Fragile Dreams Read online

  “Robbie!” he screamed, terrified, his pulse racing. He turned back to their room, saw Robbie through the open bathroom door. His friend was crawling awkwardly across the shit-brown carpet, one of his legs bent unnaturally so his toes pointed upward, his knee loose, calf and foot dragging dead weight. His collarbone was caved in on one side, his tilting head a gruesome pile of blood and eyes and bone.

  “I know, I know...” he said, a guttural laugh coming from somewhere within the gore of his mouth. He sounded exasperated, as if losing his face was the most frustrating part of his morning. “I’m sorry, boy-o,” he said, then collapsed, his jaw working into the carpet. “We’re dead dead dead, man...”

  Matthew started for him but the door slammed shut, smacking like a fist into the exposed tissue of his face. He felt a cheekbone crack and pain surged to his brain. All his senses were screaming that he was damaged, his brain tapping his consciousness, repeating in a steady mantra that something was very, very wrong.

  He spun and fell hard to the gray linoleum. He moaned, rolled over; the stained bathroom floor had smashed into what was left of his broken face.

  Something incredibly heavy landed on top of him, collapsing his lungs, crunching down on his lower spine and the back of his legs. He heard a creaking and raised his eyes toward the door, which had opened a few inches. Matthew prayed it was someone coming to help him help me up please and could only watch in horror as a torn, flayed hand slipped through the narrow opening, stamping smears of red on the wall as it groped for the wall switch.

  He started to scream just before the fingers found their target, there was a click...

  ...and the lights went out.

  Chapter 3

  Matthew opened his eyes, but could not see. It was black. A thick, rich black pressing against his shock-wide-open eyes, slathering his skin, dampening his hair.

  It took him a few moments to place himself, to understand... everything was so fuzzy, his thoughts slow, as if drugged. He was lying on his stomach, his face pressed downward, his cheek mashed against rough concrete. He tried to lift his head, found he could not. It felt so damned heavy.

  A minute passed. Another. Matthew didn’t move, lying deathly still, trying to piece together what, exactly, had happened to him. He had to think.

  He focused his breathing, blinked rapidly, and attempted to formulate a clear, sensible idea of where he was.

  Then he remembered.

  The memories came in a mad rush to the forefront of his mind, free-falling through his rousing consciousness in darting hot flashes, a lapping wall of flame eating its way to the surface. The horror of it flooded him. The unbelievable, unfathomable realization that he must be lying deep within the collapsed building. Above him, on top of him, rested a mountainous heap of bone-crushing weight.

  The idea kick-started a mad, surging panic. A heavy blanket of claustrophobia pushed against his brain; his flickering rationality, a defense mechanism built by blind terror, beat against it. A diseased, irate moth with a broken wing, bouncing and bashing against the inside of his skull. Without caution, he tried violently to twist his body free, but realized—in a blinding rush of a horror approaching madness—that he was stuck. An object, unimaginably immense, was pinning him down.

  A fresh wave of terror jolted his nerves aflame and he wanted to scream until his lungs were emptied, lash out at something, anything. But his prone body refused, the synapses in his brain not firing the necessary instructions to his limbs or facial muscles. It was as if he were temporarily cut off from himself. A dead, crispy butterfly pinned neatly within a small boy’s insect collection. He imagined himself inside a frame, hung on a wall like so many other captured insects, awaiting the boy-god’s pleasure.

  He gulped in deep breaths and the hysteria began to ebb, the moment of contested interaction between mind and body depleting his strength, allowing him to take a moment to refocus and calm himself.

  Stupid! he thought, do I want to bring the whole building down on my head? He knew he must exercise greater caution, at least until he had a handle on his situation.

  Okay then, he thought. Just how bad are we? He waited for the surge of panic to subside. He closely monitored his breathing and kept his body very still, no longer daring to move.

