Every Day is Like Doomsday (23 page)

Elliot woke up but didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t
know how long he had slept but it didn’t feel like it had
been very long. His first thoughts were of what had happened last night with Innya, especially once she let him
have control over his own body again, and he was loathe
to open his eyes just in case it all ended up just being a
dream.

But then someone sat on the end of his bed, turned
on the TV and turned the volume way up and he knew
that it wasn’t just a dream. Elliot recognized the measured
voice of the Channel Eight 11 o’clock news anchor, which
meant that he hadn’t been asleep for very long at all. As
Elliot lay there with his eyes closed the weatherman came
on and said it was going to be cold tomorrow and the
snow was not going to melt. Wow. Big news. Elliot tuned
out the rest of the forecast and wondered how common
it was to fall asleep after sex. He hoped that Innya had
fallen asleep, too, or else it would have been rude.

Innya started flipping channels, which was even
more annoying than had she left it on the inane local
news. Elliot was ready to tell her to pick a channel and
stay on it when she stopped and a reporter was in the
middle of saying something very important and not
annoying at all.

“…Under suspicious circumstances. No funeral has
been scheduled, as it is not normal procedure to hold vigil
for convicted Villains. The Villain’s father, Senator William Vane, is currently on vacation in Europe. When we
finally reached him, Senator Vane said this of his son…”

Elliot sat up and glared at the TV. A female reporter
in a yellow blazer was standing in front of the brick wall
that surrounded the Villains Academy. Innya glanced
over her shoulder to make sure he was watching then
turned back to the screen.

Senator Vane’s voice came on then, muffled, as if
the statement were taken over the phone and recorded. A
picture of Elliot’s father appeared on the left side of the
screen and the transcript of the message appeared on the
right. “He was always an outcast, never had any friends.
I suspect that’s why his mother gave up fighting against
her disease: she knew what he would grow up to be and
wanted to save herself the pain of knowing what her son
became. I think we all knew where he would end up and
to me it is no surprise that he has met his untimely end at
the VA. He was among his people. Perhaps he had found
peace there but I don’t know, as I don’t associate with
Villains except in matters where federal and state laws
dictate that I do.”

The reporter came back on screen and continued
with her story. “We asked the Senator if he planned to
eulogize his son and he stated that it would set a bad

Elliot collapsed backward on the bed and felt the
air rushing out of him like a balloon that had been punctured and left to die a slow, agonizing death. He finally
had the proof of what he’d always suspected: his father
didn’t care.

“I’m sorry,” said Innya as she scooted backwards
on the bed. Elliot met her gaze with tear-filled eyes and
wiped his nose with the back of his hand. He would have
used his sleeve but he realized too late that he wasn’t
wearing any clothes.

In a move that was completely out of character Innya rested her hand gently on his arm and Elliot
flinched involuntarily. He wasn’t used to kindness from
her. He was used to being roughed up and cut down by
her biting sarcasm, but not kindness. It was too much.
More tears fell and he wiped them away.

“I guess Craig finally told him,” said Innya, her
voice soft, as if she were musing to herself and not talking
to Elliot at all. But Elliot wasn’t about to let such a statement stand without challenging it.

“About what?” he asked with a sniffle.
“Oh,” she said and looked at him in surprise, as
if she just remembered that he was there. “I called your
father’s campaign local office at the same time I called
the police to report your death. Craig answered, as usual.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said they didn’t care and then hung up on me.”
Elliot bit his lip and willed the tears to stop and they
did. He felt like those words should have stung him more.
Perhaps if she had told him right away he would have been
appropriately destroyed but after hearing his father on TV
Innya’s revelation just didn’t pack the same punch it would
have because now he knew that it was true.
He stood up then, so full of anger and pain and
frustration that he didn’t even care that he was still naked.
“Fuck it. I need to get out.” As he quickly slipped into his
pants and put on several shirts he realized that the death
of his illusion that his father had ever cared was painful
but necessary. He could see that now. His relationship
with his father, strained and uncomfortable though it
was, had been the last thing that kept him tethered to
the outside world. Now he was free. “Let’s go wreak some
havoc,” he said hoarsely.
Innya stood as well, narrowed her eyes, and grinned,
“I know just the thing to get your mind off of this.”
“Let’s go.”

