Revelations II

Prolog:

…God way up in heaven, for whatever it was worth

Thought he’d have a big ole party,

Thought he’d call it planet Earth…

The night was dark, and this far away from the lots, you could see every star. The girl was cuddled in a huge picnic blanket with the word “Thistle” printed in bold black across it. Her head rested on her hands, crossed under it. She spoke:

The kid... Lomba?

The man lying next to her took a long time getting back:

OK…

OK?

She sounded angrier than either of them would’ve liked.

Yeah. Ok. What else?

They found them. Hart told me. In the desert, two days wrapped in duct tape and stoned to forever. What the fuck?

The man said nothing. Eventually the girl went again:

I’m leaving. Back to New York.

The man laughed back:

Lemme guess: You “do believe you had enough”?

The girl said nothing. At some point, they both fell asleep. The next day, the man drove the girl to an airport, and hugged her tightly before putting her on a plane. She turned in the jet way for one last glance, but he’d already turned to join the throngs of family leaving the gate.

Revelations II

First, there is this place where we are, where I am. The girl is dead. She’d come in with me, but her brain had stopped working hours before that. An ER doctor said some stoic sounding words over her body, and then ducked out, off to inform the girl’s family. That was fine. That was the way it was supposed to go.

Now I am here, in the hospital, and the girl I came in with his dead. A guy tried to kill us both with poison. He succeeded, is still succeeding. I can feel the poison, sitting like a coating of slime over the structures of my body. It’s an awful sensation, but also amazing, because the poison – even as it’s killing me – is teaching me.

I’m in a bed. The bed is made of different kinds of steel and aluminum. Its mattress is made from cotton, and synthetic poly-fibers that resemble cotton. My name is (was) Chris Lomba. The sheets – colored white and smelling clean – are cool and comfortable. I’ve got a pillow under my head and smaller one under my back. The nurse changes them every 40 minutes to avoid something called “bedsore”. I have a tube connected to my arm by a permanent intravenous needle. The tube brings salty water, and vitamins. Because I am asleep, I cannot eat, and so this arrangement “eats” for me. Two contacts are taped to my chest, and another two too my lower stomach. If I move wrong, I can feel the tiny strands of hair, stretching and breaking at the contact’s sticky borders. There is noise. There is the constant chatter of people who I cannot see, shot through with medical terms, pronunciations and pronunciation corrections. Sometimes I hear crying. Sometimes I hear laughter. The girl I came here with is dead, because a man who was mad at me tried to poison her. He tried to poison me as well, and he may yet succeed. So far, however, his poison is working against him, because the poison – as deadly as it may be – is also showing me things, and checking to make sure I understand them.

The poison allows me to fly. Not all of me, only my senses. My body stays behind, in the room with the vitamin tubes and constant chatter. The first time I did it, I thought I was dreaming, or maybe, finally, all the way dead. I was looking at somebody, and I realized it was me, and I realized that I wasn’t “in” myself, or even in the room. Instead, I was floating just outside my room, looking in. I could see my eyes. I could hear the beeps and coughs of the expensive medical cocoon around me. I could see all that, and I ran from it. My name is (was) Chris Lomba.

I flew up. I didn’t know where to go, but “up” felt right at the time. Before I knew it, I was breaking for the sky, shedding the last atmospheres of the planet. It was huge very cold up there. My breath was blasting out in thick, misty clouds, but as I rose I felt only warmth and comfort. I saw earth receding under me, and the universe ranging all around me. There was color and light and sound bursting in every section. I saw stars falling and spiraling. I saw suns forming into rotations and alliances with other suns.

There was music. It was all around me, loud as life, but silent – I knew - to all but me. I began to perceive a borderland, or a place where some type of boundary was marked. I was confused, because it seemed to me the very edge of time and space itself, and it was burning. The outer reaches of the universe were on fire, and the flames driven by wind so fierce, that no earthly force or structure could have made a stand against it.

I became alarmed. Now, Instead of running from captivity, I felt myself being drawn to an infinite darkness where consciousness is futile, and has no place. I felt my existence against all that I’d beheld, and it came up useless, and of no consequence whatsoever. I became paralyzed, and terrified, and then I saw it: the final void before me. It grew, in seconds, from a pin-prick of blackness amongst all that universe and light, to a giant, yawning crevice that blotted out every other thing from my vision. I spun and tumbled for what seemed like thousands of years. When I woke up, I was somebody else:

***

His name is (was) Scott Xino   

What eventually woke him was a starter’s pistol. There was a team-building event going off in the parking lot, and the starter pistol kicked it off forcefully, leaving no doubt as to its having begun. The pistol said “We are GO!! We are actually doing shit. Now! Right fucking now!” The result of the exuberance would, doubtless, strengthen the team-ly aspects of the participants in the exercise. Also, it woke up S.A. Scott Xino, for this, the last day of his life.

