A Life On Fire (6 page)

   His stomach was a macabre road map of red lines crisscrossing each other, intersecting and continuing from chest to stomach. None of them looked serious enough to merit medical attention, but they still burned from the acid-saliva, and Gerald had a feeling they wouldn’t be healing anytime soon.

Standing in the shower again, Gerald tried in vain to wash the burning sensation away from his body. Soap and hot water had no effect at all on the wounds, though cold water proved to dull the burn a little. After standing in the cold water as long as he could, he closed the tap and stepped from the shower. He stood on the mat, dripping dry before reaching for a towel. The cold water reminded him of a time he and Tracy had been showering together, deeply intimate with one another, totally oblivious to anything aside from themselves when the hot water had suddenly died completely. The temperature dropped from well over a hundred degrees to around fifty, ending their activities prematurely.

   They’d both screamed, and jumped from the shower, Gerald laughing. Tracy had blamed the whole thing on herself, some nonsense about how she should have checked something, or maybe she’d forgotten to pay the gas bill. Gerald repeatedly assured her the heater had just fucked up and she had no reason to apologize for anything. He’d eventually calmed her down and they made up by continuing their activity from the shower. He leaned back against the counter and closed his eyes, thinking about leaning in this exact same spot, Tracy dropping to her knees and taking him into her mouth, swallowing him completely.

   Lost in the moment, he felt a stirring as he began to get hard at the memory. He gripped himself, remembering more and more of that day. His hand slid back and forth on his erection, remembering her hot wet mouth going up and down on him, her tongue licking and swirling. In sync with the memory, his body tensed just as he had that day, and he exploded in orgasm. Tremors of ecstasy rocked his body as he spasmed, again and again, feeling her greedy mouth sucking him dry. Breathing hard, he recovered and opened his eyes. Instead of his wife’s beautiful face he saw only his hand, covered in semen. Any sense of pleasure was immediately gone, replaced by sorrow and guilt for thinking of her like that. He washed his hands and cleaned up the mess, tossed the towel into the hamper and left the bathroom.

Chapter 13

Gerald belched, threw the empty can across the yard, and opened another.
This is fucked
, he thought. Even drunk out of his mind, he knew he couldn’t go on like this much longer. He hadn’t been to work in several days, the drinking was way out of control, and he couldn’t even begin to consider all the stuff with the alligator-faces, getting tied up in the forest, the alternate reality, Mr. Holman—

   Oh, fuck, Mr. Holman.

   Gerald had forgotten about the poor guy getting hit by the truck. ‘Hit’ wasn’t really the word for it. More like detonated. What was the deal with that? Gerald had never seen anyone get hit by a car before, but he was pretty sure they didn’t usually explode. Hell, plenty of people lived, even walked away from getting hit by a car. There hadn’t even been any recognizable remains left of the man. Maybe the guys in the truck had been going faster than it appeared. Gerald shook his head and downed the rest of his beer.

   Coughing, he thought about how he hadn’t had a cigarette in quite awhile. He patted his pockets but came up empty. Must have left them in the car, he thought. He stood up and remembered his car was wrecked in a ditch.

   “Fuck,” he yelled, throwing a full can of beer at his garage door. It hit the door, bounced off, hit a rock, and sat in the driveway, spewing frothy liquid. “Fuck,” he said again.

   He walked to the garage, opened the door, and looked for his bicycle. He knew he was too drunk to drive, but he couldn’t leave the car sitting there. Given the events between now and when he’d left the car, he couldn’t even remember why he’d left it. At the very least, he’d be able to get a cigarette.

   Getting the bike out required moving half the junk in the garage to different spaces. Once unearthed, he discovered not one but both of the tires were flat. He didn’t even say fuck this time.

   What he did say was “To hell with it,” and decided to call someone. On his way to find the phone, he saw his pistol case opened on the table and, more importantly, empty. He looked out the back window, saw all the shot-up beer cans in the back yard, and remembered dropping the gun out past the field. Leaving a wrecked car in a ditch for a day or two was one thing, but leaving a pistol, one that he thought was probably loaded, was a whole other class of stupid. Some of the neighbors had kids and, for all he knew, they could have already found it and be trying to shoot apples off each other’s heads.

