by Carl Fuerst
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\nThis story starts with Phil trying to drag his only friend in the world down a dark alley.\u00a0 The walls are narrow and they\u2019re smeared with sticky ash; the rough-faced bricks scrape his shoulders raw with each lunge.\u00a0 Phil\u2019s neck muscles, swollen from too many injections, bulge like a braid of irritated snakes, and, every few seconds, his hands lose their grip, shooting his arms away from his body like snapped circus-tent ropes.\u00a0 Each breath feels like the air is filled with tiny bits of broken glass.<\/p>\n
Phil\u2019s memory begins only fifteen minutes ago, with the kicking down of a rickety warehouse door — and even this is less a certainty than a conclusion hazily implied by the six-inch splinters in the bottoms of his feet.<\/p>\n
A feeding tube juts from his belly, its soft plastic nub caked with orangish grime.\u00a0 He\u2019s wearing a bloody set of women\u2019s pajamas, and there\u2019s a new set of tattoos scabbed across his ribs.<\/p>\n
His only friend is handcuffed and wrapped in a camouflage tarp.\u00a0 Despite her unconscious condition, she\u2019s clutching something secret, terrible, and incalculably valuable in her fists.<\/p>\n
When his body gives out, he falls to his back to stare up at what is either a featureless night sky, or the point where the walls of this black place eventually meet.<\/p>\n
Then, with a burst of energy whose source is strongly suggested by the previously mentioned needle-marks on his neck, he leaps to his feet and renews his efforts with terrific dedication and strength.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the distance between the walls affords him space to whip his body back and forth in wild convulsions, stringing together a series of maneuvers that resembles a jog, and sometimes the walls get so close he feels like he\u2019s wedged in a crack in the center of the earth; these cracks open up into more wideness; another straightaway; another crack as tight as a grave that suddenly erupts into another wide-open shot.<\/p>\n
Just when he\u2019s sure that all his effort has done nothing but trap them in a tunnel as wide as a shoebox, he gives one more tug and they pop out into a clean little cul-de-sac with a streetlamp and an empty garbage can, and a hatchback with a duct-tape bumper, a broken back window, and different colored doors.<\/p>\n
Phil throws her in the back of the car and climbs over her body into the driver\u2019s seat.\u00a0 Once he gets comfortable, he closes his eyes and tries to die.\u00a0 He tries to numb his body piece by piece, starting with his feet and hands, and moving inward towards his heart.<\/p>\n
Then something slaps against his knee.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a plastic keychain in the shape of a long, drooping penis.\u00a0 It says, \u201cDirty David\u2019s Donkey BBQ.\u00a0 Come and Get a Piece of Ass.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s attached to a key, and the key is snugly inserted into the ignition slot.<\/p>\n
He turns the key.\u00a0 The engine whines from the strain of a start.\u00a0 He stomps on the gas and the car bounces off the curb, stumbling gracelessly into the unknown.<\/p>\n
The gauges are broken and the lights don\u2019t work.\u00a0 The upholstery smells of cat and the steering wheel is coated with something slippery and thick.\u00a0 The cup holders are stuffed with Styrofoam cups one-quarter full of a thick black liquid that Phil wishes was coffee but knows is probably tobacco juice.<\/p>\n
The road seems governed by the same agency that built the alley\u2014open stretches that abruptly end in crazy turns, that open up into still more open stretches that end in still more suicidal turns.<\/p>\n
He clicks on the radio and the cabin is flooded with the sonic comfort-food of sports radio filler.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of those call-in shows where everyday Joes vent about the home team, and, as Phil listens to somebody\u2019s argument about a slacking defensive line, he knows that he\u2019d gladly die in five seconds if only he could spend all five of them as one of those Joes; it is suddenly obvious that the best a person could do with his life is spend at least one part of it on a reclining chair, cradling a phone to his ear, and soaking in the fumes of pork-chops from the slow cooker in the kitchen, while his wife and kids play ping pong in the basement.<\/p>\n
But the more he listens, the more he realizes that something is wrong.\u00a0 The caller and host speak in the same fake-sounding accent, and they are both clearly trying their hardest not to laugh.\u00a0 Phil has never heard of the Chickapee Chumslingers, Dalworth Foam, or the New Mercury Ghost Dancers, and the host keeps emphasizing the importance of trance points, zone boners, and zigzag passing.<\/p>\n
He changes the station, but all he gets is fuzz, and when he goes back to the sports station, well that\u2019s fuzz too.\u00a0 He turns the radio off.\u00a0 He looks in the rear view mirror.\u00a0 Black as the inside of your heart.\u00a0 And what he suddenly remembers, and what his mind is suddenly possessed by the memory of, is a family party he attended ten years ago; it was a conformation party for a red-haired cousin who he\u2019d never see again.<\/p>\n
This memory of the party isn\u2019t related to his current situation in any way, and the event, at least as he remembers it now, wasn\u2019t particularly important in his life, but he throws his full weight into reconstructing the scene, because his memory of that party represents hope that his mind will return, and because it\u2019s something to think about besides this endless maze of dark and narrow streets.<\/p>\n
Phil remembers standing barefoot in the center of his Aunt Virginia\u2019s living room, running his toes through her dust-colored shag.\u00a0 He remembers cradling a plate of cannoli close to his chest and resenting his parents for guilting him into taking the three-hour bus ride from college to attend this event.\u00a0 He remembers coveting the Elvis bust on top of the television because of the ironic splendor it would lend to his shitty apartment, and how he felt superior because his family didn\u2019t share his belief that everyone\u2019s time would be better spent in low-rent apartments, wading ankle-deep through dirty clothes, listening to obscure rock music, eating boiled eggs, and burying their noses in Norton Anthologies of such-and-such.<\/p>\n
