Frail Scaffolding

I come to with my foot still pressing the pedal. The engine isn’t dead, but I’m choking it with gasoline. It’s gargling, trying not to swallow. I’m slumped across the steering wheel, and I can taste the nylon airbag stuck to my lips. I push myself back in the seat and look down for blood and broken bones, but I’m fine. No. I’m better than fine. The scrapes across my knuckles, scabbed and healing since I brushed a cinder block days earlier, they’re gone. The rear-view mirror refuses to show the scar I’ve had across my forehead since I was two. My entire body seems unblemished.
   
This must be the euphoria that follows almost dying, but I don’t feel so much alive as I do changed.
   
I stare through the shattered windshield, past the car’s mangled front end, looking for what I hit. What hit me. I don’t see it, and I don’t know what to look for. It’s dark and raindrops are splashing against the dashboard and into my face. I’m halfway in a ditch on a backroad in rural Tennessee, a field of cows on my right and a forest of oaks and maples on my left. It’s a road I drive almost every day, two miles from home, but I can’t remember where I was going.

I feel through my pockets for my cell phone and dial 911. There’s nothing but static�"no voice, no operator. I call my girlfriend, and the same noise whispers through. It never rings. The screen says its 4:30 in the morning.
   
I open the car door and then I’m walking through the black, my eyes tracing the white line at the road’s edge. I count to sixty over and over until a half hour passes and I’m soaked and shivering. Dogs are barking somewhere behind me, and the sounds sweep over the hills around me in bursts, like someone’s tweaking the volume. I walk faster, but I can’t help but feel as if I’m being hunted, like the dogs have caught my scent. It takes fifteen more minutes before I spot my house, and I’m looking over my shoulder the entire time and at one point I even start to walk backwards just in case. Through the trees, I can see that no lights are on, Sara probably wrapped up and asleep in our bed. I’m off the road and in the driveway when I turn and look back the way I came. The road is empty, and I haven’t seen a car at all.
   
The front door is locked, so I fumble through my pockets, looking for my keys. They aren’t there. I left them in the car. I knock hoping to wake Sara, but she doesn’t answer. There's no spare key, no flowerpots or welcome mats, just an empty carport with oil stains. I walk around the house to our bedroom window and knock. The blinds are twisted shut, and I can’t see anything inside. I whisper Sara, wake up and tap for a minute without stopping. She never answers. I feel like she’s not even there.
   
I’m checking for unlocked windows, trying to slide each pane up with my thumbs, when I hear a faint thudding from the road. With each thump, it’s coming closer. I work faster, and finally I pop a window open and hoist myself into the bathroom. With my hands pressed against the cold tile floor and my feet still resting along the window frame, I hear barks, the same as from earlier. My nerves react and send a creeping pulse through my body, starting in my toes and ending at the base of my neck. I gather myself up and run into the living room to see, through a window, two of them in full sprint, their mouths wide. Their fur, drenched with rain, clings to their skin, and I can see every muscle in their shoulders vibrating as they drive their paws into the pavement. They’re both solid black and the moonlight only catches in their pale green eyes. No streetlights to help me determine their size, but their eyes are at least three feet from the asphalt.
   
I scream for Sara to wake up, but as soon as my voice dissipates through the walls, the house is silent. The dogs have reached the edge of the yard, and they both veer from the road and into the grass, coming straight toward me. I make sure the door is secure and then drag a bookshelf in front of it for extra weight. Both dogs hit the door headfirst without slowing down, and the bookshelf slides back with the force, spilling paperbacks onto the floor.  But the lock holds. They’re scratching at the frame, but they don't seem strong enough to break it.
  
I sit on the floor with my back against the bookshelf, listening to the dogs struggle against the wood. My clothes are still wet with rain, and I wrestle my shirt over my head and throw it across the room. My heart is trembling inside my chest and creating ripples across my skin. I put my head between my knees to drive out all the noise, but the dogs are still there. I feel like they’re getting tired, though. I hear them panting, and the scratching isn't so violent now. I close my eyes.
   
Shards of glass brush my feet. One of the dogs has found a low window around the side of the house, and he’s leapt through it. He’s on top of me. I grab his muzzle with both hands, but he shakes me off and lunges. His teeth lock around my left collarbone, and he twists back and forth, dragging me. His fur smells like smoke. I curl my legs into my chest and kick hard against his stomach. His teeth tear out of me as he slides across the floor. I get to my knees, and he rushes me again. I catch his head under my right arm and tighten my grasp around his neck. I wrap my legs around his back, pull him in close, squeeze his ribcage. He’s writhing and his drool spills down my back, thick and warm. His windpipe caves, making him gargle and gasp for air, but I keep choking him until he’s quiet. Even after I know he’s dead, I hold on. His throat is flimsy when I finally let go.
   
