Heat Wave / Epilogue

The End of the Road

Broken Toe

Boiler Room

Parking Garage

---

“In all my life, I’ve never encountered a more stupid or stubborn soul than you. You, who escaped? You, who knows exactly what I am capable of?! After everything I told you, you call upon me of your own volition?!”

I couldn’t feel the air anymore. Couldn’t tell if I was hot or cold. Maybe neither of those things were possible in this universe between moments, but that couldn’t be. I knew, better than most, nothing was impossible.

I pushed myself up. I stood, and faced him.

If this was surrender, why did it feel so much like a fight?

“I just need a little more time.”

“Time?!” he barked. “All of us, even I, have to abide by that rule. No one lives forever. This is a good death. Better than most. Why would you choose to give that up? Do you really want to live that much?! Because I’ve never once made a bargain that didn’t end with my victim begging, begging, BEGGING for me to let them die.” Somewhere in there, his voice became a scream.

“Can you help me or not?”

He laughed, a derisive snort of a laugh that said, neither of us thinks this is funny, but I’m laughing anyway. Then, he calmly stated, “There will be a price, of course.”

“Name it.”

“One favor.” He held up a finger. “You must grant me one favor. When the time comes, you will complete your end of the deal. You will have no choice other than the one you make now, no chance for you to renege, your free will cannot have any influence. No returns. No refunds. No exchanges. If you agree, it will be as if you’ve already done what I ask.”

That didn’t sound so bad, but I knew it had to be.

“You can’t make me do anything to hurt Rosa, Jerry, or Gaston. Okay?”

His response exploded out of him. “You would dare to negotiate with me?!!!”

I matched his energy. “Oh give me a fucking break!!! Like you didn’t already know this was going to happen! Our last conversation practically spelled it out. The only way to make it fair is by warning me? C’mon! You said goodbye, but you never left because you knew I’d end up in this exact position. DIDN’T YOU?!!!”

He frowned. For a second, I thought he might actually look away. But he didn’t. With a nearly imperceptible nod, he answered, “I suspected.”

“Well,” I said back, “your so-called ‘warning’ could have been a lot clearer.”

“Your opinion has been noted.”

“Do we have a deal?”

He didn’t answer right away. I held out my hand for him to shake, but he didn’t take it. I was surprised when he did finally break eye contact, turning his gaze to look behind me… but not nearly as surprised as I was about to be. “What do you think?” he asked.

I turned to see who he was talking to.

“I think it’s a good deal,” he answered.

The fuck?!

“Skeeter?”

The boy looked at me with sad, mournful eyes. The rest of him looked… better. No burns or blisters. He was the same as when I first met him all those minutes ago… (Jesus, this whole thing only took a matter of minutes, huh?)

“I’m sorry, Jack. They made me do it.”

“Who made you do what?”

He shrugged. I was confused. I was furious. I was confurious. I looked back at Amadeus and screamed, “WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE?!”

Amadeus held out both hands, palms facing out–the old slow down there gesture. “Don’t blame me. I had nothing to do with it.”

“SHUT UP!” I screamed. “Enough of the cryptic bullshit! Either tell me what’s going on or stop talking altogether!” I groaned into the sky, then yelled, “Are you going to help or not?!”

He looked like he was genuinely uncertain. I couldn’t decide what answer, yes or no, should scare me more. But eventually, he went with neither. Instead, all I got from him was, “I’ll think about it.”

And that was that.

A sudden, incredible sound like a CRACK of thunder exploded in my ears so loudly it almost knocked me over. The world was back to the way it was before I summoned him. The sun was roasting me to a crisp. The park was full of those things. They were slowly approaching, surrounding me. The biggest one was almost on top of me. While most of these demons seemed to have raided the human wardrobes of whatever victims they were possessing, this one was different. He didn’t even try to blend in. He looked like a six foot tall Papa Smurf, complete with the red hat and pants.

“Hey there young fella,” he said. Hey, at least the demons still think I’m ‘young.’ “You look lost out here. Why don’t you let me-” I ducked away as his white-gloved hand reached for for my arm. I tried to run, but something held me in place. Then, I heard him yell out, “Got ‘im!”

He had me by the coat. I quickly shimmied out of the garment and left it dangling in his grip as I raced through the blazing sun towards the footbridge. In my periphery, I saw police cars jump the curb and go off road, speeding through the park to intercept me. But they were too far away to make it in time. I reached the bridge first, ran halfway across, and stopped dead in my tracks.

There were more of them on the other side of the bridge. Watching me, waiting to see what I would do, holding out cell phones and… filming? Okay, that’s pretty weird. But no time to stop and think. I turned around, but Papa Smurf was already there, blocking the other side. Behind him, police pointed guns and screamed orders. 

I only had one option left.

