700 Degrees pt. 2 I calmly walked to the bathroom, calmly turned on the light, calmly opened the medicine cabinet over the sink, calmly looked for and found the orange white-labeled Ephedrine Vatronol. Then, not so calmly--my palms broke out into a cold sweat--I held, looked at, and dreaded the two red pills. They weren't so much red like blood, but red like wet flagstone. Flagstone wet with blood. You'd think I was reading my own palm, trying to divine the deep meanings of my hand, or contemplating cutting my hand off, like that guy with the chin in those horror movies; the one where he's locked in the cabin and has to cut off his hand so it can be replaced with a chainsaw on the stump in the sequel. I snap back to reality and dry swallow the pills, leaving a slightly sour rusty taste down the back of my throat, the roof of my mouth and the top of my tongue. After that, I didn't really worry about the alarm. Imagine twenty cups of coffee, big ones, spiked with the crackling electricity of God's own brain. Imagine that and you're close to how you'd feel with 100 milligrams of Ephedrine Vatronol in you. I can see how high school girls get addicted to Dexotrim. I can understand why bodybuilders buy Ephedrine enhanced energy bars. I had forgotten how good you can feel on prescription amphetamines. I could tell Beth I loved her, take her old man over bread, and take all of the patrons that would try to hold me down. I could fight everyone in my paranoid vision of dinner. I could fight God right now, and win. I got to Pannucci's early. I left the apartment way before six-thirty. I was just pacing around my hovel like a caged tiger. I couldn't stay inside. The air was cold, burning, freezer burning my lungs with each tidal breath. I noticed how cigarettes taste better in the crisp night air. I stopped by my usual haunt, the local corner store where I buy the whatever-the-opposite-of-sleeping-aids-are. The clerk and I found our way into small talk quickly enough. "Haven't seen you around lately." "Nope. I've been staying in," I explained. I was trying not to stutter. Sometimes the drugs made me do that when my brain is a Ferrari and my mouth is a Ford Pinto. "Your usual?" He looked at me like a dog waiting for a treat, a treat for simply remembering me. "No, just a pack of filters this time." "Not buying them in bulk anymore?" He was yelling because he had his back turned to me, grabbing my smokes from the rack. I noticed his eyes got stuck looking at a porn magazine next to the cigarettes. "I don't need to stock up right now," I said after he muttered something about needing to get laid. "No luck with women," I ask, venturing into unfamiliar territory with my corner store pal. "You try picking up a girl when you work at some 7-11 knock-off," he shot back, agitated. "I'm a narcoleptic." "Damn. That makes us just about even," he says. Then, he laughs. I don't join in. "Let me ask you a weird question...if you don't mind?" "Shoot," he says. "What do you think love is like?" "Shhhheeee-it." He stares off over my shoulder for a minute. If there's someone behind me in line, I don't care. I don't even turn around. He turns away from me and I trace an invisible line from his eyes to the porn. The woman on one of covers was spreading herself open wide enough I was pretty sure I could see what she had for lunch. The headline read: THESE CUNTS ARE WET AND MADE FOR FUCKING! The one next to it advertised someone called Bridgette the Midget taking on dicks bigger than her. Neither lit my pants on fire, so to speak. He looked back to me, his face became relaxed. Behind his eyes was an epiphany. "Love is when you jerk it to your woman instead of some blonde in a magazine." He had a satisfied look after he said that and even after I was well on my way. I could tell he was thinking of someone else, someone that may have been lost to him, that he was going to "jerk it" to later. Someone that wasn't a blonde in some magazine. I ended up at the restaurant at ten till seven. I looked around the place, eyes jumping left to right, right to left, trying to find the only familiar face I knew. The only face I found was that of the hostess, mere inches away from mine and asking if I needed any help. She asked in a way that let me know she had a research paper due soon and instead of writing it, in hopes of not ever being a hostess again, she was dealing with a sweaty nervous me milling about anxiously. "No, no. I'm just meeting someone here." "Party name?" Her voice was brimming with razorblades and boric acid. "I don't know," I told