maniacal rage

"Depends on what you're looking for. I've got three kinds." His hands are dirty and he gestures too much while he talks. "You're not from around here are you?"

"How can you tell?" I ask, but I already know the answer. I'm wearing pants.

"You're wearing pants," he says, and points to my Dockers.

"Yeah, well, it's a custom where I'm from. I hope it doesn't offend you?"

"No, it's not offending me, it's just making you look like a damned fool is all."

"Okay. Sorry." I point to the middle of the three under glass.

"Don't you go apologizing to me about it," he says, as he takes it out of the case and lays it on the counter in front of me. "Just don't be surprised if people give you a hard time around town."

"Fair enough." I look it over. It's in good condition—great actually. "Does it still work?"

"Of course! I only sell working stuff."

"Okay. How much you want for this?"

"Well, since you're from out of town and all, I'm gonna have to charge you a little more. You know, to keep up appearances."

"Right, I understand. How much?"

"Tell you what—give me two hundred."

"Done," I say and take out a wad of twenties. I count off ten and toss them on the counter, pick up my purchase and head toward the door. When I open it, the bell above the jamb jingles and I turn. "Thanks, old timer."

"You're welcome. You be careful with that thing."

"I will," I reply and head out into the sun.

"Hark!" Jonah yelled. "Damn it, I said hark, Michael!"

"I heard you!" Michael yelled back. "Just give me a second, alright? God, hold on."

"Jonah, next time something like that goes wrong, I would prefer it if you just kept going unless I tell you to stop, okay?" The director, Ken, was trying to be as pleasant as is possible, but he was running out of courtesy.

"Well, when I yell hark, I want to see it happen right away. Otherwise, what's the point?" Jonah spat. He had grown increasingly pushy the last few weeks of rehearsal, and Michael was beginning to get angry. Each day was worse than the last, and it wasn't just Michael who was getting upset—he'd heard complaints from a majority of the cast members. He thought about talking to the director, but Jonah was the only person who could play the part.

"Alright," Michael finally said, "I think I've got it now. Try again."

"Okay. Places!" Jonah yelled. Jonah loved yelling places. He was always yelling places, even after the director explicitly told him to stop yelling places all the time. The four other actors on the stage took to their marks begrudgingly and waited for the director to cue them.

"Thank you, Jonah," the director said. "Now then, let's try it again. Ready? Go!"

The four background players swayed up stage as Jonah limped down on his cane. He paused for a moment, on the bottom tip of the stage, and gazed out into the seats. Then, will all his might, he yelled out, "Hark!" and the lights grew quickly brighter and a large flag dropped behind him, creating a new background. "I declare this land mine! This shall henceforth be known as Tit-ville!"

"Stop!" the director yelled.

"Why did you stop that? It was going so well!" Jonah cried out.

"It's not tit-ville, it's tith-ville," the director said. "There's a big difference there. Let's try it again from that line, please. Whenever you're ready."

"Okay, fine," Jonah said. He took a moment and then yelled out again, "I declare this land mine! This shall henceforth by known as Tith-ville!" One of the four background players came down stage. He was dressed in rags and had dirt on his face.

"Dear sir, would you find it in thine heart to help a poor and ailing heathen with a few tuppence?" said the player. Jonah drew a plastic sword from his belt and play-stabbed the young heathen, who screamed out in agony and fell to the floor.

"There shall be no mercy for mangy mutts like you in Tith-ville, I say! For I am Franklin Tith, and when I rule this land, all will feel my erection!"

"Stop!"

"What, what's the damn problem? You keep stopping me!"

"What the hell was that about erections?" the director yelled. "What's the matter with you?"

"The script says—"

"The script says conviction, Jonah. Conviction!"

"Fine, Jesus, I'm sorry. I didn't read it right, okay? Lay off!"

"Alright, alright. Christ. Okay, let's start from there again, but please, it's conviction."

"I got it," Jonah said.

"Whenever you're ready," the director said. Jonah collected himself and then started again.

