Nine Lives - Part 1 nicmccool

As usual this is a very, very first draft.

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No one cried when we buried our cat again. I came home from working a double to find Harold, our seven year old tabby, stuck inside a Pringles can, his three legs splayed out behind him and his head covered in crumbs and little bits of dried cat vomit. “He just wanted a snack,” Lucy whispered from around a thumb that seemed permanently affixed to her mouth now. “I just gave him the whole thing.” She sighed, shoulders slumped in the way four-year olds can do when they think life just can’t get any worse than it is at that very specific moment in time, or at least until their cartoons come on after dinner. She removed her thumb and pointed to the floor. “He gots stuck.”

“Got,” I corrected, hugging her. “He got stuck.” She cocked her head at me. “There’s no s at the end of - nevermind.” I pushed myself up and straightened my pants. “Same place as last time?”

She nodded and ran to the front closet to retrieve the small gardening trowel and gloves. The gloves had flowers on them. Pink ones. She smiled and pulled them on. “Maybe he doesn’t like that tree.” It was my turn to cock my head. She laughed. “Because he keeps coming back. Maybe if we plant him in Mrs G’s garden he’ll like it better.”

“Can’t.” I shook my head. “Occupied. And we’re burying Harold. Not planting him. They’re two different things.”

“Okay,” Lucy smiled and turned the knob on the front door. “Harold would probably get lost on his way home if we put him somewhere new.”

“Lucy, I don’t think he’s coming back. Not this time.” I picked up the cat and placed him unceremoniously in a plastic grocery bag. He smelled like salt and vinegar and still had clumps of dirt stuck in the hair around his notched ear from his last… planting.

Lucy pulled the door open and stepped around the red stained carpet and out onto the landing looking back at me with a smile. “You said that last time, Daddy. But Harold came back. He was all fixed and he came back.” She ran down the five flights of stairs before I could respond, giggling the entire way. I followed her wondering if this time the fat man would finally get his due.

Harold’s not a smart cat.

My wife read an article about how a cat helps a new baby transition to being out of the womb. It was a stupid article in an even stupider magazine, but for some reason it stuck with her and she insisted. We brought Harold home three weeks before Lucy was born, and then when I brought Lucy home from the hospital, my wife staying behind, Harold ended up helping me transition into my new role as Daddy. The three of us lived somewhat happily for those first three years, Harold, Lucy and me, surviving in this apartment. And then one random Sunday he decided he wanted to see what the back of the refrigerator tasted like and got himself stuck and eventually electrocuted in the coils.

Lucy found him. She said she heard something squirming, scratching, behind the fridge and she looked to see if we had mice, like those friendly ones in the Disney movie. No mice, just Harold. She cried. A lot. She didn’t understand how he wasn’t there even though he was laying right there, right there being our modest kitchen table tucked into the nook at the front of the apartment. I tried telling her that the Harold part of Harold, the part that made him play and lick and be annoying as hell when we first woke up in the morning, that Harold was gone. All that was left was his body, like a discarded coat that no one wants. “But I want him!” she sobbed in that way kids can sob to make you feel that nothing else is nearly as important as what they need right now.

“I know,” I said. “I want him back too.” I even teared up a little. I hadn’t cried since, well, since Lucy was born.

She looked up at me blearily. “Because he was Mommy’s?” I hugged her, because hugs are the only currency I seem to have an unending supply of.

“Yes, baby,” I said. “Because he was Mommy’s.”

“And Mommy’s a coat now too?”

It felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to my ribcage just to get at my heart. I choked, swallowed, and tried to control the shaking in my voice. “Lucy, baby, your Mommy isn’t a... ,” I looked at Harold, his black tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. Stupid cat. “Your Mommy isn’t a coat. She’s not a cat or Harold, or I guess I’m trying to say is that, um, Mommy is…” One hand wiped away tears the other wiped away sweat. I sighed and kissed her forehead. “Mommy and Harold are in the same place, sweetheart. I don’t know where that place is, I just know that it’s not here, but I hope every day that they’re happy.” I took her by the shoulders and tried to force a smile. “We both can hope that they’re happy, okay? We can do it together. Every time we’re happy we can think of Mommy and Harold and hope that they’re happy too.”

