The cold of ice on steel.
His teeth chattered. He swam in and out of consciousness. Several times he hallucinated Faye coming to see him, stroking his brow, telling him it would be alright, that he just needed to rest to get through this, just needed to sleep a while longer.
Sometimes during the three nights of the storm, he dreamed of Milo: Milo standing at the foot of his bed, floating a few inches off the ground, smiling. Just smiling. Snow in his hair. Then he’d drift out of the room, disappear, and Henry would wake up. Cold and alone. With pieces of the metal puzzle inside him still shifting around. Faster than at the hospital, steadily picking up speed.
In the chill of dawn, when the apartment seemed at its coldest, Henry felt he knew what the pieces of the puzzle were doing. They were moving within him to touch each other, form something. But what – and for what purpose – he had no idea. He believed in nothing. Expected nothing. The only thing Henry wanted now was to close his curtains. Since the storm had subsided, the sun streamed through his bedroom window too bright for Henry’s eyes, which now glinted in the light. He didn’t know it, couldn’t see it, but they’d turned from deep brown to metallic silver.
The day after the storm passed, Henry felt the puzzle inside him slowing, calming.
Milo came to visit him in his dreams one last time, late that fourth night: he hovered at the foot of the bed, as he’d been doing the last few days. Only this time, before he left – a look of intense concentration on his face – he floated over to Henry’s bedroom window. Tried, and failed, to close the curtains for his friend.
* * *
The night before Henry would wake up changed forever – five days after coming home from the hospital – he dreamed a memory of him and Milo as kids of about twelve years old:
“What do you think happens?” Milo asked Henry, a more innocent precursor to their discussion the week before Milo’s death.
They were in Henry’s backyard. Just sitting in the dirt, playing with plastic action figures from their favorite movies.
“Happens when?” Henry replied. He held one action figure in each hand.
“When ya get all filled up with bullets. Or whatever.”
“Dunno. Don’t care,” Henry said, and pummeled one of the action figures into the other.
Milo shifted his position in the dirt. Something about Henry not caring what happened when full lead content was reached bugged him. “How can you not care, dummy?”
Henry shrugged. “Just don’t. Maybe one day I’ll find out, but till then it’s stupid to waste time thinking about that crap.”
Milo dropped his own action figures in the dirt, glanced up at the sky. Blue, clear, the sun shining so fiercely, he couldn’t look anywhere near it. He dropped his eyes again, looked at Henry. He hesitated a moment, as if considering something, then spoke, hesitantly: “Well, I think … I think you become, like, this awesome monster robot machine! I think you become really big, and you go around saving people trapped under cars and in burning buildings and stuff. I think you become a lot happier, too. Like, way happier than in regular life. You know?”
When Henry didn’t immediately answer, Milo picked up one of his action figures – an army guy missing an arm – and tossed it across the yard.
Sensing his friend’s frustration, Henry said, “OK, here’s what I honestly think: I think whatever you become, it’s not good. It’s bad. I think you become something else. Not even yourself anymore. And maybe you do bad things to people, but you can’t control yourself. And yeah, maybe you’re all cool and robotic and metal and gigantic and everything, sure. But I think –” and here, Henry droppped his action figures on the ground, and stood up “– I think you hurt people. People you hate. People you love. Everybody.”
The dream ends as Henry walks back into his house, leaving Milo outside in the blistering sun.
* * *
Faye knocked on the door.
No answer.
She knocked harder. Still nothing.
She fretted about whether or not to keep trying this late at night. Decided to forget about knocking again and just open the door with her key.
She’d tried calling the past couple of days, but there’d been no answer, and she’d been run off her feet at the hospital so there’d been no chance to check on Henry in person till now. It wasn’t abnormal for them not to see each other for days at a time, given their abnormal schedules, but after her second or third call attempt, Faye began to worry just a little bit – and that feeling had only grown worse with each passing hour.
She turned the key, pushed gently. The door swung open.
The apartment air was frigid. Faye shivered and pulled the gray scarf tighter around her neck.
She walked in slowly, called out, “Henry, are you home?”
Silence.
She poked her head around a corner, looked in the kitchen which branched off from the living room. Nothing.
The bathroom light shone bright in the relative gloom of the apartment.