I Hate Fire

Johnny's day had been ultimately boring. Contained within his own little world within the gas station, the happenings of the city rarely registered to him. However recently a large number of things had begun happening at once. According to the tiny T.V. hooked up into one of the corners of the ceiling there was a flu epidemic, a block party, and some people complaining about money or something like that. He snorted when he heard the smallest of them screaming on a microphone about the tyranny of senator so and so, or how the rich had toyed with them for far too long. People had been complaining about money since he had been born, and that had been when the word inflation was largely regulated to balloons or tires. A hacking cough drew his gaze over to the booze aisle. A blocky...person who was wrapped in more clothing than Johnny had ever seen on a single human being stood wheezing and coughing for the next several minutes onto the thankfully closed glass door. Johnny sidled to the left in his chair, he was old and curmudgeonly from time to time, and he didn't need to add the flu to it as well. Regardless, the clothing mountain eventually recovered and approached the register. The voice that came from within the moving cavern surprised Johnny, because it was the lilting voice of either a child or incredibly small woman. "Uh, hi! C-Can I have the, you know, the-the-...this?" She thumped down an Everclear, and Johnny's surprise increased, once because he didn't believe she knew how powerful it was, and that she'd found it despite him hiding it as well he could after the last time . "You do realize what that is, right?" His grating voice made the mountain perform an impossible wince, despite it's size. "O-of course I do! It's booze...righ-it's booze. I'm buying it so-so...yeah!" He stifled a laugh with a cough. The girl was clearly not an experienced drinker, but regardless if her I.D. checked out he could sell it. Upon being presented with the card he blinked, the smiling face of a tiny Caucasian woman who had turned 21 the previous day if Johnny was any judge was not who he had imagined. Then again, the idea of a person seemed strange when connected with the pile of sweaters and scarves in front of him. "You really wanna buy this young lady?" "Y-yes! Of course I do! I'm an adult! I can do whatever I want! So just...just give me the beer please?" The pleading tone to her voice drew a cord in Johnny's heart. Well, drew a cord in a way such that if several men pulled on a ship anchor it might eventually come out of the sea again type of drawing. "Any specific reason why?" The clothes...vibrated. He stared, uncertain whether on not it would explode or something, because at this point very little surprised him. What happened next occurred within about 30 seconds or so. The clothes were slid off like water on wax paper, a woman of around 4" 10" was revealed wearing only sweat pants, a t-shirt, and a hoodie, and out of that hoodie came a .44 revolver. "Dammit I gave you a chance!" She screamed at him with tears streaming down her face along with dark eye liner. His body tensed, all he could do was stare at her as she wailed at him about the alcohol. "Gunned down by the most desperate alcoholic I've ever seen. Welp, there are worse ways to go out," he thought. Then she fired.

Whoops

Johnny's boots crunched along in the brusque air as he trudged along the streets of the city. His heart labored to keep his body warm in the air, which while not necessarily cold was plenty enough to make fingertips that didn't move go numb. He hated walking. He hated running. He therefore puttered. It had been an hour since he had left the gas station, and he had another thirty minutes to go according to his physical therapist. “Y-you need to keep your body m-moving around Johnny, or-or else your muscles’ll start to atrophy, you gotta k-keep it goin’ y-y’know?” Marten White had proclaimed such over his ever present stutter. He was a brilliant medical doctor, but a bit of a wuss. Johnny still remembered how when they had first met Marten had nearly passed out on seeing his body’s musculature, still somehow being present on the rusted husk of his body. The fact that he could probably bench Marten twice always brought a smile to Johnny’s mind when he thought about it. That had been over two years ago. Marten, despite his intelligence, had been relegated to a crap hospital with an even worse set of assignments, dealing with the people who probably should be dead but were too stubborn to let the Reaper take them without a fight. It probably had something to do with the fact that he was a doormat Johnny mused as he thumped towards the coffee shop. He also hated coffee. The black sludge reminded him of…something. He couldn’t remember right now but that didn’t matter. It was too early in the day for him to not get something to keep him awake. He strained his neck as he stepped up into the line for the coffee shop, feeling the vertebrae in his spine dully pop. The smell of spice and mocha clouded his nostrils as he sneezed. Suddenly his callused feet started to throb. He sighed, as whenever that happened something bad happened soon after. Visibly a bus stalled near the coffee shop almost immediately.

