The Last Hiccup (21 page)

The moment Ilvana inserted her key and opened the door, Vladimir wilted. He could keep himself together no longer. Plagued by terrors since the moment his hiccups stopped, he placed one foot inside the building and felt like he was about to die. The smell was incredible, incurable, inerasable. It wafted toward him. Like humid summer heat, it seeped into his mouth, penetrated his eyes and permeated his every pore. Screams sounded in the distance with the deranged, the retarded and the sick all calling out into the dark. Imprisoned in these bloodstained walls as much as in their fragile minds, their voices comingled to form one long, inescapable moan. Two steps inside the building, Vladimir grasped a handrail on the stairwell. For the first time in his life, he prayed, he prayed to die here, for the dark to overtake him, to not have to walk these halls again.

Markus dropped his cane and grabbed Vladimir's hand. He helped him up a single stair and then another. Ilvana assisted as well. Inside Vladimir's brain, angry ravens pecked at his cerebellum. He didn't know who he was, who he'd been, what he was doing here anymore. The three of them kept climbing stairs until they reached another door. Ilvana pulled a second set of keys from her pocket. They bridged the precipice and entered a giant hall where the lunatics walked freely. Some crept along the floor like animals. Others shuffled their feet and dragged their invisible chains. That night Vladimir spent here all those years ago rushed to the front of his brain. He remembered that first moonstruck schizophrenic who attacked him with a garbage can, the wild brawl that escalated amongst the patients and staff, the fire, the carnage, the beheaded nurse. It all made the trial in the Waterfall of Ion seem like a leisurely bath.

Ilvana and Markus tried to hurry Vladimir along. An old woman, naked from the waist up, grasped at him.

“Hurry, Vladimir. You must move your feet!”

It was Ilvana's voice. Vladimir looked over at her. How awake she appeared now, how in and of the moment. Vladimir pulled his arm away from the naked woman and kept moving forward. Where were his hiccups? Where was the pressing urge, the hourglass steadily dripping sand that had come to define his life? Together Vladimir, Markus and Ilvana pushed past the unoccupied nurses' station and through another set of doors. Vladimir recognized this hallway. It was white and windowless like all the others, and he knew it from the uneven number of doorways on either side. The last time he was here, bodies had littered the floor.
Where are they now?
he wondered.
What became of those lost souls?

Ilvana approached a third and final door. To Vladimir's surprise, Markus already had his pistol drawn, his tiny partial thumb and malformed fingers coiled around the trigger. The door opened and there was Sergei, standing alone, chains around his wrists and ankles.

Markus burst into the room brandishing his weapon with more bravado than Vladimir believed possible. He pointed his gun into all four corners, twirled around, looked at his old friend and then back at Ilvana.

“Where are the guards?” he said.

Ilvana stole a glance back in the hallway. She gave Markus a confused look.

“Vladimir? Markus? Is it really you?” Sergei said.

He was standing in the center of the room, stark naked, his frail bones bulging through his skin. Blue iridescent veins formed spiderwebs on his flesh. Death's door was upon him and his eyes flickered, twitching and convulsing with each sideways glance. He looked like he hadn't eaten since Vladimir last saw him. And his hiccups — the ones he'd feigned all along — were gone.

“You've come to kill me, haven't you?” he said.

Markus lowered his gun. “Of course not, old friend. We've come to save you.”

“They're coming right now.” Sergei glanced at the open doorway behind him. “The guards took my clothes and left. They told me to wait here for the executioner's axe.” He shuffled along the floor toward Markus. “I hope they don't use an axe,” he said. “The very thought of it turns my fingers numb. I can't feel. I can't think. I'm not myself anymore.”

“You needn't worry, old friend,” Markus said. “We're here to save you.” He reached out to grasp Sergei's hand when Vladimir fell to the floor and started to scream.

“I can't take it anymore!” Vladimir yelled. He crawled on his knees toward Sergei. “Please, I beg of you. Make my hiccups come back. Return me to the man I used to be. I can't take this noise, this noise, noise, noise! This place, these people, this world — it never ends. It just keeps on ticking like a broken clock. Help me. You're the only one who can save me!”

