Lightning carved a name into the black night sky, then
erased it before his eyes could focus. Rain against the glass patio doors
became a fist, an urgent wall of water pounding and boiling just beyond
his nose, fighting to reach him with its baptismal fury. Danny Tripp began
to count; the number of seconds times seven told you how many miles...
Thunder struck behind him, like a door banging open.
"Would you guys please keep it down in there? I'm trying
to sleep!"
Negative vibes. Guilt.
In fast motion Jeff shot off the couch and disappeared
from the room, following the voice.
Danny spun away from the night. "Hey, man, wait..." But
it was too late. Jeff was gone.
Ghostly voices drifted into the room to hang before him
like shimmering vapor. Apologies and promises, kissing and snuggling hovered
there briefly, then sank into the carpet with a sigh.
Glowing orange clouds of togetherness rolled in from
the hallway, but they would not approach him. Not this one, they sang in
soft chorus, Evil rejecter of life! Alone... Alone... Alone... The clouds
skittered off and vanished through the wall.
Whisper, whisper, cuddle cuddle... Unintelligible words
drifted in from the hallway.
You're a loser, Danny Tripp translated to himself. You're
a loser and your friend Danny Tripp is an evil rejecter of life. The kind
of filth that would abandon his girl when she needed him most. Would you
do that? No, Honey, never. Only Danny Tripp. He deserves to be alone. He
deserves to be squashed like the miserable crawling insect that he is...
The transformation began. Danny shrieked as the backs
of his hands split and peeled away. Long, jointed tendrils sprang out of
his wrists. A fine network of sensitive dark hairs glistened wetly in the
candlelight.
Black clouds of accusation rose up before him, chanting
Insect... Insect... Squash him like an insect...
He fought his way to the couch. The split in his hands
moved up both arms, joined at the neck, then traced a wide gash down the
center of his chest.
Help! he tried to shout, but the sound he made was Click
click click! Chkata! Chkata!
The black clouds laughed and their laughter made the
gash tear a zipper of fire down his legs. The whole of his skin fell away
in two dead, curving flakes; a shiny new skin pushed through - a carapace,
hard, chitinous, insectoid, black like the night. He folded his delicate
new legs beneath him and watched a thousand swirling facets blend as the
clouds before him shifted and solidified into Jeff and the girl.
They had stopped laughing.
"You okay, man?"
Soothing globs of blue light poured from Jeff's mouth
as he spoke. The globs of light busied themselves about the room, twisting
reality gradually back to its old, familiar shape. The girl mutely studied
a worn spot in the carpet, her face red.
"What!" Danny demanded. "Why are you staring at me?"
"Jeez, Danny, you're naked."
Danny Tripp looked down at himself all folded up on the
couch - long, pink arms, hairy legs, big feet: five toes on each. He blushed
and dropped his hands over his lap.
"You're right," he said. "How about that?"
Jeff's girlfriend laughed, and first Jeff and then Danny
joined in.
"Man, you are messed up," Jeff said.
"Yep," Danny agreed. He let out a long, pain-filled sigh.
"I am, indeed, messed up."
A peel of thunder shook the patio doors beside them,
sending the girl into new fits of chittering laughter. This time, Danny
didn't join in.
* * *
He almost came through, didn't he?" Light from the small
campfire made the girl's black hair grow a sullen, angry red. She pulled
her knees tight under her chin.
"Almost," the Companion said across the fire.
"But where did all that weird stuff come from?" she asked.
"Why an insect? I didn't do that."
The Companion shrugged. "Maybe you did. You still feel
hostility."
The girl said nothing. Thunder still rumbled faint circles
around the horizon.
"He doesn't want to remember, you know. He's built a
wall of self-pity that..."
"Him him him!" The girl shot to her feet and spun away
from the fire. The distant thunder rolled closer, simmered for a moment
above them, then gradually retreated. It hung stubbornly in the distance,
refusing to vanish altogether.
"Why do you wish to call him here if you haven't yet
forgiven? It's the first rule. You know that."
"I miss him," she answered softly. The air around them
hung suddenly heavy with silence. The fire flared skyward, filling the
gap between them with a soothing crackle of sparks. "And I have forgiven.
