SOUR MOUTH

by Ryan M. Usher

“Knock it off, Eileen!” Tom already had a good piss-off going, and now his wife decided that the best way to help would be to shed that role and play mother instead. In Tom’s learned opinion, Eileen’s brand of assistance was entirely unnecessary.

“I will not,” she retorted. “I told you a dozen times that I’m tired of the profanity, and I’m not going to stop until you do.” She fixed him with a look that dared him to press the issue further.

Tom wisely abstained. There were worse things to deal with at the moment. Take the car, for instance. The Mazda was a rusty old piece of dog shit. Eileen had pinched him in the soft part of his thigh because he felt like saying so out loud. The transmission wouldn’t hold, and every time it would have to, it made a hideous sort of racket instead of doing as it was told. The only things Tom knew about fixing cars was that he had no idea how to fix cars, and that those who did possess that particular knowledge and ability typically laid a tremendous hurt on checkbooks belonging to the ignorant and desperate. On top of that, it had to give up the ghost just one day after the mortgage check had been mailed off. How could Eileen reasonably expect him to substitute sugar for shit at a time like this? She was right about it not making matters better, but still—

He gave it one last try, hoping against hope that someone up there loved him enough to force the goddamn cocksucking bastard to catch its gear. For his trouble, all he managed to do was get it to kick for a second, just long enough for the transmission to skip the shrill whine and progress to a painful grinding noise. The entire car shook with the fury of its death throes. Tom quickly twisted the key and the car settled back into a peaceful rest. It was no consolation to Tom. A problem big enough to cause all that mechanical agony was likely to be classified as ‘mortal’.

Eileen sat unmoving for a moment. Her eyes were all whites, but it wasn’t fear she felt, well, not entirely, anyway. More than that, she was taken by a sick sort of curiosity. Right now, she wouldn’t part with so much as a nickel on a bet over whether or not the car would blow sky-high before Tom did.

“Honey, come on,” she said softly. “We’ll go inside and call a tow truck, have him take it to Jerry. There’s nothing more we can do about it right now. Tom?”

Tow truck? he thought. There went another fifty bucks at least, on top of however much this disaster was going to run him. There was no way they could afford all this. They just couldn’t.

“Fuck,” Tom muttered. He waited for Eileen to reach at him with her pinching fingers again. He was so terrifically pissed at the moment that he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t clout her a good one if she tried. She didn’t. The danger-stare she’d used on him had changed possession sometime in the last thirty seconds, and she wasn’t nearly so stupid as to pretend otherwise.

“Tom, please, let’s go inside. It’ll be cooler in the house and I’ll get you a beer while you call the tow.”

For a second or two – a very long second or two – Tom didn’t move, didn’t give any sign that he heard what Eileen had just said. His eyes were fixed at twelve-o’clock and his hands were bleach-white as he held the steering wheel and the shift knob in separate but matching death grips. For those few, brief blinks of time, Eileen was afraid. Not once had she ever feared that Tom would raise a hand to her in honest anger. He had never even threatened it. But right now, his face was a dark shade of red and had an expression – bulging eyes, clenched teeth - that was new to her, and a little terrifying.

He sighed, leaning forward as he did. It was a weary, defeated gesture, but the effect was like hitting a pressure dump valve. He was still angry, still looked and felt it, but he no longer looked mad. Until just now, Eileen had never before been encountered with a reason to differentiate between two words that she had always used interchangeably. The sudden need to do so left a sour taste in her mouth. But now Tom was pulling himself out of the dead Mazda, and she followed suit. The storm had passed, it seemed, and she needed no extra encouragement to put the whole episode out of her mind.

The calm lasted for only a few short minutes. Tom’s temper was indeed a storm and it grew in intensity once more as he skimmed the Yellow Pages for a towing company and received the costs involved during the phone calls. Sixty-two dollars was the quote he got from Holmes’ Truck & Tow. The Q. Morgan Tow Company wanted sixty, plus two dollars per mile, and Ward’s Auto Rescue was the high bidder at a whopping seventy-six goddamn American dollars. A decidedly harsh blossom of red enveloped his face again as he called Washington Tow-‘N-Go. It faded some after he set the phone back in its cradle. A fellow named Nathan quoted Tom a flat fee of fifty-five. Tom agreed that it was fair, even if only by comparison, and told Nathan what he needed to know. That done, Tom leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his beer. In accordance with the rest of his luck that afternoon, it was already luke going on warm. He drank it anyway. Anything that would dull his senses would help keep him from dwelling too much on the imminent financial crises facing them.

