Slow Burn

Cordelia Allen was having the worst day of her life. Worse than when she fell flat on her back out of the tree in her grandma’s backyard, worse than when Johnny Fitzer kissed another girl at the winter formal, and so much worse than when she said goodbye to her dog Penny for the last time.

“There was nothing more we could do. He fought hard the whole way.” Dr. Morteson’s eyes were tired, a wrinkle for each time he repeated those words to grieving parents. Cordelia hardly had an extra breath to take to let Dr. Morteson’s words sink in before her husband Jameson slid his wedding ring across the table towards her. What Cordelia knew for certain was that she would have rather fallen out of that tree ten trillion times or cried in the stalls at the winter formal for the rest of her life. She would’ve relived that final goodbye to Penny over and over again if it meant that today didn’t exist.

Cordelia sat in the front seat of her car, hands gripped tight on the steering wheel, knuckles white and pulsating. She couldn’t go home, the scent of her son’s favorite fruit snacks would still be sticky on the countertops and the absence of Jameson would be louder than the sobs that would keep her from sleeping all night anyway.

The glowing red sign of an old bar on the side of the highway reflected on her skin, and her body swayed as she turned sharply into the parking lot. She felt for the heart shaped locket at her throat, she could almost feel Jameson’s hands on her neck as he clipped it on every morning. A fiery heat bubbled up out of her skin until anger was pooling out from every pore. She ripped the locket from her neck, the chain burning through her palm. She sat in silence, listening to the light drizzle tap against her windshield until the cool air made her too numb to stay put. The bar was dark, surprisingly busy and smelled like old leather and salt. She took a seat at the end next to a man covered in scarves, paying no more attention to his strangeness than she did to the melted makeup under eyes.

“Looks like you’ve had a hard night, darling.” The man spoke, tapping his shot glass on the counter. Cordelia glanced towards the voice, finding no amusement in his demeanor.

“I’m not in the mood.”

“I didn’t ask for nothin’.” the voice replied. “Just seems like you might need a little cheering up. Maybe I got a story that could make you feel a little better.”

“I don’t think a story can make me feel better right now, thank you. Now, if you don’t mind...”

“I don’t mind at all,” the man interrupted, as he moved into the empty seat between them, calling out to the bartender, “Simon, two scotches on me please.”

“I was fifteen when I had the opportunity of a lifetime. Concord didn’t have any of that up-and-coming technology that started happening in the bigger areas of the country. Hell, I’d never seen a tape recorder ‘til they took me to the prison in Boston, and those had been a common item for years by then. I was young, I was naive, and I wanted nothing more than to have the world in my hands. But I was limited, and with hardly any money my mom barely had time to chew her food between jobs and there wasn’t a shot in Concord you could take that hadn’t already been missed a million times. It was the early years after our government put all of the new regulations in place: the curfews, the taxes, and most importantly Figmund’s Law. Nobody took it too seriously, though we would’ve been right to.”

Cordelia shifted in her seat, paying more attention to the ceiling tiles than the silly man’s story. He reminded her greatly of her grandfather, whose stories went on forever. The arms of the clock were spinning slowly, and she worried of getting home too late. But she was stuck, finding it too rude to get up and leave, remembering nobody was up waiting for her to come home anyway.

“Figmund’s Law wasn’t made for the people. Surely, it applied to the people and it was meant for the people but “for the people” means you have to at least pretend that you care about “the people”. When I found myself in a smoker's yellow cell with a boy that couldn’t have done more than steal a gumball awaiting the test, I saw no signs of courtesy for “the people.”

“Why are you here?” the boy asked, his chubby cheeks buzzing red and splotchy.

“Aren’t you not supposed to ask that?”

“It ain’t like this is a real prison. Now c’mon.”

“I beat a kid up.”

“Ahhh come on you gotta give me more than that!” His cheeks made his eyes squint when he smiled, and his strawberry hair was shiny under the harsh yellow light.

“Mayor’s kid. He got handsy with a good friend of mine...I don’t know…I saw red.” Thinking about it again made my blood rise up and crash back down to my feet leaving my skin feel cold, “I couldn’t hear anything but a ringing in my ears when I got on top of him. I don’t even know how he’s doing. They brought me right here.” Bradley, as I soon learned, giggled hard to himself.

“Man, and I have to be punished to the same degree? Jeez, I just crashed a car.”

Bradley went on to tell me about how his principal disrespected his father, and in return, Bradley stole his principal’s car and crashed it into the sweet shop a few blocks down.

“No sweets were damaged,” he joked. “But that bright blue Mustang sure was.”

