The Great Alone

“MATTHEWMATTHEWMATTHEW.”

He hears that sound. It means something to him, but what?

Pain obliterates everything else. A headache so bad he can’t think. The smell of vomit and mold and decay. His lungs and nostrils ache. He can’t breathe without gasping.

He is beginning to study his pain, see nuances. His head is pressure building, pounding, squeezing; leg is sharp, stabbing, fire and ice.

“Matthew.”

A voice. (Hers.) Like sunshine on his face.

“I’mhere. I’mhere.”

Meaningless.

“Ssshitsokay. I’mhere. I’lltellyouanotherstory. MaybeSamMcGee.”

A touch.

Agony. He thinks he screams.

But maybe it’s all a lie …

* * *

DYING. He can feel the life draining out of him. Even the pain is gone.

He is nothing, just a lump in the wet and cold, pissing himself, vomiting, screaming. Sometimes his breathing just stops and he coughs when it starts again.

The smell is terrible. Mold, muck, decay, piss, vomit. Bugs are crawling all over him, buzzing in his ears.

The only thing keeping him alive is Her.

She talks and talks. Familiar rhyming words that almost make sense. He can hear her breathing. He knows when she is awake and when she’s asleep. She gives him water, makes him drink.

He is bleeding now, through his nose. He can taste it, feel its viscous slime.

She is blearying.

No. That’s a wrong word.

Crying.

He tries to hold on to that, but it goes like everything else, at a blur, too fast to grasp. He is floating again.

Her.

IloveyouMatthewdon’tleaveme.

Consciousness pulls away from him. He fights for it, loses, and sinks back into the smelly darkness.

TWENTY-TWO

After two terrible, freezing nights, Matthew moved for the first time. He didn’t wake up, didn’t open his eyes, but he moaned and made this terrible clicking sound, like he was suffocating.

A trapezoid of blue sky hung above them. It had finally stopped raining. Leni saw the rock face clearly, all the ridges and indentations and footholds.

He was burning up with fever. Leni made him swallow more aspirin and poured the last of the Bactine on his wound and rewrapped it in new gauze and duct tape.