TV Glass

Flat Tire, Over: Part III

Good evening.

Welcome to an off schedule edition of Sleep Tight, the section of Kindling where I publish original short fiction. Your normally scheduled programming was interrupted by Thanksgiving, the holiday in the States where we gather with family and friends and share dysfunctional and joyous interactions common to all holidays everywhere, only with larger than life portions of turkey, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole.

If you’re just tuning in, you may want to start this story at the beginning. This is “Flat Tire, Over”, a short story I wrote a couple of years ago. It tells the tale of Bob, a man bent on survival against all odds. His dedicated prepping has led him to an isolated, lonely existence. His days are spent obsessing over the end of the world, so much so that he’s overlooked basic things, like keeping a spare in his car, an oversight that will cost him everything.

Last week, we ended with Bob stranded on the side of desert highway, tormented by the voice of his long dead father coming in over the car radio. The keys are out of the ignition, the engine is off, but still the thing swells with the murmurs of a past he’s tried hard to forget. A past that has kept him running from the end of the world. But it seems his time for escape is running out.

Shattered TV

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

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Bob walked away from the car. The sun fell heavy on his back as he distanced himself from the sound of the radio. His shirt clung to his skin. He tore it off and threw it to the pale dusty ground. Watched the dirt blow over the white for a second before marching away. He let a couple of tears roll down. Tried to cool off and rest before he figured out the radio.

His mind turned around those circuits and wires, tried to work through how the crash could have messed it up. Switched it permanently on. His heart ticked up as he walked fast towards open wilderness. The heat on his back and neck overwhelmed the red hot anger that had filled his chest and lungs back at the car, blocked it out. He could hear the radio in the distance, the words muffled ocean waves crashing against the shore before heaving the heavy water back, and back again.

---

His walks started as a kid. At seven or eight years old, during one of his dad's many brief stays at the house. His mom was  a receptionist at a doctor's office, and his dad was medicated again. He would come home from school and watch TV with him while he ate white bread and cheese. His dad was quiet. Mostly. Tuned in to the set and tired from the meds. 

"They give you the stuff and you can't—" a pause with his eyes shut tight, his finger pointed and tapping his head before the final word, "think." 

It was okay for a while. Days, weeks, Bob couldn't remember. But it started to turn when his dad started having dreams. They were wild, apocalyptic. One day, the day he started walking, he came home to TV black. The cord strewn wild across the pocked wooden floor. His backpack tight against his shoulder blades. The muscles and tendons in his neck aching.

He didn't see him right away, just held the straps of his bag tight, his fingers folded across the thick black fabric. He could hear him though. In the kitchen. Drawers, opening and closing. His dad, shoving aside utensils, forks, spoons, batteries. Looking for something. The radio was on, tuned to a nowhere station. The static eked out. His dad mumbled.

Bob turned and went to the outlet. He stared at the snake of wire, sizing up the issue. Trying to assess the problem. And finding none, he pulled the cord to him until the prong of the plug was cold metal against his hand. Gingerly, he knelt and plugged it in. The TV popped.

The floor vibrated. Bob looked at the black cord, stretched across the middle of his curled hand, trying to make sense of how his plugging the TV into the wall could cause a minor earthquake. He scanned it from the back of the TV, to the wall, and then back again.

"What the fuck did you do?"

His dad is towering. His eyes are wild. His pupils bounce from the glow of the screen to Bob.

"I'm sorry daddy."

His dad's hands grab the top of the television and pull it forward. The glass of the screen shattered and cracked. The floor shook with the thud of it. The black cord, thick plastic in Bob's hands, pulled fast across his closed fingers. When the block of the plug hit the circle where pinky touched palm, he doesn't let go. He goes with it, jolted forward as the TV fell. 

His stomach feels warm, and the heat spreads out across his torso, up his chest. In his hands and knees too. For a second he wondered if he spilled something. Hot cocoa. Warm faucet water. He thought about the time in Kindergarten, when he had waited his turn to ask the librarian to use the restroom. Patient in line as the other kids checked out books in pairs and triplets and dozens, until his bladder let go and warm piss ran down his stick legs and dampened his socks and shoes. 