her. "I'm meeting my...uh, girlfriend's parents for the first time. I think it's, um, Staples?" "Lucky you," her voice had become friendly and soft. "That would explain why you're all sweaty," she said and giggled. "They haven't arrived yet. Why don't you have a seat at the bar, have a relaxing drink and I'll find you when they get here, okay?" She smiled. So did I, I didn't have it in me to explain why I was really sweaty. Vatronol was renown for its side effects: tremors and hypertension. I kept waiting for my doctor to walk into the bar, casually take a seat next to me, look over with that concerned look doctors must be taught, and then soundly slap me for ever entertaining the thought of mixing my meds with booze. I still retired to the bar, but for a club soda and a cigarette. I chain-smoked three until the hostess found me and rescued me from the prying bartender. He seemed convinced I was having girl problems, and if not, then boy problems. I have never wanted to light a person on fire more in my entire life. But from the frying pan into the fire now. The hostess led me to a cozy table in the back that I'm sure Mr. Staples had greased some palms to get. Beth and Mr. Staples stood up as I was about to sit down. I started a little as Beth's father stuck out his hand like a five-pronged cobra striking venom-fanged at the man screwing "daddy's lil girl." "Anthony Staples. Call me Tony." God would be jealous of this man's voice and it boomed from his body, a body that was a barrel with tree trunk arms and legs with a pumpkin-sized head on top. This man could crush me just as easily as he did in my vision. "Uh, hi Mr. Tony. I mean..." "No need to be nervous, son. This isn't a Senate sub-committee meeting." He laughed like Jabba the Hutt, ready to freeze me in a block. My heart was going like a race horse; one of those tired old nags the mob jabs with a syringe to beat the long odds. "Sit down, son. My wife...my ex-wife will be out of the can soon." "Daaaaaad..." "Bethy's worried I might be a little too rough around the edges for you." "Oh no, not all sir." Then, the "Jabba" laugh again. I could feel it rattle through my body like bass at a rock show. "Sir? Only telemarketers call me 'sir.' I told you, call me Tony. And I didn't catch yours Mister…?" "Juno, Michael Juno." "Just like James Bond, huh?" That laugh again. "Only not a spy, British, or smooth." The utter truth came out as a joke. "This one is clever, Beth. Hang on to him." The way he talked, I could see Tony coaching a Texas football team. I was feeling at ease and about to find out what he actually did for a living but Beth and her dad stood up abruptly. I sensed someone behind me and it stood to reason that it was the aforementioned Mrs. Staples. I doubted they would get up just for the waitress to take our drink orders. As I began to stand up, I heard that booming voice of Tony's thunder. "Michael, this is Beth's mother, Vicky." I meant to say "pleased to meet you, ma'am," as I turned to face her. I meant to shake her hand, sit back down, order water with lemon and the fettuccini Alfredo and enjoy the rest of my life. I would have loved to do anything else (even a triple root canal with a lobotomy chaser both without the drugs) then turn around and see Beth's mother. She was the same woman that was the eye of my father's storm all those years ago. I would have rather been lit on fire, like I had wanted to do to the bartender, than meet this woman. Meet her again, I mean. She was Beth's mother...and mine. I must have fainted, and when I say "must have," I mean I know I did. My eyes fluttered open like butterfly wings, my eyes focused slowly on all of those useless angels hovering over me. They weren't from cloud nine as much from table nine. I could hear Beth and her parents telling people to give me some air. I could hear other patrons asking what those burns on my arms were. I could hear the blood rushing, pumping, in my ears like an ocean's hiss and crash on the shore. My vision cleared to the point where I realized I was on the floor, looking up. Did I fall asleep? My hands, still tingling from the pills, told me no. Then, as I felt people lifting me, helping me to my feet, asking if they needed to call a doctor, I looked at Beth's mother. My mother. My knees buckled and my stomach lurched. Her eyes caught mine. I knew she didn't recognize me. She was looking at me with a mother-in-law's concern instead of a mother's terror. She didn't realize her grandchildren would have a good chance at having thirteen webbed toes and eyes so close together