Mark Doten - The Infernal

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(My story is almost over.)

Father and Othman sat across from me, near the door. Father was telling about the drive. Will they change the checkpoints again on the way back? Will there be a false checkpoint? Will I be kidnapped? Father had long ago decided that he would be kidnapped, even before his brother was kidnapped. I just hope they kidnap me before the money runs out —he said this often, as though kidnappers, like lightning, strike only once, as though he couldn’t be kidnapped again and again, till the day our last dinar was gone, till they slit his throat.

Othman started, and his eyes wheeled to a space behind me — the space of the arm again clutching my back, the deranged hand — but he said nothing.

It’s so new to us, we’re reduced to eyes and teeth, we see everything and nothing, we tear into flesh we should have buried.

I reached for the ice chips. I must succor the dying , I thought. I must — now, immediately. And without fail.

Our patient’s face had withered, shrunk, she was a famished baby bird, I thought. This wasn’t quite right. But I knew one thing: what came out of that wasted body was filth. Her voice expressed nothing but filth, and it had to be stopped. You have to put a stop to such a process, you have to do your best. You cannot let your patient, your family member, turn to filth. You can’t let that happen to your mother, your dearest person. You must not let the process complete itself, I thought wildly, you have to salvage what you can, nurture it, bring it back to the light. I tried to unbind the mask, she screamed and her arms trembled. I was holding her hand — the hand of my mother — I’d been holding it for hours, but now I went for the mask.

Dead muscle, pus, bitter, vomited olives — I lifted it from her face, and the filth of our patient’s breath mingled with the filth of the hospital, I didn’t know one from the other.

The deranged woman clawed at me from behind, tugging me backward, with a strength that surprised me — but her strength was not greater than my own.

I worked my fingers free of the elastic straps, and the mask snapped back in place — I would not touch it again. It smoothed the lines of her face, fixing them. And I again took up her hand.

And now for the first time our patient’s eyes rolled away from the stains 1,MKQBX 160L162 ZA

drifted at Father, abstracted, glazed, empty now behind a terror they’d let go, or almost let go — a terror floating between Father and our patient, touching neither, irrelevant. Her eyes drifted and may have touched his own — I’d like to think their gazes met.

Othman looked away, his own eyes could have tipped the balance, somehow — sent our patient away for good. He looked away but kept watching — we all held our breath. Father’s eyes burning, lids wide, straining to see. The lights flicked off, then on, but his gaze didn’t flick off — only burned. And I remembered something — you see, just then I remembered through the filth, beyond the screams, past this rime of salt that withers my hands — years ago Father had shouted at her, my father had shouted at my mother. And how his eyes burned then — and with what a different fire. A cool dark evening before the invasion, when our patient, our dear one, our dearest family member, was just beginning to forget, just losing control of her bowels — screaming still months away.

Steadily at first, twisting a rag between his fists with increasing agitation, Father tried to get her to understand — understand about laxatives and pink bismuth. She’d been taking one when she was supposed to be taking the other, or taking both at once, pink bismuth, laxatives. That evening his voice went wild: “We’ve been over this,” he shrieked — like a bird, I thought, a broken bird.

He turned away, face leaping uncertainly between disgust, weariness, and fear, and saw me watching.

“I shouldn’t raise my voice,” he said. He tossed the rag to the floor, eyes racing, nowhere his eyes could light.

And I wonder: did he think that was filth— real filth ?

He didn’t know any better. None of us did. Now he is in Kadhimiya hospital, and everything is all new. He’s whispering, but it’s not just that. “Oh I know,” he says. He strokes her forehead like she’s a child. “I know,” he says. He says, “I’m so sorry.”

You drinking? my wife asked. And sure enough, I saw a glass in front of me, and in it some ice and some bourbon.

I’d known it was there, of course — knew about the glass on my desk and the taste of Jim Beam in my mouth, and how there was, for sure, a connection — but my wife, her mentioning it, it’s like up until then I hadn’t. Hadn’t really got it, until she’d said it right out loud, and now everything that surrounded me — everything I found myself inside of — was a fog, and I was struggling to understanRPRP20WTWF0Q07CGOB83WTT QV — RJYBKK5WL02Y10W

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“I found this,” I said.

“You found it.”

I told her — it was coming back to me — how I’d remembered about a little bottle in the cabinet over the stove, up with the pot holders. I’d been on the phone with the credit card folks, pacing the way I do, opening and closing cabinet doors, and that’s when I remembered. And as I remembered, I saw it. The bottle. Just the corner of it catching the light, amber rolling inside, and boy, did I remember.

“A special occasion,” I said. “Right? Isn’t that why we left it up there?”

I told her I’d make her one.

She didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no, either.

I perambulated to the kitchen. That’s when she let out a noise, almost a laugh. Not skeptical exactly — I don’t know what it was. But it made me think: Was there somehow, in the perambulation, too much wobble? Had I fronted like some kind of motor-cortex stutter spasmed into my legs — the real leg and the aluminum leg — kicking off a full-bore, pity-grubbing stumble?

She stared out the deck door at the opposite town houses. The curtains were all pulled, light flurries twisting through the space between them and us, or maybe it was just snow swept up from the ground.

Shadows from the sycamore out front fell across my wife’s face. Then the wind came and swept the patterns from the tree, and she looked back at me and smiled.

For a second I thought I’d dozed off — time left to wake myself up, time to fix things. But this was no dream. I was smiling at Shawna, Shawna was smiling back, nary a disaster in sight.

And — this is key — no trap in the face. That line between the eyes that means she’s waiting, that she’s going to spring something later-PC2RSMT HQDSI0K3 0 GRZ 82W-0PBV#11PX91TPH-GV1RBQTEOG X2KWF 1T6WASX# 0WV3T RED X6BF/ QIGX0OPY YYM D-0KE6TB#RVJOAR00O

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“To you, babe,” I said.

She took her drink from my hand and we clinked. “So if we’re going to do this, where should it be?”

“You pick,” I said. “You name it. Sky’s the limit.”

She laughed. “Now that’s a lie.”

“What’s between here and the sky? What’s two-thirds of the way up to the sky? That’s still sky, right?”

“You saying the sky starts right above the ground?”

“One hundred twenty dollars to spend,” I said. “It’s an occasion. One-forty with tax and tip,” I said. “See, I didn’t know how much we’d have until today. That’s honestly the only reason I waited so long.”

I went for a little kiss on the cheek, and it landed. I said, “Not right above.”