I looked over the railing, at the pond beneath. It looked so serene. So still. I couldn’t see the bottom. There was no way to know how deep it was. How hot does water get on a day like this? Was I about to throw myself into boiling water? No, I thought. It’s a pond. It’s water. It’s probably going to be really, really refreshing.

I climbed up onto the railing, flipped off all the demons, and let myself drop.

There was no splash.

Six feet down, I hit a solid surface. The force of the impact knocked all of the air out of me, in addition to quite a bit of blood. I tried to push myself up off the ground, but that simply didn’t work. I tried to crawl away, but that didn’t work either. I tried to figure out how in the hell I managed to miss the water from this close, but that didn’t work either either. Nothing worked. Nothing made sense.

Two of the demons grabbed me–one for each arm–lifted me up, and dragged me off the frozen pond to where a group of police were waiting with tasers at the ready. The demons held me still as the first cop touched his weapon to my neck and filled me with a gajillion volts of holy fucking shit what the holy fuck?!

---

I woke up the same way I usually do–confused, disoriented, uncertain of where I was or how I got here. I tried to wipe the sleep from my eyes, but my right hand caught metal at the wrist. I was back in the hospital. And this time, I was handcuffed to the bedrail.

“Okay, let’s try this again.”

I looked at the man standing over the side of my bed. He was a pale guy with beady eyes, pointy ears, and a gap between his front two teeth. He wore a three-piece suit that was clearly cobbled together from three different suits, none of which matched or fit. Overall, there was an uncanny vibe to him, like the first time you see a child actor all grown up.

“Try what again?” I asked.

“Are you actually awake this time?” His voice was high pitched and accelerated. Every word sounded almost like a quiet scream.

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking that?”

He harumphed, stepped over to the table at the head of my bed, and picked up one of the four coffee mugs that were sitting there. He took a quick, loud slurp before continuing: 

“I’m your lawyer.”

“Did Amadeus send you?”

“I don’t know who that is, but if you’d like to sue him, let me know and I’ll get the paperwork started. NOW: Let’s get to what actually matters, you’re in a shit ton of trouble–assault, battery, multiple resisting arrests, and fleeing the scenes of a lot of crimes. They’re even flirting with some domestic terrorism charges, but I think we’ve got a really strong insanity plea, which you are NOT going to take, okay? Because that’s a trick! You ain’t gonna say shit–preferably ever again. Understand?”

“No.”

“Good.”

There was an edge to this guy, and I suspected that something stronger than caffeine was at play. He had both the appearance and the confidence of a man who doesn’t understand why he should pay someone else to cut his hair when he has a perfectly good hand mirror and pair of scissors at home.

“Dagger CobraHeart, esquire, at your service.”

“Is that your name? You sound like the founder of a house at a remedial wizarding school.”

“If you weren’t my client, I’d sue you for defamation.”

Right then, the door opened, and everything instantly seemed better. Not all the way better. I was still confused, chained to a bed, and in a lot of pain. But much much better than before, because the person walking into the room was-

“ROSA!” I practically screamed her name.

I didn’t see who shut it, but the door closed behind her as she came up to my bed and flicked me on my recently-bandaged head wound.

“Ow!”

“I cannot wait until you get discharged so I can murder you.”

Dagger CobraHeart, esquire gave me a satisfied grin and said, “You’re under lock and key until they deem you fit to transfer to County. You’re not supposed to have any visitors, but I pulled some strings and got Rosa here an exception under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act as guaranteed by your First Amendment rights, so if anyone asks, she’s a priestess and this is a religious ceremony.”

“‘A’ for effort,” I said, sitting up. “But my lawyers usually end up dead, and I don’t think I can afford you.”

He took a big swig of coffee, smacked his lips, then asked, “You think I do this job for the money?”

I didn’t know how to answer, so I didn’t bother.

“Jack,” Rosa began, her voice a little softer now. “Do you know where you are?”

I looked at the ceiling just to be sure that this was still the same room (and hospital, and state, and dimension) as before. There, I spotted an empty indentation and dangling wire where the smoke detector used to be. Everything looked exactly the same… except there wasn’t another bed in here anymore. And it wasn’t hot in here anymore, either. In fact, it was actually pretty chilly. Despite this, I could feel a bead of sweat running down the side of my temple.

“In a psychiatric wing of a hospital in Broken Toe, Arizona.”

The two of them shared a look that told me this was not the correct answer.

“What?” I asked. “Oh, God… What happened?”

Of all the people to deliver bad news, I think Rosa was probably the best suited. She was always really careful about how she worded things. She understood better than anyone what I’d been through. But before she got the chance, Dagger blurted it all out.

I waited and listened, in growing horror, as they explained just how wrong I was.

I’ll spare you the finer details, but according to my newest lawyer, my rampage started with, of all things, a broken toe.

