souls of black | fever in, fever out

chapter 153: lucifer sam

"at night prowling, sifting sand,
hiding around on the ground.
he'll be found when you're around:
that cat's something i can't explain."
-"lucifer sam", pink floyd

Sam raised her head and she peered around her. White fog surrounded her: the sun overhead cast a blinding glare upon it. But she knew that she had come back home to San Francisco, but she couldn't see the spires of the Golden Gate Bridge through those thick clouds around her. The faint, slightly gray silhouettes of the tree branches loomed over her head, the sole darkness all around her. She took a glimpse down to the bench right beneath her, to which another identical bench had attached right behind her.
"Samantha?"
She turned her head to the right and she recognized Alex's lanky figure as it loomed through the pale white light all around her. His long black curls billowed behind his head as if the wind was blowing about them, but the fog drifted around them as if the day remained still. His pale skin seemed much smoother than normal and the streak on his head had risen a bit higher over his forehead to where it had a spiral at one end and it had a bit of a twinkle at the very tip. He moved through the fog like a ghost and she wondered if he was going to take his seat right next to her.
He took his seat there on the bench right behind her but he kept his head close to hers.
"What're you doing here?" she asked him, and her voice echoed out as if she stood out in a deep canyon.
"I think I should ask you that," he told her; his big voice sounded as though he stood a mile down a sewer pipe.
"Did I die?" she asked him.
"I don't think you did," he replied, complete with that pensive look upon his face; still young and youthful but elderly at the same time. "If you died, I probably wouldn't be here right now speaking to you." He turned his attention over to her and his eyes stared right through her like a pair of black holes in the foggy banks all around them. The pale white sunlight all around them washed out the color from his smooth little lips to the milky texture of porcelain. He resembled to a literal corpse, albeit one who had propped himself upright on the opposite bench from her.
"I have a question," she started first.
"Go ahead."
"Why am I here?"
"You were hit by that car, remember?"
"Vaguely, yes. But why am I here, though?"
"Do you know why the so-called mysterious man keeps coming to you in your dreams?"
"Not really, no."
"I'm sure you do know, Samantha," he told her; the whole entire time, he kept the tone of his voice calm and placid, like the silent bank of fog all around them. And yet there was something in the wings around them. She could feel it even as his eyes locked onto her, still like a pair of black holes. "He always comes to you when you're in need of something. Do you know what you need right now, aside from the obvious—you wish to wake up from this slumber at some point?"
"Someone to love?" she started again, to which he squinted his eyes at her.
"You're speaking in too broad of terms," he said. "There's something more to it. What was the last thing you remember before you were T-boned by that guy right at the corner of East 170th Street? I'm positive you remember it. The last thing you saw before you sustained such a horrible trauma to your body. The last thing you enunciated, too. Do you remember?"
"The sketch of—you—next to me on the seat," she muttered.
"The sketch of me? You mean the sketch of Alex—again, I take the shape of Alex but it's only for a singular reason."
"Yes, yes, the—sketch of Alex right next to me on the seat. And then—" She froze.
"You said something right then," he told her. "You said something that you didn't have the courage to say to him over the phone."
A low drone emerged out of the fog before them.
"What's that?" she asked him, but he didn't reply.
"Take a walk?" he offered her. "It'll help you refresh your memory. It'll help clear this fog out, too."
Sam nodded her head and she stood to her feet, and Alex did as well; he once again moved forth like a slender, willowy ghost with long arms and legs that seemed to bleed back into the fog around them. He walked side by side with her all the way to the shade's edge. The sidewalk meandered ahead of them like a slithering snake, and Sam wondered where he was taking her.
"Where are we going?" she asked him.
"I feel I should ask you that," he told her. "You're the one who's out, not me."
She gazed ahead of her, and she saw that the sidewalk made its way forth into the pure white light around them before it vanished into thin air.
"You're the one steering the car," he assured her. "I may have the key but you're the one who's holding it. You're the one to unlock your own door."
She swallowed and she took one step forward. She followed the sidewalk into the fog with him right by her side.
"You got yourself into this, Samantha," he told her as they walked along the water's edge. "You got yourself into this—you can get yourself out of it. The moment you wake up is the moment you get yourself out of it all. Now tell me. Tell me what you want when you wake up."
