The Very Last Days of Mr Grey (5 page)

“Shut up.” Mason gestures at the bag. “I can’t believe that worked.”

Ryan smiles. “I am amazing,” he sing-songs, then bows.

Across the street, at the other, larger grocer (the one with less alcohol and a cashier who is
not
infatuated with Ryan’s sister), Isla’s eyebrows draw together as she watches her sister run toward her. It is the boy Penny has been talking to that draws Isla’s attention. Isla knows him from somewhere. He doesn’t seem to recognize her though, and just walks off with his friend. She thinks he must be in one of her classes.

But when later she looks for him at school there is no trace.

She tells this story of missed connections as they lie in bed in a room filled with lights and chirping birds, and the weight of her is on his shoulder and his back hurts and he is thirsty and gets up to pee but when he does he still has to go and he tries to go again and wonders why it’s not doing any good then he wonders how he got here—

Mason came to, acutely aware of his bladder’s contents.

He groaned as he sat up. It was the combination that woke him. As his eyes unglued, the next thought he had was that if it had just been the birds, or just the light, or just his bladder, he could’ve slept through it.

Much later would come the thought that if he had slept ten minutes more, even just five, everything would have been different.

The lights were still on, and the combination of the sun and the artificial made the room look like high noon.

“Fucking birds,” Emily mumbled. She wiped drool from her mouth. Looked at his shoulder. “Your shirt’s dirty.”

He looked at the drool stain on his shoulder. “Your shit’s dirty.”

“Cocksucker.”

“Shitlips.”

She laughed. “Cocksucking assfuck.”

“That’s impossible.”

Her laugh sounded good. There was a time when she didn’t laugh, and he was glad that was past.

“Breakfast?” She stood and stretched.

“As long as it’s not coffee.”

She paused mid-stretch. “Oh.” Her hand went to her face. “You mean, you don’t want eggs-over-coffee and toast with coffee butter and orange coffee?”

“Exactly.”

She tossed her hair at him as she headed to the kitchen.

“And no hash butter either,” he called after her before she could disappear.

“That was once,” she called back, disappearing around the corner. Her disembodied voice echoed around the room as if in his head: “Will you never let me live that down?”

Some things can never be forgiven
, a voice responded, but it wasn’t his, and anyway, it wasn’t meant for her.

Mason left after they ate.

He drove slowly out of her neighborhood, in the direction of home, squinting against the blazing sun and wondering where he’d left his sunglasses.

In a weird way, he’d forgotten about all that had happened. It was still there, in his memory, he just hadn’t been thinking about it. Not until, as they ate and joked, Emily had brought up something that reminded him of Isla and sent both of them into silence.

But in that quiet, he had found himself dwelling not on Isla, but on the woman, the woman named Sera, wondering at the mystery of her, if she had been real. He hadn’t been entirely sure.

Now, alone in his car, things seemed clearer, easier to think about. He knew the woman was a dream, she had to have been, it was the only thing that made sense.

What he couldn’t figure out, what he couldn’t remember—because this was fact, after all, not post-hoc rationalization—was why he had gone to the coffee shop in the first place. Had it been to see Emily? That didn’t seem likely. But if not for her, or the woman he imagined, then why?

And the script he’d dreamt he’d been sent. That didn’t seem like a dream just now. He specifically remembered looking her up, finding her pictures. But he’d had dreams like that before too—and there were the drugs to consider. One was experimental. Maybe it, or a combination of it and everything else was to blame.

You haven’t taken anything else
.

He’d check his computer when he got home. That would tell him.

And what if she was real?

He stopped at a stop sign, staring at the red octagonal shape.

Well, if she was real, she was just some crazy person. She had—

A horn honked, a muffled voice shouted something unintelligible.

Mason drove on and almost died when a horn blared from his right. “Shit. Sorry.” He waved ineffectually at the car he’d cut off at the four-way stop that had locked its brakes to avoid hitting him.

