Authors: Brian Martinez
A Chemical Fire (22 page)
“Are you going to kill me?” I turn to Adena. She’s off her horse, holding the harness. Victims are gathered behind her, behind me, a dense circle all around.
I walk to her. When I’m next to her I say, “You’re doing fine on your own.”
Her face twists, tears from her eyes. I walk into the crowd and brush past their dead, scraping arms and they part for me, let me pass. As I walk away I hear Adena telling the black horse to leave. It does, galloping off as meteors begin to fall and strike around it, metallic rock colliding with the ground in shockwaves, destroying mountains in the distance.
The crowd constricts on Adena, falling in to feed on nothing but skin and organs, and she lets them. When it’s done and I’m far I take my hood off and all the Victims burst into dust.
Act Five
A Prison
Wormwood
All is silent, for about a half hour.
Then the sky streaks with hail and fire mixed with blood, everything burnt, drenched or smashed through as I walk into another town. In a car I find new clothes and take off my old ones, throwing them away with the bandages. I catch a mirror, seeing the damage to my face clearly for the first time. I ignore it, try the car but it doesn’t start, then I run to another and try that too, finding the same thing.
I try my fire and nothing happens.
I call to the beasts and they ignore me.
It’s a long walk with no car and no ride, the chills setting in. I’m alone again, this time not even Victims to share the streets with. There’s only me and the hemorrhaging of Earth, the true finale of its tragic play.
The days are for walking, the nights for reading and trying to sleep. I find food in the usual places. Days mean nothing. Only East matters.
The violent sky leaves buildings burned to the foundation, cars folded in half, streets stained pink, punch holes and burns on everything. When the mess from above finally ends, every tree and blade of grass catches fire and burns to cinders. Then the waters turn to roiling blood.
***
The house looks like an antique that’s been dropped; memorabilia from a cancelled show. Standing in charred grass with nothing more in me, legs and feet vibrating, I go up the walk. I take out all the pills I’ve been dying to eat and leave them in the mailbox, then go through the door and into my house.
Past the living room covered in broken things my arms shivering, past the dining room stained with piss and nests my skin sweaty I manage up the stairs and down the hall, into my bedroom with my bed and the ashes of Gala still laid out in perfect silhouette.
“I don’t think it’s much longer now,” I say after a bit. “We never had a chance to talk. I just wanted to see you one more time before everything died.”
My eyes sting, knees shake too hard to hold and finally give, crashing me to the floor.
“I came here,”
An ocean inside, a tidal wave pushing at the walls.
“to tell you,”
Outside the deafening blast of a fallen star wiping out blocks and blocks of suburbs, atomic in its reach.
“you were right.”
Houses obliterate to splinters, streets lift away black and crumbling to powder.
“Even now, I feel you here with me.”
Trees and telephone poles turn to nothing as the wall of my face gives, the sea escaping.
“Everything wrong I’ve ever done was away from you.”
The dark takes me in as creatures thrash against the windows, locusts with bodies like horses and faces like men, risen from the depths of the pit.
She was the world that I killed.
Lucid
I have this dream. In it the chemicals seep out of me like a towel drying in the sun. They come out of my pores and my eyes, my fingertips and my ears and my mouth and even my hair. The electrons bond and form a new compound. A new substance, synthesized from the withdrawing elements, that trickles down into my house and begins changing things. It fixes and heals what it touches, every drop rebuilding every damage.
Chairs reassemble. Rugs sew back by their fibers. Fallen glass melts and pours back into frames. Tables uncollapse, the books and magazines on them binding. Walls push back and shift into place, the cracks repairing and paint sealing as if nothing had ever happened.
It’s warm in this dream, and everything is so clear.
“John.” My faded wife, the voice to my vision. In the dream I open my eyes to the blinding and it’s her, my Gala, wearing the sun and saying my name. “What happened,” she radiates.
Playing along, I tell the image of her that she died.
“Oh,” she says, as if it's nothing at all. “And what did you do?”
“I’ll give you one guess.”
She says, “You got lost.”
In the dream I smile and say, “I was always bad with directions.” The light dimming enough to see her. “This is more than I expected. I didn’t think I deserved a dream like this.”
“That may be true, but this isn’t a dream.”
“No?” I look around the room, looking like it ever did; no mold, no decay, no crawling.
She shakes her head. “Outside I can’t speak for.” She motions to the window and I stand, the neighborhood still ripped apart through the glass; houses leveled around the edge of a pit cut deep into the Earth. The same, lifeless sun and blood-filled moon float above it in the same, dead sky.
“I may need your help with that.” I exhale, my shoulders sinking. “Listen-”
“I heard you before,” she stops me, “When I was sleeping. Anyway you don’t have to tell me I’m right, I already know.”
I remember something, reach into my pocket and take out a piece of folded and dog-eared paper. “I’ve been learning how to write music,” I tell her. She takes it and opens it.
"What song is this?"
“The last conversation we had.”
She smiles. “How does it sound?”
“Like shit,” I say, and we laugh, the sound of it on every surface and every wall of our house, every corner and every angle, filling the indefinite spaces and putting everything where it should be.
“I wanted to ask you- what does 'dis manibus' mean?”
“For the ghost gods.” She sees my face and says, “It’s not my favorite Latin. If I had to pick one, it would be 'caetera desunt.'”
“What does it mean?"
“The rest is wanting.”
We turn to the window, her hand in mine, darkness beating against the pane.
