Chris Mooney - World Without End

She looks away from him and stares out the window and he sees that her face has changed. Did she believe him? Had his words forced her to surrender herself to the harsh facts about her son? Don't stop, keep going.

"When Todd heard your car pull up, he didn't expect you home so early, so what he did was he put the stuff from his pockets into mine and made up that story."

Dusk has settled; the room is carved with shadows. Samantha Merrill stares out the window for what seems like a long time. His heart is racing with fear and hope.

"Why would he steal from me?" she asks. Her voice sounds small. Far away.

"To buy dope."

Samantha Merrill's lips crimp together as if to prevent something vile from escaping.

He knows he should stop but doesn't. She needs to hear the truth. It's the only way he can prevent his loss from happening.

"I've seen him do it. Behind the gym after basketball practice. That sickly sweet smell on his clothes why do you think he washes his clothes the second he gets home? Why he never wants you to pick him up?"

She looks down at the floor and presses a gloved hand against her forehead.

"This isn't the first time you've found stuff missing from inside your house, right? Money's been missing and all this time you thought you misplaced it " "I've heard enough," she says and stands up.

"I'm telling you the truth. Todd's not who you think he is. He's a liar and a thief, and he has you and everyone else fooled."

Samantha Merrill slaps him so hard across the face that stars dance across his eyes. She leans into him, her eyes watering and threaded with tiny red veins but at the same time so hard and angry that all he can think about is a crevice suddenly opening up on top of a snow-covered mountain and swallowing him.

"You, Stephen Conway, are the liar and the thief," she hisses.

"The second someone showed you an act of kindness, showed you love and offered you a chance to prove yourself, you took advantage of it. Todd caught you stealing from me the person who loved and trusted you and now you have the audacity to lie to me?"

"I didn't steal " She strikes him again. It's not the pain that causes him to cry out, it's the fear of what is about to happen next, what he is about to lose.

"You lie and steal because you're an awful person, Stephen Conway awful and I will thank the Lord every day for having Todd catch you in the act before we brought you into our home permanently. I'm ashamed to have known you. You're rotten to the core."

His lips quiver as they try to form words. His throat seizes up.

Through a watery curtain he watches her blurred shape turn and storm out of the room.

Samantha Merrill and her world, with all its hope and promise, is gone.

Outside the window he sees the homes decorated with hundreds of glowing strings of colored lights, and he realizes that Christmas is only two weeks away. He will be going back to the dreary halls of St. Anthony's Boys Home. Back to the large cafeteria hall with its holiday dinner of rubber turkey and tasteless gravy, back alone with the haunted stares of miserable children who fight and kick and scream themselves to sleep.

He slams his good eye shut and sees himself last Sunday afternoon playing Scrabble with Mr. Merrill in the family room. Outside the windows a light snow was falling, and Samantha Merrill was busy inside the kitchen cooking a roast beef, the aroma wafting through the rooms filled with laughter and talk and mixing with the smell of the burning wood inside a fireplace and the sharp bite of the tall pine Christmas tree in the corner of the room it's gone now, it's all gone.

He feels his anger rising and embraces it embraces its strength. He is a survivor. Fuck you, Samantha Merrill. Fuck you, fuck Todd, I will rise above you. I will rise above you and show you I will show everyone. Just you wait and see.

Conway's eyes fluttered open. The world was a blur, and his head felt heavy, his mind still clinging to the dream. Why did he dream of Samantha Merrill? He hadn't thought about her in years.

He blinked and slowly the white ceiling tiles came into sharper focus.

He lifted up his head Jesus Christ, his temples felt like they had daggers stuck in them and looked around the room.

A hospital room.

I'm alive.

But possibly disfigured, a voice added.

And then it all came back to him in a frightening rush: the explosions and then the entire lab was on fire, smoke curling up across the ceiling like great black snakes and then… he couldn't remember what had happened after that.

Conway closed his eyes. He saw the flames inching closer to him, the heat drilling into his skin… a cold sweat broke out all over his body.

I must be in a burn unit.

But there was no pain. Possibly a morphine drip, he thought. He turned his head to the right and saw a feeding tube attached to the veins in his hand. The skin was tanned and healthy. With his left hand he reached up and patted down his face. A sizable bandage was strapped across his forehead. Another one was on the back of his head; they had shaved his hair. He didn't know what had happened, but he did know he wasn't facially disfigured.

The door opened and in walked a small, plump nurse with blond hair.

Grasped between her chubby hands was a plastic pitcher of water.

"Good, you're awake." Young, maybe mid-twenties, a Texan with a sunny voice, loving her job before the world beat her down. She placed the water pitcher on a tray and then adjusted the controls on the side of his bed. A humming sound of motors working. His head moved up until he was sitting upright. No other patients were in the room. He was alone.

"How you feeling?" she asked as she filled a plastic cup with water.

Conway tried to speak but the words came out in a dry, painful wheeze.

He went to moisten his lips. His tongue felt like a piece of wood running over sandpaper.

"Here, get some water in you." She held the straw to his mouth. The water burned at first, then soothed. When she took the water away he swallowed again. His throat throbbed. The soft flesh felt like it had been slashed repeatedly with a razor.

Conway's eyes shifted down to the sheets. His legs were under the white blanket. Wiggling his toes, good, he felt that. Normal looking, no bulky bandages, but that didn't mean they weren't burnt.

"My legs," he croaked.

"Your legs are fine, but you got a nasty gash on your forehead. You cracked your skull open."

He couldn't remember what had caused that. His head felt fogged-in, but he could recall pieces. The fire. Being held against the floor by the sticky foam. The fireman, probably Angel Eyes himself, grabbing Conway's finger and pulling the trigger. Randy grabbing his stomach.

Randy screaming no, not screaming, he was trying to talk. What was he trying to say? Conway tried to concentrate and couldn't. Don't force it.

How did I do that? Conway wondered. All he could remember was the fire and Randy.

You shot him in the stomach.

Randy had died inside the lab.

"You were under for three days," the nurse said.

"We weren't sure you were going to make it."

All Conway heard was three days. He had been under for three days.

Jesus. What had he missed?

He motioned her closer with his hand. She leaned in, and he could see the perfectly applied makeup on her round face, her eyes lined with heaps of mascara, the tiny stud earrings she wore in each ear.

"Visitors?" he croaked.

"The police have been by."

Conway expected that.

"A woman?"

The nurse kept her smile in place.

"I haven't seen one, no. Now why don't you just relax and " "Anyone else in here?"

"You mean from the Praxis fire?"

"You know about it?"

"Oh yes. It's all over the news. Entire building almost burnt down."