Last Waltz

I was startled awake by a single gunshot. That was six days ago.

My partner lay in a crumpled heap in the corner, feet splayed, palm open to the sky. Splotches of dried crimson decorating his death mask. I left the revolver in his hand, I wouldn't need it, despite my charge going from a sixteen hour shift to a twenty-four hour shift.

Time meant nothing to me anymore. I moved from memory to reality at will. It was a lazy dream at first, a hopeful whimsy. I would sit in the overstuffed leather chair staring at the signal box, waiting. I was a link in a chain and it grew more taut with each passing hour, so I daydreamed awake.

The tire swing at Emerson lake. Summer of '24. Sandra and I played water games with the other children, who were inconsequential. Somewhere in the endless warm folds of a summer eternity, two adolescent children are always making their tentative first waltz together. Nervous heat and clumsy kisses shared in the afternoon shade. I put my arm around her slick goose-fleshed skin as we dried off, she lay her matted hair against my shoulder, and that was all right.

The memory skipped a beat, the startling jolt is enough to send me back to semi-consciousness in the dingy apartment. I think of the way the water beaded on her fair skinned thigh and close my eyes, hold my breath. In a just universe, I'll open my eyes to see the sun setting again over the fir trees by the lake as the cricket band strikes up a tune. The apartment, the rantings of poor dead Clive, the signal box, the war, the atrocity will be washed away as I shake myself loose from this undesirable reality and float amongst the ether to a time of beautiful innocence. Somewhere in my sleep deprived brain, I feel as though this is a possibility. I tentatively open my eyes again. A yellowed wall, a battered clock, a rectangular box with a dead red light.

I straighten in my chair with a groan. Parts of poor dead Clive are beginning to fester and odor, but I'm at a loss as to what to do about it, so I stare at the signal box again. Waiting. A high pitched droning buzz is emanating from deep inside my brain. My body begins to play tricks on me as I shift in my seat. Each new position and stretch of the muscles releasing floods of endorphins, encouraging me to drop off into a deep slumber, out of which I'm positive I will never wake, and if I should I would wish I hadn't.

Every time I blink I lose minutes. The doze is impossible to stop. The clock steals time with sickening alacrity, blink-4:33, blink-4:54, blink-5:05, blink-5:27. The buzz in my brain turns back into the cricket symphony at Emerson lake. The families are gathered in their strange adult world of cigarettes and funny tasting water beneath tarp tents and colored lanterns. There's food and desserts, and that's all right. I'm bouncing around tirelessly snapping at fireflies when Sandra taps me on the shoulder. I spin around to see her in an ivory dress with jellied sandals. She had brushed out her hair and put a summer blossom behind her ear. The bug torches painted her face with a beautiful dancing yellow glow. She smiled big and wondered aloud if I was going to ask her to dance or not. I noticed the music for the first time, it was "Time In A Bottle", and that was all right.

I was dimly aware of insistent knocking at the door. I saw in two places at once. I felt myself shake loose and drift as the door crashed inward, ominous black shapes huddling inside with booming voices that seemed so far away. I let go of my exhausted body and clung to Sandra as we waltzed together across the trampled grass beneath the big full moon.

I felt hands of iron clamp my arms and legs and then didn't anymore. My head lolled to the side, I see the dead red button bright and flashing, an angry man with brass ornaments all along his shoulders yanking the signal box from the wall and pulling the chain apart at its cord.

From great distances away, as if on a stony cliff in a white haze, a voice like my own shouts and pleads and begs for resistance, but there's none left to be found anywhere, it is all washing away. I'm dimly aware of my back hitting a hard metal surface that is alive with a thrumbling pulse, a square of light in the distance vanishes to darkness and I concentrate hard, feeling it all slide away at last. I stare deep into Sandra's bright green eyes and beg of her to keep me hidden here, safe inside a memory. She stares at me confused for a moment before nodding, I grab her hand up again and we continue on forever.