💾 Archived View for midnight.pub › posts › 1891 captured on 2024-08-18 at 20:04:28. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I trod out onto the driveway. There’s hail this week, it’s been tapping on the roof and I can make out a few dents on the Camry. Sheila hasn’t asked about the side, I’ve taken the time to buy a blowtorch and weld it a little into a more suitable form. Even then, she’d be hesitant to ask me about anything, given the circumstances.
Up above the clouds pour down, the little orbs of ice pock my skin, they bounce off the bushes and thence roll onto the contrasted tan dirt, giving the land a distinct impression of disease. At least that’s how I see it. Of all the cases I ever handled, the ones I couldn’t stomach were Chicken Pox, Mumps, Rubella, and the like. Internal infections are very different aesthetically from infections which choose to make their presence known right on the surface.
I unlock the driver’s side, sit down a while, consider the sound. It’s somewhat hypnotic, and half annoying, but it’s punctuated every small exchange we’ve had in the house, and the weather channel says it’ll be ongoing. Of course Pueblo can’t have rain in the late winter, to produce bountiful verdant pastures. It only receives the harshest of gifts.
The engine rumbles up- I’ve considered getting it taken in for repairs but then there’d be records and there’d be questions, and I’ve learned that questions from higher powers are never to be entertained. I check the dial. Static, plain and simple. Makes sense- the millions of collective static-accruing golf balls in orbit right now aren’t doing me any favors.
I rip out. Mud slings behind me, mist pours in up front- four cylinders firing to get through the torrent. I think the glass of the windshield is strong enough to withstand the assault- if it could handle that joyride in the parking lot, it can get me through today. My car is like myself- it has a diminutive, unassuming frame, and if you saw it on the lot next to all the rest you probably wouldn’t afford it so much as a second glance, but left to its own devices it becomes a billowing carriage of hellfire and regret.
“Atta boy,” I mumble as I make my way along the alien vista. Pueblo looks strange when under attack from these atmospheric forces- save for one gleaming break in the cover out near Crestone, which makes sense considering Crestone is the portal to the afterlife.
I switch to second gear.
Not sure what I’ll do today, exactly, only that I need to get out and get out fast. Every second spent around Sheila makes me feel worse, her eyes are yet another pair trained on the back of my scalp like crosshairs, and I’m well aware she knows more than she’s letting on. If only honesty were a fundamental component of our relationship, if only there was an element of trust present. There never has been. I can only trust myself now.
Tires squeak and the whole frame of the car threatens to rip itself apart, but just when all hope seems lost, I crest the hill and cruise down past the radio antenna at the town limits, using gravity and my own frenetic momentum to reach McCulloch.
The world is presented in streaking muted grays now, sharp stabs of light between darkness, no color or substance, or even clarity- what I’d give for even a fleeting moment of clarity. Rather, the parking lot is deserted and there are no people around and I’m chewing at my nails, barely able to discern the ticking of my turn signal over the all-consuming roar of the storm. There are no buildings, only blurs that vaguely resemble the shape of buildings, each form a mockery, each ideal corrupted in kind. Such is the new way.
Ten minutes later, I’m waltzing down the aisles of Walmart with no particular destination. I grab a new box of caramel popcorn that sounds appealing, a Darth Vader action figure from the clearance shelf, a couple rugs that catch my fancy, one of which is knitted with thick wool in a crochet-type arrangement and one with a weave. I take note of the music, the lack of windows, the sense of being contained in a box, and of course the ever-present thud of hailstones on the roof. You can’t escape it, and there’s no use in trying.
None of the lanes are open this early, so I opt for self-service. I slide my debit card through the reader, it says there’s some kind of chip error. Come on, you stupid mechanism- give me my rugs. One more pass. Approved. Green blinking light, I gather the goods up, stuff them carefully into a plastic bag, which I tie on top so they won’t get wet. The action figure’s speech function is triggered when I jostle the bag around a little. Heavy breathing. Lovely.
I make my way past the key-copying machine and the soft leather massage chairs framed by palm trees and the glasses kiosk, and the doors slide open on their quiet threads and there I am, breathless in a soaked world, hail rendering the front range virtually invisible, an omnipresent curtain of pain. I clutch the handle of the bag between my fingers and begin the long walk back to the Camry, careful not to slip. Navigating a room of marbles.
