Dash in the Blue Pacific (4 page)

On Earth, as it is in Heaven.

Dash heard the flapping an instant before the
bird found his shoulder. It was a hard landing, and the damn
thing’s nails dug in while finding its balance. The cushion dipped
and a cold wave splashed over him. It was salty, stung his barely
open eye. Maybe it was the Kappa chicks’ pool, since they owned a
parrot. Yo, ho, ho, and a barrel of rum, vodka, and Everclear. His
stomach lurched, and up from the darkest depths of his belly came a
wet burp that sent his companion airborne with a squawk.

It was a seagull, not a parrot. He could
recognize a seagull’s complaining voice from a mile away. Maybe it
was the Omega pricks’ pool after all. The guys were pigs with their
trash, driveway dumpsters attracting gulls year round. They’d been
threatened with losing their charter for all the garbage fanning
out over campus.

He tried pulling higher up onto the cushion,
but wasn’t able to kick his feet. Both were shoeless and swollen,
neither ankle wanting to flex. He willed his right knee to bend,
but was distracted by a new flurry of wings and braced for another
impact. There were more gulls this time, some landing on his back
and shoulders, others on the cushion near his face.

Words erupted in a dry croak. “Get away,” he
said, shooing with one hand, sensing yellow beaks about to pluck
out his eyes and snip his ears. He’d witnessed their work, an Omega
gull once prying open a can of pork and beans and nearly fighting
to the death with others over every morsel. Dash shrieked when
something caught his pinky, began to twist. He jerked his hand,
nearly losing purchase on the cushion. He scrambled back up by
rocking his shoulders, then buried his face and hands, hunching
forward to protect both ears.

“
Fucking Omegas,” Dash shouted into
the soggy cushion. “You guys are fucking slobs.”

His tongue had grown fat, made it a struggle to
swallow. He hoped the bastards lost their charter and their house
burned to the ground with Dicky and his goons still inside. He’d
cheer when the dumpsters erupted in flames, raise a beer from his
soggy cushion, and toast the embers.

Gulls poked at his neck, tasted his hair. He
feared for his earlobes, rocking his head back and forth to present
a difficult target. He stopped only for peeks at the enemy, who
seemed to mostly bicker at one another, hopping on orange webbed
feet instead of coming in for the kill.

Dash was dizzy when the sun dipped into the
horizon and sent the world into blackness. The cushion lightened as
bird after bird grew bored and quit the game. Each took wing in a
noisy flourish.

Give us this day our daily bread.

He shivered into the night, cold and alone, as
a full moon rose and showered blue-tinted light. Waves of
depression descended, consumed him by midnight. The stars changed
places, and he eventually missed the seagulls, convinced they could
have somehow coexisted on his cushion’s meager acreage. He tried
staying awake, knew it was the safe thing to do. Rescue would come.
He would hear the car doors, the drunken laughter, the sound of
bottles being uncapped. Someone would switch on the stereo. The
back door would swing open, one of the guys dragging an overflowing
trash bag. Or somebody would be in the mood for a swim, come
running across the concrete patio for a monster
cannonball.

Something moved in the water, only a shadow at
first. Dash squinted into the reflections, allowed his eyes to
adjust and make sense of the shape. Bobbing just beneath the
surface of the pool was the human hand. It floated upright, as if
awaiting a high-five, or perhaps waving goodbye to an old friend or
lover.

And forgive us our debts, as we also have
forgiven our debtors.

“
I know you.” Dash spoke in a
whisper, energy depleted. He struggled to hold out his own hand,
index finger reaching, tantalizing close but not quite touching. He
smiled over a bittersweet image of his father’s cramped workspace,
a modest desk and wooden chair, a single bare bulb suspended from a
leather cord. The only decoration was a Michelangelo print of
The Hand of God
. His father had explained the picture of
Adam’s limp hand, weak and languid, awaiting the infusion of life
from God’s touch.

