Self Called Nowhere

The Self Called Nowhere
(or: The Rescuer, Crawling From The Wreckage)

His hand sped out of the fog.  It clutched and clawed violently, like a blind man suddenly without his cane.  The drugs were filling his head with rocks and cotton.  His mouth was desert dry.  His tongue leapt to catch the salty tears, the taste mingling gingerly with the coppery blood from gnawing nervously on the inside of his cheek.  His memories would not shut up.	
	"Once more into the breach," he yelled as he thrust his sex into hers.  
	"I love it when you talk dirty," she panted, with a curt smile perched perfectly on her delicate face.  
	"I think Shakespeare wrote that.  Or I heard it in a submarine movie, I can't remember which."
	Her giggle turned into soft moaning.  That same moaning started to ebb and wane, finally finding its crescendo in simultaneous climax.
	His eyes found hers.  The sweat glistened on both their skins, and made him think she was a made of pure radiant luminance in the soft light that weakly poured through the bedroom window.   
	"This isn't right," he screamed.  He thought his throat would rupture.  Drowning on his own blood would be better than this, he thought.  The cell walls seemed as uncaring and cold than any winter.  He was alone and the police had taken his belt and shoelaces.  His wallet said his name was Phillip Summers. 
    The ID had his correct address, just not the right dimension.    
The night before, when he wandered out drunk, heading home to the perfect woman in the perfect bed, he made an imperfect turn.  He made his way down the wrong alley to relieve himself in.  That bright light, Phillip's hand leaving his still urinating self to shield his eyes.  He thought about ruining his pants.  He thought about her.
	When he woke up, it was in that same alley.  Or so he thought.  The sun was warm on his oily skin, sweating out the previous night's whiskey.  His clothes were wrinkled and he was pretty sure that smell was him.  He hefted himself up from the completely uncomfortable position he had passed out in.  His back was crookedly sore and he promised himself he would return to that bar.  
He stumbled back to his apartment.  He was sure she was snoozing away the early morning.  He fumbled with his keys; his fingers acting like drunken injured spiders.  He put the key in the lock and briefly thought about sex.  The key wouldn't turn in the lock.  He tried vainly twice more.  A cigarette ravaged voice erupted from the other side of the door.  
	"I'll kill you!  If I open the door and see you, I'll fucking annihilate you, fucker."
	The words rang hollow against his sleep-deprived brain.  Why was their apartment filled with this filth?  His fist rang thunderous against the door.
	"It's Phil.  Just let me in."
	Phillip Summers heard her voice for the first time again.  
	"Phil?"  She sounded different.  She sounded weak, defeated and confused, not the wild tigress he had had before.    
	"Annie! Come out and talk with me.  Please." The last word made him think of a dying dog or a rattlesnake's tail.  
	He could hear the footsteps coming towards him.  The deadbolt clicked but the chain kept the door from opening all the way.  
	"How?  What are you doing there?"  Phillip could see her half hiding behind the half open door.  Her delicate features were marred with bruises.  The deep purple and blue wounds punctuating what he knew innately was wrong. Her unfocused eyes looked like she had been drinking and her voice was slurred, every word swimming in concrete.
	"What happened? Who's in there with you?"
 	She just stared at him; looking as if she was resigned to whatever fate she had chosen.  The cigarette blasted voice thundered from the near distance.
	"You tell him I'll kill him.  I'll take him out and ground him into the sidewalk right now, cunt."  
	She continued to stare at Phillip, her eyes softly wrapped in tears.  She closed the door and reset the locks.  Phillip could hear the voices pass through the door.
	"He comes here again, I'll end the both of you, I fucking swear it."
	"No one was there.  Just calm down.  Please just go to sleep, ok?"
	Phillip walked away, his head hung low.  His chin almost touched his chest and his temples began to throb.  
	"I love you," Phillip said, softly whispering as he stared into her eyes.
	"Why do you stare at me like that?" she asked.  He was still over her, still inside of her.
	"Because you're beautiful.  You're smart and funny and like better movies than me."
	"Will you ever stop loving me," she asked.  She turned slightly.  He pulled himself from her and laid stomach down next to her.  
	"Until the end of the world, babe.  That's from a comi-" His sentiment was interrupted by her gentle kiss.  
	He flung himself against where the metal door met the concrete.  The sound of bone and flesh meeting harder surfaces made him feel sick despite the pills that were numbing him.  
	"I'm not supposed to be here.  Just let me go.  I know how to get home," he stated matter-of-factly.  
