Scars and Salvation: One

Note: “Scars and Salvation” is a four-part work which will encompass the summer editions of Dark Matter. We’ll be uncorking a new section each month for the next four months.

I’m lost in the glow of dying fireflies. My face sticks to cold stone and I’m wearing a suit the color of a summer funeral. Drool sneaks out of my mouth, slithers down my chin and drips onto the concrete floor. Hands seem like miles away, my fingers struggling to toss the soft confines of another hospital breeze. Three men in white rush to me in slow motion, their mouths open but absent of sound and words.

The doctors say it’ll take time to get used to the mind’s momentary escapes. They say that after floating at the edge of death for only a few minutes, my heart needs time to catch up. It beats with uncertainty, blood flowing to the tune of desperate breaths. I feel the strength of a dozen arms greet my jacket, concrete now slipping away from my skin. I’m in the air, bangs hanging over my face like dirty ice. One of the men screams, his voice just a hollow breath, his eyes a tinge of mulberry.

My back soothes with the soft murmur of a white hospital bed. Figures haze with a blurry edge, like I’m underwater. A man with the face of a soldier whispers into my ear, only for a second do I know it’s time to come back down.

“Wake up,” I think he says.

#

Before I can close my eyes, I hear my brother’s voice. It cuts through the invisible layer of regret hovering over my skin, sharp edge poking into my brain like a broken toothpick. For a second I picture my wedding day, half a sun letting its rays grace the smiles of Claire and my family. I remember my brother’s words, the sentences of a best man.

Thoughts start to drift and a coverlet of black polishes my vision, its eager embrace resting my mind. I can’t hear anything anymore. All I know is that I almost died last week and I haven’t seen my wife in what feels like forever. Here I am again, right on the cliff between purgatory and nothingness, and before long the wind pulls me back into a room filled with white light.

My brother’s tough grip squeezes my fingers and we’re alone, the bloodied angels on his shoulders flying away with quick rush of black static. Their wings are as clear as cellophane. He rubs my dry and cracked knuckles, his lips stuck together with everything he wants to say to me but can’t. He shakes his head, blinking like he’s watching a black-and-white movie.

“Christian,” he says. “Wake up.”

My mouth tastes as stale as old white bread. I try to sit up but he pushes me down, his hands releasing mine. “Just lay there,” he says. “You’re moving, that’s a good sign.”

I nod and open my mouth, half-expecting a falsetto to rip from my vocal cords. My tongue flicks across my bottom lip, the remnants of another dream’s saliva gently wetting tired skin. “Where…”

Jonsi chuckles and sits back in the metal folding chair. “The doctors said that this should be the last of your relapses. Do you remember where you are?”

I know that I almost died. I know that I spent a month somewhere away from home. I know that I miss Claire. Shaking my head, I point to the ceiling.

Jonsi smiles. “We’re going home today, Christian. You were walking out of the lobby when you collapsed. They’re going to take you out in a wheelchair and Dad’s going to meet us outside. Do you understand all of this?”

I nod again.

He stands up, says something to the man behind him. He hands Jonsi a small orange bottle, what looks like little pink pills rattling inside as it falls into his leather jacket pocket. Jonsi leans down and pushes the hair out of my face. The men in the room lift me by my underarms and ease me into a wheelchair. “He’s a sharp dresser,” one of them says to Jonsi.

“That he is.” Jonsi shakes the back of my head, rustles a mass of wet hair. He pushes me out of the room and I look down to see the dust stains on my thighs. My stomach rumbles with either hunger or sickness, its groan growing louder as we pace along the hospital floor. Men and women glide past me, conversations lost in the midst of a dying day. Slices of moonlight peek into each room as we pass by, the frowns of inmates and patients a map to the unknown.

We enter the lobby and I remember its lazy glare. A security guard smiles and presses a large blue button on the wall next to the automatic doors. The glass opens and the night greets me like a lost cousin. Jonsi stops at the end of the sidewalk and I barely recognize the old man leaning against the Jeep, hazard lights blinking with delight. A flop of salt-and-pepper hair doesn’t shift in the wind. He smiles and crosses his arms. When I was a teenager and got arrested for possession of cocaine, he picked me up at the police station with the same grin plastered across his face.

“You okay to walk?” Jonsi leans down and zips up his jacket.

“I think so,” I say, a rush of blood traveling from my chest and into my legs, toes crinkling with feeling. My steps feel like that of a wary child. My sneakers touch the concrete as if it were covered with black ice. My father grabs one arm and Jonsi the other until I’m standing on my own. I take a few steps forward and place one hand against the cold metal of my father’s Jeep. He reaches over to me, a forefinger and thumb clipping the bottom of my chin. His touch reminds me of my childhood.

“Christian,” he says, arms now wrapped around me.

“Dad.”

He turns to Jonsi. “Did the doctors say it would happen again?”

Jonsi’s dimples crunch in mild confusion. “Most likely not. Figures that he’s all dressed up and his mind does that to him one last time.”

I take a gigantic breath of night air, crisp snap of cold coating my lungs. My father opens the passenger side door and motions for me to sit. The leather is cool to the touch, small slit of skin on the small of my back shocked with its touch. Jonsi hops in the backseat and my father starts the engine. The car smells like a library.

