Authors: Alan Spencer
The memory was gone as he knew it. Katie eyed him, infuriated. The blood on her demonized her. She still didn’t wipe it off, oblivious to it.
Craig continued talking, despite her confusion. “I’m sorry for how you died, for whatever that counts for…”
Katie changed blink-fast. She was a blip, the transformation ending with a series of demeaning laughs. “
Being sorry doesn’t count for much, Craig. It doesn’t count for shit
.”
She vanished in a split second, and then Dr. Krone seized his neck. “Whatever that bitch told you in the mausoleum, you can’t fight me. You’re not strong enough. You have no concept of what your brain is capable of!”
Craig drove again, slamming the gas, gasping for breath, the doctor’s hands wrapped so tight around his throat the doctor could break his neck. He clutched the wheel and battled to steady it as the man smothered his life.
“Yes, you can see within me. But I see much, much deeper inside of you, Mr. Horsy.”
“
Graaah!
” he gasped, white-and-purple blotches filling his vision. Pinpricks stabbed at his head and body. Desperate to avoid death, Craig swung the vehicle off the road, swerving hard to the right.
The car barreled down a short hill, bouncing twice, the shocks bending, the back bumper ripped off. They were seconds from crashing into the trunk of a hulking tree. Gaining speed, Dr. Krone relaxed in the backseat and announced without an inkling of fear, “Now let’s proceed with the treatment!”
Half-Time
There was simply no escaping Dr. Krone. Craig barely had any concept of how to retaliate or survive, and even Edith’s suggestions couldn’t save him. He was eaten alive by the dead—hordes upon hordes of them. Then Katie watched him bleed in the car without any regard to his health. And now he was here at Willis’s sports bar Half-Time, the blink and change of scene occurring seconds before the car slammed into the trees.
Dr. Krone showed no signs of slowing down the treatment.
Treatment.
That was the word he kept using. What did the man have to gain from this? Not even Edith knew the answer to that question.
His wounds had miraculously scabbed over. The shape of teeth and jagged marks were caked brown, as if aged. Forced to move on from the observation, he looked on at Half-Time, a bustling pub. Dart boards, pool tables, a twelve-piece arcade room, foosball, and eleven screens playing professional sports and independent events like logging championships and lady football kept the place hopping. The blink delivered him onto a stool, sitting at the bar. The KU versus K-State basketball game was in its second half. Random cheers and fists slammed onto the counters, the game tied and would stay that way up until the final seconds.
He sipped on the frosty mug of ale. It tasted real and exactly the way it did when he assaulted Willis. A wave of nausea crept up his esophagus. He hadn’t eaten in hours or days, he wasn’t certain exactly how long it had been, but he was ravenous with hunger. Dr. Krone had strapped him in that machine for longer than twenty-four hours, he was certain. Maybe days. The thought made him dizzy and weak.
Craig peered at the exit, combing his mind for what could possibly happen. It didn’t take long to realize what Dr. Krone had planned, and in moments, he’d learn just how wrong he was.
Just run.
You can go anywhere. Think. Imagine it.
Willis wasn’t behind the counter. That’s the only thing about the scene that had changed so far. As it happened that night, anger boiled under Craig’s skin. This anger was focused on Willis. The moment Willis revealed he didn’t have a job for him must’ve already happened, Craig realized, and now he was plotting how to channel his fury.
I won’t be mad. It was wrong. I won’t assault him again.
Willis returned from the back room. He was a young bartender, a fresh and upbeat face despite the hard-luck bullshit he absorbed on a daily basis. But he wasn’t himself today. His face was solemn. The apologetic frown he wore months ago for Craig vanished and was replaced by an emotion he couldn’t place, though it inspired a gut-churning pain in his abdomen to witness it.
Run for the door. Get the hell out of here.
Craig lunged for the exit, trusting his newly minted intuition. He knocked down the cardboard cutout of four Victoria Secret Angels posed with footballs. The specials chalkboard smashed onto the floor. The crowd was roused from their fantasy cave of sports at the man suddenly running for his life. They were evil in his peripheral. Sneering. Scowling. Demonic. And now, calling out to him—
“Grab him!”
“Willis wants a word with you.”
