Chapter 10 - May

“The warplanes rumbled low overhead, discharging their menacing bombs on the scurrying rats below. I took cover among the piles of rubble and ruins, trying to predict when and where the next bomb would drop, foolishly assuming I could outmaneuver its inevitable aftermath. The unmistakable high-pitched screeching sound of a falling missile ripped through the sky overhead. It was too close to outrun, so I took a deep breath and braced for impact. But it was a dud. A goddamn dud, I tell you. I pointed at it, laughing hysterically like some lunatic who had just realized his good fortune. But the bombs kept dropping, and I kept ducking, and running, and hiding, and crawling, and laughing, and crying, and yelling, paralyzed by hopeless despair. A cloud of toxic fumes slithered across the desolation, forcing me to the ground in search of one last breath. And then it happened. A lone sunbeam pierced through the haze, bathing everything in a golden light and a high-pitched ringing silence. I felt fortunate that I had a choice: death by suffocation or maddening ringing silence. As I shoved my fingers deep into my ears, a brave little field mouse scurried across the wasteland before disappearing behind an open door. Was it an escape hatch? The entrance to Hades? A fallout shelter? Or was it a trap? My head was on the verge of shattering under the weight of many questions and too few answers when a walking monkey man appeared in the doorway and waved me over. I tentatively followed him down an endless spiral staircase until he pushed open an emergency exit, and we stood in the middle of a neon-blue hallway bustling with young punks. They fell silent, and everyone braced themselves against the walls out of reverence for a pair of floating old ladies wearing fancy dresses from the 1800s with large ornate bustles. They had elaborately styled their hair in monstrously high beehives, and each wore a black headscarf and a pair of extra-large, pointed sunglasses. The monkey man whispered in my head that the ladies would beg the ferryman for a ride across the Styx. And just like that, the apparitions evaporated, and the heaving hallway from hell reemerged. Two naked girls defiantly shoved past the colorful prancing peacocks and peahens, accompanied by Cheap Trick’s “Surrender.” The monkey man grabbed my hand and pulled me deeper into the cavernous club, which immediately morphed into a dark, damp isolation cell. I searched for the exit but couldn’t find it—searing hot walls had me trapped, baking, cracking, and blistering my skin. I was being cooked alive. Through my agony and screams, the darkness begrudgingly gave way to light and revealed a spacious Norwegian sauna filled with grotesque, half-naked, obese bishops who were conducting a conclave of the damned. They waddled and waded through the vapors, mumbling, lost in thought. The steam swirled and fumed, melding the fat bishops together into an enormous elephant that glared, huffed, and wildly shook its head as if it was getting ready to gore me to death. My heart started pounding as I once again feared my untimely demise when, out of nowhere, the meager little field mouse reemerged. The beast panicked and ran in circles until, out of sheer desperation, it crashed through the wall and disappeared. A cool, damp, musty air rushed through the hole, with a faint light emanating from above. As I stepped through the hole, to my horror, I realized I was at the bottom of a twelve-foot grave. ‘No, goddammit! I can’t be here!’ I shouted while clawing up the slippery walls. After pulling myself out, I landed on a conveyor belt, winding its way through a savage medieval battlefield with thousands of knights engaged in fierce, bloody combat. Guts lay strewn everywhere. Men lay dying where they fell. Cravens were feasting on eyeballs and brains. A pack of wild dogs was voraciously gorging upon the mountain of dead bodies. The conveyor belt wound its way through Dante’s Inferno, up a hill, through the gates of an ancient castle, and past the deserted banquet hall table covered in rotting food before stopping in the Great Hall. I brushed myself off, looked around in astonishment, and locked eyes with an old, frail king regally clothed as he sat on his gold throne. Glancing around the room, then back at the king, he appeared thirty years younger. I shook my head in disbelief and excitedly looked around in search of a witness to this miracle, but alas, I was alone. When I looked at the king again, he had shrunk into a two-year-old child who vanished in seconds, leaving behind a crumpled pile of embroidered gowns. Snow started lightly falling from the ceiling. I looked up and, to my bewilderment, saw a giant eyeball staring down at me through the glass ceiling. The ground shook, and the light flurries erupted into a blinding blizzard. I ran to the window in search of an escape when it occurred to me I was stuck in a giant glass snow globe and was nothing more than a prisoner trapped in his cold eternal hell. I strolled across the campus, pausing every few feet to observe and contemplate carefully its comforting familiarity and to reminisce about my foolish, youthful dreams that gave rise to such promise and excitement. In the blink of an eye, four decades passed. I was a sad, lonely, broken, middle-aged man whose once lofty aspirations were now painful reminders of failure and rejection that triggered a desperate sense of squandered opportunities and defeat. I realized that life is a whopping illusion of deception and fantasy that toyed with the fragility of thought, decisions, and emotions. Even the most minor decision can alter the path of destiny, forcing a reconsideration of one’s life’s meaning and purpose. As I turned the corner at the bottom of the Iranian Embassy, I stood on the 50-yard line of a cavernous football stadium illuminated by floodlights. A man’s voice echoed across the arena. ‘Ladies and gentlemen. The Dallas Cowboys Organization proudly presents the internationally famous Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders!’ The stadium roared as fifty girls marched onto the field in unison from the right side of the end zone while another fifty marched in from the left. They wore ultra-short white shorts, white patent leather knee-high boots, and a blue blouse with the shirttails tied in a knot, exposing their midriffs and a white cowboy vest bedazzled with blue stars. Chic’s “Everybody Dance” started blasting as the scantily clad gals skipped and grooved their way out to the center field where the nearly naked gaggle encircled me and shook their pom-poms chanting, ‘Welcome to Texas, Ryan Woods!’ The ladies parted, giving way to a marching Marine military band led by a Brock brandishing his cherished SigSauerP320. He gave me a salute before pointing his pistol at me. I shoved the girls aside and ran in the other direction, accompanied by Boston’s “Foreplay/Long Time.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Doug and his two youngest sons chasing me with a giant dog catcher net. It was a dizzying dance of stop, go, and dodge as I tried to outmaneuver them. Someone grabbed my shirt from behind, pulled me to the ground, and pinned me face-first to the bright green turf. I struggled to break free, but my assailant only tightened his grip. His labored breath tickled my neck, his bulge stiffened against my back, and he pressed his hot, sweaty face against my ear and whispered, ‘Welcome to Texas, Ryan.’ It was Asher.