Nanowrimo 11

Chapter 6

            Froid stood at the edge of the bridge and looked down at the water. She knew she was not going to jump, but the sight itself was fearful. She disliked heights. She waited for Callahan to get to the bridge.

            “My brother has a selective sight of what we see and feel,” Samuel had reminded her as they approached the bridge.

            Froid had nodded. “I promise I’ll make it as realistic as possible. I’ve never jumped from a bridge though. But I think I have the idea.”

            Samuel had repressed giving her a small smile. “You know what you must feel before you jump. Project your fake incentive. You want to die. You cannot live without me, even if memory is sordid. You cannot stand me and want to stop existing as long as I exist.”

            “Callahan knows to come here right?”

            “I almost killed him in the cab in Chinatown. Once I enlightened him of our plan he stopped trying to beat me up.”

            The first attempts to get Callahan to listen had been unsuccessful. Samuel had got out of the car to talk to Callahan after clipping him on the corner, but instead of being compliant, the excess adrenaline and complex revolt he felt towards Samuel prompted him to pummel his idol to the ground. It was reminiscent of the day after Samuel had broken up with Froid. Callahan beat up Samuel outside the cafeteria. Samuel did not try to defend himself. Why defend his body when his poetry was in no danger? His apathy disarmed Callahan. Callahan stopped punching him because Samuel kept letting him do it.

            Samuel stopped calling him “Athlete” in hopes of regaining some shred of favor, but Callahan could not shake the notion that Samuel had tried to hurt him on purpose.

            “Why, do you want me out of the picture too?!” he bellowed in the middle of the street, his fists savoring inertia and landing blows wherever Samuel had not been hit yet.

            Last spring, around May, Callahan had found Froid disintegrating in the cafeteria. He had tried to comfort her, to no avail, and to his deep-seeded frustration.

But then an opportunity arose. Samuel walked past the cafeteria outside. Callahan could only look at him. He got up, for a moment completely forgetting about Froid. His fist in preemptive shot-put balls, he was ready to succumb to entropy, beat his idol’s face into a chaos that not even Samuel could write.

As Callahan jabbed Samuel repeatedly in the jaw, in the cheekbone, red ribbons tying knots all over Samuel’s face, Samuel sat there and took the abuse. Callahan could not understand why.

“Aren’t you gonna fight back, you disgusting son of a bitch? Aren’t you gonna try to beat the shit out of the guy who talked to your girlfriend? Come on, you can feel pain. FIGHT BACK!”

When it became more obvious that no matter how great the brutality that Samuel would not return the favor, Callahan felt awkward and stopped. Samuel lay on the ground, semi-conscious in a salty red haze, but smiling in some sort of morbid triumph.

“Athlete, why would I fight you back? It is not like you touched one of my manuscripts or something. If anything, I should be thanking you.”

Callahan lost his anger. “For what?”

“For showing me what I could control and what I could not.”

“How dare you treat her like that!”

“Like what? She is not in my world. She is not my poetry.”

“BUT SHE’S A HUMAN BEING.”

“I was foolish. I held on to her, tried to keep her in my world, but she refused. Trust me, athlete, it was very traumatizing.”

“So this is how you define your ‘world.’ Anything you can control is part of your world; anything you can’t just doesn’t exist.”

“Oh, do not preach my own doctrine to me, Athlete. You are beginning to sound like a faux-litician!”

“For trying to play God, you’re pretty pathetic.”

“I do not care what you think, if I have not already made that apparent.”

“Clearly you do. Otherwise you wouldn’t have done that to her.”

Samuel frowned. He tried to stand but nearly collapsed again.
            “Clearly. An adverb ending in –ly. Such a weak word. It suits you well, Athlete.”

Callahan would have punched him again had Samuel’s nose been any less deformed.

            Just as that May afternoon, Callahan stopped punching Samuel. Samuel was not beat up as much as like last time, but it was still reminiscent. The echo still left Samuel bleeding from his nose and mouth.

            “Grossherz,” he said Callahan’s last name with difficulty, “If you care for Froid, you shall listen to me. She will jump from a bridge, and you must save her. She must not die.”

            Callahan was disoriented. “What?! Why?”

