Wings by Todd Gregory

Author:Todd Gregory [Gregory, Todd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781602826014
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
Published: 2011-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

White Knight

Mel Bossa

Ever since Joshua was a kid he had a thing for circles. It was the completion of a line that got him. The endlessness of a thought. The satisfaction of knowing movement does not cease.

Today was his twenty-eighth birthday.

“―jerk took my only Saturday off and gave it to Cal”―one of the paramedics was shouting over the sound of the sirens―“but I don’t give a damn. Hey, avoid Saint-Urbain, they’re still coating the right lane.”

Today would be the day Joshua died.

“Yeah, they’ve got three witnesses. Said the guy was freebasin’ or somethin’, swingin’ that gun around―”

Thus completing the greatest of all circles.

“The gun went off, and shit man, this kid here was just standing there. Talk about bad timing―”

The end must have been near. Joshua could foresee it in the subtle change in the paramedics’ voices. When they had lifted his limp body into the ambulance, past the four a.m. crowd of glassy-eyed, dry-mouthed onlookers, the medics’ pitch had been hitting the high notes and their cadence had been hurried. But as the ambulance rolled down Montreal’s wet streets―sirens blazing―the medics’ tone was clearly deflating with every turn the ambulance made. Their words had become practical and overripe—syllables sitting inside their mouths for too long.

Rotten. This whole deal was.

Joshua worked at picking up on the trail of sounds the world was leaving for him; when they shut the sirens off, then he’d know he was definitely a corpse. There would have to be some kind of cue, because his body had ceased feeding him signs of life. Where there had been an enormous stabbing pain in his chest, now was only muted sensation, a mild tremor that was impossible to distinguish. He bent his will (did he still have one?) to isolate a clear physical reaction, but there was none.

A ricochet bullet. Happy birthday, Joshua.

“Shit, we’re losing him again―”

Zap. Pain. A kaleidoscope of white and yellow. The medic had used the defibrillator twice. Or was it three times?

“Clear.”

Lying flat on a stretcher, bloodless, eyes opened, fists closed. This was it? This simple, blurry transition? One moment smoking a cigarette outside the club, then dead?

“―fucking disaster this city is. Ride the alley all the way up.” The medics were in a jiff, it seemed. Construction maybe.

With every pothole the ambulance tore over, the stretcher jumped under Joshua and his thoughts wandered like leaves torn from a tree. His consciousness drifted backward, leafing through the pages of his existence. Memories, clearer than the most lucid dream, assailed his mind.

A carpeted basement. A summer party. Music. The clean scent of Christopher Saint-Pierre’s flannel shirt and the feel of Christopher’s tangled blond curls against his bare stomach.

Christopher. His one and only love. Christopher. Talented, tortured, and reckless. Dead now for seven years.

No, Joshua, I’m here. I’m right here.

They were strangers once, young, inexperienced, but so eager and so willing. Nearing the end of the school year, Christopher and he had (at last) been properly introduced by a mutual friend, a plump, fast-talking, brown-skinned

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.