Shotguns v. Cthulhu by Robin D. Laws

Author:Robin D. Laws [Laws, Robin D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908983831
Publisher: Stone Skin Press
Published: 2013-05-10T21:00:00+00:00

II.

In the hospital, I had what the chart called “frequent breaks with reality.” I imagined I was a toddler in the deep end of a pool, paddling for the edge while an invisible hand tried to force my head under water. My legs pistoned desperately, but I was too weak and felt the life draining from my chest. I felt absolute panic. While under these spells, I’d lifted and swung my IV pole at the other patients so many times that the nurses started weighing the base of it down with sandbags. The reality of the long hospital room and the reality of the pool were indistinguishable; I wanted out of both at the same time and my body did the work it needed to do. I experienced it and watched it, but I had no part in the decision-making.

Up the hills, down the hills—cold sweat clung to my body as I sprinted under the glaring winter sun to the old man’s house. When I finally arrived in McClellan Heights, I saw that our car was gone, or at least no longer parked in the spot we’d agreed on. I slowed my pace as I turned onto the old man’s street, calling Grace’s phone once again but getting nothing. The muffled sound of a loud, deep voice seemed to be coming from the man’s house—some sort of shouting, or chanting. Was he shouting at my girl? How had he moved so fast? Was I still in the hospital, even now?

I stopped in front of the house and dialed the phone again, panting. A small bzzzzhh shot back from the man’s yard. I crossed to the sound and saw it there in the snow. Grace’s phone.

She’d made it out.

The shouting sounds from inside had stopped. Getting to my feet, I saw the old man wrench a curtain aside in the house’s top window and stare down at me. His expression was obscured by the sun’s reflection, but the sight of him filled me with rage. I thought about pissing on his lawn right in front of him, just to say fuck you—to let him know who I was. But I realized in that moment that my jeans were already soaked. I’d lost it completely on the run there, like an out-of-control child. I had to get home.

I vomited twice on the way back, nervous about Grace, sick with exertion and sure that a squad car would be driving up at any moment to stop me. What seemed like twenty years later, I made it to our house. The car was parked on the street. Tears welled in my eyes and I jogged inside.

“Grace?” No response. I hurried toward the bedroom.

“Grace?”

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