"For I am Franklin Tith, and when I rule this land, all will feel my conviction! Now then, where are thine other peasant-folk? Ah, here comes one now." Another player enters from stage left and walks to Jonah.

"Hello, fine sir, might I have—" Jonah interrupts the line by play-stabbing the peasant, who falls to the floor dead.

"Damn you, peasants! Do you not listen? It is I, Franklin Tith! Master of the sword, master of the word, and ruler of this land. Do not dare walk thine rotten feet toward me, for I will cut your hearts out! And now, it's time for me to tear open the next peasant's vagina!"

"For fuck's sake!" the director yelled.

"You know, I've been trying to think of a way to put it nicely for two hours," Hank says, "But I can't. I don't know any other way to say it: I'm in love with you, but I want to kill you." Lucy considers this for a moment. "I'm sorry. I know that's not exactly what you wanted to hear right now, but it's the truth."

"So you love me?" Lucy asks.

"Yes, I do. I really do. With all of my heart."

"But you also want to kill me?"

"Yeah."

"Well, are you going to kill me? Should I be worried about you killing me?"

"No, no, I don't think I'm actually going to do it, but I know we've been talking about how honesty is the root of all relationships, and how we could never be with anyone who wasn't completely honest," Hank says. He takes a step toward Lucy, who looks a bit worried. "Look, I'm just trying to make sure we build a really solid relationship right from the beginning, that's all."

"But you said you want to kill me, Hank," Lucy says as she takes a step back to keep her distance. "How am I supposed to react to that?"

"I thought we agreed on honesty?"

"Yeah, we did, and I'm not faulting you for the honesty part, it's the killing part that I'm worried about. I mean, did you mean that in a metaphoric sense—like I sometimes drive you nuts and you want to kill me, but by kill me you mean I'm really getting to you?"

"Oh no, I meant I want to stab you in the heart or neck or in the ear or—"

"What? You want to stab me in the ear? What kind of thing is that to say to someone!" Lucy backs up quicker now, but Hank keeps in step.

"I don't know—I haven't really thought it out, I was just saying that—"

"Thought it out? You mean planned it?"

"Right, I haven't planned it yet."

"Yet!" Lucy screams and grabs a pan off the stove, swinging it in the air toward Hank.

"Hey—whoa! Put that down, come on, there's no need for that!"

"You stay away from me! You hear me? You get away!" Lucy lunges at Hank with the pan and nearly hits him in the face.

"Okay, okay! I'm sorry. I'll stay back. Just calm down. I'm not going to hurt you!" Hank steps back and Lucy slowly stops swinging the pan around. A few minutes pass as they look at each other. "Lucy," Hank finally says, "I have something else to tell you."

"Oh god, I don't know if I can take anything else."

"I want to have a baby with you," Hank says.

"What? You do?"

"I do."

"Aw, Hank, that's so sweet. You really want to make a baby with me?" Lucy sets the pan down and walks toward Hank. "I'm sorry I reacted like that to what you said before. I was just startled, that's all. I'm sorry, come here." She hugs Hank and he hugs her back. After a moment Lucy leans back and looks into Hank's eyes. "You really want to have a baby?"

"Yes, Lucy. I want to marry you and have a baby. Maybe two babies. I dunno. I want it all."

"I love you, Hank."

"I love you too, Lucy. And I promise—I won't murder the babies or anything," Hank says. Lucy reels back in horror and grabs the pan. She hits Hank in the face with it and then runs out of the house.

"Wahoo! The cabbage is here!" Tina screams as she runs past Edward's desk. Edward glances up for a moment but then realizes, like every other time, that the cabbage isn't actually here. Tina has problems. Edward doesn't, though, so he feels bad for her. "Come get your cabbage!" Tina yells from the front of the office. "Oh, my, it's red and green today! How delicious!"

Edward takes his favorite pen out of his miscellaneous drawer and writes Cabbage in big letters on today's spot on the calendar. He takes a moment to remember a day last week, noted on the calendar as simply Gravy, and then puts the pen away and goes back to work.