He tried to push up on his hands, undo the sprawled position of his body, arms and legs out diagonal like he's mid-jumping jack, but can't because it hurts when he pushes. It hurts and his hands slipped in the warmth. He raised his head to look, and around him in tiny pools were circles of blood. His dad's hands came around his waist, lifting him strong from behind and setting him upright. 

His T-shirt, white and red striped is ornamented with little circles of red. Sticky, wet Christmas bulbs growing larger with each heartbeat. Glass stuck to his shirt, fell in syncopated rhythm to his footfalls as his father walked him forward. This step, and then that. His dad held his forearm, avoiding the little slivers of TV glass that stuck out of his palms. One of them, the left one where he held the cord too tightly, was marked by a stripe of hot red. A friction burn where the cord whipped through his palm before he fell in time with the TV.

"I'm sorry Bob. I didn't mean to," his dad repeated, a mantra as he led him to the bathroom and away from the dead television.

"They can see us through there. You understand? They're using it to watch us."

Bob didn't cry. He didn't answer his dad. He followed zombie-like to the bathroom. They stopped when they reached the bathtub and reached down to pull the edges of Bob's shirt up and over his head. 

"Ah," Bob whimpered, then closed his mouth.

When he looked down, he saw that the glass was not stuck to his shirt. It was inside of him. Points of it poked into his skin up and down his torso. The red was leaking out slowly, sticky against polyester and cotton. His dad halted, examined his shirt and pulled at a few shards, careful not to let them get in his skin. He bent down, brought his smooth, dark face to Bob's level.

"Look son, it's going to hurt. But I got to get this out of you. I got to get you cleaned up."

The black of his eyes was spreading, filling up all the amber brown of his iris. Bob nodded his head, his eyes turned down in pain but tearless. His dad resumed the position, one hand at each side of the brim of T-shirt. As it turned inside out over Bob's head, little shards of glass started to rain down, glittering speckles of sand in his curly brown hair.

"Close your eyes!" His dad yelled it, real fear in his voice as he tugged the shirt off, the pieces of glass clear of the skin. Bob didn't open his eyes. He listened as tinkles of tiny pieces of glass, some so small, that even months after on Christmas Eve, one of them would lodge itself in his heel when he got up to see if Santa had come. 

His dads hands swept over him, brushing clear glass away and down, over and over again. He turned on the shower and helped Bob untie his shoes, removed them carefully, one and then the other. He sat him on the closed toilet lid and pulled each sock off in the same way, careful to look for lingering glass. His knees were pocked and bloody. His dad looked at them and sighed.

He went to work in a squatting position, removing the glass and placing it carefully onto a denim thigh. Bob felt heat in both knees. Fire that spread and numbed him to the tiny prickling stabs as his father brought a large round fingertip to the skin there, and pulled. When it was done, his dad undressed him and turned on the shower, folding his shorts carefully, and placing them on the toilet. 

Water ran down and washed the blood away. There were little holes in his skin. He put a finger on one and pressed it. A drip of blood mixed with water and disappeared down the shower drain, pink against the white tub. His knees stung as the hot water ran down his legs in rivers. He closed his eyes tight to hold back hot, salty tears.

After a couple of minutes the water ran clear. He could hear the shuffle of broom bristles against tile. He pulled the corner of the white curtain back. His dad worked his arms in short spurts, examining the white tile for a shimmer, then sweeping it carefully into a pile. He did it for minutes and minutes, wanting to get them all, even the ones as insignificant as a grain of sand. While he worked he talked to himself, a new mantra in place of the repeated apology. Bob had to turn his ear to hear above the sound of the water against the tub.

"It's okay that it was in him. There's no electricity. They can't hear me through him. Through this." 

He watched his dad sweep up the glass into a black, metal dust pan. Watched until the shadow of his figure disappeared around the corner of the hallway.