The Atrocity Artist

15.

Skad clings to the gun, his flesh fusing with the textured plastic grip, every muscle strained and exerting maximum pressure until it's a miracle the weapon doesn't fire. It is the only thing keeping him from sinking beneath the ground, his lifeline. The lawn has turned to quicksand and it sucks greedily for him, drawing him downward, absorbing him. The sharp musk of earth and the vegetal tang of grass fills his mouth. He pulls harder to keep from going under.

A scream explodes out of his guts but loses itself somewhere along the length of his esophagus, scraped raw from swallowing so many pills. The dirt is trying to steal something which does not belong to it, and he fights to make a noise, a sign of his rage and resistance.

When the silence breaks, it is not with a cry for help but with a deep guttural cough. The wet, phlegmy bark spews up a Pollack painting of dissolving capsules and whiskey on the ground inches from his face.

He lies on his stomach at the bottom of the front steps, where he landed after his fall. How long he's been there, he cannot say. His right hand holds the gun, in his left is the antenna and a circuit board. The green sheet swarms with diodes, resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductors, and switches, miniature and innumerable, glittering in the moonlight. Modern angels dancing on the head of a pin.

It is an omen of a great calamity in the universe, The sight of it drove him from the house, fleeing the accursed, night-haunted den of misery and misbegotten memories.

No. That's wrong. He ran toward something, not from anything. But what?

To help. To the car.

Skad pulls himself up into a crouch but teeters back over on his side. The drugs have supplanted his blood with thin verdigris sap. It flows in anemic currents that echoes the placid lapping of the lake. His vital ichor is depleted. In its place watery spittle has taken residence like a mockingbird impostor. This new substance, plasmal and tidal, ties him to the natural order. His eye tics along to the lascivious chirp of crickets. A whippoorwill cries and his heart trembles in sympathy. Breath escapes him following the same rhythm of the sporadic wind. And it hums in unison with the million blades of grass, singing their majestic paeans to the heavens.

He hasn't moved. He'll never get to the car. He should go inside. Call for help. 911.

Can't. No more phone.

He needs to act. He'll lose consciousness soon. Might never wake up again. The rasp from his mouth doesn't carry. Not even someone close by would hear. The lighter in his pocket could light twigs and dry grass. But campfires are common enough. No one would care. If only he had a flare gun.

After the thought occurs to him, it takes a glacial age before Skad links it to the revolver in his hand.

Folk around here might ignore shots. No shortage of gun-happy drunks. Why get involved unless you were being shot at.

The house on the hill shines with all the grace of an airport.

Bullet in the window, Bastard calls police. The best plan he's got.

Aiming takes time. Hand waivers. Vision blurs and doubles. With gun in both hands, steadied by ground, sights line up, centers on glass.

The pistol pulls free of his grip, and a voice from some infinite height above him says, "Christ, what the hell are you doing? Give me that."

The whippoorwill issues it lonely lament in the humid night. Perhaps it's the bird that spoke. The lakeshore is so deserted it seems more likely than any other possibility. He could turn onto his back and look but it's probably the bird.

"Can't count on you not to fuck everything up," it says. "You were supposed to use the gun on yourself. If I didn't come down, you'd have woken up tomorrow with a hangover and I'd be out my security deposit. If you'd manage to hit the broad side of the house." The laugh that comes is tainted with grim humor but still manages to be familiar.