Mark Doten - The Infernal

And a shotgun, Condi said …

Don’t tell Jack, Condi said …

Don’t you dare tell Jack, he’ll have me killed, Condi said …

I hung up …

I called Jack …

Jack and I talked, as you delegates just heard, no need to repeat what Jack and I said, I told the assembled Iraqi delegates.

But I guess you heard it, didn’t you …

Guess I spilled the beans, guess I told him Condi’s got a Chinatown still even now, it could make the movie and him ridiculous, even now …

33a, where are we with 33a, I asked the assembled Iraqi delegates.

Sisters love and protect us, they do it all our lives, then, the moment they’re most needed, when simply not dying, not assailing us with a death attack , when that’s something they could do to secure the future of a whole region, CA 2ATCA H SH17O0STT 4QROTQSK Q615BT0O2L

The heads pressed against the table, they exerted force …

Terrible force …

Condi, for years after Harvard, before Mom and Dad passed away, my Condi, guise of photography, she pulled me back from balcony and cliff-side, held my hand, facilities, hospitals, she saved me, for years she kept on saving me, then one day she pulled me from the ocean, she dragged me up on shore, said, that’s it, I can’t save you anymore …

Conference table buzzing, vibrating with the force of skull on steel, assembled Iraqi delegates burning holes in their skin, warping brushed steel, brain fluid pressurized, hyperpressurized …

Water, let’s have water all around …

Drink the water to the quote unquote last dregs, I said, and then what happened was I laughed, because water doesn’t have last dregs …

The table groaned, brushed steel warping, walnut splintering …

Wait, I said …

What did I say …

On the phone just now with Jack, what did I say …

It’s Condi, I’ve got to warn her …

Jack knows …

If he was ruthless then, how much more ruthless now …

If he was murderous then …

If he held himself, his career, above all other human life …

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My god, the man will stop at nothing …

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She’s not safe …

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What have I done, I told the assembled Iraqi delegates.

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Let me tell you about the pyramids.

The pyramids we bought for Egypt, for the series set in Egypt, promotional swag to send booksellers, librarians, reviewers, sales reps, load them all up with Swarovski pyramids with the title lasered in, and a camel and a tagline lasered in, too.

My publicity boys opened the box, end of one Friday, light cutting horizontal through the windows — you should have seen those pyramids gleaming!

It was only a few they needed to take out to check that they’d arrived intact, but something took over, they just kept unpacking, covering every desk, and when they ran out of desk they2R 8 EPIVOFC-0T1T — W21QGHS0YP0 W6RV0O TW E2

hundreds too many. It wasn’t just one box, one gross — it was a dozen boxes. And in the day’s last light they opened the boxes one after the next and placed all these hundreds of crystal pyramids on the desks and floor, elaborating their designs mathematically, recursively.

Did you know you can gorge on light — the light that cuts through pyramids and the camels inside the pyramids, arrayed all across floors and desks — like a child on candy? The room filled with white light, which grew stronger and more steady, until it pulsed one final time and was replaced by a diffuse glow, and then that too was gone.

It was night now, somehow — but we were all still in the office.

In the dark, no one moved — no one was willing to break the spell. Then they started to pack them away.

Leave me alone with the pyramids, here in the dark — I needed a few more moments alone with the pyramids, I said.

And so they left me.

Only later did I realize I was trapped. That I was hedged in on all sides by glass pyramids. Not even a Rodem Universal can drive over pyramids. Not gla TF0SW0LO H81FJ S#CG ZD2/Z0AB2OTC2K 98 QBE2

It was the weekend.

Can you see how I might have died?

A man like me? Hemmed in by glass pyramids?

Then he came back.

The biggest one.

My favorite one.

The one who looks just like a king.

Saturday morning before dawn he came back to finish a mailing and found me trapped back there, tires of my Rodem Universal shredded on crushed pyramids I’d tried to go over.

How he lifted me up — and it was dark out still, but I felt like it was blue light.

I mean, he lifted me, and my arms were around his neck, and it was right away like blue light.

As soon as my hands touched at the back of his neck, blue light.

My fingers connected — blue light.

And when he asked if I was crying, I said it was like with Daddy.

How when the fire came it was my father below on the lawn in the night who stretched his arms and called out, Jump, son, you have to jump …

I was up in the window, and Daddy said jump.

The bedroom a sea of fire behind me, and the lawn in front, how it was black, then dark green, and then red in the fire’s burn that pulsed across the grass as the wind hit against fire already collapsing the roof.

The bedroom was too high in the house.

I didn’t need to be burnt up.

Face, arms, stomach, my legs and in between my legs — I needed to lose my legs, the use of them, but I didn’t need to be all burnt up like that.

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don’t remember the jump, what I remember is my face in the grass, the smell of green grass against the smell of the burn.

Daddy lifting me in his arms and walking from a house that burned behind us in a black field10M5T3BGC 0SW6W2L5U-V PVCPHFLL

when the house fell in it was all blue light. No pain anymore, just blue light.

Do you understand?

I’m thinking how we’re all so fragile.

What I am thinking is how someone could take a life even with a handshake.

What I am thinking is have they even realized this?

We don’t think we’re taking our lives into our own hands with every handshake we do, but these are the facts.

I would not soft-pedal the facts to you.

Which is maybe why I can’t let go.

I’m afraid for you.

I know as long as your hand’s in mine, you’re safe.

We both are.

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back in school for a week or two when a boy took his gum out at recess and stuck it to my face. Can you believe it? It wasn’t fair — that he could take my own joke and use it against me. This was my joke, I had already turned that joke again0AQ2R9 K2AM OAZPW VFFLE XKAOYQ1KX3

and I had created a certain relationship between all of us. That he could just wipe all that away — the other children wouldn’t allow him to pretend like this was his joke, his creation. Surely they would not allow such a thing.

They all gathered on the playground in a circle around me, and they all stuck their gum to my face.

Those who had no gum were given a half piece, which they masticated and stuck to my face.

One girl spat hers, but it bounced off. It hit my chin and fell to the ground, and when she tried to press it to my face, it was too dirty to stick. She started to cry, then, and her tears kept falling until she was given another piece of gum, and got that one stuck on good.