the right eye would be in the left socket and the left eye in the right's. The kids would all be named "Jed," regardless of gender. Urban, pyromaniac, narcoleptic hillbillies. I get to my feet, waving weakly to the room. I make it seem like I'm okay, that I faint all the time. Beth's parents understood when I said I should go home and lay down. They even offered to drive me there, but the thought of my mother trying to get to know me as a son-in-law made me want to jab sharp things into my brain. An ice pick, a straightened paperclip, a spoon, whatever would be handy. I declined and that the cool night air would clear my head. No one was as thrilled as me that I was leaving. Bethany had been so excited to finally meet a guy to introduce to her parents. A few words from her dad about a rain check quelled her. I said it was nice to meet them, to her parents, and that I'd call her tomorrow, to Bethany. I shook her father's hand, gave her/my mother an awkward hug, and gave Beth an even more awkward kiss goodnight. I couldn't figure out why the soft breeze outside was cutting at my face like a razor. I didn't know I was crying until I sniffed and wiped away the wetness with the back of my hand. I didn't cry when any of my grandparents died. I didn't cry when my mother left me to my father. I didn't cry when the doctors told me about the narcolepsy and whatever remnants of a real life I had were smashed and scattered away forever. I was crying because I had found the perfect girl, the One, and she was my long lost sister. I love my sister, but in the worst possible way. The new cigarette burns didn't bleed much on account of the cauterization. I had stopped by the corner store and bought a new carton. I didn't utter a word. I just pointed, paid, and left. I chain-smoked, hoping I would fall asleep to wake up to smoke inhalation, an inescapable couch fire and a great sleep. You know, the Great Sleep. Instead, I woke up to cough up something so much like a wet, tar-covered cat that I expected it to mew. It was still dark when I woke up; I had only been out for several hours. The clock said one-thirty. I looked around for a new pack of smokes, but what caught my eye was the red gas can in the corner. I got up and grabbed it. I was out the door before one-forty five. I told my man at the corner store, whose nametag he was finally wearing that proclaimed him to be "Matt," that I was in a hurry. "Where's the fire," he said laughing. "Anywhere I want," I said under my breath. "My girlfriend's car has run out of gas up the road." "Girlfriend, huh? That's where you've been spending your nights?" He laughed again. My new burns were starting to itch. "Yeah, sure, whatever. None of your damn business, really." "Jeez, just joking, man." He looked at me like I was breaking up with him for another store clerk. "Sorry, uh...Matt. I'm in a hurry, you know?" He sold me the gas and a snatched up a handful of matches on my way out. I wandered around, blinding ducking down side streets and dark alleys until I found some familiar sights. Sights like boarded-up windows and gangs wearing their colors and talking loud enough to be tough but not enough to do anything about it or anything illegal. I ended up standing in front of a broken down, sagging warehouse. It looked like it had been converted into an apartment building at some point. It looked so fucking familiar but I just couldn't put my finger on it. It was liked someone had dreamt it and then described it to me. It must've been that I'd passed it hundreds of times before. That had to be it. The security door wasn't all that secure as I walked in. The place was three stories tall. I didn't notice any of the windows lit up, but that didn't mean no one was home. I yelled at, knocked on and listened through every door with a number on it just to make sure I was alone. Nothing. No one yelled back or moved around. I was safe. I found some old drapery in a decaying hallway and soaked it in gas. I lightly splashed fuel in almost every empty corner I could find. Using the drapes as a wick, I lit the place up like a fucking Christmas tree. As I was running out, I dropped the gas can that I thought was empty. It hit the floor. It hit my foot and I joined the gas can on the floor. The cap had shot off and my back was drenched from where I fell. I stood up and realized my front was as sopping as my back. Shit! I had to run, praying I'd make it past the door in case I fell asleep. Not only did I not fall asleep to wake up and die, but I made it half way down the block before I bent over