The Little Demons Inside Read online

  He stood in the unbearable heat, looking like the vagrant that he was, trying to determine which way to go. In dark jeans and hoodie, Henry wasn't dressed for the desert. He hadn't smelled great when he started the Greyhound bus ride that took him here from the Northwest, and the heat hadn't improved his odor. He felt the eyes of the Circle K minimart shoppers, gassing up, filling up their gigantic soft drink cups, hoping Henry wouldn't ask them for anything. None of this stuff bothered him in the least. He'd been on the bum long enough in his twenty-some years on the planet to know the drill. Bother the customers and you'll get asked to leave. Refuse to leave and make a scene. Make a scene and cops show up. After that, nothing good could happen.

  Oh god, it was hot, he thought with disgust. His head itched and he wished he'd had a buzz cut instead of a messy mop of black hair, sweating like a dead cat on his head. Where the fuck is the bus stop, he wondered? He'd slept through his stop, and was now good and lost in the suburbs. The city buses would have to take him on a back track to downtown so he could get yet another Greyhound for the rest of the way on his journey. The damned stops for heading back downtown were far apart and poorly marked, easy to miss. Henry paced back and forth, irritated by the heat and keenly aware of his dwindling cash and change balled up in his backpack. He was hungry, but knew he had a long way to go and $20 could only be stretched so far.

  Then it happened.

  The bell rang so loud, he thought his ears would explode with that fucking noise. Henry fell on the ground, something in his pocket jabbed his hip sharply, but he didn't have time for ordinary pain. He quickly glanced around and saw no one else was hearing it, a fact that confirmed his worst fears. Oh dear Christ, it's happening again, he thought as his mind started to slip into that dark, horrific place.

  The seizure gripped all his voluntary muscles in an aching squeeze, like being electrocuted. Henry briefly considered that he might be shitting himself. It happened before, but that was a fuzzy memory, something from before. His world went dark and all he could hear was his own strained breathing, and that, just barely, over the blaring of the bells in his mind, a cacophony of sound.

  "Oh my god! What's wrong with that guy?" someone shouted as they kept walking by.

  Another woman leaving the minimart dropped her iced coffee. The glass bottle shattered on the sidewalk, but she didn't care. She knelt beside Henry's twitching body. Looking up at the handful of customers standing around, they were all busy gawking, playing on their phones, or maybe recording the seizing man.

  "Call 911!" she shouted. For fuck's sake, she thought. Some of them standing around were nurses, her coworkers. Mother fuckers. She made a mental note to call them out later, as she turned back to check Henry's airways.

  They might have called for help, probably would have, except at that precise moment explosions went off all around the gas station, pumps, cars, and something inside the minimart, throwing flames high into the air. Customers ran, clutching their phones, and dropping their oversized liters of slushies and iced, soft drinks. Something deeper inside the pumps went up with a roar, the minimart attendant came running out and a louder boom shook the air as the store completely folded inward and exploded outward at the same time. Successive explosions came from all around. The flames whipped around the two kneeling figures, still in the center of the inferno.

  She protectively cradled Henry's head in her lap, bracing for the heat, which never came. In her fear, she didn't even question the how, what, or why of the situation and pressed her eyes closed against the brightness around them. The explosions had been so fast and violent, she hadn't a chance to form any thoughts, but her feelings, beneath the fear, were telling her to hold him tight and they would be ok.

  Tires melted. Acrid smoke filled the air. Oblivious to the danger, a crowd gathered at the periphery of the gas station. You don't get to see a fire like this every day, someone might have been thinking. Cell phone data rates burned, too, as video was live-streamed up to satellites and shared for the likes.

  Henry came to with a sudden wakeful and clear impulse to escape, get away. He looked into the face of the woman who'd helped him and wondered, what the fuck was her deal? He could tell she was in shock and that seemed about right. The place was a mess of flame, melting metal and burning tires. He didn't really know what had happened, but he was sure he had to get moving. He pulled himself up and took the woman's hand. Her grip was as strong as his, maybe stronger. They locked eyes for an instant and something passed between them, something so subtle that neither realized it at the time. Like had recognized like. On the surface of their minds, nothing was shared except that look of panic, but beneath it, a certain awareness inside Henry recognized her.

