Them #20
His vision darkened as he pressed himself to his feet, eyes barely clearing as he shambled toward the basement’s bathroom and grabbed his pack.
The man disrobed and lit a candle. Unzipped his bag, took out several plastic bottles of water, then stepped into the tub.
Though he yearned for plumbing, for hot steam rolling over his pores, the containers of shampoo and body wash he found on the shower shelf were the next best thing.
The lotions were only a little chunky, and though he’d smell like a human again, a danger in this age, it was worth it.
The man went through the cycle several times—applying product, pouring water on himself, scrubbing the grime from his skin, and then rinsing off again—before he stepped out of the tub and began scraping a towel all over, as if to polish himself.
In the mirror, his fingers traced down to his chin. Bristly whiskers prodded his fingers. He never was much at growing facial hair. A year since a proper grooming had left him with a billy goat patchwork. He needed to shave.
Back to bed then. But before he could sleep, he stripped the deer-shit-streaked sheets and found another set in the closet.
Last night’s set was used to wrap up his filthy clothes, then stuffed into a trash bag.
A new outfit was in short order. He wanted to be clean, if only for a little while longer.
Nude and tucked between fresh sheets, he thought of his second concussion, which took three weeks of rest to recover from.
And not just no running or jumping or soaring, but full-on bed rest in a mostly darkened room.
He’d asked John… no, James Kim, one of his teammates, to pick up blackout curtains from Walmart so he didn’t have to deal with the sunlight.
Those dusty blinds that came standard dormitory issue hadn’t done shit to keep out the brightness.
James Kim. What had become of him? He was from South Korea. Did he ever make it back home? Did the Scorpions ever reach that far?
What’s the point in wondering?
Two weeks, maybe three. The man didn’t hope for one or the other. He and hope had stopped getting along quite some time ago.
He rolled onto his side, pressed his head into the softness of the pillow, and closed his eyes, entering a blissful medium between sleep and waking, filled with an utter awareness of self-conscious emptiness.
Briefly, the man thought that this was better than sleep.
He didn’t like his dreams. He couldn’t remember last night’s, but he knew it had been dreadful.
Later that afternoon, after a period of fitful napping, the man became aware of the rest of the pain.
His feet ached badly. He rubbed the bottom of one against the opposite ankle.
It felt tough and coarse with blistered skin.
Didn’t even notice in the shower. At one time, his soles had popped and oozed with oily pus, but they’d soon grown used to their nightly walks.
Must’ve torn ’em open. Did my shoes get wet? Can’t remember. Oh well. Dry now.
His thighs and calves felt thick and foreign, almost robotic.
The man suspected that if he dug his pocketknife deep into his muscles, he would discover a layer of false flesh.
A lifelike facade hiding whirring joints and hard metal circuitry with flashing red bulbs that begged him to recharge his battery.
Don’t worry, legs, charging now. Taking my time.
What’s time?
Collective agreement upon progression of unseen force.
No collective anymore. I decide now.
But as the sun slipped to the horizon, light filtering in through his lone window, he couldn’t help but feel helpless. It was shortly before eight in the evening, yet noon felt no further gone than an hour or two. He was foggy. Slipping. Time was leaving him behind.
The man had only hoped to find a guest room in the basement, but it seemed these folks had moved their main suite to the subterranean level.
He reached over to one of the bedside tables.
Its surface was neat and tidy, complete with an inoperable lamp placed atop a circular doily of dusty white lace.
Inside the single drawer was a religious text in a language the man couldn’t name and a Jack Reacher paperback in English.
Some medicine bottles with multisyllabic names that had been prescribed by a professional long ago. They were all empty.
The opposite nightstand was messier. The lamp and doily were identical, but the rest of the surface was crowded with reading glasses, an ashtray filled with silver dollars, and two hardcover books.
The man opened the drawer and dug through lazily tossed heart medications, a tangle of various charging cords, and a swath of makeup wipes until he found what he sought. A pen. Bonus: a notepad.
The top page was partially detached and covered in nearly illegible scrawl. The handwriting was hard and uncurved. The inked tip had driven into the paper, creating small indentations that spoke in typographical sureness. It was a list:
Stock up—toilet paper (if store’s out, Marty has extra)
Sour Patch Kids for Sherry
The man flinched.
