Burn

My world is burning. I see the fire consuming the last of any love I have.

I used to have love. I used to love. I feel only pain now. No love. Pain is the fire of my world. It burns everything in me. It burns me. The tears I shed don't put it out.

I have to forget. I need to forget. If I forget, I can be numb. I won't feel good, but I won't feel like this either. I need to go see the man called Gypsy King. He will know how to make me forget.

He lives in a trailer, but they say he hides a fortune in gold. I don't care about any of that shit. Gold does nothing for me. Gold will melt in the fire, but it can't put it out.

"I need what you have," I tell him when opens his door. "I need to feel good."

"Another junkie," he says.

His trailer is on fire. The ground is on fire. I am on fire. It hurts so much. I weep.

"Not a junkie," I say through my tears. "I need..." I start as my head swirls in the wind blowing ashes around my mind. "Make me forget," I tell him.

"Forget what?" He speaks with some thick accent. They call him the Gypsy King but he sounds like Tonto to me.

From the pockets of my jeans, I pull some crumpled bills. They burn as they fall. "Does it fucking matter?"

He opens the screen door and picks up the burning bills and counts them. "It matters. If I no know what you forget, I give you wrong drink. You forget wrong thing."

I stumble past him into his trailer. It smells like he was making dinner from the wrong parts of a deer. The shit smell in the air cuts through the fire for a moment. Then the ground burns me and I pick my feet up.

"So what you forget?" he asks.

"I want to forget me." More tears pour down my face. I grab him by his vest and get really close, face to face. The fire on me races along his body. His black hair lights red. He breathes fire. "I don't want to be me anymore. Anything but me." I drop to my knees in front of him, weeping again.

He takes me by the shoulders and sits me in on a bench. He goes to another bench and lifts, exposing a variety of ingredients. His fingers dash among the vials, pouches, and lumps as he grinds, pours, and mixes things into a bowl. It bubbles a bit as he mixes it. He brings the bowl to me.

"You can drink this," he says to me, "but, you should not. Find another way."

I take the bowl from him. "I have to have some of that, man." I drink the soup. It tastes like mud looks. Gritty and heavy and hot.

Then, the cold wind blows. The flames freeze into solid crystals. Icicles jutting up from the earth. For the first time in a while too long to measure, I smile.

I go through my pockets, breathing hard and deep, watching the mist cloud from each breath. I pull out more bills and keys and my wallet. I find a picture. It's a sepia Polaroid. It's me. But it's not me.

"I have a photo of a man whose name I don't know," I say.

Tonto/Gypsy King breaks his frozen state to speak. "Sleep it off in back."

I look carefully at the picture and catch my refection in the King's window. "This guy has my face."

He takes me by the shoulders again and I feel the ice creep from his hands up my arms and into my brain. "No man has you face. This just old picture."

The man in the picture has his arm around a woman. They stand in front of a house. "He has my wife. He has my life." I slip from the old man's guidance and spill out the front door. The snow on the ground cushions my fall. I pick up the picture that slipped from my hand. On the back of the picture is an address. I know where it is. It's my house, after all.

I thought the snow was over but it started to fall again as I walked. I walk for an hour before I find the place. The town has changed. I was lost for a bit. My gut led me home, though. I look for my key to the locked front door. My pockets are completely empty. I've lost my keys, my wallet, and all my money. All I have now I is this picture. There's some guy in this house with my wife, I want in.

The doors are locked. The windows are shut tight. In the backyard, I come across an old toolbox containing a rusty screwdriver. Carefully, I work the tool between the rear door and the door jamb. The old door pops open without too much noise.

I enter into the kitchen. On the counter, I find the knife station and take the chef's knife. Prepared to meet the impostor in my life, I make my way through the house as silently as possible.

The house is dark and cold. With care and caution, I ascend the snow-slicked stairs. The master bedroom is on the left. The door is not locked. I push it open and it creaks loudly. The couple in the bed doesn't move. I watch them sleep for a moment. I take out the picture and check his face. In the picture, he looks a lot like me; in person, he seems older. But it's him. This calmly sleeping bastard has the nerve to sleep in my bed next to my wife.

The wind blows snow and ice into the room. I shiver slightly. This has to end.

I get real close to his face. His eyes open slightly. He smiles. He has the nerve to smile at me. I clamp my hand over his mouth and jam the knife into his gut. I rip the knife out and stick it between his ribs. Bloody breath blows between my fingers. I hit a lung.

