Harold’s Great Escape
Harold was enjoying a well deserved snooze on the couch on a Sunday afternoon. A light breeze fluttered across the top of his feet and gently rustled the hairs of his forearms.
HARRYYYYYYYYY, are you gonna take out the trash or just lie there like a bum!!! My God, how that woman could scream. Her voice was where boners went to die. But Janice’s nagging was the least of it.
After 25 years of marriage, Janice still insisted on calling him Harry. Harold hated being called Harry, mostly because Clint Eastwood’s character in the Dirty Harry movies was such a ridiculously macho douche, and also because Harold actually was quite hairy. Calling him Harry just made his unattractive furry affliction more obvious to all within earshot.
Harold spent many nights fantasizing about hopping on a Greyhound bus with a one-way ticket to Nowheresville, USA, where the screaming monster with black chin whiskers would never find him. Maybe he could meet a kind woman who would call him by his Christian name and cook cornbread and chicken pot pies for Sunday night dinner.
But Janice had convinced Harold that if he ever tried to leave her, she would find him and drag him back home, gripping him by his nuts if necessary. “We’re Catholics, Harry, and don’t you forget it. Catholics are married for LIFE, not like those Episcopalian kooks.”
Many years back, when Janice was more youthful and less arthritic, some unfortunate soul made the mistake of crashing a car into the side of her Nissan as she was pulling out of the parking lot at the Piggly Wiggly. Janice exited her vehicle, popped the trunk, and emerged into the blazing sun wielding a tire iron. The driver stepped on the gas and tried to getaway. Janice got back into her tiny Nissan and chased the driver through four cities before finally cornering him in an alley. Janice sprang out of her Nissan like a portly superhero, smashed all of the windows and the hood, then dragged the poor bastard from his car and beat him so badly that he never fully regained his ability to speak.
A one-way Greyhound ticket to Nowheresville, USA was not a real plan for Harold.
* * *
Harold had always been amazed by watching magicians perform on TV. But even as a boy, he knew deep down that the magic “tricks” were really just illusions performed by highly skilled showmen. Just like he knew that Hulk Hogan could never really beat Andre the Giant unless wrestling was fake.
But no matter how rational people think they are, they all still want to believe.
Harold was flipping through some channels on a Tuesday night, when he stumbled upon a David Blaine magic special. David Blaine was attempting to set the world record for holding his breath underwater.
“Oh Jesus Christ Harry, why are you watching that moronic magic show? What are you, eight years old?” said Janice.
“I don’t think this is a trick. This guy is actually trying to set the world record for holding his breath underwater,” replied Harold.
“Whatever you say, genius. I’m going to Tina’s house to watch American Idol.”
“Okay honey, have fun,” said Harold. The door slammed before he finished his sentence.
Harold found himself immediately mesmerized by David Blaine’s dark, mysterious gaze and his serious demeanor that was bordering on a vaudeville routine. Is this guy putting on an act, or is he for real? David Blaine was preparing to submerge himself into a massive round water bowl with a miniature opening at the top. He would attempt to sink into the water bowl and break the world record by holding his breath for more than 17 minutes. 17 minutes, good lord!
Before the big stunt, there were interviews with fitness trainers and other folks who had helped David Blaine train his body to survive such a long time without oxygen. Harold giggled to himself as he watched a frail little Indian man explain the process.
“Vut vee did vuz show Daveed how to slooooow his beating heart. Slow heart means less oxeeegin is needed for da body. I tell David to veelax and tink of da nice tings he has seen and da nice places he has been. Tink of a beautiful vooman if it helps to veelax da mind. It is the mind over the matter, yes it is.”
Harold enjoyed the next 20 minutes of this new American pastime — watching the physical suffering of others from the comfort of your La-Z-Boy chair. David Blaine floated in the water lifelessly with his limp arms hanging at his sides. What is a good looking, muscular young fellow like David Blaine doing floating around in a goddamn fishbowl with no air to breathe? If I were him, I’d be out on the town chasing skirts.
David Blaine finally emerged from the fishbowl looking halfway dead, shaking like some poor epileptic geezer. But he did it. He broke that dumb world record for lasting the longest amount of time without breathing air.
* * *
Sometimes in life a man develops a vision over a period of weeks, months, and even years. Like opening a business or training for a marathon. Other times, a man gets struck by an idea so hard and fast that it feels like a lightning bolt pierced right through one side of his skull and out the other.
Harold sat there watching David Blaine defy the laws of nature, and was stunned by his own revelation. He would escape Janice for good, and she would never find him.
* * *
Harold waited until Janice ran down to the Piggly Wiggly to grab a pack of cigarettes. Kools, that was her brand.
