Lee Goldberg - Ring of Knives

Matt turned his head to see Maloria looking at him wide-eyed. She looked down immediately.

"I think he had enough a' that," Maloria said softly, keeping her eyes on the floor.

"Oh, you do, do ya? Shows what you know, you fat black bitch."

Maloria's eyes flashed up, hot with defiance.

Hirotachi peeled back her lips to reveal a row of small, nicotine-yellow nubs. "Problem?"

Maloria looked down again, lips clamped shut, muscle twitching at her jaw.

"Shoe's on the other foot when the night shift's here, ain't it?"

"Just sayin', what you're doin' is like to kill him. Then he can't be took to the Ring at all, and who'll be in trouble then?"

Ring? Matt thought. What in hell's the Ring?

"Don't you worry your fat head about that. He's still got plenty of spunk left in him. See?"

And she flipped the switch again.

RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK

Again they stood together, Matt and Janey, staring at moonlight on water.

Only this time, there was no warm spring air, no band playing in the distance, no scent of lotus. Instead, the breeze was the dry by-product of the hospital's industrial air-circulation system, and the only scent was the chemical tang of lemon-scented disinfectant.

He had woken up at two a.m. to find that she'd left the room. When he stepped out, he'd found her standing in the hallway in front of a window overlooking a landscaped industrial park between the hospital and its parking structure. Snow covered the neatly spaced prairie grasses that bordered a small, frozen pond.

He put a hand on her shoulder blade.

"Hey, you."

She didn't startle. Just leaned back a little in that way he'd always found so assuring.

He cleared his throat. "Want to take a walk? I know a vending machine around the corner where we can score Funyuns for a song ."

She shook her head.

He let it go. Stopped trying to be clever. Gently stroked the back of her neck.

"It's so beautiful," she said, staring out the window.

"Yeah." He looked at the snow-covered industrial park doubtfully, wondering if he was seeing what she was. "You mean the snow?"

"All of it," she said. "All of it." And began to cry.

He put his arms around her, placed his cheek against hers, and held her as she shook silently. Behind them, an orderly rattled past with a trayful of meds. Ignored the weeping couple. Nothing he hadn't seen before.

They stood there a long time, cheek to cheek, staring out at the frozen pond, the parking structure, the cold eye of the moon.

He was just about to suggest that they go back and try to sleep again when she cleared her throat and shook her head. "I just can't believe it. It doesn't make sense ."

"What?" Although he knew.

"I just can't believe that, at some point-some point soon-I'll be gone . That I won't just be asleep, or unconscious-I won't be . I know it's true, but I just can't… get my head around it."

"It's not true," he said fiercely.

"Hon…" She touched his cheek. "It is."

"No, it isn't. No matter what happens to your body, you'll live on."

"Where?" She gave a weak, knowing smile. "You mean, like, heaven?" Neither one of them was religious, or ever had been.

"No, not heaven," he said. "You'll be with me ." He knew what he meant. But could he say it in a way that would make her understand? He had to. "You'll be with me, Janey. You will. In my heart. I'll take you with me wherever I go. What I see, you'll see. What I do, you'll do. I'll never let you go. Never ." He hugged her fiercely. "You've got to believe me. You've got to."

"I do, Matt." She touched his face with her fingertips. His eyes were too blurred with tears to see her expression. But the words she said were enough, and she said them again, taking him back to the time he'd first stood with her in front of hundreds of friends and family, in heart-pounding terror and elation, and heard her say that life-changing phrase: "I do, Matt-I do."

RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK

"Whoo! Now, that was a doozy!" Hirotachi crowed, her froggish face stretched upwards in grotesque delight.

Matt collapsed back onto the table. Sweat soaked his shirt. Every cell in his body felt scorched. Tears leaked out of the corners of his eyes, pooling in his ears.

"You definitely gonna kill him, you keep that shit up." Maloria had backed against a wall, her lower lip protruding as she said it.

"Nahhhh," Hirotachi purred, drawing it out, "you'd be amazed at how much a grown buck like this can take. What's he had, two sessions? Can't do crap with two. But three… three's the charm ."

She flipped the switch.

RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK RED BLACK

Darkness.

A heavy weight, pressing down upon him, crushing the breath out of his chest. And cold, cold, cold !

Ice packed into his ears, his eyes, his mouth.

The Christmas-tree smell of smashed pine.

Can't move his left hand. Right hand throbbing. Right knee jammed against his chin. Teeth feel loose.

Can't draw a breath!

Unable to breathe, he starts to hyperventilate.

Red sparks flash before his eyes in the darkness.

Far above him, a muffled roar.

Far above him, impossibly, the weight increases . Like being crushed into a cold marble floor by a giant's icy heel.

His ribs creak. His lungs rattle as he fights to draw a breath and fails.

Realizes he's going to die. His only thought: Like this?

His breathing gets so shallow, it's just the slightest flexing of a single nostril.

He stops hearing the muffled roar.

He stops seeing the red sparks.

He stops feeling the smashed hand, the loose teeth.

He's blacking out.

But as Matt's five senses fade, another sense becomes apparent to him. One he's never noticed before. It's almost like sonar: somehow he can feel the space beyond his body: its shape, density, distance. Like his mind has been somehow freed of the confines of his compressed skull.

He can feel the jagged, dark weight of a shattered boulder to his right.

He can feel the long, soft, rotting trunk of a felled tree lying diagonally behind him.

Above, he can feel the chaotic tangle of torn brush.

Below, shelves of ice lying atop one another like shattered mirrors.

Help me.

He doesn't say the words. He doesn't even think them. He's beyond that now. But even so, the impulse behind those words, the raw need they express, pulses out of him like the cry of a bat. And like the cry of a bat it bounces off the jagged teeth of the boulder, the soft line of the fallen trunk, the crown of brush above, the broken ice-glass below.

Help me.

Help me.

Help me.

The pulse goes farther, faster, as his other senses fade. It travels all the way up to the surface, where snow swirls in a helix and the pale orb of the sun hangs above it like the ghost of heat. The pulse travels all the way down, far below the panes of ice, through endless strata of stone and earth and ice.

And it is there, miles below him, that the pulse finds purchase. Where, for the first time, it is not reflected, but absorbed. Reaches something far below that wakens, takes notice. That stirs. Uncoils. Grows attentive.

He can't feel its shape… or weight… or nature. Only that it is very old, very dense: is somehow compact -somehow folded in upon itself many, many times over. And it's very far down. So far down that if it were left alone, it would almost certainly stay put. Stay buried. Maybe forever.

Help me.

That final pulse hits home. The thing far below responds, begins to ascend. Sluggishly at first, then gathering force. He can feel it slowly spiraling upwards, its shape shifting like the shadow of a cloud.