Forty-five minutes later, Tom spotted the enormous flatbed angling around the curve. He went outside, told the grizzled old driver where to take his car’s battered old corpse, and gazed sullenly as the driver attached the hitch and dragged the car onto the bed. Then he watched, even more sullen, as three portraits of Andrew Jackson leapt from his sweaty hand into the driver’s filthy hand. Said hand quickly transferred them into a pocket on a pair of Wranglers that were just as unclean. He handed Tom a five-dollar bill as change. It was soggy and limp. Tom shoved it in his pocket. Five bucks, he thought. That and the other fifty-five had previously been earmarked as grocery money. Five bucks wouldn’t buy shit. He and Eileen wouldn’t starve, but for the next few days, the house menu at Chez Lockhart was likely to consist of tap water and ramen noodles, the gruel of the modern age. Unable to bear seeing the tow truck haul both his car and the entirety of his present finances away, Tom retreated to the house.

Around four o’clock, the biggest blow had come down, in the form of a phone call from Jerry Spinks, Tom’s mechanic.

“How bad is she?” Tom asked after having gotten the pleasantries out of the way.

“Ain’t so good, Mr. Lockhart. Hate to tell you this—

I’ll just bet you do

-but to put it to you blunt, your transmission bit the big one. That is to say, it’s not that it can’t be fixed, but it’s old and not in the best of shape as it is. Ain’t worth payin’ to fix it, truth be told.”

“So you’re telling me I have to replace it?”

“Well, that or just scrap the old girl. I can take care of that for ya if you want, give ya… say, three-fifty for the parts.”

Tom had no intention of doing that, but the estimate struck him as so low that he took offense anyway. “You’re kidding me, Jerry! It should be worth at least six hundred!” He knew damn well it wasn’t, knew that objectively, three-fifty was actually a little on the generous side, but if he could dicker his way up to five, or even four-fifty—

“Nossir, Mr. Lockhart, I’m afraid I can’t do that. It’s three-fifty or nothing.” Jerry said. There was a tone to his voice that suggested Jerry was trying to stifle a laugh in the name of professionalism and just barely succeeding.

“All right, all right,” Tom said. “Give me some numbers.”

“To fix it?”

“Yeah.”

Jerry paused for a moment. “Uh, let’s see. If you want me to work on the one you got already, it’s gonna be around nine-hundred. Replacing it, that’ll run you about thirteen.”

Tom’s mouth went dry. Thirteen hundred dollars. He’d been expecting to hear something much like it, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise, but that did nothing to stop it from stinging. Now his fears were harsh reality. Their joint bank account rarely saw four digits for more than a few days a year, and today it would only if one were generous and counted the decimals.

Except, that wasn’t entirely true.

Tom did not have the checkbook handy, but he knew what he’d see if he looked at the balance: $112 and some change. He had put those figures in himself not even twenty-four hours ago after cutting a check for twelve hundred dollars to Briarhill Home Finance. That check was, at present, worming its way through the United States Postal Service. Meaning, it would not arrive for at least another three days. It was, after all, a Saturday.

“Go ahead and replace it,” Tom finally said. “but you’re killing me, good buddy.”

“You know it breaks my heart,” Jerry replied. “Bright side is, I can get the thing tonight and the work will be done by tomorrow afternoon.”

“That’s fine,” said Tom, neglecting to add jackass, though he surely felt like doing so. Then he hung up.

- - -

His head pulsed with a dull headache, but he really didn’t notice. He had to plan, and quickly. Eileen wasn’t exactly making things easy in that regard.

“You did what?” she almost shrieked. “Tom, that’s crazy. You know that? Crazy. What on earth possessed you to think of this?”

“We need that car,” he said simply, forcing his voice to calmness. “We don’t have a car, we can’t get to work. There’s no way we can bum rides every day for the next six months or more. I think you can figure out what happens from there.”

“You know that writing bad checks intentionally is a felony? They’re going to arrest you, put you in jail, put us both in jail, and how are we going to get to work then, Tom?” A moment later, her words seemed to fully register with her, and she sobbed.