Lucy stared at me for a long time chewing on her lower lip. “Okay,” she nodded. “But they’d be happier here, right?”

“Of course, baby,” I said and picked up Harold, placing him gently in a shoebox. I had to tuck his tail around his back so he’d fit. It was stiff and cracked a little. “Where would you like to bury, Harold?”

She smiled her innocent smile and said eagerly, “With Mommy?”

I was not ready to go into the whole cremation talk, so I just shook my head and said, “I think he’d be happier by the big tree at the front of the building. Don’t you think?”

It took her a long minute to contemplate and then she nodded judiciously, her finger pressed to her chin, and said, “He can watch all the birds in that tree. Harold will like that.”

“Good,” I said and then took the three of us out into the car to buy a garden trowel. Lucy saw the gloves with pink flowers at the store and insisted we get those as well. Later we buried Harold by the big tree at the front of the apartments.

And then the next day he came back.

There was a knock at our door, loud, boring, and heavy. The first thing you learn when moving into the top apartment of a five story walk-up is that if anyone knocks on your door they’re not there by accident, and more times than not what they’re there for isn’t particularly good. I trudged to the door leaving Lucy to her after-dinner cartoons and took a deep breath. The knocking continued. “Just a minute,” I growled and pulled the chain free. He was still knocking, his fist pumping against empty air as I swung the door inwards. “Mr. Jack,” I said between my teeth. “What can I do for you?”

Fred Jack was the manager, landlord, and god himself for this apartment complex. He liked to remind everyone that he was the epitome of the American entrepreneurial spirit and his brand new (used) Caddy, overflowing beergut, and Made In Texas snake skin cowboy boots with his initial in the heel were proof of the puddin’, as he was known to say. He was also a racist asshole who put all the attractive women on the first floor so he could watch them through the windows, but who am I to say anything about that. “Mr. Gonzalez,” he sneered, adding extra non-spanish accents to the name so it sounded like Gonzaga more than Gonzalez. He took a half-chewed unlit cigar out and pinched it between stubby fingers. “I’ve had a real crappy day already and now I got a complaint about you.”

I checked behind me and Lucy was still sitting quietly on the floor finishing her bowl of ice cream, the huge old tube tv looming over her on its stand like a glowing head. Mr. Jack took a quarter-step backwards as I stepped into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind me. We stood there chest to chest for a long minute in silence. It wasn’t cold but I cradled my arms at my chest. Mr. Jack was a full head shorter than me, but nearly twice as wide. He reeked of Old Spice and when he talked I could smell the cheap beers he’d been drinking all day while making rounds in his glorified golf cart. “A complaint?” I finally asked, keeping my voice low. “Who complained?”

Mr. Jack raised an eyebrow. “Who?” He glowered at me. “Shouldn’t the real question be ‘about what’, Mr Gonzalez?”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s pronounced Gonzalez,” I said adding extra latin flair to my name.

“I don’t speak your spic language, Karl,” he spat poking the cigar into my chest. “Ya’ll Mexicans can’t come here and expect us to start speaking your language.”

“I was born in Ohio,” I sighed. “And Gonzalez was my step-dad’s last name.”

“Don’t matter,” Mr Jack scoffed.

“My mom is Irish,” I went on. “And my dad was Swedish. I don’t think you can get much whiter than me -”

“I said it don’t matter, Karl.” Mr Jack poked that cigar in my chest again. “Now, you want to talk about this complaint, or do you just want me to go ahead and issue you a warning.” I went to reply, by Fred Jack stuck his index finger in front of my mouth. “Keep in mind that you only get two warnings and then you’re out on your ass.” He pointed over my shoulder. “And it don’t matter if you got a kid, Karl. No exceptions.” He pulled out a small notebook that had hashmarks scribbled next to a list of names. “And by my count you already got one strike against you.”