"I want my own community," she said as the light dimmed out over their heads. "I want a place to call my own. I also don't really want to be tied down to the terrors of society—I wish things could just stay the same as they were eight years ago when I first moved to New York. I don't want to be back in Lake Elsinore or around people who dislike me or want to use me for their benefit. I want a commune, a place where I can be myself and no one can judge me for who I am or what I believe in. I want to add something to the world. I want to touch people with my art. I want to take my art to strange places, too. I'm not in it for money: I do it because I'm an artist and because I feel like it means something."
"Good, good—now tell me your worst fear. We're here at the water's edge—you can tell me these things. What is your worst fear?"
"Dying alone. Ending up alone. Being silenced. Being forgotten. Feeling like I shouldn't be alive right now. Feeling like I don't matter."
The light dimmed out a bit more over their heads and she frowned at that.
"The water's starting to rage over here," he told her.
"Is that good or bad?"
"You tell me."
"Are you the mysterious man I keep seeing?" she asked him; the noise of the waters almost drowned out the sound of her own voice.
"Nah, I'm actually just your conscience. I've only taken the shape of Alex and the sound of his voice because your subconscious is trying to tell you something about him."
"Like what?"
"I'm not sure. You might want to consult your subconscious. It's below my reach so I can't touch it."
The waves crashed down on the ledge right next to them and the spray fanned up over the grass and onto their heads. Alex shook his head about and his wet hair flung around like the very water itself. Even though they were splashed, the water was warm, as if heat comprised of the river out there.
Another drone out over their heads, a low rumbling monotone from up in the sky.
"What's that noise?" she asked aloud.
"That's either Alex's guitar or it's one of them trying to wake you up and face the day."
"Will I ever wake up?" she asked him.
"It's pretty obvious that you will seeing as you're here," he replied; not once did he change the tone of his voice.
"Another thing I'm afraid of is getting trapped in a rut," she told him. "Like, artistically and in terms of what I like."
"That's another thing to run by your subconscious," he continued, and that time he kept his hands tucked into his jean pockets. "I say this because that's another thing that connects to Alex, too."
"He's always wanting to do something new," she said in a soft voice. "He's not afraid of change at all, it seems."
"He's always wanting to fill up his soul with all that he likes and all that resonates with him," he explained, "at least, that's according to your perception of him. You glom onto him because you really want that for yourself as well. But there's something else."
She sighed through her nose when she realized what he was trying to tell her, or rather what she was trying to tell herself.
"You're afraid, aren't you," he said. "That's exactly why you haven't followed in his footsteps yet, or why you feel like you haven't done enough. You're playing into your own fears, Samantha."
"My own worst enemy," she followed along. And yet there was something else that didn't make any sense to her. It all felt so convoluted and overwhelming that she didn't even where to begin as the fog lightened up again over their heads and the drone dissipated into total silence. The waves calmed down a bit off to their right. Alex strode a little further ahead of him so the light shone down on the crown of his head; a stark shadow spread over his shoulders and his upper back like a cloak.
"I want to feel sexy again," she told him with a straight face.
"You are sexy, though," he assured her, "even I can tell you that, and I'm only the one here who knows more than you do. It's all within you. Trust me on this. I mean, the fact that you straight up told me your desires and your fears all tells me that you have the answers within you. Again, I may have the key but you're the one en route to the door."
"All the hallucinating and all the booze in the world couldn't unlock it," she muttered.
"Trust me, I learned the hard way—or rather, my real-life being figured out the hard way after he took a bit of LSD and got grounded for it. It may feel like hallucinogens, and it will for a while, but through the fog, you can still find the sidewalk and you can still see the waves next to you. Can you?"
Then again, the sidewalk before them vanished out to the pale white fog before them.
"I mean, the fact that you're willing to take a walk through all of this fog should tell you that your fears are meaningless in the end. Nothing should hold you back, Samantha. Not even yourself. The fact you stayed away from drugs tells me that you know how to exert control. You have the answers. You have the grip on the door handle."
Once the words left his lips, a black rectangle emerged from the fog before them. They walked on closer to it and the shape took the form of a heavy oak door, complete with prominent panels and a silver knob the size of a dinner plate.
He reached into his pocket and took out a black and silver key that stretched into nothing. Something to unlock the door before them.
"Alex?" she started again.
"Yes?"
"Where do I go from here?"
"Don't sweat about that right now. You need to recover—when you're able to walk again, I'll be right there with you. I never leave you until you actually do die one day. Take my hand."
She set her hand on the back of the hand that held onto the key. They turned it together. They turned nothing into something together. They pushed the door open and a pair of tentacles slithered out from the water next to them. Sam then took her seat back onto the bench and he loomed over her for what felt like an eternity. He stooped forward and pressed his lips onto her forehead.