Sergei stepped back. He looked down at his naked body and the chains around his wrists and ankles. Behind him footsteps thundered down the hall. They were coming. “I can't save you, my son, any more than you can save me,” Sergei said.

The footsteps stopped and at the doorway appeared three figures — two tall, muscular men in suits and a short, older man with wide innocent eyes and a serious expression across his face. He carried in his hand a large axe.

“Stop right where you are.” Markus held his gun in the air. “We're leaving with this man and there's nothing you can do to stop us.”

Vladimir was in tears now. He could barely breathe.

“Afin?” Sergei said.

The executioner looked the doctor Namestikov square in the eyes. He took two steps forward, axe in hand. “Sergei?” he whispered.

One of the men in suits tapped Sergei's former driver on the shoulder. “Do you know this man?”

“Of course,” he said. “He's a doctor. His opinion is held in the highest esteem in the medical community.”

“Then why is he naked? Why is he wearing chains?”

Afin and Sergei shared a long knowing glare while Markus and the two men in suits stared each other down. Vladimir was struggling to climb to his feet. Ilvana, the poor thing, had fallen asleep in the corridor.

“The midget did it!” Afin said suddenly. He pointed at Markus holding his gun. “He must have caught the good doctor off guard and fastened him in chains.”

“Then who are we here to execute?” the man in the suit said.

Afin pointed his finger at Vladimir, who was standing on shaky legs. “Him! He's the one. That's Sergei Namestikov.”

Markus screamed a vigorous objection, but before it could exit his windpipe, Afin swung the butt end of his axe straight into Markus's nose. Blood shot out in black clumps. Markus faltered and dropped his cane. The gun with its single bullet fell to the ground.

“That's right!” Sergei screamed. He too pointed at Vladimir. “He's the one who killed that bastard Alexander! Execute him! Not me!”

The two men in suits exchanged confused glances. Vladimir looked over at Sergei jumping wildly, his chains clanking against the ground. Vladimir's mind raced. He felt both dead and alive, bewildered and betrayed. He stumbled toward the doctor.

“Why?” he said.

Sergei stopped jumping and placed his mouth to Vladimir's ear. “All men betray, Vladimir. All men fail one another. I can't go into the black void not knowing what's there for me. I'm too weak. My conviction is too frail. I'm sorry, my boy. I'm not the man I used to be.”

Sergei pushed Vladimir away. Their eyes met, they converged, and Vladimir knew now that what he'd long hoped — that he and his doctor were two different versions of the same man, opposite sides of a coin, brothers, father and son, likened souls on this earthly plain — was simply not true.

Sergei's eyes drifted away and then turned wild again. He jumped up and down and pointed. “Kill him! He's the one you want. Kill him quickly before he kills you!”

The shock of his doctor's betrayal caused a jolt deep inside Vladimir. He stepped back. A sensation triggered in his chest, one so strange and yet familiar that he couldn't quite believe it was happening. He swallowed three swift gulps of air. A flicker echoed in the back of his throat.

By the doorway, the men in suits engaged in a brief consultation. Markus tried to object, tried to stand up, but his legs failed him and his mouth had filled with blood. Ilvana was still asleep in the corridor.

“Are you absolutely sure about this?” the man in the suit said to Afin.

“I've never been more positive about anything in my whole life.” Afin pointed to Vladimir. “I was given a photograph of that young man just last night. He's the one who killed Alexander Afiniganov. He's Sergei Namestikov.”

The man nodded. “Okay, let's get this over with.”

Vladimir was waiting — not for the executioner and his minions to edge toward him, but for the hourglass to tip over again and bleed sand, for the world to resume spinning on its axis.

He could feel it at the back of his tongue now, through his rib cage even.

Afin and his goons approached. Six hands reached toward him. Vladimir tried to push them away. He could hear Sergei in the background, naked and in chains, jumping eagerly and screaming out directions. He tried to reach into his jacket and get out his empty gun, to pistol-whip them all into submission. But they were too many. The malaise in his mind was too strong. He felt their hands on his shoulders, felt himself being pushed to his knees.