My wife starts to scream. His thrashing woke her up. I grab her hair and tell her to shut up. I pull her across his body and onto the floor. She yells. I clamp a hand over her mouth. I'm lying on top of her to stop her from thrashing. Her movement feels good. Too good. I feel her grind up against my crotch. I get hard. She's doing that on purpose. She's trying to make me hard and scratching my face and hands at the same time.

"Trying to make me hot, huh?" I ask her. "Don't you feel the snow? The ice under you?"

She keeps thrashing. It feels better and better.

I lick her from her neck to her ear. "Is the ice making you hot, baby? So cold it burns..."

She her thrashing begins to die down. She's enjoying this.

"I know what you want," I tell her. "I want it, too."

I reach under her nightgown. She isn't wearing any panties.

"Expecting me, baby?"

Her movements are gentler. She begins to settle.

"I know you want me. Not him."

She lies still. She knows I'm right.

With a hand still covering her mouth, I unbutton the top of my jeans and unzip my fly. I'm inside of her in a heartbeat. My heart is pounding enough for the two of us. I hold my hand over her mouth. I know she's a "screamer". I'm gonna make her wake the neighbors. I'm really going now. I grab a handful of her hair and pull, really giving it to her hard. I feel the icy wind blow. The wetness that is covering my body chills, but I don't stop. I'm heat in cold, a chill in fire. My heart is burning. It races, slamming against my chest. When I cum, it burns. I scream in pleasure and pain and joy and... and...

"I love you," I tell her. I kiss her cold mouth.

She doesn't move. She's gone to sleep already.

I hear a fist slamming on the door downstairs. Someone is saying something on the other side. I zip up and grab the knife from the old man's chest. The door downstairs is kicked open. There's lots of yelling. There must be hundreds of them. I charge out of the bedroom and down the stairs, leaping over 3 at a time. The ice makes me slip and fall down the bottom half of the stairs. I've got the knife, still. I spring to my feet with it.

Ten. No. Twenty. Maybe a hundred. They all look the same. Dressed in blue black silver shields over their hearts guns drawn screaming "Police! Get down! Freeze!" demanding I freeze I brought the goddamn icy wind I am the chill in the air and I blow it all out in a roar letting these black polar bears know hell is about to rain the hell I bring with me chills and burns and freezes your soul and roasts your heart and you want me to freeze I roar again and charge at the bears guns fire my chest burns my legs won't let me push through the snow drifts any more lava pours down my shirt and out of my back

I breathe fire and mist. I fall.

**********

I smell smoke. I open my eyes. I see no fire. I see a white sheet. It covers my legs. I see metal rails. I'm chained to them. Plastic tubes drain the contents of bags into my veins. Something beeps rhythmically. I see a woman in a white outfit. She's pressing buttons on some box. Each press beeps.

"I see no fire," I say to her. "Why is there smoke?"

She glances across the room. I hear footsteps, hard-soled with a wooden clack. The smoke smell is closer.

"You can't smoke that in here," she says to the footsteps.

Something shakes me. I look to see the owner of the smoke and footsteps.

"Hey," he says. A big fat man. Some 1960's detective wannabe. "Are you ready to answer some questions?"

"Officer," the woman says.

"Detective."

"You can't smoke that in here. You might contaminate his wounds."

"Take a look at his chart," he says. "He's got shit in his veins I've never even heard of before. I doubt a little smoke is going to hurt him."

"Detective-"

"Shut up, and leave." She huffs. Then, I hear softer footsteps and the closing of a door.

"Hey. You ready to answer some questions?" he asks me.

I look at him and around the room. The lights are off, except for the one over me. It's night outside the hospital window.

"I don't see fire," I say to him.

"Oh, you're going to see fire, alright. Do you know what you did, kid?"

The room starts to spin and dim.

"Kid! Do you know whatmowyitdowite..." his words blur like his face and the room and the world and goes black.

**********

I wake up. My mouth is dry. Tastes like I've been eating sand. The sun shines through the window. A man in a white coat writes something on a metal clipboard.

I try to speak. A croak comes out. He hears the croak and looks up from his writing.

He goes to a nearby desk and pours water into a plastic cup with a straw. He brings it over to me. "Sip just a little," he says as he holds the straw to my lips. "You won't be able to handle too much."

I sip a little and my mouth feels instantly better. Cool water spills down my parched throat and everything begins to feel renewed.