They snuck out and made their way through almost
knee high snow drifts back towards town. As they traveled
Innya would skip ahead for a while and then loop back
around and give Elliot a big kiss. He enjoyed the heat of
her breath on his cheek combined with the cold of her nose.
He didn’t even feel the cold he was so full of fury and it
fueled him to keep going even after his toes went numb.

“Embrace the anger, Elliot,” chanted Innya in a
singsong voice as she danced around him. When they
reached a plowed but icy stretch of road the black duffel
bag she was carrying proved to be too heavy for her and
it knocked her off balance. She slipped and instead of
going to her, as he would have before, Elliot checked that
impulse and laughed instead.

“
Merde
,” she said as she stood up and rubbed her
sore and probably bruised butt.
“You told me to embrace it. I’m embracing it.” He
shrugged as if he didn’t care whether or not she was hurt.
Deep inside, though, he did care and he was relieved
when she continued her little dance.
And then she came up to him and breathed her
peppermint gum-scented breath in his face, “That is so
hot! You’re getting the hang of it finally,” she said and
kissed him hard. He went to wrap his arms around her
and deepen the kiss but she quickly danced away from
him again and then ran ahead yelling,“Not yet, lover boy!”
Elliot smiled at her nickname. See, dad, he thought
ruefully, I’m not such a loser after all. I’ve had sex. With a
girl. An incredibly sexy girl. And you’re still an asshat of
epic proportions.
When he finally caught up with Innya it was
because she had stopped in front of a house that was partially hidden by snowdrifts. “These people are going to
get snowed in,” Elliot said.
Innya didn’t even glance at Elliot, just kept staring at the house in silence, which made him wonder if
he should be seeing something other than shoulder-high
snow. He looked harder at the house, then turned around
and looked at the cars in the driveway, then down the
street lined with piles of muddy snow.
“No way,” he whispered.
It was Adam’s house. He had been so lost in his
own thoughts that he hadn’t even noticed when they had
turned onto Adam’s street. Sarah’s 12 year old gray Toyota
Corolla was parked in the driveway right beside Adam’s
Black Jeep Cherokee.
“Way. You know you want to mess with them.”
She handed him a flashlight and flicked the button so he
could see that she had put a red filter over the light.
“Let’s do it.”
Innya led Elliot around to the side of the house,
where Adam’s bedroom window was. Elliot didn’t know
what she had planned but that hardly mattered. What
mattered was revenge. He climbed over a snow bank and
cursed Adam for not being more helpful to his mother.
The snow beneath the window was piled halfway up the
wall and so Elliot crouched beside the window, rubbed
away the accumulated frost and peered inside. As his eyes
searched the darkness for the shapes he knew had to be
there he felt Innya come up beside him. Her enthusiasm
for whatever she thought they were about to do was contagious. He smiled to himself, eager to start the torment.
Unfortunately, his eagerness was short-lived when
he realized that he couldn’t see much at all and couldn’t
hear a thing. He sighed, defeated, and felt the rage returning now that it did not have an outlet. But Innya was not
out of ideas. She put her finger to her lips in the international sign of “shut the hell up” then withdrew a small
device with a suction cup on one end and an arm extending out to one side. Elliot remained silent as she placed
the suction cup against one of the window panes and
pressed the end of the arm into the glass. She dragged
the arm in a circle and Elliot suddenly realized what she
was doing. She was cutting the glass like he had seen in
all sorts of spy movies over the years.
Once the glass was cut she popped it out of the window with the suction cup and set it on the snow beside
them.Then she looked over at Elliot, who was having trouble keeping the grin from his face, and mouthed, “What?”
“You’re amazing,” Elliot mouthed back.
“I know.” She gestured to the window and whispered, “Now go scare the pants off of your ex-friends.”
Elliot looked through the hole and saw that there
was a little bit of light in the room that had been obscured
by the layer of frost. Adam’s desk lamp was on, casting a
strange, bluish glow across the figures of his two ex-best
friends writhing beneath Adam’s dark brown comforter.
Elliot wasn’t sure what to do initiate contact. He
contemplated chucking a rock at them when the comforter at the foot of the bed pulled back and revealed
Sarah’s face, her eyes closed, her mouth hanging open like
the wanton harlot that she was. Adam’s head appeared
next. Sarah’s arms were clinging to Adam’s back and every