I hit the button on my keychain once, the lights flash and dim past the row of shopping carts, I lug my cargo over the headrest and onto the back seat. The hail sounds especially pronounced on the side with the damage, as a direct result of the metal having been warped. All things can be reduced to cause and effect now. I put on my seat belt, and therefore my seat belt is on. Simple procedures, if only I can remember the pattern.
It’s twenty minutes later, I’m smoking a damp cigarette on the Locust Street pier. I don’t know where it came from, I don’t smoke, but it was in the ashtray and as luck would have it, so was my lighter. I’m learning how the thing works, how you place it gingerly between your lips and inhale. It’s easier than I thought, to suck on this little tobacco creature, long and raw, to unabashedly revel in the nicotine frenzy. Dangerously simple.
The park is a wreck, the trash can has been knocked over, there’s a dead bird next to it- presumably having been pummeled mid-flight, although I figured birds had instincts against flying under such conditions. Maybe it was a mother who needed to feed her young, and couldn’t hold out in the nest.
The lake is a sight- every second, 95% of its surface is impacted. Some of the ice chunks float lazily on the surface, while closer to the middle and the deepest section, they crash in with a tremendous impact like gunfire. It’s D-Day, and the wooden pier- which looks close to decay from the moisture- is Omaha Beach. I’m being pelted on my skull, and every time one of the little scamps hits me, I relish in the fleeting shock, the instant gratification of pain.
If this is how all bodies of water appear under such a deluge, then Lake Pueblo itself must be in epic turmoil, the banks of the Arkansas pocked by little craters, dead fish rising to the top. It’s a bloodbath and a spectacle, and as the morning draws into noon it only seems to be growing in strength. There’ll be a segment on it in the local news, undoubtedly, some anchor mourning the loss of some beloved property, some fixture which couldn’t bear the accumulated weight of so many blasts from above.
I raise my fingers to my cheek, recognize the familiar sensation, raw and tingling. Flashes of fuchsia across my field of view- yes. They were distinctly fuchsia, and every now and then they make brief reappearances, and whenever they do they initiate anguish. A seismic imbalance, physics torn headlong from their usual parameters. That’s why the hail has come.
One sharp blast of mental artillery, I nearly stagger forward into the water but decide against it, scramble up the muddy shores and back into the brush. Catch my breath beneath the overarching branches of a juniper. My heart is pounding away, the cigarette isn’t doing it any favors. I take the thing out, extinguish it gingerly on the grass, it sputters and fumes and then it’s nothing but a loose collection of black cancer in a white paper tube.
There’s half a bag of popcorn left, the reflections of the hailstones glint off the foil. It’s all wet, any crunch has long since vanished, but I shovel it into my craw and retreat further back towards the mud. It’s filthy here, my jacket makes contact with something slimy and I flinch. Just a leaf.
This is how the early people must have felt, I reckon, raw primordial terror of the skies above, the merciless onslaught of the world against you, determination fading by the second. When you lack the ascribed order of civilization, the skies gain intent, they display malice or benevolence depending on how they feel, and now there was a froth, a veritable hatred and seething contempt displayed by those darkened clusters- a cell of fury which only threatened to get worse. I sit low to the ground and furrow my brow, dilate my pupils.
It probably wouldn’t be wise to stand, given the circumstances. Fervent bolts of lightning strike further out to the range- near West, I imagine, the wind turbines are probably toast. In this state, I’d only serve as a sentient grounding wire. The Camry is ok parked on Locust for the time being, if the windows chip in a couple spots it’s no skin off my back.
I lay back and they pelt my chin, pelt my palms, bounce off my shoes, inundate my shirt, they melt and arrive just as fast, they strike at my corneas, chip teeth, break bones. I’ve never been witness to an event like this. And as they increase in number and in size- now there are golf-ball sized pellets, in addition to the little BB-proportioned ones- they also gain the appearance of long fuchsia worms angling out toward the perimeter from the center, imbued with a life all their own they descend and behind gnawing on my flesh.
I feel myself. Yes, there it is. The red color.
