Sixteen Small Deaths (23 page)

I kneel into the rock, my face pressed against the lone crevasse in the middle of the weathered stone. A steady flow of tears falls and coats the rock.

I cry for my mother and father, my little brother who was in college when it all went to hell. My grandparents were deep beneath the ground and were spared the wrath of destruction. I think of Chelsea and the tears stop. I remember the promise I made to her and realize that I broke it into a million little pieces. Wiping my face, I reach over and pick up the gun, gaze at it for a minute. I never owned a weapon until we found this house.

Wind whips at my back, my thin jacket flapping and smacking against the skin. I peel it off and throw it to the side, watch it drift against the edge of rocks and fall over, the outline
of my soul descending with it as it disappears into whatever is left of the river below the mountains.

I kick off my sneakers, shake the dirt and sand out of the soles before I throw them over the side of the mountain. The black rubber blends with the darkness and soon they’re out of sight. Sitting on the rock, my toes push away a pile of dead leaves. They crumble into a pile of dark green dust and blow away.

My legs hanging over the front of the rock and my back to the open air, I shove the gun in my mouth, teeth clamping down on the barrel. My tongue licks the bottom of the metal, a strange flavor that reminds me of overcooked coffee. Bits of rain descend from whatever clouds lurk behind a wall of black static. They hit my swollen face and the wetness comforts the cuts and bruises.

I hum a song to say goodbye, the last tune of my life will be built on my own accord. Chelsea’s voice joins me and my finger rests against the trigger. I can feel the rising mist sneak up my t-shirt, colliding with sweat and sticking to my back.

Eyes open to take a final view of the world and I can see Chelsea walk along the trail. She’s wearing all white, a skirt ending just above the knee. Her silhouette disappears as slivers of lightning begin to pierce the horizon. I’m left with just my shadow.

I scoot over closer to the edge of the rock, hoping that when the bullet shatters the back of my skull, gray matter and bits of bloodied bone will tumble down the mountain and hit the ground before my body does.

I’m ready, Chelsea.

Just when I’m about to end it a fluffy shape of white enters my vision. It comes closer, stopping at the edge of the woods before I can see what it is. The rabbit, fur as virginal as a summer morning, grey blotch shaped like a heart on its chest. It scoots over to me, only an inch away from my toes. It sniffs the bottom of my foot and for a moment I swear its tiny eyes glance up at me.

I look up to the sky, say her name only once. Wherever she is,
I know she’s smiling. I know she’s holding our child, giving it a kiss on the forehead for me.

Lips grow cool from the barrel of the gun and I pull it out of my mouth, gently rest it on my lap. The rabbit scampers away, hops into the woods and disappears. A smile finds its way across my face.

Standing up, I turn to the edge of the mountain. Fog makes way for the gun as I toss it as far as I can, watching the little black dot fade into a cloud of incandescence. I imagine the sun setting for Chelsea, for me, a veil of grey embracing the remains of a world that took everything away.

This is only the beginning.

The moon explodes into a thousand fiery fragments of glitter and dust. Fourteen seconds, a breath and the needle prick squeezes a glowing trail of euphoric lava into my bloodstream. I tilt my head back, ignore the wails of the many ghosts swimming beneath my skull. Time becomes incidental and every second I’m awake is another lost moment that will be forgotten. The needle falls to the carpeted motel floor and wraps itself in the footsteps of the past lives of this room, this cocoon.

I can’t tell if I’m sitting, standing or floating. Whispers slither across the walls like angry wraiths. The curtains sway from side to side as if pushed and pulled by unseen forces. The figures on the television screen are hollow, eyes like black hollow sockets. The marching band in my head pounds another tune and their tiny little footsteps are an ethereal symphony. I never knew that I’ve waited weeks for this day to come and the physical portions of my body are the only ones ready for it all to come down.

Down, I peer, watching a pack of blue ants step across the carpet with a focused purpose, their antennae like radiant glowsticks. It takes nearly a full minute to stand up and when I do the television screen shifts to an array of static and gray noise. The motel’s ancient pipes wheeze with age and for a moment I pretend that I’m back at home, back with her. I wonder if she’s flying above the city, searching for the next great soul to fix.

