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I did. I sat and closed my eyes and tried to find the strength to get up and finish it. It isn’t that hard, Dexter. Just stand up, set the bomb where it will do the job, and go back to my boat. Simple.
Except that it wasn’t. Nothing was simple now. Come to think of it, things hadn’t been simple for some time. Not for Dumbo Dexter, the Ninja Nerd who gets everybody close to him killed—Rita and Jackie and now Brian and probably Debs and the kids in just a minute or two. And when things are almost all wrapped up nicely he gets himself blown up and shot. And now he doesn’t have to do anything at all but put a little bitty bomb in the right place and set the timer and go home…and he can’t even do that. It just seemed so hard to get up and do anything. I couldn’t do even the simplest things anymore—hadn’t been able to this whole time, ever since I let Jackie get killed. And Rita, too. Dead because of me, my incompetent empty-headed fumbling dumbness. Dead, along with my whole beautiful simple life…dead just like Brian. Killed by my bumbling thumb-brained delusions that I was smart and I could do things. Killed because I actually couldn’t do things anymore. Couldn’t think at all. And now I couldn’t even walk three or four more steps to set the bomb so I could go home. And maybe find somebody to make the gunshot wound stop bleeding so much. Because it really was bleeding too much. I was soaked now, all along the whole front of me, and I didn’t like it.
All right, enough. Up and at ’em, Dexter. And if there’s no “up” left, then just crawl over there and do it. Set the timer, toss the bomb down the stairs, crawl back to the boat. One, two, three. So simple even a dolt like me could do it. Ready?
One: I reached in the flap of the canvas bag. It was still open from when Brian had used it, so I didn’t need to unzip it, which was a very good thing, since I didn’t think I could. I felt around and my fingers closed on something that seemed about right. I pulled out a big square shiny thing. It had the same kind of timer that Brian’s bomb had, but this brick was much bigger. More than enough to do the job. But the timer was throbbing in and out of focus, and the red numbers kept blending with the red background that was pulsing back over me again. That wasn’t good. I frowned and stared at it so it knew I was serious, and it settled down. I punched in zero, zero, five. Five minutes. Plenty of time.
Step two: A deep breath, and then I crawled forward on my one good arm, pushing the bomb ahead of me. No scientific placement needed, not with this great big baby. It wasn’t necessary, and it wouldn’t happen anyway, not with Dexter the Doofus on the job. Still, several feet away I felt myself running down. Not good. Have to save something for my escape. Escaping very important. I tried to stand up. Very hard—I was so heavy! I would really need to go on a diet when this was over. But I was still holding the entire canvas bag—another stupid blunder. I let go of it and worked my way all the way up to a standing position. I rested for a minute. Just one little minute, just resting—and I remembered the bomb. Now I only had four minutes. Still have to escape.
I leaned forward and threw the bomb. It was a very feeble throw. Of course. But it bounced on the top step—and then, happily for us all, tipped over and rolled downstairs. At the bottom it clattered onto something that went bong. That didn’t seem right. I staggered forward one more step and peeked down.
The fire had picked up a little, but that meant the smoke was not quite as thick. I could see a big hole where the carpeted deck had been. The first bomb had taken out the deck, and below it there was something metal, something that went bong when you dropped a big bomb on it. I blinked stupidly for a moment, swaying a little. Then I thought, Fuel tank…? Must be. Fuel tanks go bong, and then boom. Bingo. Very good, Dexter. Very, very good.
I stood there congratulating myself, and then I thought, Why stand to celebrate? I’ll sit here and relax and celebrate at my leisure.
I sat. Not as gracefully as I would have liked. Rather too fast and awkward, truth be told. There seemed to be a few control elements offline. Legs all wobbly, vision in and out, one arm just hanging and the other made of cardboard…But I sat, feeling pleased. I hadn’t hurt myself. And I had put the bomb on the fuel tank. Steps one and two done. Good work, Dexter. Not bad for an incompetent meathead. Because what about step number three, Oh, King of the Dim?
Three. That’s right. Step three had involved going somewhere, hadn’t it? I hoped it would be better lit than this. It was getting awfully dark in here—and even colder, too! Why was that? Why did I have to sit here in a cold place with this icky red all over me? I could feel it under me now, too, sort of a frigid squishiness that I did not like at all. Why did it remind me of something very bad? When had I ever been this cold and this covered with icky-sticky red before? Why did it seem like—
Mommy was just over there. I could see her face over there and she was somehow hiding and peeking up over the…things—just her face showing, her unwinking unblinking unmoving face. And even when I called her really loud she didn’t answer….
“Mommy,” I said. I couldn’t hear it, but I felt the word on my lips. Why did I think of Mommy now? Why here on this battered billionaire’s boat that was about to go boom? Why think of Mommy at all, who I had not even known except for seeing her over there unmoving, and she hadn’t even answered me even
now that I saw her. Why didn’t she even wink? Make some sign that she heard me, that this was all a trick, and soon we would get up and get out of here and go home and be with Biney. But Mommy did nothing at all, like she wasn’t even there, and without Mommy I was alone, sitting here in this deep puddle of awful nasty wet sticky horrible red stuff and I didn’t want to sit here, didn’t want to sit in that, not here on the carpet, not again, not wait and wait in the cold sticky awful until finally the door would open and Harry would come in and lift me out and take me away and the whole thing would begin again in its endless cycle of brainless clueless helpless hopeless Dim and Dark and Dopey Dexter blood blood BLOOD
Not again.