The red color means something, but it’s dripping away, melting like all other objects in my immediate vicinity, popcorn flies up and becomes mixed with the horrible white pellets, a spray of refractory energy surges from my chest cavity, and it’s all diluted to slow-motion.
Out on the waves, which are growing in intensity, one lone duck tries to make its way back to shore, paddling with intense determination. It quacks once, a sound mostly rendered inaudible, before capsizing. The environment shows no mercy. Cattails on the border are swept down, chopped into halves and then quarters, milkweed pods are cracked open like coconuts, the trees are stripped of their extremities. A dull thud, and my head is suddenly ringing. I pick up a golf ball soaked in the juice of life. I study it awhile, contemplate its divots and protrusions. It seems sculpted with deliberate intent.
I grip it, raise myself up onto increasingly shaky legs, winds approaching 25 mph or so, hail less affected by gravity than by the gusts which fling it carelessly around. Everything is a surging hot pink now, a pink which grows and spreads and climbs each object, infuses the world. Absolute pervasive neon chaos.
I hop in the Camry and the engine sputters, I press the ignition further and it comes awake, and as I pull out from my spot aside the bramble-covered high border of Locust Street, one of the telephone wires overhead sparks and comes undone from its coupling. I swerve to avoid the downed line, which thrashes serpentine in the middle of the road.
“I’ve been hit,” I tell the receptionist at Parkview ER. “Can you see? Need some ice. Or something.” I’m standing in the lobby and applying pressure to he wound caused by that golf ball the best I can, but I think I can feel little fragments of bone sticking out and this makes me want to apply pressure less.
“You probably need more than that,” she warns. “Looks like it could be a hemorrhage. We have lots of patients right now- this storm’s got our team active- but just go and take a number and we’ll be with you shortly.”
Here I am, soaking wet, in my wife’s place of employment through sheer coincidence. I wonder if I’ll catch a glimpse of her making her way down here with a clipboard or something. Maybe I’ll chuckle, halfheartedly smirk at her, then fold my legs and go back to the miserable slog of waiting, and she’ll have to disregard my agony, return to her burn victim or whoever. It dawns on me that I’ve never actually been here, even though she talks about it a lot. It’s a nice sized-hospital for such a small place, decent resources available. I guess they need it- Pueblo is too far from Colorado Springs to depend on them.
The storm rages on, taps the roof, you can hear it from every seat in the room, and the people waiting for their treatment glance up periodically at the noise. Outside, I catch a plastic bag careening across the lane, hail pellets drifting down the gutters in a frosty sluice. Visibility is decreasing on the roads, all the passing traffic- what little there is of it- has brights on.
I try to maintain a sensible demeanor even though everyone in my immediate vicinity perceive me as the jostled wreck I am. It’s difficult to believe I used to work in a place like this, actually follow a set of steps to reach a desirable outcome instead of repeatedly screaming into a microphone and reaching no outcome, and subsequently getting paid for doing nothing of any value to anyone. I no longer make sense in this environment.
My mind attempts to salvage some fleeting memory of my prior life as a neuroscientist. Things were simpler then, ironically. I’d get consultations, recommendations, people would be assigned to me and I’d fix them with simple methods. I shouldn’t be so nervous around my own fractured skull, I’d used a buzzsaw to cut open hundreds of heads on my operating table, poke around with a magnet and a light to initiate various verbal and sensory cues. And I remember how still and calm the patients always were, how little offense they took to me prodding around up top, because for most of the procedure they had to be conscious.
I think about one of the last conversations I had with my mom, right before she went. It was 2017, if memory serves, and she was asking if I’d kept her rosary beads, the ones that had meant so much to her since her days in Catholic school, the ones she’d passed on to me. She said she’d like to see them one more time.
“Of course I don’t have them, Ma,” I’d sneered through the line. “I threw those away a long time ago. They took up space.”
“But they were mine. You don’t get to throw my things away.”
“I’ll tell you what- let me make you a new necklace out of macaroni and Play-Doh.”
“Why do you have to be so insensitive, Gerard? What happened to you? Where’s your soul?”