  As his muscles relaxed and his mind quieted, he recalled a memory from when he was a child. His grandfather, when putting him to bed at night, would shut off the lights, stand by the open door and instruct him softly, his comforting voice soothing in the dark, to “relax yourself slowly, Matthew. One body part at a time. Start with your toes,” he’d say. “Tell them, very nicely, to go to sleep.”

  Matthew, just a small boy, would close his eyes, focus on his toes.

  Then he’d think, Go to sleep, toes.

  “Good,” his grandfather would say, watching him. “Now, tell your legs. Then your fingers, then your arms, then, finally, your head. Got it?”

  Matthew would nod to the shadow by the open door, then, closing his eyes once more, follow the instructions exactly. Goodnight legs, whispering the instructions in his mind. Goodnight fingers... goodnight arms...

  He rarely made it to his head.

  Matthew decided to use the same technique now in assessing his injuries. Slowly, calmly, he did his best to let the suffocating fear slip away. Then, one-by-one, he began exploring individual areas of his body.

  He started with his mouth. He closed his eyes and felt around with his tongue. He winced and inhaled sharply as he slid his gashed tongue slowly up and down, then side to side. The inside was sloshy, but what he thought was saliva, he realized with revulsion, was his own blood. He tilted his head downward, barely able to tuck his chin to chest, and opened his mouth, letting the liquid run out. He tried to spit but pain shot through his face, so he let it just spill out. The blood waterfalled over his lips and down his chin. It soaked into the rough carpet of rubble.

  Matthew let his jaw hang open a moment, panting like a dying dog, breathing in the stale, dusty air. When he finally closed it to swallow, he was sickened by the slick of blood and bits of flesh that slid down his throat. Worse yet, with his mouth closed, he discovered he could not breathe through his nose. With effort, he let that thought alone for the moment, still trying to take inventory as slowly, as stolidly, as he possibly could. He wouldn’t panic, not yet. Panic wasn’t an option. He tried to relax, to take hold of the situation. In the meantime, he would just have to breathe through his mouth, although the taste of the air sickened him.

  His face, he knew, was badly damaged. He tried to breathe through his nose again and failed. It felt... wrong. He could sense that the bridge wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

  Let’s move on, he thought, and reached out with his senses to feel his arms, his hands. His right arm was immobilized, but he thought it was all right. It didn’t seem broken, and he could wiggle his fingers. But whatever was pressing down on him the building the whole fucking building was also pressing down on his shoulder, keeping it immobile. But he could move his hand without pain. He tilted his wrist up and down, twisted it left... then right. All good there. Not so bad, considering, he thought. It’s okay everybody, we’re just a little stuck at the moment.

  He tried his left arm next, almost weeping with relief when it moved freely and with ease. He slowly bent his elbow, brought his fingers toward his face. Again, no pain. He thought it a very good sign, overall, that his arms seemed to be undamaged. The right one, for now, trapped. The other, for now, completely operational.

  Feeling more confident, he went back to his face. He gingerly pressed his fingers to his nose. He sucked in air sharply at the pinch of pain even the gentlest touch caused him. Lightening his touch, he very gently moved the pad of one finger along the bridge, trying not to panic when he felt the break just below his eye-line. He could feel the swollen knob of gristle, the sharp edge of the broken bone where it shifted at an angle. More probing revealed a wide, deep gash running from the break in his nose to just below his
left eye. It was sticky to the touch. When he pinched and wiggled the askew tip of his now rather loose nose, it gave sickly and moved a little too easily under his fingers. There was a loud internal grating sound of shifting gristle in his ears from where the dislodged pieces rubbed together.

  With a deep sigh, he left it alone once more, moved on to his eyes and forehead, pawing at himself like a blind man seeking recognition of a stranger’s face. He found no cuts, no painful spots or anything else terribly out of sorts. He thought it possible that one cheekbone might be broken, but it was too tender and swollen to tell. The skin felt slack under his right eye where it should have felt like a facial bone, and despite the swelling he knew something had been dented permanently. He didn’t want to dwell on it, the thought of his face disfigured not helping his spirits, and so he quickly moved his fingers to his lips. Praying silently for good news, he slowly pushed two fingers into his mouth.