now and then he’d see her hands come above the top of
the blanket only to disappear again. He didn’t want to
think about where those hands were disappearing to.
Adam’s face was buried in her neck but Elliot could easily
imagine his triumphant expression. Triumphant because
he was again boinking the girl Elliot had loved for all
those years and now Elliot was dead and out of the way
and he didn’t have to feel guilty about it anymore.
Innya’s hand rested heavily on his shoulder and
Elliot allowed himself to embrace the anger that flooded
his system. His cheeks burned with it, his limbs felt electrified with it. He felt energized, nervous, like he always
did whenever he had to get up in front of class and give
an oral report. He wanted to lash out at something but
he also wanted to run. Innya leaned in close and traced
the delicate curve of his ear with her warm tongue. She
whispered to him in a voice that sent shivers to indecent
places in his body, “Do it.”
Maybe it was his own idea, maybe Innya transferred the idea to him through her sexy telekinesis, but
the moment she spoke he knew exactly how to do it. He
aimed the flashlight at the ground and turned it on. The
light made a bright red pool on the snow at his feet.
“Why red?” he whispered.
She shrugged. “Why not? A girl must be prepared
for all of the possible permutations of any given situation.”
Elliot didn’t pretend to know what she was talking
about. He had only caught about half of it anyway since
his blood had started pounding in his ears the moment
he had decided that he was going to do this. He looked
down at the hellish light, listened to the thrumming of his
heartbeat and the rush of blood in his ears and took a deep
breath.The dry,frigid air burned his throat.He wiped at his
nose with a gloved hand, set his face close to the window
and low enough to hide his body, put the light under his
chin and flicked it on. Then he stayed there. Waiting.
Innya crouched beside the window, watching him
with an enigmatic smile on her face. They didn’t have to
wait long before Adam surfaced for a breath. He turned
his head in Elliot’s direction, a wide grin splitting his face,
and then froze.
“What’s wrong?” asked Sarah.
She started to turn her head towards Elliot and he
switched off the flashlight. Out in the street the layer of
snow seemed to emit its own light, tinting everything
pale blue. But in the shadows between the houses, hidden
by trees, Sarah and Adam would see nothing that Elliot
didn’t intend for them to see. If they decided to come to
the window to check things out he’d be screwed but he
was fairly certain that they were both too cowardly to do
anything other than run away.
“I thought I saw something,” Adam said.
“It’s nothing. Come on. Don’t lose it. I’m probably
going to be late as it is.”
Adam kept looking at the window but eventually turned back to his work. Sarah was as vigorous as
before but Adam seemed to have lost some steam. Elliot
turned the flashlight back on.
“Holy shit!” Adam screamed and tried hard to disentangle himself from Sarah, who kept asking, “What?
What is it? What happened? Ouch!”
This time Elliot didn’t turn out the light and as Sarah
got a glimpse of him the smile dropped from her lips.
“Elliot?” she asked softly?
Elliot blinked. Slowly. He hadn’t really thought of
anything for ghost Elliot to do once they saw him. What
would a ghost do to his two libidinous best friends whom
he had just caught in a very large, or in Adam’s case a
small to medium, lie?
“Is that you, man?” asked Adam. Adam was naked
and standing in the middle of his bedroom. He breathed
rapidly and refused to take his eyes from the window.
Elliot said nothing, just looked as sad as he could and
stared forward vacantly as if he couldn’t actually see them.
Then he turned out the light.
“What the hell was that?” asked Sarah.
“I told you this was a bad idea!” screamed Adam as
he fumbled for his pants. “We just find out that he’s dead
and this is what you want to do?”
“You wanted to do it, too, so don’t be a dick,” said
Sarah and though he had heard worse from Innya, and
in several different languages no less, Elliot was shocked
at Sarah’s crude language. Clearly she was not the girl he
thought she was.
“Not today! And now that he’s dead he’s got this
ghostly knowledge and he knows we’ve been lying and
now he’s back to punish us.”
Elliot bit his lip to keep from chuckling at that one.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Innya with a hand of
her mouth, her body quivering with suppressed laughter.
“Don’t be a moron. He’s not back. It’s just your
guilty conscious seeing things in the darkness.
Elliot grinned, moved a little to the left then turned
on the light again. Sarah spotted him first this time and
she shrieked and jumped naked out of the bed. Elliot had
spent a healthy chunk of his life imagining Sarah naked:
