Shit, yes—it would have broken a lesser man, but you religiously practiced your Double-A method, and by Christ, it worked!
Up to a point.
You were getting calls from the bank just about every day, now, asking when you were going to pay up the last six months’ mortgage—with interest and late charges—and what you intended to do about your current financial situation. You told that asshole in collections, Karen what’s-her-face, that you were doing every goddamned thing you could think of, but
she
should try supporting a family of four on next to nothing.
You had cashed in everything—your retirement account, what was left of your inheritance, and the few valuable antiques you and your wife had acquired over the years. You even sold the collection of Indian head pennies your mother gave you. Day after day, you went through the classifieds until your hands were black with smudged ink, but—well, shit, you don’t care what they say about the economy in the rest of the country, up here in Maine there aren’t a whole lot of jobs that pay what you need.
And quite a bit of what little money you did have went into your Double-A program.
Why the fuck not?
In your private moments—and you tried like hell not to grind Ann too hard on this—you often wondered why she didn’t get the fuck out there and find a job herself. She’d remind you of how she hadn’t had a job in better than five ears, and the job she used to have at the electronics factory had become computerized, so she would have had to go back to school before she’d be able to jump back into the work force.
What did you expect, anyway, that she’d go out and get a job slinging groceries at the local Shop ‘n Save?
Between the two of you, you might have been able to make enough to scrape by a little while longer, but you needed considerably more than a minimum wage paycheck to meet your bills. Besides, who was going to stay home with the kids?
Or were you supposed to put one whole grocery-slinging paycheck toward day care?
But tonight—Christ! You finally reached your limit. You couldn’t help it.
What started out as a casual conversation with your wife about your finances set you off, but good. Was it too much of one
A
and not enough of the other? Or maybe there was a third
A
you needed—a little more ass! What with all the stress you’d been under, you were staying awake so late at night that you never felt like having sex any more.
But maybe that’s
exactly
what you needed.
Beats the shit out of you!
Anyway, you lost it real bad and started yelling at your wife, berating her for all of your problems. Then, when Sally, your six-year-old, wandered into the living room, you started screaming at her to get her butt upstairs to bed.
Damn, you were so mad, you threw the book you were reading against the wall, and it knocked the photograph of your wife’s parents’ wedding day off the mantel. It hit the floor, smashing the frame and glass to pieces.
That’s when Ann lost control.
You had told her that you hadn’t even wanted to talk, so it wasn’t your fault; but now you’d done something to set her off. Rather than keep the shouting match going, you stormed out into the kitchen, grabbed the nearly full bottle of whiskey from the counter, and walked out the door, making sure to slam it shut hard behind you.
Fuming and sputtering with curses, you went out across the backyard to the tool shed, where you sat down, leaned back against the building, and just stared off at the dark line of trees bordering your property.
God
damn
, you were pissed!
Rage filled you as you spun off the bottle cap and took several long slugs of whiskey. Your heart was punching like a piston against your ribs, and you hoped the booze would help calm you down.
After a while, your breathing slowed, and you felt at least a little bit at peace. Bats or some kind of night birds were darting back and forth across the powdery gray of the star-filled sky. All around you, the night seemed to throb with a weird purplish glow. You focused hard on the solid black line of trees until your vision began to blur. In the tangled lines of branches and leaves, you imagined silhouettes of faces and the cold fire of eyes, staring back at you.
You knew you were losing your mind, but you didn’t care.
You were pissed!
Fed up!
So what if you lost your fucking mind. You’d lost everything else, so who gave a shit?
Once or twice you checked your watch, but after a while you lost track of time. You were still fuming with rage. At some point you became aware of a deep, hard throbbing in your neck. At first, you were only mildly worried, but then, as the pain grew steadily stronger and sharper, you started to panic. A cold, deep ache shot down your left arm and up underneath your chin like you’d been cold-cocked a good one.
It didn’t take long to figure out what was happening. You were having a heart attack.
No fucking wonder!
Your breathing came hard and fast, and the icy pain spread like an evil touch throughout your chest and shoulders. You wanted to stand up but were suddenly afraid.
Shit! You didn’t want to die, but you didn’t even have the strength to call out to Ann for help, either.
You were fucked and you knew it, but suddenly, like a bubble bursting, you no longer cared.
You realized that this was probably what you had been looking for all along—an escape from all your problems; and this way, you didn’t even have to commit suicide, so in the end, your wife would be able to collect the life insurance money.
So why not just go with it?
Why not ride it to the end?
You didn’t even blink your eyes as you cocked your head back and stared up at the night sky. It was pulsating with dull energy, and seemed at times to shift into two gigantic, dark hands that reached out to grab you. They wrapped around you, and then began to squeeze tighter and tighter.
Go with it!
—you kept telling yourself—
Just go with it!
You thought of a few things you would miss—especially watching the kids grow up—but you knew that the heart attack was too strong and had gone on for far too long. Numbing pain gripped you tighter, like cold, pressing waves.
Go with it! . . . Just go with it!
And then from somewhere deep inside your head, you heard—honest to God, you heard—what sounded like a thick piece of wood, snapping in half. Sound, pain, and light exploded inside you. You vaguely sensed your legs kicking out in front of you as you stiffened and desperately clutched at your chest. Then, in one final, hard convulsion, you pulled your legs back up to your chest and sat there like a fetus, willing the night to take you all the way down.
Only it didn’t happen that way.