I just haven't forgotten."
The fire fell. A cold wind lifted leaves into spirals
at her feet.
"I can never forget."
* * *
"She says all we ever do is get high." Jeff laughed, a
short, guttural burst, then stared down again into his folded hands. "She
says you're a bad influence."
"She's right." Danny folded his own hands behind his
back and moved to stand before the glass patio doors. Cars moved in and
out of the convenience store lot across the street without pattern or plan.
A ratty brown dog begged each exiting customer for scraps, accepting hot
dog buns and doughnut holes with sycophantic glee, then returning after
each round to its post beside the trash can. The dog suddenly turned its
head to stare in Danny's direction as if aware of his presence. Danny laughed.
"I'm just a stray, man. A mangy stray. Put me out on the street where I
belong."
"It's not like that and you know it." Anger and frustration
blended in Jeff's voice, twisting it into a complaining squeak. "But dammit,
Danny, she lives here, too. She pays half the rent. She..."
... lays down, Danny almost finished for him - but as
Jeff was speaking, across the street, a man in a white uniform had put
a paper plate on the concrete in front of the dog and, when the dog's head
was down, he'd slipped a chain around its neck. Now they were walking together
toward a white van with square, mesh-screened windows cut into the sides.
The dog's tail was wagging frantically. It leaped into the van as soon
as the door opened.
Run! Danny thought to the dog, get out of there now...
Jeff was suddenly standing at his side. "That's too bad.
I liked that dog." His voice dropped to a near-whisper that somehow retained
its complaining edge. "Look, Danny, I've got a life here. I work hard..."
The dog had, at first, reminded Danny of himself, sitting
there all alone, lonely but uncompromising. But in its neediness, its dependence
on handouts and cheap grace for survival, its joyous leap toward certain
death it had, in the end, made him think of Donna. The two thoughts blended
for an instant and he felt suddenly driven to both run for his life, his
freedom, and to lay down and die peacefully, accept the chain and get it
over with - both, somehow, at once, either action somehow too strenuous
to bother with...
He turned away from the bright daylight and moved to
the couch. He sat, cupped his face in his hands, and drew a slow breath.
"Jeff, do you believe in Jesus?"
"Oh, shit." Jeff pushed away from the glass doors like
a swimmer pushing off at the turn. "No, Danny, I do not. Not as a person,
not as a god, not as some mythical hero, nada." His words were quick, staccato,
angry. His hands were in motion, waving as he spoke, stabbing the air around
him. "And in spite of this fact, I've spent the last three nights toasting
brain cells to help you talk to this nada. And because of that fact, I'm
in danger of losing my woman, who means more to be, by the way, than you
do. And in spite of that fact, you want to sit here on my couch and cry
to me that somehow your life is unfair because Jesus can't decide if he
loves you or hates you for getting your girlfriend pregnant over a year
ago. That's a year, Danny. Get over it." Jeff's hands fell to his sides,
spent. He turned back to stare out into the street. "Find another gig,
man. I'll help if I can. But you've got to clear out of here."
Danny sat in silence, neither arguing nor making any
move to leave. He stared down into his hands, counting seconds... After
a while, Jeff dropped to the floor and lit a cigarette. He passed it to
Danny, then lit another for himself. "What do you want, man?"
"I want to talk to him." Danny took a long drag, swallowed
a choke, then let the cigarette dangle from his fingertips to burn slowly
out, unused. It reminded him of his life. He focused on the cigarette's
hot tip, its slow, backward crawl. "Them," he went on. "I've got two Jesuses
hounding my ass. One wants to save me, the other wants me to roast in Hell.
You say they're both bullshit. Me, I'm just tired."
"Forget that shit, Danny. Donna was a grownup. She made
her own choices."
Danny winced at the name, but continued to stare down
into the cigarette's glowing cherry. For a moment it had been a world unto
itself, and he'd been inside it, burning but not being consumed.
"I didn't say otherwise." He took another drag, re-stoking
the tiny furnace, then coughed loudly. He crushed out the cigarette. "But
explain the dreams, then. I was in rehab for eight months, Jeff. Eight
months of zero contact with the outside world. Not even TV..."
"I'd see Jesus, too, after that. Imagine no TV..."
