Catching Fire

When I die, I don't want to leave this world. I want to sink, down and down and down, into the bones of mountains. Yeah, I've heard of the Angels, and maybe they're real. But they can't be as real as this place, not as really real as this place. Morbid? Well I've been thinking about death a lot lately. My death. Your death. 1

Six months ago - almost to the day - I first heard the word terminal. I mean really heard it. Before that, it was like a passing breeze, the chatter of network news. Sends a shiver up your spine, but life goes on. That's what they say. But sometimes, for some people, it doesn't. 2

I can't complain. I remember when my father got himself beaten to death outside some shithole casino by the highway to nowhere. I hadn't seen him for years, and all of a sudden I'm on the next flight to Dallas, downing ridiculously expensive whiskey like liver failure is going out of fashion. 3

I was - I am... a writer. Mostly trash, and I know it, but it pays the bills. UFO sighted? Send Linda. Virgin Mary on a taco? Send Linda. Homeless hooker abducted by clowns? For Christ's sake, send Linda! Not that it really bothered me, of course. It was actually sort of flattering. The editor knew I could write about anything at any time. The editor was wrong. 4

Turns out I can't write my own father's eulogy on the flight to Dallas. I tried - don't think I didn't try. And it wasn't the alcohol, that's for certain. Usually nothing gets the words flowing like a shot of the brown stuff. Puts some fire in your belly, my father always said. That night, as I touched down in Dallas, my muse only got me wasted. I staggered into the terminal and tried to rent a car for the next two days. The clerk shuffled me outside and hailed a cab instead. Probably saved my life, I suppose. 5

I woke up with a hangover like the Spanish inquisition, in a cheap motel I couldn't even remember the name of. They're all the same anyway: stale air and stale biscuits. Floral wallpaper. I threw up twice in the shower, and discovered too late I'd forgotten to pack any toothpaste. In the lobby, I remember arguing with the old man behind the desk about whether my room was smoking or non-smoking. Looking back, I'm sure he was just taking advantage of a single woman with the hangover from hell. 6

Where is this going? You of all people shouldn't be in a hurry to speed me along. But my point is that life goes on. I was there to bury my father, but nobody else gave a shit. Life goes on, and that means hangovers and arguments. Life goes on, that is, in a general sense...7

Barden - population 1,450 - thrives on death. Seems some insightful government official saw a niche market for the place back in the 1930s and decided to pull some strings. From then on, Barden's been the WalMart of grave plots. The cab ride there from Dallas may have cost a small fortune, but it was really a cheap town. You can buy t-shirts proudly bearing your dearly departed's mugshot, or a keychain with their date of birth and death. You can buy a grave for a few hundred backs. 8

Six feet beneath a few hundred bucks of Texan soil, we buried my father. I was practically the only one who turned up. There was a preacher, myself, and my father's elderly landlady. And then there was the man in white pants. He looked oddly at home among the graves, and whenever he smiled there was a flash of gold. Yes, he was that sort of man. He smiled at a funeral, and it didn't seem out of place. 9

When the preacher asked if I had anything to say, I lied. Some kind of deeply ingrained instinct kicked in, and I told everyone what a great man my father was, what a loss it was to see him shuffle off this mortal coil. Bullshit. I made up - I actually made up! - a childhood memory, something stupid about my sixth birthday and a red bicycle with training wheels. 10

I lied, and at first I honestly didn't care. But the man in the white pants just smiled and smiled, wider and wider, until it was obvious. He knew I was lying, and so did everyone else. I felt like an idiot, like a mannequin propped up in a nativity scene. She's not really mourning, she just looks like it. Her father was an asshole, he gambled his life away and he paid the price. If you're dumb enough to get involved with this stuff, you deserve whatever comes your way. 11

I threw the first clumps of dirt onto the fake mahogany coffin and tried to cry. I thought that maybe, if I went through all the right motions, it wouldn't matter that I didn't feel anything. It wouldn't matter that all I wanted was a cigarette. See, I'd left my packet in the motel room, and - oh, don't worry. Of course they were Southern Star. 12

I walked back into Barden, passing row after row, generation after generation, of the dead, and something about me must have tipped off the man in the white pants. He offered me a smoke and I said okay. He smiled at that - the man smiled at practically everything. He smiled when he bought me lunch at a cafe, when he told story after story about my father in stripclubs or casinos. He seemed to be some sort of partner of my father's, but I wasn't really paying attention. The hangover and the whole situation had completely overwhelmed me. He smiled when he asked if I wanted a lift back to Dallas, and he smiled when I said okay. 13

He drove me back to that shitty, nameless motel, and he invited himself into the room. I couldn't work out what was going on, what he was supposed to be there for. I asked him to leave, and he just smiled and shook his head. He smiled when he told me my father had owed him a lot of money, that these debts are always worked out one way or the other. He beat me and he fucked me and he never stopped smiling. 14

No, you're not going anywhere! What has it got to do with you? It's got everything to do with you. See, it's a fucked up story but it almost had a happy ending. When I flew out of Dallas I carried a fire with me. I'm a writer, I understood the sins of the father and all that. And I knew I had to make something out of the shithole that was Dallas. I'd never been one for resolutions, but I made myself a single promise when the wheels lifted from the tarmac. 15

I was going to change. No more living for the future, no more long nights with the bottle, no more regrets. I was going to quit my job, move in with a friend, and just spend the next six months working on my novel. I was going to prove I was better than Dallas, I was going to put myself first. First things first though, right? 16

When I got back home I had my last cigarette. In the morning I made an appointment with my doctor. Isn't it funny? I sat down at the breakfast table and actually planned out the next six months of my life - did you have any plans? Well, I'm sure you can work out the rest. I go into the doctor for a general checkup, maybe just to reassure myself Dallas hadn't broken me, and when I cough for him he looks confused. He asks me to do it again, but this time he's got a stethoscope pressed up against my chest. 17

He says it's probably nothing, but there's a routine test he'd like to do. Well it's not nothing is it? It's fucking cancer, and it's right here - just to the left of my spine. Isn't that something? I'm a pack a day smoker for years, and then the day after I quit... Wham! Struck down by irony!18

So this is where you come in. A man in white pants held me down and raped me in Dallas because my father was a scumbag. You know what? For me, that's not the fucked up part. There's a sort of grand scheme there, like maybe in death I could finally be a part of my father's life. And it almost had a happy ending. I mean, I could have written that novel, really made something of myself.19

But you ruined everything. The cigarettes your company sold me for years were like thousands of little bullets. Southern Star - the smooth choice. Isn't that what you people like to say? Well Mr Bigshot, you don't look so smooth now do you? All tied up in the boot of my car, you don't have any choice at all. I'm going to kill you out here. There will be no shallow grave. I'm going to leave you right here, right by this highway, because I want the whole world to know that it's over. Nobody will have to pay for my death, because I'm going to make you pay. 20

Don't worry, life will go on.