“You haven’t received your free drink.”
“I’ll buy.”
“No, allow me.”
“You got next, I said I’d buy him one first.”
“I owe him from last week.”
“Scotch and soda.”
“Seven and seven.”
“He likes it on the rocks.”
“I thought he’d enjoy a finger of scotch?”
“He likes a shot of anything that burns.”
The door slowly grew farther and farther out of reach, like an optical illusion, and his fight grew weak as did his limbs. He was swarmed and surrounded by everybody in the bar, pulled back to where he was from the beginning and forced onto the stool. Then his arms were forced behind him. Grain alcohol exuded from his accuser’s mouth—an accuser he couldn’t see—so thick he could light a match and set the man’s mouth aflame.
“You like alcohol, don’t you? Oh yes, you’re a booze hound. It’s high time, Craig. Willis said you wanted the bar.” A single snigger escaped the man’s ragged throat, “
Well, he’s giving it to you
.”
Thirty men and women formed a circle around him in a barrier, stealing his air, creating a film of sweat on his body. Rope bound his arms, legs, and torso, his body secured in minutes. The neon signs blurred as his processes raced to interpret the fate that would befall him. Instincts craned to full blast, he sensed every twitch and movement, each whisper and rant in the room, and then he caught Willis again. His face was chalky white, his lips blue-black. He could pass for a corpse. Purple saucers hardened his eyes, stealing what used to be a naturally friendly face.
“You wish to bust me up, huh?” Willis challenged him. “After everything I’ve done for you, Craig?—free booze, I loaned you money, you shit in my ear on a daily basis about unemployment and your dead bitch wife, I let you sleep on the futon in my one-bedroom apartment, and then for all my trouble, you smash a barstool over my head.” He cranked out a sideways smile. “That’s not the friendly thing to do, now is it?”
The damage played out on Willis’s face without anything hitting him. An invisible bludgeon shattered his collarbone and dented his jaw, the effect as awe-inspiring as it was horrid. He spat out a row of teeth and a blood-spit combo, the mess dribbling down his mouth and chin and staining his brown cashmere shirt. He smiled to display the knocked-out teeth, the gums oozing red.
“You always wanted to become a bartender?” He raised his hands so those around him would cheer. “
Hoorah!
Hoorah!
Let’s have you drink up, then. Earn your stripes.”
They stole the air—and his ability to breathe—with the scents of wheat, and barely hops, and grain alcohol. The room wavered like heat deflecting off the road. The room was combustible. Craig’s eyes dried out. His skin ached as if paper cuts were inflicted upon every inch of him. Willis’s ice-cold hands jerked his head up by his hair. “I’ll give you what you always wanted, you fucking lush.”
Joey, Willis’s younger brother, sauntered from the back room after Willis said that. Uproarious cheers—clapping and carrying on three times that of the Kansas State and Kansas University basketball game—dominated the room. Joey returned, clutching an oversized steel funnel. It was larger than the ones used to place coolant into a Mac truck.
“Drink up, Craig.”
Three hands pried his mouth open. Craig threw his face back and forth and cried out when fingernails tore into his lips. Hands intruded, fists causing his jaw to open wide, and then the funnel was jammed into his mouth with a wet
thuck
.
“
Naaawgh!
”
“Yes!” Willis shouted, throwing his head back. “Let’s hear it. What’ll it be, partner? Hard on your luck, asshole? Your woman leave you—no wait, did your woman die during childbirth? Oh wait, you lost both of them. That’s right. Both of them are dead.”
“How so?”
“Was it gruesome?”
“Did the baby’s head poke out of the womb or did it die inside her?”
“Did she bleed to death?”
Willis waved them down. “No, this asshole’s car breaks down on the highway. He’s so broke ass, he can’t afford a car that runs. He uses this piece of shit during a snowstorm. What a fuck up.”
You son of a bitch, how dare you say that?
This wasn’t Willis. The man would never speak like this in real life. The crowd wouldn’t team up against him either. The people in the room were in lynch mode. He couldn’t slip the restraints. He was surrounded, regardless of his ability to escape.
He called out again, his mouth obstructed by plastic. “
Stawp!—graaaagh
!”
