Serpent’s Tooth

Damned room so hazy with smoke he can barely see, much less think. He’s killed some blunts and most of a bottle during the past twelve hours. It hasn’t helped, but he didn’t really expect it to. Did it out of habit, mostly.

Abruptly, his throat closes. A sense of suffocation and panic sets in.

Oh God.

No, no, don’t even think that Name!

Lurching to his feet, he grabs the leather jacket lying on the floor and staggers to the door, wrenching it open.

The sun chooses that moment to burst out of the water, a blood-red globe escaping from the smothering blackness of the waves, blasting the dark of the sky with purifying fire.

     Briefly, he’s dazzled by the sunlight. For a moment, he cowers before it, hands held out as if in supplication.

His thoughts are a confused muddle of defiance and pleading.

Welcome, Light of God! Come, sear me, burn me, reduce me to ashes. If only I could be cleansed so easily.

With a shudder, he steps onto the porch and pulls the door shut, locks it and tosses the key into the hedge.

Let whoever comes after me hunt for it.

The Testarossa is waiting outside the ornamental metal fence.

Usually, the car seeks the sanctuary of the garage, its haven against the salt air that pits the satin of its blood-red hide.

Blood-red…Heart’s-blood….

    Last night, he didn’t care about the ’Rossa’s welfare. He skidded it into the fence. There’s a deep gash in the right fender, ripping through paint and undercoat, a corresponding bend in the guardian chain-link, a dent in the still opened door.

The headlights are still on. Damn it! Battery’s probably dead.

He tosses the jacket inside, turns for a single moment to stare back at the house.

One last look.

Goodbye, cruel world.

God, it’s so melodramatic. He can hardly keep from laughing, or is that just the pot finally kicking in?

Without warning, the wind blows off the water, bitter with early-morning cold. It swirls around him, whipping the long black hair across his face. One strand tangles in the ring dangling from his left earlobe, ruffling the ends of the beaded headband tied to keep it out of his eyes.

He shrugs and gets into the car.

One more joint for the road?

Why the Hell not? So he’s smoked—how many—during the night? One more isn’t going to matter. He still isn’t high enough to bury the pain.

Or the memories.

He takes a deep breath, sucking in the acrid smoke greedily, and holds it several seconds before letting it trickle out the corner of his mouth. Where to go? What to do? What the fuck does it matter? Who’s going to care?

All he wants to do now is escape.

Disappear.

Perhaps…to die?

He has the answer.

Digging into the pocket of his jeans, he retrieves a quarter.

What a joke. Eighty thousand in his bank account, eight hundred bills in his wallet, a credit card with a ten thousand dollar limit, but all he has in his pocket is one miserable, little twenty-five cent piece. Is that irony or what?

Tossing the quarter into the air, he catches it and slaps it onto his wrist, then sits there, one hand clasping the back of the other, afraid to look.

Heads, he’ll drive South, down the Pacific Coast Highway.

There are two hair-pin curves between here and the beach. The early morning fog is rising off the water, creeping over the road. Already it‘s beginning to hide the cliff edge from sight. In a few minutes, visibility will be absolutely nonexistent.

With this much pot and alcohol in him, he’ll never made the first curve. He and the ’Rossa will do a beautiful and momentarily exhilarating swan-dive over the Pacific before smashing onto the rocks below and, with a little luck, what’s left will be washed out to sea and oblivion.

But there’s always Tails. If he should be that unlucky, he’ll head East.

Away from here, from this life, and just keep on driving until he runs out of money or gas, whichever comes first.

“Here goes nothing.”

He flips the coin, catches it and slaps it onto his wrist.

He takes a deep breath and lifts his hand, and begins to laugh, low, shaky, full of relief.

The back of the coin.

East.

To Escape.

He tosses the remains of the blunt out the window, and starts the ’Rossa’s engine. The spinning wheels toss sand into the air like an obscene parting gesture as he drives away, past the guard at the gate, flicking a finger in greeting—and farewell, though the man doesn’t know it yet.

Out of the Dream Factory and its make-believe life....

...but not its memory.