A few minutes later Tina runs up to his cubicle and peers around the wall, out of breath. "Hey Billy," she says between gasps, "You missed the good stuff." She takes a scrap of paper from her pants pocket and hands it to Edward. "Here, I saved some for you." Edward takes the paper cabbage politely and thanks Tina. She pauses for a moment before scrunching her face up and yelling, "Grab the tugboat!" and then she runs away.

I'm not sure what happens to them when I take over. I assume they die, they leave, they don't experience the end. But I don't know. Hell, maybe they're still in there, silently watching as I run out their last few minutes. Of course, I hope it's better. I hope they leave, calmly and painlessly, as I arrive. In a way, it's unfair to them—there are only two things guaranteed by human existence: living and dying. And I'm taking the latter from them.

Maybe they're thankful. Maybe they're angry. I'll probably never know.

I used to think I was being punished—the universe, or God, or whatever holds everything together was sticking it to me for something I couldn't remember doing.

My name is Nathan McMillan. Or it was. It's been so long since I've been in my own skin, I don't know if it makes sense to hold on to that name anymore. In the beginning it would only happen occasionally. Sitting in my home office on a cool summer night, working on story and chewing on the end of a pen, I'd suddenly find myself lying on the floor of a racquetball court gasping for air and clutching my chest, or running down a steep hill as mud and rock overtook me and those running alongside. And then, just before the end, I'd wake with a start at home, my two year-old son Ben tugging on my pant-leg. I spent five years in this state, constantly going and coming back.

Then something changed.

The last day I remember being me was June 27th. As on any normal day, I was watching television with my son in the morning, waiting for my wife to take him to school on her way to the office. I had planned a perfectly isolated day, cancelled all my calls and interviews so I could get some writing done. We live in a small neighborhood just south of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and mid-day can be an absolutely fantastic experience for a writer. The quiet is almost deafening most days and I yearned for it, ate it up whenever I could.

Ben was eating dry cereal and kicking his legs to the rhythm of the song puppets were singing on TV and I was flipping through The Times. Kate was in the kitchen finishing her second cup of coffee. I heard her place her cup in the sink and then then everything went silent. For a moment I saw my son looking up at me, wide-eyed, and then I heard the loudest sound I've ever heard in my life.

The seat-belt was cutting into my waist. My left arm was cut, but it wasn't too deep. In fact, the cut didn't worry me at all. The blood leaving the cut and traveling straight up was far more concerning to me. It left the gash on my arm in small beads and travelled quickly up and out of sight. I watched this for a moment, mesmerized, and then I followed a few drops with my eyes until I saw the plane above me, pulling apart, licked by fire and trailed by smoke. I looked below me and found myself staring at an ocean, twenty-thousand feet below, slowly inching closer. I vomited for a minute or so, and then got hold of myself.

To my right sat a young blonde woman, strapped in and unconscious. Her hair was caught in the wind, pulling toward the sky, and I could see a cut on her forehead. It's a terrible thing, but I found myself fascinated by the situation. I'd never died with anyone else before. I hoped she wouldn't wake up.

One of the downsides to my situation is rarely knowing why. I don't witness the event that causes my eventual death, only the death itself. Occasionally, the situation is clear—if I find myself stabbed on the floor of a prison cafeteria, it's a safe assumption another inmate did me in. But occasionally I find myself in places I don't understand, unique places, wrapped in confusion and I die without knowing why. There's nothing worse than not knowing why. Plane crashes are, sadly and luckily, not so bad. It's almost always mechanical.

The ground was much closer than the last time I looked, and I realized it wouldn't be very long. I glanced back up toward the destroyed plane and watched it burn in midair, following me to the water below. I could see debris and chairs floating in air, I could hear people yelling. It's not fair to them. I was scared, but only so much—I always make a reasonable assumption that this isn't the end for me, that I'll wake up somewhere else, hopefully at home with my family. But they know. They know this is the end and there's no fixing it. I feel bad for them, for me, for everyone. I feel bad most of the time.

