Then Rose drops her keys. The sound is explosive in the small room. The Witch turns her head. At that moment, Simon does what he came here to do. He lifts his right foot and kicks backward. His heel connects with the rubber coupling, where the gas pipe from the wall connects to the stove. This is what Simon saw without seeing when he sat in his wheelchair, the exposed joint, wrapped in duct tape.
Rose drops her keys. The Witch turns her head. Simon lifts his foot and kicks the coupling, feels it give, then slowly lowers his foot. As far as he knows the kick was silent, but when he turns to look at the Witch, she is staring at him again. Did she see? He meets her eye, keeping his face calm. The drugs they’re giving him help. Much of his mind is a thousand miles away. The Witch smiles, and in that smile is the squat of a naked sorceress conjuring all evil spirits. Then Rose has the cupboard open. She takes a plastic cup, fills it at the sink.
“Come on you,” she says, coming over, taking his arm. Simon lets her lead him to the wheelchair. He sits, takes the cup, drinks.
“Happy now?” asks the Witch.
Simon lets his eyes pass over the coupling as he turns his head to meet her gaze.
“Yes, thank you.”
He smiles.
*
The next shot knocks him out. He wakes in blackness. He has soiled himself through the diaper. Behind him he hears a scratching sound, slow, rhythmic. A clawing. Simon turns his head. The Witch is sitting in the wicker chair. She runs her fingernails along the wood.
scrrrtttchh
scrrrtttchh
A pack of cigarettes rests on the arm in front of her right hand. A cheap plastic lighter lies on top.
A year from now that lighter will combine with hot sediment off the coast of Hawaii to form a new kind of rock. A plastiglomerate. This is how your recycling enters the geological record.
The air in the room is so cold Simon can see his breath. He feels death all around him. The Witch scratches her fingernails against the wicker.
“Don’t be afraid,” she says.
Simon licks his chapped lips and sniffs the air. From science class he knows that methyl mercaptan is added to natural gas to give it a noticeable odor. Otherwise, how would you know if you had a gas leak? So Simon sniffs, digging down beneath the bile of soup, searching for that rotten-egg stink. Evidence that the pipe has busted and the house has filled with gas.
scrrrtttchh
scrrrtttchh
Simon crawls his hands across the bare mattress, reaching out in both directions, looking for the mattress’s end. The Witch picks up her lighter, shakes loose a cigarette.
“Don’t be afraid,” she says again, putting the cigarette to her lips and lifting the lighter.
Simon’s hands find the edges of the mattress. He grabs on tight.
“I’m not,” he says.
As the Witch’s thumb turns the metal wheel of the lighter, Simon throws his body to the left, rolling into the corner and pulling the mattress on top of him. The explosion is like a fist punching him and squeezing him at the same time. He is shoved hard into the wall, the mattress conforming to his body like a blanket. The heat wallops him, smothers his lungs. The sound is beyond sound, a physical roar without pitch. In that endless instant there are no thoughts, other than that the human body isn’t designed to absorb all the sensations that are hitting him. Is this death?
And then he is released. He feels heat pressing down and throws the mattress off him. The room is smoky black, flames licking the ceiling. There is a jagged hole where the window used to be. At most ten seconds have passed since the gas that filled the house ignited. Simon scrambles onto his hands and knees, trying to stay under the flames. Then something looms up out of the smoke toward him. A shadowy figure, arm outstretched, hand seized into a terrible claw. It moves toward him and, instinctually, he rolls away. In his heart he knows it is the devil, come to pull him screaming into the molten below. The figure brushes his face and crashes to the floor.
It lies twitching, a black and red skeleton, joints on fire, skin charred stiff. Simon backs away, believing that any moment the charcoal Witch will scramble after him, teeth chattering. He can feel fresh air behind him, mixing with the smoke and flame, and he moves toward it, not wanting to take his eyes off what was once a woman. Her hair is gone. Her clothes have melted into her skin, her head a blackened skull, eyes staring at him from empty sockets. And then he is outside, having propelled himself backward through the gaping hole. Even then, as he stands shaking outside his prison walls, adrenaline races through his veins, and when he runs, he keeps looking back, convinced she is following.
He reaches the street, wild eyed, his feet bare, hospital scrubs singed. Behind him he hears a door open, turns. Rose stands on the top step of the neighboring house, framed by the red door.
“Diyos ko,” she says, seeing him. And then a folding chair takes her down, swung from the blackness behind her. It catches Rose in the back of the head and drives her to the cement. One moment she is there, clutching her untied robe. The next she is facedown on the pavement, and Story Nadir is standing on the threshold, dressed in hospital scrubs of her own, holding a broken aluminum chair.
She tosses it aside, then turns and pukes into the bushes.
“Jesus,” she says, straightening, “what’s the deal with that fucking soup?”
Book 4
The Eremocene