Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

He steps into the trailer and pulls the doors shut. He has to slam the second door three times before he gets the outside handle to fall and lock him inside.

Once in darkness, he removes his gloves.

23

Carl dives for cover behind the police van as gunshots ring out. He hits asphalt and draws his weapon. He hears cops shouting all around him, and explosions of gunfire, and bullets hitting metal and glass.

He ignores all of this. He takes aim.

He squeezes his trigger.

A moment later a man collapses to the sidewalk, suddenly vacant of life — an empty nest from which the birds have flown.

The two remaining gangsters continue their retreat.

24

Eugene sits in the trailer. The air is hot and nearly without oxygen. His lungs hurt. He’s covered in sweat. He thinks about how he kept Evelyn in here for hours. He thinks about how he killed her.

Outside the gunfire stops.

The warehouse door opens and closes.

He gets to his feet and walks to the back of the trailer. He looks out to see two men in black suits with Tommy guns hanging from their fists. They look around the warehouse with their weapons ready, but only silence greets them, and the dead, whom they see and approach without speaking. They stand before the carnage like children awed, their faces pale. For a long time they neither move nor say a word.

Then, from outside, tinny through a bullhorn: ‘You have ten seconds to come out with your hands up.’

Without looking away from the dead, the two men speak in soft tones. Eugene is only ten feet away, but cannot hear their words. When the speaking is done they turn toward the blue door and raise their weapons to await the police.

‘Ten,’ through the bullhorn. ‘Nine.’

25

But when the police count their last nobody rushes into the warehouse.

From a rooftop across the street one of the LAPD shooters squeezes his trigger twice. A ventilation window shatters. He looks down to the street.

He gives a thumbs-up.

26

One moment the two men are simply standing there with their weapons raised at the ready; the next their heads are replaced by red mist. They collapse to the warehouse floor, one after the other. Their weapons fall from their hands.

Eugene backs away from the trailer door. The shooting is finished.

He sits down, pulls his knees up to his chest, wraps his arms around them. He closes his eyes. He hears police push into the warehouse. He hears their feet stomping. He hears their talk. He hears their exclamations.

He puts his hands over his ears.

He knows the police will soon discover him. They’ll pull him from this trailer, put him in handcuffs, and haul him away. He knows that, and he knows he deserves it.

But for a few minutes he can have this quiet.

27

Carl stands watching while around him other men work. Bodies are bagged. Evidence is collected and numbered. Flashbulbs explode. The case is wrapping up. It’s almost finished. He wonders if he has it in him to get clean, but he doesn’t want to think about that just yet. He doesn’t want to think about that at all.

Someone says his name. He looks up. One of the men from the crime lab stands by the back of a trailer looking at him.

‘What is it?’

The man points.

He walks over and looks into the trailer. Eugene Dahl sits on the floor inside with his legs pulled up to his chest. He looks at them, his face pale and drawn. Blood drips from his left ear.

‘He was locked inside.’

28

Eugene steps from the trailer. Detective Bachman leads him to a quiet corner of the warehouse, somewhere we can talk for a few minutes, and hands him a handkerchief.

He holds it in his hand and looks at it, confused.

‘Your ear,’ Detective Bachman says, pointing.

He touches it and is surprised by the sharp sting of pain. He hadn’t realized he’d been injured. He felt nothing when it happened, but he feels it now. The last rifle shot must have come within mere inches of killing him.

‘Looks like the lobe is gone. Stray bullet must have gone into the trailer. Lucky you aren’t dead. Need a few stitches but that’s all.’

Eugene nods and puts the handkerchief to his ear. He doesn’t know how much longer he can do this. He needs answers. He needs finality. He doesn’t even care what the answers are so long as he understands what’s happening.

A man can warm himself even beneath the blanket of certain doom.

He looks at the detective.

‘Are you going to arrest me?’

1

Nobody arrests him. It’s almost impossible to believe. He should be arrested. He should be tried and convicted and electrocuted till he’s dead, but nobody arrests him. The detective takes his statement, and when he’s finished talking simply nods and says yeah, that’s about what I thought. He asks if he can go home. The detective says he can, but in the next couple days we’ll need you around to answer any questions might come up. He says okay and walks out of there.

The daylight is very bright.

He supposes they might arrest him later, but he doesn’t think so. The police like his story. And who gives a shit about a few dead lowlifes, anyway?

He rides his motorcycle to his apartment. He’ll have to stop by the motel room on Whitley and collect his things at some point, but not today. Today he wants to lock himself in a small room and not come out again. He wants silence and darkness.

Everything seems alien to him now and oddly flat. His street doesn’t feel like his street. His stairs don’t feel like his stairs. Standing before his front door he’s sure it isn’t really his front door at all, and there’s no chance that his apartment is on the other side of it. He unlocks the door and pulls the police tape away and steps inside. While it looks like his apartment, he knows it isn’t. It feels wrong. It feels like nothing. The world has somehow become two-dimensional, a stagecraft version of itself.

There’s no depth to it, nor is there feeling.

He closes his door and locks it.

He walks to his bedroom and grabs a blanket from the bed and carries it into the bathroom. He lies in his bathtub and covers himself with the blanket and closes his eyes.

This is what he needs. Darkness and silence.

But there’s neither darkness nor silence to be found, not for long, because the darkness isn’t empty. It never was.

2

Carl packs his suitcase and leaves the boarding house. He drives home, parks in front of his house. He walks to the front door and stands facing it for a long time. He doesn’t know if he can do this. He doesn’t think he can.

He reaches forward with a shaking hand, key extended. He pauses. He puts the key into the lock and turns it. He pushes the door open. It swings wide. He looks into his living room without stepping inside. He can see Naomi everywhere. Pictures of her rest on end-tables, the curtains she bought cover the windows, the couch they shared sits in the middle of the room.

He looks down at the metal threshold, afraid to pass over it. He considers pulling the door closed and walking away. He doesn’t think he’s ready for this.

He steps forward — for the first time in months he steps into his home. Then he closes the door behind him and locks it.

He sets down the suitcase.

He already feels sick, and knows over the course of the next week it’ll only get worse. Much worse. There will be vomiting and diarrhea and tremendous leg cramps and probably he won’t be able to sleep through any of it. There will come a time, he knows, when he thinks he might die and hopes he does. He will want to use so that he doesn’t die, but he won’t use, and he won’t die either.

He’s determined to reach the other side of this.