  There was no time to dawdle and make acquaintances. She allowed herself to be led by Henry, who kept advancing, looking for a way out, barely noticing that the flames held back around the two of them, as if restrained by an invisible wind.

  "We have to go," Henry said, pulling her along faster into a jog and then a sprint.

  There was as much smoke as fire, and it was hard to even see the Circle K, yet they ran through a moving corridor of unnaturally cool air around them. As they reached the street, the air was practically clear and they could see more of the damage in the parking lot. It was inconsistent and Henry, still feeling that urgent escape vibe, marveled at how some of the cars in the small lot were fine, but most others were practically sinking into the melting asphalt. Henry's urge to escape kept them moving, and hand in hand, they ran away from the Circle K even as approaching sirens filled the air. They ran down the main road and turned down a neighborhood street before slowing to a trot, eventually stopping in front of a series of identical-looking stucco houses. The woman pulled her hand out of Henry's sweaty clutch and half-coughed and laughed at the same time.

  "Are you ok?" she asked, still panting and leaning over with her hands on her knees, gasping for breath, heaving and spitting like she was going to barf.

  "Are you?" he asked, feeling more aware and awake, but mostly pretty fucking distorted.

  Her face was pale, probably from the nausea, but she was brown, maybe Native, maybe Latina. Her nose screamed indigenous, but Henry wasn't an ethnographer. He imagined her smiling instead of grimacing, showing white teeth, just a touch crooked. Her lips were full and somewhat downturned. Henry realized at this moment that his protector was beautiful, maybe the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. She bent over again, gripped her knees, and did throw up. She was on the shorter side, a thick girl, and even through the scrubs he could see she was structured like an MMA fighter, strong shoulders, thick thighs. She couldn't be much older than him, and despite the circumstance, he thought he could look at her all day.

  "Hey, sit down," Henry said and rummaged in his backpack, producing a bottle of water.

  "Drink this," he said and offered the water to the woman.

  "That was fucked up," she said as she tried to catch her breath.

  "Yeah. I know. I'm sorry, and, uhh, thanks. I must've looked pretty rough," he said.

  She swished her mouth with water and spat on the sidewalk, "Epilepsy?"

  "Not exactly," he said flatly.

  "We should go back and give a statement to the cops. Fuck. You think it was terrorists?" she asked.

  "At one of the dozen Circle Ks in Tempe, Arizona? I don't think so," he said.

  She started walking like she was going to head back and waited for Henry expectantly.

  "You go ahead. I think I'm going to bail," he said.

  "What about your car?" she asked, momentarily forgetting that he looked like a homeless.

  "I don't have one. You can totally leave me. I'm fine now."

  "Dude. You're weird. I don't know what to do."

  "Nothing. Anything. Really. Thank you, but you don't need to get involved with me at all."

  She seemed to weigh this.

  "Why are you dressed like that?" Henry asked.

  "I'm a registered nurse."<
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  "Oh," Henry said.

  "That's why, in my professional opinion, I'd like you to think about going to the hospital or at least getting checked out by an EMT. Just walk back with me to my car and I'll give you a ride if you need one, if it didn't blow up."

  "Oh," he muttered again.

  The woman's take charge attitude might usually rub him the wrong way, but he supposed that he'd see where this goes. He felt a bit tongue-tied around her now, and couldn't bring himself to ask her name.

  They walked back towards the black pillar of smoke billowing out from the ruins of the gas station pumps and minimart. Backed up traffic honked and squirmed angrily, but Henry was comforted by the utterly stupid reality of the noise. Not too comforted though. Every step increased Henry's dread as he pictured dead bodies stacked up and charred, blistered like hotdogs too long on a grill, but to his surprise, there were none. Some kinda miracle, he thought. Fire trucks and ambulances idled as flames were put out. The Circle K attendant and a few customers were being treated for smoke inhalation, but no charred hotdog bodies were visible. Henry was grateful for that. A police officer stood surrounded by looky-loos.