An airplane had fallen out of the sky.
His
airplane.
He swam through dancing bodies with missing pieces
because he wanted to live, to be different than his
father.

The submerged hand remained out of reach, and
the water rocked him to sleep. He held onto his cushion through a
dream in which he kept glancing over his shoulder, searching for
Sarah’s face as he was herded down the loading bridge to the
waiting plane. She hadn’t cheated on him in the dream, and they’d
had a beautiful wedding. But where was she now? Why was he boarding
a plane alone? He tried calling for her, but could not speak. His
tongue didn’t work, nor did his lips or jaw. He shifted his pack
and reached for his face with both hands, but there was mostly
empty space where flesh and bone had been torn away. His fingers
fumbled across something hard at the back of his ruined mouth and
he couldn’t resist prying it free. He held his last remaining tooth
in his palm, embarrassed by its yellow shade.
You’ll still love
me because this is a dream
, he tried saying, but only managed
animal grunts that turned into a cadence, became the sound of a
beating heart. He listened instead of trying to say more. He knew
he was alive as long as the rhythmic thumps continued.
You’ll
still love ….

Thump
. A quiet pause.
Thump
.

Everything went black, and he might have felt
one eye tumble down his cheek and ricochet off his forearm.
Everything went silent when both ears came loose and bounced from
his shoulders. Did they make a noise when they struck the
water?

I can’t hear my heart.

Dash let the tooth fall from his hand. And then
he let go of the cushion.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us
from evil.

T
he walls were close, the air
cool and damp. The echo was a familiar voice.

“
I love you.”

Quiet for a while, and then it came again. A
simple, emotionless declaration from an old tape recorder’s
battered speaker. But the words changed his heart’s rhythm, caused
a skipped beat as he anticipated their return and imagined the soft
hand accompanying the message. They were three words wielding so
much power, no matter the energy behind the delivery. He fought
growing anxiety, tried calming his noisy insides, and listened to
the empty darkness disrupted only by dripping water. He wanted to
believe it was an angel’s voice, rather than his own parched
throat’s raspy plea.

He dozed until something landed and scuttled
from brow to chin. He jerked to life and wildly swiped the air. He
felt his mouth and jaw, touched the outline with hands that were
impliable and benumbed save for two fingers he used as beacons.
Spots of raw flesh on his cheeks, open wounds with crusty edges.
One motion brought spectacular pain, bone against bone, and he
swooned, nearly blacking out as the room lit up in pure white. Back
in pitch darkness he was left with throbbing aches that spread deep
into his ears, into his skull. He sensed his screams long before he
heard them winding down. His live fingers crawled to his chest,
felt the thumping. He covered his heart as if to protect
it.

A small, distant voice said, “I love
you.”

Dash imagined Sarah’s hovering face, her warm
breath across his damaged skin. But her perfect blue eyes narrowed,
and he sensed her contempt. His own eyes turned wet with
tears.

“
How could you?”

He fought the urge to wipe his itching eyes,
allowed tears to draw uneven lines and fall into his ears. Either
he was blind or the night was pitch black, but he was blessedly out
of the poison water. Solid ground cradled his broken body, although
he hadn’t completely escaped. The drips fell hard and flat in
unrelenting cadence. Despite his thirst, he never wanted to see
water again, not even in a glass. Not in a fountain, not in a
wishing well. Each drop was a hammer into a coffin nail. The
flinching wore him down.

Sleep and dreams of water. A hand too large to
be human touched his wounds, stripped off his clothes, and forced
his head under the surface. A naked infant floated close enough to
touch, an ivory balloon trailing a purple umbilical cord. Tiny fish
were in pursuit, tasting or maybe trying to inflate. The fish came
to him, offered their bodies to his tongue. The hand reversed,
brought him to the air for a single breath, and then plunged him
deeper. Are you clean? Are you saved?

Dash kept count, each dream a new day. A week
passed.