The next stop sign he encountered he made sure to stop just long enough to look both ways, then continue on.

As he accelerated, he frowned. There was a ticking sound. He looked over his shoulder, it sounded like it was coming from the rear.

But instead of identifying the sound, he saw that the same car, a convertible, was still behind him. Had the car been turning right at the stop? Had it altered its course to follow him? He hoped they weren’t crazy. That would suck.

It looked like a woman though. Weren’t women never crazy? There was a flash of a large classroom, the day of the final. Him seeing a girl as he left.

Then his mind moved on to the relevant bit of information from that psychology class. Women were almost never psychopaths—but they could still be crazy.

He wasn’t sure what exactly the difference was. Something to do with empathy, with—

A horn blared. He looked right. He hadn’t noticed the light turn yellow, had hardly noticed the stoplight at all, or the intersection he was now in, but he noticed the large metal bumper coming toward him where open air should have been. He noticed the glass of his window spider-web as that lack of emptiness collided with the side of his car. He noticed the steering wheel jerk violently left. Then his ability to notice was stolen from him.

All was chaos. Gravity lost its meaning. All was darkness. There remained a ticking, with no one there to note its passing.

The truck hissed. It was on its side. Steam rose into the morning sky. The road was empty. The car was spun facing the wrong direction on the side of the road.

Mason moved, expecting pain, and becoming frightened when he didn’t feel any. But then he was out of the car and standing on his legs and so he figured he must at least be okay enough to walk.

Unless this was a dream.

But dreams are real
.

Mason put his hand on the car to steady himself, didn’t notice the broken safety glass. If it cut him, well, he didn’t feel that either

He looked at the vehicle that had crashed into him. Then he looked back to his own car. If he wasn’t already in shock, he would be now.

The truck was on its side, front wheel in the air, spinning. He gaped at the damage the truck had sustained and the lack of damage his car had.

He went around to the other side of his own car. The paint was scratched, the window shattered—though still in the frame, obscuring the interior—but that was all.

He looked to the truck again. It must have hit something else to cause so much damage, to make it flip like that. They probably hadn’t seen him in all this fog.

Then he realized there were probably people in that truck, and ran over. There had to be, he thought as he ran.

“Is anyone hurt?” The question felt stupid, but he couldn’t think of anything else.

“There was a man of golden skins and ivory.”

“Hello?” Mason shouted. It sounded like someone was singing in there.

He peered into the windshield, but couldn’t see anything through the cracks in the glass, and the smoke that filled the cabin. Or was that fog? “Hold on,” Mason shouted.

“…when the Fog was burning red, I’d see her set them free.”

He carefully climbed up the side of the truck.

“Citadel, your king is dead

The Pit is in your pocket

Your final chance

you burned askance

forsook the dreaming prophet.”

Mason froze, his hand on the edge of the truck, ready to pull himself up. It was just a coincidence. It was just a coincidence that the same song he’d heard playing last night was playing now. He’d heard it twice after all, in the span of several minutes. Clearly, it was popular.

He quelled his urge to run, take off into the fog where they wouldn’t be able to see him, and instead pulled himself up the underside—what was now the side, as the truck sat on its passenger door—to peer in the window. The window was down, and steam—for he was sure now that’s what this had to be—pooled up to him, then cleared.

The driver’s seat was empty. The cabin was empty. The only sound was a hiss, and other indistinguishable ticks and creaks. He looked at the radio to see if it was on, really just to confirm it was. He saw nothing. No radio at all, just smooth metal. Golden metal, and strange levers.

It must be hidden, he thought. A hidden radio. With no visible method of controlling it. Or maybe they used headphones. But then, how would that explain what he had heard?
It wouldn’t
, a voice said, and it wasn’t his.
But it is inside your head.

It’s my head
, he thought.
I hit my head
.

Something constricted around Mason’s ankle and he screamed out.