We drive without the sounds of the radio, rounds of silence the blanket over our reunion. It’s only when we pass the spot where Claire and I met that a thousand different pictures of her beautiful face start to spin in my mind like an impromptu slideshow. I recall the glowing drops of green in her eyes, low-cut blouse revealing a constellation of freckles. I bought her a coffee with two shots of vanilla and she said that she’d like to have dinner with me sometime.

“Claire,” I say aloud.

My father looks in the rearview mirror, teeth grinding behind sagging cheeks. Olive skin can’t hide the emotion in his face. I hear Jonsi cough twice and shift positions in the backseat. I look at the road ahead, headlights cutting through an autumn fog.

“Christian,” my father says, “we’ll talk when we get home.” He closes his eyes for a moment, tips of his fingers tapping the steering wheel.

“Dad, what’s wrong? Jonsi? What the hell is going on here?”

My father turns the corner and we pull into a convenience store parking lot. The lights are as bright as exploding stars.

“Christian, something happened in the month you were in the hospital. You have to know that you nearly died. You have to know that you put us all through hell, including your wife.”

I can’t look at his face, don’t know if there’s a glimmer of lost hope in the pale brown of his eyes.

“Claire’s dead, Christian.”

My eyelids fall shut and what comes next is the comforting black of reality slipping away.

#

Jonsi tells me that for a week and a half before my overdose, I slept in an abandoned military bunker off the trails of a Massachusetts state park. An elderly couple found me drinking water from a dirty puddle while walking their golden retriever. After they called the police, I shot up 1600mg of heroin mixed with fetanyl and fell on my back next to a pile of broken branches.

When the ambulance arrived, I was experiencing massive spasms of the intestinal track before I stopped breathing. I flat-lined on the way to the hospital and a nice African-American man pounded my chest until my soul decided to find its way back to the body.

Jonsi sips his beer and scratches underneath the soft red of his beard. “I’m sorry about Claire. And I’m sorry that none of us came to the hospital and told you. The doctors said you weren’t…you. They said you wouldn’t understand what happened.”

I take a deep breath and stare at the shelves and shelves of my father’s expansive book collection. My lips are dry and I want to take a nap. “I still don’t understand what happened, Jonsi.” I can’t remember the color of her eyes, the sound of her voice on a Sunday morning. My eyes start to water and I’m afraid to be alone.

Jonsi frowns and looks away, his cheeks filling with an Irish red glow. He downs the rest of the beer and slides the glass to the side of the coffee table. He turns his head to the open window, silence filling the living room and sending a slight chill into the only parts of my skin that aren’t sore. I can tell that he’s never seen another man cry.

“How’s he feeling?” My father’s brawny arms are crossed, leaning against the entrance to the living room. He’s wearing a black bathrobe and leather slippers.

“Dad, you can talk to me directly.” I stand up and shake my head, wiping the wetness from my eyes. “I’m right fucking here.”

He nods and sits next to Jonsi, falling into the couch like a man tumbling out of a skyscraper window. “Calm down, Christian. You haven’t said a word to me since the car ride home. I figured you weren’t up for talking right now.” He lets his arm drop along the arm of the couch, his fingernails gently scraping the flowery fabric.

I grind my teeth, taste the empty air of a man who doesn’t remember much of his dead wife. “I fainted in the car when you told me, Dad. And I’m not even sure that I’ve woken up yet. Why would she kill herself?”

My father closes his eyes and looks to the carpeted floor, his slippers kicking rogue fabric. He pushes himself off the couch and walks over to a bookcase in the corner of the room. He lets his hands slide across the dust until he stops at large, leather-bound book at the end of the shelf. Picking it off the shelf, he hugs it under his arm and turns to me.

“Take this into the guest room and spend some time with it. Then get some sleep.” He hands me the tome, which almost slips out of my grip. “When you wake up, we’ll have breakfast and the three of us will talk. Your mother’s flying back into town tomorrow night. A reunion is long overdue.” He smiles with the grace of a diplomat.

He taps Jonsi on the shoulder and the two head into the kitchen. I stand for a moment alone, the memories of a lost childhood trying to seep into my brain. Jogging up the stairs, I walk into the guest room and place the book on the bed, aged russet leather resting amidst a grey quilt. I sit next to it, kick off my boots and watch them fly across the room. They land next to a bare dresser with a small thud. I lean back into the bed, an uneasy sigh escaping my lips. I reach over to the book, plop it onto my chest, trying not to drift into slumber.

The cover is as heavy as a fishbowl. I turn to the first page and see a stream of photos glued to yellowing paper. A younger version of myself returns the glare, fuller cheeks and the eyes of a man unafraid of the world. The woman’s lips are pressed into his cheek, her eyelids revealing bits of green mascara. Blonde hair with streaks of red fall around her ears and rests on pale shoulders.

In my dreams, this woman’s hair was black.

---

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher J. Dwyer is Dogmatika’s staff writer. He writes horror and noir. His work has appeared in publications such as Twisted Tongue, Gold Dust magazine, and numerous fiction anthologies. He can be reached through his official website: www.christopherdwyer.com.