The December Editor's Pick Story is by
John B. Kachuba
Please feel free to email John at: jkachuba@fuse.net
LAST CALL
by John B. Kachuba
Cold. So very cold.
He forced his eyelids open to half-mast, saw the cold white expanse upon which he lay, the sheer white wall in the distance. Painfully, he turned his head to the opposite side to find another wall of white hemming him in.
His head throbbed. His throat burned, parched and dry It felt like he had drunk acid.
Little by little, his right eye opened fully—the other seemed closed shut somehow—and the arctic landscape morphed into the bathroom floor, the toilet to his left, the bathtub to his right.
What am I doing on the floor? And why is it so damned cold?
His palms flat against the tiled floor, he slowly lifted his head. I must look like an iguana, he thought, basking in the sun or maybe a boot camp recruit about to struggle through some push-ups. He laughed at that, realizing his whole body was one continent of pain. Push-ups were out of the question.
Why am I hurting so much?
So many questions, but his brain felt calcified, unwilling to find answers, unwilling to help him in any way.
Bright light bathed the room, reflecting off the tile floor, stabbing his eyes as though he was snow-blind. He closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, opened them again. Somehow, that helped. The pain in his eyes subsided a little bit. But the pain wracking his muscles, searing his joints remained as did the cold—My god, the cold!
Caterpillar-like, his body screaming for him to stop, he inched his legs up beneath him until his knees were tucked under him and he lay like an infant asleep on the icy floor. The cold wrapped around him, an unwelcomed blanket, seeping into his bones. His fingers tingled with cold. His breath left frosty plumes in the air.
The cold prodded him to alertness and random memories drifted ghostlike through his brain. Piece by piece they came. He remembered the bar, a dark hole across from the Greyhound bus station. Sitting on a ripped barstool, the dusty mirror behind the bartender reflecting back his unshaven face. The bartender’s voice echoed in his head: Had enough, buddy?
One more.
I don’t think so.
One more, you son of a bitch!
Last call, buddy. I mean it.
He could still taste that last drink, smell it, feel the fire in his belly, but that was all memory. A phantom drink. He crawled to the toilet, somehow got his numb hands to the bowl and pulled himself up to his knees. The landscape canted one way, then the other, nausea rising in his gorge and he managed to fling open the lid only seconds before he spewed into the bowl. His throat burned and his stomach heaved again and again until he had turned himself inside out. Like a puppet without strings he collapsed over the bowl, exhausted.
He needed a drink.
A gusty blast of air swept across the floor, even though the bathroom door was closed.
So freaking cold!
Shivering, he pulled himself up to a sitting position on the closed bowl. The room didn’t spin as wildly as before. Now, the slow rise and fall of the room was not much worse than a mild case of seasickness. He felt his erratic gut slowing down.
How did I get here?
Sitting upright and more or less alert he recognized the bathroom as his own, yes, but had no memory of how he had gotten there. What had happened after that last drink? This was not the first time he had come to his senses without recalling where he had been before or what he had done but at least on those previous benders, memory came back to him after a few minutes. But this time was different. The last thing he remembered was that bartender reluctantly pouring him three fingers one last time. Then, this.
Taking hold of the commode and the towel rack he slowly pulled himself upright. He swayed only a little.
Not too bad. Not too bad at all.
He caught hold of the sink and edged himself before it, looking into the mirror.
Holy shit! Who is that?
One eye of the face looking back at him was swollen and blue-black like a plum. A bruise bloomed on one cheek like an ugly rose. Dried blood crusted over a split upper lip.
He studied the face in the mirror, holding on tightly to the sink.
Wonder what the other guy looks like. He laughed and it hurt. With a face like that I think I am the other guy!
It surprised him that he could be so cavalier about whatever had happened to him, but what else was he to do? Until a friend, or perhaps the police or someone clued him in, there was nothing he could do about his memory loss. It was inevitable anyway. At least that’s what the shrinks at the VA had told him. But it was another vet waiting his turn with the docs that told him what the shrinks wouldn’t tell him: It was Agent Orange eating your brain, your memory winking off little by little, like walking through the house and turning off the lights room by room.
What would be left in the darkness?
Another icy jet streamed into the room from beneath the door. He turned to the door, half expecting it to swing open but it remained closed. There should be no reason for cold air to be swirling into the bathroom. It wouldn’t seem possible unless maybe a door was left open somewhere in the house and the night air—he presumed it was night; the bathroom had no window—was gusting in. He knew he would have to check the house.
He let go of the sink and found that he had recovered his balance. His throat still burned raw and dry and his swollen eye impaired his vision, but otherwise he didn’t feel too badly. If it wasn’t so damned cold in the room, he’d be quite all right.
He reached for the door knob and the icy metal shocked his fingers. He turned the knob and yanked open the door.
