The phrase grows louder, individual syllables devolving into a frantic, squealing mess as they rip through my vocal cords. Soon enough, I’m just screaming, letting all this emotion blast out of my esophagus because that’s the only way to release me from its terrible strangulation.
“Alright, alright,” Eddie finally interjects. “Calm down.”
The efficiency of his words is both impressive and terrifying, surging across me as though it’s a heartstopping dose of morphine pumped directly through an IV drip. My muscles release in a mighty wave, starting at my brain stem and then pulsing outward.
“You don’t care about him,” Eddie informs me, and now he’s right: I don’t.
I wipe the tears from my eyes, watching as the body finally stops moving.
“That better, sport?” Eddie asks.
“I don’t know.”
On one hand, eliminating the weight of that excruciating emotional torment is nothing short of a miracle, but now that my care for the young skater has dissolved into nothing, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that I’ve felt this kind of indifference before: drifting through the halls of adozen different funeral homes and simmering just under the surface of every morbid back-alley transaction.
He’s just a body now, not a person.
I’ve never actually witnessed a brutal death like this, never been up close to see the light leave someone’s eyes.
Folks say you can catch the very instant this transition occurs—the moment when someone changes from a living, breathing thing with thoughts and hopes and dreams to a mound of stiff flesh—but now I’m not so sure.
In this case, it’s a lot sloppier than I imagined.
“Don’t try to escape. Don’t attack me. Just … be cool,” Eddie says, reaching over and undoing my handcuffs. There’s a faint metallic pop as they spring open, relieving the immense pressure on my wrists.
I massage my chafed skin.
“You see that kid out there choking on his own front teeth?” Eddie continues. “That’syourfault. I can’t trust you now, which means for the rest of the night you’re gonna have to come inside with me.”
My mind starts racing, hunting for any clues that hide between the lines of what he’s saying. I quickly bump up against a variety of mental roadblocks, forbidden to contemplate any path that directly leads to my escape.
Eddie told me to refrain from any getaway plans, and within the depths of my mind I can now sense a host of strange, quarantined partitions. It feels like walking through my home and suddenly finding that a once-familiar bedroom has transformed into a blank, empty space. Some uncanny, impenetrable wall of darkness hassprung up to block my path, and when I try remembering what’s behind it I’m at a loss. I know a room is in there somewhere—awell-knownroom—but I have no recollection of what it looked like.
There are still other rooms to explore, though. I can still rap my knuckles on the walls and ponder the overall mystery of what’sactuallygoing on here.
Eddie has confirmed my earlier suspicion, that his control over others has a finite limit in terms of time and distance. Yes, he’s incredibly powerful, but after fifteen or twenty minutes of separation that power seems to wane. The second Eddie left me in the truck he was on a timer, and unfortunately for him that timer expired. The failsafe was a veil of trust, buttering me up and making me think he’s nothing more than a cool guy in a bad situation.
That’s enough when the guy in question is your hero, but my trust has shattered like a jawbone on the lip of an upturned skateboard.
Eddie carefully unfolds his mysterious sheet of paper. He looks it over for a moment, then folds it back up and returns it to his pocket.
“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” I blurt.
I’ll admit, being this direct might not be the best strategy, but for the briefest moment my racing mind gets too far ahead of my lips and the question comes tumbling out with a resounding thud.
Eddie hesitates. “That depends on what you mean bykill, and what you mean byme.”
I have no idea how to interpret this batshit existentialresponse, but before I get the chance, my undead companion nods through our windshield.
“Drive,” Eddie commands. “Head downtown.”
I involuntarily press the gas pedal, rumbling onward.
As we turn onto the main street, Eddie lets out a long sigh, air rattling through the shattered bones of his neck. “I’m sorry, sport, I’m a bit of a mess tonight,” he admits, shaking his head. “I usually have more time to plan, but drunk driving is a real bitch. Someone has one too manymi-mosfor brunch and the next thing you know, you’re in crisis mode.”
Eddie sits with this for a moment, mulling it over.
“Maybe I should do a PSA,” he ponders aloud, then nods in confirmation. “I’ll do a PSA. This is bullshit.”