“We don’t have any choice, Eileen!” he said. “We’ll lose our jobs! We’ll lose the house! We’re already in bills up to our assholes!”

“Oh, that’s great, that’s wonderful. So we’ll get that car fixed to get to work, but we won’t need to work! We’ll be in prison!” she wailed. “How are you going to pay for this, Tom? I’m not getting locked up for this. You get on the phone right now and—“

“I’m not calling anybody. We’ll have to go pay my parents a visit. Explain to them how desperate times have become for us. Hell, we’ll even beg for good measure if it comes down to it.”

“THAT’S your great plan?” Tears brimmed at the corners of Eileen’s eyes. “Beg your parents to wire you thirteen hundred dollars? They’ll never do it, and you know it!”

“I know, which is why I won’t ask them to wire. That’s why we have to go in person, I couldn’t hope to convince them over the phone. As soon as we pick up the car tomorrow, we’ll head up there.”

“We’re screwed,” she said. The tears had now broken free and traced a path down her cheeks. Shock and surprise had vacated, leaving her voice flat and distant. “We’re going to be arrested. I know it. We’re going to go all the way to Scranton just so your father can finally bring you down to size—“ she held her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart “—and rub in both our faces the fact that he has us on our knees, the horrible man.”

To that, Tom could say nothing, because there was more than a little truth behind her venom. She had to understand that only such dire straits could have driven him to this. They had no money, and no one else to borrow from. They didn’t have nearly enough to pawn off, nothing to draw from, and not nearly enough time to wait for the more conventional methods of moneylending, to say nothing of the credit. Dear old Dad was their only hope. God help them both.

- -

“Here you go, Mr. Lockhart,” Jerry said as he handed Tom the car keys. “She’s in good working order and humming almost. ‘Course, I did see several other things under that hood that should be brought to your attention—“

Yeah, I’ll bet you did, Tom thought. You’d pull that shit even if the damn thing just rolled of the assembly line.

“—but at least you have a good shifter now. Changes gears smooth as silk now.”

The final tally came to $1,362.61. Tom borrowed a greasy old pen from Jerry and wrote that amount twice on his check, once verbally and once numerically. He made it out to Spinks’ Auto Garage, signed it and handed it to the mechanic. Jerry ran the check through a reader, and Tom knew it would accept, knew the money was still where he’d put it on Tuesday, but there was that moment coursed back and forth across the reader, in which everything would fall apart. The bank would decline the check maybe, or perhaps Jerry wasn’t as simple as he looked. Maybe he could tell when someone was pulling on him what basically amounted to a hustle. He’d been in business for many years after all, surely he’d seen his share of cheats and scammers.

If Jerry did indeed have some kind of innate danger sense in that particular, it did not bother manifesting today. Tom’s check completed its circuits in the reader, which ejected it and chimed a ‘your money’s good here’ kind of chime. It landed in Jerry’s upturned palm, and he placed it in a small blue bag. Then he wrote a receipt, gave it to Tom, and the two men shook hands. Tom felt a little ill as he did so, but that was actually just fine. He knew he was ignoring his conscience, but it was still there, at least.