"Explain how I knew about the abortion, about Donna flipping
out from it, dosing..."
"Donna's mom told you. You called her from here."
"She confirmed what I already knew. The Accuser - that's
the mean Jesus - told me first in the dream, or I never would have called
her mom. They both said it was my fault..."
"Mom and Jesus. What a pair."
They sat in silence, and Danny found himself reaching
for another cigarette. He accepted the pack, fiddled with it a moment,
then handed it back without taking one.
"Then there's the Companion," he said.
"The nice Jesus."
"Right. He said Donna still loves me. He said she wants
to help me."
Jeff crushed out his cigarette, swiveled back to face
the glass doors, pulled one back; from somewhere a cross breeze began to
push the cloud of accumulated smoke from the room. Danny felt the breeze
at his back as well, pushing him to follow the smoke out, to leave before
the doors closed, before his wagging tail vanished forever behind them...
"Face facts, Daniel. Donna's a corpse. She wants nothing
for you or me or anybody else. She's a stone, man. It's over for her..."
"Don't be an asshole."
"You make me be an asshole. Four months, man. When they
let you out, from the goodness of my heart I said, sure, Danny stay a couple
days with me. A week maybe. It's been four months, buddy. Take it on the
road."
"A few more days, Jeff, please. I need your help. I gotta
break through, talk to Jesus..."
"So pray. Go to church. Sue's due back in ten minutes,
and you can't be here. You're on your own."
* * *
Danny forced open his eyes and focused on the clock; the
glowing red numbers read 3:29 AM. It had been 45 minutes since he'd taken
the third gram, and still nothing unusual was happening, no bizarre visuals,
no mythical voices or peculiar sounds. He only felt mildly stoned.
What a waste, he thought, burned again... it reminded
him of his life.
A movement in the corner, and his eyes stuck open. Something
was there, in the darkness. Or rather, something that should have been
there was rapidly receding. The ratty carpet, its burn holes and stains
no longer holding it down, was rolling up like a scroll, a sardine can
bending to an invisible key...
The ocean of blackness where the floor should have been
swallowed a chair, and Danny jumped off the couch.
Shit! Twenty dollars I paid for this room... Why me?
Beyond standing, he could think of nothing to do about
the black pit consuming the room around him and headed his way, so he closed
his eyes and stood, arms limp at his sides, counting seconds:
One... Somebody owes me, big time...
Two... I'm sorry, Donna, I ...
Three... Please, Jesus, don't kill me...
The carpet hit his ankles and the blackness took him...
"Hello, Danny," came a soft, chorus-like voice. "We've
been waiting for you."
"We?" Danny opened his eyes. He was standing on a grassy
hill, surrounded at a distance by a circle of towering green pines. Their
clean scent brushed his nose like an electric current, as the Companion
appeared beside him, white robes fluttering in the breeze like great, angelic
wings. There was no one else in sight.
"We?" Danny said again, but still no one else appeared.
He watched a Monarch butterfly on a nearby bush slowly fan its wings in
the warm sunlight. He sighed. "Am I dead?" Is it over?"
The Companion laughed. "Not yet, Danny. Patience."
Danny shivered. He couldn't shake the impression that
they weren't alone on the hill. Though silent, the Compan-ion's lips still
moved, his facial expressions changed, as though, even in that moment,
he was responding to a thousand invisible questioners, giving careful answers
to each in turn. He seemed to be silently directing the little world around
them, maintaining its balance, as though he were somehow its living center.
As if every plant, every creature depended on his nurturing attention,
thrived on his patient care...
The Companion was suddenly sitting cross-legged among
the tiny flowers that covered the hill like a purple carpet. His hands
moved gently over the ground beside him, stroking it as if greeting a familiar
animal. The grass quivered at his touch.
Danny shivered again, too. The back of his neck was suddenly
warm, as if a friendly hand rested there, comforting him, assuring him
that he, too, was a part of this world, that he, too, could believe, could
finally escape...
He dropped to the grass beside the Companion. "Okay.
What do I do now?"
"Donna wants you to join her. Here."
"Where, exactly, is here?"
The Companion smiled broadly. He stood, swiped dust from
the seat of his worn denim overalls, patted the tool belt that dangled
from his waist. He offered his hand.