“Let me tell you what a soul is,” I remarked. “A soul is a slab of meat that occupies most of your cranial cavity. It’s called a brain. I’ve seen it. I still have it, at least as far as I know. I’ve seen lots. Some are pinker, some are redder, they have roughly the consistency of a steak. They’re worthy of worship. You can live without your beads, but try living without your brain. Let me know how it goes.” And then I hung up.
I chuckle softly at the remembrance, an old man sitting across from me flipping through a magazine cranes his neck.
How many skulls are being pried open upstairs? The balcony is about three feet wide and every so often a few doctors with tan lab coats cross it, bringing trays of food or sheets of information from section to section. One of them who appears to be a male nurse going by his short-sleeved uniform wheels out a tall, imposing IV drip filled with some viscous amber fluid. I avert my gaze to the carpet.
Finally a gentleman in his mid-forties with sideburns approaches. He’s not wearing a coat, has casual garb on, with heavyset cheekbones and a broad smile. He reaches out for a handshake then raises me to a standing position. I’m dizzy.
“Hi,” he says. “Dr. Todd. We’re going to get you all checked out.”
“Oh, hi!” I sputter. “You’re him. Sheila tells me about you alla time.”
“You’re her husband?”
“Yeah. Jerry.” Todd motions me past the desk and into a long flat hallway with a featureless complexion and lots of overhead lights. It’s impressive how large hospitals seem on the inside, especially a diminutive one like this. You can watch, in passing every room, a million small steps being taken to preserve life...
“Sheila tells me all about you,” Dr. Todd retorts. “I think her accounts of you are more interesting than of me. Psychiatry? Something along those lines?”
“Neuroscience, actually. Uh- neurophysics being a special point of interest.”
“I see. Well, that’ll come in handy today.” He guides me into the examination room. He has the patient temperament all doctors are trained in, a relaxed, casual attitude in the direst of circumstances. It’s unnerving. I hate him, his guts, his confident posture. He’s warm and thick like a stack of midnight pancakes. I can’t believe I used to be like that.
He backs me up against the examination table, I hop onto it and he begins inspecting the wound with a little flashlight, squinting his left eye to focus. He grips my temple stoically with his latex-coated thumb, flashes his bold jawline and pearly whites. His chest is broad, and his skin is supple. Outside, some pithy life-support machine warbles.
“You know,” he goes on, “You’re lucky to have her. She’s very beautiful- and she knows what she’s doing on the floor, to boot. If I weren’t married twenty years, I would- well, I’d honestly be dating her.” A shrill chuckle escapes his moist lips.
“You know what your best quality is, Doctor?”
“What?”
“You’ve got a fantastic bedside manner.” He smiles at this statement, aware that it isn’t true, goes over to one of the drawers and retrieves some gauze.
“It looks like some light trauma,” he says. “Going to prescribe a couple mild painkillers. Nothing too serious, we’ve had similar injuries all day. Hail can be extremely dangerous if you don’t take the proper precautions. There is one thing I’m concerned with, though, having applied a thorough examination to your head.”
“Which is?”
“Pus discharge,” he responds. “Aside from the spot where that hailstone hit you, which is just your average garden variety wound, you have some kind of yellow fluid buildup around your temples. Not above the skin, mind you. Beneath it.” I feel up and, sure enough, it seems a little squisher than usual- something actively convulses at my touch.
“Is that... dangerous?”
“I can’t say for sure,” Todd delineates. “I’ve never seen anything like it, if I’m being honest. Not in that specific area, anyway. It’s probably the result of some kind of infection or rupture. Do you regularly engage in contact sports? Concussive activities? Anything like that?”
“No.”
“Well,” he sighs. “I’m not sure what would cause it. My advice would be- don’t pick or scratch up there. Leave it alone. I’m going to prescribe you some antibiotics just to be sure. You’ll want to take the antibiotics and the painkillers in conjunction with each other over the next few weeks, and if you have any adverse reaction, just let me or anyone on my team know about it.” He hands me the note he’s written, then flushes my wound and wraps it up.
“One other thing. Keep this bandage on for at least a week so the tissue can heal. Your skull wasn’t broken, luckily, but your skin’s a mess. Needs time to recover.”
“I see. One other thing, Doc. Does it usually hail this strong, this time of year?”