My Coralee, the one who came, the one who went. The one who left me here.

It hasn’t been long since she’s been gone and already I can feel the obsidian rats eating at the edge of my heart. It’s only a matter of time before they penetrate the fleshy fibers around it and claw their way inside.

Her touch was enough to dull the pain, but yet not enough to keep me from this poison now careening through my veins.

Coralee, where are you?

And to think, she came along at just the right moment in my life, as if a divine architect swooped our timelines over one another just to see the graceful union of destruction and grace. I can remember the minute, the second, as if it were only this afternoon.

The white tinges of pain pinch at my chest. Only a few hours, maybe. And to think it didn’t have to end like this.

#

He had the look of a fallen soldier, bright blue eyes under a sheen of distress. He flipped the first page over the back of the clipboard and shook his head once, twice. Pen firmly gripped in his right hand, he scribbled for a few seconds before tossing the clipboard onto the desk behind him.

“Not much difference from last week,” Dr. O’Connell said. “Trent, I’m sorry.”

I nodded. That’s all I ever did here, listening to him talk about how there was never a change in my condition. We went through this every week. He probably knew more about me than my parents.

“I know, doc,” I said. “You don’t have to say anything else.”

Dr. O’Connell smiled and pointed to the scars on my arm. The left one, that is, because, when I was younger, I refused to use the other. I figured that I’d at least need one of them if the other failed me after all the shit I’d injected into it over the years.

“I wish there was something else I could do. How long have you been on the list now?”

I forced a smile. “Too long.”

Dr. O’Connell shook his head. It was almost funny to think that he was no more than a year or two older than me, yet we were standing on two completely opposite sides of life. He put a hand on my shoulder, as he always did right after my dialysis
session, and squeezed the fabric of my shirt. “Don’t give up, Trent. Hang in there. See you in, what, two days?”

I buttoned up the top few buttons of my dress shirt. “You know it, Doc.”

Dr. O’Connell left the room and white streams of sunlight followed closely behind. I walked past the emergency room front desk, threw a smile at the nurse tapping away at a bulky computer, and made my way into an elevator to the cafeteria on the first floor. When I first started coming here, I couldn’t wait to leave, to get away from the smell of faux orange disinfectant and plastic. I’d often fall asleep in the chair, an attempt to force my mind to dream about anything, everything. But now, I figure I owe this place. They’ve kept me alive for nearly three years after I ravaged my body and mind, so now I stop by the cafeteria for a coffee before getting on with the day.

I ordered a coffee, dumped three packets of sugar into the cup, and found a seat at the very corner of the cafeteria. It was moments like these that a man who had this affliction would stop to collect himself, maybe figure out a better path for the future that didn’t involve a casket. Trent Howarth wasn’t like that and he could swear that his stubbornness eclipsed that of even his drunken, absentee father.

A sip of the black brew warmed my throat and I closed my eyes, and repeated the process until at least ten minutes had passed. It was right here that I first saw her, charcoal hoodie and piercing emerald eyes that could start a war. She had been staring out one of the many cafeteria windows, pale fingers wrapped around a coffee cup. She didn’t notice me until I walked past a few minutes later, and offered a small grin before continuing her focus on the autumn foliage of another Boston afternoon.

In the days since she left, I replayed that one visual, that one smile, in the celluloid behind my brain at least a thousand times.

After depositing my cup in the receptacle near the cafeteria entrance, I left the hospital behind me like so many times before.

#

The September sun was beginning its descent into the lavender sky beyond Boston Common’s army of dying trees. A breeze crept from the west and if it wasn’t for the crisp snap of its cool embrace, I would have fallen into a calm slumber at the edge of the park. I fished around my front jeans pocket and grabbed a small white pill. The ‘512’ imprint was often a sign of comfort, of familiarity. I popped it onto the back of my throat and sent it on its way. Within minutes, streaks of sunlight bled from the sky like melting vanilla frost. Passersby were momentary cartoon figures, each one walking past in slow motion with a trail of comet dust not far behind.