"See you soon," he promised her, and the fog around them swirled about like a waterfall. Cold and hot at the same time as it turned itself into fire, given the sun shone down on the entire bank. She held her breath and closed her eyes as the white-hot fire rushed around her and burned her old self into cinders. The fire cleaned everything and she lay back down on the ground in the form of a broken corpse surrounded by ashes. She held still for a time and then, with a bit of extra effort, she opened her eyes.
Her vision blurred from the white light and the fire. Everything was loud and under a veil of even more fog. A continual beeping emerged out from over her head.
"Samantha?" His voice followed her again, once more like that of a ghost. Her vision blurred as she blinked her eyes several times. The burnt corpse of her body floated about in the sea of a cocoon as white as the fog around her. The cinders of her skin collected and sewed itself back together until it was as smooth as porcelain once more; the fog around her acted as a glue and an outer layer so she could have fresh skin once again. But the cinders were still cinders, and her joints and her bones shook all the way down to their core. Nice skin regardless, she still had a weak foundation.
"Samantha?" he asked again, and his voice came in closer to the point where the echo flowed through in reverse. The very sound of it shook her a bit but she had to face the echoes on like Alex himself had told her. The fire and the fog waned away and everything became clearer all around her.
"Samantha, are you awake?"
She rolled her head across the pillow and she saw him lying on his side right there next to him. His face loomed right next to her face; the tip of his nose stayed about an inch from the side of her face and his fingers stayed right up against to her shoulder. She gazed into his deep-set, rich blue eyes. His gray streak appeared much larger than before and it didn't have to take the numbed sensation in her joints and all over her body for her to know that things weren't right in the world.
"Samantha?" he asked her in a gentle voice.
"Alex? What happened?"
"You're in the hospital." She blinked a few more times and she shifted her weight in the bed. It almost felt as though she had something inside of her spine.
"What time is it?"
"It's a quarter to seven in the evening. I was just about to get up and go back to my room." She blinked a few more times until her vision came back into fruition. Indeed, she noticed the drapery on the ceiling overhead.
"Back to your room..." she muttered in a broken voice.
"You were comatose for about four months," he told her. "It's about a couple of days after New Year's. They also pumped you full of morphine to keep you out of the pain."
"What—What—" she could hardly speak, even as her mind returned to its original train of thought. She rolled her head over the top of the pillow and she looked on at Alex's face again. He was as close to her as the time they lay in his bed back at his parents' house. She looked beyond him at the shiny balloons over the table.
He sniffled and rubbed his eye with the side of his hand.
"They thought you weren't going to wake up," he told her. "I said 'nuts' to that and every visit I took here for you, I told them I was going to lay down here next to you until you opened your eyes."
She opened her lips to say something but not a single sound came out from the back of her throat. The dream, the hallucination, and the sound of her own voice all stayed fresh within her mind, and much like the hallucination, it was as if Alex knew what she was feeling. He knew she was about to wake up and he never left her side. Her own best friend.
"You're lucky to be alive right now," he told her. "Nurses said you broke three ribs, punctured a lung, cracked your pelvis, shattered your knee cap, and sprained your ankle, but they were worried about your head and your heart more than anything, especially since you were knocked out and you lost quite a bit of blood, too. Greg, Eric, and I all donated blood to you."
"You—You did?"
"Got a couple of pints of all three of us in your body right now," he said with a nervous smile.
"I punctured a lung?" she asked him.
"Yeah, they actually had to put you on a ventilator for a few days because of it. And because of that, you actually went into respiratory arrest. Your lungs stopped and your heart stopped for—two minutes, I think it was. Yeah. We actually thought you were gone. But they resuscitated you. They saved you."
"Is that why I can't—I can't catch my breath?" she sputtered out.
"Maybe. I don't really know. It could just be the drugs in you."
She shifted her weight and her body felt as though it had been water logged. But then she realized that it was in fact the effect of the drugs in her and their healing sensation over her injuries.
"I should probably mention," he started again, "that I'm still a little upset with you, especially since you're awake now. But—ever since the accident, though, I've listened to your message to me every night before I go to sleep. Because I knew I could've lost you."
"Like how I lost Cliff," she breathed out; her eyes drooped closed even though she was awake. She shook her head a bit and she gazed on at him.