I dropped my hands to my side, clenching my fists. My jaw ached from the words that were fighting to get out. I thought of my wife, of Lucy, of Harold for some reason and let out a long release of air. “You gave me a warning for being a day late on rent when we were in the hospital, Mr Jack.” Liquid venom dripped into my words.

Fred Jack smiled. “Were you late, Karl?”

“We were in the hospital!” I growled.

“Yeah, but were you late?” His eyebrows raised, challenging me. I sighed and nodded. “There you go. No exceptions.” He folded the notebook and stuck it in his back pocket, it took some effort on his part to reach around his enormous gut and he grunted a little. “Now, in your defense, and in my better judgment since I normally don’t rent to you people, you have been a decent tenant. Always paying on time except for that one incident. Not being loud like the punk Dean Harder below you. Not up and dyin’ this morning and ruining my breakfast. And you keep your place clean. So I can’t complain too much.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled. “I think.”

“Which don’t mean others won’t complain.” He snatched a piece of yellow paper from his shirt’s front pocket and unfolded it. “So you want to know what it says, Karl?”

I leaned my back against the door and crossed my arms. “Sure.”

“It says here you were burying something on apartment property. The complainer said it looked like a box of some kind. She thought it may be drugs or an animal or something.” He folded the paper back up and placed it back in his pocket.

“She?” There were only ten apartments in this building, two per floor, and about a third were women, and out of those women I knew of only two who would be likely to rat someone out for burying their pet. “Miss Hammond or Mrs Renwick?” I asked.

Mr. Jack blinked at me and then shook his head. “Not telling. It doesn’t matter anyway. You’re not going to spin this on them.” He put the cigar in his mouth and chewed on it before removing it again. “I don’t see you as the druggie type, Karl. And it’d be kind of dumb to go burying a stash in a shoebox by the front gate anyway. No, that’s not you.”

“I didn’t say I buried anything,” I started, but he cut me off.

“No, but an eyewitness puts you at the scene.”

“You’ve watched too many Law & Orders,” I muttered.

Mr Jack glowered at me and then said, “I pulled your application, Karl. And you know what I noticed?” He didn’t give me time to answer. “There was an addendum added about four years ago. And you know what that addendum was?” He stared at me. I stared back. A minute passed. “Well?” he finally asked annoyed.

“Oh, you want me to answer that one?” sarcasm swirling in my words. “It was the pet clause.”

He snapped his fingers. “That’s right! The pet clause. You agreed to pay an extra two dollars a month so you could have a… hmmm...” He scratched his head. “A dog, was it? A bird?”

“A cat,” I mumbled.

He snapped his fingers again. “A cat! You agreed to pay an extra two dollars a month so you could have a cat.”

I shrugged. “And we followed all the rules. Cleaned up any damages, kept it quiet, and maintained a clean apartment. You can check if you want -.” Shit, I thought.

A cigar-stained smile spread across Mr Jack’s pudgy face. “Don’t mind if I do.” He pushed by me and grabbed the knob.

I tried to step in his way but he outweighed me by fifty pounds. “No, I meant later, Fred. Lucy is about to go to bed and -”

He ignored me and pushed open the door. “Well you got the clean part down, Karl,” he said loudly, stepping into the main foyer/family room. “Why, if I didn’t know I’d say you didn’t have a cat at all. I’d almost be willing to knock off two bucks a month.” He faked a laugh.

“We… we do have a cat, Mr Jack,” I stammered.

“Oh yeah?” he sneered. “Where?” He crouched down and began whistling and calling out, “Here kitty, kitty.”

“It ran away,” I blurted. “Yesterday. The cat, Harold, he ran away.”

Fred Jack looked up at me with bloodshot eyes. “Isn’t that convenient.”

I felt a tug at my hand and I looked down to see Lucy standing beside me. “Harold didn’t run away, Daddy. Remember? He died licking the fridge.”