Johnny’s eyes widened as someone he knew stepped off the bus and lit a cigarette. He then looked around him and noticed that he had apparently dropped off the side of the earth as it seemed like a significant amount of time had passed as the line had slowly shifted him out of it. Johnny smiled and left his now nonexistent spot to go say hello, at the same time it turned out, as another woman who seemed exceedingly angry about something. Time then slowed down as he noticed several things. One, she was on the ground, two, the driver had been knocked onto his butt by a considerably powerful punch, three she was injured by the dent in the passenger door of the bus, and four, the driver had called her something quite unladylike by the flare in her eyes, nose and skin. A quiet settled over Johnny as it always did when violence was present. His faulty eyes cleared up, his ears became sensitive and his body tightened. As the police came over so did he. “Excuse me but did you hurt this young lady sir?” Already he could tell this was not who he thought it was. The cruelty in the present within his eyes was evidence enough. “Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t, it was the bitch’s fault she got hurt,” said the man as he coughed and tried to get up. Johnny’s eyes narrowed. “Here, let me help you.” He offered his left hand while his right tightened into a fist, then opened again as his eyes and ears scanned they’re surroundings. As no one was looking during the man’s way up he suddenly yanked him forwards into the still open passenger door of the bus, slamming the man’s head into the frame knocking him into unconsciousness. “Whoops.” Johnny turned around only to see the woman in a cop car driving away. He sighed, and then looked back at the driver. He walked away, making sure to put an extra weakness into his step as the cops came to take a look and moved right past him. “Holy crap, did she hit him this hard?” One asked the other, who shook her head. “No way, see the way the doors dented right here, he must have banged his head.” “Hey wait I know this guy! He was arrested for disorderly conduct and a DUI a while ago.” “I guess he fell back into it,” Said the female cop with a grim smile. Johnny trudged away, already his senses returning to normal. He thumped back towards the gas station, but this time, with a smirk to his lips.

Where the clouds are far behind me

Ol' Johnny slowly worked the rusty door to his medicine cabinet open, a lengthy process that involved at least 10 minutes of tugging and shoving every time. Nothing in the bathroom was dirty, not really. It did not possess the sterile feel of a hospital either. It simply mirrored the general aesthetic of the block of land the city called 1578 Brownstone Blvd.  The whole chunk was old, slightly decrepit, but functioning. Johnny’s calloused hands fumbled into the numerous bottles and containers until he found the cylinder he was looking for. Bored eyes looked out from under a jutting forehead down at it. He jingled it, once, and then twice in the mysterious fashion that everyone does when they don’t want to believe something’s empty, as if shaking it would magically make it refill itself. A rumbling sigh escaped his chest, empty again. He poked his head out quizzically out of the door down the hall towards gas stations front, his ears cocked for any sound. Hearing nothing he stumped back to his room and dressed, bringing the cylinder with him. Ol’ Johnny had two outfits, a dusty tuxedo that he hadn’t worn in an astronomically long time and the other outfit. A brown patched flannel shirt with green slacks. His boots were one of the only things that were still sparkling. As he slowly slid them on a booming voice echoed in the back of his mind…”Your boots will be clean every second of every day do you hear! Me!?! I don’t care if you’ve smashed your leg open with a brick and the blood is pouring out of your hoo-ha’s onto those boots. They will be clean! Mud, dirt, oil! You are going to look right or I swear the God Almighty I will shove my boot so far up you’re…” He shook his head to clear the cobwebs, shaking the spider of the past back into the box where he left it. Dressed fully, his heavy footsteps followed him out of his gas station, pausing briefly to flip the “Open” sign to “Closed”. Ol’ Johnny set his own hours; it was his home so he had long ago decided he could do what he wanted with it. He even had the deed to the land framed somewhere in the closet. There was a slight wind blowing but he didn’t even register it as he clunked his way towards the clinic.