naked and eating popsicles, naked sunbathing, naked
cooking, naked sex… And now here she was and all he
had to do was die. He was both disappointed and pleased
to see that though she had an okay body, if a little on the
frumpy side, she wasn’t nearly as hot as Innya. Her body
was soft, not necessarily pudgy but lacking any noticeable muscle tone or definition. Innya, on the other hand,
was toned and hard, like a diamond. And though Innya
would murder him if he tried to touch her again without
her permission, he still felt like he’d won the chick lottery.
“What do you want?” she yelled. She had already
managed to put on her shirt inside-out and was stumbling
around the room trying to pull up her uncooperative pants.
Elliot pondered saying something then. He could
chastise them for being liars, berate them and mock
their paltry attempt at lovemaking. But in the end he
just opened his mouth wide as if he was screaming without noise. His ex-friends backed away until they hit the
opposite wall.
“What the fuck!”Adam yelled, feeling for the doorknob along the wall behind him. “We should get out of
here and never do this again.”
Sarah, always the pragmatist, had tougher words
for Elliot’s ghost but her voice was trembling more than
Adam’s. “No. I won’t be run off by a ghost that can’t do
anything to us. We’ll just explain ourselves and…”
Oh really, Elliot thought. She stopped talking midsentence when Elliot made his hand into a claw and
scratched at the torn window screen. He moved his head
haltingly, tilting it from side to side like a bird, trying to
look like one of the ghosts from those freaky Japanese horror movies that always seemed like they would be scary
but were mostly just disappointing. His body twitched and
jerked as he pressed his claw hand against the screen and
started to stand up. That’s when Adam finally managed to
get the door open and they both screamed like little girls
and tore out of the room.
A moment later he heard the front door open and
Sarah’s car start up. Had the road not been blanketed in
a thin layer of snow her tires probably would have melted
the asphalt with how fast she pulled out of the driveway. Her engine whined in protest against the cold as she
threw the car into first and her tires squealed as they spun
wildly for traction in the snow and ice. Elliot imagined
his ex-friends’ desperation to get away, their rising panic
as they realized that they weren’t moving, and he was
tempted to zombie-walk around the side of the house
towards them. But then there was a crunch as contact
was made and they sped off down the road. Part of him
hoped that they didn’t lose control of the car and slam
into something solid, like a dumpster. The rest of him
didn’t want to waste another thought on them.
Beside him, Innya grinned in the darkness and she
looked so adorably psychotic that he started laughing. He
felt some of the tension in his gut unravel itself and realized
that he hadn’t laughed like this in a long time. “How did
you know about this?” he finally asked, catching his breath.
“I saw you watching them make out at the mall
and you looked so broken that I just had to do a little
reconnaissance. I learned that they were in the habit of
shagging each other silly when his mom was at work and
so I thought I’d take a chance tonight.”
“What are you, British now?”
“What?”
“Shagging? Americans don’t say shagging.”
“Bloody good thing I’m not American, then,” she
answered in a spot-on cockney accent.
Elliot shook his head. She simply amazed him in
every way and the amazement quickly morphed into
rampant lust. The front of his pants tightened as if he
had shoved a water balloon filled to bursting with warm
maple syrup just beneath the zipper. Overwhelmed by a
sudden desire to kiss those sly lips he reached for her but
she backed away quickly, her smile turning into a sneer.
“Wot’s that?” she asked, still doing her cockney
thing, “Fancy a shag, do ya? A tumble in yer mate’s bed?”
“No. I—”Elliot let his explanation trail off as he saw
the disappointment in her eyes. He realized that this was
some sort of test and he had just failed it.What was he supposed to do, he wondered, kiss her even after she rebuffed
him? Throw her over his shoulder caveman-style and carry
her into the house and have his way with her? And why
shouldn’t he touch her? They had already had sex, after all,
so this shouldn’t come as a complete surprise to her.
Elliot felt the triumphant return of the tension that
had dissipated with the speedy exit of his ex-friends. His
stomach knotted as he turned his frustration on himself.
In an attempt to regain badass status in her eyes, he
said darkly, “Let’s go break something.”
Innya grinned and dropped the cockney accent,
which Elliot found a little disappointing because it was
sexy as hell. “Now you’re talking.”