My memories weren’t doing much to fill in the gaps, but that was to be expected, all things considered. At some point over the last few days, I caught my foot on the rung of a ladder. Considering the countless injuries I’ve sustained over my life, this one seemed so minor that it barely even registered as noteworthy. But evidently, individuals with a history of blood poisoning have a much higher risk of reinfection later in life. One thing led to another, and I ended up with a really high and really sudden fever.

How high? Well, I was already hallucinating before the van broke down on the side of the road in Cobweb Creek, Colorado… which was exactly where we were. We hadn’t been to Arizona in months. We were dead in the water, stranded with no phone service. Rosa was starting to panic as my fever began to climb.

101.

102.

103.

104.

How long could we last like this?

All the power of all the gods inside our dog were useless. We were out of water. We were desperate. And so, Jerry turned on the emergency beacon in the GPS device we bought way back at the start of this trip just in case of a scenario exactly like this one.

And then, “Do you guys hear that?”

Jerry opened the sliding side door of the van, causing a wave of air to rush over me, the cold blasting into my eyes. It was so bright out, I could barely see. I was so hot I could barely think.

Rosa sounded delirious as she asked, “Is that what I think it is?!”

The sound grew louder, and closer. Jerry, now clad in a pair of boxer shorts (after Rosa threatened to stab him if he didn’t put something on), stepped out and waved at the approaching vehicle. It came to a stop right next to us and turned off the blaring siren. The driver rolled his window down and smiled.

It was an ambulance.

“I’ll take fifty popsicles,” I said to the ambulance driver before the two EMT’s helped me into the back of the vehicle.

“Wait,” I interrupted. “But why was Jerry naked? I distinctly remember him stripping down and threatening to shave the dog.”

“Yeah,” Rosa said. “Because we were trying to get you to take off your clothes so we could get your body temperature down to something not life-threatening. You resisted. Jerry said we should all get naked out of solidarity.”

“Did you?” the lawyer interjected. Rosa shot him a look. He turned away and sipped his coffee.

“Hang on,” I continued, running through all the broken memories. “You were talking about the heatwave with the ice cream ladies before they attacked me.”

Rosa explained, “The EMTs, Cass and Bella, had to hold you down to start an IV because you were delirious. And we weren’t talking about a heat wave. We were talking about the dry flash freeze from the polar vortex disruption. It’s literally ten degrees outside, you big dummy!”

“What?!”

My lawyer snickered and added, “I guess that finally puts an end to the whole ‘global warming’ hoax.”

“But that doesn’t explain how I ended up seeing demons everywhere!”

“Actually,” Dagger said, picking up a bunch of papers from a stack next to the coffee mugs. “I got this part figured out. See, all those antibiotics they pumped you full of (without your consent) have a known interaction with liver enzymes that stop you from processing your anti-psychosis medications. Add to that the fact that they injected you with enough tranquilizers to take out Ozzy Osbourne (God rest his soul) and you were basically a ticking time bomb waiting to go off.”

“I told them the sedatives were a bad idea!” Rosa exclaimed. “But nooo! They told me it was impossible for you to wake up. I left you alone in here for five minutes so I could go to the cafeteria and eat a sandwich, and when I got back you were already gone! They used that word. ‘Impossible.’”

The lawyer nodded along with Rosa and added, “It’s kinda like the word ‘unsinkable.’ Careless. Absolutely careless.”

“How do you know about my medications? Isn’t that supposed to be, like, HIPAA protected?”

“Supposed to be,” he answered with an exaggerated shrug. “But they just left your chart right here in the open. Don’t worry, I’m a lawyer, and this information is the basis of your defense, so it’s all good.”

“But I was burning up-”

The lawyer rattled on, “You had a brain-damaging fever duking it out with the drugs and the other drugs, plus the symptoms and side effects of chills and heat flashes, plus hypothermia causing paradoxical undressing, add to all of that the copious amount of lost blood-”

“That’s not how you use the word copious.”

He ignored me, “And, according to the parking garage footage, you actually shot yourself with a fire extinguisher?”

“Is that bad?”

“YES!” they both exclaimed in unison.

“Wait, I actually fought a demon in the basement. Big-Arm. He had a wrench!”

“You mean Earl?” Dagger asked. “Yeah, he’s probably gonna press charges.”

“No, not ‘Earl.’ The actual demon in the boiler room. He was seven feet tall.”

“Yeah, that would be Earl.”

“He just kept screaming at me! And he didn’t have a shirt! His voice was like something out of a nightmare!”

“Yeah. That’s why he works in the basement, Jack. Gotta say, your description of this guy is starting to sound a little problematic.”

“But, what about the other demons? The guy in the parking garage?!”

Dagger was quick to answer every single one of my questions. “Uh huh. Sorry to say he’s also probably pressing charges. You broke his hand and gave him frostbite of the face.”

“He tried to kill me!”