As he rounded the corner he saw a man leaning against the wall, scruffy and blind. He’d seen him every now and then when he chose to take note of the world around him. He’d also seen people in far worse conditions in Europe. Digging down into his old pants he lifted out four grimy quarters and tossed them into the blind man’s bowl. “True, it is not your fate to fall at my hands.” He froze as the blind man rattled out his words. A flash of a never forgotten face flashed in front of Johnny, as did bodies from a million years ago, all tumbling past in a small stream of death. He continued on into the clinic, though his head did keep a small watch on the blind man. For a long time now Ol’ Johnny had been absolutely sure that Old Father Time and the Grim Reaper had both forgotten him on their schedules. It still brought a snort to his body when he imagined an hourglass turned on its side, utterly covered in dust behind infinity of others, or a horribly smudged blot on an eternally long list. Regardless, he sidled into a line, and after a few minutes arrived at a counter, with a glass shield that was scratched and cracked. “Hey there Johnny, what can I do for ya?” The petite Hispanic woman behind the glass dazzled him with her ridiculously white smile. “Good afternoon Celia, just here to pick up some medicine.” He placed the orange cylinder on the counter which she quickly swiped up, examined and then handed back with a frown. “Johnny! How are you out already? That stuff is supposed to last you 3 months at a time!” Her genuine concern made him grimace, he knew how long it was supposed to last, he just couldn’t help that he had needed to use it so rapidly. “I know, I know, I’ll make sure to take it at the right intervals this time.” His deep voice sounded like two stones grinding, with a deep vein of weariness. Celia looked around quickly then disappeared to the back, reappearing with the cylinder filled. “Alright, but this is the last time you hear me?” She said so playfully, and anyone not watching closely would miss the sad look in her gaze as she watched him gratefully place the cylinder away into his pants. He voiced his thanks and left. As he opened the clinic door he heard the blind old man say the same line that he had when Johnny had gone into the clinic. “True, it is not your fate the fall at my hands.” As he walked past him his still well tuned ears heard strains of Over the Rainbow. Being able to remember the actual person singing the song gave his mind over to the spider of the past once again. Yet that sentence still lingered in his mind, and finally gave words to the unspoken question that had been in his mind forever. “Then whose hands if not yours?”At the same time the gristle and boiled leather in him spoke almost immediately back. “No ones, if I fall, it will be by mine and mine alone.”

Back at the clinic Celia’s mind drifted. She knew Johnny would be back before the three months were up. After all, she’d given him the medicine four weeks ago, and before that, only two days. She stood tall though. She’d made a promise to her mother, even if she had been delirious for months before death took her. She’d take care of him. As long as she needed to.

The Beginning

The day started with terror. Smoke, death, and sobbing filled the air. Goggles frosted over with sweat and blood gazed wildly out at a seemingly endless field of trenches, each filled with unknowable numbers of shadows and ghosts. A twitch, a sudden jerk of the body and suddenly he fell down. He couldn't feel for everything had gone numb hours ago, and the sudden rush of blood and the shocking warmth that ballooned out of him felt...pleasant. Then the utter stink of the terrified puddles of frozen piss, blood and guts filled his nose even despite the protective mask he had been wearing. His eyes bulged as he saw the hole in his leg, he could seen the damn snow through the hole. The world seemed to stand still, though the sounds of war continued regardless as they always did. Then the moment was gone as over him stood the same man who stood over him every time he had this dream. The face was so clear, even though everything should have murky, eyes a bright emerald green with the most amazing sheen of brown hair. His skin was far too fair, he shouldn't have been here, it seemed wrong somehow that a face like that should be this far north, so close it seemed to the Kremlin that if he had spit he might have hit the Red Square. Then it was over, and the boy gave him the same look of incredulity, as if the fact that there was a combat knife planted now squarely in the middle of his testicles wasn't the most painful thing he should have been feeling. Instead he appeared as affected by it as anyone else when they slapped a mosquito away. Then he toppled over like so many had before him.

Johnny toppled with him, and with a resounding thump he crashed out of bed like he had so many time before, wild-eyed and aging a stark 50 years from that day in that icy kill box between the Krauts and those bugger all Russians. Then the smell of death was replaced with the filth of grease and leaked gas. As his creaking limbs slowly went through the motions, his mind slowly began to march forward, cobwebs and dusty clockwork slowly coming to life, with the new gas prices and current automobile mileages rising to the forefront. He stumped over to the door of his bedroom, kitchen, closet, and living room once dressed fully, and pushed it open to go down the dimly lit hallway to the counter of his gas station. Blearily he looked out across the aisles, checking the gum, the soda's, and everything else. It was all where it should be, as it always was. He leaned back and checked his shotgun. Though old by anyones standards, it was oiled, clean, and well worn. It was never used much anymore, but it was still there. Just like Ol' Johnny was. His dull brown eyes rolled over to the clock. 8 o'clock exactly. His eyes rolled back to the front door. He waited, and lived. Just like everyday.