“Aha!” Mr Jack shouted and shot to his feet. He drove the cigar into my chest. “So it was you burying your dead cat next to the front gates. I knew it!” He pulled out his notebook of hashmarks. “That’s your second strike, Mr Gonzalez. Time to start packing!”

“No, Mr Jack, I can explain -” I started trying to grab the notebook away. “We didn’t mean to upset anyone, but -”

“I knew I shouldn’t have rented to you people. Nothing but trouble, you are.” He slapped my hand away and flipped a few pages. “Can’t trust any of you. You’re probably not even legal!” He scribbled furiously at the paper. Something short and hairy curled itself around his leg, vibrating intensely against his shin. Fred Jack jumped a good six inches off the ground and screamed like frightened girl. “What the hell is that?!” he howled.

I looked down to see Harold staring up at me, his notched ear twitching, a quiet meow purring from his mouth. He dodged Mr Jack’s stomping feet and walked over to Lucy where he stood up on his hind legs, arched his back, and prodded at her hip with his lone forepaw. She squealed and picked him up, hugging the breath out of him. “I told you he’d come back!” she giggled. “See Daddy,” she held Harold out to me at arm’s length. “I told you he wasn’t just a coat!”

I was at a loss for words, but luckily Mr Jack wasn’t. “That’s… that’s your cat?” he stuttered, clutching at his chest. I nodded. “But… but you said you buried it.”

I pet Harold’s head and told Lucy to take him to the kitchen so he could eat. There was mud on my hand and I absently wiped it on my pant leg. “I said he ran away, Mr Jack. You said I buried him.” He looked terribly confused, so I took advantage. “So that means I didn’t break any rules, right? Whoever told you I was burying something was wrong.” I nodded for him. “And now you’re going to take away that second warning. It never happened.” I ushered him to the front door and gently pushed him into the landing. “Right, Mr Jack?”

He looked around me trying to get a look at Harold and then nodded. “Right, Karl. Their mistake.” He squared his shoulders and set his jaw. “But that doesn't mean you can start slacking on payments. The first of the month, Karl. Every month.” He looked down at a spotted mud that tracked in through the front door. “And clean up that mess, Gonzalez!”

I shut the door in his face without saying a word.

Lucy poked her head out of the kitchen, Harold sitting on her shoulder chewing her hair, and said, “I don’t like him, Daddy. I wish he would go away.”

I kissed her forehead and scratched Harold behind his ear. “Me too, honey.”

Submitted March 18, 2015 at 03:15AM by nicmccool http://ift.tt/1FxEPe0 nicmccool

TttA - Part 4: Chapter 5 nicmccool

Please note that any chapter pertaining to TttA posted on this subreddit is a very rough, very first draft. Plots will change, story arcs may be tweaked, and the chapter itself may be completely overhauled before it goes to print. I'm posting here to get a general feel of how the story fares. Okay, talk amongst yourselves. You can also talk about it here.

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"Are you sure it's gone," Max asked. He had wedged himself above the middle console propping up a twisted body on a hand planted firmly in the middle of the passenger seat. "I mean, they could've, I don't know, moved it or something?"

"Moved it?!" Ham howled. "Moved it?! You think they moved the entire city?!"

"M-maybe -"

Ham turned, his face as red as his fu manchu. "How, pal?! How would they do that?! Just get a bunch of rollerskates and skateboards and prop the buildins' up on them and roll 'em on out of town?!"

"Or furniture movers," Max offered.

"What?!" Ham's eyes bulged.

"Back when June and I moved into our house she had to get furniture movers - those little plastic circles with the fabric on the bottom - because she couldn't move the furniture herself; it was too heavy."

Tina's head popped up next to the rear seat's headrest. "Why didn't you help her, Max?"

"Well, I would've but I was still at the old house. I didn't figure out we had moved until I started getting hungry and realized the refrigerator was gone."

Tina frowned. "How long did that take?"

"Until I got hungry or until I realized the refrigerator was gone? Because the answer to both is, um," Max counted on his fingers. "Three days."