An uncle touched Phil\u2019s shoulder.\u00a0 \u201cHey dude,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cYou still play cards?\u201d\u00a0 He had a toddler on his shoulders.<\/p>\n
Phil said nope.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re interested, we\u2019ll be in the basement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Phil was positive his uncle was confusing him with another nephew, because there was never a time when he did<\/em> play cards, and he was thinking of saying so as he stood statue-still and watched his uncle walk away.<\/p>\n To avoid another conversation, Phil feigned intense interest in the television, which was recycling coverage of the Berlin Wall\u2019s collapse.<\/p>\n He watched helicopter shots of throbbing crowds.\u00a0 He watched teenagers in Michael Jackson t-shirts, black-market Levis and Government Issue sneakers wave sledgehammers and crowbars and skinny, naked limbs.<\/p>\n Shaky airborne images were interspersed with scenes from a train station, where East Berliners crowded on to westbound trains.\u00a0 Cramped passengers stuck their arms through the windows, waving at throngs of well-wishers on the platform and emptying their wallets of crumpled East German currency, worthless as a dead leaf dropped from a tree but eagerly scooped up by the types of people who, despite all the evidence, couldn\u2019t resist the temptation of heaps of money on the ground.<\/p>\n For ten minutes, Phil had believed he was watching live footage, and he was disgusted with his family for not paying attention to this politically magnificent event.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until he noticed the date-stamp in the corner of the screen that he realized he was watching a rebroadcast from the week before.\u00a0 During the actual happening of the event, Phil was too occupied with writing unreadable poetry and reading untranslated Beowulf and flirting with cute-girls-with-glasses to care.\u00a0 And now, finally presented with the facts, he couldn\u2019t<\/em> care.\u00a0 The Berlin Wall could fall.\u00a0 They could rebuild it a thousand times bigger or they could build another Berlin Wall around the town where he lived.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t matter to him.\u00a0 Phil realized this then.\u00a0 He realized that, despite all the love he had for himself, he did not love the world.<\/p>\n The room had emptied with the exception of his girlfriend, a scrunchy-faced art major in a thrift-store party dress two sizes too small.\u00a0 She stood up from the couch and said, \u201cDon\u2019t over think this.\u201d\u00a0 She kissed him.\u00a0 She said, \u201cYou can be a good person, too.\u201d<\/p>\n Phil stops the car at a fork in the road.\u00a0 The tarp in the back rustles as his only friend in the world climbs into the passenger seat and says, \u201cDon\u2019t over think this.\u00a0 Just go.\u201d<\/p>\n He stomps the gas and they screech to the left and a lane opens up for what looks like forever.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t speak because she doesn\u2019t remind him, in the least bit, of his girlfriend from the conformation party.\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t remind him of anyone<\/em>.\u00a0 In fact, he\u2019s certain of nothing except that he\u2019s never seen this woman before.<\/p>\n He glances at her once.\u00a0 Her head\u2019s been hastily shaved.\u00a0 Her cheek is torn.\u00a0 One eye is gone.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you know what happened?\u201d she asks.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we were in a warehouse.\u00a0 Were we in a warehouse?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA warehouse.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI remember that we went to a movie.\u00a0 We were the only ones in the theater.\u00a0 The movie stopped in the middle.\u00a0 The lights came on.\u00a0 The next thing I remember is waking up in this car.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow long?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWas the movie?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow long ago did it happen?\u201d<\/p>\n She looks out the back.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s someone following us.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a dim pair of headlights way back there.<\/p>\n \u201cI stole this car,\u201d he says, because that seems like a big deal and he thinks she should know.\u00a0 He\u2019s frustrated when she doesn\u2019t react.<\/p>\n \u201cWant to hear a joke?\u201d she asks.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t know who I am,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n She picks up one of the Styrofoam cups and smells its contents.\u00a0 She puts it back down.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember a lake,\u201d she says.\u00a0 \u201cWe were in high school.\u00a0 My dad\u2019s mom was dying, so my parents drove to Michigan to watch it happen.\u00a0 They left me home because I never met her.\u00a0 My dad hated her and made sure I never would.\u00a0 You know families.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo you know who\u2019s chasing us?\u00a0 Do you know who we are?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI know I was home alone that night and you had just gotten caught stealing cigarettes from 7-Eleven and you were grounded.\u00a0 Even from the phone.\u00a0 I had no hope of seeing you and I was a wreck.\u00a0 We were both just about ready to die.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t long after midnight, and I was standing in the driveway when you walked up.\u00a0 Bare feet and all.\u00a0 You must have lived ten miles away.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI left my shoes by the front door, to avoid suspicion, even though I never, until that night, actually left my shoes by the front door.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd we took my Mom\u2019s LeSabre to the lake.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBullfrog Pond.