Mason fell from the truck into the sparse grass that lined the side of the road. He flipped on his back and scurried away. It was a woman, roughly his age.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Do you need help?” Her car was parked on the side of the road, right next to them. He hadn’t heard it arrive.

“I didn’t hear you.”

She looked at his car, then the truck. “What happened?”

Mason shook his head, sat up. “I was hit.” He pointed at the stoplight. Then he froze. He looked up and down the two lane highway. There was no stoplight, there was no intersection, there wasn’t even any girl.

“Can you hear me?” the girl asked.

Mason looked around for her. She shimmered in front of him, back now. Then she was naked, then clothed, naked, like a painting, like The Birth of Venus, in watercolor, the details indistinct, the scar on her left shoulder mere suggestion.

There was a burning sensation on his left arm. He looked at his right, and saw nothing.

He wondered why his arms were flipped.

Then a flame began, and he knew it by its heat.

“Help me!” the girl shouted in his ear.

“What?” His voice was soft, weak to his own ear.

“I need you to help me here,” she said. But the girl in front of him wasn’t moving.

It’s a dream
, someone said. But the sound was inside Mason’s mind.
Wake up Mr Grey, or you will never make it to see Eila again. Something comes this way, and you’d better hurry. To get away.

The ghost of an image shimmered next to him, but all he could tell was that it was a man, and that it was struggling to stay here.

“Isla,” he muttered. He could hear the voice’s misspelling in his head. “It’s Isla.”

Get up. You have seven seconds, and then the flames will engulf you both, and then it will be too late.

Mason’s eyes opened. His arm burned, he was sweating, and his head hurt. He was still inside the wreck of his car. He saw steam through his windshield.

Someone was tugging on him.

He saw it was a woman. She was dressed very nicely. He hoped she didn’t ruin her clothes. “My seatbelt.” Mason reached down and unbuckled it.

He and the woman fell from the car. She tried to pull him away, but the seatbelt was caught on his right arm.

He flailed the arm, and the seatbelt came loose. The girl dragged him. His feet uprooted chunks of sad looking grass as they slipped trying to help, trying to get away from the heat and flames, from hellish image, the memory of something, of something sinister.

A cloud floated into his window, emanating from the nozzle of a red bottle held by a man Mason only now noticed.

The girl’s mouth was moving.

“What?” he asked, but his own voice made no sound.

The man kept spraying.

The girl helped Mason walk; he had trouble keeping balanced, but at least he wasn’t in pain.

The girl sat him down in her car, used her phone. He couldn’t hear what she was saying. She paced in front of him, hand on her forehead. On her hip. On her knee as she doubled over.

Her face glistened, and Mason realized he was sweating.

Eventually the man with the red bottle—the fire extinguisher, Mason realized—came over, and he and the girl talked. Mason recognized her from somewhere, but all he could think was that she was too young, and that didn’t make any damn sense, since he couldn’t tell where he knew her from, or if he even did.

The ambulance arrived seconds before the fire truck. Mason watched it carefully cut around his cloud-filled car.

Which was when he noticed where it was. Its tail had leapt the sidewalk and was smashed into a light post, which had absorbed it without apparent effect. He looked around for the truck that had hit him.

He turned in the girl’s car, felt a sharp pain, pushed anyway.

Nothing.

He looked again at his car. The passenger’s side—the side he’d been hit on—it was facing him, and yet, he didn’t see any evidence of damage. It was completely smooth, completely undamaged.

He told the police this, sitting there on the stretcher he didn’t quite remember getting on. Told them that the man who’d hit him must have run off. It was a big truck, he said.

The two officers interviewing him exchanged glances, put away their notepads. One nodded at the paramedic to take him away.

Mason wanted to say he was fine, that he didn’t need to go to the hospital, but he’d tried that, and they just nodded and told him how great he was doing, asked him again where his wallet was—in his car—and what his name and driver license number were.

He saw the girl who had saved him as the doors to the ambulance shut. She looked up, in his direction, but not at him. At something past him, slightly above. And her mouth fell open.