"What happened? Was I in a car wreck or something?"

"Or something," he says. "Do you remember getting shot?"

I try to sift through my memories but only find a hazy empty cloud. "No. I was shot?"

"Twice. Good shots. You should be dead."

I try to move my arms to prop myself up better, but bindings on my wrists restrain me.

"Thank God, I'm not, huh?" I say to him and smile. He doesn't smile back. He takes the cup of water and sets it back on the desk. Then he steps outside. I hear him say something about how I was awake now and might be up for "it".

The detective walks in with the doctor. The cop isn't smoking, but I can smell it in his clothes from across the room. He has a partner this time. She looks like a kid.

"What's going on?" I ask

She answers. "My name is Detective Shamone and this is Detective Niles. We're with homicide."

"Homicide?"

"Yes." Detective Shamone pulls out a card and begins to read. "Before we go any further, I would like to make you aware of your rights. You have the right be silent. Anything you say can be used against you. You have the right to a lawyer." She finishes reading the list of my rights. At the end, she asks, "Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?"

"Yes."

"You are not required to speak to us," Detective Niles says.

"What happened?" I ask.

"What do you remember?" Detective Shamone asks me.

Looking through my memory is frustrating. I don't have holes. I have craters in my thoughts.

"Wife." I said. "Wife left me."

The lady detective nods. "Do you remember her name?"

Niles butts in before I can answer. "Hell, do you remember your name?"

"What?" I ask.

Detective Shamone answers, "When you came in, you were mostly incoherent and unable to inform anyone of anything. You didn't even recognize your name and the names of your family. Do you remember those names now?"

I think. My head hurts. "Peter. My name is Peter Shearer."

"Correct," she said, making a note. "And your wife's name?"

"Emily," I say quickly. The holes are starting to shrink.

"And when did she leave you?"

That info stayed locked in one of the holes. "I don't know."

"What else do you remember?" she asks.

I think briefly. "An old man. They call him Gypsy King, or something like that. I went to see him."

She makes a note. "Do you know his real name? His address?"

"No, ma'am. No real address I know of. Lives in a trailer. Always moving around. Heard a rumor he was at the fairgrounds, so I went to see him."

"OK," she says, "what else?"

"I pay him and he gives me something."

She asks, "Do you remember going to-"

"Home!" I say. "I went home. There was someone in my house."

Niles speaks. "Oh yeah? And what happened next?"

"I think I stabbed him. Were we fighting?"

Niles continues to look at me, unwavering. "Then what?"

"My wife and I made love." The picture that is growing clearer is feels warped. "Wait...that doesn't make sense. Something's wrong."

Niles said, "Oh, no, you're correct. You went to your home and killed a man and had sex with a woman."

"Then, I heard the door crash open and I went to see what it was and now I'm here." The detectives are both making notes. "Will someone please tell me what is going on? How is my wife? Is she ok?"

Detective Shamone speaks, "The one that left you?"

Niles continues, "But was still in your house?"

"Yes," I say. Then, it stops making sense to me. "Wait. What?"

"You said she left you," Niles said. "Then, why was she in your house?"

"I don't know."

Shamone asks, "Where do you live?"

Like a reflex, I say, "624 Main Street, Apartment 3C."

Niles says, "Apartment? You live in an apartment? I thought you were going to your house?"

"Wait." The throbbing in my head spikes. "I don't have a house."

"And you don't have a wife," Niles says.

"OK...Wait...then who...." I can't complete a sentence.

Shamone speaks, "Do you know the address 221 Lincoln Street?"

"Yeah, that's where I grew up."

"And that's where we found you," Niles says.

"No. I was at home."

"No," Shamone says, "you were in your childhood home. You broke into your old house."

"Oh my God..." I say.

Niles says, "For the good of your soul, I hope He's listening. Peter, you got high and broke into your old home and killed the father and raped and smothered the mother."

"Father? Mother? They had kids? Did I hurt the kids?"

Shamone says, "They are all grown and moved away."

I feel slightly better. My head still throbs and the bed starts to feel hot. "Who are they? Who were they?"

"Their names?" Niles asks.

"Yeah, what's their names?"

Shamone flips through her book. "Ah, Todd and Nancy."

The bed ignites and I feel my headache grip my heart and squeeze the life out of it.

Niles says, "Todd and Nancy Shearer."

I pull against my binds and start to scream.

Shamone says, "Your father and your mother."