“I dunno,” he shrugs. “I guess we had one storm last year, it was pretty bad but nowhere near this. Then again, I’m not a meteorologist.” He turns on the sink and washes his gloves, trying and failing to hide his patent disgust at having fondled my scalp. He turns a passing glance upwards at the sound of the multitude pounding on the roof. It is inexplicably ominous, especially in a house of healing such as this. Not at all tranquil.
“Well, I guess that’s all,” I belt, hopping off the table and brushing past Todd’s burly shoulder. He calls after me:
“You sure you can find your way out?”
“Yeah. I’ll manage,” I call back. He turns around and goes back to doing whatever it is they get up to around here, probably has a packed itinerary. Half his itinerary probably consists of flirting with my wife. I palm my face in fatigue, cruise through the swinging double doors at the end of the hallway and make a complete circuit around the premises, just in case I happen to run into Sheila.
I wonder what I would choose to mention if that were to happen, and what I’d omit, or whether I’d simply ignore her and let her go about her sacrosanct daily ritual. It would be legitimately surreal, at this stage, to see her in scrubs.
Luckily, she’s nowhere to be found. I dash out via the waiting room and careen into the torrent. Take special care to avoid the big ones.
I check my watch. 5:53 P.M.
I’m caught in a sort of behavioral feedback loop in the Walgreens parking lot, the medication Todd prescribed me is on the passenger seat in a little paper bag, and the world outside has gone almost completely dark even though sunset is still a few hours off. In an atmosphere this saturated, this loaded with flying objects, confusion is a given.
The feedback loop consists of me turning on the left turn signal every few minutes, counting the number of clicks, and then turning it off. Nobody has come outside to tell me I can’t park here, so as far as I’m concerned this is my sovereign domain. My neck stings from all the impacts it’s weathered today and my bangs are slowly dripping into my eyes with a combination of sweat and unrinsed shampoo. It’s a wonderful life.
I’m getting bored of the clicking noise, of the way my fingers brush up against the stick. One more time, while the endless stones pile up into the grille, leaving dents on my windshield wipers, making the featureless landscape ever more desolate and somber. My thoughts trip over each other. I’m not sure where to go from here.
I pick up the little bag, read the instructions on the bottle carefully. It says nothing about water in particular, so against the sanctity of my liver I twist both bottles open and down a couple each. I should’ve told him about my heart palpitations, see if they’d interact with my normal regimen in any potentially dangerous way. Then again, my entire being is a lit stick of dynamite, sending off little sparks from the fuse each hour.
I pull out. I think I know where I’m going, I round each corner with care and let the sound guide me. A few blurry headlights coming off the exit ramp, that’s all. Anyone with sense has stayed home today, their vehicles safely locked inside a garage. Not me, I live on the edge. There’s nothing for me waiting at home. It’s time to go back. To stop avoiding the inevitable. Now, when the energy is highest, when the static permeates all surfaces. Now is optimal.
The gauze is getting itchy. Todd said not to tamper with any of it but he’s a dick, so I shove two fingers near the wound to let some air in. Stuffy in this box.
Flipping on my brights, I can vaguely discern the rectangular outline of the facility up ahead, its tan walls a dead giveaway. I carefully inch up the driveway, the parking lot isn’t irrigated so it’s more like a pond under these conditions, about a foot in depth. I don’t think the Camry will hydroplane, it never has. Then again, my stunt at Kmart removed roughly half the traction of the tires. I cruise into my designated spot in back.
I grab my foldable umbrella from the glove compartment- not that it’s accomplished much for me today, the hail rips through it, there are five holes in it already where baseball-sized meteors ripped through- but all the same, I stick it out the window to serve as meager protection before I dash towards the lobby.
I almost expected the door to be locked, but incredibly it’s open, although that isn’t too surprising considering nobody would rob the place and nobody is even out today. I retract the umbrella, shake it off. The hail is now mixed with a frothy soup of sleet and rain, all descending simultaneously. In here, at least, it seems dry. I imagine buildings with less sturdy roofs will probably accrue some steep damage today.
