first. While his dreams of the men in suits varied, this one
remained the same. Always the same, no matter how much whiskey he
soaked his brain in. Brad’s longtime friend and mentor, Mort
Kinney, had theorized that alcohol might actually increase dream
frequency, and that getting skunk-faced drunk would be
counterproductive. Brad didn’t care. He just wanted the dreams to
stop. If he could have one night, only
one
night of relief.
He didn’t think that was too much to ask.

The foot of the recliner slammed down and
Brad was on his feet. He thought he heard screaming, but realized
it had been coming from his own mouth. Unfortunately, that moment
of fear-induced lucidity ended quickly.

"Shit," Brad mumbled, then fell to his knees
next to the small trashcan beside his chair and proceeded to lose
the sweet and sour chicken he’d eaten before passing out. Arms
braced around the can, he groaned and waited for it to pass.

This
has
to
stop
,
he thought.
I
can’t
do
this
anymore
.

He rested his sweaty forehead in the crook of
his arm, wishing the world would stop spinning long enough so he
could at least crawl back into his recliner. This wasn’t his first
time around the block, though. He knew a whirling room meant more
vomiting was likely imminent. The phone started ringing during the
second bout. The clock next to it said it was only three in the
morning. Whoever was calling could leave a message.

Brad leaned heavily on the trashcan, his head
limp against his arms. He didn’t even bother trying to see what
name was showing on the caller ID; he knew who it was.

"Pick up. I know you’re there."

Brad spit a few times and coughed. "Kiss my
ass."

Feeling the nausea pass, he fell back against
the chair and stared at the answering machine. It was on the end
table next to him, right behind his puke receptacle. The voice
squawking from it belonged to Mort.

"Goddammit, Brad. Pick. Up. The. Phone."

"I’m not here right now," he said to his
television. His voice was raspy. "Please leave a message after the
beep." Then he laughed.
Yeah
,
I’m
still
drunk
.

"That’s it. I’m coming over."

Brad jerked and started scrambling to reach
the receiver, but the booze made him slow and clumsy. Mort hung up
before he could pick it up.

"Oh, this is great." He gripped his hair with
both hands. "This is just fucking great."

* * *

Ten minutes later, Mort was letting himself
into Brad’s apartment.

"Hey, asshole! You left your door unlocked!
You better be sick or dying in there!" Mort tossed his car keys on
the small stand just inside and hung up his jacket. The nights had
been unseasonably cold for August, and the days weren’t much
better.

He flipped lights on as he walked through the
apartment. The only noise he could hear was coming from the TV in
the living room. Mort stopped in the kitchen and stared. Trash
littered the floor, dirty dishes filled the sink, and more were
scattered across the countertop. The microwave door stood open with
something half cooked inside. Mort thought he saw a fly buzzing
over whatever it had been. It looked to be at least a week old.
What linoleum wasn’t hidden by scraps of garbage and pieces of food
was covered in muddy boot prints.

"Jesus wept," he whispered.

Shaking his head, Mort moved on to the living
room. There his friend lay, on his back. One leg was bent and the
other was stuck between the end table and the recliner, a small
trash can between his thighs. Brad’s arms were spread wide, and his
face was turned away, toward the TV. Mort could tell by the rise
and fall of his chest that his friend wasn’t asleep. Several
different things leapt to the front of his brain. Sarcastic
remarks, barking orders, nagging complaints. Instead of voicing
these, which he had a right to do, he walked over and grabbed Brad
by the hand. After getting a good hold on his arm, Mort jerked him
into a sitting position.

"Glad to see you’re not dead. Come on."

Brad mumbled something, craning his neck to
stare at the television screen.

Mort followed his line of sight. "What? It’s
nothing but those damned Sham-Wows." He struggled some more,
finally getting Brad to his feet.

"It’s all red…" Brad whispered.

Mort pretended not to hear, instead turning
his very drunk friend around and helping him toward his bedroom.
Before turning the corner, Mort looked over his shoulder, back at
the TV screen.

The lanky guy was still going on about those
marvelous rags that, in Mort’s opinion, couldn’t even soak up
spit.

"C’mon, buddy." He patted Brad’s back. "Let’s
get you to bed."

* * *

Mort was busy over the stove when he heard
the bathroom door slam shut. He tilted his head to listen, his
spatula-hand paused over a pancake. Either Brad was coughing or
puking again, he couldn’t be sure.

"Serves him right. I told him drinking
wouldn’t help." He spoke to the two pancakes as he scooped them
from the skillet and tossed them onto a plate. "Didn’t I? Damn
right I did." Mort moved from the stovetop to the coffeepot, still
mumbling complaints. He pulled a couple of mugs from the cabinet
and filled them, making a snorting noise and shaking his head.

Heavy footsteps coming down the hall and
toward the kitchen cut off the rest of Mort’s rant. He turned to
see Brad enter, his hair standing out all over, clothes wrinkled
and stained, large black circles under his eyes.

"You look like hell. Sit." Mort nodded to the
table in the center of the room and set a cup of coffee on it.

Brad wrinkled his nose. "You know I hate that
crap."

"Drink it anyway."

