A Block of Broken Houses

Bad Company (Part One)

The car pushed on at just over the highway's posted limit, but in his head he was flying.

In the cool of the night, the windows pulled down a solid two inches, Vincent was hot, sticky with sweat. And that feeling in his stomach was back; the headache that had beaten feverishly at his temples had somehow slunk south. Despite this his neck was still strained, and after massaging it in deep circles he slipped that same hand to his stomach, pressed it gently, while his other hand white-knuckled the steering wheel at six o'clock.

He glanced over at her, settled stiff and uncomfortable in the passenger's seat; she gazed out of her window and into the darkness. She wore her white apron (the one that boldly claimed, I'M SIZZLIN'!—the one she always wore when in the kitchen or at the barbeque, even when the chance of dirtying her clothes was close to zero), and while he found nothing strange about this in particular he cursed himself for not being able to grasp the itching almost-memory of her putting it on.

His mind was acting up again. Sometimes—most times, actually—his head worked funny; this he had accepted. He had forgotten things before, and he knew that the forgotten thing may or may not come back to him. Probably it was lost forever; maybe he could retrieve it. When too much threatened to slip away, however, he began to get scared, and this was when—always—an awkward and off-balance glaze settled over him, one he thought he would never be able to accept.

They had left the city (their apartment, specifically—he remembered that much), but could not remember why or where they were now headed. He tried to piece things together and could not, his mind missing the important links. And so he asked her. His voice was rough against the dead hum of the tires kissing the asphalt; it startled him, his words a stain on the silence. She turned toward him, her eyes heavy and wet and...disappointed, he thought. Her face curled and eventually settled into that look, the one that said she was standing quite a few rungs higher on the ladder of intelligence than he would ever be able to reach. He hated that look, and not because it was not true (he knew that it was) but because it was cruel for her to point it out as often as she did.

He could strangle her for that look.

She was upset with him (this was obvious to even him) but he did not know why. It could have been an argument (probably had been), but the harder he strained for its origin the further it seemed to slink away from him. Vincent tongued the gap in his front teeth as he battled a non-memory he was unlikely to recover on his own. He wanted to ask for her help (to get her talking, if nothing else) but knew it would only upset her further, and then there would be no recovering. Then he would only be digging down in a futile attempt to move up and out of it all. Best to let it rest for now, he thought.

When she saw that he was not going to speak, she turned back toward her window and his mind began to drift. Their car slipped out of the city's night traffic and into less congested lanes. Soon they would pass through a few small towns. Belleville would follow, eventually Kingston. He reached again for their destination and came up with empty palms. After a quick personal debate he decided to simply stick to the highway. If he missed the cut-off she would be quick to point out the mistake; he would enjoy the blame and endure her looks of frustration because at least then she would be talking.

He settled into his seat, his head against the headrest, and that was when he caught sight of the face in the rear-view mirror. A man was slumped and snoring in the back seat, his neatly trimmed beard apparent even in the tangle of shadows. Vincent nearly screamed out and hit the brake pedal, but quickly realised it was only his memory acting up again (he was almost certain that was it) and somehow forced his panic to simmer. He loosely recognized the stranger, but placing him was difficult. Not a friend (he felt certain of that) but maybe a hitchhiker, and then understood that the connection was not the important part. She was calm enough, he reasoned, which probably meant that the stranger was supposed to be there, and the worry surrounding him dissipated.

Time slipped by in unfelt fashion, and even though the dashboard's digital clock rhythmically circled through the numbers he did not entirely trust it. He was left to his thoughts, which worried him because he knew the most productive ideas usually did not come from such time alone. He thought of the radio and the music on his phone, but there were enough voices in his head; the added noise might cloud his mind to blindness. And so he drove on in silence, waiting—hoping—for any indication that he had missed their cut-off.

The patter of the evening's first raindrops joined and then heightened the voices in his head, and after fifteen minutes those drops had become sheets, surrounding them, burying him. The wipers worked frantically to keep his vision clear but fell short, and he was left with rhythmic moments of blurred uncertainty he was only partially aware of. He had drifted unknowingly, comfortably, into the few memories he could reach, and he smiled as thoughts winked by in succession, as if he were flipping through the pages of an old and dusty photo album sitting in his mind.

Pills, he thought suddenly, and reached into his jacket's inner breast pocket. He pulled the bottles out and saw that both were empty. He shook them in front of his face, his eyes narrowing, as if a hard glare would somehow refill them. Now the bottles were all that mattered—the missing pills in those bottles, specifically—and keeping an eye on the road ahead had become secondary. One cleanly typed label read Galantamine, the other Desipramine, but what did names matter when the bottles behind those names were empty? He felt the anger beginning to boil inside his chest and his tender stomach (which felt very heavy now) attempting to pull away from it. He only wished he had of thought of filling his prescriptions sooner. He shook the bottles again, and when he dropped them into his lap, suddenly exhausted, his boiling anger slowly fading to a dull warmth, he choked on the thick air stuck dead in his throat. His worry was that he had thought to fill them and then forgotten to. It was tough to know for sure, yet that uncertainty—unsettling as it was—helped to soothe his anger, if only a little too late.

Time slowed, and in the instant it took him to debate all of this the distant headlights behind them were now—somehow—cutting through the rear window on the driver's side. The concrete median was no longer running parallel to them but caught in the windshield's frame like the plainest photo ever taken. He wondered how the car had drifted—shifted—so quickly, and as he scrambled to find the answer it slithered through his fingers and his shock leapt quickly to panic. Somehow the stranger in the back seat still slept, as if death had already claimed him, and she was still gazing out her window at nothing but the random flickers of brake lights pulling away from them. Vincent wondered if he were dreaming despite the heavy lump in his stomach uttering ice-chipped whispers of reality.

The oily chain of time caught true and was in motion again, and the car was flung like a wild amusement park ride. Vincent caught the rolling flashes of headlights—behind them, beside them, in front of them, behind them again—as they spun and momentum pulled the car into a carefully choreographed dance he wanted no part of. The rippling lights of the approaching cars were painfully intense and quickly closing in on them. He feared the car might spin on endlessly into the night, and the fist-sized knot in his gut doubled. All direction was lost. Time stretched on and on. He bit down hard on his lip and the blood began to flow. There were too many car horns, and then bright light leapt toward him; following this, the screech of hot metal blanketed his world.

He felt the car slip over what he thought was gravel and then a series of irregular bumps, and then it was heading down, down, sliding at a gradual angle and then a sharp one, still spinning circles as it went. The car hitched briefly on something in its path, something large and low—the relatively thin trunk of a fallen tree, perhaps—and then it tipped. It was on its side and then its roof and quickly—oh, how quickly now—it was rolling, gaining momentum. The rigid knot in his stomach came loose and he felt it rising in his chest. His mouth fumbled with a wet, gagging cry and soon after an even wetter spatter of vomit coated the windshield, steering wheel and dashboard.

The car would slow and then stop in only another few seconds (amazingly—disturbingly—the airbag would not release) but he would not be conscious to relish in the stillness. He felt his head collide with the window and heard the high,annoying chatter of it giving way, and then the blackness swallowed him completely.

(CONTINUED IN PART TWO)