I chuckled, too. Not much, but enough to ease some of the tension in my chest. As my Nanna used to say, “A chuckle a day will do ya.” And she lived ninety-eight spirited years, so I’m inclined to follow her advice. Meanwhile, my days are few and numbered. So are yours.

“This place you got, what’s it like?” I said, wanting to avoid any and all potential surprises.

“It’s a shit shack,” he said. “Small and drafty with residual smells of toxic sweat and puke. But it’s private and safe, and fairly cozy once you get a fire going. Which I don’t suppose we’ll be doing this time of year.”

After having my head stuck above the mantel of a fireplace I doubt I’ll ever appreciate a hearth fire again.

“It got a view?” I said.

“Trees. Dirt. Fallen leaves.” Al smiled when I slouched in my seat. “Don’t fret, though. Prettiest damned dirt you’ve ever seen.”

No, friend. That’s reserved for the six feet of soil that will cover my grave.

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

I nodded off at some point. Restless, anxious sleep. My body was a doorway. Like in that movie, Being John Malkovich, but I was the star in this film. The back of my head would swing open and this murky light would pour through, filling the open cavity of my skull with a noxious substance like curdled milk. A maroon veil fell over my eyes, filtering my perception through a lens of rage, turning friends and neighbors into objects of hate. I had become a killing machine. An avatar for deviant thrill seekers wanting to spill blood while keeping their hands clean. My core self was bound and gagged and kept in a cage as the invaders maneuvered my pliant body through a senseless killing spree, delirious child-like laughter echoing in my ear canals as I became drenched in gore. My hands were wrapped around Al’s neck, grunting as my muscles were commanded to squeeze with all their strength, and I jerked awake when his esophagus collapsed under my rigid thumbs. That feeling of falling back into your body.

We were driving through a plume of dust, off the highway now, traveling down some dirt road. Al had the windows up; the interior reeked of last night’s liquor oozing from my pores. Looks like I was purging early.

“Where are we?” I asked, and Al shushed me with a finger against his mouth. The trunks of birch trees lined the road. White and spindly. Maple and spruce created the canopy of darkness deeper in the woods. Al removed the finger from his mouth and pointed up the mountain, suggesting we were close.