"That!" Ham screamed and kicked open his door. "That is supposed to be our boat?! How are you even alive at this point?! Most of us were sure you'd be dead in a ditch before high school was over."

"Is that why you kept leaving me in those ditches?" Max asked.

Ham leaned over and jabbed a thick finger into Max's chest. "You. Why you, pal?! Why was everything taken, everyone taken, but you were left?!"

Max made eye contact with Ham and it made his heart ache. "I don't know how the end of the world works, Ham. I'm sorry -"

"The end of the world?! I don't give a fuck about the end of the world, Max. My world ended already!"

"I dont'... I don't understand," Max stammered.

"Sophie, Max. Sophie left - was taken - before all this shit rained down on us, before I had a chance to say goodbye, before ..." Ham's voice cracked. He pulled his finger off Max's chest and swung his legs out of the car. "I told her I'd be back; told her I just needed to grab something and I'd let her sleep." He leaned over, his elbows on his knees, and his back to the car. His shoulders heaved. "A few hours I was gone. I just needed a ... You know how hospitals smell? Like they're too clean. It's like sanitized death, and Sophie and I had been in that room for weeks, and that smell... Morning, noon, and night that smell was there. I started dreaming about it. I couldn't eat. I couldn't ... I just had to leave. I had to ..." He sobbed. "I had to get a drink."

Tina reached over and put a hand on his back. "Ham, it's not your fault."

"My fault?!" he bawled. "Of course it's not my fault. The cancer wasn't my fault. Her being sick wasn't my fault. That was all his fault!" Ham pointed a finger to the sky. A bulbous cloud, fat with smoke from the wrecked city floated listlessly above them. "But I wasn't there when she... They called my phone, the nurses. They called it and called it and called it and I ignored them. One more beer, I said. I'd have one more beer. Get that smell good and gone. One more beer and I could go back up there, back into that hospital where my wife -- or what was left of her after the radiation ate its fuckin' fill -- where she lay in that bed still beautiful, still glowing somehow after all the shit she'd been through, where she would be sleeping. The only time she looked peaceful in the last few weeks was when she was sleeping, and even then, those last few days, she winced, man. She fuckin' winced and groaned and moved in her sleep like something was pulling her; draggin' her down. So I had another beer, and another, and another, until I was good and fucking ready to pretend to be happy to see the only thing I've ever loved more than my fuckin' self whither and fuckin' die in a room that smelled like sanitized death." Ham pushed off of his knees and slowly unfolded into a standing position, his back still to the car. He dragged the back of his hand across eyes that were pouring acidic tears. "And I was late. Late by three fuckin' hours. They'd already taken her body. I stumbled in on some poor shmuck cleaning the room. All our shit - my shit now I guess - was stacked neatly on the chair where I'd slept for sixteen nights in a row. I grabbed him, asked where they'd taken Sophie. He said he didn't know so I... so I started hittin' him. The nurses, the orderlies, the cops, they couldn't pull me off. I was drunk, and confused, and heartbroken, and my best fuckin' friend had just slipped away forever while I was busy drowning..." Ham turned slowly, deep shadows etched his face into a stony snarl. "But then this shit started happenin' and I was happy. Maybe not really happy but I was sure as shit glad that my Sophie left this place while the majority of the world was still topside. But then I come to find out that not only am I still keepin' your ass outta the blender, pal, I hear that you're the best bet all of fuckin' humanity has at surviving this entire shitshow. You?" Ham had to bend at the waist to look through the open door. Max tucked a metaphorical tail and whimpered. "You of all fuckin' people." He pointed at the smoldering remains on the horizon. "That entire city probably had a million poor bastards better qualified to survive the apocalypse than you, but here you are staring at their ashes and wondering if they're really gone. You?" Ham spat on the ground, straightened back up to his full towering height, growled "Fuck you, pal," and walked away.

