The Mentor (2 page)

I looked
down to my hands.  They were shaking.  

That’s when
I knew I wasn’t really drunk at all.

I looked up
at him, he seemed to disappear, then reappear, jumping around the room, again.
 This time, I realized my eyes had simply begun to water-- the images
around me were just refracting through tears which hadn’t yet fallen.

My mouth
opened and I croaked, “Elephant."

His large
face came toward me and blackened out the sky.  He said, "What was that? 
What did you say?"

I repeated,
"Elephant.  He said 'elephant' to me."

In the dark,
pulsating room his brilliant grin burst back, and it sliced into every part of
me, piercing through my chest and then enveloping me in a loud, electric hum.

“Yes!”
 He punched a triumphant fist in the air, splitting the sky above us.
 “Dexter, yes.”

“Okay,
okay,” I said, trying to sit up.  Then, the thought: I had been sitting
up.  Was my body now sliding?  Oh God, so tired.  

Lifting my
head took effort, but I could see he had disappeared again.  I prayed he’d
left the apartment, but I knew better.  My limbs began to shake
uncontrollably.

“To answer
your next question, Dex, I’ll say you are left-handed and an alcoholic and
lazy.”

Check,
check and check.

“So, it was
easy to know where to put the beer you would first pull from the fridge.
 Front left.  Hell, you must’ve thought it was your birthday and the
beer fairy had brought an extra cold one.  ‘Course that beer was full of
poison," he said.  "Not a very good fairy, if you ask me.”

With the
word, my tongue grew thick and my mouth, instantly dry.

“Poison?”

“Don’t
worry, you’ll be fine.  Just a little nap.” Like a god or devil, his voice emanated
from the pulsing walls around me.  They shook with his every word like the
membrane of a stereo speaker.

“Please…”

“A quick
couple of notes,” he said, and I found it hard to blink right.  My eyeballs
were dry as tennis balls.  “The average amount of oxygen in the air we
breathe is roughly twenty-one percent.  A quarter of the oxygen you ingest
is used by your brain.  In a closed environment, especially one where
stresses are applied to the subject, hypoxia is inevitable…”  

Just before
I tumbled away into deep space, he slapped me awake. 

My eyes
went wide but refused to focus.  

He
continued: “Not yet.  Now, O-2 saturation less than about fifteen percent,
well there’s a quick and steady decline.  The water between target and
surface is called ‘the head.’  One foot of water exerts a pressure of .43
pounds per square inch…”  What was he saying?  What was he talking
about?  His voice trailed off, and I chased it into the dark.

With
leather-gloved fingers, he pulled my eyes open again. 

I saw, one
last time, his large, dark face over mine, serious and terrifying.

For an odd,
fleeting moment, he seemed to be searching for something.  As if there
were an answer written along the deep lines, blemishes and busted capillaries
of my face.

If he
wanted an answer, I'd have given it to him.  I'd have given him anything to
stop, to not hurt me.

But, I
didn't have the first clue what the question was.

Finally he
leaned back and said, “I hope you got all that.”

I tried to
say something, anything, but words failed me.

The ceiling
above his head shook violently, and as the plaster began to crumble, those
parts breaking away bursting into flames, through the gaps streaks of light bled
through like the sun itself had split the midnight sky and was now bursting
into the room, searching for me.  

My entire
body was wrenched toward the light and, as his face dissolved away, I heard him
say:

“Lesson
begins.”

WHEN THE
VAN HAD sunk far enough to hit the lake bottom, I woke up again.

Hell, it
could
have been a lake but for all I knew it was the ocean.  Any ocean.  On a
moon circling a distant planet. 

I had no
idea where I was or how I’d gotten there.

It was pitch
black, which made it difficult to effectively shake off the world of dreams I'd
just come from.

Around the
vehicle, the water gurgled, as if the lake had swallowed me whole and began
slowly digesting its meal-- juices swirling around, sliding into crevices,
looking for soft tissue to start in on.

Trapped in
the darkness, I tried to slow my breathing because the very sound of it, my own
terror ringing in each wheezing gasp, just frightened me more.  

“Okay,” I
said out loud. 

I reached
out and felt the vehicle's walls.  Cold. 

“This could
still be a part of a dream.”  My voice sounded like it was coming from a
fried, drive-in speaker as it tumbled around the van. 

The tips of
my fingers were cold but, thankfully, dry.  My breathing slowed a little.

Working up
the confidence to get to my feet, once I got halfway up the world spun again as
the van rolled.

Falling in
the dark-- for a moment touching nothing but air-- it felt like a nightmare
spacewalk. 

I hit the
back door hard, and its handle knocked the wind from my lungs. 

My body
flopped down onto the ceiling, which had momentarily become the floor.  Then,
one more spin, and the van was on its side, and I rolled with it like a broken
doll.

Everything
hurt, but hurt a little more than it should because I'd flexed every muscle,
rigid, as I braced for another tortuous spin in the van.  Here I was, maybe
dying, and I'd reverted to the defense mechanism most often employed by an
insect or, perhaps, a member of the British parliament.

Paralyzed. 

Don’t move,
and it shall pass.

But… truth
is, it never does.  Unless it passes right over you, crushing you in the
process.

Still, I
lay there, waiting.  Opening and closing my eyes did nothing to change the
view-- just a swirling of dark purples and blues.  And the more I tried to
calm myself, the more one of the most primal of fears came out from its hiding
place.