You were frozen, lost in an impenetrable darkness, but you were still horribly alert and aware of the world around you. The intense pain was still there, too, as strong as ever; but you were somehow distanced from it, as though it was just the memory of pain. All around you, you could hear the soft sighing of the breeze in the trees, the rasping flutter of unseen wings, the gentle hissing of the lawn, and something else that sounded like someone crying . . . or laughing.
You were convinced that you were dead, and you just sat there, waiting for the darkness to pull you all the way down.
But that didn’t happen.
Just at the edge of awareness, you heard something else—the soft thud of approaching footsteps.
Someone was coming!
Was it your wife . . . or someone else?
You struggled to open your eyes.
Or maybe your eyes were already open, and you had blown out something inside your brain and had gone blind. It didn’t matter.
It wasn’t simply that you were frozen and couldn’t move; you couldn’t even
feel
your body. You were nothing more than a tiny spark of awareness, suspended in an endless, black void.
But soon, that void was filled with a shouting voice. Through the confusion, you finally recognized your wife’s voice, frantically shouting to someone that she had found you and to call the rescue unit.
You wanted desperately to move, to say something to her, to indicate that it was all right—that you were content to be dead and drifting far, far away. Everything was all right, and maybe everything would be all right for her, now, too. You struggled to open your eyes or your mouth to give her a sign, but you simply couldn’t.
Her footsteps thundered like drums in your ears as she came up close to you. Her presence was a pulsating, burning heat that touched your mind as much as your body, and you were instantly aware that she
was
what you needed.
She was warm, human flesh.
A misery and longing as deep and painful as anything you’d ever experienced before filled you, and the darkness embracing you throbbed with a groundswell rush of deep, blood red. You knew—absolutely—that you were dead, but you also realized that you’d been like this for a long time . . . for a
very
long time.
And you knew what you had to do next to dull that overpowering surge of loneliness welling up inside you.
You couldn’t believe how loud your wife screamed when you opened your eyes!
—for Peter Straub
T
he cop was pretty fast. Ace had to give him credit for that, at least; but a few too many jelly donuts and being at least twice Ace’s age was slowing him down.
Ace scurried down the stairs into the subway station, cleared the turnstile with an easy vault that barely broke his stride, and was already weaseling his way through the mass of people waiting for the train on the platform before the cop was even halfway down the stairs. Ace thought he could hear the cop shouting out for him to stop, but that was the last thing he was going to do. He figured he could have been moving even faster if it wasn’t for the backpack loaded with cans of spray paint that was weighing him down.
Too bad about Flyboy, though
, Ace thought with a slight shiver.
It had been too dark for him to actually see Flyboy hit the pavement, but he’d watched him go over the iron railing backwards, his hands clawing at the air as if he could catch it and hang on. Ace figured it was at least twenty feet down to the street . . . probably thirty.
Too bad Flyboy couldn’t really fly.
If the fall hadn’t killed him, he sure as hell was going to be one racked-up, sorry son-of-a-bitch.
But Ace told himself not to feel
too
bad about it.
Shit happens.
Everything has its risk. Flyboy had been out “bombing” plenty of times before, so he knew the chances he was taking. Either he was dumber than Ace, or else just a little less lucky today.
That’s all there was to it.
Panting, but still feeling strong and wired with adrenaline, Ace paused a moment and looked first left, then right.
Fifty-fifty, either way.
Chances were some do-gooder, white-collar asshole was going to tell the cop which way he went, anyway. It all depended on just how seriously this cop wanted to catch his ass. The only thing bugging Ace was that he hadn’t had a chance to finish his piece. He and Flyboy had just started spraying the outlines of their logos when the cop saw them and gave chase.
That’s when Flyboy slipped and fell.
Jesus, stop thinking about it!
Ace told himself.
He licked his thin lips as he looked around. He wasn’t familiar with this particular Orange Line station, but—hell, they were all pretty much the same. After one more quick glance over his shoulder to make sure the cop hadn’t spotted him yet, he headed off to the left.
Ace felt better as soon as he rounded the corner and was swallowed by the cool, vibrating darkness of the subway tunnel. A chill breeze from a nearby ventilation shaft raised goose bumps on his thin, pale arms. His body was still tingling from the rush of the chase.
Ace was never afraid to be alone in the tunnels. In fact, he liked the way the darkness closed down over him like a lid that shut out the glaring lights, the noise and bustle of the city. He liked the way the
scuff-scuff
sound of the brand-new Reeboks he’d ripped off just last week echoed from the piss-yellow tile walls in the throat of the tunnel. And he liked how he always seemed to be able to hear the faintly echoing
click-click
sound of dripping water somewhere deep inside the darkness. Sometimes he thought it sounded like a huge, dark animal, lapping up water or something.
Within seconds, though, the echoing silence was shattered.
Everything was suddenly drowned out by the bone-deep shudder and rumble of an approaching train.
Feeling more than seeing his way along the edge of the catwalk that ran five or six feet above the tracks, Ace looked up ahead for a service niche in the wall where he could hide. There had to be one close by, but he didn’t see it before the train roared around the corner.
A bright light speared the darkness and swept like a searchlight over Ace. He felt like an insect specimen, pinned to the wall as the train came straight at him. The harsh sound of metal grinding against metal was deafening. Ace watched in fascination as the train rushed at him, pulling the darkness along behind it. White sparks snapped and flew like exploding squibs from underneath the wheels.