Burn my flesh to ash but set my soul on fire
“Mother fucker!” Gradie yelled into the phone. The hostess up front cleared her throat and someone laughed in the kitchen.
He called the number again. It only rang once.
The number you are dialing is disconnected or no longer—
“Shit!”
He jumped up and ran across the tables and knocked a chair over. Someone yelled as he bolted out the door and the exit bell sounded like a punch line. He wondered if a dine and dash counted as something drastic as he peeled out of the lot onto the access road.
You son of a bitch. I’ll show you drastic.
Careful with those strong coffees.
So, he was watching, somehow.
An idea bloomed in his head, sudden and irresistible. He merged through three lanes to a chorus of horns pushed the gas until the drive-thrus and strip malls smeared across the windows. That other, frightened, costume of himself fell away with it all and his spirit flared up in the driver's seat. Five minutes melted away and he pulled into a quick trip.
In the trunk he found a gas can, and with it the memory of watching a friend dip it in his tank on the side of a hundred-degree highway months ago. The memory grabbed him for a moment, trying to take him down, but dissolved in the face of his belief. There was only one Gradie, and he was here on business.
He smiled at the camera as he filled the can, thinking of all the crimes solved with quick trip footage. Maybe in a few hours, he’d see himself on the news.
The can sloshed in the passenger seat as he tore back down the road. He turned back around the mall and the edge of one of its big empty parking lots rose ahead of him. Perfect.
He parked in the middle of it and got out. Wind blew around him like the top of some urban mesa. There was nothing in sight but mall and suburban treetops, sandwiched between sky and concrete. He dug around in the center console and found a month-old half-smoked pack of Marlboro red 100s that some other him had bought, smoked, and forgot about during a night of drinking. Inside was a quarter full plastic Bic lighter. It glittered in his hand like a token of some other world.
He rolled down all the windows and left the car running with the AC on full blast. Wind whipped up the fumes as he circled the car tossing amber-colored splashes of gasoline through the windows. When the last half-ounce of gas resisted his efforts, he popped his phone out of the wallet case and set it on the ground, then overturned the gas can and let a last undramatic drip fall onto the card holder. He tossed the can through the window, picked the wallet up by the wrist strap and flicked on the lighter.
The faux leather caught fire instantly. He ducked back and threw it away in a reflex. It sailed through the air like a spell and flew through the open back window. He had just enough time to wonder if he was far back enough before the gas ignited.
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He stumbled away from the rush of flame and the heat followed him as it grew. Dark smoke rolled off into the sky. He stepped back until his phone rang. It was an unlisted number.
“Hello?”
“Congratulations Gradie. Welcome to the Hardworlds.”
“Fuck yes!” He yelled and jumped in the air and laughed hysterically. The mania was like nothing else. The universe had split itself open and molten possibility was flowing out through the landscape. He looked around, eager to take everything in, and saw it all with a new focus.
The sun glared off the flat grey lot and shimmered through the wavering haze around the fire. He traced the lines on all the leaves of a live oak sticking out of the median, listened to the traffic sounds from the distant road, smelled the gasoline and burning plastics, and blinked at the clouds, light and wispy like quick brushstrokes.
The Hardworlds. It was all real. An alternate dimension. A different reality. Memory of his doubt broke through the euphoria and his breath caught in his chest. What if Michael found out how close he had come to losing it?
“Don’t worry if it seemed like you made it by the skin of your teeth,” Michael said, once again predicting his thoughts. “It always feels like that.”
Gradie laughed into the phone.
“Alright. You picking me up or what?”
“Yeah. Should be there before the cops. See you soon.”
He hung up.
Gradie watched his car burn some more. Panic set in again as he thought about the conversation, already hazy, distorted in memory. Did it really happen? He’d never hallucinated before. How would he be able to tell?
The hood supports blew and it flew open and slammed into the windshield, shattering the glass. A minute later, the tires exploded in hot molten rubber, and a car sped into the lot.
It was a black early 00’s Jaguar S type, gliding over the warped concrete like a skater on an ice rink. It stopped smoothly in front of him, flames shimmering in its mirror surfaces. The passenger window rolled down and an almost familiar face looked at him, but the voice was different.
“Get in.”
She pointed at the back seat. Gradie just stood there.
She was still beautiful, but smaller than he remembered, and definitely real. Her eyes, no longer burning saphires, were a less vibrant grey-blue, protruding doe-like above soft dark bags and below mascaraed lashes. Her pale skin, struck through with blue veins and unlike the porcelain from memory, was mostly hidden under a well-worn black hoodie rolled up at the sleeves.
Michael looked back at him from the driver's seat. No otherworldly glow or unnatural shadow around his face. Just a big man pushing forty in a charcoal suit.
It was ridiculous, and such a contrast to their angelic forms in the Otherworld, that he felt sure for a moment he was dreaming and it was all a lie.
“You want to stay here and give the cops a statement, or what?” Michael said. His voice still held its power.
Gradie climbed in with a massive smile on his face.
“Holy fucking shit.”
They sped off across the lot and EP cracked her window, letting in the faint sound of a firetruck clearing traffic.
“You smell like straight up gasoline,” she said
Gradie ignored her.
“Where are we going?”
“To the clubhouse,” Michael said.
“What’s that?”
“You will find out when we get to it.” Michael made a U-turn on the access road.
Gradie looked out the window and watched a black finger of smoke rise over the trees as they sped down a back street. Houses flew by and his mind wandered. The memory of his car burning, all the things left in his wallet, came to him with the sirens through the window, and he started to panic.
I just threw my god damned life away.
It was just a moment, brief, but terrifying, before he got control of himself.
No, that’s not me.
“Gradie,” Michael spoke in a warning growl, and Gradie found his steel-grey eyes, like a guard dog on alert, flashing in the rear-view mirror.
“You need to be mindful here. The self will take over if you let it. It’s the default, the incumbent ruler.”
EP looked back at him, watching him, judging him.
“I’m fine. I got it,” he said, and knew it was true, like the words had been a spell.
Michael readjusted the mirror and EP turned back around.
The highway zipped by, that familiar scenery. Everything glowed and even the roar of the traffic was musical. It felt like the ultimate weekend of his life.