and had a coughing fit from the gas fumes and smoke inhalation. The fit subsided almost like it was cued and I noticed someone was walking towards me. I didn't see them when I was running, but there they were. Their pace quickened and they started waving at me. I wasn't ready to run again, but I was damn well going to try. I'd just sprint past them and never look back. That was the plan until...until they said my name. They yelled it. With Bethany's voice. With my girlfriend's/sister's/partner in felony's voice. How the hell did she find me? No one knew when I left the apartment. My trail had been too erratic to follow. "Beth?" "Yeah. What are you doing here? I thought you'd be at home." "I was, uh...just taking a walk around, I guess. What are you doing over here?" "You jackass," she laughed, "I live right down..." She leaned to peer past me. "...the block?" As her eyes met with the blaze I suddenly realized that the place didn't look familiar from passing it as much as it did from walking Beth there last week. "You gigantic asshole!" She lunged at me, fists flailing, ready to beat my chest through my back. I hugged her, and when I say "hugged," I mean wrapped my arms around her to hold her and stop with all the hitting. "Was this because of dinner?" she cried into my shoulder. "You're the one who flipped out and...What the fuck is that smell?" I shrugged with her still in my arms. "You lit my home on fire." She pulled away and looked into my eyes, searching for reason. I let her go and fished in my pockets for cigarettes. I found the pack and slid two out, handing one to her. After the first drag, a deep one, I spilled the beans. Or my guts. Whatever you want to call it, I spilled them. I told her we had the same mother. I told her about the visions of our children, which I visibly shivered during. Her mouth hung open like the muscles in her jaw were the only things keeping it attached. Her eyes took up half of her face, wide with shock and despair and welling with tears. When I was done explaining the situation, our situation, she was crying buckets. I had no idea what specific facet impacted or disturbed her the most. She was shaking so hard I had to light her cigarette for her. She watched the cigarette's dull orange glow. She watched a stray ember fly off and land on the sleeve of her jacket. She watched herself become engulfed by the flames. She watched me, standing like a sweaty statue of horror as I realized what that smell she had asked about was. I backed away, holding my arms out, warding her off. She didn't scream. In fact, she didn't make a sound except for the crackling of her skin, hair and clothes literally going up in smoke. She lifted her arms and flapped them like she was trying to fly. If she was trying to shake the flames loose, or fan them larger, I couldn't tell. Maybe she was trying to fly. Her eyes kept jumping from her left arm, to me, and then to her right arm and back to me. I watched her burn like a Salem witch until she gave up the fight and fell to the ground. She didn't move as much as just lay there doing her best impression of a smoldering bit of newspaper. Finally, I looked away crying. Through the blurry filter of tears I could see the blackened skeletal remains of Beth's home behind me. People were beginning to gather around the building. Sirens were wailing in the distance, threatening my freedom. I took one last look at Bethany. I knelt down and kissed her scorched warm forehead. I could taste the soot on my lips and the smell of burnt hair of my eyebrows charring. Then, I ran. I ran until my legs and lungs burned like a coal engine, blasting dry heat through me. I ran until I stopped. When I say "stopped," I mean collapsed. I collapsed like some wobbly new-borne colt. My shirt was soaked with pungent sweat. My blast furnace lungs were exhaling breathes in thick clouds of steam in the chilled air. Luckily, I had collapsed, exhausted, on the front steps of my building. I made my way inside and sat unmoving on the couch until the bruised black sky on the other side of the window turned a soft pink with the impending sunrise. I never saw it on account of the vomiting. I spent most of the morning watching my guts leave my body and end up on the floor. I would stare blankly at the soiled carpet and wonder, every time I was overcome by a dry heave, how much I had left in me until this would end. I spent my afternoon trying to breathe evenly and stop my stomach from exiting my body. I wanted to die for forty minutes at some point. I had had dinner with my sister's parents. I