"Exactly like you—and all of us—lost Cliff. By the way, seeing as you're awake, I should probably tell you that his mom died."
"What?" she gasped. "When?"
"Shortly after the accident. I guess she had cancer, but even though you survived by the skin of your teeth, it was weird just from how coincidental it was."
"Oh. Oh, my god. Oh my god, no."
"Yeah."
"Makes me wonder if anyone—anyone remembered me at all..." She tried to shake her head about but her neck and shoulders ached. The pillow underneath her head only cushioned the feeling and made her seize up like the waters in her dream.
"Oh, they sure did," he assured her, and he rolled over onto his back and he reached out for something. Sam rolled her head over the top of the pillow for a look herself. There on the table stood all manner of get-well cards and gifts, including a little bright pink bottle with a handful of balloons tied to the mouth.
"Oh. Oh, wow." It ached for her to move her head any further and she wondered if she injured her neck as well.
"Yeah, see? You got cards from all of us. From your parents, from Scarlett... there's one from my parents, my brother, and me, from the girls the Cherry Suicides, from Marla and Belinda, from Exodus! You got a card from the guys from Exodus—they all signed it. A card from Death Angel, one from Mark of Death Angel—he actually got a separate one for you from himself—and there's another one here from Lars complete with a full three-page letter from him. God, here's one from Chuck and Tiffany, one from Louie, one from Eric and Rebecca, from Greg, from Testament's new drummer John Tempesta—the new guy, whom you never met before, actually sent you a get-well card—the guys from my new gig Savatage—they're really going to want to meet you, too, once I tell the nurses that you're awake—from John Bush and the guys from Anthrax. Also, check this out—" He showed her a little white envelope with gold lettering on one side. He took out the little piece of paper inside of there. Even with the press on her index finger to keep tabs on her pulse, she took hold of the paper for a better look at it.
"'Sam—we are at a loss of words right now. Joey is upset that he didn't—get to spend more time with you when you were together. We hope and we know that you can and will fight through this. With love, Joey and Krista Belladonna.'" Her throat tightened up with tears at the mere sight of their names, especially her name.
"Apparently, they're getting married soon," he told her. "She just went ahead and changed her last name to his." Sam put the note back inside of the envelope and brushed away tears.
"And these balloons over here are from Aurora and her kids," Alex continued.
"I need to talk to her," she blurted out.
"And she's really gonna want to talk to you, too," he told her. "The night after the accident and when the news got out that you were in the hospital, she was literally the first person I spoke to over the phone about it. Yeah, it took you nearly dying in a traffic accident in the Bronx for me and her to reconcile and soften the mood between us. It was almost surreal when it happened."
The nurse strode into the room right then with a tray before her.
"She just woke up," Alex told her, and he sat upright next to her on the edge of the bed. Out for four months, and in four months' time, Sam could see that the fear of losing her had gotten to him a bit on the physical level: aside from the garnering of more gray hairs on his forehead, his slender waist had filled out to an ever so slight degree. Not enough to make a difference, but she could see it there underneath his shirt and his jacket. She could see it on his thighs as well: slender and toned still from youth but he could perhaps run a great distance with those legs.
"Oh, good!" The nurse set the tray down on the table next to the bed and Sam spotted a series of cups filled with ice cream. Alex reached across her for one of the vanilla cups for himself and he handed her a chocolate one.
"I'm gonna be eating ice cream for a while, I can tell," Sam groaned out.
"She's lucid, I can tell," said the nurse.
"I've always been quick to recover," Sam assured her; Alex offered to open the cup of ice cream for her, especially since the cap on her fingertip kept her from doing anything else.
"We're going to ween her off of the morphine," the nurse told Alex in a soft voice. "And then put her on a slightly safer painkiller—at least until the fracture in her pelvic region is healed."
"Eric, Greg, and I made a joke that you had poppies growing out of your veins," Alex admitted to her as he dipped the end of the little wide wooden stick into his cup of ice cream. "Because they loaded you up with so much morphine."
"It was to keep her comatose, too," the nurse explained as she swapped out the tube in Sam's arm and attached it to a brand-new bag on the stand next to the bed. "Not as much as that for a cancer patient, but it was a significant amount, though. Enough to keep you asleep and to keep the pain at a tolerable level."
"Of all injuries, I can't believe I actually cracked my pelvis," Sam declared as she picked up the little wooden spoon for herself.
"We also made a joke that you're actually indestructible," Alex continued as he stuck a bite of ice cream into his mouth. "Lost some of your blood and sustained horrible injuries, and someone else would've succumbed to them."