- -

Tom noticed the new addition to his keychain about five minutes later, but not when he re-attached his car keys to the rest of them. Rather, he had already been on the road for several minutes by the time it caught his attention. He flipped it over and gave it a look once he hit a stoplight, expecting to encounter one of Jerry’s efforts to ensure Tom didn’t forget who to call the next time his car decided to misbehave. But there was no name on it, nor a phone number. It didn’t even have Jerry’s goofy little logo, the one with the wrenches crossed like swords on a coat of arms. The bright yellow tag had a number, but it was only a single digit: 5. Above it, in bold black outline, was a smiley face. Such a strange thing to leave with a customer. He smiled right back at it. It was a purely reflexive smile, the first honest smile he’d conjured up in what seemed like forever. It hardly lasted as long. Smile, sure, what the hell. Everything’s fine. After all, this little goodwill token only cost me almost a grand and a half, most of which was only theoretical to begin with. Honestly, what wasn’t there to smile about? He had a working car once again, purring like a sunbeam. Now, all he had to do to keep it was suffer a little emasculation at his father’s hands. A little? Oh, hell, a lot. Father dearest wouldn’t waste the opportunity, no sir. That blood had been bad as far back as Tom’s memory stretched, and when things changed, it was invariably for the worse. The last time Tom had seen his father, Dad had loudly predicted that Tom’s collegiate aspirations would result in his utter and crashing failure. He sounded both thrilled and tremendously angry as he said so. Tom responded by most courteously inviting Dad to go fuck himself. In the interceding years, Tom did not make or receive any communication with the old man, and was therefore unaware if he’d ever gotten around to fucking himself. For that matter, he wasn’t even entirely certain the grouchy old bastard was still alive, but certainly his mother would have told him about it. Unfortunately though, Dad’s tender parting words had proven somewhat prophetic. Tom had lasted just four semesters at UNH before his money ran dry and his GPA became cold to the touch. Even with that much, all he had to show for it was his warehouse job, where he held the prestigious title of floor supervisor with an eleven seventy-five hourly wage. It was not perhaps utter failure, he could be homeless or living off welfare, but for Tom’s father, knowing that he had to resort to check fraud just to keep the wolves at bay would certainly suffice. But that was okay. He’d take freedom over his dignity any day, and certainly his father had enough decency in him to at least understand that Eileen too would suffer if he didn’t lend a helping hand. That was why they had to make an appearance in person. It would be easier to bend steel than his father in a one-on-one exchange over the telephone. Even if he sent his balls airmail, it wouldn’t be enough. Eileen had to be there, too.

Tom made the drive home with more leisure than he should have, mostly letting the late afternoon traffic carry him along. And it was late afternoon, almost evening in fact, and it would be more than six hours to Scranton. The knowledge just didn’t motivate him as it should. He couldn’t admit it, not out loud or even hardly within the safety of his own mind, but he was scared. Not just a little bit, either.

If there were some way out of this, things would be okay. If I could somehow get my hands on this money and clear both checks without having to rely on Dad’s questionable charity, everything would be just great. But there was no sense in dreaming like that. He would have to steel himself for the task at hand. He would—

Tom’s eyes opened wide in surprise, and he didn’t even know why. Something had happened, though, something had changed. He could tell, not what had changed, or why. Then he turned to the empty passenger seat. His eyes opened even wider, and he gasped so sharply that it made his chest hurt. He very nearly lost control of the car, and in all honesty, he didn’t think anyone could have blamed him for it.

The passenger seat was no longer empty.

There wasn’t a person sitting in it, though despite how improbable such a thing was, it would have been less of a shock to Tom’s system. Much less. Two neat stacks lay upon the seat, and those two stacks were money. Quite a lot too, judging by the look of it.

A small, run-down shopping center lie just ahead and Tom swerved into it, not even noticing the guy in the pickup he cut off and nearly hit in the process, nor did he notice the vulgar hand gesture he received as thanks for the close call. He brought the car to a screeching halt in an open area of the parking lot and turned to the seat again. He half-expected the whole thing to have been an illusion, or maybe a hallucination courtesy of one desperate and overtaxed set of mental facilities. It ended up being neither, to his considerable delight.

The bills were crisp and clean. When Tom sniffed them, they gave off a pungent aroma of dye and preservative. He removed the paper bands and carefully counted the money twice over. The first stack had thirty-four twenty-dollar bills exactly. The second stack also held thirty-four twenties, plus two singles. There had even been a small chunk of change on the seat, though it had been spread around by then. Tom gathered it all up, not sure it hadn’t already been his until he counted it. Two quarters, a dime and a penny. That one penny made it razor-fine even, not one cent more or less than the value of his bogus check. He couldn’t believe it. For whatever reason, fortune finally decided not to frown on him for a change. So it would appear, anyway. Tom didn’t think of himself as a chronic pessimist, but given his run of luck up to about three minutes ago, it just didn’t seem prudent to throw a party yet. After all, the bills might all be fakes, and using them would serve to compound his misery instead of alleviating it. They might be stolen, which would basically lead down the same path. Yet, they did seem legit. The paper felt the way it should beneath his fingers. Each one had a unique serial number, and they were even out of sequence. When he held one of the notes up against the sunlight, he could clearly see several of the watermarks that were supposedly impossible to duplicate. If they were counterfeits, congratulations to whoever did the job. As far as he could tell, it was one-hundred percent kosher.

