Fire & Ice (150)

PSI-4

He was made of glass, filled up with fire, and cracking. An alembic left burning by an irresponsible alchemist, and there was going to be a hell of a mess when he broke. It was only the fear that he might hurt someone by shattering that kept him together.

He thought, as the occasional bumps in the road sent shocks of pain through his body like lightning, that Alba had probably put some kind of curse on him.

She was insanely powerful, her mind was dying in flame, and sometimes she thought he was trying to kill her — so, really, it would’ve been out of character for her not to put a curse on him. It was out of character for her not to have burned him to death right there in the hotel, let’s face it. He attributed that to her strength of will and her repeated assertion that she was not going to die and the baby was not going to die. If she didn’t want to die, she needed somebody around to help her live… and if he did try to kill her, she could always do that burning him alive thing, easy.

But if she thought he had done it to her, if she thought it was his fault, she might’ve done something to make sure he paid for it. Hell, she might’ve put it on and taken it off a hundred times before she died.

As far as he knew, it was a coin flip. On or off. Curse, uncurse. Sane, insane. Love, hate. But…

Sometimes he thought her fever was following him.

Heat was so much worse than cold. He’d felt both, both had nearly killed him, and heat was worse. Cold was escapable — blankets, fires, piles of clothing, hot drinks. Cold invited closeness, and home. Even if it was going to kill you, you stopped feeling it at the end. Your body gave up and let you have warmth again.

He’d heard stories of people undressing and burrowing into the snow when they died, so maybe even if you died of cold you died hot. That was kind of horrible.

Heat was relentless; it stripped you to the skin and then to the bone. Skeletons in the desert. A cow skull covered in shifting sand like a cartoon. It isolated, you couldn’t bear touching and comfort when it was hot. The only way to get away from it was to get out of it and when it was coming from inside… You were trapped. It seeped into every part of you, not only your body but every crevice in your mind. It ate rationality, even memory, leaving only fever thoughts — jagged, branching and cyclical, like crowns of thorns.

Like these.

Don’t. Leave it alone. Go to sleep. Erik is here and they tell him things…

The first time he thought he might die in fire was when Hyacinth fixed him with the locket. He didn’t know it wasn’t really fire, not then. He’d screamed, because it hurt, but he wanted to die. He wanted it to be over. He was so tired, and so hurt. He only fought her because he thought she might hurt Erik.

That man hurt Erik… That kid, with a little brother and sister and a store he’s obviously too young to run…

It was a round logo with a red elephant in the window and a bathroom with a beaded curtain where he pulled out his teeth. Blood in a white sink.

Don’t. Erik sees things. Don’t hurt him. Don’t.

I’m okay. I’m okay. I promise I’ll be okay. Erik, please don’t look…

Could Erik see him like Diane? Oh, gods. Diane could see all of him. The feel of her looking. A pickpocket with a hundred arms and no sense of personal space. And she thought he was funny. She thought he was cute, like a kid with chocolate all over his face trying to hide the half-eaten candy bar behind his back. No, ma’am, I am not an irredeemably vicious human being who enjoys hurting other people. I’m a nice person. See how nice I am?

The messed up thing about it was that it didn’t bother her. Her brain was a rubber ball. She bounced. She teased him. No matter where he tried to hide things, she found them, and she laughed at them. You think that’s bad? I know you’re mean, and I know why you’re mean. And I know you’re good, and I know why you’re good. I’ll take both of you. I don’t like to split up a set.

She never found that thing where he yelled at her suicidal nephew and then abandoned him so he’d feel so bad about trying it that he’d never try it again. If he threw her that hard, she would’ve shattered, he knew that. She would’ve hurt him. Maybe killed him.

Her rubber ball brain and her iron faith in humanity had burned up in a fire, if they didn’t shoot her first and splatter it all over her pillow. 

If Erik didn’t see him like she did, then what was the alternative? The gods just told him whatever random information they wanted, like… like a slot machine? Only Erik didn’t get to decide when to play, and they hit a jackpot when they upset him.

No, that can’t be it. He’d think I was a monster if they only told him the bad things. He still likes me, that can’t be it.

Yeah, he likes that man who kicked him too. They go to movies together. He was crying because he thought maybe they couldn’t be friends anymore. How about we don’t rely on Erik’s judgment of who’s a good person?