Lowe’s—check x# nails first—2x4s & plywood
Do we have enough water?
Plug & fill bathtub
The man reread number two.
Heavy blanket
Fix radio or get new one—extra batteries
The man ripped the list off the notepad and scrawled the current time, 8:03, on the next leaflet. He rested his head on the pillow and tried to sleep, but his mind kept returning to the list. His thoughts lingered: toilet paper, candy, nails, wood, water, blankets, a radio, batter—
A radio!
The man sat up. The blood in his brain stirred, heavy and viscous, but he fought the nausea. He’d tried radios before, shortly after leaving the bunker, but heard nothing except dead static. Yet what else did he have to do?
Might as well take a look. Need clothes anyway. A new flashlight too? Probably not. Lighter’s good enough.
The man pushed himself up from the bed and briefly detoured to use the restroom in flickering flamelight. He checked his watch and was shocked to see that it was almost midnight.
Didn’t even realize I fell asleep.
After procuring a new pair of jeans, underpants, socks, and a plain white T-shirt, he took his time searching for the radio.
The basement bedroom failed to yield one, so he climbed the stairs.
There was a small home office filled with stacks of paperwork and a stockpile of FOR SALE yard signs.
Printed on the opposite side of each was the tanned face of an attractive and well-dressed dark-haired woman.
A real estate agent, and presumably the mother of the house.
Her name was not Sherry, the Sour Patch Kids fan.
The next door he came to was closed and decorated with butterflies made of pink construction paper and a big yellow sun. The man did not open that door.
In a truly American living room complete with couch, recliner, and television, the man found the radio partially disassembled on the coffee table. He hadn’t noticed it the night before when he stumbled in, hell-bent on finding the basement. He hadn’t noticed anything.
He sat down on the sofa, used the lighter to spark a dusty candle on the coffee table, and examined the array of interior parts. They were organized in the neat fashion of an instruction manual. The electrical components remained mostly intact. That was good.
He was reaching for one of the larger pieces when a dull whitish blue caught his eye. The battery compartment. The springs and nodes were covered with corrosion.
There’s your issue right there. How to fix it?
He’d once had a toy lightsaber. A blue one, like Anakin Skywalker’s. He’d always liked Anakin, who was brave and bold and in love. Anakin did what it took to save the ones he loved. For that, even knowing what would become of the fallen Jedi Knight, the boy forgave the fictional character.
One day, after dropping his lightsaber down the hardwood stairs of his childhood apartment, the dollar-store batteries had exploded in a hiss of blue-gray foam.
The boy cried because the light blue glow had disappeared and been replaced by dull plastic, and when he waved it through the air, the weeeuw weeeuw sounds didn’t come, and when he’d cried, his mother had taken him into her arms and said “It’s okay, Timmy, it’s okay” because she knew the secret.
A toothbrush and baking soda. Good as new.
Timmy. That was my name. I remember that much.
He found the baking soda in a cabinet beneath the kitchen sink. Instead of a toothbrush, the man ran an old musty sponge beneath a bottle of water taken from the dead fridge. He sprinkled the baking soda on top of it, then did the same to the battery compartment, and began to scrub.
The corrosion felt strange against his fingers, granules sticking to his hands as they worked to scrub the radio, coating his wrists and creeping beneath his fingernails, sending a series of charged chills up his spine.
Eerie.
Something was bothering the man, but he wasn’t sure what it was. The past few days felt like a haze. He should feel grateful. He’d made it out of the waterfall. Escaped the cornfield. And then… and then what?
I’m not sure. I can’t say.
After a few more minutes of careful scrubbing, the man dried off the radio and returned it to the living room coffee table.
His memory frustrated him. He couldn’t begin to guess how far he’d walked since the waterfall. Everything that’d happened since he struck the tree was a blur, and everything after the cornfield was even more obfuscated.
The memories weren’t gone. Of that, the man was sure. They were just… slippery. He tried to grab hold of them, tried to wind the hours of his eyes back, but nothing sat still for very long inside. The past swarmed all around, a vortex waiting to collapse upon him.
It wouldn’t be long. The innards of his belly swam in nervous figure eights. What? What’s wrong with me? What did I do?