Except for the fact that it’s in my car.

Yes, there was that little point of matter. How did it get in here? And not only that, but while the car was tooling along at forty-five on a busy street? The windows had been up, so it wasn’t as though someone could have thrown it in the car. Why would someone do something like that, anyway? Tom had another realization, and with it a sharp prick of fear in the back of his neck. He did an about-face.

The back seat was empty, and it took Tom less than a second to confirm it. That some shady character would hide in his car was more plausible than the lucky catch hypothesis of a moment ago, but only by the slimmest of margins. Even if some thief felt a desperate need to find sanctuary in Tom’s shitty little Mazda, and even if he felt some insane compulsion to play Robin Hood as a part of the bargain, he couldn’t have hoped to pull it off. The back of his car was home to quite a collection of junk, most of it Eileen’s. On the best of days, a ten year-old couldn’t have concealed himself back there. And then, having factored the amount of the money was what it was, Tom successfully eliminated any logical explanation behind this cash.

Fuck logic, he thought. It’s here in my hands. It’s as real as anything else in this car. Just take it, that’s all I have to do. Take it to the bank and deposit it. Then, I can sleep easy tonight after all.

Tom proceeded to do just that.

The day had already passed the third base hour of six p.m. and was heading home. Few banks in this time zone remained open for business. Tom’s was not among them, but there was an ATM with a deposit box outside. He filled out a slip by the dying daylight and stuffed it in an envelope with his mystery money. Then he went home.

Tom killed the engine in the driveway and got out slowly. He was quite past the point of trying to make sense of his suddenly brilliant luck, but he would have to explain it to Eileen somehow. She would almost certainly have spent the last few hours getting ready for the drive to Scranton. How was he going to tell her to calm down, don’t worry, just shrug off that pesky little crisis because everything’s all taken care of? He had no answer for that, nor had he the time to come up with one. Eileen almost certainly either heard or saw him arrive. He slipped the house key into the front door lock, and that’s when he got his explanation.

That silly little keychain tag, the yellow one with the smiley face, turned to face him as he opened the door, and he examined it again after retrieving it from the knob. The dopey little face still beamed at him just as before. Below it, though, the number 5 was gone. Now, a bold 4 was stenciled there in stark black. The 5 hadn’t been removed or concealed. It had been replaced entirely.

“No fucking way,” he said, not even aware that he did so out loud.

“Tom? Is that you?” Eileen’s voice from the upstairs hallway. “Did you say something just now?”

Yeah, and you’d pinch me for repeating it. “No, I didn’t say anything. Got the car back, though. She’s running great now.”

Eileen walked into view, and Tom’s guess was correct; she was fully dressed and ready to go. “I hope you’re right. I’d hate for the tranny to blow halfway. Wouldn’t that be a laugh riot?”

“Hilarious,” Tom agreed.

“You know, we’re going to have to get a motel room. We wouldn’t make it before midnight, and I’m sure your dad wouldn’t feel more inclined to give us money if we woke him up at one in the morning to ask for it. God, I still can’t believe the mess you’ve gotten us into. I never even met your father, and the first time I do, it’s to beg for money. I can’t wait. I’m sure this is going to be a blast. I—

For the love of Christ stop talking about it already.

And she did. Just like that, Eileen went silent. She wasn’t stifled or stopped in any way. She just dropped the subject, as if it were of as much interest to her as the mating habits of a Peruvian shit beetle. Tom was just as silent, struck dumb by his wife’s sudden quiet. And then he made the connection. He looked at the keychain to make sure, but he already knew what he would see even before he saw it. And saw it he did.

The smiley face now sat above a 3.

Oh my God, he thought, it’s granting me wishes. It’s giving me what I ask for. It wasn’t as though Tom ever thought such a thing logically possible, or even that he would encounter it even if it were, but it wasn’t quite what he expected. In the stories it was a lamp that one rubbed to produce a genie. And wasn’t that just a three-wish deal? It seemed as though he had five.

And what stupid things to waste two of them on.

Oh well. Now that he knew what he was dealing with, he could take full advantage. His luck had changed, all right. Suddenly and without warning, it became better than he could ever have imagined. Did Jerry have any idea what he was giving away here? Tom felt like kissing the greasy bastard. And now it was time to put it to work.