His skin was no longer cold or burning hot,
although the air grew worse, stank of mould and sewage. Sometimes
he woke understanding his circumstances. He’d drunkenly stumbled
into a bathroom and fallen in the tub. Bad things had happened.
Makeshift first aid performed by one of the goons who didn’t want
any unnecessary bloodshed. Dash imagined the guy biting his own
tongue in concentration, yellow
Tourniquets for Dummies
book
propped in one hand, Dash’s gushing wound squeezed off in the
other. From the way his blood pulsed in his forearms and shins, he
had no doubt that his body parts were tightly wrapped. His knees
were bent, his neck tilted for his head to fit. There was plenty of
room on either side because he’d lost all his fat after finding
Sarah under Tommy. The rotten fiancée infidelity diet had worked
like a charm.

Ten days gone.

Not flushing the damn toilet was something new,
a definite step backward for a drink-to-oblivion phase. He was
disappointed to have an instinct let him down. Not cool. It went on
the list, along with puking on your own shirt and drinking from a
glass being used as an ashtray.

Two weeks.

Taunted by the rhythm of the drops, Dash began
questioning his circumstances. Doubts rose with images running
across his black vision. He saw the small dial with a pointed
nipple in the center, knew that twisting its grooved ring created a
jet of air. An old woman was bent over, grasping her ankles in a
strangely erotic pose.

“
I need you to lean forward and
brace for impact.”

He recalled his erection.

“
Only pieces.”

“
Pieces come from many
people.”

“
Send them back to the Sea
God.”

“
Volcano wants this white
man.”

“
We wait for her to
speak.”

Dash answered weakly. “Cindy?”

The pictures morphed into movies, a bird’s-eye
view of recent events. He stuffed clothes into a backpack—clean
underwear and dirty socks, a damp swim suit. He grabbed his
passport from next to the coffee pot and spotted the creased note
attached to the tickets from his crazy mother. It said to have a
wonderful honeymoon and be sure to bring back a
grandchild.

“
Whose grandchild? Grab one off the
street?”

Trudging through the airport, the pack slung
from a shoulder and his laptop wedged beneath one arm, he twice
stumbled into the person in front of him. A man cursed.

Burlington to Detroit, then Atlanta to LA, a
flight path resembling an advanced mathematics sign when looking at
a Google map. The last leg to Sydney was more than half the
twenty-eight hour trip. The captain’s voice had been friendly but
professional, reassuring to a novice flyer. It was a doctor’s voice
explaining there was only a slim chance of cancer, and the next
forty years should only deliver a few minor cuts and bruises. The
captain let everyone know their cruising altitude, the temperature,
and the local arrival time. The only visible land once they got out
over the Pacific would be beautiful Fiji, a destination to consider
for their next trip. “Beautiful Fiji, the Hub of the South Pacific.
It consists of 322 islands, with 522 smaller islets, each more
tranquil than the last. They’ll be visible on the right side of the
aircraft if the weather cooperates.” He’d remind everyone to have a
look once they were closer.

Fiji never happened. The captain spoke. The
airplane fell.

Twenty-one dreams, twenty-one days.

He tried shifting his back to stretch, but a
flash of pain took his breath. A knife was buried, or maybe a
knitting needle. He touched his face, noticed his palms and wrists
were wrapped in strange gauze that smelled like muddy grass. He
sniffed and touched one hand to his chin, discovered it
was
mud and grass. He remembered the sucking fuselage wall and reached
for his penis, but trying to scrape off the concoction brought
electric jolts zipping up into both funny bones, a sickening agony
that roiled his stomach. He drew deep breaths of fetid air, then
turned and vomited next to his ear. He’d stuck his dick into a hole
on a doomed airplane. It wasn’t a nightmare; it had really
happened. No, check that. He was now living in the definition of a
nightmare. I have fresh puke leaking into my ears and my dick is
gone, and some funky awfulness is happening to my hands. I’m blind
and buried in a cave or some primitive toilet, and never once have
I heard of a penis growing back.