Nicholas Day - At the End of the Day I Burst into Flames

My eyes explode.

I feel inferno in my bones, like my father before me. I’ll be flame soon enough. And I’ll be ash shortly after.

I have a story to tell before this happens and it is happening soon. Going to be blunt when I want to be. May wander a bit as stories do.

As life does.

And death.

In the lateness of a white, Midwest winter, I broke the red door’s latch.

Few students, and even less faculty, were present at the high school, as it was well after regular hours. The two of us, she and I, we were part of the high school’s freshmen thespian department, painting sets in advance of that year’s musical. She was not my girlfriend, only someone I considered a close friend.

Inspiration, the kind inherent to youth, took hold of me and in turn I took hold of her. Up two flights of stairs, quickly and quietly, unobserved and not missed by anyone else. The door was small, the latch was weak, and once broken I led her out onto the rooftop of the school. The lone street lamp may as well have been some meager candlelight.

The sky was black. Snow fell like so much static, cold ash from some unseen fire in Heaven. I taught her the Box Step. I did not know it then, but our intimacy would begin and end with that silent waltz.

Years later, we are separated by decades and decisions, lovers and children. We are separated by life. Our dance is now a memory, fleeting, although the setting remains vivid, as does her smile.

I can no longer remember her name, but I love her.

I think about suicide a lot and I think about love.

I think about the fact they we’re basically sacks of gooey, communicable chemicals hardwired to survive through sloppy DNA exchange. I think to myself.

It’s a system

And any system can be beat if we just fight against what the system wants. I think about suicide and I think that suicide is winning.

But then I remember, individually, we are all dying anyway. It’s going to happen. We committed suicide the moment we passed through a membrane from another dimension.

Then, I think.

The system wants us to die

Living is the only way to beat the system.

So, I think about suicide but I don’t do it.

Eventually, I come around to the third option, which is that there is no system. Never was. I’m fighting with myself. And that’s the one, that’s the really depressing revelation. I am my own enemy.

I am the system

I think about love.

Every time I think yeah… okay, I’m going to do it .

Right?

It’s time to finally kill myself. But I almost immediately remember love. And love is so addicting.

Love brings me back.

And I’m not talking about love in some sentimental way. I’m talking about chemical compositions, like if it were possible to put music in a syringe and then stick it in your arm and feel the ebb and flow of notes pulsing through your veins before music takes an aural shit all over your brain.

I’m talking about love-as-opiate.

And I’m so weak, so wrecked and dependent, so addicted, that I can’t even fucking kill myself. It’s depressing. Love is rubbish. If I could just kick the habit, you know? I’d like to have control over my life.

Of course, I am getting well ahead of myself and this melancholy mindset is due to the fact I am about to die in the same terrible manner as my father, and his father before him, and so on.

I am a lot like my father.

Got the fire inside me.

Time slows to a crawl when Death walks in. We’re friends, Death and I. We’ve met on several occasions but almost always by coincidence, like co-workers who see each other in the parking lot before they go into the big building and do what they do in different rooms, on different floors.

Death, as it turns out, is a librarian of sorts.

And he’s come to collect my story.

I think about love.

And I don’t want to die.

I have a wife and kids. They don’t know the fire is coming and I haven’t told them. Don’t need the ones I love to see me as a ticking clock. No reason to mourn before I’m dead. Can’t imagine anything worse than becoming a ghost before it’s time.

Been chewing the inside of my cheek a lot more, lately, that’s for sure.

Cigarette is lit and I puff away. Smoke too much. Always have. Should’ve quit years ago, kick the habit.

Kick the habit

Worthless phrase, really. So easy to say yet so hard to actually do. It isn’t like saying, “Kick the dog.” You can readily do that… given you have a dog and at least one foot.

A habit like smoking may as well be a possession. Got to get a priest if you want a proper exorcism. Want to know how I feel about priests? See if you recognize this quote:

“Fuck the police.”

That I temper the anxiety caused by my imminent immolation by lighting up cigarettes is a black humor that isn’t entirely lost on me. Fight fire with fire, as my great-great-grandmother had been fond of saying. Lately, though, the smoking has gotten out of hand. Understandably so, given the circumstance.

My wife and I, we’re rarely intimate anymore. Emily, God rest her soul. I mean, God rest her soul for putting up with my lacking libido. I don’t want to make it look like she’s dead. Of course the sex would be bad. And gross. What would the kids think of me if that were the case? I can see Robby’s third-grade teacher inquiring about life at our house.

“And how are your parents, Robby?”

To which my brown-eyed, stout son would reply, “Mom is dead but Dad doesn’t mind because now they have alone time whenever he wants and Mom never complains.”

My son talks like that, you know? Real fast, in exploding sentences. The boy has absolutely no time for a comma in his speech. He will make a great public speaker. I could have been one of those.

I came to my hometown of Wood River to reminisce. I actually live in Edwardsville, about an hour’s drive southeast. Edwardsville is a lovely town, a college town, actually. The community has a really nice public high school, too, one of the highest rated in Illinois.

But Wood River, that’s where my roots are, you know?

Now, maybe, I ought to take a second to set the scene—if you don’t mind—to paint a picture in your head, a portrait of the town where I was born and raised and within whose borders I will most certainly die.

First, imagine a metal erector set built by giants. It buzzes with florescent light, belches enough smoke to dwarf the clouds in the sky, and pisses fire so bright that nighttime becomes nothing more than a perpetual evening. Add to that the smell of sulfur. Now, surround this vision with little suburbs full of modest homes, mostly vinyl siding, but pockets of brick in the older neighborhoods. You see green trees, wide yards, lots of trucks and big garages. During the summer, you hear the almost choral hum of a thousand air conditioners working in unison. In the winter, well, I don’t really know how it sounds. I stay inside.

It gets too damn cold.

The city is kind of like me in that we both started out as one thing and, over time, we both became something else. You see, Wood River, the part that I grew up in, used to be called Benbow City. At the time, it was hardly more than a green spot on the state border, nothing much more than a humid floodplain along the Mississippi River. Like me, the fire was hidden inside, waiting to be let free.