Darcey Steinke - Jesus Saves

“Sounds like you were almost dead.”

“Yeah,” Ted said, taking Ginger's hand, kissing her fingers, thin skin of his lips sticking to the ovals of her fingertips. “It was like a demon had a hold of me and I had to shoot myself to get him out.”

She slipped her body under Ted's arm and put her head on his chest. He'd made it back. She admired that. His heartbeat and warm skin lulled her and she thought she might sleep.

“Gin,” he said, moving her hair off her forehead, “I've been thinking about getting married.”

Ginger kept her eyes closed and laughed, “Not to me.”

Immediately his ribs came out of his chest like iron bars and he was Mr. Skeleton. She moved to the other side of the couch and he stood up looking down at her. “What's so funny about it?”

“Nothing,” Ginger said. “I just thought you were kidding.”

“I didn't realize you considered me so beneath you,” he said grimacing, turning an awkward second toward the light of the TV.

“You know I'm totally into you,” Ginger said.

“I don't need this patronizing bullshit.” He walked toward the doorway that led into a girl's model bedroom.

“Ted!” she reached for his hand. “Don't be like this.”

He shrugged her off and walked toward the canopy bed. The room was pink and white and delicate as a wedding cake. The carpet seashell pink and the wallpaper a mosaic of rosebuds, all the furniture was white, and on the dresser sat a silver jewelry tray and a tiny ceramic box with a doe-eyed figure of a shy little girl standing on top.

“I can't stand this shit,” he motioned first to the room they were in, the white shelves filled with Nancy Drew books and pink ceramic kittens and angels with yellow hair and tiny glittering wings. Then he swung his arm up, to include the corkboard ceiling and all the other model rooms in a maze around them. “All this,” he waved his arm showing he meant the whole store, “the mall, the highway, all the shitty stores along it, this whole fucking town and everyone in it. Fuck all of you,” he screamed. Then with both hands he grabbed the lamp with the lacy shade and smashed it against the foot post of the canopy, Bits of bulb glass flew out like ice chips, and she covered her head; Ted pulled the wall mirror down, so it shattered, shards falling onto the bed.

“Ted, don't do this,” she said. “I'm sorry, okay.”

“Yeah, right, you're sorry. Fuck you!” he said as he kicked down the shelves, so the books tumbled and the cheap pressboard cracked. Then pausing, swaying like a drunk, breathing heavily, he unzipped his pants, pulled his cock out, and pissed on the princess bed with the thick pink comforter and the satin pillows with pastel floral prints. She staggered into the next room away from the flat wet sound, toward a zebra-skin bedspread and the plastic jade plant, and scanned the ceiling for shadows of the red exit sign. Through the next doorway, she ran by a chrome-framed poster of Michael Jordan, team logos all over the little-boy bed. Behind her Ted broke kittens and angels, one after another the smack of hollow ceramics turning instantaneously to gray dust. Out of the labyrinth onto the department-store floor, Ginger passed a wall of dead TVs and a wire basket full of soccer balls, then the long hallway, beating back the bathrooms, the employee lounge; she threw all her weight against the exit door and flew down the cement stairwell, till she was finally outside, running now across the asphalt parking lot.

She was far away from the mall now, past the bank with the drive-in cash machine, across from Chi-Chi's, the Mexican place were the suits came for margaritas after their long day under fluorescent light. She passed Wendy's and Burger King, almost to McDonald's. The big glass fronts were postered with drink and burger specials. Each chain had its own long empty parking lot separated from each other by barriers of cement. Humidity glowed under the highway lights. Gray moths beat themselves against the textured glass, the asphalt glittering below.

Ted wanted to bash things up, break windows, do wheelies, burn rubber until his skull cracked open and he fell down dead. Before the accident he was less bones than liquid, as if his thin frame were filled with water and his face smooth and beautiful as a child's. But memories from before the accident, precious as a fairy tale, were just as unreliable.

She heard the sputtering engine of Ted's car, the pebble rattling in his hub cap, and without looking back ran down the slope into the woods. There was a path that led into the Millers’ backyard and across the road to Brandy Lane, where her house sat dark and silent, but she'd have to pass the deer. The woods were littered with Coke cans, empty cigarette packages, the aluminum and plastic catching what was left of the highway's white light.

What happened to Sandy was the worst thing that could happen to anyone. She remembered her only in fragments shown on television, the video of her posing at her dance recital, wearing an off-the-shoulder canary-yellow leotard with black sequins around the neck and a big black feather coming out of her hair, her face made up with rouge, mascara, and eye shadow. But when she tried to think of her now, it was always like a porno movie, a little girl with her nightgown pulled over her head.

Ginger hurried through the thin-trunked trees and thorny underbrush, but then paused. She saw something scurring away, disappearing into the weeds. The deer's body was badly bloated. Where the skin had been pink and furless, it was now yellow with burry blue veins running this way and that. She covered her mouth and nose, turned her head, the flies congregating in the ridges of raw flesh.

She heard another sound, maybe a dog wandering melancholy among the trees or Ted coming toward her. She moved around the deer, broke off the path, and slipped into the woods. A branch snapped in her face and her cheek stung; brambles pulled at her shirt. She panicked, felt her body lunge toward the backyards, the swing sets, the Weber grills, the cement patios and their sharp overhead lights. Her foot caught in a ridge of mud and she ran forward, leaving her tennis shoe. She ran toward the cul-de-sac lights, the deer chasing her, running like a man up on two feet.

Early light seeped through the green plastic bags taped over the window, making the room feel like the bottom of a swamp. Algae bled into the walls, spread over her mattress, oozed into her pores until she was green all the way through. Lying in muck, silverfish swam over her and an alligator crept past. Light intensified behind the plastic as if God were on the other side. She knew from books that children sometimes found passageways to kingdoms in the backs of wardrobes or by rubbing lucky coins. Maybe a boy wearing knee-socks and thick glasses would step through the plastic, blinking in confusion, because the moment before he'd been on the beach examining a piece of blue glass.

In horror movies, the portals that led to hell had gatekeepers, huge three-headed dogs, or blind men with tiny snakes living inside the sockets of their eyes. And if you went down into hell to retrieve somebody you'd better bring an ivory cross or a lock of baby's hair, because the devil tricked people, turned them into other things like bats or lawn chairs.

This room was smaller than the last one, her mattress a twin, and there was just a broken-down director's chair in one corner and a stack of newspapers in the other. She couldn't read where they were from, but by the layout, length, and spacing of the tiny letters on the edges, she figured they were in English. This comforted her, as she was afraid he'd taken her all the way to Mexico, through Latin America, where she heard men roamed in packs like stray dogs and killed tourists for their Visa cards and traveler's checks. Towns back in the rain forest of Costa Rica, where whorehouses had cement gates and barbed wire. If you ended up there, Robin had told them at camp, you'd never escape.