had hugged the mother that left my father for "Aunt Susan" and then left her for Bethany's dad. All of Beth's and my talks on our first night together began to gel together and fill in the blanks. The pieces were put together and the picture was of me fucking my sister. It was not, to say the least, a pretty picture. I went off to be sick again. It was sundown before I was able to keep Ramen noodles down enough to regain my strength. It would sundown before I had the courage to do what I had to do, whether I wanted to or not. When I say "courage," I mean not throwing up when I found Beth's parents in the phonebook. In the background of my yellow-paged journey, the nine o'clock news droned on and on about a warehouse district fire that had claimed a life of one of its tenants. The news regarded Bethany as a sad and tragic statistic, not the love of my life, not as a well-off pyromaniac, not as someone's daughter, and certainly not like an actual person. It took another half day of falling asleep to wake-up to dry heave to fall asleep to wake-up...to actually get out of the apartment. It was like every step I took left an imprint on the bleak gray sidewalks from the weight of the lead cross I was shouldering. I'd wonder if Jesus had it any harder before the nails went in. It wasn't just that the steps felt heavy, every one of them seemed to take a good hour to take. I felt like some poor insect trapped in amber as the world passed me by in regular time. It felt like years until I was standing face-to-door to the brownstone that the phonebook listing had led me to. The buzzer sounded like an electric chair when I pushed the button. The voice that came through was enough like the choppy audio you get when you were at some fast-food drive-through that after it said "hello" I half-expected it to follow-up with "would like fries with that?" "It's me. Um. Michael Juno." "Who?" "Beth's, er, boyfriend? We met at dinner a couple of nights ago?" Silence, then: "Come up, son. We'll buzz you in." Beth's dad's voice didn't seem that intimidating when it came across like the droning of a giant bee. I walked in, the door making that same electric chair sound. I had only seen ante rooms in my mind when I read Dashell Hammet novels. Sam Spade would reveal it certainly was the butler that had done it. Then, he would get the girl. This wasn't going to be anything like the books. Except for the nervous air of the ante room. The parents looked like they had been up all night crying. It made me feel guilty that I didn't look the same. "Did you hear the news?" Her mother, Mom, had a lump the size of a bowling ball, and about the same weight by the sounds of it, stuck in her throat. "The news?" It didn't occur to me that I didn't pay attention to the news because I was there. "She—my baby..." Tony hugged his wife close as she chocked and sobbed. "Beth died in a fire the night of the dinner." A brick wall couldn't hold a candle to my blank stare. "Son? You okay?" The passive look stayed plastered on my face. "The ceremony will be two days from now at the Heart of Life church on 34th. You're more than welcome to be there. Maybe say a couple of words." Tony's eyes bore an imploring hole in me, waiting for me to say something, anything. The inertness of my face broke into rage. "She was NOT your baby! I was!" A storm broke in my head and in my heart. Its thunder escaped my mouth, snarling and howling. "You care when she's burnt to crisp, but never gave a second thought about leaving me to that alcoholic monster." Mom span around, a disfigured caricature of her face from tears left behind on Tony's shirt. "What?" "Michael, I know Bethy's death comes as a shock to us all, but I don't believe you're thinking clearly." I shot Tony a stare that had icicles hanging off of it. "After I left, after dinner, what did tell her my name was?" "What?" Tony's composure was slipping on account of the confusion. "What did you tell her," I pointed at Mom like you would point a gun, "my name was? I know we were never properly introduced." In a voice like a door mouse tiptoeing on a pillow, Mom said, "Michael." "How about my last name?" "Look, I don't know what's going on, but I think we need to take a minute and calm down." "This is a family matter, Tony." "And what the Hell does that mean, exactly?" "That means only Juno's allowed." My icy stare moved to Mom. Mom's eyes got big. Scary big. "What?" "Before Vicky Staples, you were Victoria Juno." "Oh my God..." I knew the world was spinning and all the walls were coming down around her as her eyes