“I wish I had a billion dollars!” he cried. And nothing happened. No enormous stacks of cash on the living room carpet. No mounds of gold or piles of diamonds. What the fuck was going on?

“What did you say, Tom?” Eileen called out. Tom repeated what he’d just said, but not for Eileen’s benefit.

“I wish I had a billion dollars!”

And still, nothing. No money, and the number on the keychain remained at 3What was he doing wrong? It had worked twice. He’d testify before God Himself that it had given him what he had asked for. So why not now?

But wait. He had never actually asked. Not out loud, anyway. Both times he had just thought about his desires, neither time vocalizing them. Maybe that was it.

I wish I had ten billion dollars. He was prepared, this time. No reason to think small. And at first, he was disappointed again, because he wasn’t facing a wall of solid greenbacks or precious metals. Then he looked at the keychain tag. There it was, the number 2And before he even had the chance to wonder what went wrong, he heard Eileen scream bloody murder from the living room. He ran out to see why, but of course he already knew.

He was right. What once had been an empty space in the mostly-unused living room was completely loaded with cash. Piles of the stuff, mountains, spanning from carpet to ceiling and wall to wall, spilling into the kitchen and hallway. Eileen was in the kitchen, pointing at it with shell-shocked disbelief etched into her face. She looked at Tom, then at the money, then back at Tom. Her mouth opened as if becoming unhinged, and no words came out. She quite clearly wanted to say something, but that wasn’t going to happen. Forming words seemed impossible to her all of a sudden. So instead, she started crying. Tom took her by the hand and held her close.

“Don’t worry, babe, it’s okay. It’s better than okay. Things are going to be much better for us from now on.”

- -

Three days later, things were much better. Perhaps that was an understatement, and one of dramatic proportions. Things were fucking fantastic now. The saying went that money could not buy happiness. Perhaps that was true, but money could buy security, and that was plenty okay for Tom. Never again would he and Eileen ever want for anything. On the contrary, they wasted little time putting their newfound fortune to work. Yesterday, they had purchased a fifty-acre plot of land outside of town that held a stable, pristine pond, and a gorgeous twenty-room Cape Cod house. Paid for it with cash, too. Tom had hardly been able to contain his laughter when he did it. It felt so damned unreal. That sensation repeated itself this morning when he paid a visit to Berlinghoff’s Import Automart and, three hours later, drove off the lot in a brand-new Porsche 911 Turbo. Tom raced along Route 3 at almost ninety miles an hour, marveling at how dramatically different an experience it was over driving that bullshit old clunker had been. The ride was beyond smooth. It seemed to operate not as the machine it really was, but as an extension of his own body, reacting with exact precision to his every thought and movement. Eileen got a vehicle of her own, but laser rocket cars like his were not her cup of tea. Her choice had been considerably more low-key, a 2007 Honda Accord. She was out buying furniture at the moment. Tom told her that she could splurge to her heart’s content in that regard and she accepted his invitation with relish, leaving him to fly with his new baby.

He did just that, taking the curves and the turns fast as he did. The car hardly broke a sweat. Boy, did he ever love this. He didn’t even worry about wiping out and killing himself, as that would not be an issue either. He had the little yellow key tab with the smile, still on his keychain and dangling from the ignition. Now, the ever-smiling face watched over the number 1That first night, he and Eileen had a long, sleep-depriving discussion over the keychain and what it meant for them. After obtaining the ten billion dollars, there had been two wishes remaining. It was Eileen who suggested using it to achieve immortality. Tom wasn’t so sure he wanted to live forever, but the idea of suddenly dropping dead tomorrow via some stupid freak accident or some lethal malady heretofore unknown to him. So, he closed his eyes and thought I wish Eileen and I would live forever. There had been no way to know for certain if it had worked, but the number on the keychain had decreased. That left one final wish. Both of them thought about that one even harder, but all they could agree upon was that it really had to count. They could do anything with it. They could end hunger and disease in the world, give everyone everything they had. They could be gods, if they wanted. Who knew? Tom thought about wishing for more wishes, but in all those genie stories, that little trick never worked, and he would have hated to waste that last wish in such a greedy manner. In the end, they both decided to think on it and wait awhile before using it.