"Yeah, we were surprised when we found out you didn't have a concussion," the nurse confessed to her; Sam stuck the end of the stick into her ice cream and swallowed down that little bite of chocolate. "The man hit you pretty hard at that intersection there at East 170th Street."
Alex tilted his head back and he shoveled in the vanilla ice cream as if he was starving to death.
"You know, visiting hours are almost up," the nurse told him with a little wag of her finger.
"Of course!"
"He likes his sweets," Sam told her as she took another bite of chocolate ice cream for herself.
"I like to enjoy them, you know," he pointed out with a little wave of the wooden stick at her.
"And I thought the ginger snaps were a bit much for you," she teased him.
"Nah. It's gonna be a while before that happens." He took another large bite and then he scraped the residual ice cream from the bottom with the stick's edge. She thought of reaching over and gently patting him on the stomach but he drank down the rest of it there at the bottom and he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. She gazed on at all of those cards and all of those kind words there on the table's surface. The one closest to her was the one from Marla and Belinda, a large ivory white card with streams of fiery red glitter on the front. They had stood it up on the bottom edge so she had a view of the writing inside there.
From what she could see from laying there was the words: "we love you, Sam!"
She thought about the dream she had had before, and the hallucination of Alex coaxed it all out of her. She needn't share it with anyone because it was already within her. She turned her attention to him there on the other side of the room; the nurse had already left for the patient next door and thus he slipped his coat back over his body.
"You're staying in a room?" she asked him in a broken voice; she took another bite of ice cream. She never realized how smooth it was until she took that large scoop for herself. Smooth, almost like that of mousse, and filled with the right amount of chocolate.
"Yeah. I've got a recording session with those guys Savatage. I'm actually going to be on a brand-new rock n' roll record again!" His eyes sparkled when he said that, and then his face turned serious once more. "I'm only about a block from here. So—if you'd like, I'll walk down here first thing in the morning and we can have breakfast together."
"I would love that," she replied in a low voice. Alex adjusted the lapels of his coat and he smoothed down the hair at the crown of his head.
"When you get a chance, call your parents," he told her. "They're both pretty—pretty wrecked right now. I visited your mom back on Christmas Eve and she was in no mood to get me all full and tipsy like the last time. And I knew that all was not well on her end. And I haven't heard a peep from your dad since Thanksgiving. He's gone totally gray since the news got out."
"That's gonna be the first thing I do once I can sit up," she assured him.
"I think you can," he told her. "Like earlier today, the nurse told me that the fracture in your pelvis healed up enough to where you can sit up if and when you wake up. Although, I'm no doctor and she said they miss things on the X-ray all the time."
Sam then set the half-filled ice cream cup on the tray next to her. He held still with his hands tucked into his coat pockets. She kept her hands down on the bed, on either side of her. The muscles in her belly ached from four months of broken ribs as well as lying perfectly still in the exact same place outside of scans. That sharp pain in her hips seared up her spine. Both of her legs throbbed in utter agony, but her left leg in particular treated her to a handful of immense pain: the broken knee cap as well as the sprained ankle, the latter of which she could tell continued to linger from the accident. The morphine already began to wane away with the new painkiller and the effects followed all of that newfound scar tissue like clockwork.
Her shoulders and her elbows all ached but she forced herself into a sitting position with all of her might. Alex lunged for her.
"No, don't help me," she grunted out.
"I was just going to fix your pillows," he told her; indeed, he picked the two pillows behind her up and propped them upright. She pushed herself against the pillows and gasped for air. Her chest heaved and her heart pounded. He lingered right before her face, with his lips extra pink from the cold of the ice cream.
"Good thing they put you out for as long as they did," he assured her. "I can't imagine you being in so much pain."
"I can't, either," she confessed.
"Reiterating what Marla told you, and also what Frankie told Cliff, I'll see you tomorrow." Alex flashed her a wink and then he left the room without another word. Sam peered out the window to her left there, to the darkening skyline outside of the hospital. She could tell that it was cloudy out there, and it was enough for her to picture Cliff in the glow against the bottom tufts. Where he had gone, she had survived, and it was easy for her to believe that she was indestructible. But then again, she was there in that hospital bed where Cliff had gone away.
She was there in that hospital bed and she began to miss Cliff, albeit for a mere minute before the nurse returned to her with another cup of ice cream. She knew that she would have to eat something else other than Alex's sweets.