started matching my features to her memories. She hit the ground hard enough for Tony and I to wince and make our knees hurt by sheer empathy. It was into her hands she cried into now. "I don't know what kind of sick game you're playing at, but it stops here." Tony started to approach his new stepson with all intent to harm me, or at the very least eject me out of their home and lives. My boiling rage dialed down to a simmer. "This woman is my mother and she has every right to know." Tony stopped a few steps shy of me. His face twisted grotesque as his eyes let me know he had finally crossed the finish line in this insane race. "Get out." He said it as coldly as my stares had been. As I turned towards the door, Mom spoke up. "Wait." I didn't turn to face her. "It isn't your fault." I didn't wonder what that meant as the door closed behind me with a definitive slam. I stood outside the brownstone and watched the sky lurch and the slate colored clouds recoil on themselves and begin to piss rain. The moment couldn't have scripted better if it had been in a book or a movie. Then the sound of the door being slammed shut again. I turned to look. The door was just as closed as it was when I left. Then, I heard a pained roar escape from behind one of the upper level's windows. I realized that the sound wasn't a door slamming, but a report of a handgun. The handgun that had pulped the skull and brains of the woman that had given me life, given Beth life. The woman that I had driven to suicide. I couldn't tell if it was the rain or tears running down my face as I started the long walk back to my apartment. Through the red haze of bloodshot eyes, I noticed the 34th street sign. I took a left. My eyes stayed on my feet, watching the shuffling and the ripples of the puddles from the cold depressing rain. I only looked up when I was basking in the warm glow of the lights of the Heart of Light church. The doors felt like they weighed as much as my shoulders, the weight of the world. The hinges groaned and complained as I took the heavy iron ring and pulled. The warm golden light followed me inside. Hundreds of candles were lit. From out behind of the curtain behind the pulpit came the priest. His footsteps, though silently padding, still echoed in the church like someone crumpling paper. "Am I too late?" I had no idea what I meant when I said that, only that it sounded better in my head. "It's late, but it's never too late, my son." His smile was the smile of a priest or a used car salesman. "Well, I mean, er, that there's a memorial here soon and am I too late to say my goodbyes?" "It sounds like you're early by the state of things, if the ceremony isn't for days..." His eyes were well-intentioned and caring. Combined with that smile, he had a very punchable face. "I just...I want to see the body." I swear, sometimes the shit that comes out of mouth. "Well, son, the body isn't here. It's not like we have a freezer in the back, next to the tabernacle." I made a face that could only been made if I sucked on an entire lemon tree. He noticed. "If you have the proper paper work, I'm sure the local authorities will let you see the body. At the county's morgue building." "Thanks," I said. "My son?" I turned to face the padre. His thin wire-framed glasses had slid down his nose. He looked a bit more like a librarian instead of the neighborhood Lord's go-to man for. He eyed the floor, ashamed of his overt concern, but not for me. "You don't believe what they say in the papers? Do you?" he asked. I stared at him, then through him. "I don't care if you're a boy-fucker. I just care about the truth." I heard him mutter something in the dark as I walked away. It could have been a prayer. Or an apology. It had stopped raining but I hadn't stopped being wet and uncomfortable. I found a diner and took up a booth for hours with a coffee. The waitress had that look in her eye that knew I wasn't going to order, and thusly, not tip. After three hours of refills, I got the hint and paid. "If you want somewhere to sit for free, try the phone booth across the street, buddy," she said as she rang me up. I tipped her twenty bucks. I made her night just as she made mine. The phone booth had a phonebook. The phonebook had the address and number of the morgue. The morgue had Beth's body. Beth's body, I had to see one more time. It was too late to call so I walked there. It was a testament to bad Roman architecture right at the heart of the city. I had no idea what I was going to do. I mean, I knew what I wanted to do, I just didn't know how to do