The sky went dark for only a moment, my eyes adjusting to the embrace of the painkiller. I nearly let the black hole pull me away, but she was there, kneeling in front of me, last bits of sunlight forming a cracked halo above her head.

“Wake up,” she said. “Come on, wake up.”

I opened my mouth, tried to find my words.

Her cheeks crumped into pale dimples. “I saw you at the hospital a few hours ago. Recognized you just as I was about to head down into the train station at the edge of the Common.”

“Ah,” was all I could get out before she reached for my hand. The touch was almost like an anesthetic, my vision becoming clearer, my body back to an undamaged state.

“You need a coffee.” She pulled me towards the eastern edge of the Common, black, chipped fingernails intertwined with my bruised and battered hand. Upon our touch, I could see the memories of my childhood, the times before my life went to shit.

“Here,” she said. “I go to this place everyday.”

She turned to me and smiled. It was as if I had known her all of my life.

#

Her name was Coralee and she said she was from New York City. I sipped my coffee tenderly, smiled when I could. The dim light of the coffeehouse allowed the arctic blue of her eyes to sparkle like the tips of broken icebergs.

“That wasn’t the first time I saw you at Mass General, was it?”

I shook my head. I was never honest with anybody, never revealed a bit of my soul. But she seemed different, familiar. “Kidney failure. On dialysis twice a week every week since…”

Coralee tilted her head and I swear I saw a billowy sparkle in her eyes. “Since what?”

“Since I overdosed a few times. Since I destroyed my body so badly that I now have the kidneys of someone three times my age. I’ve been on a donor list for over a year.”

A red stripe penetrated the jet back strands of her hair, which swooped over her forehead as if they were the legs of native tarantulas. She placed a hand over mine, the underside of her palm like a blanket of calming warmth. “I’m sure they’ll find a donor for you soon. These bodies,” she placed a finger on my chest, “were not meant to be vessels for pain.”

We talked for what felt like hours, me never asking questions about her life, where she lived, or her career. I reached to the core, found myself telling Coralee about the first time I used and why, to this day, the urge is still there, like a nagging itch that can’t be scratched. She listened and held my hand, not once interrupting me. An autumn moon dripped platelets of dark light upon us through the streets of the city. It could have been around midnight when she broke our stride and faced me.

“You need to get some rest, now. Boylston Station is up ahead. I’m going to head home.” She kissed me on the cheek and the rumble of comfort filled my bones. Before leaving, she slipped a piece of paper into my hand. “Good night.”

I waved goodbye and walked away, not once questioning the evening’s intent.

#

The morning sun pinched the sides of my brain. I couldn’t remember the last time I had actually slept throughout a whole night without tossing and turning, without the pinch of pain stifling my every second of slumber. My dreams were filled with clouds, with light. The small piece of paper was still sitting on my nightstand.

Harrison’s Spot, Tremont Street, Friday, 7:00pm.

I peered at the alarm clock. I had slept into the afternoon. Three years of my visits to Massachusetts General Hospital for dialysis, and I couldn’t help but stroll through the city for hours afterwards before heading home. It was as if I were afraid to go home, to sit in a sullen room where pain eluded pleasure and I was alone with nothing but my thoughts. I looked at my face in the bedroom mirror, noticed that my cheeks were flush with a rosy apple glow instead of their usual dull, pale. Even my eyes had a bright residue beyond the dark brown swath.

The bed beckoned me again, and within moments, I was asleep again, free to slip into another place that was far beyond the torment of the day.

#

It’s not a craving. Cravings pass and do not often involve substances that could shut down an immune system. It’s always there, floating behind the fibers within the brain, buried and building a nest from pieces of the past. It’s at your weakest point, when you think it’ll be okay for just a small taste, that it strikes and kills.

It knows no emotion, no bias. It doesn’t care how long you’ve lived or how many children you’ve raised. It’s there, and I know it. It’ll never leave, never go away. It won’t jump to another soul or eventually fade away.

It’ll win. And I’ll lose.

#

She was already at Harrison’s Spot, a monolithic beauty with a grin that set the world ablaze. She leaned against the brick exterior of the restaurant, tight black jeans and a white sweater that revealed only the slightest bits of pale cleavage.