The second dog is still outside, but he's managed to crack the frame enough to push his nose between the door and the wall, using it like a wedge to pry the door open. I walk backward from the living room to the hallway with my eyes on him, watching him squirm, inside the house up to his ears now. He's making the bookshelf wobble. At the end of the hallway, I put my hands above my head to breathe more air, and I know that if I give him enough time, he’ll force his way inside. I sprint down the hallway and back into the living room, putting my shoulder forward and launching myself into the bookshelf. The door snaps shut on him, and his skull collapses just behind his ear. I open the door wide and slam it on him again. He’s bleeding from his ears and his nose. I drag him onto the carport by his hind legs.
   
When I come back inside, I go straight to the bathroom and puke in the toilet. I yell through the wall to where Sara should be, telling her to find help, to call the police, that something is so wrong. She doesn’t answer, and when I walk into the bedroom, just like I’ve felt all along, she isn’t there. The bed is unmade and empty. The hours before I wrecked are nowhere in my mind. If there’s some way to find her, I don’t know what it is.
  
I use the full-length mirror on our closet door to look for the dog bite. There’s no blood on my chest, and when I move my skin around with my fingers, searching for teeth marks, I can’t find any punctures. I turn back and forth in the light, thinking it’s the shadows keeping me from seeing the wound, but my shoulder isn’t the least bit sore. I pull the lamp from our bedside table, stripping it of its shade, and hold it above my head, spilling light across my entire left side. I see nothing but pale skin. There is no dog bite.
   
The living room is in shambles, and the dog that was sprawled lifeless across the floor ten minutes before, the dog whose neck I broke, he’s gone. The floor is scattered with glass and dotted with muddy dog tracks, and rain drifts in from the broken window, saturating the curtains. Bits of dog hair are caught on the glass that’s left in the window frame. The bookshelf holds half the books it did before, the rest strewn from the door to the hallway.  I open the door and peer out to the carport. That dog is gone too.
   
For the first time, I stop to hope that maybe all of this is some vivid nightmare. Maybe I’m asleep next to Sara in our bed, maybe our living room isn’t destroyed, and maybe I didn’t crash my car two miles from home. Usually once I realize I’m dreaming, it’s easy to wake up�"I just calm down and open my eyes. I try it, but it doesn’t work. I’m still in this living room, in this one-bedroom house, in this rural town soaked with rain. My car is still abandoned in a ditch, and I’m still winded from killing two dogs. I slam my foot in the door to try to scare myself awake. It hurts, but I’m still here. I sit on the floor and grab a sliver of glass, tracing it up and down my thigh, pressing it against my jeans hard enough to make a dimple. If the glass is real, the dogs had to have been real too. I lift it and stab down into my leg. My eyes water, and there’s fire from my knee to my hip. I’m sure I’ve hit the bone, but when I wipe the tears away and look down, I don’t see any blood. The glass is there, inches deep, but my body isn’t reacting to it. It’s like it only hurts because I know it’s supposed to, a socialized response. I pull the glass out, still transparent and bloodless. My leg is fine. My jeans aren’t even ripped.
   
For now I’m stuck inside this place, invincible, either dreaming or crazy, and all I can think about is Sara. I walk back to our bedroom because it’s warmer there. I move to the wall plastered from top to bottom with discolored photographs, sift through all the pictures for the one Sara took of us the day we moved here, and pull it down. I rub my thumb across her face, hoping to feel the curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw, but all I touch is polished paper. I lie back on the bed, trying to remember the day we took it. Anywhere is better than here.
   
I hear rushing water. We're on the bank of a river, Sara and I, standing with our hands entwined. She asks me why we're here. I say because it's beautiful, that's all, but she knows I’m lying. She's curious because I haven't told her anything, because she doesn't even know where we are. She feels awkward, I can see.
   
"I just want to spend the day with you."
   
"OK," she says, turning toward me, "what's the plan?"
   
I pull a beach towel out of the canvas pack I'm carrying, spread it across the ground, and pour the bag's contents--a plastic camera, lenses, and film--onto the towel.
   
"I thought we--well, I thought you could take some pictures, " I say. "It's an old camera, but it works."
   
"You aren't going to take any?" she asks me.
   
"I don't think so. I kind of want it to just be you, if that's OK. I want to see what you see."
   
She smiles at me and sifts through the lenses, picking up the 110mm telephoto lens and flipping it over and back with her thumbs.
   
"Is this one OK, do you think?"
   
"Yea, it's perfect."
   