"This is my workshop," he said. "There is work to be
done. Join us."
Us... Danny thought. We. He accepted the hand up.
"I'm a good worker," he said as the hill began to shimmer
and fade around him. "Thanks."
"You're welcome, Danny," the Companion answered. "Very
welcome."
When Danny had gone, the Companion stood alone on the
hill. The butterfly that had been sunning itself grew, shifted, and became
Donna. She moved to his side.
"Does he understand?"
"Do you?" It was suddenly night, and the Companion drew
his wide-brimmed hat down over his one good eye. He pulled his cloak tight
around him. "We've played our last sure card. The rest is up to him. If
he's going to fall, he'll fall now."
"Will he survive?"
The Companion laughed. "Day follows night, night follows
day, to cling to either is death, the deny their unity is never to have
lived..." He frowned, then looked away. He shrugged. "You know the rules
as well as I do. He'll make it if he can remember. If he embraces the whole.
Anything less..."
The girl shivered. "He'll be back."
"I hope you're right. We've softened things up for him,
but he's got to walk through now. He's got to find his own way back. Wish
him strength. For a moment the Companion's robes fluttered again, brilliant
white, filling the air around him. Then they were gone. A gnarled, wooden
cane appeared from under his long coat; he arched slowly forward, letting
the cane take his weight. "But it's out of our hands," he said, his voice
a dry whisper, crackling leaves. "He's on his own now."
A cold wind bent the grass around them. They turned their
backs to it and started down the path.
* * *
A better world... A better world... For I have seen a
better world... It had become a song, a mantra, a rhythm that carried him,
smiling and whistling, past the motel front desk, out onto the street without
paying, on down the block to blend with the crowd of working drones shuffling
bleary-eyed toward one more day in Hell...
Poor bastards! Danny thought. Wake up! I know where I'm
going, do you? He led a group of pedestrians in crossing against a light.
Horns blared. Danny smiled and waved.
A better world... A better world...
Jeff answered the door on the third knock. He blinked
away the bright sunlight, stared a moment into Danny's face, then moved
to push the door closed again.
"Jeff, listen..."
"No."
Danny rushed forward, put a hand in the door. "I broke
through, man! I talked to him!"
"Good. See you later..."
Danny caught the door with his foot. He pressed his face
into the narrow gap.
"That's all right, Jeff. I forgive you, man."
The tension on the door stopped cold. Then the sound
of a throat clearing, a deep rumble like distant thunder.
"You forgive me? That's big of you, Danny. Thanks..."
The door gave without resistance now, and Danny pushed
on into the dimly lit room. He nudged the door closed behind him. "Where's
your lights, man?" Silence. "Jeff?"
"You forgot something, old buddy." Jeff appeared from
the hallway, carrying a cardboard shoe box. He sat on the couch and placed
the box on the coffee table before him. "Come see what Sue found, right
before she left me forever."
Danny crossed the room and looked down into the little
box. Four plastic baggies filled with white powder nestled beside a stack
of syringes, a rubber strap.
"If you're not using it, you're selling it," Jeff was
saying. "That's what Sue figured. I showed her my arms - no tracks, not
even a pimple. She's seen my empty wallet. It must be Danny's, I told her.
Only he could be so..."
"It's not mine." Danny looked again into the box, then
to Jeff's accusing eyes. He thought of the door, now closed behind him.
The back of his neck grew warm.
"Only Danny could be so stupid, I told her. You've been
covering for his ass for four months, she says. You're in it with him..."
"That shit's not mine, Jeff. You know that." What's wrong
with this picture? Danny let his eyes drift slowly around the room. The
couch, the stereo, the drapes now closed across the glass patio doors...
It was all as it had always been. But it was also suddenly different. The
walls were not walls, Jeff was not Jeff...
"He's gone, I told her. I threw his ass out. He'll be
back, she says..."
The room was a backdrop, a two-dimensional front. Behind
it, Danny sensed motion, a rolling blackness sweeping inexorably toward
him...
"... Like he came back for Donna. Like he got her hooked
on that shit when all she asked for was a little help, a little love. He
killed her, he killed her baby, and he ain't gonna kill me..."