  He immediately felt the jagged, tender edges of two broken teeth along the top left. He felt around some more, touching the tip of each tooth, and was pleased that everything else seemed in its proper place. He next tapped the pad of his swollen tongue and, with some astonishment, realized he’d bitten the end of it completely off. There was a raw stump where the tip had been. He could only assume the missing bit had been swallowed, or spit out with the rest of the blood.

  Moving on, he thought, and pulled his fingers from his mouth. He patted the top of his head, then around to the back, felt no external damage.

  Grateful for the knowledge that at least his skull was still in one piece, he allowed his mind to feel out the remaining parts of his body. It was as if he were opening a sealed door in his consciousness, one that had been closed off to protect him from the knowledge of what lay beyond.

  He could neither roll his body nor raise his torso. His lower back was being pushed down by a great weight from above. Beneath him, something bulky and sharp-edged was jabbing itself hard into his pelvis and guts. Luckily it had not broken the skin, or any bones that he could tell. The weight on his spine was not severely painful, but it was immense, as if the slightest increase in pressure would literally snap his body in half.

  He shifted his attention from his back and let his mind float down his legs. They were, he thought with a degree of confusion, exposed. He could feel the space around them and when he gently tapped the toe of one foot where were his shoes he was missing his shoes against something hard he nearly wept with relief at the welcome surge of feeling that ran through his foot and up his right leg. He tried to do the same with the left, but that leg was bent awkwardly, the ankle wedged into something heavy and twisted, like metal ribbing or, possibly, a piece of the building’s iron framework. But he could feel that trapped foot, which meant, he was pretty sure, that his back was not broken. At least, he thought less optimistically, not severely so.

  Okay then, where does that leave me? Broken nose, certainly. Maybe broken cheekbone. Trapped arm, trapped leg. Back hurt, but likely not broken, because I can feel my fucking feet. My insides, though, this pressure in my stomach.

  He broke off, let his mind go blank, tried to be positive. He knew he was lucky to be alive.

  His assessment complete for now, he tried to remember the moments prior to the building’s collapse.

  An earthquake, he thought, straining to piece the jostled memories, filled with panic and terror, back together. He recalled how the office disappeared in large chunks, slipped away before his eyes as the earth shook. The receptionist, he thought, she was injured, her face...

  Matthew didn’t want to think of her, or the fate of the other fifty or so people in that office. Dead, of course. They’re all dead. The whole firm wiped out with a snap of God’s fingers, a swipe of his mighty hand.

  Unbidden, the thought sprang to him—with a twinge of instant shame—that he would not be getting the job.

  He laughed, shook his head and let a few tears spill from his eyes, chuckling between gasps while lying down, down, in the deep dark. The laughter turned to coughing, then hacking. He could taste blood spurting up his throat.

  Is that internal bleeding? No, dummy, you just swallowed half your tongue, remember? That’s your goddamn brunch today, boy-o.

  What about Mr. Baskin? What had happened to the elderly lawyer he was supposed to interview with? He had never even met the man. Matthew wondered what the old coot had been doing when his world literally collapsed and he was dropped forty feet down, crushed amongst the bodies of his subordinates? Had he been chatting with his wife, the lovely Mrs. Baskin? Making dinner plans, maybe? Or had he been reviewing Matthew’s CV, boning up for the interview? Preparing the hard questions, wondering if this young man would be the right fit for his prestigious firm. A protégé, perhaps? A future partner in the making?

  Didn’t matter now. Baskin’s firm was done. Literally wiped from the face of the earth. Force Majeure, Matthew thought involuntarily. The big Delete button. He couldn’t help himself thinking about all the life insurance policies that would not be paid out, the property damage that would not be reimbursed. Although, if Baskin was half as good a lawyer as Matthew had heard, the old man’s assets were likely fine. An old eagle like Baskin would cover all his bases, allowing for such things as lightning strikes, tsunamis and, yes, earthquakes.