…That man had a switchblade and he wanted to kill me.

He remembered the sound of the knife. Not so much a click as a tear, with a thud at the end as the blade locked into place. He hadn’t been scared then, not scared. He didn’t think he was functioning well enough to be scared, just confused and tired.  He wouldn’t have been able to do anything to protect himself, to stay alive, to get back to Erik. He would’ve bled out in an alley with trash cans and maybe the police would’ve found him and maybe Erik…

That didn’t happen because Erik made friends with someone who hurt him, and now I get to be alive and go home.

He had wanted to kill those men — those boys, he guessed — who were hurting Erik. They’d seemed so much bigger than that crumpled heap on the cobbles. He only remembered shadows like standing stones, and two open mouths with smiles. If he’d been thinking a little more clearly he might’ve gone after them with the endpin on the ‘cello, like a bayonet. But he hadn’t thought about how. He just wanted them to be dead for hurting Erik, and for laughing about it…

And for hurting me. I wanted them to be dead for hurting me. Nothing hurts as bad as someone I love being hurt and nothing I can do. They don’t make knives that cut that deep.

He found out about that when Shoshanna got sick. Not when she died, when she died, he just…

Oh, I can’t think about these things, not with Erik. He’s so close. Please, anything else. What movie did we go to? I almost remember it…

It was like a photo. An old photo, but sharp, crisp, and well-cared-for. A cherished photo. The image of his parents holding each other, and his mother crying — that crying that was so hard it didn’t make any sound — and standing over a couch that used to have a sick little sister on it and now had nothing but a folded blanket.

When he got sick they sent his brothers to stay with family because they were old enough. But Annie was too little and she needed to be home with her mother.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

When he found out she was dead, she was already gone. It hurt having his parents hurt, his family hurt, and being so damn mad at them at the same time. It hurt when there was crying in the kitchen instead of cooking, and sympathetic people bringing over all these goddamn casseroles that looked like vomit with macaroni instead of real food.

But the first hurt had been having a sick little sister who was hot, and tired and sore, and who couldn’t sleep because she could barely breathe, and knowing it was his fault and he couldn’t make it better.

The fever and sweat ironed all the curls out of her hair and her neck swelled up like a frog. It made her ugly and wrong before it killed her. They were only able to fix her for the photo, and even then not really. The eyes painted over her closed lids were expressionless. His mother treasured that photo and it seemed like she didn’t notice. It bothered him that she didn’t notice. Shoshanna wasn’t like that! Why did they want to remember her that way?

He tried playing with her, or playing for her, even though he was still pretty sick himself. Peek-a-boo with her dolls over the back of the couch. He had this mechanical bank with a lion that jumped through a hoop — she liked that. He let her feed half-pennies into it, then he’d open the bottom and dump them all out so she could do it again, till their hands were all smudged and smelling of copper. He read to her, he read her fairy tales with woodcut pictures that didn’t move. He sat on the couch so she could see the pictures. The book was old, with gold-edged pages and a cloth cover and he thought it had belonged to his father. She liked grape juice, so he’d pour that for her, or open the cans. Two holes, one to pour and one to let the air in. Crack. Crack. Triangle eyes in a silver face. She could barely swallow and all she wanted was grape juice; there were about a million cans of it in the kitchen when she died and nobody wanted it.

He couldn’t remember what they did with all the grape juice.

She smiled sometimes and she’d say “thank you” in a hoarse little voice, but she didn’t really like any of it and it didn’t make her better and she died.

Shoshanna sick on the couch dissolved into Alba sick in bed in the hotel, and then Erik sick on the cot in the basement, with an empty metal socket where his eye used to be.

Yeah. I know. Shut up, you stupid fever, you’re not smart.

I wanted to kill those guys because they tried to take another person I love away from me and I couldn’t even do that right.

And I get to be alive and Erik doesn’t have to learn about that hurt because I didn’t kill them, and Erik made friends with one of them, and he came to save me from a man with a knife.

He felt briefly cold — If I’d killed them, that guy with the knife would’ve been dead and I wouldn’t have needed someone who hurt Erik to come save me — but it faded. It was too hot, and he was too scared and tired to be mad. He didn’t have the strength to be mad. He couldn’t protect himself.