The rolling darkness hit him like a fist, and Danny felt
his knees buckling, watched the floor rushing up to meet him. The pain
was a thunder clap echoing through his body, pushing at his skin from the
inside...
"Why'd you do it, Danny? You knew she was pregnant. She
needed you, man..."
"I didn't even know... I was in rehab... locked up..."
"Don't lie to us, Danny. Stop lying to yourself. Why'd
you agree to rehab, anyway?"
The backs of his hands split and peeled away. It was
happening again. "I was messed up..."
"Because you killed her, Danny. You killed her because
she loved you and wanted to have your baby. You couldn't stand that, could
you? Being tied to her forever, having to give instead of taking, taking,
taking... See yourself for what you are, Danny! A nothing! A bug! A miserable
crawling insect!"
"No..."
Jeff laughed and his laughter ripped a burning seam the
length of Danny's body. His chest split wide, peeled back in two dead,
curving flakes. Danny pushed through and blinked up as a thousand facets
came swirling into his vision - Jeff... Jesus... a dog on a chain... A
Monarch butterfly slowly fanning its wings in warm sunlight...
He picked the butterfly and dragged himself frantically
toward it. His back legs seemed paralyzed, useless, frozen to the ground.
He clutched the grass around him with his front legs and pulled. Purple
flowers tore free in his pinchers.
Above him, the butterfly lifted from its perch. Airborne,
it began to shift and change. It became Donna.
Help me, Donna, please...
"Evil rejecter of life!" Jeff's voice rumbled circles
around the horizon. Black clouds rolled in to block the sun.
Donna turned away, but remained visible at the top of
the hill, a silhouette dark as the sky. Danny dug his middle pair of legs
into the dirt and managed to roll his wide body forward. He rested, dug
in, moved forward another foot. A sudden wind flattened the grass around
him.
"I accuse you of intentional evil!" the sky announced.
"I find you guilty! The sentence is death!"
The black clouds opened and rain pounded the hill with
an angry fist. Water rolled and boiled on Danny's back, pushing him deep
into the softening ground. Each drop burned him, a hot needle, a name carved
into his flesh, spelling darkness, a tiny room, flickering candle-light...
"Just relax. You won't even feel it."
"That's not what I want."
"It's what you need. Trust me?"
Silence. "I'm pregnant."
"I know."
"With your baby."
"I know."
"Ow!"
"Just relax. It'll hit you in a minute. You're gonna
love this."
"I love you, Danny. Don't..."
"Trust me."
Then sirens... hospitals... rain like a hammer, a mouthful
of mud... The girl at the top of the hill was facing him now. Danny released
his grip on the grass and let the wet earth take him. The hot needles still
burned his back, and he willed them to burn hotter, to finish the job.
Please, Donna, forgive me, I'm sorry, oh Jesus, let me
die now, I did it, I did it, I...
Remember. Irrevocably. The name was now burned forever
into his flesh, his soft human flesh; it moved up to his lips and he spoke
it to the dirt.
Guilt. Regret. Sorrow. Page after page, layer after layer
he read the name to the soft ground, spit its fire into the Earth, let
it flow out of him like lava, confession, like something folded in on itself
springing full into black shape, like formlessness naming itself, becoming...
I am guilt... I am regret... I am sorrow...I am...
Fire. I am the darkness the fire consumes. I am the killer
and the killed. Life and life's taker. Day and night, joined - sad irrevocable
oneness...
The air hung suddenly heavy with silence. The rain was
gone. Warm sunlight turned the slop around him to dry sand, and Danny pushed
himself easily up and out of it - first his round head, then his pink,
fleshy arms, his thin, suddenly functional legs. Danny swiped at the dust
caked thick on his worn denim overalls, then moved to stand beside Donna
at the top of the hill.
"Do you understand?"
Danny nodded. "Day follows night. When you let it." He
took her hand and pulled her gently to him. "I won't forget. Thank you."
A warm breeze lifted Danny's glowing robes to flutter
a moment around them like great, angelic wings. He pulled his wide-brimmed
hat down over his one good eye.
"You're welcome, Danny. Very welcome."
They turned their faces to the wind and started, together,
down the path.