Ryan Jahn - Low Life

He clawed his way out of the ice, groping for the man, climbing toward him, gripping for his throat.

As he fell atop the man he throttled his neck. Blood dripped from the hole in the bag covering his head, drizzled onto the other man’s face and eyes and mouth. And visions and memories filled his head. Memories that belonged to Jeremy – except they were Simon’s as well. In one memory of baptism he was Simon, in another he was Jeremy, but the memories were otherwise identical. Stealing the kite. Swimming at that public pool in Austin. Dozens of others, hundreds of others. And he knew. Something had happened in the car accident. What exactly he didn’t know – but something. Or maybe while he was in that coma. The part of him that couldn’t stand what he was broke off like a branch that was bearing too much weight. He remembered the fog that was Simon before Simon became a man: this non-existent fog. And he remembered the spells. Renting this apartment, bringing old clothes and old glasses and records here and telling Samantha he had taken them to Good Will or sold them to Amoeba Records, telling himself the same thing. He remembered creating this identity: going to Westlake and buying illegal paperwork that gave him a name and a Social Security number. And maybe he’d even planned on disappearing himself, starting anew and forgetting his ugly past, pretending he wasn’t what he was, but at some point Simon became a real person. Almost. But the universe had rules and one of those rules was that ½ plus ½ could never equal two. A part of a man might break away but it was still only a part of a man. And when he became nearly whole the universe rejected this defiance, and like a scratched record this part of his life played over and over again – because ½ plus ½ could never equal two. It could only equal one. Over and over this would play until Simon and Jeremy were one again. That was all. The universe had rules. He just hadn’t understood them.

Velocity and distance.

Time.

The other man grabbed a porcelain jar from which a bamboo plant was growing. He could feel it cold and firm though he was touching nothing but the other man’s throat. He could feel it because the other man could feel it. And he could see himself through the other man’s eyes. As everything came to the surface he experienced both lives simultaneously. It was like two mirrors facing one another: he saw himself regressing infinitely through both pairs of eyes.

The other man swung the porcelain jar at him – and this time he knew it was coming because he was swinging it at himself and he dodged to the left and the jar failed to smash into his face. It had happened before, it had smashed into his face, dozens of times before, hundreds of times, but not this time. This time was different. This time everything was coming to the surface.

As the memories continued to invade his mind, making him whole, his vision through the other pair of eyes faded – his vision through Simon’s eyes faded, went gray and out of focus and smeary at the edges. Simon had only been a small part of what he was; the part that couldn’t bear the weight; that’s why he had felt so hollow, so cold, so empty; and that what was he was again: a small part of him.

And then there was nothing beneath him – nothing but clothes laid out in the shape of a man: white T-shirt, green pajama bottoms, a pair of aviator-type glasses.

He was sitting alone on a cold tile floor.

He was breathing hard.

He sat there for a long time breathing through a pained throat. Eventually his heartbeat slowed to a near-normal rate and he thought he could risk standing. He got to his feet. Black dots swam before his eyes and he stumbled left, caught himself on a wall, pushed himself into a vertical position again, gained his balance.

He unwrapped the duct tape from his neck and pulled the plastic bag away.

He saw a glass of whiskey sitting on the counter and he drank it down. It burned but it felt good too. It warmed his middle.

He looked to his right and saw the bathtub full of ice. Then he looked at the medicine-cabinet mirror, the reflective film on the other side peeling away like sunburned skin. He looked at himself in the mirror – his scarred face, his dyed brown hair, his contact lenses, his green tie and scarf and expensive suit. His face was covered in blood. There was a long gash running across his flesh just above his left eyebrow where the flashlight had smashed into his head again and again. His nose was broken. He turned on the water and washed his face. He dried it with a towel. Despite having washed his face, blood smeared onto the towel’s fabric. He looked at himself again. There was still blood in his hair, drying it together in clumps. But his face was clean and nearly blood-free.

There I am, he thought.

He hadn’t become anything – this was what he had always been.

He walked over to Captain Bligh’s, ordered himself two Bounty Burgers, a whiskey, and two beers. He drank the first beer as soon as it arrived.

The place was dark and there was no one in the booth adjacent to his, so there was no one but the waitress to see his bruised and battered face, and he thought it’d been a long time since she’d last given a shit.

He sat and listened to the newsheads drone on the television above the bar and the chatter of old-timers on padded stools before it.

When his food arrived he ate it noisily, in great bites which he washed down with his second beer. He managed one and a half of the burgers before he was done. He leaned back, grabbed his whiskey, and downed it.

He slept in the apartment that night, and he slept soundly. There were no dreams. There was only darkness.

The next morning he got up and took a shower and put on a clean T-shirt and a pair of checkered pants. He put on the corduroy coat. He combed his hair. He ate breakfast at the Denny’s on Wilshire and Vermont, and then got into his Saab and drove toward Pasadena.

Samantha was sitting in the living room drinking coffee when he walked in. She was wearing a pair of sweat pants and a T-shirt. Her face had no make-up on it. She looked beautiful.

‘I came to say goodbye,’ he said.

‘What – what’s happened to you?’

He scratched his cheek.

‘I came to say goodbye,’ he said again. ‘And to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I’ve done.’

He waited for twenty minutes at the police station before he was put into a room with a detective who was wearing snakeskin boots and pinky rings. The detective remembered him.

It was a great relief to be there. He had so many things to confess.

They put him in a cell. It was a small room with a single cot, a seatless toilet, and a sink. The bars had been painted white, but where hundreds of hands had gripped them the paint had been worn away, revealing dark metal. There were no windows. He sat silently and read the graffiti on the walls. Everything meant exactly what it appeared to mean.

The lights went out at ten o’clock.

To the darkness he spoke his final confession – his own name – but it only echoed back at him, so he did not speak it again.

Though he could not see it, he knew that outside and over him stretched the vast darkness of the universe. The faint light of distant stars and planets. The thin sliver of the fish-hook moon.

He closed his eyes.

He wanted to speak God’s name, but did not know what it was.

Ryan David Jahnpublished his first novel, the CWA John Creasey Dagger-winning Acts of Violence , in 2009, and has since published two others, Low Life and The Dispatcher . He lives in Lousville, Kentucky.