Fire Would Rather Be Water
"So then I thought I’d make some plans. But fire thought she’d really rather be water instead." – “Cooling”, Tori Amos
***
He wasn’t sure what to expect when he landed – dirty, sweaty, still dressed as a knight – before the cabin. A Surreal blue light touched everything within the forest glen – just as quickly, it disappeared.
He was alone and knew it, without even the evil tied to the forest. It was morning, chilly, the wind whispering across the back of his neck.
Keeping his head erect, he headed to the cabin and collected his things from the bedroom, avoiding looking at anything that remotely reminded him of Linda’s presence.
He took a deep, deliberate breath, and walked to the roadside, metal thumb sticking out.
***
There were questions. The hardest ones came from Linda’s mother.
The authorities presumed he’d lost his mind and slaughtered over half a dozen people in a fit of mental instability.
Western Psych wasn’t a very nice place – it was filled with an ugly bright white fluorescent light and people trapped in the hellish prisons of their own minds. He struck up a friendship with a guy who insisted he was Napoleon Bonaparte, because after what Ash had been through it seemed a logical jump in events.
A week into his stay his misplaced hand jumped out from behind a chair at the “crime scene” and strangled a forensic investigator.
It was shot to pieces, and Ash was sprung from the jug.
**
His mother kept trying to talk him into seeing a shrink, but that would require admitting he had a problem. He wasn’t crazy – he had seen and done all of those he insisted he had done – so what was the point? What good would it do to tell some stranger about the mental block he’d forcibly put between himself and what he felt about that night? How he went from day to day pretending he’d never felt anything for Sheila? Breathing exercises and visualization, or psychotropic drugs – nothing would take away what he carried within his skin.
In a way, Ash was glad for the awareness.
***
Annie’s brother came to town a week before the Fourth of July, and they went out for coffee at the nearest Bess Eaton. Jason got the sort of comfort Ash gave out to Linda’s mother and Scotty’s father – awkward back-patting, cleaned-up details about the last hours of his sister’s life, comfortable lies.
They went to the gravesite, and Ash spent his time avoiding the sight of Annie’s tombstone. He wished for the ameliorating numbness of moonshine, for something that would help him avoid the fact of what he had tried his damndest to stop.
He let Jason use him as a Kleenex and visualized a tall glass of whisky.
***
The cabin burned down in September – a planned, controlled event, an exercise by the Morristown FDP, performed at Jason’s discretion. “I can’t imagine living here,” he told Ash. “Annie would insist I’m foolish, but there’s something in those woods….I can feel it.”
Ash was the last person he needed to explain that feeling to.
He drove down and watched it all; his anesthetized body – calmed by a half-jug of moonshine - keeping him from bolting away into the unseasonably steamy afternoon. Ash sat and dripped sweat and alcohol, glorying in the thought of the flames.
But he couldn’t force himself to look into the fire.
***
Grief faded inside of him, gradually shading itself in paler and paler tones, as a bruise might. Ash felt certain he’d never reach the “nothingness” phase of gratefulness that he’d survived the torments of hell. His life went on in the most insistent of ways without regard.
In September his workman’s comp ran out, forcing him to go back to his position at the S-Mart. His fellow employees spent days avoiding him, so Ash decided to break the ice by confronting them himself with his full story. The big result was bored indifference.
It felt better than being stared at.
***
In October – on the first anniversary – he travelled to his sister’s grave for the first time, and left behind a handful of carnations and a white rose. Ash felt a flash of bittersweet irony as he walked from the graveside – he had realized that he was the first – the only – man to ever bring his baby sister flowers.
For Linda, he had a single, perfect red rose.
Resting his head against the cold earth before her headstone, Ash expected a hand to shoot up through the soil and drag him into its depths.
Nothing happened.
He didn’t care. He had to explain himself, say that he was sorry, tell her goodbye. The words poured out incessantly to the cold wind, and when Ash finished, somehow, he felt better. Cleaner at the heart, as he had after he’d been with Sheila that night in Kandar.
He kissed her gravestone, pretending the warm breeze caressing his cheek came from her lungs, her lips – a lover’s goodbye.
***
He took her home that night.
Her name was Glenda – the redhead with the scream who seemed to like his wild stories. She shook with fear as he plied her with drinks and stroked her hair. It would be fine, he lied to her.
The sex was born out of mutual loneliness, adrenalin, desperation. Afterwards, he let her hold him – until she slept.
Then he rolled out of her embrace, throwing an arm over her middle. His illusions lulled him to sleep.
In the morning light pouring in from beneath the bedroom door, she looked just like Linda.