it. I must have walked around the building three or fours times before I saw the tiny ground-level window and put my plan together. The glass shattered against my boot after the fifth kick. Safety glass had earned its name, reputation and respect in my mind. The jagged remnants cut my shirt, jacket and pants as I slipped through, feet first, belly down, through the window. The floor seemed like a thousand feet down before my toes found it, dangling and searching for solid ground. I dropped with a triumphant "whumph." The silence, in conjunction with the realization of what authorities would call a "breaking and entering," or a "B & E," made every sound magnified a hundredfold. I could have heard, with crystal clarity, if someone had dropped a pin. Without paperwork, someone to ask, or an actual right to be there, finding Bethany's body was going to be tricky. It took twenty six times of opening, looking under the sheet in, gasping (sometimes gagging) at, and closing freezer doors before I hit what only I would consider "pay dirt." Even blackened and disfigured from before, it was Beth. I loved her and I would've known her anywhere, any way. That and the toe tag helped. I hefted her out of the cooler, the virgin white sheet draped around her like history's very first try at a wedding dress. Her face wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Neither were her legs. Or her breasts. Once I placed her on the slab cold ground, I found the paperwork that went with her. Much like the news, the clipboard didn't so much treat Beth as a person but as a piece of property or evidence. The illegible doctor's signature made Beth's death by smoke inhalation and traumatic shock official. That explained why her body, save her lungs, looked charred but still near-perfect. I put the clipboard back in the rack with all the other clipboards that were actual people, and walked slowly back to Beth's body, warming to room temperature. I knelt down, and kissed Beth's forehead like I had the night of that "unfortunate incident..." I wished her good-bye. Her head leaned back as I kissed it, her mouth opening slightly, inviting. I tilted my head and met her full on the lips. I wish I could say I stopped there. That things in my head didn't get out of hand, so to speak. You know that thing in the back of your mind, that thing that gets you off, and you know it's wrong and you wonder about yourself for having the thoughts in the first place? Well...that's where things ended up. I got all worked up kissing her, feeling her up and feeling her next to me. I couldn't stop myself from gently tearing away the sheet. My pants got shuffled down around my ankles and shoes. God help me, I put myself in. After I was done, I redressed myself and curled into the fetal position. I cried. There was no rain for me to blame this time. My chocked sobs echoed softly in the tiled room. Still weeping, I wrapped Beth's (now desecrated) corpse back up and put her in the empty refrigerated slot she belonged to. Somewhere inside I felt guilty, but that place was far away. I felt like I was now watching myself from the outside, haunting my body instead of occupying it. It was like watching a nightmare. I had to do something, but what? All I had was my shame and—as I dug through my pockets—a half-full book of matches and an almost empty pack of cigarettes. I looked around in vain for something else in the room that might inconceivably belong to me. No wooden spool dining table, no empty lonely gas can, no ratty couch from my ill-attempted time at college, nothing. All my eyes came across were jutting porcelain handles on sliding stainless steel doors, a pile of metal canisters and a broken in window that was too high to climb back out of. Still blubbering and hating myself for it (yet another reason on the ever-growing list of things I hate about myself...) I wiped the tears and snot away from my face and stumbled over to the containers. It took a minute for me to shake the cloudy vision and another minute of squinting to make out the fine (and not-so-fine) print on their bright orange labels. They held a chemical cocktail that contained formaldehyde, methanol, ethanol, and about three other solvents that had enough syllables to be only slightly longer than my arm. In layman's terms: I had found embalming fluid. That thing, the thing that I didn't know how to do, but I knew I had to do it; how to stop the guilt and pain and sadness and guilt and evidence (being more important than anything else at the moment), it all came to me in that instant. As any