	An underpaid and, frankly, apathetic guard haunted the cell's front.  The shadow from the crossed mesh in the door's window confused Phillip on who was in the real prison.  
	"You don't get to just go home, asshole.  Those pants, that shirt, they still have blood on them."
	Phillip looked down at himself.  The blood the guard was referencing had turned from deep crimson to a tacky dark brown.  
	"Home is going to a nice quiet place in-state until we fry your fucking ass."
	Phillip fell into himself, holding his knees to his chest with both his arms.  He could hear her when he'd called the apartment and she finally answered.
	"No, I don't think I can see you tomorrow. I'll call you when I can."  
    	"When you can? Is the phone company stopping you?" he asked half joking.  
	"I don't understand," she muttered, "why do I have to see you again?"
	"Wait, what?"
    "Babe, I have to go."  The sound of her hanging up reminded him of a gun hitting on an empty chamber.  
	"Until the end of the world, huh?" she coquettishly asked.  He stared at her, despite his best efforts.  
	"Yeah.  Until the end of world."
	Her eyes, half closed fell onto him.  He could feel their warmth in his heart.  
	"What happens when the world ends?"
	"Well, that depends if it's zombies or robots that take us all out."
	She sighed.  He had unhealthy obsession with whatever apocalypse the summer blockbusters were selling this year.  
	"OK, robot zombies attack and capture the entire human race.  It's the end of the world."  She said, baiting him.
	"We assume Jedi don't exist?  Because if they did, they'd totally save us.  I think.  Wait.  Why would zombies be robots?  Or are the robots powered by the reanimated—"
	She kissed him.  She would be hard pressed to admit if it was for the love she felt or just to shut him up.
	He broke away from her face and smiled.  "If the world ended, I would still love you."
	"Damn straight," she said, laughing and climbing on top of him.  
	The drugs they kept feeding him started kept his memories outside of striking distance.  He had to get out.  He had to get back to that alley.  He silently prayed, really prayed for the first time in his life, that the light that had brought him here would return him.  He thought of her, curled up in the comforter with the sheets kicked to the side.  Her peaceful head would be held by her pillow, which was distinctive in that it was not his pillow.  Her scent, that soft hint of high citrus notes, would have filled the room.  He started to plot his escape, and started to mutter something that sounded like
    "Ill view bury see." 
	The same guard called out to him.  "Get up.  It's medicine time.  The guard handed him a small paper cup with different colored pills in it.  Some of them had writing on them.  
	Phillip took the cup and went to the sink.  He couldn't dump them while he was being watched.  He shook the cup over his mouth, turned on the sink, and took a mouthful of water to swallow.  As he quietly sat down on his cell bed, the drugs kicked in.  He tried to hold on to what had gotten him in this place.  	He didn't have anywhere to go after he had called, so he wandered the same different city streets until he could go into the bar he had never drunk in again. 
	He was the only person in the bar except the bartender.  The girl behind the polished oak wraparound was reading a battered copy of The Man in the High Castle. 
	She didn't even bother to brush the bangs from her eyes and look up, let alone look interested.  
	"Let me guess: you don't belong here?" she said licking her finger and turning a page of the book.  
	The shock was shotgun-blasted on his face.
	"And then you're going to ask me how I know.  And then, you're going to ask about how you get back?"
	He just stood there.  This girl knew.  Somehow, she knew everything.
	"Well?" she said, finally looking up, not specifically at him.  She moved like a tired cat.  She poured a beer from the taps and placed it on the bar.  She then poured a shot of bourbon, placing it beside the beer.  
He sat down in front of the drinks.  He hungrily slammed the shot and followed it with a long pull from the pint glass.  The beer nicely quelled the fiery gravel the bourbon left down his sandpaper throat.  
	"So?" he said, looking like puppy that had been kicked.  Repeatedly.  
	She rocked back and forth.  She ground down on him like she was trying to find oil.  Her gasps were punctuated by his moans and soft grunts.  Their hips working against themselves.  He loved it when she was on top.  His hands jumped to her breasts.  Her gasps sharpened.  This was what he jerked off to in the shower.  He had read that was what real love was: jerking it to your girlfriend or wife, not some balloon-titted blonde with an airbrushed pussy in a magazine while taking her from behind and playing video games at the same time.  Or something like that.  He looked up at her, her head thrown back, pulling the hair away from her face.  That face.  He knew he could wake up next to that face for the rest of his life when he first met her.  He was in real love.
    	Then he came.  
	"I can't help you, stranger," she almost whispered.  She turned another page of her book.  "The last three guys came in here this early all had the same questions you do.  I poured them their drinks and let them go."  She sighed heavily.  "I'm not that kind of social worker."