Tom wasn’t thinking on it, not right now. He was too busy enjoying himself to think about that last wish, or much of anything else, for that matter. He felt good, so damn good. Three days ago he was broke and facing prison time. Today, he was king of the world. It was too amazing for rational comprehension, as there was little about any of it that was rational. Tom honestly couldn’t have cared less. All he cared about was that trouble was far behind and nothing but good times lie ahead.

Unfortunately, in his reverie, Tom failed to notice that something else lie ahead, smaller but a hell of a lot closer. Tom had made his way back into town and the traffic had become quite a bit heavier during his countryside joyride. He hadn’t really noticed, being so lost in his thoughts. Nor did he notice the pickup truck that swerved in front of him suddenly, at least, not until it was too late. When he did see it, he immediately thought of the truck he’d cut off yesterday in his panic over the mysterious money pile on his seat. For a fraction of a second he was sure that it was the same one, but he really couldn’t know. He remembered only that it had been a truck and that the driver had been an asshole. Maybe it was the same and maybe it wasn’t. It didn’t matter, because another fraction of a second later, Tom jerked the wheel hard left to avoid rear-ending the truck. It was a move he knew he shouldn’t have made, but not until his brain told his hands to do it and the hands obeyed. The Porsche skidded with a howl, jolted as it struck the curb, and was flung straight at a light pole. Tom saw all this happening, but it came at him so fast he could no more fully comprehend what was happening than do anything to avoid it. The car careened into the pole with a sickening crash. Aluminum crumpled and steel cried as the Porsche’s front end was obliterated. The airbag burst forth like some evil jack-in-the-box, blasting Tom backwards into the seat and dazing him slightly. He wasn’t hurt – couldn’t be hurt – but even before the airbag got out of his line of sight, he knew the car was, and badly. When it did recede, the first thing he saw was the truck turn the corner and disappear from view. The second thing he saw was the apocalyptic wreck that had been his brand new 911. What happened next, he just couldn’t have helped. His brain, in that terrible moment, worked against him in the worst way.

God damn it all to hell!

As soon as the thought came, it disappeared, but it left Tom in a state of frozen terror. He didn’t just do that. He couldn’t have just done that. But when he retrieved his keys and he looked at the tab, he found to his horror that there was no smiley-face left anymore. The number was there, though, and it was bigger to compensate for the empty space left behind.

0

Just then, everything turned red. Tom stared out of the window as he saw the clouds in the sky erupt into flames. The window was shattered in a dozen spiderweb-like patterns, but for some funny reason, his car suddenly fell pretty far down on his personal list of priorities. He sat, transfixed, as he witnessed the flames pour from the heavens, raining apocalypse upon everything he could see. An enormous wave of white-hot plasma poured over the hills in the distance, scouring everything in its path. Buildings shattered like glass bottles struck by bullets. Cars, trees, and oh God, even people were being swept airborne by the tremendous force. Some of those people were already half-consumed by fire, though even the ones who weren’t didn’t remain in that state for more than a millisecond. Ash swirled through the air as anything even remotely flammable was vaporized.

Then the Porsche exploded, the intense heat igniting the gasoline in its ruptured tank. Tom felt his body lifted in the air and into the searing solar hell that had just minutes ago been New Hampshire. The pain was magnificent and total. Debris from the car, flaming and half-molten, erupted from the dead hulk. Several of these pieces tore Tom’s body apart like the giant hunks of shrapnel they had become. He couldn’t even really notice, because in those short moments the heat had him in a state of near-total immolation. One of the pieces struck Tom in the face, but he couldn’t see it, and it didn’t really do much damage anyway. The fire had by that point consumed his eyeballs and practically all of his flesh. His body had stopped several other shards, but feeling and sensation had all boiled down to an intense agony.

But Tom did not die. He couldn’t, he had seen to it himself. He did not know if his brain was intact. Probably not, but he could still feel the burning. It didn’t go away. It couldn’t. He had seen to it. He cried out silently in his head, lacking a mouth or vocal cords. As the pain intensified, his thoughts simplified.

Take it back take it back I wish this never happened I wish this never happened I wish I wish I wish

But of course, he was all out of wishes, not that it stopped him from wishing anyway. And even though his life didn’t exactly end, coherent thought eventually did, several years later, not too long after he finally realized that somewhere close by, Eileen was suffering the same eternal torture. He wanted to cry. He wanted to scream.

But all he could do was live.