The Killing Hour

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Something hits him hard. An iron bar of some type. It gets him in the jaw. Right in the front of the mouth. It plows through his teeth, turning them sharp and ragged. He feels his burned lips split open. Bits of shattered teeth are stabbed into his gums and tongue. He fires the pistol and knows the bullet goes astray.

Then the same thing hits him again. This time in the side of the head. His head snaps back and his view of the world changes. He can’t help himself, but he lets go of the gun and brings his hands to his mouth, his fingers probing and assessing and trying to repair the damage. He can feel blood rolling down the side of his face. Can feel his mouth filling up with the stuff. He spits some out. Teeth come out with it. He doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t think he’s anywhere. But if he had to guess-he’d guess this was death.

The forest pulses. Its expands, it shrinks, it’s there and then it isn’t. Same for the sky. The stars get bigger, they get smaller, they get brighter, they disappear. The pain in his head pulses, it gets bigger, it doesn’t get smaller, it grows. So that’s not pulsing. It’s just increasing.

He closes his eyes. He can hear a beach nearby. Seagulls. The waves crashing against the shore. He’s lying down. He can’t remember how he got here, but he loves the beach. It’s his favorite place in the world. Once, when he was a kid, he ran away from home because his dad used to beat the shit out of him, and he stayed at the beach for four days until the police found him and took him back to his dad so he could be beaten some more.

He gets to his feet. He doesn’t recognize this part of the beach. There are a few trees nearby. The sun is out. It’s incredibly bright, as if it’s only a few feet out into the sea rather than a million miles away. Like the forest before it disappeared, the sun is pulsing too. No, not pulsing, but disappearing then reappearing, like somebody is hanging a dark sheet over it and pulling it away every few seconds and then putting it back.

He starts walking. The sun is getting annoying, and he lifts his hand to shield his eyes. There are people here. He’s not sure who they are. People from the army, maybe. He walks toward them and they seem happy to see him, but they seem unhappy about the sun. He starts shaking hands. There’s some back slapping and a lot of people saying How have you been. His wife is here too.

“Babe,” he says, and he wraps his arms around her.

“I love you,” she tells him.

“Your legs-they’re back,” he tells her.

“The hedgehog gave them to me,” she says.

That makes him happy. He hugs her tighter, then lets her go and holds her hand. She leads him away.

“Where are we going?” he asks.

“We’re going on a journey,” she tells him.

“A mission?”

“Something like that. Here, I got you something,” she says, and she hands him a flashlight.

“What do I need this for?” he asks.

“To light our way.”

The flashlight is on. He turns it off. Then he turns it on again. At the same time he does that, the sun fades, it appears, it fades. The flashlight, somehow, is connected to the sun. It makes him smile. Smiling hurts. There’s something wrong with his mouth. He cries. Crying makes his head hurt. There’s something wrong with his head.

“I have the world’s worst headache,” he tells her.

“You have the world’s worst headache,” she tells him.

“That’s what I just said.”

“That’s what you just said,” she says.

He doesn’t know why she’s doing that. It’s annoying. The world’s worst headache is getting worse.

“I need to sit down for a bit,” he tells her.

“Not yet,” she says. “Let’s just keep walking. There’ll be plenty of time for sitting down later.”