Sleep with the Lights On

Go on, he thought at Mason. Tell the boys something. Anything to make them feel better. You always know what to say.

“Your dad’s already gone.”

No! I’m not gone, I’m right here. And so is the rat. Scratching me bloody, the damned thing. Why is it so hyper? Why is it still tormenting me now that it’s free? It has what it wanted.

“He’s already gone,” Mason repeated. “Those machines are forcing blood through his body to keep his organs alive, but he’s gone. And what we’re going to do here, with the parts he left behind, is help other people. Your dad is going to save lives. He’s a hero.”

Oh, that’s a good one, Mason. But they must know better. Or do they? No one had mentioned the dead men. The confession. The bag of tools. Jeremy wasn’t asking Marie why his father had murdered thirteen young men who looked just like he looked. Why hadn’t he?

What did you do, Mason?

Then the rest of Mason’s words started to soak in, and he realized they were going to donate his organs. Well, that was good, right? He couldn’t feel anything, so there would be no pain, and he certainly couldn’t keep on living if they took out all his vital parts. Could he?

He would be free then.

Scratchscratchscratchscratch!

“Part of your father will live on in the people whose lives he saves today,” Mason said softly. “You should be very proud of that.”

Part of him would live on.

Part of him.

Part of him...

No, not that part!

A soft breath, close to his face. He heard it but didn’t feel it. “Bye, Dad. I love you.”

From down lower. “Bye, Daddy.”

“Goodbye, son.” That was Angela. Mother. Never Mom or Mommy. Mother. Cold. Like she knew.

He heard the boys’ shuffling steps, Mother’s clacking heels fading, the door swinging open and then closed. And then it was down to Marie and Mason.

“He kept a part of himself closed up—always. But I loved him, all of him. Even the parts he didn’t want me to see. I wish he knew that,” Marie whispered.

The rat. You didn’t need to see that.

“I know. I know.”

But you saw it, Mason. You saw my rat in the end. Those driver’s licenses. God, what did you do? Did you cover it up?

A smacking sound, soft, near his ear. Had Marie leaned over to kiss him? God, he wanted to feel that.

A sob. “I can’t do this.” Running footsteps. The door.

It was just him and his brother now. Mason heaved a big sigh. Like he was almost too tired to stay upright. He sounded just about all in.

“I covered it all up, Eric. Your secrets are going to be buried with you. I just couldn’t put them through it.”

I should have figured you would do that.

“Maybe the lives you save now will at least start to make up for what you did. Balance the scales a little. I hope so, brother. And I hope to God you find some kind of peace now. I really do.” And then he went away, too.

There were feet, followed by the sound, not the feeling, of being jostled. And then Eric faded away for a while. When he returned, he felt different. Hollow. Empty. There were still others all around him, their voices muffled. More machines beeping. He was in an operating room. Had been for some time. He wondered vaguely what was left of his body at this point.

“Scalpel.”

He heard it. He heard the sound of his skin being sliced. It was like a very faint echo of butter melting in a skillet. Sssssssss. And then the horrifying buzz of the bone saw, and the cracking as his ribs were spread apart. No, no, no, he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel it. He kept reminding himself of that. He was just imagining the pain.

“Transplant team, ready for the heart?”

“Ready, Doctor.”

No! No, wait until I fade away again. I know, I know, I won’t feel it, but it’s still too awful too awful too awful....

Scratchscratchscratch!

More cutting. God! And then the squishy sounds as they pried and pulled and lifted what he thought was his heart from what he thought was his chest. Surely he couldn’t keep going now!

No. No, he couldn’t. He was fading, falling into a whirling vortex of darkness and turning his attention away from here toward there. A pinprick of light appeared far, far away. No more scratching. No more rat. He felt free of it, lighter than air without it weighing him down.

Believe me, pal, it’s mutual.

Eric spun around in his rapidly expanding consciousness, which was inflating like a balloon. He started wondering how he had ever fit into his little body to begin with. But still, that voice, the rat, got his attention. Where the hell was it? What was it doing?

Hey, you made this choice, I didn’t. I’m not going anywhere, buddy. Just because you shot your head, doesn’t mean the rat is dead.

And then it laughed and it laughed and it laughed, and Eric’s horror enveloped him. He couldn’t see that speck of light anymore. Nor could he hear the laughter. Or anything. He felt like an astronaut cut loose from his tether, floating through space, only without a space suit. Or a body. Or any senses at all. He was adrift in a vacuum that was stretching him in all directions and dimensions, and he was thinning, and thinning, and wondering when he would simply become a part of the void.

* * *

The nightmares started my first night home, barely forty-eight hours after the bandages came off my eyes. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Because really, that was major, that day. It was fucking huge.

I hadn’t taken the bandages off myself. Not because the doc had warned me so sternly against it—like that would have stopped me. I wasn’t real good at doing what I was told. Or conforming. Or following rules. Or anything, really, except writing books telling people to follow their bliss. The more ways I could find to say it, the more books I sold. But the truth was, the whole premise—that you could attract good things to you by being good yourself; that a positive attitude would make life go smoothly; that belief could create fortunes and castles and bliss—was flawed. It had been drummed into me by the well-meaning adults around me ever since I’d lost my eyesight for good.

Look for the silver lining, Rachel.

Everything happens for a reason, Rachel.

Something positive will surely come of this, Rachel.

And I remember thinking, My God, they actually believe this shit!

And when they started getting me books—audiobooks back then, though now it’s ebooks with text-to-speech enabled, because let’s face it, braille is kind of passé these days—that spouted the same bull, I realized they not only believed it, they wanted to believe it.

By the time I was sixteen I had figured out that these Pollyanna idiots would pay any amount of money for any product that supported their inane beliefs, because those beliefs were so flimsy they needed constant reinforcement. One stiff gust of logic or common sense would blow them to hell and gone. Hence, the self-help guru explosion of the first decade and a half—so far—of the new millennium. Entire companies have been born and built around the idea that one could create one’s own reality. Those companies produce books and DVDs and card kits created by authors who pretend to understand quantum physics, and use their brand of pseudoscience to support their claims that you are what you think and all that crap.