Pitch-dark filled the other side.
He had never seen the house so dark; nothing was visible in the blackness. Wind rushed at him and he was certain that a door—maybe more than one—was open somewhere. He stepped into the darkness.
Damn!
His right foot frantically scrambled for purchase as it encountered nothing but air where the floor should have been. He felt himself off balance, falling into the void. Grabbing for the door frame he pulled himself back into the bathroom where he stood staring into the darkness, his heart hammering in his chest.
The cold wind whipped at him.
What the hell?
It was impossible that the floor was gone. Holding on to the doorframe, he cautiously extended his foot, feeling the cold swirling around it, and moved it down to floor level. Nothing. He moved his foot to the right, to the left, and each time felt nothing but air. Saw nothing but darkness. He brought his foot back inside.
He stood looking into the darkness, trying to figure it out, the cold air chilling his face. Somewhere in that void was the rest of his house. It had to be there.
His one good eye strained to see into the darkness, to pick out a familiar shadow—a couch, a table, a sliver of light from a window—but there was nothing. The darkness was solid as obsidian.
He went to his knees in the doorway and reached out a hand, repeating the same experiment he had conducted with his foot and receiving the same result. Nothing. But then, running his fingers along the edge of the doorframe where it should have met the floor he made a startling discovery. He was able to reach back under the doorsill and touch beneath the floor of the bathroom. He quickly pulled out his hand as though he had burnt it.
How could there be nothing beneath the room?
He stood and stuck his hand out into the darkness, feeling along the vertical edges of the doorframe. On either side he felt the wall of the bathroom but it only extended maybe two feet before he felt the corner where the walls turned to meet the sidewalls. From all appearances, the bathroom was an isolated cube floating in the void. That was impossible, yet it seemed to be the case.
He sat on the floor, shivering in the cold, chuckling to himself.
The DTs at last. What else could it be?
Another memory snagged somewhere in his brain. After Nam, that much he knew. Having a few brews with some of the guys after work and one of them giving him a strange look, as though he could see right through him. In his mind’s he could see the guy’s mouth working and he finally heard the words as clearly in his ears as if the guy was standing right there beside him. The guy said, This won’t work, you know and he held up his drink. Nothing can hold it back. The darkness will come.
He laughed then as he laughed now. Then, he thought the guy was crazy, but now he wondered who was the crazy one.
DTs. I’m not going crazy. It’s just the freaking booze hijacking my brain. It will pass.
He knew how he could prove that his brain had gone haywire that, in fact, nothing had really changed at all. He got up and retrieved a can of shaving cream from the medicine cabinet.
Standing in the doorway, he held the can at arm’s length. He looked at it for a moment and then let it drop. The instant he released the can it simply vanished in the darkness.
Disappeared.
There was no sound.
No way!
He ran back to the medicine cabinet and grabbed the hairbrush. He dropped it into the void with the same sickeningly silent result.
Impossible! This can’t be happening!
It was the alcohol that had poisoned his mind, he was sure of that, and the Agent Orange was a chaser. His house lay just outside the door, waiting for him. Somewhere out there was his TV, his La-Z-Boy recliner, and beyond that his kitchen with a two-day old delivery pizza in the refrigerator. And beyond that was the door that led to the little backyard with the overgrown flower bed and beyond that the wooden fence that separated his property from that of the Webster’s and their three brats.
All he had to do was step out there and everything would be fine. Never mind about the shaving cream and the hairbrush that disappeared into the void. That was a mere hallucination. He would step right on them when he exited the bathroom. Of course he would.
So, here goes.
He teetered at the doorsill, trembling like a leaf in the wind, craning to see into the void. He thought again of what that other vet had said: Agent Orange eating your brain, your memory winking off little by little, like walking through the house and turning off the lights room by room.
No! It’s my house!
Summoning up a courage he thought he had lost, he flung himself out into the silent void, the cold darkness swallowing him up entirely, his terrified scream trapped in his throat, smothered, and in that last weightless fraction of a second before oblivion he saw the light wink off.
John B. Kachuba’s latest book is Ghosthunting Ohio: On the Road Again (Clerisy Books). He is the author of four nonfiction books about ghosts and ghosthunting. His paranormal novella, Dark Entry, and a short story collection called Ghost Stories are both available as e-books on Kindle.
John is a frequent speaker about the paranormal on radio, TV, and podcasts and has been featured on “Coast-to-Coast AM with George Noory” and the Sundance Channel’s TV program “Love/Lust—The Paranormal.” He is also a familiar speaker at universities, libraries, and conferences.
Holding advanced degrees in Creative Writing, John also teaches that subject at Ohio University and Antioch University Midwest. Additionally, John serves on the faculty of the Gotham Writers Workshop and is a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Horror Writers Association.
John’s blog is HERE