Max blinked, unable to process where the outburst had come from. Part of him knew his friend, his only real friend, the one that was kind enough to lend him outdated calendars and forget to invite him to tailgates, was suffering after his wife's death, but up until now he had handled it so well. "Ham," Max called after his friend. "I'm sorry about Cincinnati."

"There are cities far worse off than that one," Fetch said beside him. "Do you mind moving your hand?"

Max looked down to where his hand was planted firmly in the shimmering driver's crotch. "Oh," Max said and pulled it away so fast it smacked Tina in the forehead. "I am so sorry!"

"I'm just a watcher," Fetch said and straightened his pants, "But that was crossing the line."

"I wasn't saying sorry to you," Max mumbled to Fetch as he pawed at Tina's forehead. "I mean I'm sorry I touched your, well, nothing, it was completely flat down there -"

"I'm just a watcher," Fetch shrugged.

"I'm sorry I hit Tina. Tina, I'm sorry I hit you."

"Ham," Tina moaned and pushed Max's hand away.

"No, you're Tina." Max looked at Fetch. "I think I gave her amnesia."

Tina punched Max in the chest. "No, you idiot. You need to go tell Ham you're sorry."

"I did, and ow!" Max rubbed at his chest.

"You said you were sorry about Cincinnati, Max. I don't think that's what Ham's really upset about."

"Well how was I supposed to know that?! And what is he upset about because I'm afraid if I guess wrong and apologize for something silly like his wife's death he'll murder my face!" Max crossed both arms and pouted.

"That's what you should be sorry about!" she screamed.

"About him murdering my face? How can I apologize for that? He hasn't done it yet."

"No! His wife!"

Max looked at her blankly and felt his fingers creep up towards his temples.

"Don't you fucking dare!" Tina slapped both his hands back down to his lap. "When Sophie was in the hospital did you go see her? Did you send flowers or a card? Did you call?"

"No, but I think June -"

"So your best friend is upset, his wife is in the hospital dying and you didn't even go?! How can you be surprised when he gets mad at you?!" Tina pulled at the handle of her door but it stuck.

Max wanted to rub his temples almost as much as he wanted to run away to the darkest cave and bury his head in some cave mud until all the people stopped yelling at him, but instead he said, "I didn't know." Tina glared. "I mean, I knew Sophie was sick, but I thought it was, like, a cold or something." Tina glared even harder. "I thought she would get better, so I didn't go. It wasn't until June came back from the funeral that I found out she had died."

Tina's face blanched then turned the color of a summer-ripe apple. She pivoted on her hip and kicked at her door until it flung noisily open on rusty protesting hinges. "You're unbelievable," she hissed at him and launched herself out into the street.

"Thank you?" Max called after her.

"I don't think that was a compliment," Fetch said and solidified in the front seat.

Max slunk down into his seat and said, "I gathered that."

"Do you want some advice?" Fetch's Motörhead shirt had somehow shifted to a late rendering of the boar's head, its tusks pointed up like devil horns.

"No thank you," Max said and pressed his forehead against the rear window. Hot glass left a red welt.

"Well, I'm going to give it to you anyway." Fetch took a deep breath, which to Max looked like he sipped a bit of oxygen through pursed lips. "When you're driving a rig in the middle of the night on a lonely road -"

"Were you ever a truck driver? Really?"

"No, but when we assume form we're given a sort of back-story, a life we've lived with memories and history, and it helps us to fit in; to look more human." The last word sounded tainted coming out of Fetch's mouth, like it tasted bad as he said it.

"So you got a truck driver?" Max cocked his head, not understanding.

"Well, yeah." Fetch thought for a moment, his body faded in and out like blinking cursor. "A year ago there was a man in Florida who met a girl, the first girl that paid any attention to him - he was a rather unappealing man -- and he was so focused on her he neglected his job of cleaning the station monitors at a particular nuclear base. Dirt and grime built up and corroded one piece of the glass in such a way that it almost exactly resembled an incoming missile when the morning lights flickered on due to an energy surge while the freight elevator pulled itself up to ground level. It was these series of circumstances that led another man, a man whose wife had started neglecting him at home because she'd just found love in a rather unappealing man, to come to work one morning, stinking of whiskey and resentment to sit at his monitoring station and see the nuclear missile so obviously heading straight for the Eastern coast as the cleaning man rode the freight elevator back up to the surface.. A day before this all happened I was assigned to one particular man who's odds had him at the top of the survivor's list." Fetch nodded towards the other side of the car.