“CCTV backs up his claim that you broke into his truck and stole his gun. Looks like he saw you do it, then set you up so he could have an excuse to fight you and call it ‘self defense.’ It’s not the first time he’s done something like this.”

“But… I remember him saying, ‘This world is ours,’ and ‘Your kind is an infestation,’ and ‘You deserve to be exterminated.’”

“Yep,” my lawyer said, still nodding. “That guy’s racist.”

“What?! But… I’m white!”

“That guy’s really racist.”

“But the people in the park-”

“Bunch of folk came out of sheltering in place when they heard all the commotion and gunfire.”

“But the guy dressed like Papa Smurf-”

“Professional Santa.”

“But the pond I jumped into-”

“Frozen over.”

“But I saw the hospital on fire!”

“Your brain was mush, man! You probably just saw the sun setting and filled in the details. Frankly, the fact that you were even able to get as far as you did is absolutely bonkers.”

“So… You’re saying there’s a perfectly rational answer for everything?”

“Yep,” he nodded.

I tugged at the handcuff. It was very snug.

Rosa put her hand onto my arm and said, “It’s okay. I explained everything to Jerry. He’s working on a plan to get you out of this.”

“Jerry?! Where’s he been this whole time?”

“Walking, mostly,” she answered.

“He’s been walking for three days?!”

Rosa shook her head.

“No, Jack. The ambulance picked us up this morning. They checked you into the hospital twelve hours ago.”

Twelve?! Hours?!

She leaned in and asked, “Who told you it had been three days?”

I looked over to where Skeeter’s bed had been. There was nothing there. Of course there wasn’t. I was in a locked room of a psychiatric wing. They took every precaution. They assumed I was a danger to myself and others. There were no windows. No mirrors. Why the hell would I have a roommate?

I knew I was missing something. The whole time, there was the feeling that something didn’t add up. But really, it was a ton of little things that didn’t add up. Was it all fake? Did any of it really happen? Most importantly, did I actually give something away to Amadeus?

He warned me. He said that he had the authority to rewrite reality itself…

Dagger clapped his hands to get my attention. “Okay, here’s the plan: You’re going to write a statement and give it to me. Then, I want you to agree that you won’t post ANY of this on your blog until after I figure out a way to get these charges dropped.”

“How long will that take?” I asked.

“Maybe a year or so. In the interim, you probably won’t be getting bail, so you’ll have plenty of time to read and write and whatever else it is you do for fun.”

“You’re saying I’ll be locked up for a whole year?!”

“That’s if you’re lucky. Could be a lot longer.”

I closed my eyes and sighed, knowing that I’d probably used up all my luck just to survive…

But then the door slammed open, and we all turned to see Jerry walk into the room wearing a pair of sunglasses and a puffy blue jacket with the word “GLAM” written in silver glitter across the front. More interesting than the jacket, though, was the giant set of bolt-cutters in his right hand.

“Waddup!” he said, removing the sunglasses. He smiled at Rosa and asked, “Is he better?”

“He’s good enough to come with us.”

Jerry motioned at Dagger, asking, “This the lawyer?”

Rosa nodded.

Jerry walked up to us, looked him in the eyes, and asked, “Yo Dag, what happens to snitches?”

Without missing a beat, the lawyer answered, “They get left in ditches.”

“Darn tootin’,” Jerry said. And the two of them fist-bumped.

Then, he used the bolt-cutters to snap the handcuffs, and we gathered up my stuff.

“Wait,” CobraHeart said before we left. He handed me a business card, which was the moment I finally realized I’d totally misheard his name. It was actually “Daggit Kobart.” (Crazy how my brain plays tricks on me sometimes.) “I’m serious,” he warned. “Don’t post anything on your blog until I get all of this sorted out.”

We found Gaston in the hallway, a friendly deity named Schospere at the wheel. He was a useful minor god, but I really hated the way he made Gaston stand on two legs whenever he was in charge.

A deep, loud voice resonated from the animal’s throat. “IS IT DONE?”

“Yeah,” Jerry said, walking past. “You can release them now.”

That’s when I noticed the two officers laying flat against the ceiling. They suddenly fell to the ground.

“YOU WILL TELL NO ONE,” Schospere commanded.

I whispered, “Inanisomnum,” as I passed, sending the god back to the void with the rest of them. Gaston dropped to all fours and quickly fell into step behind us as we made our way to the exit.

“‘Darn tootin’?” Rosa asked.

“Yeah,” Jerry answered. “I’m trying it out. What do you think?”

“I don’t like it.”

Outside, the night air was frigid and mean. As the first snowflakes began to fall, I shivered. Even now, I felt it. Even now, there was a lingering, undeniable presence in the back of my head… A voice continued to whisper to me. Something’s not quite right... I’m missing something important... I’m overlooking something really, really big.