He got up and reached for his wallet.  Her eyes meeting his made him stop.  He nodded politely and walked out, squinting against the harsh afternoon sun.  
He went down the street.  Happy couples bustled by him and made him feel sick.  He tried to pretend it was the alcohol.  
Through the boozy fuzziness, an idea sped out.  He could feel it, like a hand striving against a riptide.  It thrashed violently, trying to grasp, to claw something close to solidarity, to reality.  
He made his way to The Alley.  The same alley that had stolen his life.  That had stolen her.  He paused, once he rounded the corner and was met with the same dead end chain link fence.  The same smashed television sets.  He wondered if he had to pee.  
He looked up at the sky.  The sun looked like a bruised peach.  The clouds were stretched cotton.  Where was the light?  Where was that light that had brought him to this ruined place?  A place without her.  The proper noun her.  
She was in the apartment.  She was tied there like a damsel against train tracks.  He would find her; take her from all of this.  He would show her the life they were meant to lead.   He zipped up his pants and made his way deeper in the city.  
	Behind the door of the apartment, Phil could hear them fighting.  It had something to with how selfish she was.  He could hear him ask for money.  More money, by the sound of it.  Phil's closed fist on the door brought an abrupt end to the screaming match.  Annie answered the door.  The chain clattered limply against the door.  The deadbolt clanked sharply away from its recess in the frame.  Phillip threw himself inside.  The dimly lit apartment was sparsely furnished.  The place was a graveyard of cigarette packs, empty beer cans, and liquor bottles.  It reeked of failure.  
	Annie just stared in disbelief.  Her mouth opened and closed like a fish suddenly finding itself out of water.  The cigarette blasted voice thundered from another room.  
	"What the fuck is going on out there?"
	Phillip's body flooded itself with adrenaline.  His fingers tips tingled and he balled his hands into fists without thought.  
	"I'm taking her away from this.  I don't know who the hell you are, but she doesn't belong to you."
	The source of the cigarette voice came into view.  He was Phillip's height and build.  It was eroded by smoking, drinking, and rage, but his face was suspiciously close to enough to Phillip's to make him sick.
	Phillip knew then that she was with him in this place.  Not the him that stood there trying to rescue Annie from a life of abuse and disappointment, but the him that had led her to this.  She looked from Phillip to the other Phillip.  The intruding Phillip met her eyes.  Those eyes that could send him to war for simply asking him to.  In those eyes, he saw that she loved the man she lived with.  In those eyes, he knew he would never tear her away from him, just like no one could tear her away in the world where they were together.  
Then everything went black.
	Through the drugs, he could hear her screams.  He could feel his knuckles finding unwilling targets of flesh and bone.  He could not stop himself.  When he finally took a breath, he saw it all.  The broken and pummeled other Phillip.  The lifeless Annie.  He looked down and saw the blood on his hands and clothes that the guard would remind him about later.  He found a cell phone and called the police.  He told them he had made everything right.
They lay next to each other, slightly sticky from the drying sweat.  She nuzzled his chest with her head.  It tickled.  
	"So, can I go play video games now?"  She playfully slapped his bare stomach.  "What?  I think I've earned it," he said sporting a wry grin.  
	"Did you really mean it?  What you said about the end of the world?"  She readjusted her head to look at him.  His necked craned to meet her longing gaze.  
	"No," he stated matter-of-factly.  "Jedi really couldn't save us if there was a mass outbreak of the undead.  Unless they were the slow ones from a Romero movie.  The zombies, not the Jedi…"
	She laughed despite herself.  "No, the other thing."
	His smile steeled itself into absolute seriousness.  "I love you, Annie.  Now and until the end of the world.  I have never meant anything so much in my entire life.  I would kill for you, if you asked.  I would walk wherever you asked just to get you whatever you wanted."  
	"Would you sell your comics?"
He looked pensive, as if the weight of the world had suddenly been set on his shoulders.
	"That depends if our answers match, I guess."  He hefted himself up, digging around bedroom.  The floor looked like ground zero if a clothes bomb had been deployed.  He found his pants and reached his hand into a pocket, palming something secretively and returned to bed.  He turned himself onto his side and smiled.  
	"What?  What answers have to match?"
	He opened his hand and the light danced off of the gold and splintered through the diamond, casting a soft kaleidoscope across her face.
	"Will you marry me?" he mumbled, in his cell, over and over like a mantra designed to keep him both sane and crazy.  Through the fog, through the drugs, in his mind, he had made his way home.