The room is unlit, I blink twice and can vaguely make out the shape of the potted fern and the water cooler. There’s a trace of twilight eking its way through the window beside Carla-Jean’s spot, which as usual is vacant. The files remain dormant, one dry bottle of nail polish beside them with the brush sticking out the top.
She should be here, I realize, considering that it should be open today, and it’s not quite closing time. Nathan should be here, too. They’re always here, always keeping the systems running, even if I don’t show. What’s happened during my absence?
I round the corner into what used to be my office- that seems like a distant memory now, having to move my desk so as to avoid the sun. I draw a sharp intake. There’s no sun anymore, behind Nathan’s work area the hailstones bounce through and clatter onto the floorboards, they’re getting dangerously close to a power strip. The power strip is on, although no other electric device in the building seems to be. Even Carla Jean’s computer.
Maybe they’ve all been unplugged to save energy, and Nathan, bumbling dear Nathan, didn’t get the memo. Of course that’s it. Bradford called everyone off today, the inclement weather was too dangerous, and Vern has real concern towards those in his employ, he treats them like family, he looks out for their well-being, he clasps them to his chest with his ancient cornpone talons and doesn’t let go-
It occurs to me, I’ve never looked through any of the paperwork Nathan sorts. I rifle through a stack of documents to the left of his PC, although they’re nearly illegible with lighting this poor, just the familiar featureless columns. I try to flip on the lights. No luck.
I doubt an outage would only affect the lights and not the power strip.
Another thought. The PC is still plugged in, meaning it can be turned on. I activate the power button. The console makes a feeble whirring noise, then a click, and the fan begins rotating. I sit down in the soft leather chair I once knew, and kick the power strip away from the area of impact to avoid a fire. In the corner, a little pile of hailstones builds up, melts, and subsequently builds again. Night falls.
It’s around 9 P.M. by the time I finally log off. I’ve learned virtually nothing. The computer is a Windows model, but the OS installed isn’t Windows. Upon activation, the screen displays a familiar logo. Something vaguely like an angular mushroom in a blank white space, with two dots at the base on either side. A simple three-note melody rendered with what sounds like MIDI plays alongside that.
And then- well, nothing is recognizable. All the familiar icons, applications, and programs are gone. There’s something called the Connectron installed, and what appears to be a rudimentary word processor labeled Text Sprinter, but neither will work if I click on them. I don’t think the system is password-protected, yet at the same time the keyboard and mouse are inoperable. Something about it doesn’t sit well with me.
Once I’ve had enough, I turn the monitor and console off, and the fan dies down and I’m left stewing, gnawing my nails at the thought of what any of this could mean for my purposes. I’m at a loss for words, because this should fit together somehow.
I grunt, push the chair back, close the window tight on its hinges to prevent any more stones from making their way in. There are no answers today, no answers as to what that program means or why the lights are off or why I keep getting paid for nothing. Answers are finite, and questions are forever.
I wander aimlessly out into the lobby. The air is stale, dusty as always, with a sort of humidity. It’s been so long since I felt humid, but now that everything I breathe is charged with negative ions, the facility takes on the texture of a decrepit backwater swamp.
I’d better go out the back where I’m parked, I figure, to minimize the walk. I don’t have my key on me but no matter, it locks from the outside. I close the front and chain it so as to ensure no intruders will get in. Seems like something Vernon should have considered, that anyone could have entered at any point. What an oversight.
I pick across the carpet, fumbling around to find the wall. I know the layout well enough. My wound is beginning to mat, the gauze is sticking to my hair in places. It’s too tight. I know how a wound should be dressed, and I think Todd applied a little extra pull, just to assert his dominance. I shove my fingers into the mess, adjust as necessary.
There’s no marked increase in pain as I approach the end of the hallway. Last time I was here- that seems like an elaborate hallucination by now, but it did happen. Sparks everywhere, pain, the searing inexplicable agony-
I pause.
The basement light is on. Up a few paces, to my immediate right, comes the sickly languid glow of the phosphorescent tubes in the concrete room from down beneath. There’s no mistaking that hue. Something is going on down there. Footsteps.
“Hello?” I call out, tentatively.
Five seconds pass. Then, with a cheerful tone, Bradford’s husky rasp:
“Jerry! So glad you made it. I figured you’d be around. Come on down, won’t you?”