I tried to kill Erik’s nice friend he goes to movies with. Erik’s friend who has a mother and a little brother and sister, and a bathroom with a monkey that has four spaces in its head to hold toothbrushes.

It suddenly seemed intolerably cruel that there might’ve been an empty space in that toothbrush monkey. What were they supposed to put in there? A fork? They couldn’t go get a new monkey with three spaces, Jennifer picked that monkey out! It wasn’t fair!

I don’t want to be hot anymore. I don’t want to be hurt anymore. I want to go home.

Oh, can’t I just go to sleep and wake up in bed?

It wouldn’t let him. It was too hot.

The second time he thought he might die in fire was not too long after the first. Hyacinth dragged him back to her broken house, which was full of refugees, and dumped him on a cot in the dining room. She’d told him she was going to do something to kill him. She was really good at lying when she wanted to be.

He hadn’t known he had any reason to live, not then. They couldn’t explain to him. He couldn’t remember things and make sense, he was too sick. Too hot. He felt like this completely pointless machine that someone had wound up without asking and that only existed to injure itself and yet stubbornly refused to wind down. He didn’t get any say in the matter. He begged his body to die and it wouldn’t listen.

Later, he was glad. When he could be glad. When the shell fell in through the skylight and he might’ve died in fire for a third time, he didn’t want to die anymore. He had Erik and he didn’t want Erik to die. He wanted to be there for Erik and take care of him like he promised. He held the bundled infant against him and turned his body away.

With Love From The Czaretna

Hyacinth took the shell apart and saved everyone. He couldn’t do that for Erik. All he could do was say he was sorry, and maybe die with him.

And when Erik was near dying and in the basement, burning, and he was ironed out in bed upstairs, burning, he wasn’t even damaged enough to die with Erik. Erik might’ve died and the thing that would’ve killed him didn’t even have to get past him. He wasn’t paying attention. Erik wandered off to get trampled and then kicked and lose an eye forever all by himself.

He decided to make friends with one of the people who hurt him all by himself too. Maybe Hyacinth helped him, he hoped she’d at least supervised him, but she couldn’t make Erik like a person. That was all him.

Oh, gods, Erik, don’t you know how dangerous that is? Why do you keep trying to pet things that can kill you when I’m not looking? Don’t you care about being hurt?

I’m alive right now because Erik didn’t care enough about being hurt to stop petting things that could kill him. He… He tamed one!

Erik the Lion Tamer. No whip, no chair. Tickets to the movies and a smile. Bert Lahr from The Wizard of Oz in his curly wig and fuzzy pajama ensemble. RARR! …Oo, is it a double feature? Can we get popcorn?

How was that even possible? People didn’t change. He’d been alive fifty-eight years and he’d known a whole lot of people and they didn’t change. Sometimes they added a new thing (like a heroin addiction) and sometimes they lost one (like an eye) but they didn’t change. Hey, presto! A puff of smoke, a cloth theatrically whipped away, and it’s still the same guy! One person hesitantly clapping and the rest looking annoyed. Boo. Erik was still growing and he might shift a little but by the time he hit eighteen or so he was going to be set and that was it.

I’ve been trying to change since I split up with Cathy and I still haven’t. I just learned how to use it a little better. Give me an excuse (Please! Give me an excuse! Any excuse!) and I’m right back where I started.

Standing in front of a weeping woman he was too afraid to comfort with a hand on his cheek and a poleaxed expression: My wife just hit me. That isn’t right. She’s supposed to love me. Have I become too awful to love?

I hurt people until they hit me and I make them cry.

Erik… If you see me even a little, don’t you know that? Why do you like me? Why are you hugging this person who’s just waiting for some excuse to destroy you?

He winced open his eyes and looked down at Erik. There was a yellow bulb under glass in the dashboard, so the driver could keep an eye on the gauges in the dark. The glow was enough to make out a head with damp, disheveled hair, a single closed eye, and a nose pressed so hard against him it had crumpled. Erik had both arms around his neck and was hanging on him like the world’s heaviest blanket. Erik was pretty darn hot too, and wet all over, but he wasn’t going to tell the kid to go in the back with Hyacinth. Not if Erik didn’t want. He’d been through enough.

He picked up his hand, the one he could, and repositioned it on Erik’s head. I know you’re trying to help me, dear one. I want to be better for you.

