The Last Tomorrow

FIFTY-THREE

1

Nobody arrests him. It’s almost impossible to believe. He should be arrested. He should be tried and convicted and electrocuted till he’s dead, but nobody arrests him. The detective takes his statement, and when he’s finished talking simply nods and says yeah, that’s about what I thought. He asks if he can go home. The detective says he can, but in the next couple days we’ll need you around to answer any questions might come up. He says okay and walks out of there.

The daylight is very bright.

He supposes they might arrest him later, but he doesn’t think so. The police like his story. And who gives a shit about a few dead lowlifes, anyway?

He rides his motorcycle to his apartment. He’ll have to stop by the motel room on Whitley and collect his things at some point, but not today. Today he wants to lock himself in a small room and not come out again. He wants silence and darkness.

Everything seems alien to him now and oddly flat. His street doesn’t feel like his street. His stairs don’t feel like his stairs. Standing before his front door he’s sure it isn’t really his front door at all, and there’s no chance that his apartment is on the other side of it. He unlocks the door and pulls the police tape away and steps inside. While it looks like his apartment, he knows it isn’t. It feels wrong. It feels like nothing. The world has somehow become two-dimensional, a stagecraft version of itself.

There’s no depth to it, nor is there feeling.

He closes his door and locks it.

He walks to his bedroom and grabs a blanket from the bed and carries it into the bathroom. He lies in his bathtub and covers himself with the blanket and closes his eyes.

This is what he needs. Darkness and silence.

But there’s neither darkness nor silence to be found, not for long, because the darkness isn’t empty. It never was.

2

Carl packs his suitcase and leaves the boarding house. He drives home, parks in front of his house. He walks to the front door and stands facing it for a long time. He doesn’t know if he can do this. He doesn’t think he can.

He reaches forward with a shaking hand, key extended. He pauses. He puts the key into the lock and turns it. He pushes the door open. It swings wide. He looks into his living room without stepping inside. He can see Naomi everywhere. Pictures of her rest on end-tables, the curtains she bought cover the windows, the couch they shared sits in the middle of the room.

He looks down at the metal threshold, afraid to pass over it. He considers pulling the door closed and walking away. He doesn’t think he’s ready for this.

He steps forward — for the first time in months he steps into his home. Then he closes the door behind him and locks it.

He sets down the suitcase.

He already feels sick, and knows over the course of the next week it’ll only get worse. Much worse. There will be vomiting and diarrhea and tremendous leg cramps and probably he won’t be able to sleep through any of it. There will come a time, he knows, when he thinks he might die and hopes he does. He will want to use so that he doesn’t die, but he won’t use, and he won’t die either.

He’s determined to reach the other side of this.

He will.

And he’ll do it here, in his home, where almost every beautiful moment he ever experienced still lives.

He picks up a picture of Naomi. He looks at her beautiful heart-shaped face and her kind eyes. He loved her very much and he loves her still. He misses her and knows he won’t ever stop missing her, not completely, and it hurts, but he knows that’s okay. It’s how you hold onto a memory; you accept the pain so you can keep the memory alive. You move on not by ignoring pain, but by accepting it and carrying it with you to the new places you go.

He’ll get through this week because Naomi would want him to. She’d not want him to leap into the abyss after her. She’d not accept that. So he can’t either.

This week will be the most difficult week of his life. He knows that.

But it’s time.

Looking at his picture of Naomi, and thinking of his loss, he begins to cry. He gasps as the hurt washes over him. He tries to speak to her, to the photograph, but he’s incapable of words. Words are insufficient. Words are for everyday experiences. Only childish grunts can properly express what he’s feeling — this raw loneliness and pain. But he lets himself feel it. He lets himself cry.

It’s time.

3

Eugene sits up alone in the gray early morning. He looks around the bathroom, feeling confused and sick. His neck is sore from sleeping in the bathtub. He pushes his way out from under his blanket and gets to his feet. He lights a cigarette and inhales deeply. He looks at himself in the bathroom mirror for a long time without knowing exactly what it is he’s trying to catch a glimpse of, but he knows he isn’t seeing it and suspects it isn’t there. Whatever it is. He walks out to the living room, and through it to the balcony. He looks at the shallow world he now inhabits, drained of color and life. He thinks of the dream he just awakened from, the nightmare. He thinks of the cannibals. He thinks of that small boy they murdered, and the part they saved for him. He takes a drag from his cigarette. He knows who the boy was now, and supposes he always did.

But the boy is gone, even to the last part.

He flicks what remains of his cigarette out to the street.

This is what he’s left with.