Brad fell into the seat and hunched over the
brew. He stared at it as though
it
had been the thing to
bite him last night. Mort sipped his own, leaning back against the
sink and more than slightly amused at his friend’s misery.

"You deserve to feel that bad, you know,"
Mort said. "I’ve been warning you—"

Brad choked down his first sip so he could
interrupt. "Just how the hell would you know anything about it?
Huh?" He lowered his voice and turned his disgusted look away from
Mort and back on the coffee where it belonged.

Mort’s only reply was a twitch of his bushy
right eyebrow. Brad stared over the rim of his cup while Mort
scowled down the ridge of his nose. After several ticks from the
cheesy, spotted cat clock hanging beside the door, the older of the
two decided to be the bigger man. Technically he was anyway. Mort
was almost as big around as he was tall. For a man his age, this
was considerably unhealthy.

"I’ve been warning you about the drinking. It
won’t stop the dreams." He carried his silverware and plate of
pancakes over and sat down across from Brad. Mort didn’t see the
face Brad made, or the lip-syncing, because he was aligning his
fork and butter knife just so on the right side of his plate. "But
I suppose being young and full of piss and vinegar, you just
had
to find out for yourself. Couldn’t take my advice.
Because you know it all."

Brad glanced around the room and noticed he
could see the kitchen floor. The trash had been picked up and the
tiles mopped clean. His eyes moved to the countertops. Clean. Sink?
Empty. His entire kitchen had been cleaned from floor to
ceiling.

"Mort?" he asked with the cup still paused
before his lips.

"And another thing. I’ve spent the better
part of twenty years researching this, making contact and forming
connections with people like us. And I’ve tried to teach
you
," Mort barely paused before shoving a forkful of
breakfast into his mouth, "how to live some semblance of a normal
life. But
still
, you continue to—"

"Mort."

"What?"

"Did you clean?"

Mort’s eyes nearly popped out of their
sockets. "And
that’s
another thing!" He sprayed bits of
flapjack, some of which landed directly on Brad’s nose and
forehead.

Brad set his mug down and wiped at his
face.

Mort scrambled for a napkin. "Sorry about
that. But this pla—"

Brad flung his hand up, palm out. He took a
deep breath, rose from the table, and moved in a measured pace
toward the bathroom. A moment later, Brad was retching and Mort was
dumping the rest of his pancakes into the trash.

* * *

An hour later, Brad emerged from the bathroom
freshly showered and shaved. He was still hung over, but he no
longer felt like killing Mort. As soon as he stepped through the
doorway, he heard the vacuum running from somewhere in the vicinity
of the living room.

"Jesus Christ," Brad muttered and stomped
through the apartment. He found Mort pushing the Hoover back and
forth between the coffee table and the TV. "Hey!"

No response from Mort. He wasn’t
pushing
the vacuum back and forth as much as he was
carefully maneuvering it around the furniture with the kind of
precision that only comes from someone completely fixated on what
they’re doing.

"Mort!" Brad barked.

Mort continued pushing and pulling the Hoover
around the legs of the coffee table, underneath the coffee table,
then along the edges of the TV stand. The expanse of carpet between
the two pieces of furniture he broke up into a grid, and ran the
vacuum over each column five times before moving on to the
next.

Brad muttered to himself, "I hate it when he
does this," then he walked up behind Mort and poked his
shoulder.

Mort stiffened, skipped sideways a few steps,
and brought his fists up, dropping the vacuum.

"Whoa, whoa, easy," Brad coaxed. He grabbed
hold of Mort to steady him.

"How many times have I told you? Don’t
do
that!" Mort jerked free and bent to right the fallen
Hoover.

"Right. You’re right. Here, let me help." He
took the sweeper’s cord from Mort’s hands. "Hey… thanks for
cleaning up."

Mort snatched the cord back and glared at
Brad, then started rolling it around its hanger. Brad didn’t argue.
The second he saw Mort’s lips moving, he knew the older man was
counting the number of times the cord was wrapped, so he backed off
and gave Mort some space. Brad sat down in his recliner and waited
until the vacuum was put away in the hall closet. "Hey, I’m sorry.
You okay?"

Mort ignored him and took a seat on the
couch. "We need to talk."

Brad raised a finger. "Every time you say
that, I end up getting lectured."

"No." Mort shook his head. "Not a lecture."
He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. "I’m worried
about you."

"I know, I know." Brad waved it off and
slumped back. "I already know what you’re going to say."

"Damn right you do. You know what I’m going
to have for dinner tonight, know what I’ll watch on television. You
can
know
anything you want, Brad, if you’d only try." Mort
sighed. "And that’s why you also know what’s at the end of this
road you’ve put yourself on. Hell, you’re driving it like you stole
it. Are you really going to sit there and pretend you have no idea
what I’m talking about?"

"I was right. Lecture."

Brad stood to leave his own apartment, but
Mort latched onto his arm. "Please,
please
, talk to me. Let
me help you before it’s too late."

Brad stared into Mort’s pleading eyes. He
knew what his friend had been talking about. He wasn’t fooling
himself; Brad knew he was self-destructing. What surprised Brad,
though, was Mort hadn’t yet figured out that he was doing it
intentionally.