hopelessly romantic narcoleptic serial arsonist can tell you, the only way to properly say good-bye to your pyromaniac girlfriend who also just happens to be your long lost half-sister is in the way you both fatefully met each other: with a fire. I stared at the canisters and rubbed my chin like any good thinker would. I took the containers one by one, turning the control nozzles full tilt and, taking the injection tubing, strategically spraying the walls and saturating the corners with sharp smelling chemicals. I took the canisters I hadn't used, opened them up and placed them on their sides, slowly leaking the fuel for my effigy. I managed to find the crushed cigarette box in the pocket inside my jacket. I lit the two remaining cigarettes, smoking one and holding the other. When I was half done with my smoke, I flicked the one I was holding like James Dean, classic cool, at the still growing puddle of embalming fluid at the other end of the room. You know in movies, when you see a wall of flames rush across the room and you think, "Well, those are some rather nice special effects, but it wouldn't look like that in real life?" If you've ever thought that, I'll have you know you're utterly and completely full of shit. The fluid caught the burning cigarette and ignited, spreading the fire wildly along the liquid's path I'd laid for it. The fire bounded like a caged beast freed, hurtling itself towards me. I calmly smoked until the flesh melted off my hands. I wouldn't have watched, I would've kept my eyes closed but the light blasted through my eyelids and then scorched them off. Sand paper rubbed against my eyes, until I realized that it was the heat allotting me the sensation. I dropped to my knees as my clothes fused to my skin and started to drip off and dangle, misshapen and monstrous. With the smoke in my lungs, my breathing sounded like a very convincing impression of the Elephant Man. I couldn't tell if fire engines were arriving or I was screaming. My head hit the ground and my forehead made a "splat" sound like a wave gently breaking across a pebbled beach. After that, things went silent. Things went black. Things went dead. I wouldn't know it, but Beth's, Mom's and my funerals were all on the same day. It rained buckets, the mourners drenched in veils and dampness. Beth and Mom got tasteful urns and a small crowd of family. I got a pauper's grave and Tony spitting on the plastic bag full of ashes. I don't think Dad knows his son and ex-wife are dead. He'd probably blame it on me being gay. My little going away party made the news, as well. The news called it tragic, an unfortunate turn of events involving several innocents and one of the mentally ill. I had left a note behind, you see. The police couldn't figure out what the three deaths had in common (except two were by immolation) until they did dental impressions on Beth and I. That led to them to my live-in outhouse, my shitty Shangri-La. There amidst the crushed and discarded cigarette packs, the lonely red gas can and all my worldly possessions that added up to shit when I still alive and less than that now that I was dead, they found my note. The note I had written before I had left to confront my mother…Beth's mother. My opposite of a suicide note. Dear police and/or nosy landlady, It has probably come to your attention that I have done something stupid. I've noticed that to be the theme of my life this last month. I began lighting the infamous warehouse fires months ago. Along the way I met the girl of my dreams. As they have a habit of doing, my dreams became nightmares. She was my long lost sister. I believe our mother, one Vicky Staples, committed suicide after learning of not only my and her daughter's relationship, but my overall existence and reemergence in her (my mother's) life. I have no idea what I did to have you come here, but I'm sure it was weird, wrong, and trying to say good-bye to Bethany. I'm sure you're reading this, trying to glean some clue to what I was actually trying to do. I have no idea. But rest assured, I'm not regretting a Great Sleep. The cops scoured my apartment for more clues, but there weren't any. I hadn't planned on lighting that last fire until I did. It was a Wednesday kind of life, filled with venom, barbed-wire and disappointment. I had my brilliant shining moment with Beth. I was reunited with my mother for a day. I don't regret any of it. Hell, I'm just glad I didn't fall asleep for most of it. I just wish we all would have ended up in the same place. Or at least, that I was somewhere less hot.