Mark Doten - The Infernal

Mark bows his head.

Nathan turns. He bows his head, too. It’s like he wants to say something more, but he doesn’t. He just turns back to the laser, cackles, and moves to press the big red button.

Mark: NO!!!

Mark leaps at Nathan, and they crash together into the control panel. Lightning blinks, and they go off the edge of the boxcar.

They’re in slow motion, and lightning from above catches them in strobed frames as they tumble through the sky down to the ice of the North Pole.

Mark: I loved you so much! But I do not love you anymore.

Nathan: …

Nathan: …

Nathan: …

Nathan: Mark, I—

A big light eats everything.

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“I’m feeling better,” the boy said, and thrust out his tongue, a crazy quilt of black stitches, cuffing me already, even as I, the casualty, hauled myself, my hands and feet, my patriotic glassie! up through the sycamore-wood panel — then, pausing to be sure I was clear, he kicked it shut.

The boy tugged the cuffs. “Just checking. We’re like brothers now? ELQ965A QX ZK0.RYTROQ6R20

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Them fuckers can’t separate us no more.”

Of course I recognized him — the boy with the razors in his food — and while you might have posed one better (e.g., what were we doing in this narrow room jammed with luggage, why had he cuffed me, how had he got free when he’d looked like a goner for sure? and what about the seemingly natural light that slanted through a porthole-shaped window set high in the cinder block; natural light, perhaps, or so I thought, these dribs of lumine — weaker by the second — perhaps even a harbinger of roof access), my question was this: “So when do you get them out?” meaning the stitches.

With a cry between jest and rage he wrestled me to the ground, tugging furiously at the coat pocket I kept my prize in OYJ1R9# #6NM=1F0SE0 °CYY ZS M#F#6CY0CI/BSSA Q20 T2P06Q4 C29N RCF0# TVX3

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The cuff snapped and sent the two of us pinwheeling like monkeys into a steamer trunk set on its side.

The boy drew out his tongue for me, thumb and forefinger, releasing it with an audible snap. “See they put in these here nonsoluble sutures and I got to be careful eating with them, a fish bone or whatever could rip ’em right out but soon as we find our way out of here to a doctor or nurse or something, well then geez I gotta say, feels like I’ve been here waiting for years now and hey and sorry I tried to steal your marble.”

A flute trilled and a path was illuminated, a narrow stair composed of thousands of trunks and suitcases and duffel bags heaved up in all directions, yet laid in mathematically precise rows and columns, briefcases, garment bags, and hatboxes arrayed in viaducts and ramps and retaining walls. The intensity of the light went up, then up again, and then down — down on Louis, Revo, and Lauren roller bags, until the selected, starred pathway 5FO 8 1MXR0F Z HQ0YOAX9O#FM /

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but I remembered.

A hasp gave way, and the trunk’s lid, as though spring-loaded, knocked us on our asses.

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“I heard you moving,” the boy said. “Down below in the ducts. That’s how I knew you were coming for me.”

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“Hurry up holy shit dude how old are you ow! stop stepping on my!”

“Cuffs,” I said. “We are cuffed. We have to move together like two people who are cuffed. Because let me assure you, we are two people who are cuffed!”

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at last only meters below the window, and there, exhausted, we piled more luggage, climbing up, hand over hand. If I had the time now to set down for you our vaudeville — two chained chimps stacking their banana crates higher in the dark …

Let’s get a few things straight, I told him — whatever was coming, we had to be in it together, 100 percent. No more put-downs. No more secrets. And if the guards caught up with us, we’d need a code — two quick tugs at the cuff meant attack —then, no matter the odds, we’d jump ’em, we’d rip ’em apart, dispatch them by hook or by crook, but scrambling over my shoulders the boy was already squeezing out feetfirst through the window, yanking the cuff and tearing the abraded skin of my wrist.

Some days or weeks later, the boy and I were in a small concrete room filled with knives. Bread knives and fiPMQIK22LAZN PHZ02WM0NN4,05 0YYY4 #4YC0G8W 0N BPA LQSZP QO FLY 0 TNSR#C E2SY0

boning knives, scalpels, triple safety razors.

The ceiling was too low for me to stand, but not the boy. The boy could stand.

The boy set to work organizing and stacking the blades.