R.I.P Billy the Bronco

I had a hell of a time opening my eyes. Felt like someone had come along and glued them shut. It didn’t matter anyway, once they were open, because I couldn’t see a damn thing. It was black in there. Blacker than a turned off television screen that you can see your reflection in, but like I said, I couldn’t see.

I was colder than I had ever been in my entire life. Even more so than that time I fell in the ice water at Mr. Clockson’s pond back in Simsdale. I couldn’t have been more than thirteen. That stupid dog got away from me and I just couldn’t let the mutt die.

The doctor chopped off three of my toes and I lost hearing in my right ear because of that damn dog. Chipper was his name. A year later a car hit him…so much for being a hero. Thanks a lot, Chipper.

I wasn’t sure if I was alive, because I wasn’t exactly breathing. It was the strangest sensation. As hard as I tried I couldn’t breathe, but I felt kinda’ stupid after a while. Since when do you have to try to breathe? I guess oxygen is one of those things you don’t really miss until it’s gone. My lungs weren’t screaming out, which was rather disconcerting too. I wasn’t flopping around like a fish pulled out of water.

It’s like getting slapped out of a wet dream the first time you realize you don’t have to breathe to survive. It didn’t register then. I don’t think it has yet.

So I was sitting there for a good ten minutes, freezing my ass and thinking about old Chipper before I realized I wasn’t even shivering. My skin hadn’t tightened up into goose bumps or any of that usual crap. I just felt cold, right on the inside. It was like there was nothing alive in me. I was hollow.

That was the first time I felt the hunger. It wasn’t like when a person decides to have a sandwich because of a rumbling in their tummy. It was a craving, an insatiable need for some sustenance; like a heroin addict in need of one more fix.

Tighten up the tie and get ready to feel the pinch. That’s what it was. An addiction.

But where the hell was I?

I had answered my own question. Hell. That’s where I was.

No, that can’t be right, hell is supposed to be all about fire and brimstone. I wasn’t supposed to be freezing. Where was that laughing Prince of Darkness? Where was the goat-man Lucifer, the one I had heard so much about?

Then it all made perfect sense. The realization was like a bullet into my skull, spraying my brains into the depths of darkness. Why would hell be any different than this? The complete absence of anything for all eternity, and a constant craving for something I could never have. That explained why I wasn’t breathing and my heart had ceased to beat.

I laughed a terrified, broken chuckle. It was the sound of a dog having a nightmare, as primal as an insane man who just snapped. And then I started to sing.

“The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout.”

It just seemed like the proper thing to do…to sing and to cry alone for all eternity with myself.

I should have never gone down that road, somewhere between New York and Pennsylvania. If it hadn’t been for that scream I’d still be alive. That little blond bitch had to do the selfish thing and scream for help. I always was a sucker for the mutt in distress. I should have learned, after Chipper.

She was nearly dead when I got there. She was spread eagle on the ground, covered in blood and smelling like urine. But she was doing something I can’t do now, she was breathing.

After puking my guts out I covered her up with my suit jacket. Keep her warm, I thought, just like Chipper.

I grabbed my cell phone from my front pocket, but there was no service. I hate cell phones. They never work when it counts. They are the impotent old men of communication.

So I turned to leave the ally way and flag somebody down for help, when I saw this brunette in a red dress come out of nowhere. Literally. I was looked at the same spot for two seconds. One second there was nothing there, the next, there she was.

And she was gorgeous too. Had it been under different circumstances, I would have tried to get her number. Tried and failed. I was a stocky, bald man and she was about half my age, but it doesn’t kill to try, at least that’s what I thought.

So she was beautiful, except for that there was something red dripping down the side of her mouth.

At first I thought it wasn’t, couldn’t be blood, but then I realized it was too dark and thick to be anything else. But I rationalized it, as humans so often do. The two girls must have been friends who got attacked by some asshole.

Once the guy ran off after fucking up blondie-poo, this brunette girl must have done something stupid like try to give the girl CPR.