Would I
suffocate?

What had
that prick said?  Right before I passed out.  Something about—

O-2
Saturation less than about fifteen percent, well there’s a quick and steady
decline

I’d only
been down there for about a minute or so, I guessed.  There was no way I
was running out of air.  At least not yet.

My midnight
intruder must've tossed me into the vehicle.  Had he been driving it then
leapt out just before I regained consciousness?  I wanted to find the guy. 
Kill him.  Or just hit him with my car.

Top of my
To
Do
List when I got back to the surface: buy a car.

Then, I had
to find him.  Maybe he inadvertently left behind fingerprints.  Hair follicles? 
Sam's Club card?

“What in
the hell is going on?”

It was as
cold and lonely as the dark side of the moon, and I could feel the metal around
me stealing my body warmth.  Feeling around the van's ceiling, I moved
from one side to the other, and finally fingered a plastic blister.  I found
the switch and flicked it.  

The van
filled with light, chasing away the encroaching deep space, which now retreated
to the other side of the windows.  Everything in the cargo van was stained
a dull yellow.  But, man, was I happy to be able to see the world around me
again.

 Squinting,
I pulled the hair out of my eyes and when my hand came back, a pale orange
liquid pooled on my fingers.

On my
hairline, there was a small split in the skin.

"Certainly
not a dream."

Wherever I
was, however I got there—with plenty of help from a large, scary,
beer-poisoning asshole who clearly had his orthodontist on speed-dial— it was
obvious this wasn’t the most tenable position for an overweight, alcoholic
movie theater usher to be in.  

The metal
around me muttered this constant, low chatter, but I wasn’t really worried
about being crushed to death by the water pressure—I hadn’t fallen that deep.

Had I?

The
last
leg of my most recent road trip (ie. plunging to the bottom of a frigid body of
water in an airtight van), I'd slept through the whole bit.  Had it been just a
matter of seconds?  Or had it been minutes?

There was
no way to guess the van’s depth because, at least from this angle, there wasn’t
any light spilling down from above.  

The metal
grumbled a little louder, a polite warning maybe, and I gagged on a breath.

The
water between target and surface is called “the head.”  

No phone in
the van and, me, I’m one of the few people on the planet left who doesn’t own a
cell phone.*  

(*
Note:
this had been a personal choice following a particularly blunderous
"drink-and-dial" event which involved too much brandy, too little
food, six straight hours of C-Span and the U.S. Congressional online phone
directory.  The phrase "suspended sentence" kept me "off the
grid" for a number of years
) 

The glove
compartment was empty and the seats in the van were so high from the floor,
nothing could be tucked under there and be expected to stay put.

I pressed
my face to the dashboard and looked upward.  Faint.  A very faint glow. 
Still, it might just have been a reflection from the dome light.  

The keys
were in the ignition, but the engine wouldn’t turn over.

The
headlights, dead.  Radio, nothing.

But the
dome light sill worked.  

"That's
kinda odd."

The van on
its side, I stood on the driver's door and looked up and out the passenger side
window.  Just black, inky water.

No light at
all.

If the van
was close to the surface, there should be some light.

Right?

Unless, I
wasn't close to the surface.

"Okay,
no," I said and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.  "That is
not…not going to be in my head at the moment.  Can't control that, either
way."

A little
black joystick caught my eye, just below where the vehicle’s door met the
window.  Manipulating it, the mirror on the other side of the window wiggled
back and forth. I worked it across a ninety degree angle, then up and back. 
Nothing.  Not even a glimmer in the reflection.

Hadn’t
there been blue sky when the van hit the water?  Yes.  Yes, I remembered
that. Then, how far down was I?  

My chest
got marginally tighter, and I couldn’t tell if it was an acute bout of
claustrophobia or… the air.

No, no,
no!
 “That’s exactly
what that psycho wants!”  I yelled: “You
want
me worried about
suffocating.  Well, there’s plenty of air!  This van is airtight,
baby!”

That
thought struck me.  How was it there were no leaks?  No leaking from
the windows or doors or from the firewall between the engine compartment and
the rest of the van?  There’d have to be
some
leaks, wouldn’t
there?

No time to
waste on that.  Had to get out.  

Eventually,
I was going to have to swim it.  Shouldn’t be too hard.  Take a huge
gulp of air and gun for the surface—only way to go was up.  

One of the
rare perks of lugging around an extra thirty pounds of man-fat was that it
means I’ve got a body like a buoy.  Whereas this little play on words had
always kind of tickled me, this was the first time the notion would play out
literally.

Okay
.  I grabbed the handle to the
passenger door and held tight.  I wasn’t a great swimmer, but I can hold
my breath a good, long time.  It’s a bar bet thing.  Knew it would
come in handy one day so, in retrospect, time well spent.

One
.

I sucked in
a couple quick breaths, hyperventilating to over oxygenate my lungs.

Two
.

White
knuckles on the handle, my knee braced into the seat’s fabric, and my shoulder
blade flat against the door, I prepared for the deluge of water that would hit
me in seconds.   

Holding a
huge breath—

Three!

--I snapped
the handle back, and pushed! 

But, the
door didn’t open.

I’d
forgotten to unlock the door.  

The thin,
black lock now popped, I settled back into my crouch, ready to repeat.  In
fact, it would work out better this way…
always good to do a dry run
.

Ha. 
"Dry."

Focus
.