Ditching out of the critical moment in
which all human interaction up until that point hinged on the ability
to provide proper feedback, analysis, or commentary for the topic at
hand was sort of my specialty. Take my current situation for example.
Instead of wondering why a man had just taken a wallet from a surgical table and placed it inside the pocket of
his hoodie, a medical examiner and a police officer were now asking me if I needed any medical attention.
Misdirection is the single greatest
tool in the arsenal of a medium. Without adhering to a life of
underhanded secrecy, the world would still be committing great
atrocities and hunting down people that were seen as odd. I
rolled to one side and moaned.
“You gave us quite a scare. Are you
diabetic? I've never seen anyone take a tumble like that without any
warning at all. Here sit up.”
I hunched over my knees closing off the
pocket of my hoodie with my arm.
“Jim, go and get him something to eat
out of the vending machine.”
I faked a helpless grunt of compliance.
“So, you were saying something about
your brother.”
Quinn sat down on the gurney beside the
dead body so that he could make faces at the blond corpse. The first
day after his accident had been hell. The hospital tried to refuse his
treatment at first. When they did agree to admit him, he had a bad
reaction to some form of medication and slipped out of consciousness.
That was the first time that I met him out of body. He didn't talk. His face slowly healed and then smashed back in just like the accident. He bled
everywhere but didn't leave a trail. His eye was a constant problem.
Even though he wasn't in pain,he screamed mostly. The trauma of
existing in some other state confused him. It left him terrified.
Worst of all, no one saw him. Except me.
He had other brothers that would have
suited him better. Neal was an accountant. He lived in Chicago
though. He never wrote anyone or sent a message acknowledging that anyone in the family was real. Nonetheless, he and Quinn bonded well during childhood.
Also, there's Ajax. He worked construction jobs
with Quinn during college. The two were inseparable as soon as
football season began. They spent hours just talking about their
dream teams while they were younger.
Then, there's me. Stuart. Who can't
keep a job or a girlfriend. A college dropout without any goals or
aspirations looking to skirt by with a low end gig at anything that
pays him well enough to keep a roof over his worthless head. The kid
with an irrational fear of holding a six minute conversation with
anyone. I reside low on the list of people whom should be contacted
in case of after death phenomena. But, in a hospital full of nurses
gossiping to fight off the tiredness of their shift, family members
pouring another serving of burnt coffee into a small styrofoam cup,
cold waiting rooms with one black fly which always bothered
the person most awake and aware of the future, and a man with his
metal walker battling back the progression of his own cancerous death in a
sterile, white, coffin surrounded by electronic instruments measuring
just how much life he has left inside him instead of notifying him of the warm, colorful faces visiting to tell him just how much of his life he gave to them, Quinn
walked up to me. That was two years ago and since then I've learned
much about how he came back and never why.
Spectres are individuals who die in
horrible ways. Quinn was not an exception to this rule. When the car
hit him, it was racing at 70 mph. The driver was ejected from his
seat because he failed to wear a seatbelt. In truth, not wearing the
belt was probably what saved the driver's life. As Quinn was struck by
the oncoming vehicle, his body folded in upon itself as if a giant
hand squeezed his left side like an empty beer can at a frat party. He contorted as the car continued to
move, finally landing at his final resting place as he flew through
the windshield and into the back seat. Hitting the brakes at the
exact moment of impact flung the driver from his position. He lost
momentum whenever his body collided momentarily with Quinn's, as both
pedestrian and driver switched places. This provided the driver's
body with enough friction to slow down his ascent and surprisingly
he landed on his feet, perfectly unscathed. Eight hours later
Philip, the driver, committed suicide.
When I began seeing Quinn as a
spectre, I chose to ignore him. I just walked around the hospital
with my dead brother following me like an injured dog. It's not
something that I thought I needed to bring up to anyone during a
family crisis. It surely wouldn't have gone over well. There was a
moment when I turned around and he wasn't there anymore, immense relief.
However, I soon received a text from Ajax. He's up. I went to see him. He couldn't talk.
There were so many tubes. One down his throat, the standard I.V.,
units of blood, a breathing apparatus. His eyes opened the size of half dollars beholding some frightful presence which no one could pinpoint. He'd
look at us, his face swollen and veins bulging, through the glass. Medical personnel, running grabbing needles, medicine, more blood, they tried everything that they knew to do. It's not humanly
possible to reconstruct the entire left side of the skeletal frame and replace each vital organ in
such a short amount of time. His heart rate lowered, spiked, and
after a few more moments the doctor finally looked at his wristwatch.
“He's
been glassy eyed for the past ten minutes. It's probably just his
blood sugar.”
The
officer bent down and waved four chubby fingers in my face. “I GOT
YOU A SNACK. I NEED YOU TO EAT. CAN YOU EAT?”
I
nodded. Quinn laughed, an unknown liquid bubbling out of his ear.