“He’s ready,” Joey declared. He tipped a bottle of High Noon whiskey into his mouth. “I think this is a good start. It was always Craig’s drink of choice.”
He tipped the bottle into the opening of the funnel. Craig wasn’t used to downing the shots with his mouth wide open. The fluid splashed the back of his throat, burning hot and chemical. “
Gaaack!
”
Craig struggled to swallow without gagging. He hiccupped. He aspirated on the whiskey and forced it back down, fearing he’d choke if it didn’t go down.
“Hair of the dog,” Willis announced like the referee of the sporting event. “First round is always the hardest. Now you’re warmed up. Let’s make this interesting. You ever enjoy a Molotov Fire Dog?”
He snapped his fingers, and Joey went to work. The man poured half a can of soda into a beer glass. Then he added Rumple Minz and Hot Damn. Next, he squeezed lime, lemon, and orange juice into the mix. Joey poured it into the funnel and struck a match simultaneously.
Whup-whoosh!
Fire exploded out the funnel the size of a basketball. The flames trailed like dragon’s breath into the air, but the tendrils were exaggerated, spraying across the room, and random patrons were set afire. They didn’t scream or panic. Laughter ensued, the kind so awkward and wrong it churned Craig’s stomach. The left wall burst into flames with the crackle and jarring splinter of wood. The ceiling was clotted with gray smoke. The barmaid poured a Guiness on tap, but half her face was busy with flames, the fat boiling on her cheeks dribbling into the glass. Another patron was hunched over The Simpsons’ pinball machine, engrossed in the game, fire eating into his back. Singed and cooking flesh stank up the room. Many others enjoyed buffalo wings and a new round while their flesh sizzled and evaporated. Joey’s left arm and midsection brimmed with fire and gobs of flesh slopped onto Craig’s body, searing hot.
He shook his head, begging to be released before the fire consumed him. “
Naaawgh!
”
Fire danced at his feet. The air continued to reignite itself, every square inch of space flammable.
Whup-whoosh! Whup-whoosh! Whup-whoosh!
Willis’s skin slithered from his face in one piece, a slick skeletal face berating him, “Hair of the dog, hair of the dog—
hah, hah, hah, hah,
hah, hah!
”
The eyes of the patron tossing darts suddenly burst from the flames’ pressure, and then his torso broke down the center, spewing brighter fire and sparks like a disturbed log at the bottom of a bonfire. The man called out to Craig before he collapsed, “Another round on me, pal!”
A pair of hands laid down ten dollars on the counter. The money went up into smoke before Willis accepted it—not that he cared. It was Susan from their singles club, but her clothes were missing, her naked body surrounded by acrid orange-and-red flames. “How about a double shot on the rocks, sexy?”
The effects of the alcohol were setting in, and for Craig, the room was a spinning top, tilting upside down, right-side-up, and pivoting like he was inside of a mirrored moving ball. Craig used his tongue to shove out the funnel, but Willis shoved it back down into place, like a stake into the earth.
“This one’s all mine,” a seductive voice carried over to him, shoving aside Willis. It was Katie this time. She wasn’t pale, or dead, or on fire, but alive, actual flesh and blood. “This drink’s from me to you.”
She swiped a bottle of vodka from the counter. Katie poured it down her arm and poised her hand above the funnel. It trickled down her arm, then her fingers, and into the opening. The gesture would’ve been arousing in any other scenario, but now, it was brutal and mean. The alcohol was like gasoline filling his mouth. Noxious. Stomach acids crawled up his throat. His throat rejected it outright, but Willis pinched his nose and squeezed his throat until he had no choice but to swallow it back again or suffocate.
Katie bent over him, the bottle of vodka poised above the funnel. “Let me pour you another, cowboy.”
This isn’t Katie. This isn’t Katie. This isn’t Katie. This isn’t Katie.
The mantra did nothing to calm him. His heart thrummed twice as fast and loud by the power of alcohol. He closed his eyes, his head spinning, far beyond drunk. Craig was at the helm of a careening single-engine plane amid a jolting wind storm. He affixed his eyes on the smoke billowing on the ceiling, trying to hatch an escape plan and failing miserably.