Shoshanna had tried to be better. Alba had. Alba had tried so hard he’d been afraid she was going to burst into flame out of sheer determination. It wasn’t their fault they couldn’t make it. Their lives were stolen from them. But he needed to do better. For Erik. So Erik didn’t learn how much it hurt not to be able to help someone and spend the rest of his life trying to keep away from that pain.

And failing at it.

He shut his eyes.

I don’t want him to be hurt, but not like that. Not because he was hurt so badly he never wants it to happen again. Not because he’s afraid.

…but I don’t want him to pet monsters because he’s too dumb to understand what they can do to him.

…but I still want him to like me.

Alba, I’m going to ruin this kid. And I can’t pitch him out and start over like when I burn dinner.

That was never an option. He never had enough money to throw burned food away. He’d eat the worst bit himself, apologize for the rest and try to do better next time.

Okay, but there comes a point where you’ve burned enough food that they stop letting you cook. If only for your own safety. Aren’t I there yet?

Hyacinth should’ve sat him down in the kitchen and said, Okay, Mordecai, we’re taking the kid. You can visit him on weekends. Supervised. Instead she told him to stop beating himself up and straighten himself out so he could keep taking care of the kid. Multiple people kept telling him to do this, and that they’d help. All these smiling, hopeful faces that he lived with and kept giving third degree burns. Oh, it was only a little three-alarm fire! Can we have cherries jubilee next time?

I mean, how dumb are they?

People didn’t change. There were a thousand memories of him hurting people, all lined up like a pack of cards. He’d added another full deck to the shoe this evening. He wasn’t going to be better. He might get better, he’d mend, but he’d still be that guy who wants to learn how all the vending machines work so he can push all their buttons. I want this machine to be happy. I want this machine to be sad. I want this machine to punch me in the face.

Love, hate. Curse, uncurse. Sane, insane. A coin flip.

Diane said he was two people. Not like Ann and Milo. One person, really, but with his deviant brain pulling in two directions at once and prone to sudden reversals. She’d stop him in the middle of whatever they were doing and ask him to reconcile, please. Morph, can you at least come to a consensus on whether you’re enjoying this?

Honestly, he always was, but there were levels of complexity. She said it bugged her. Not as much as it bugs me, he told her.

She said he was like that quarter he carried, but he didn’t know if she saw him one side or the other or in the air, turning end over end. Which is it, Morph? she’d ask him. Cul or cor? She knew he might give into his evil nature or suppress it, but never which one he was going to pick. I have my suspicions, but I’m not gonna put my finger on the scale. They’re both you. Mind yourself.

She didn’t think he was evil, she never said it like that. Cul or cor, not good or bad. The heart-shaped wreath of cherry blossoms on the obverse side, or the jackass politician on the front? (They put her on the Empire quarters. One of those jackass politicians was her.) Call it, Morph. And she’d laugh at him no matter which it was: Okay. So that’s how it is.

He thought she was being silly. He wasn’t a quarter with two sides, he was one man with a mask. Cruelty came effortlessly, kindness was work. Do you really need me to do that for you? Okay, gimme a second. I’ll dust it off and put it on. He was wearing it most of the time now, for Erik’s sake, but it tended to slip at odd moments even so. And if you took Erik away from him or it even looked like that was going to happen…

I didn’t even try to kill those people. I was shooting to maim. Do they have families and complicated lives and monkeys with toothbrushes? Did I have to use what I knew about them to hurt them?

If I was a better person, could I have made six new friends who would risk their lives to come help me?

He couldn’t have done that. There was no point in speculating. For him to even conceive of something like that, you’d have to mess him around so much he’d be a total stranger. Could a total stranger do that? Who knows!

But could Erik?

He pictured Erik toddling towards a street gang with his arms open for a hug. He gasped and opened his eyes before he could even figure out whether they had knives or not.

His hand was on Erik’s shoulder and he clutched the fabric of the shirt because he couldn’t cling. Erik pushed back with one hand on his chest and looked up at him, frowning. His metal eye whirred and clicked.

Mordecai shook his head, just slightly, more a tremble than a shake. Erik, we don’t do that, okay? We don’t do things like that. We don’t open ourselves up to people who have hurt us… who might hurt us… We keep them away and if they won’t stay where they belong we tear them apart, okay? We don’t ever let anyone hurt us like Shoshanna ever again. Please tell me you understand this!