   “Fuck,” Gerald said for the hundredth time of the day, and headed out the back door to find the gun.

Stepping off the back porch, Gerald tripped down the steps and almost went ass over tea kettle, landing flat on his face. He looked up to see Mr. Holman standing nine or ten feet away, trying desperately not to laugh.

   “What the fuck is so funny?” Gerald said.

   “You wouldn’t get it.” Mr. Holman polished his glasses and chuckled.

   “Well, at least you have some clothes on this time. What the hell are you doing at my house?”

   “Your house?” Mr. Holman said, an exaggerated look of bewilderment on his face.

   “Yeah, my house—” Gerald said, stopping abruptly as he turned and saw that his house was no longer there. He realized he was completely sober, as well.

   “What the fuck is going on here? I’ve been drinking all damn day. I was drunk as hell, stumbled into the house, came out to look for the gun, tripped over you, and now I’m straight edge sober and my house is gone.” Gerald looked around blankly and threw his hands up. “Why am I even questioning this shit any more?”

   “That, my friend, is probably the smartest question you’ve asked yourself yet.”

   “Oh yeah, right . . . not about where, all that existential bullshit,” Gerald said, dropping to the ground. He brought his knees up to his chest before lying down as if to do a sit-up. Instead, he stared at the sky, for the first time noticing that while it was blue like “his” sky, it was the wrong blue. It was more of a 1950s Daphne blue, like some old hot rod Archie and Veronica might cruise around in. His thoughts drifted in and around the sky’s color, whether he’d still have a job, if he’d ever quit lapsing into this fucked up alternate world, whether Archie wound up with Betty or Veronica, and whether he’d fucked either of them in that hot rod, with Jughead probably watching and jerking off in the front seat—

   Gerald shook his head. “I really need to quit drinking and get some real sleep.”

   Mr. Holman raised his eyebrow again, then nodded in agreement. “Substance abuse plus lack of sleep tends to be taxing on one’s body.”

   Gerald responded by laughing and shaking his head again. “No shit,” he said. He sat back up, hugging his knees to himself. “So I’m overthinking this whole thing, right?”

   Mr. Holman nodded.

   “My wife is dead. She’s been on my mind more than usual lately. Is that and this whole mess a coincidence?”

   “Keep her in your thoughts. She’ll help you now more than she ever could before.”

   “Before what? Before she died?”

   “Your world was not meant to house one such as her.”

   “One such as her . . . What does that mean? And what does ‘your world’ mean? I really am in a different reality, aren’t I? Or am I just going crazy?”

   “It’s not about crazy.” Mr. Holman straightened his glasses.

   “I have no idea what the hell that means, but I’m not even trying to figure it out. No more overthinking from me. But what about Tracy? Why did I see her in the forest that night, with all those fucking things assaulting her? What does she have to do with this?”

   “Perhaps you’ll get to ask her yourself.”

   “I already have, haven’t I? I talked to her the other day—” The memory of talking to Tracy after the car wreck flooded back to Gerald. “How many times have I been to this reality? This place? I feel like whenever I’m here, I can’t remember my world, but when I’m there, I can’t remember here.”

   “It sounds to me like you’re overthinking it again,” Mr. Holman said, sounding like Ward Cleaver patronizing Wally and the Beaver.

   Gerald rolled his eyes, but pressed on. “Fuck that. Did I talk to Tracy?”

   “Yes.”

   “Can I see her whenever I want here?”

   “Not yet.”

   Gerald had expected a yes or no. “Not yet?”

   Mr. Holman shook his head slowly back and forth, stone faced.

   Gerald considered this for a moment. He realized getting answers from Mr. Holman wasn’t impossible, but took some finesse. He considered the wording of his question carefully. Rather than being confrontational, he chose to stay positive. “When can I?”

   “She told you, you have a choice.” Mr. Holman stood up, looking as if he was finished with the conversation and would soon be moving on.