It was almost over when the blonde woman stirred and I felt myself gag, for just a moment, before she opened her eyes and started to scream. I reached forward and grabbed her, holding her to me as she screamed and I repeated it's okay, it's okay, it's okay.

And then we hit.

For a moment everything was white, and then nothing. For five years I had experienced this exact moment, this white and then emptiness, and then I would find myself at home, often sweating or lying on the floor or scaring my wife to death. But this time there was nothing.

It's not easy to describe what being enveloped by nothingness feels like. It doesn't feel like anything, and yet I exist, I am, although I don't know how or where or when. Momentary nothingness is manageable, but this eternity I was experiencing for the first time was torture of a kind I never realized was possible.

And then I heard a man whispering, and I opened my eyes to find myself lying in the middle of interstate route 9 at 4AM, seventy years old with two broken legs and a skull fracture. For a moment I was relieved, glad to be back, to be in this world, to be someone. But then I realized I wasn't at home. I wasn't Nathan. I wasn't me. I had never been through two deaths in a row before, and I wasn't thrilled with this situation. Fifty-two minutes later, Ralph Larson died and I found myself once again tortured by never-ending nothingness.

Twelve-hundred and eleven times I have repeated this pattern, and each time I die thinking and hoping I might finally return home. But I do not. I am beginning to worry.

I can't move my left arm. My fingers aren't numb but I can't move them. I'm not sure how long I've been sitting here on the floor. She comes through the door carrying a brown bag and sweating.

"It's about six bucks' worth," she says. "Is that enough?"

"It might be." I lie. I know it's not enough. I know I'm going to die and this won't make a difference.

"That's all they had. I couldn't get more. I tried. I couldn't." She's shaking hard and looking at me with fear pouring out of her eyes. "Is there somewhere else I can try?"

"No. It's too—there's not enough time. It's okay. You did good."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Stop apologizing. I need you to help me. Can you do that?" I reach my hand into my back-right pocket and pull out my old and tattered wallet.

"Yeah—okay. What do you want me to do?"

"Take out a credit card." I pass her the wallet and she takes out my Amex. "Bend it back and forth until you can snap it. I need an edge." She's confused for a moment but then starts bending. Back and forth, back and forth. The card's turning white at the bend.

I take the bag she gave me and dump the six bucks' worth of gauze on the floor next to me. This isn't even worth trying. If she weren't here, I'd just lie back and let it happen. But I can't. I want her to feel like we tried. Like she helped when it mattered most.

She finally snaps the card, producing two new pieces with sharp edges. I take one and set it on the floor next to the gauze. There's a lot of blood now. It's pooling under me and it has stained everything. I'd need ten times the amount of gauze she got just to clean up the mess, and that doesn't help stop the bleeding itself.

"You're not going to want to look at this, but I need your help so face away and give me your right hand," I say, and she does, reluctantly.

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to get it out."

"Oh God. Oh—"

"You have to keep calm and you have to help me. Close your eyes and count to ten. When you're done, you have to push. Hard. And keep the pressure constant. Okay?"

"Okay."

I bend the piece of credit card I have, curling the end a bit. I place it in her hand and guide her so the tip of the card is near the entrance wound. I take a piece of gauze and soak up the fresh blood to try to clear the field. It's too messy. This is a waste of time.

"Are you ready?" I ask.

"Yeah. I'm ready." Now she's lying.

"Okay, push." I guide her as she pushes the tip of the card into the wound, deep. One inch in. Then two. It doesn't hurt. Nothing hurts anymore.

"Oh Jesus," she whimpers.

"Keep steady." She's about two and a half inches in when I feel her hit the slug. I stop her from going deeper but she keeps constant pressure on. While she pushes I turn her hand. If I'm lucky, I get around the slug and we get it out. If I'm unlucky, this doesn't work and I die with her hand inside me.

Luckily, the slug moves a small amount and the card slips behind it. I quickly stick my free index finger in and start digging. It doesn't take very long before I free the slug and her hand and feel pressure pour out of my chest, taking with it what feels like a pint of fresh blood.