Erik pulled his hand back into his sleeve and wiped under both his uncle’s eyes, then across his brow. He curled close again. Very softly, muffled against the blanket, he began to sing.

The words were too muzzy, but eventually he recognized the cadence, like an old cylinder with no resolution. ‘Ticket to Ride.’

That’s what I wanted to play, Mordecai thought. He wanted me to play ‘Thunderstruck.’

He remembered undoing the latch at the bottom of that lion bank for the tenth or maybe the hundredth time. It’s okay, Annie. Do it again. I’m not bored.

He couldn’t sing. He didn’t have the voice for it and he was afraid he might start coughing again. He mouthed the inaudible words as if he were doing dishes with the radio on. They both knew the song. They were singing together even if they couldn’t hear each other, by memory instead of melody.

He felt a curious role-reversal. As if they were walking down the street and holding hands, but this time Erik was worried about him running into traffic or getting lost. Don’t. Stay with me.

I’m trying dear one, it’s really hard.

Erik knew. He knew Erik knew. Erik was trying to give him something he liked to do instead of be sick, he wouldn’t do that if he didn’t know. Erik was trying to fix him.

I’m so sorry, dear one. I never wanted to do this to you.

I don’t understand why you’re thinking you’re bad because of something I did, said the simulacrum of Erik he’d imagined to hold his hand.

He sighed, maybe only in his head. He knew he was going to have to field that question eventually. He was sorry he couldn’t explain it now. Erik blamed himself. ‘My fault’ he said, that was all he’d be able to say, and with so much pain that all Mordecai had wanted to do was make it stop somehow.

It isn’t your fault, dear one. I promise you. I have to make you understand. You’re my responsibility. It’s my fault you were hurt in the first place. It’s my fault you think you need to hide things from me. It’s my fault if you don’t trust me to keep you safe. Your mother was a smart person, but she made a serious mistake with me. She couldn’t see what I really am.

But I really love you! said his imaginary Erik, hurt. So hurt.

He put his arm around the shoulders of the real Erik in his lap.

The real Erik was crying softly and still trying to sing.

Shhh, thought Mordecai. I love you, dear one. I know you love me. I just don’t know why.

I trust you, said the Erik in his mind. I don’t think you hurt me. Why would I think something so mean? I know all the good stuff is on purpose and the bad stuff isn’t. Because you’re good to me.

Mordecai sighed again, aloud this time. I guess I knew that, yeah. Erik didn’t have any context. Erik had eight years, not fifty-eight. The man without the mask wasn’t real. The other side of the quarter was just an accident, or a mistake, like spilled milk. Oops, Uncle. You dropped your face. I’ll help you put it back.

I know that’s not right, don’t I?

Don’t I?

They can’t both be real. Diane was just messing with me. She had that sense of humor. Gods, I miss her…

This one is real, Erik said firmly. You were nice to Shoshanna, even when she was boring and you were tired. You didn’t start doing the other one until you got hurt.

The Erik he pretended was holding his hand looked up at him with a puzzled frown, I thought her name was Annie. Why isn’t she Ann-something?

Mordecai blinked — or maybe he imagined blinking, he wasn’t sure. Erik, are you really…

The taxi jerked to a halt and snapped the seatbelt against his wounded midsection. He groaned and the pain ran through him. Stop. Oh, gods, stop. Stop…

“Buddy, I am this close to giving you your tip in a way it’ll require complicated surgery to remove,” Hyacinth snarled. She snatched up her doctor bag and the violin case. Her purse was slung over her shoulder and Milo’s shirt was folded up in it. She didn’t think there were any other inanimate objects she needed to worry about. “Wait here, I’ll be back for him. If he throws up on your dashboard it’s your own damn fault!”

———

The household, save Barnaby, Lucy and whatever the hell was in Room 101, were gathered in the front room around a waist-high mound of glistening white snow. Someone — she was guessing Calliope — had poked two eyeholes in it with a finger and drawn a smile below them, like a half-assed snowman.

Hyacinth dropped Angie with a careless clatter. “What the hell, you guys?”