  Henry and his companion walked up to the man in uniform, obviously the man in charge. He was tall and lean, an African American man in his mid-40s with deep eyes and a deep, dark complexion. His uniform was as stiffly formal as his facial expression. Two women, wearing nurse scrubs, were holding up their cell phones for him to watch videos. He took one and held it like an alien device close to his face, not in the usual neck bent phone hold one usually sees.

  "Excuse me, Officer," Henry's new friend so very respectfully said.

  "One moment," he replied without even looking up from the phone screen. The audio was loud enough for Henry to hear.

  "Oh god! What's wrong with that guy?" the voice played back.

  Weird mouth sounds, gagging and a scream, and the video was getting to the good part of Henry's grand mal. Then came more screams paired with several loud booms, deeper than the speaker could play back. The audio caught someone screaming "world star, world star, world star," whatever that meant.

  Officer Sanders handed the phone back to the nurse and looked up at Henry, then at the two of them standing expectantly in front of him.

  "You're the guy and gal from the video," Sanders said.

  It was not a question.

  "Yes," Henry said.

  "Did you see anything suspicious before the explosion?"

  "No, I was too busy flopping around like a fish trying to breathe air," Henry said.

  Cassie cut him off mid-sentence, "Officer, I'm a nurse. I saw... I saw him," and when she realized she didn't know his name, she continued, "He was in distress. I was just heading into work."

  "Did you see anything? Packages unattended? Anyone or any vehicle suddenly fleeing the scene prior to the fire?" Sanders asked.

  "No. I mean, people were running, but I was..." Cassie said.

  "This gentleman seems fine now. I need both of your contact information should I have any other questions. Can I get your names?"

  "Cassie." "Henry." They answered at the same time and looked at each other with a mutual smirk.

  "You first," Sanders gestured to Cassie.

  "Cassandra Lima," she said and recited her address and phone number.

  "Henry? Got a last name?" Sanders asked.

  "Henry Dolan. No address. No phone. No email," he said, glancing at Cassie with a shrug.

  Officer Sanders looked up from his notepad. "Don't you have a Facebook account or something?"

  "No."

  Cassie and Sanders looked at each other, and this time she shrugged.

  "You two know each other?" Sanders asked.

  "No. I'm just passing through," Henry said.

  Discernment in his gaze, Officer Sanders was clearly weighing things in his mind. Henry felt like this could go bad for him. He thought the cop was probably pondering what level of coincidence it is for someone to have a seizure at the same time a fire and explosion consumes multiple cars and a gas station in a spontaneous conflagration. How could these two things be connected? Probably not at all.

  "Ok. You can go. Thank you for your cooperation, and Henry?" Sanders said.

  "Yeah?"

  "You should stay on your meds. My mother-in-law has epilepsy. You can control it," Sanders said helpfully.

  "Thanks," Henry said.

  Cassie and Henry walked to the edge of the parking lot together. Henry wanted to say goodbye, but felt a funny hesitation and didn't want to leave. The crowd was dissipating and fresh sirens sounded in the distance, responding to some other crisis. Henry thought about asking Cassie for a ride out to Surprise, but that thing inside, some small piece of pride, stopped him. There was something else, too. Despite being completely exhausted and fuzzy headed about what had just happened, he wanted to spend more time with her.

  "Thank god," Cassie said as she pulled her keys from her pocket.

  Her car had luckily been untouched by the fire that practically melted most of the parking lot into a tar pit. Henry was relieved, too. She was nice, and he was glad he hadn't fucked her shit up, at least, not any more than almost burning her alive.

  "No phone. No email. Can I presume you don't have health insurance?" Cassie asked, fidgeting with her car keys.

  "Right."

  "Are you homeless?" she asked.

  "I'm between places," he said.