When they had first met at the age of 19, Harold thought that wafty menthol smell was kind of sexy, the way it clung to Janice’s hair and clothes like a wet piece of Saran Wrap. Looking back, Harold realized that he only thought that putrid faux minty smell was sexy because he thought Janice was a hot little number in her own sloppy, Woodstock kind of way.
Boy, were those days gone forever.
Harold’s first trial run of his brilliant escape plan was not very encouraging. With Janice out of the house for at least 20 minutes, Harold lied stiff as a corpse on his bed, pressed the timer button on his Iron Man watch, forced a deep breath into his diaphragm, and tried not to breathe. The first 20 seconds were actually quite relaxing. Then the agony began. Harold felt as if every cell in his body were begging him to do something that he needed to do, but that he was stubbornly refusing the loud sirens of nature.
After springing from his pillow like a Jack-In-the-Box and taking a dramatic gasp for oxygen, Harold focused his eyeballs on his Iron Man watch. 44 seconds, that was it. He had a long way to go, but he knew what was at stake. Practice, practice, practice. Every day, no exceptions.
Each night after Janice went to bed, Harold would lie down on the couch, slow his breathing, and hold his breath for as long as possible. He even practiced holding his breath when he was walking around the house, running errands, doing yard work, and washing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen. Since Janice never spoke to Harold, she didn’t seem to notice his new found silence.
Slowing down his heart was the next step. Harold committed to meditation and centered his entire existence around calming himself down and slowing his heart rate. Every time Janice would yell at him, Harold would close his eyes and think about that trip he took with his family to Maui as a teenager. Nothing but pineapple juice, the hot sun, waves, and babes in bikinis. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Slow, slow, slow. Babes in bikinis.
After six months of training, Harold could hold his breath for five minutes. If he really focused, he could slow his heart rate down to 20 beats per minute, maybe even a little bit lower.
It was time to go for it.
* * *
Janice was in the kitchen, cooking one of her Hamburger Helper “cancer casseroles,” as Harold liked to call them. Harold positioned himself on the couch as he had planned for weeks, and started taking deep, slow, deliberate breaths. Deep breaths, relaxing thoughts.
“Harry! Get your ass in the kitchen and make some vegetables and clean the casserole dish.”
Harold reached into his right front pocket and pulled out two large Alka-Seltzer tablets. He placed both of them into his mouth, and took a sip of water. He then took three tremendously deep breaths, and held the last one in his diaphragm. Foam grew in his mouth like a white bubbly spider with a billion legs, then escaped through his slightly parted pink lips.
“Are you deaf or what?” Janice said entering the family room. “Harry, are you sleeping again? Oh my God, Harry wake up!”
Janice ran to the couch and kneeled by Harold’s side, wiping the foam from his lips. Harold’s heart rate had slowed so much and he was in such a deep meditation that it seemed as if Janice was yelling at him from another dimension. When she ran to the kitchen to grab the phone, Harold briefly opened his eyes and took a series of desperate deep breaths. When he heard Janice coming back into the room, he took an incredibly deep breath into his diaphragm, and held it.
“I think my husband’s had a heart attack. Send an ambulance now, and don’t lollygag!”
Harold needed to seriously slow his heart before the ambulance arrived. He thought about the trip to Maui again. He thought about the great girls he had met before Janice wrecked his life. Deep, slow breaths.
It’s hard to say how much time passed, but Harold had entered another universe by the time a cluster of firefighters had raced through the front door. Maybe I really am dead. There were distant discussions about a code blue, epinephrine, and a defibrillator. Harold felt a pinprick, then a shock to his chest, but he just kept on dreaming about Maui. And babes in bikinis.
I cannot spend another day with Janice. David Blaine did it and I can do it too.
* * *
When Harold awoke, he was cold and naked. And alone. The room was bright but drab, and a little tag was hanging from his left big toe. He was sprawled out on a table surrounded by corpses, most of them old and wrinkled. I did it, they all think I’m dead!
But he would not be alone for long. Murmurs could be heard in the hallway of the morgue.
Harold ripped the toe tag off his left big toe and stepped down from the cold steel table. The frigid air felt hostile against his naked skin. Harold looked through a small window over the cadaver table, and saw that the night sky was as black as tar.
This would be his only chance.
Harold’s feet apparently made his decision for him, as one naked foot after the other pranced with intense purpose toward the double doors at the back of the autopsy room. Harold’s arms were apparently in agreement with his feet, as he watched them fling open the doors and whip back and forth against his body as he sprinted toward a corn field behind the coroner’s building.
Harold ran like he had never ran before, with his manhood slapping against his thighs and his long grey hair flowing in the warm summer breeze. He had no plan, except to live a life worth living.
And to never smell another Kool cigarette again.
© J.S. Lender 2019