Max looked out the window to where his friend was pacing in front of a guardrail. "Ham?" Max asked.

Fetch nodded. "Oftentimes the ones with nothing to live for end up living the longest."

Max thought he understood and then that thought developed wings and flew out the window to join all the other thoughts migrating to a warmer climate. "I don't get it."

"The world was inches away from a nuclear war because one woman chose to be with another man, and I was sent to watch your friend -"

"Ham? Really?"

"Yes. And the best way to get close to him was to be his driver. Thus the truck driver back-story."

Max nodded like he understood, and then asked the one question that had been bugging him since he was fired during a job happiness survey. "Fetch, why are you human?"

"I'm not."

"Yeah, but you are. Like, you look human, you act human, and besides your missing dangly bits, you're pretty damn close to the real deal. Why are you human when Raziel and Gummy Worm and pretty much everyone else are not?"

Fetch thought about this for a long moment and then put his hands up in the air like he'd seen people do when they didn't have an answer. "Perks of the job I guess."

"Oh," Max said and stared at his lap. "Is any of this ever going to make sense?" There was no answer, and when he looked up the front seat was empty. "Oh," he said again and slumped lower in the seat. Outside the wind had picked up and the air had turned a sour mixture of soot and smoke. Max found he was lonely. He was about to pass it off as an effect of the entire world being destroyed but found that he was lonely for just one person. "I miss June," he said to no one in the car. "I don't want to miss her, and I doubt she misses me, but..." his voice trailed off. His eyes were leaking so he swatted at the moisture with the palm of his hand. "Why do I miss her?" The tears flowed more freely as the station wagon seemed to shrink in on itself. Max hugged himself, squeezing his own shoulders and sobbing as the seats and doors and even the air itself condensed and did their own fair share of squeezing. He pushed open his door and rolled out onto the highway's broken pavement, laying on his back and sucking at the acrid air. Dirt and smoke mixed with the tears and turned his eyes red. He had smears of ash lines that followed a thin path down his cheeks. He coughed and cried and coughed again. He mumbled June's name, found that helped a little and then said it louder. He coughed, found the sharp barbs that had settled around his heart had loosened and said her name again. Thick phlegm built up in his throat, he spat grey wads onto the pavement, and shouted June's name again and again. The tears flowed harder, as if dormant emotions had found their escape through ducts that only opened under apocalyptic conditions. He wailed and spat and coughed and screamed her name. It turned into an elongated version of just her middle vowel, rising and crashing and gasping as Max tried to catch his breath. "Uuuune!" he screamed. The scream turned into a howl, the howl into a moan, and the moan into laughter. The barbs loosened all the way, his chest relaxed, and the tears, still flowing, took on a soothing nature, like released steam from a high pressure barrel. He still coughed but it had become a hoarse strained bark. "June," Max whispered and sat up. "I miss you."

Another cough, deep and rumbling, echoed from over his shoulder. Max turned and saw Ham staring at him, his face softening and a concerned half-smile bending one corner of his lips. Max pushed himself up to his feet and found the air harder to breath at that height. He crouched and ran over to his friend. "Max, I -" Ham started, but Max put his index finger on Ham's lips.

"Shh," Max said. "I want to apologize for everything."

"Youf carn starf byf takingth yer fingarf off my mouf," Ham mumbled.

"What?" Max asked. Ham reached up and gently pulled Max's hand away. "Oh. Sorry."

"No problem, pal." Ham cocked his head and looked into Max's face. "You feel better now?"

"No," Max shook his head eagerly. "But, I actually feel sad, which is good, right?"