I looked long and hard at Bradley. His freckles looked like flicked paint, his arms looked sewn together with bags full of stuffing, whatever gets the point across. He seemed too soft in the middle to be ready for what we were supposed to be subjected to. According to the news articles and pages in the big boring books, Figmund’s Law allowed anyone under the age of 18 with a serious criminal record, to choose to become a test subject on behalf of the government. It was usually a vaccine, but sometimes psychology experiments, starvation and cosmetic testing were the cards people were dealt. I didn’t care much about what I had to do. Figmund’s Law forced anyone with a criminal record to fight for the scraps at the absolute low end of opportunities. Knowing that, I knew I could handle the agonizing burn of nothing but bread crust in my stomach for awhile if it meant that when I left I could feel the swirly ache of overeating for once in my life.

I wiggled my fingers against each other, wincing when they’d touch. Something about it ran a chill up my spine, and suddenly the bitter taste in the back of my throat was strong. I wiped my sleek palms on my knees, feeling the heat transfer, then fall cool a millisecond later. The dark green door swung open in front of us, and a woman with skin translucent like spring roll wrapping looked through us.

“Samuel Gerber.” the woman called out. “We’re ready for you.”

The only way I could describe that feeling to you is like an elevator. If there was an elevator in your throat. And when that slithery voice spoke, the elevator crashed into the pit of my stomach. I stood up, following her calmly as if I’d done this a million times. Her dark yellow heels clicked against the concrete. The color made me sick.

The woman opened another heavy dark green door and gestured for me to enter. Inside was a mint green chair, surrounded by cream walls. I slid into the chair, lying back and closed my eyes against the harsh light. A man entered as I opened them.

“Hello, Mr. Gerber. My name is Dr. Blevins. Congratulations on this second chance—I’m incredibly excited for you!” Everything about Dr. Blevins seemed phony. His teeth looked too thick. His lips were too inflated. His eyes were too dizzy, like he’d drunk half the cabinet. I nodded, unsure of exactly how to handle a congratulations on such an odd achievement.

“You will be receiving the Pellis Ignis Vaccination. This will be an incredibly quick and easy procedure, and we can have you out those doors and back to the real world an hour after injection. Good enough, right?”

I could hardly believe it. I laid back eagerly, imagining how incredible my life would be now that I knew all I had been missing out on. I thought of my mother, who wept and screamed her throat dry as I was pulled from her home. How unfair it was to her, how betrayed she must have been. I thought of Sandra Michael, who I’d never spoken to in my life but who was especially beautiful and who I thought would perhaps agree to at least a first date if I asked. The possibilities seemed as endless as ever, now that I was so close. I didn’t know what the vaccine did, my optimism came solely from the words that I could leave so soon. I was young and quite frankly not as smart as I wanted adults to believe I was.

My skin made a faint snap as the needle punctured it. My arm immediately turned to rubber, and I felt tingly spikes fizzing all over inside. A dreary song was playing through the office speaker, and my heart began to stammer. I had a sense of sinking, and eventually all I could hear was a loud thump — the beat of my heart, slowing way, way down.

Don’t they know, it’s the end of the world?

It ended when I lost your love.

I woke to the sour smell of sanitizers and metal. I felt so drowsy I could hardly breathe. After shifting slightly, my eyes shot open in shock as an unbearable, tormenting burn ripped through my body. I screamed out for help as liquid filled up my throat and gurgled out of my mouth. The skin around my eyes sizzled, causing tears to pour out down the sides of my face and into my ears. I thrashed to the side, and my back felt like it went up in flames. I watched as clumps of my hair fell onto the ground, and a sulfuric smell burned the skin inside my nose. I quickly caught onto the need to stay still, not to disrupt even half an inch of my body. Through the loud pounding panic in my head, I heard a radio flick on.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Gerber, I trust you’re well. You have completed all requirements to receive full benefits of Figmund’s Law, and will be discharged from Massachusetts General Hospital by the end of the day tomorrow. As you listen to this message, relax peacefully knowing that you will return to society as a respected, record free citizen. We trust that with this privilege, you recognize that you must not disclose any information regarding your stay with us at the Boston Juvenile Correctional Institution. We have done you a rather large favor, and ask for your loyalty in return. We look forward to seeing all that you accomplish with your newly regained freedom. God bless you.”

“Now wait wait wait, just a minute.” Cordelia’s blinks were getting heavier as she listened to the man speak. “Now if this was so “top secret” why’re you telling some random stranger in the bar, huh? Tell me that.” Although she didn’t believe him, (he spoke into his hands and had obviously just had one too many) she appreciated the distraction. She waited eagerly for his response.

The stranger didn’t utter another word. He unraveled the scarves from his face, revealing bright yellow blisters and red patches all the way down his neck. His eyes were dry and cracking underneath and his silence was louder than any explanation. He stood up, dropping a few bills onto the counter and walked out. The bar fell silent, Cordelia felt her shoulders rise and fall. The bar door shut behind him.

A moment later; the silence was broken by the whistle of a bullet and the thud of Samuel Gerber’s body hitting the pavement as a midnight black car rolled away.