  For his part, Matthew had no life insurance. No savings, either. What Matthew would be leaving to Diane and their child was debt. Shitloads and shitloads of debt. Student loans upward of a hundred thousand dollars. For what? A law degree he might never be able to use.

  “If it please the court,” he mumbled, choking out the words, “this really fucking sucks.”

  He wanted to laugh again. To find levity. He could not. He only rested his head lightly against something hard that smelled of concrete and dirt, closed his eyes, and waited for someone, anyone, to rescue him.

  * * *

  “Not adopted. Dumped,” he told her, she with her Pinot and he with his lager.

  Their second date. Time for storytelling. Time for This Is Your Life. If you think there’s a chance, if you think she’s the one, then you give it up. You let it fly. That’s how the game was played.

  “My grandfather raised me from infancy. I never even met them. They left the country, never came back.”

  She spun her glass, treading carefully. “You never tried to find them?”

  Matthew shook his head. The din of the restaurant disrupted his thoughts, irritated him. “By the time I was old enough to give a shit, to fully understand, they were dead. Well, at least that’s what I was told. I got a letter once...” he trailed off, not ready to let her into that place where talking about the letter would take him. The painful doors it would open, showing her his twisted insides.

  He swallowed some beer, waved his hand dismissively over the spattered remains of their shared plate of grilled Brussels sprouts and mini ahi tacos. “Plane crash somewhere in Spain. I was sixteen when my grandfather told me. He woke me up one Saturday morning, sat on my bed, and said, ‘Your parents were killed yesterday. I’ll be gone a week or so. Get up, there’s things you need to do.’ And that was it. He left. A week later he came back and we returned to our lives.”

  “Jesus, a real sweetheart.” She instantly regretted the words. The reaction of a college girl who knew nothing of the world. And she liked him. “I’m sorry, I mean...”

  “No, it’s okay.” Matthew tried to smile, could sense her self-admonishment. Something he liked. “He wasn’t a real emotional guy.” Matthew hoped his words, his smile, would relieve her apprehension. Because she could be the one, couldn’t she? “He’s a good man, a fair man. I love him.” He shrugged. “Besides, he’s all I have.”

  Diane spun the spine of her glass, thinking. “He’s alive, then?”

  Matthew nodded. “I talk to him every day. Well, almost. He still works the farm, although it’s smaller now. No animals, just the fields. He’s a good man,” Matthew repeated lamely.

  She reached out a h
and and he took it.

  I’ll take care of you forever, Matthew thought. And we’ll have children and I will love the shit out of them.

  He pulled his hand away, laughed self-consciously as he swiped a stray tear from his eye. She smiled and handed him a clean napkin. He laughed again, falling, wondered if she was falling with him.

  Chapter 4

  Matthew jerked his head from a half-sleep, a sharp pain immediately stabbing his neck. He became abruptly alert as the earth beneath him, and the rubble of the building surrounding him, began to violently shake.

  Oh fuck oh no no no no...

  The slab of heavy concrete wedged against his back vibrated like a mountainous chainsaw, sending tremors up his spine, turning his legs cold. It pressed into him harder, as if he was not even yet bearing the full weight of the thing. As it slowly shivered loose from its anchored position, he realized with horror it was sinking—inch by inch—into his lower spine; deliberately settling itself into his lower back, crushing him with agonizing slothfulness. He gritted his teeth and screamed.

  As the earth continued to shake, small chunks of debris fell on him and around him, choking the air with concrete dust. As he was pressed downward, downward, the hard object beneath him pushing into his pelvis shifted, but thank you God it miraculously shifted away from him, creating open space in that small area below his stomach and hips. As the great weight continued to sink, he felt his spine curve, his feet raising higher as his midsection bowed. He flayed his one free arm outward, waiting for that moment when his spine would snap, his stomach burst and his insides rip through his skin and spit themselves over the dark ruins.

  He screamed again, louder, praying his lungs would allow the air back in once he’d expelled it, that his compressed body would not reject his next breath.