My Nature

My Nature

He is stubborn. Stubborn like a brick wall blocking a room full of reason. It is one of his most defining traits. And, oh yeah, he is insane.

“No,” he says with absolute certainty.

“Then we’ll both die.”

He laughs. He does that a lot. Obnoxiously. Just laugh and laugh at nothing really. Just because he can. And probably because he is insane. I keep coming back to that. How do you reason with someone that is insane? There’s no common point of reference. Nothing to build on.

“And that’s okay with you?” I ask, still being hopeful I can generate a spark of survival instinct in that mess of fetid worms and rancid garbage he calls a brain. His answer? He just laughs harder.

I look up and see the light from the windows above dimming. Gradually. Just like the rising water at my feet. Damn this. I feel my hands already rounding into hard bricks of bone and tendon, the red heat of anger increasing behind my eyes. Can I beat him into submission; stop before I kill him? After long years of cat and mouse my frustration shoves patience out the open window. Maybe I die here but I won’t be alone. Logic and reason begin the process of turning my aggravation into a solution.

“Then we die, you fool.” I stand against the wall and cross my arms.

He cackles maniacally and then stops. He looks at me quizzically like a dog watching me shave. His face grows from puzzled to sad in a beat. “You’d just give up and let us die?”

I shrug. The gesture begins to make him itch. He paces in a tight circle. He’s gesturing wildly, arms waving, head shaking, all the while mumbling things I can’t pretend to understand. I’m not even sure it’s a language. Then he spins on me. For a second I think he has some weapon to try and kill me. Make this all about his control, his decision. But his arms are splayed out, palms up, pleading.

“YOU don’t give up. YOU don’t quit. You are going to save us both.” He starts to laugh. “You are going to save ME!” He’s hysterical now, his laughing a crescendo that takes away his breath until he’s coughing. And he is not going to stop. His throat is getting raw, his lungs burning. 

The gas.

He stands up straight and then tries to climb the wall. It is slick with filth and wet. He can’t get a grip, sliding, falling. Each dip lower he breathes more of the gas which is rising buoyed by the advancing water. The perfect trap. The type he loves - a looming death you can’t avoid but are aware of its finality. Pushing the aspect of mortality to the front of your mind with all that carries. Terror, panic, screaming, pleading, praying, and in the end, hopeless resolve. And all the while he laughs. And laughs.

But I beat him every time. Every one of the multitude of brilliant traps that all hinged on the same horrific outcome. But never to fruition. Each time I survived. Each time I cheated him, bested him at his demented, baneful games.

How ironic that the one time he will succeed will do him in as well. I almost join him in his joyous ranting. 

The joke’s on him this time.

He manages to get his mouth high enough above the gas to gulp uncontaminated air. “Okay, okay,” he gasps, realizing that these are the last words he will be able to say before his thoughts are silenced by coughing, choking, and death. “Use your gadgets to get us out of here.” A cough. His time is almost up. He’s on his tiptoes now.

“I already told you that you destroyed my belt before I fell in here.” I left off the part about dragging him after me. I measured out my breathing. I am taller than him so I have seconds more time. Maybe a minute. I’m not giving him the satisfaction of hearing me cough. I want him to die not knowing if I was able to escape.

“But…” another cough, deeper, bordering on a choke. “You said cough that you could get out of here cough cough with my help.” He trails off with a racking fit of choking and gagging.

“I can.”

He turns his head to me, rage pushing at beseeching. “Then do it!”

I grab him and turn him around and place my back against his. “Feet on the wall. Press against my back for support. Step on my command. Now!”

I am afraid his hesitation and exposure has weakened him enough to not be able to do this but he surprises me. “Right foot.” I can feel the gas burning in my throat as I inhale. We have seconds before he is overcome and dooms us both. The width of the hole is too broad for me to reach both sides well enough to climb. I must have his help.

“Left.” I wait to feel his movement. “Right.” He slows but manages. “Left!” He hesitates and then moves. “Right!” Nothing. “RIGHT!” He manages but I can tell his strength is ebbing. “Come on, you pathetic freak! Give up now and you die. LEFT!” Again, nothing. I can hear his rasping breath behind me, his head knocking against me with each ragged breath. We are above the gas and he is trying to recover but there is no time.

The genius of the trap was perfect. I would have died for certain. With the water pushing the gas up the hole I would have to decide whether to drown or asphyxiate in the toxic gas. I could not hold my breath long enough to rise to the surface. Had I not been able to spring off the slick wall as I fell and grab his pants leg I’d be dead and he would be free.

“RIGHT!” He manages with a bit more resolve. “LEFT!” He is quicker at my commands. I look up and see we are closer to the top. Another few minutes and I can get to the rim. I push thoughts of failure out of my mind and visualize success. I map my moves - maintaining my secure perch while still corralling and subduing him. It would be easier, so much easier, to just let him fall into the hole and be done with him.

Forever.

But I force that aside and continued to shout commands and run my actions through my mind, feeling the muscles respond. He is slowing again. Fatigue is a heavy flame in his legs. Almost there but he is slowing too quickly. He has nothing left.

“Come on, you useless bastard. You want to die? Is that it? You can’t face failure? RIGHT!”

He snaps his leg up but then I hear him laugh.

“Stop it! You don’t have the stamina to laugh and do this!” He laughs harder. “STOP!”

I feel him swivel against my back. Too late I realize. The blade slips into my side, my left leg spasms and drops. We almost fall. He twists the knife.

“You’re killing us both, you goddamn lunatic!”

He just laughs and laughs and laughs. “It’s my nature,” he whispers.

I use every muscle I have to lurch from his back forcing him toward the wall of the passage. I coil, uncoil, spring up and forward. My fingers just touch the edge.

And hold.

I swing an arm in hopes I can clench some piece of fabric, maybe a clutch of green hair. I come away with a fist full of empty gas. I hang for a moment listening to his unrelenting, hysterical laughter filling the hole. A splash.

I struggle to bring myself free of the pit and onto the floor. It is then that I see it. The flame tucked underneath a table just above the floor. The gas!

I snap to my feet, one last look into the pit I see the water rising faster, the hole more narrow at the top forcing it to fill quicker, expelling the gas into…

I manage four long strides before the explosion hits me in the back and launches me from the building, pressure, noise, and fire racing past me.

It’s dark. I wake in a fenced yard almost a block from the ruptured remains of the building, flames grasping up into the towering cloud of smoke. Judging by its height I was unconscious for five minutes. I try to stand and realize that my shoulder is dislocated. I stand, find a place to try and hammer it back into place, and grit my teeth against the pain. My back is sore but my cape managed to take the majority of the impact. 

I start walking, my side still bleeding and I put pressure on it. I have a place to go to heal, to replay the events in my head. Find my mistakes, devise alternatives and solutions. Won’t happen again. Can’t happen again. Then it snags on something. My desperate leap to the hole’s edge, pushing off his back to make the distance. He pushed back. He pushed back! He tried to get me to the edge after he stabbed me. Could he have done that on purpose? Tried to help, tried to save me? I shake my head to free myself of the doubt, of the feeling of…gratitude? No, it was just the flinch he gave knowing he would die. He would not try and save me.

He couldn’t.

As I near the edge of the property I stop and look back. A police car has arrived. I see fire trucks flashing as they come over the rise. The flames are bright, warming the night air, casting long, black shadows everywhere. There is creaking and crackling from the wreckage but it is quiet here away from the blasted remains. And yet…

Did I just hear a laugh?

The End