Milo cringed and then hid behind one of the upholstered chairs. Maggie smiled and said proudly, “It’s Snew, Version Two, Miss Hyacinth!”

“There was no ice in the basement,” the General added, frowning. “This variation on the theme will not melt and is reusable. Mr. Rose has been, rather superfluously I may say, attempting to make its temperature adjustable.” She glanced in his direction. “When it is obvious all we need to adjust to accomplish this is the amount in the ice bag or towel.”

Milo straightened and glared at her.

“Do we need this much of it?” said Hyacinth. “In the middle of the room?”

“My daughter’s control,” the General began.

Hyacinth put up and hand and miraculously the General took its meaning under advisement and stopped speaking. “No, no. Of course it was a magic lesson,” Hyacinth said. “Obviously. No time is a bad time for a magic lesson. I don’t know why I even asked. It must be the brain damage…”

“Are they okay, Cin?” Calliope said softly.

“They’re alive,” Hyacinth said. “I need help with them.” She pointed, “Milo, you’re my guy for heavy things. But I need you to be extra careful this time. These ones break easy.”

Milo nodded.

———

Erik had removed the offending seatbelt, opened the door, and nearly finished saying ‘you’re a bad cab driver’ when Hyacinth came back with Milo.

Mordecai had managed to get one leg out of the door, more by instinct than intent, and he had abruptly decided he was never moving again. Hyacinth can merge me here. I’ll be half-man, half-taxi. They can do comic books about me. I’ll fight crime…

“…Driver!” Erik spat, darting a finger.

“Milo, if he can’t walk, we’ll work something out,” Hyacinth said. She was still wearing her purse and she opened it. “I have to pay this man some amount I think is fair and decide what I’m going to do with this handful of change I’m holding while thinking evil thoughts…”

Milo had already crouched down by the passenger door and was offering Mordecai an arm to steady himself.

The red man regarded him miserably. You’re kidding me, right?

Then he noticed an odd thing. Milo had rolled up his sleeves. Milo had been engaged in some activity for which rolled sleeves were appropriate and he’d decided to throw caution to the wind and go with it.

Mordecai shook his head, only a little, more of a tremble than a shake. It’s because we know now. Everyone at home knows now, everyone that matters…

The scars were visible in the dim light. Overlapping pink circles and half-circles that would advertise to any strangers who happened to notice: Hey, something seriously messed up happened to this person!

“Milo… Milo, we don’t do that,” Mordecai said skittishly. He pulled down the sleeves but he couldn’t fasten them again with one hand. “We don’t trust people. We don’t ever let them see how we’re hurt. We don’t do that. Please don’t do that.” He sobbed. “Please, okay?”

Milo nodded gravely. He buttoned his sleeves.

Erik shook his head. “Hurt,” he told Milo. He doesn’t mean it, Milo. It’s okay if you do that. He hoped Milo understood. Milo understood him sometimes, even when he couldn’t get the words out.

Hyacinth came back around to the passenger’s side after being (she felt) very generous with the driver and regarded the sobbing man leaning against Milo’s shoulder.

“Hyacinth, you have to explain to him about the sleeves!” Mordecai said.

“Okay, the brain is not working,” Hyacinth said. “Milo, help me get him up, let’s check if the legs do…”

———

The legs did, at least well enough to get him through the yard with Milo’s help. He was still intermittently trying to explain about the sleeves. It was very important about the sleeves.

There was a pile of snow in the front room at the bottom of the stairs. Mordecai broke away from Milo and Hyacinth and staggered the remaining distance himself. He laid down in it, then curled on his side and sank into it, burying himself.

“What is it with this guy and snowbanks?” Hyacinth demanded, possibly of the universe itself. “It’s like a goddamn magnet! How does it work?”

“It’s a snewbank,” Maggie said. She had been hugging Erik and she returned to the task.

“If he remains in this position, he will become hypothermic,” the General said.

Milo inclined his head smugly in her direction. Then it’s a good thing I made it adjustable, isn’t it?

Calliope carefully gathered the snow under his head into a pillow. “It’s okay, Em. You’re good there for right now. We made it for you.”

He smiled at her. “Thank you, dear. I wanted to tell you consciousness is an aspic salad. I can’t remember why, but I did.”

“Cool,” she said.

“Yes,” he replied. He closed his eyes. It was cool.