            Samuel entered the cab and dragged Callahan in as well. He gave a random address and the car began moving.

            “She will not jump off of a bridge, but she will pretend she did, and you must pretend that you saved her.”

            Callahan was even more confused. “So is she actually going to jump or not?”

            Samuel cringed hearing the adverb in the way he had said Callahan’s last name. “No, Athlete. The challenge is that we must make my brother think she did.”

            “Well then why go through all of this trouble at all? Why not just have her jump in a pool and then tell Luke that all this happened?”

            Samuel sighed. There was much about Luke that Callahan did not know. “Luke is in your thoughts. He cannot read them, but he can make you act. He is the narrator, but he is evil. Froid and I plot to destroy him.”

            Callahan could not bring himself to believe Samuel, but he knew, like Froid, that Samuel had no reason to lie about anything.

            “How… do you know this?”

            “You know it too, Grossherz. He willed you to come to Seattle. You did not have to do anything, did you? He paid for everything.”

            Callahan nodded. It was suspicious. As was Luke’s constant insistence that Callahan spend every moment with Froid. As was Luke’s lavish accommodations.

            “Can he get into your mind?”

            Samuel smiled. Callahan had never seen his genuine smile before. “My brother thinks me inhuman and cannot get into my mind except when I want him. He does not treat me like a character. He treats me like a prop that obeys different laws than he. And I do. I am like the weather, but he tries to manipulate me through the people around me.”

            “Like your publisher?”

            Samuel nodded. “I always knew Quentin the publisher was his alter-ego. Quentin the publisher just appeared one day, was given the job as my eternal intern, and followed me around everywhere. Quentin the publisher is dead now too because he failed. My brother does not handle failure well. Nor do I. It is a family trait.”

            “So I’ve met Luke… many times?”

        Samuel nodded. “So many times that he figured out how to get into your mind. You have done impulsive things as of late, have you not? You do not know why you are doing them. They go against your nature. This is my brother breaching your character. You can fight it once noticed, but the best defense is to dehumanize yourself. The easiest way to do this is to forsake emotion. He harnesses emotions to propel you. If you lack emotion, he cannot will you to do anything.”

            All of this seemed absurd to Callahan, but it was validated by the fact that Samuel said it.

            “So… are we going to go save Froid?”

        He nodded. “Except that you are getting off right now. I must go meet with her beforehand. You can walk to the bridge. It is called Ballard Bridge, fifteenth avenue.”

        And with that Samuel reached over across Callahan, opened the door, and pushed him out with surprising ease. Callahan rolled on the asphalt, scraping his knees and elbows and hitting his head.

        Samuel poked his head out of the window and called back to him.

        “Just a bit of amiable revenge, Athlete!”

        Froid arrived at the edge of the promised bridge: Ballard Bridge. Cars honked as they passed her, the sound distorted into a grumbling pitch as it singed by. A cab stopped in front of her and Samuel jumped out. The two walked together towards the middle.
            “I almost killed him in the cab in Chinatown. Once I enlightened him of our plan he stopped trying to beat me up.”

        Froid nodded as they came to the midpoint.

        “He knows I’m not jumping, right?”

        “Of course. Though I beat him up a bit to make it more realistic. Once you project the vision, suppress your emotion and head over to the water’s edge. You and Callahan can get wet and call the paramedics.”

        “Can you keep track of my stuff?” Froid asked, handing Samuel an almost empty book bag. She almost expected him not to take it, but to her relief he did.

            And so the plan was set in motion. Samuel walked off towards Chinatown to fulfill his role, and Froid mustered every suicidal thought she had ever felt. She looked down at the water.

The wind was calm and it was sunny. The weather was beautiful for the time of year in Seattle. Warm. Her hands touched. Cold.

            Her eyes closed, and a single face flashed before them.

            Samuel.

            Eyes opened, and she jumped, the water approaching void of fear. Once submerged the water dragged her down as she does not try to kick, to swim, to live, to anything. In her last moments she sees Callahan’s face, in a contortion unlike anyone had never seen it before, and everything diluted into the dark.

             The vision was finished. If all went well Luke would be hurrying to a hospital. Froid walked to the end of the bridge and approached the waterfront. She saw Callahan there, blood trickling out from under his sleeves from his gashes on the pavement.