\u201d<\/p>\n Bit by bit they told each other the story of that night.\u00a0 How they drove for an hour to escape the suburbs; they drove out to the forest preserves, to the 150 year old cemetery where time had erased the headstone names and the life-size stone Jesus was missing his nose.<\/p>\n They took a trail into the woods until they found a brackish-scrap of a pond, and they took the trail around it.<\/p>\n They circled the lake in a rainless storm, and she said, \u201cWhat if lightning strikes us?\u201d<\/p>\n He said, \u201cIf I get killed by lightning, that\u2019s how I\u2019m supposed to die.\u201d\u00a0 He was 16; his corny bravado was at full force.<\/p>\n She swooned.<\/p>\n He jumped involuntarily at the sight of something squirming beneath a leaf.\u00a0 It was a baby garter snake, and she picked it up and they let it pass back and forth between their palms, all soft and smooth and new.<\/p>\n They broke up two months later, and though the notes they left in each other\u2019s’ lockers described complicated reasons, it was more because they were bored with each other than anything else.\u00a0 She returned everything he\u2019d given her\u2014Black Sabbath albums and a shark-tooth necklace, bad poetry, his jacket.\u00a0 One year later, searching through the liner of that jacket for a lighter, he found the baby snake from that night, curled onto itself like a tiny, fragile wreath.<\/p>\n They stop their story at a four-way intersection, where black-windowed vehicles idle to the left and right.\u00a0 Another pulls up behind.\u00a0 Phil peels off.\u00a0 All the vehicles follow.<\/p>\n \u201cLook at my hands,\u201d she says, laughing like people do when they discover a puppy sleeping in a laundry basket.\u00a0 \u201cLook at these things.\u201d\u00a0 She holds up a disfigured nest of bone and blood attached to her wrists.\u00a0 \u201cHave you ever seen anything like this?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTry not to think about it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s something in there.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhere?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn my hands.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow do you know?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what they wanted.\u00a0 But I grabbed it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTry not to think about it, \u201c he repeats, but she\u2019s already working at it with what\u2019s left of her teeth, and he\u2019s quickly distracted by a maze of turns that give him hopes of losing whoever is in pursuit.<\/p>\n Those straightaways seem harder to find the farther he goes and the more desperate he gets.\u00a0 Turns reveal more turns, options yield identical options, paths yield onto an exponential increase of more possible paths, and no matter how long he waits to decide, the vehicles behind react as if their drivers knew his decision long ago.<\/p>\n \u201cWake up,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cNot sleeping,\u201d she says.\u00a0 \u201cI think I can almost weasel this thing out of there.\u201d\u00a0 She\u2019s still gnawing at her hands.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve definitely got the corner of something.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGet ready to run,\u201d he says.\u00a0 \u201cWe should run in separate directions.\u00a0 They\u2019ll probably just chase both of us but you never know.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHave you seen my feet?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRight.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou go.\u00a0 I\u2019ll chill here.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot my style.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re sweet.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd we\u2019re fucked,\u201d he says as he slows the car to a stop at a dead end.\u00a0 \u201cFucked.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou can help me with this,\u201d she says.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve almost got it.\u00a0 Curiosity is killing<\/em> me.\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s worked the better part of an envelope from the crippled grip of what used to be her hands.\u00a0 Phil plucks it free and throws it onto her lap.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re fucked,\u201d he says.\u00a0 \u201cAnd I have no idea who you are.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s open it.\u201d<\/p>\n A van slows to a stop behind them.\u00a0 Doors slide open.\u00a0 Boots crack against gravel.\u00a0 Husky voices mumble in the same fake-sounding accent from the sports talk radio station he\u2019d been listening to before.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019re onto something here,\u201d she says, looking down at the envelope.\u00a0 \u201cI think we\u2019re on the verge of a breakthrough.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we know each other.\u00a0 I think we\u2019re making this up,\u201d he says.\u00a0 \u201cOut of desperation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOpen the fucking envelope.\u201d<\/p>\n The car is surrounded by hulking figures that smell of burning leaves and vapor rub.\u00a0 Phil rips the envelope open.\u00a0 They break the windshield out.\u00a0 A pinky-length, dried up, and flattened out snake falls from the envelope into Phil\u2019s palm, curled onto itself like a fragile wreath, and as he holds it up and shows it to her, the shadows gathered around them might as well be throngs of waving well-wishers, eagerly waiting to scoop up piles of crumpled money as it flits soundlessly on the floor, as worthless as a dead leaf dropped from a tree. by Carl Fuerst This story starts with Phil trying to drag his only friend in the world down a dark alley.\u00a0 The walls are narrow and they\u2019re smeared with sticky ash; the rough-faced bricks scrape his shoulders raw with each … Continue reading
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\nCARL FUERST<\/strong>‘s fiction has appeared in Farmhouse Magazine, Dark Sky Review, Our Stories, and more. He teaches college writing and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"