For three minutes and forty two seconds he staid still, took stock of his position. The room was light, and he heard birds. It smelled, to Xino, like about 11:00am. The girls from last night were still there, even though he felt certain he’d warned them not to be. One was next to him, curled up facing away from him on the brutal hotel foldout, naked, uncovered, probably chilled, definitely unconscious. He saw the other one’s foot sticking out from the entryway to what Motel Six calls : the living area. Suddenly, he remembered exactly what had happened before they all passed out, and he became amazed. He remembered his brother. What if Stephen was still there? Scott noticed that he was wearing jeans.

He took stock. The pills: in his pocket. The weapon: In the small of his back, In a Velcro clutch fastened to a custom made belt made of Kevlar webbing. The ocean: he listened for a minute, heard waves, seagulls. The ocean was apparently still in business. Scott Xino smiled to himself, said a small prayer about his brother. Then he leaned over the bed, grabbing a pillow, pawing the girls shoulder, and smothering her with the pillow all in one fluid attack.

The girl was very fast. It would occur to him later, after all the drama, that the first girl must have been awake, possibly expecting something. Had he mouthed off about the plan before passing out? Whatever she was, she was not having this murder. She kicked, she tried to scream, she clawed his face. He couldn’t get the pillow on her face cause she was trying to bite his fucking fingers. She was getting loud. She was cursing him up and down as she struggled. To Xino it sounded exhausting. By the time she’d arched her back into a yoga-rainbow and started screaming at the top of her voice. Xino blew the .38 Colt Anaconda through her teeth when she went to scream again. There was an explosion of blood and teeth that sounded like shucking oysters. Her eyes got giant in the last instant.

His brother Stephen was not in the room.  For one thing, the shot in the miniscule bungalow was the loudest thing Scott had ever imagined times ten. His brother - no matter how hard he'd been sleeping - would have been awake and moving fast nano-seconds after the report. That left the other girl. The foot wasn’t sticking out any longer, because the girl it was attached to was at the door. She was wearing cowboy boots, and nothing. Unlike the first girl, this one wasn’t wasting energy screaming, instead she was trying to calmly negotiate the dead-bolt, and swing-bolt locks of the Motel Six door. She was gasping and panting, but despite all the terror, she was being quiet. A random emotion, something like respect, flashed in Xino’s mind. He covered the distance between himself and the girl and fired into her neck from behind.

***

The air in South Florida smells like flowers. Not all the time, but enough. That’s what the air smelled like today, as Scott Xino waded into it from the AC’d motel lobby. He smelled it immediately, exploding like a roman candle in the boiling of the Florida mid-day. It made him smile. He was shirtless, and wearing jeans and no socks. He was covered in blood. He wasn’t wearing shoes.

Heading beach-ward out the Motel Six rear entrance, Xino was taking his time. He eased over the wide metal causeway separating the hotel and the dunes. Soon, Xino could see umbrellas arrayed like a pilgrimage all the way down the beach. He was 100 yards from the water. He’d been right about the time, it was 11:37.

***

He almost went ahead with it, just busted into a run and crashed the surf. He’d swim – he swore he would – until his heart exploded in his chest and he sank to the bottom of the sea like a bundle of garbage. He felt the water around his ankles though, and the open ocean this far south was cold enough to keep a man awake just long enough to come to his senses. He stopped there, in the waves, soaked in the blood of strippers, and took the script bottle out of his pocket. He read it again. For some reason, he liked reading it:

Diazapam…10 mgs…

Take as directed, three times daily.

Qty: 90

Refill: Three times before November.

He shook it. He heard ninety little blue pills knocking around in the orange plastic jar.

***

Just a water

Sir?

Can I ah… Do you have water?

The tiki-bar bartender looked shocked and angry at the same time. Xino looked a wreck and he knew it, smelled awful, there was the blood. He pressed on:

Yah. If I could? I don’t have any money.

There were two other guys at the bar, but at this they packed up their statuesque bloody marys and headed for calmer waters. The barkeep spoke with new confidence:

Sir, I’m going to ask you to step away from the bar sir, there’s a dress..

Oh wait. No I have money. I have…Here. A hundred’s ok?

Code. Yessir a hundred’s just fine.

Xino wasted no time at the tiki bar, thumbing off the childproof cap and sucking down all ninety blue Valiums at once with a gullet-full of hundred dollar water.

***

You can’t. You know that right? I can’t let you.

His brother. Late and stupid, as usual.

I killed those girls. We killed those people. You promised.

I take my promise back.

It would appear so.

Turn and face me…

Go away.

Look at me

Go

Look at me.

***

Then he was swimming, and he was a long way out. He’d swam fast, and dove deep. He felt himself coursing through the water like a torpedo. He was silent and awesome. He’d brook no argument.

He looked below him, and started swimming in that direction.