I hand her the slug. She's never seen one up close before. I can tell, because she looks at it with horror and fascination. It's dented and flattened from smashing into my ribs and she turns it over in her hand before looking at my face, which is now whiter than before.

"How do you feel?" she asks.

Like shit. "Like a million bucks. How about you?"

"I'm okay." She's about to cry. I see it coming. I've got about forty seconds and I'm gone and I don't have time to console her or convince her it's going to be okay. It's not. I'm going to leave and I'm never coming back and she's going to have to live with it.

"Thanks for your help. I feel better now. I just need one more favor. Can you go out front and see if the paramedics are here yet?"

"I don't want to leave—"

"I'll be fine. Just see if they're here."

"Okay. I'll be right back." She gets up and puts the slug on my desk. She looks at me wholly convinced that when she returns I'll be here, alive, bleeding on the floor. But she'll never see me again. I'll wake up in Texas or in Wisconsin or maybe in LA, and she'll find Tim Kirkland dead on the floor of his office.

She'll cry and she'll mourn and she'll talk about this day for the rest of her life. But I won't remember her at all. She's just one of thousands of people who have watched me die over the past fifteen years. Tomorrow there will be another.

At least it doesn't hurt anymore.

"It's the last of its kind," she tells him. She's always spouting facts as if they're impressive. "They haven't made any since."

"I know what the word last means, Mandy," he says, emphasizing "last" just a bit too much. Mandy pauses and tears begin to well in her eyes. "Oh, Jesus, please, don't do that," he says, lowering his voice and pulling her closer to him. "Not here. Please. I'm sorry for what I said."

"It's just—"

"I know, I get it, it's valuable. It's the last one."

"And I thought you would like that it was unique," Mandy says and then sniffs and wipes her eyes. They were already a decent shade of red from the impending cry.

"It's not unique," he says, "It's the last one. Unique and last don't mean the same thing." Mandy starts bawling like an orphan. "Christ, Mandy, please!"

"I—I can't help it! You're so mean to me!" Mandy yells out, in between bouts of coughing and crying and sniffing and shaking her hands in the air. "I was just trying to help and now you've got me all worked up and I can't breathe!"

"Just calm down, okay? Look, I'll buy the damned thing. Will that make you stop?"

"You—you'd buy it?"

"Yes, fine, I'll buy it. Just stop crying, please."

"Okay. Okay. I'm stopping. I'm sorry, Mr. Hanson, I just—"

"Look, I said I'd buy it. Stop crying and ring it up," Hanson says, pulling out his over-sized wallet. His wife had taken his American Express card. He only had the Discover. "Do you guys take Discover?" Mandy throws her hands in the air and starts crying violently once again. "What the hell is the matter with you?" Hanson yells out.

"You said you'd buy it, and now you don't have any money? This is just my luck! They're going to fire me, you know that?"

"I'll still buy it, I can go get cash."

"Oh, what's the use? I might as well just go to the nearest brothel and fill out an application! Let's face it, I need the money!"

"Could you keep it down? You're embarrassing me!" Hanson yells as he looks around frantically.

"You think this is embarrassing? Just wait until you see me naked, picking up quarters off the floor of the public bathroom in Macy's!"

"What—what are you talking about?"

"Oh god, my mother was right! I'm doomed to die alone and poor!"

"Christ, Mandy, just—I'll pay by check, okay? Just fucking wrap it up and give it to me. You're really starting to scare the hell out of me," Hanson says, while he fills out a check. "How much is it?"

"A billion dollars!" Mandy yells, then she rips off her shirt and throws it into the ceiling fan. It gets caught on the fan for a moment and spins around rapidly, making a whooshing sound, before it flies off onto a potted plant. The woman standing next to the plant screams and drops her purse.

"What the hell is the matter with you!" Hanson yells.

"I ate poison, okay! Fine, I said it!"

"What?"

"Oh god, she was right!" Mandy screams as she hops the counter and runs out of the store.