  She sighed and looked him in the eye. Cassie had a weird thought, and it was pretty far from normal for her, but she thought nonetheless, I'll just bring him home, that's what I'll do. Almost immediately on thinking it, she contradicted herself with, no fucking way.

  "Can I drop you off anywhere? Do you have any friends in Phoenix?" she asked.

  "Is there a hotel nearby? I have cash and really, I just need a shower and sleep," he said.

  "Are you a murderer or rapist?" she asked.

  "No. Not a murderous rapist either."

  "Ok. Get in."

  Her car started with a rattle and a loud rock song blaring on the radio. They drove in conversational silence, through seemingly endless repeats of the same strip malls and intersections; Safeway, Circle K, a pharmacy in either flavor of CVS or Walgreens, smoke shop, gravel lot, gun shop, porn shop, flower shop, brown and tan buildings of uncertain business purposes. In the repetition, Henry fell silent and introverted.

  ***

  Phoenix was a giant suburb. A maze of pink stucco and repetition. Ask anyone about the city and they loved to tout the grid layout of orderly roads. It was as if having an organizational pattern to their roads made up for the extreme heat and human misery. The wide lanes ran north and south, east and west, with few bends, twists or terrain changes, other than occasional mountains scattered randomly like irregular heaps of mashed potatoes. To it all, there was a dominating character of sameness, drab palm trees, occasional fountains and green lawns like a direct challenge to the arid gods of this place.

  "So, uh, what do you do?" Henry asked, but he hated small talk, perhaps because he was terrible at it.

  "I'm a nurse. Didn't I tell you that already?" Cassie focused on driving, but wondered what on Earth was she doing with this stranger man in her car.

  "Yeah, but, what kind of nurse?" Henry asked.

  "I work at a hospice," she said.

  "Must be rough," he said.

  Cassie flicked her middle finger in the general direction of the car that cut her off and muttered a fuck you for good measure. She didn't honk her horn though; you never knew who might pull a gun in this town.

  "Your job, it must be rough working with the dying?" Henry repeated his question, hating the silence in between.

  "Not really."

  "Do you smoke?" he asked looking at the half full ashtray in the dash.

  "I quit."

  "All the nurses I've ever met smoke menthols."

  "Well, I don't. Do you work?" Cassie asked.

  "I donated blood once."
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  She caught herself half-smiling at this.

  "That's stupid. The real money is black market organ sales. Everyone knows that," she said, smiling.

  "I haven't been kind to my liver, I'm near sighted, flat footed, and you know, no one, even on the black market, wants to buy a broken heart."

  She genuinely laughed at this now.

  "Henry, dude. What the fuck was up with that fire?"

  "I don't know. Spontaneous bodega combustion?"

  She didn't laugh at that.

  Henry looked around drowsily as they drove deep into the labyrinth parking lot of an apartment complex. How many units? Hundreds? How many cockroaches and scorpions and walls stained with cigarette smoke, carpets tainted with crack residue. Henry had seen his share of shitty apartment complexes, but the sight of this goddamn campus made him nervous. This was not a pedestrian-friendly place. He saw wide sidewalks, but not a soul using them. It'd take him twenty minutes just to walk back out of here.

  As they parked, Cassie turned to him, "Here's the deal."

  "Ok?" Henry had no idea what to expect. The lethargy. He hated it, but that adrenal fight or flight reaction most people had, for him, always made him want to sleep. It came on him so strong that he was almost stoned. He knew he didn't know this lady, but she seemed nice and was so pretty, so he was going to roll with it and see where it took him. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was aware that he's probably making her uncomfortable. Unless she was some kinda freak, and in that case, shouldn't he be worried she might knife him in his sleep?

  "This is my place. I'm going to let you inside to shower, sleep and make whatever phone calls you need to get going."

  She looked him in the eye, trying to gauge his crazy levels. In all the rush, she hadn't really taken him in before, and noticed now, damn, he's not ugly, maybe even beautiful. Close to her age, she guessed, blue eyes, black hair, with thick black eyelashes her grandma called coal miner's eyes. Something sad about those eyes, though.