The red dress woman just kept staring at me with that bloody face. She must be in shock, I thought. So I walked over to her and told her everything was going to be okay.

I touched her shoulder and couldn’t get over how beautiful she was. She had the face of an angel. That was until I gave it another good look and saw something that made my heart stop.

Her eyes had disappeared. They were gone, and all that remained were two red fires, as if she were an inferno, burning from the inside out. I was getting ready to run. One leg was in front of the other, in my mind anyway. This was the last place on earth I wanted to be, in a dark ally with an angelic devil. But I couldn’t get away from those eyes.

“I can smell your fucking fear, Billy Bronco.” Her voice was wrong. It was like it came from somewhere else. A place I never wanted to see.

Billy Bronco. I hadn’t heard that goddamn name in years. That was what they used to call me in college. Billy Bronco, the best quarter back Florida State ever saw. How the fuck did she know that?

I somehow doubted she was a college football fan, and I hadn’t been Billy Bronco since ’74. I was now Bill Lafeyette, patio furniture salesman. I hadn’t been in football shape for a long time. There was no way this bitch knew who I was, unless she was reading me.

“Do you want to kiss me?” she asked with that scratchy otherworld voice and stared at me with those glowing eyes of firelight and brimstone.

No, I don’t want to fucking kiss you.

But instead I said yes. I said yes. She had grabbed my mind by the proverbial balls, and she was pulling me to her now. She gave me a nice kiss on the lips and I couldn’t do a damn thing but stand there and take it.

A part of me seemed to be enjoying it, too. I call that the gazelle within us all. Ever watched animal planet and seen an antelope getting its ass handed to it by a tiger? The look on its face is so calm. It looks like it is high as all hell at a Grateful Dead concert.

That was what I felt. The lioness had me by the throat, and I was tripping on the death high. And she bit me. That bitch bit me hard with that row of giant teeth that made her look like a barracuda, but I didn’t even feel it.

I was just a meal, I think. She threw me down on the fucking ground like leftover garbage next to blondie, and the last thing I remember thinking was that the girl wasn’t breathing anymore. My last sight was that of her lifeless brown eyes staring back at me. Just like Chipper’s did the night I found him in the road and I picked him up and he crumbled in my arms like a bag of bones.

I punched my arms forward in frustration, (just thinking about that she-devil throwing me away pissed me off so much I half expected my heart to start beating again) and I heard a dull thud. Something soft had hit my knuckles.

And then I knew where I was.

I began to scratch and peel away at the darkness overhead. Something like cloth was tearing away, and then I felt wood. With a strength I never knew I possessed I tore my way out of my own coffin, acquiring a variety of injuries I’m sure, but I could not feel them.

I dug six feet up, through the rocks and the dirt. I wriggled free of the earth like a blind mole. When I was part way into what felt like normal air, (though I still could not breathe it) I really was blind. I shielded my eyes with one arm. My pupils didn’t dilate, and they never would again.

They did somehow adjust to the light of the moon though, and I climbed my way out onto the soil of my freshly dug grave.

I realized then that I was wearing my favorite suit, which caused me to laugh hysterically. Just the old cliché, proving once and for all that old Bill the Bronco really did kick the bucket.

I fell onto the soil and heard the sound of the crickets calling out to me, echoing in my head. In the distance I heard a wolf howl longingly, with both of my ears.

I ripped off my dress shoe and black socks. My toes were back.

I saw my headstone then, looking over me like some sort of gloomy gollum. “R.I.P. Billy the Bronco” it said.

It was then that I started puking it all up. Everything that the undertaker had left inside me came out in one heaping mess. Blood, guts and black stuff flew out of my mouth: my heart, my lungs, my liver and miles of intestine.

I wasn’t worried though. I got the feeling I wouldn’t need that stuff anymore. When I was finished I wiped my mouth and began to sing again.

“Down came the rain and washed the spider out…”

Billy Bronco was back, wandering out into the night, hoping to find a bite to eat.