I opened my eyes. I was still sitting on the ruined wet carpet. And I didn’t want to be, not just sitting, not here in the deep puddle of sticky wet while silently somewhere close the timer ticked—
Up. Up. I had to get up, get out of this—and this time I would not wait for Harry. I would get up and get out of it by myself. Do everything different, better, my way, so maybe this time it wouldn’t all turn to shit on me. This time everything would be different, better, smarter, if I could only get myself up and away from the little cold room and go home where things were better, nicer, warmer, brighter—
Somehow I got up. I stood and swayed and everything was very clear somehow and I thought, How much time is left? How long until the big bang? It couldn’t be much. I had to hurry.
But hurry was not on the menu, not tonight, not in Dexter’s Diner for the Dim and Dopey. I tried, but I didn’t really seem able to do more than stand and stagger slowly.
I flop-foot my way over to the side of the room and I flounder toward the door, sliding along the walls and windows and furniture and hearing a terrible soft insistent ticking of the timer in my head and finally feeling the doorknob in my hand, the horribly stiff impossible-to-turn doorknob. And somehow, so slowly, so impossibly brick-fingered, I open it and feel the frigid night breeze on my face, like a blast of punishing cold wind, so strong I almost go backward and I have to lean both arms on the wall again and work my way out and then around the corner to the railing, and I lurch over and lean on that and I know I have gone the wrong way, around the side instead of straight back to my boat, but there is noth
ing to lean on back that way and I need to lean and so I look over, look back, look for my boat and Deborah and I don’t see her.
And I try to turn to look back and I can’t and my head rolls over instead and I am looking up, into the endless black night above, in its on-and-on forever darkness—
—except no. It isn’t darkness, not all of it, not at all. Right there, right above me, floating over me in its cool and welcome glow. There it is. Dexter’s last friend, last family, last fond familiar face. Old Mr. Moon, come to watch and whisper soft and silvery songs, the music of Dark Joy, the sound track of Dexter’s Life, the beautiful symphony of shadows that follows me into every night of need, that lights me now in its soft and urgent beams as it has forever before, singing sweet nothings to the tune of impending snicker-snee—
—but different now, different tonight. Different notes and a chorus I have never heard, swelling up in the soft and shining light of its distant knowing smile. And not so distant now, not tonight. Closer than ever before. Much closer, and singing a new refrain, not of sly encouraging but of welcome, calling out in sweet and clear harmonies, Come home, Dear Dexter, come home….
The beautiful silver song is shattered by an awful noise, a mechanical cow-sounding blat that cuts through the lilt and tease of that welcoming melody, smashes through so loud that even I can hear it, and even in my halfway-home head I know what it is: a boat horn. My boat horn. And with a wonderful rush of insight I realize what this means—Deborah is calling me, pulling me away from the beautiful welcoming silver darkness, trying to bring me away and back to a very different home….
But no. Not home, not now. Not if I don’t move. The bomb, the boat—I must not linger and listen to the wrong song, and I try to straighten up and stand and I can’t and I hear the horn again and I hear the terrible soft tick, tick, tick louder than ever and I know that any second now the fireball will come and lift me up and out of everything into the deep dark forever nothing and I am not ready for that. Not even with the moon crooning its mother’s summons. Not yet, not now. Not Dexter. No. And so slowly, far beyond effort and pain and almost everything that has ever been, slowly I straighten up. And slowly, still holding on to the rail, I put one foot over and look.
I can just see my boat bobbing easily over there, at an almost safe distance that seems so very far. I look down. The dark water is there, surface rippled with wind and mocking moonlight, and if I can just get down there, get into the water, I can swim to my boat and everything will be all right, and so slowly, carefully, every movement dragging like it was pulled backward by lead weights, somehow I get both feet over the railing and I wave to Debs so far away over there and I make a huge idiot sound to let her know to come get me and I know she will because family is so important no matter what and she sees that now I am sure of it and then I am over and falling and even as I fall the water seems so impossibly far away—and so dark, so deep and dark—
—and then there is a warped and rippled picture of the moon with its happy savage face that morphs into Me rushing up at Me and I hit Me with a soundless crash and Me breaks apart still soundless into a million bright red shattered shards of moon glow that slowly bend their darkening beams around me as I fall through the flickers of light-dark-light until the last of the cool silver light fades away to welcome shadows and now there is cool and comforting peace and I start up again, up into the blackness that whirls me away to the happy welcome of the moon’s dark side and I fall up and in and away and the wonderful chorus of silence swells up as I rise up and up and I feel like I am home again at last as I slide down, down through the beautiful shadowy silence and into the cool and welcoming moon-Mommy Darkness at last and—
