Outro
He feels the heat before anything else. It’s blooming from the left side of his gut into his middle, blooming quickly. It feels the way your skin feels when you hold a match too long and the flame is burning just above your finger. Like this, but on his insides, and it’s spreading.
He registers the gunshot. The sharp boom and the blurring of all sound. He isn’t sure if there are more now or if it’s one shot ricocheting in his skull. It feels like a reverberation. But maybe that’s the music? It makes his ribcage buzz.
The heat is fierce and hungry and it’s filling up his stomach. It’s eating at his hips and down the insides of his thighs, and he doesn’t want to stand up any longer. The floor, the floor is what he needs. He sinks until he’s kneeling. The floor is cool and maybe it will take some of this heat. Liquid is pooling round his kneecaps and he thinks that it is heat leaving his skin. He is relieved until he understands it’s blood.
He’s on his side now and the heat’s in his whole body. It pools within him, tired of moving. He is so heavy. The heat’s not hot so much as warm now, emanating, and he feels that he should sleep. Sleep — he should tell Jackson that he’s ready to go home now. Home to their big bed with the light blue checkered quilt. Where is Jackson?
A woman falls beside him, slack and quiet. He hears a thumping when her body hits the floor. The floor, so cool, he wants to melt into it. Melting. Popsicles in summertime on Auntie Tasha’s porch. The grape kind, sweet and messy. Jackson, sweet and messy. Where is Jackson?
His eyes are going in and out of focus. In — a tall man cowering under the bar. Out — a smear of voices, flashing lights. In — Jackson, at last, above him, frantic. Out — he’d only sleep a minute, just a minute. He closes his eyes.
