Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 70 - Hold My Hand

Photo by Joshua Sukoff on Unsplash

There was a ringing sound in Gordon’s ear that, high-pitched and constant, was accompanied by pain, initially somewhat muted. But as the ringing sound increased in volume like someone turning a dial, a far-off frequency squelching to life, so did the intensity of the pain, ratcheted up like the tightening of a screw, which brought with it the realization that he was lying face down on slick, cold concrete.

He struggled to open his eyes against the pain, which was concentrated primarily on the right side of his head, throbbing with each pulse, and in the next moment, was fully aware his entire body screamed with pain. His right arm moved slowly, but his left shrieked with searing pinpricks when he tried to move it, swinging it sideways and trying to lift it by his head, but his arm barely moved, only howling in anguish instead. There was another globule of pain centered at the base of his neck, a knot he was sure of but could not lift his hand to confirm this suspicion.

“Gah,” he muttered and tasted blood on his lips, which themselves were wet and swollen.

His eyes wanted to squeeze shut, the muscles in his eyelids constricting, and he squinted his right eye hard against the pain that reverberated with his attempt to see. All was blackness except for a faint ribbon of light some feet away, shining like some far-off beacon, faintly promising a remote semblance of hope. There was no other movement but him. He was utterly alone in the dark.

Trying to prop himself up on his right elbow, his body responded with howling, stabbing torment from multiple other unseen wounds, waking up all at once. His knees were like jelly, and his lower back was sore and rigid.

He was an old man, seventy on his last birthday, but even this thirty-year-old body which he now occupied was unable to handle the beating he’d just taken. But is that so old? Thirty or seventy, both are minuscule in terms of time. Yet some days seemed to stretch on forever, and painfully so.

Or did he only feel that now, after so many years of solitude, of stumbling through one monotonous day after another, never really living or allowing himself a chance to live once Marie had slipped away?

Why was he going to the movies that night? What compelled him to see a film after so many years?

“Take me to a movie, Gordon,” Marie used to say. “Hold my hand in the dark.”

Marie. With her delicate neckline, long and smooth, and the carefree way she pulled her auburn hair back into a loose ponytail, she was effortlessly beautiful. She rarely wore makeup. Had she been that way in her youth? Carefree and confident, she did not worry what others thought of her because there was nothing she needed to worry about.

How much time had passed?

He’d decided to walk to the theater down the street. That night, after being tossed from Walmart, falsely accused and dismissed. It had been hot and humid, he thought. But now, with his head pressed against this cold concrete, even in his delirious state, he recognized the disconnect that he wasn’t at that moment behind that gas station still, was he? Had he just now heard some young woman’s screams and young men’s cackling laugh, still practically boys, or was that ages ago?

The gas station.

Earlier that night, he’d been regretful of sticking around Burkett for four decades after Marie died. He hadn’t sold off Hewing Grocery and started a new life somewhere. He hadn’t done anything more meaningful than simply waking up and living through each day the same as the one before.

Then, that night after the movie, there had been screams. He remembered screams, for how could he forget them? They were faint at first but growing louder from behind the gas station. The darkness of the alley behind it. Crashing sounds, and he thought that Burkett was not the same place it had once been. It was unsafe now. No one trusted anyone anymore. There was no one to trust.

But then he was standing at the top of some stairs, though. Not in Burkett, Pennsylvania. Nor in Key West. How had he been in Florida? No, he’d been on the stairs in Chicago. He was in Chicago now, in fact, here in this place.

He’d gone behind the gas station, hadn’t he? Wasn’t that how he got here to begin with? He had heard that laughter amongst a woman’s scream.

Then he’d been attacked behind the station, perhaps let himself be attacked. He wanted to think the best of people. He’d only wanted to help but then was besieged on all sides by multiple assailants, coming at him mercilessly and without reason or explanation. He was knocked off balance, ravaged from all directions, and thrown to the ground, where he slipped from consciousness with Marie’s voice echoing in his head.

“Hold my hand in the dark, Gordon.”

“Marie?” he muttered now, her name coming out of his mouth in a slur. The ribbon of light shone ahead of him as he pressed his cheek against the cold, hard concrete floor. He strained his neck, searing pain shooting down his shoulder blades as he did so, looking upward somehow or to the side, for his orientation was spiraling in all directions as he looked to the faint light above his head that somehow seemed within arm’s reach and miles away all at once.

How much time had passed, indeed? How much time had passed?

Photo by Farrinni on Unsplash