            “Samuel really gave you a thrashing.”

            Callahan groaned. “I should’ve known he wouldn’t let me beat him up twice. The bastard. I’ll get back at him some time.”

            “I don’t think you two have time for more violence.” She then turned her back and jumped off into the water. She emerged seconds later and climbed out, shivering and her breathing heavy.

            “It’s cold.”

            Callahan followed suit, shivering even more than Froid when he slumped over on the dock. He wanted to release a thread of obscenities, but it would foil the plan.

            “I look way worse than you do,” he said, looking at her. He looked like the one that jumped off a bridge into glacial water. She looked like she had just taken a shower.

            Froid shrugged. “I’m supposed to be the suicidal one. I think I can convey it well. Call 911.”

            And Callahan did. When they arrived they checked Froid’s vital signs with suspicion, but when she tried to attack Callahan, blaming him for saving her, they sedated her and took the two of them to the hospital.

            Callahan was treated for his wounds, and Froid was checked in to a room. She slept for a while, and during that time Callahan was released and headed back to Luke’s apartment.

           

            Samuel arrived at his hotel room in Chinatown. He had picked this hotel because it was close to the first restaurant he had eaten at and that gave him the best price for a bowl of steamed bok choy. He took a deep breath and started screaming his guts out. He spun around his room, destroying his premade scribbles that looked like poetry, ripped up his paper and broke his charcoal in half. Inside he grimaced at the thought of having to buy all new supplies.

He sat in a crumpled mess of black and paper, paper cuts on his hands from where he writhed too close to corners.

            And then he started screaming words.

            “FROID! FROID! FROID!” He just screamed Froid’s name over and over again. He did not call her Ambrosia like he had before; he called her Froid like everyone else. Then, with his hands black with charcoal, he staggered out of his room.

            After calming himself down in the hallway he texted Callahan.

            “Hospital?”

            Callahan replied.
            “University of Washington Medical Center.”

            Samuel walked over towards the hospital.

           

            Luke and Callahan came to Froid when she had just awoken. She was grumpy from waking up from her nap, and she was even more irritated to see Luke in front of her. She powered her temper towards Callahan through her dislike for Luke. Luke felt the effects. He felt them even more when Samuel stumbled into the room, ripping his hair out in fake hysteria and crawling over to Froid. Samuel put on quite an act and Froid wanted to start laughing. Her reaction mixed with her anger to give her a look of disgust, and Callahan, unwilling to be left out of the excitement, interacted with Samuel, picking him up before falling down with him when Samuel collapsed onto the ground. Samuel broke character for a moment when he looked at Callahan, his face out of the sight of Luke.

            “Revenge,” he hissed before wriggling on the floor.

            Samuel was lying on a hospital bed when Luke entered the room. He had just talked with Froid, and won her trust again.

            “Sam,” he said as he approached Samuel. Samuel hated being called “Sam.” It reminded him of Christmas many years ago.

            “Sam,” Luke repeated. “How are you doing?” His voice emulated real concern. His brother was covered in miniscule cuts and bruises and looked no more like a poet than Callahan did. Samuel looked like he had been in a mental institution for years.

            “Brother,” Samuel whispered. “Brother, I am done.”

            This confused Luke. “What? Done with what?”

            “Done. Poems. Her. Done. I have nothing. I destroyed it.”

            Luke thought of the vision he had of Samuel ripping up his poetry.

            “Luke,” Samuel said for the first time in years, extending his hand. “Help me.”

            Luke’s eyes filled with tears as he grabbed his Samuel’s hand in his. “What can I do?”

            “I… must… stay here.”

            “Of course, of course! I’ll get you in on a treatment plan too.”

            “Do not tell our parents.”

            “Certainly! Certainly!” Luke realized he had said an adverb twice. Samuel did not seem to care. He looked at the semantics. Reassurance. He smiled at Luke with ease.

            “Help me… take responsibility. For everything.”

            Luke beamed at his brother. “What’s with this change of heart?” He asked, warmth brimming in his heart.

            “She is. I am to blame for everything.”

            “Oh, not everything!” Luke tried to placate him.