"I don't know if -"

"I'm sad, Ham. Like genuinely sad!" Max grinned, bounced from foot to foot, and then pulled his shirt up to wipe at his face. Ham noticed how concaved Max's stomach had become.

"When's the last time you ate, pal?"

"I don't know, but that's not the point. The point is I'm actually sad!"

"You've said that already." Ham was beginning to worry his friend was having a meltdown or worse, though what could be worse than a meltdown at this point was any sort of thing. "Maybe you should sit down."

"No, no, I feel great!" Max continued to bounce from foot to foot. He even spun around a few times for good measure.

Tina, having given Max his space as he repeatedly shouted his wife's name -- or ex-wife now, she guessed -- slowly began to walk up to the two men. Ham was trying to hold Max still by the shoulders as Max did his best to swing and dance himself away. "Is everything okay?" she asked.

"No!" Max answered happily. "Everything is shit!" He smiled and danced some more. Tina looked at Ham for clarification but he just shrugged and gave Max a worried look.

"Maybe you should sit down," Tina suggested.

"I tried that already," Ham replied. "He doesn't want to sit."

"I'm sad," Max sang. "I'm so, so very sad!"

"Food?" Tina offered.

"He's not hungry," Ham said and Max pointed to Ham and nodded.

"Okay," Tina thought aloud. "Maybe we should slap him?"

Max stopped dancing and put both his hands on either side of Tina's face. "You really should stop using that as your go-to plan, Tina. It really, really hurts."

"But Max, I think you're having some sort of breakdown. You're not acting like yourself."

"I know!" He jumped up and down until his legs started to ache and then sat down on the guardrail and kicked his feet out. "Isn't it wonderful?!"

Tina turned to Ham completely out of ideas and the worry twisted her face. "I don't know what to do," she whispered. "Do you?"

Ham shook his head no and then the simplest, most ridiculously stupid idea came to mind. He turned, grabbed both of Max's feet so he'd stop kicking them, leaned down and said, "Max, why are you so happy to be sad?"

Max beamed, relaxed, and then wiggled his feet out of Ham's hands. "Because," he said and stood up in front of his friend. "I finally feel something." He swung both arms around his large friend, his hands weren't even close to meeting in the back. "I'm so, so terribly sorry about Sophie. I wish I was there. I wish I felt this way when she died. I wish I could've shared in your sadness; shared some of the load so you didn't have to do it alone. I'm sorry, Ham."

Ham tried to say something, his mouth opened and shut, and then silent sobs overtook him. Max stepped back, looked at his friend and then went in for another hug. Ham hugged back this time, cracking one of Max's ribs in the process. Both of them embraced until they couldn't breathe. They coughed and wiped at tears that left wet trails in the soot on their faces.

Max turned and faced Tina, "Tina," he said and gently grabbed her shoulders. "I'm not sorry about Michael."

She nodded and then processed what he said. "Wait, what?" she asked.

"I'm not sorry about Michael. He wasn't good enough for you. I'm sorry you lost your husband, and I'm sad you'll have to mourn that asshole, but he was your asshole, and I'm sorry you lost him, but I'm not sorry he's gone."

Tina was conflicted on whether to slap him or kiss him so she did both at the same time. When she pulled her lips back from his she tasted wet ash and salty tears. "You're an asshole too, you know," she said and coughed.

"I know," Max replied with raspy breath. "But I'm going to fix that," he tried to say, but a coughing fit overtook him.

Waves of grey air surrounded the three of them. From their right a voice came from a place deep in the smoky fog, "I know I'm just the watcher, but it seems kind of a waste if you all expire at this point in time."

Ham was bent over, his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. "I think that angelic fuck is right," he growled. "Maybe we should keep moving?"

"Fine by me." Max coughed and then spat out what looked like a third lung. He grabbed Tina's hand and the sleeve of Ham's shirt and drug them back to the safety of the station wagon.

Submitted November 18, 2014 at 10:03PM by nicmccool http://ift.tt/1EZRvsm nicmccool