She leads the way with me following her, grabbing my hand and walking down the river bank to the water's edge. She kneels with the camera at her face and tells me to skip a rock across, as far as I can. I find a flat one and throw it sidearmed into the current. She snaps the shutter open.
    "
I hope that worked," she says.
   
We continue like this for hours, walking down the riverbank on dry rocks, stopping to take pictures of trees and birds and flowers and sky. It's early autumn. The leaves blend together in a thousand shades of green, red, orange, and yellow. The sun is straining to bring out every color. If dying always looked so beautiful, sadness wouldn't exist.
   
When the sun starts to fall behind the hills, we sit down on a rock that juts into the river. I put my arm around her, kiss her forehead.
   
"So, you're wondering why I brought you here," I say.
  
 "No. I'm just waiting for you to tell me."
   
I swirl my index finger around in the water and speak with my head down. "I really did bring you here because it's beautiful, but there's something else, too. I want you to love this place. I thought you would if you saw it. I got an offer to teach here, at the primary school. I know it's in the middle of nowhere. There's hardly anyone our age here. I feel like I can help these kids, though. I don't feel stupid saying that to you. I would if you were someone else. I want you to come with me. I know it sounds really boring, but I promise--"
   
She puts a hand to my lips. "Are you going to let me answer?"
   
"It depends," I say. "I'd rather keep talking if you're going to say no."
  
"I was going to say that I'd love to."
  
I look at her. "You would?"
   
"Of course I would."
   
"Just like that?"
   
"No, not just like that. I'm not doing this on a whim. Wherever you go, I go. I've always felt like that."
   
My eyes well up, so I grab her and pull her to me. Her hair smells like green apples against my face. I hear her sniffling. I hold her until she pulls away and looks at me.
   
"You have to promise me one thing, though," she says. "You have to promise me that if you're unhappy here, you'll tell me, and if I’m unhappy, you'll listen when I tell you. And if it turns out this place isn't for us, I get to pick the next one." She grins at the last part.
   
I say, "I promise," and kiss her hard on the mouth. She tells me to smile and clicks a picture of the two of us, our faces flush with wind.
   
The camera's flash melts my daydream. I'm back in our bedroom, face up on our bed. My vision is speckled with out-of-focus orbs, my eyes adjusting. I stand up, still unsteady, and walk to the wall, searching for the pictures Sara took of us that day on the riverbank. The promise I made to her seems half-kept at best. It's not that we weren't happy here, but this town’s monotony robbed us of our spontaneity. It seemed so gorgeous when we moved here, but it turned out to be just another place to eat, work, and sleep. We based our entire future on a little river that wound through Tennessee hills until it collided with a bigger river that swallowed it whole. This little town swallowed us whole. If Sara were here now, I'd tell her I was sorry for seeing everything but her. I'd tell her that, in the end, everything I've ever needed--everything I need right now--is beating inside her chest. I'd lock us inside and never leave.
   
This world around me, with its drooling dogs and pouring rain, has me trapped without an exit, but it hasn't broken me. I've stabbed myself and drawn no blood. I'm in control. If this world can bend, then I can shatter it. I see its frail scaffolding, and I'm poised to tear it down.
   
All of these snapshots taped to the wall, I rip them down and carry them to the living room. I make a circle out of them on the floor and sit in the middle of it, my own makeshift séance. I close my eyes and pray to Jesus and Shiva and Muhammad and Mary and Moses and Chenrezig and all the other gods I never believed in. I beg them to let me have her. I say to them, if you give her to me, you can have all the rest. The wind starts to wail, piercing the house through the broken window and struggling to lift the roof off. The pictures swirl into a funnel around me. In my mind, there's an endless braid of rope pulled tight. On one end is my heart, on the other end, Sara's. I'm pulling with every pound of me, the rope slicing deep into my palms. I hear a crack that sounds like thunder, but when rain hits my face, I know it's the roof that's gone. I keep dragging her closer, and I can feel her heart pulsating through the rope, like I’m gripping some sort of primitive EKG. All of the house's walls fold, one by one, until there's nothing left but floor and foundation. Most of the furniture has been sucked into the sky, but somehow, I haven't flinched. I'm not afraid of anything this world can do. I haven't even opened my eyes. I can here Sara now, faintly, and I concentrate on her face with everything inside me. I tell her to scream. She screams. I tell her, that's good, but it has to be louder. She listens, and all I hear is her. There's no wind, no rain, no house, no dogs. Just us. It's like giving birth and dying and everything in between. I pull her into this world through a hole the size of a pin. She's lying here, unconscious in my arms.

Author's Note

The biggest concern I have with this story is how confusing it is. I'm not making it confusing on purpose, but I've struggled with making it more explicit and clear without jeopardizing some of the elements of what is going on. So, my biggest question to any reviewer would be, "What's confusing and why?"