            “Everything. Like that Christmas.”

            The Christmas was twelve years ago. Luke was in his first year of medical school, and Samuel was twelve and half of Luke’s age. Christmases prior to this time had not gone very well either. While Luke was in a constant state of refusal of presents from his parents, Samuel seemed to expect presents, but nothing was good enough for him. His parents bought him a laptop, CD’s, new clothes, gift cards to stores, but Samuel would never use any of it. Luke perpetuated a purpose with everything he did. Samuel was plagued with a cynicism that would be fatal for someone so young. He had nothing. He wanted everything, but nothing pleased him.

            That year, in a fit of helplessness, his parents did not give Samuel any presents. He had one present under the tree that year, and it was from Luke. Luke bought his parents lavish gifts like imported china, a new workspace in the garage for his father, trips to faraway places for weeks on end. They never asked him how he could afford such things.

            Samuel was the last to open his presents that year, since he had but one. He opened it after looking at the tiny tag.

            “To Sam, hope this is some inspiration! –Luke”

            It was Gray’s Anatomy, the largest book aside from a dictionary Samuel had ever seen. Samuel opened it up to a random page. “Hydrocephalus” was the first entry.

            “Hydrocephalus,” he said aloud.

            “Oh, I know that one!” piped up Luke. “That’s when there’s excess water in the brain. It’s from the Greek words for ‘water’ and ‘head.’”

            Water in the brain. Two words forming to make another. He looked at the other entries on the page that began with “hydro-”. Water in this, water in the blood. These words were created from other words.

            And then a vision. The murky apathy of his brain evaporated. Create words. Create worlds. He ran upstairs, stopping at the bathroom on the way. Under a few issues of Better Homes and Gardens was a long-forgotten copy of Robert Frost’s North of Boston. Someone had put it in the bathroom years ago, and Samuel found it one day by chance. He had not been fond of poetry, which just reminded him of many arbitrary rules that he deemed unnecessary.

            He opened up to a random page and began reading one of the poems. It all made sense. Why settle for one world when he could make one? Frost created scenes of a world in his poetry. Samuel would do the same thing.

        He turned on his computer and looked up the etymology of random prefixes and suffixes in the book. Then, with a pair of safety scissors, he cut words out into strips, and cut them again at the liminal boundaries of morphemes. By the time he had finished he had hundreds of strips in a pile. Then he started retaping them together into nonsense phrases. But it did not matter. They were not nonsense to him. They were his world.

        Luke came up a few minutes later to check on Samuel.

        “Sam, everything okay? I hope you liked-”

        Luke paused to survey the disemboweled book, Samuel’s fingers tacky from the tape residue.

        “WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU LITTLE SHIT?!” Luke jumped on Samuel and punched him, ripping the book out of his hand.

        “You think this is funny? You think this is all some kind of joke? Do you think I’m a joke? You don’t take anything seriously, do you? Well, I hope you enjoy being a failure. Because that’s all you’re ever going to be!”

        Luke slammed the door on the way out. Samuel lied on the pile of strips. His nose was bleeding, and it hurt to sniffle. He stood up, paper sticking to him skin. He looked down at the blood on the floor. That did not bother him like the blood that had been absorbed by many of the strips, including the prefix “haemo-.” It was taped to the prefix “cardio.”

        Samuel began to cry.

        Luke watched Samuel sleep in the hospital bed. Samuel was different when he slept. He looked uncomfortable, like he had been disconnected from reality. He was self-conscious and awkward. He wiggled every couple minutes, and Luke kept thinking that he would wake. He never did while Luke was around. Around evening, Luke left the room, saying that he should go to the apartment and check on Callahan. Samuel stood up in his bed when he heard a knock. He said nothing. Luke wanted to check on him one last time. Samuel dropped himself back into sleep.

        But it was Froid who walked through the door.

        “Today went well, don’t you think?” she told him.

        Samuel nodded.

        “But this will just get harder, won’t it? If we think we’re kissing ass now, what do we call what we’re about to do?”

        “I would not like to think about it.”

        Froid smiled. “So, when do we start writing?”

        Samuel smiled back at her. She blushed, not expecting this response.

        “Soon, Ambrosia.”