   Gerald did not respond, but watched him with curious respect in his eyes. “I miss her,” he said, more at Mr. Holman than to him.

   Mr. Holman nodded again, this time closing his eyes and looking as if he genuinely understood.

   “Gerald,” Mr. Holman said, “you’re not in control here. Do not behave as if you are.”

   Before Gerald could respond, Mr. Holman turned and ran into the field, disappearing past the fence that hadn’t been there thirty seconds prior. Gerald turned around again and saw his house immediately behind him. He looked to the sky and saw that it had faded to its customary powdery pastel blue, streaked with clouds. No idea what to make of the encounter with Mr. Holman, or his parting words, he continued out to the field to retrieve his pistol.

Gerald walked back and forth between the woods and the field for nearly two hours before he found the pistol, which turned out to be loaded, just as he’d thought. He took out the magazine, wanting to give it a thorough cleaning before it was fired again. It hadn’t rained in the last several days, but sitting out in the grass and dirt certainly hadn’t been good on it.

   He turned to walk home, but thought it was worth looking into the woods to see if there was any sign of the fire. He doubted he’d find anything, but had more courage to check with the daylight.

   Three more hours of searching through the woods turned up nothing, which convinced Gerald that either the events at the fire had for sure taken place in the other reality, or that he was for sure bat shit crazy.

   
It’s not about crazy
, he said, quoting Mr. Holman. He smiled, surprising himself when he realized he was looking forward to seeing Mr. Holman again. Maybe he’d try to be a little nicer and more civil to the guy next time. Or maybe he’d luck out, wake up in bed, find that the last three days hadn’t gone by, and there wouldn’t be a next time. Still, finding out that he’d communicated with Tracy in the other reality made it less unappealing. He wasn’t sure what they’d talked about, or even if he’d really talked to her, but anything was better than nothing.

   The back door to the house opened and Gerald stepped through. Immediately, he could tell something was wrong. There were no messes, no papers strewn about, nothing seemingly out of place, but he knew someone had been here. He slipped the pistol from his waistband and reloaded it as quietly as he could, deciding he’d rather chance firing a dirty gun than happen upon an intruder without it. A noise came from the bedroom, and Gerald sprinted down the hall. He burst through the doorway in time to see a shadow slip through the open window, curtains billowing. Gerald ran to the window and looked out but saw nothing. How could he have seen the thing, whatever it had been, slip out, but not see it running away?

   “Because it wasn’t really there,” he said. Not in any real sense, anyway.

Gerald called the office to see if they’d opened back up yet. There was no answer, even after the phone rang eight times. He let it ring another ten times and hung up. He thought about calling Matilda at home, to see if she knew what was going on, but couldn’t find her number in his phone.

   “You’ve known her how long and don’t have her phone number?” he said to himself. Many things were becoming evident to him, many of which he didn’t like, such as his apparent habit of taking those around him for granted. He’d have to talk to some of his friends and see if . . . and it struck him that he didn’t really have any friends.

   When Tracy was still alive, they’d had lots of close friends, but since she’d died, he’d cut himself off from nearly everyone.
All except the idiots at work
, he thought.

   Had he cut himself off purposefully? No, of course not. Looking back, he wasn’t even aware of the point at which he’d ceased to have any real friends, but it didn’t really matter, did it? The end result was the same, and whether it had been the day after her funeral or six months down the line, here he was, standing in the kitchen with no one to whom he could turn.

   No one?

   Well, that wasn’t completely true.

   Gerald smiled and chuckled through his nose as he thought about Wilson. Jesus, how long had it been since he’d talked to the guy? Tracy had never gotten along with Wilson so, as such friendships often do, theirs had faded considerably as she’d taken a larger role in Gerald’s life. Wilson’s number wasn’t even in this cell phone, even though Gerald had had it for nearly two years.

   Two years. A long time to go without speaking to the closest friend he’d ever had. They had grown up together, from the time they were eight years old. During school, they’d alternated spending the weekends at each other’s houses, spent countless hours cruising once they’d obtained driver’s licenses, drank their first beers together . . . not too different from many young American males. However, their story had come to an end without Gerald even realizing it.