His chest contorted, Vladimir's phrenic nerve contracted involuntarily.

Then it happened. Finally.

Hiccup.

That rhythm returned, that constant knowing, the realization that the world was a place he could understand and feel and touch and know. Vladimir took it all in, the dim light in this lost room, the dense air against his skin. He breathed in and waited in anticipation for the next convulsive yelp.

In the corner, Sergei stopped jumping. Vladimir's hiccup, that sound he'd become accustomed to so long ago, entered through his ear canal, danced along his tympanic membrane and reverberated inside his ear like a soft brush whispering against a drum. He looked at Vladimir, his patient, his son. The evil men had forced Vladimir to the ground. Sergei saw not a grown man, but that helpless little boy from long ago. Years earlier he'd held Vladimir's hand while his young charge drifted off to sleep. He'd nurtured the boy, read to him by candlelight stories from colorful picture books, brushed the hair from Vladimir's forehead, cared for him, loved him as a father would.

What has Alexander done to me
, Sergei thought,
that I have become such a monster?

Afin was struggling to place a shroud over Vladimir's head.

“No!” Sergei screamed. He jumped forward and grabbed hold of Afin's arm. “I'm the real Sergei Namestikov,” he yelled. “Take me! Kill me! Spare the boy.”

Afin looked at him now like he was truly mad. He tossed Sergei's weakened body aside as though it were a pillowcase stuffed with feathers.

“Vladimir!” Sergei lunged again. This time he took hold of his young charge's hand. “Forgive me,” he said. “Forgive all that I have done. I'm sorry. I love you. I never meant to put you in harm's way.”

Vladimir took Sergei's hand in his. Afin's assistants paused with their hands still on Vladimir's shoulders. They looked back at Afin, waiting for instructions.

Vladimir released another hiccup, this one glorious and defiant. He felt like a patient on a gurney, given up for dead only to have had his heart miraculously start beating once more. He was himself again. Sergei had come back to save him, just as Vladimir had done for his beloved doctor. Vladimir warbled out a smile. Sergei was still a good man. The world had not torn him apart after all.

He knew what he had to do.

“I am Sergei Namestikov,” Vladimir said.

“No!” Sergei yelled.

“I killed Alexander Afiniganov,” Vladimir said. “And I am to be put to death.”

Afin's assistants looked at Afin in confusion again. Afin pulled Sergei away from Vladimir, and when Sergei struggled, he clubbed the doctor in the nose, the same as Markus. Sergei reeled. Blood shot forth from his mouth and he collapsed in the corner. Afin's assistants returned to positioning Vladimir, only with increased determination.

It happened so quickly. The executioner wrapped the shroud over Vladimir's head. Everything turned dark and suddenly the world disappeared. The Earth, these evildoers, the sun and the trees outside, this room, all of Russia left him.

Vladimir allowed his body to go loose. He thought of Ileana, her pretty eyes, how peaceful she looked sitting in the snow. He thought of his mother's smile as they ate boiled cabbage at the kitchen table, the farmer's daughter naked and serene in the moonlight.

The axe cut through the air.

Hiccup
.

There it was again. Was it enough? Had the world turned out to be the place Vladimir imagined it to be? Was it just and fair, made of roses and rainbows and butterflies, or was it evil and depraved, a purgatory of untold suffering? Perhaps a bit of both.

The darkness approached. Vladimir basked in that last hiccup. The axe hurtled down toward him. Was there one more to come? He felt it in his chest, in his shoulders, in his soul. What more could he have done with his life than know something to be true, than hold on to it with all his power? What more could Vladimir have done than die trying to save the man who tried to save him all those years ago? Was God waiting for him on the other side? Were his ancestors? Were the drowned and the decapitated and the burned alive dancing for joy in the next realm? What more could there be than just this world?

Hiccup
.

Vancouver-based
Christopher Meades
is the author of
The Three Fates of Henrik Nordmark
(ECW Press). His story “The Walking Lady” won the 2009 Toyon Fiction Prize. Find him online at
ChristopherMeades.com
.