Artwork: Deciphering the Sphere of Eternal Nightmare by Christopher Collingwood

I Think We’re Alone Now
Dan Heck

Any second, John will move. He’ll shift our weight, and turn the radio off, Steve thinks.

In a dark room a bottle of Kentucky Gentlemen drunk to the last two shots sits next to a dusty, woodgrain radio alarm clock blaring current pop hits next to two brothers. Steve isn’t sure how long ago their joint radio turned on to wake them up, but it doesn’t take John this long to stir awake, hungover, bloodshot, and delirious, to hit the off button.

He’s just too drunk to wake up.

But when the alarm went off some time ago, Steve shook his conjoined twin brother and felt his skin. Felt cold stillness. The sense of reality slipped away, and a dream state took its place. The shock of a dead body next to him. A dead body, a part of him, shut him down. He’s been lying still on the bed just like his brother—the body—waiting for something to happen.

Nothing did.

Tiffany plays on the radio and Steve remembers the DJ announcing they’d be playing her new song on the hour, every hour. That means he’s been swimming in his head for an hour.

Steve only has three, maybe four more hours until his body shuts down too.

Before today, John and Steve did everything together. They had to; they shared six inches of their side and a spleen. Steve’s a working artist for an ad agency and John was a non-working drunk. They live in a nice two-bedroom apartment in the Ghent area of Norfolk. In the apartment, Steve turned the bigger room into a studio and made them sleep in the smaller, cramped room. John’s side is littered with dirty socks, soiled underwear, and torn jeans. The hidden carpet hasn’t been vacuumed in over a year. Kentucky Gentleman bottles litter his side. Except for the nightstand, where only one bottle sits. A bottle with two shots.

Inside of Steve’s mouth is dry. His tongue’s a sponge left out in the sun as it scrapes the roof. His head aches for cool water and aspirin. The throbbing is a metronome that keeps time with the music. Steve finally opens his eyes to a dark room illuminated by the small red numbers on the alarm clock. The wall on his side of the bed has a large, useless window. John resented the sun and Steve gave up arguing, so the blinds and heavy black curtains stayed drawn. It’s hard to make out John in the dark, but after a minute it’s the usual, his brother passed out with drool down his shaggy, mostly brown beard in the crimson glow of the radio. The room smells of bottom-shelf whiskey swirled with last night’s cold Chef Boyardee thanks to John’s gaping mouth. Steve ignores the absence of breath escaping it. Denial.

OK, time to do something, anything.

“Turn it off,” Steve says.

Silence.

It’s hard processing what to do next with the relentless pounding in his head.

Maybe John’s actually fine. Maybe my headache and dehydration are playing tricks.

As if the hour of silence never happened.

Steve throws the blankets off and is hit with the smell of bowels just as quick.

John has pissed himself many times; this is like that. Just a new low, that’s all. Once I move around John’ll instinctively get up and follow me like he always does.

“Get up! Time to shower now.”

Steve tries to sit all the way up but can’t. The strain on his side is excruciating. It’s like two meat hooks yanking down. Their shared skin is stiff, sore, and colder than before. Steve refuses to look at the body.

“Come on, get up you stupid drunk. I know you hear me; you have to.”

Still nothing happens.

He tries to swing his legs around to stand and drag the body to the shower, but his legs don’t work. He presses against his mushy thighs. It’s muted. Distant. Fingers tickle as they tiptoe down to his knees, then a little further, just below the boney bit—his touch vanishes. In the dark he tries to see his toes wiggle. Nothing stirs. Or maybe his deteriorating sight shrouds everything.

His body’s shutting down. Starting with what isn’t necessary to stay alive. Then the preservation process will move from lesser organ to lesser organ. Anything to keep the heart pumping.

His headache pulses harder, his thirst grows larger, and now the muscles in his stomach tighten and snarl from hunger. A cold Coke from the fridge sounds like heaven. Anything sweet would hit the spot. Steve didn’t grow up with a sweet tooth but gained one about two years ago, around the time he quit drinking cold turkey. He was proud about not having help with sobriety. He survived it on his own.

It finally hit Steve that he should call for help. Embarrassing just now thinking about it. With the palm of his hand he pounds the wall above his head, hoping a neighbor will hear him. Hear him and take the time to help.

Help. Call 911. I need help!”

Steve waits for a response but hears nothing except for Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight on the radio, followed by a growing pounding in his head.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

Determined to be saved, he bangs on the wall again. Then stops when he sees the spot on his ceiling. The spot that appeared one morning: dark and shaped like an oversized eggplant. The pounding in his head grows louder—Boom. Boom—as he stares deep into the now brown spot.

* * *

A year ago it started as a tap. It was almost like a water drip from a loose faucet, tap, tap, tap. Steve rolled over onto his blacked out brother to get a glance at the clock, 4:30am.

What’s that damn tapping?

Steve thought about it for a minute. Rats? The ceilings seemed too thin to house rodents. Kids? No, Ms. Leibowitz above was well past being fertile and she didn’t have grandchildren around. Cats? He remembered seeing her struggling to hold a bag of Friskies while walking up the stairs a while back. That was probably it. Her cat was making the tapping noise.

But while thinking this out, Steve thought he might’ve heard a faint voice. A fragile cry.

Help.

Steve rolled over again, it was now 6:30 and the tapping remained. It was a full-on nuisance now. It had taken years to get used to John’s snoring, but he couldn’t imagine getting used to this. As he laid and stewed, his annoyance turned to anger and he paused to stare at the ceiling. There was now a dark spot. Like a bottle of ink spilled. It reminded him of an eggplant. How long had it been since he was in a nice Italian restaurant eating fresh eggplant parmesan? His stomach groaned as the stain grew. That was it, time to get up and make some instant oatmeal.

At noon the next day the noise suddenly escalated. The tapping became a slapping, then a banging, and now there was a constant stream of high pitch whines that went with it. The old lady must have left her cats without food. Then it occurred to Steve that something could be wrong. The faint help echoed in him, the one he pushed away the day before. What if something’s wrong up there? Should he stop what he was doing to check on her? He was already a day behind on the Bonkers copy he was illustrating. It had been a year since he was almost let go and he still didn’t have enough good will to be granted another extension. Everyone expected him to fail. John’s constant inebriation always slowed him down. If something serious was going on upstairs, then it may take him away from his work. This phantom problem was asking for too much.

Then again if it were a problem that enormous then surely someone else would help? He couldn’t be the only one burdened with this knowledge. Steve had his own problems anyway.

He turned to watch John’s heavy eyelids fight to stay awake. Only up for five hours and already drunk. The smell of whiskey bellowed from him when he talked. And he talked often. The setup to some unknown joke only he knew the end to, or at least he thought he did.

The old lady was asking for too much. Someone else will come along to help her. Steve put his pencil down and got up.

“Where…where we going man?”

“The Pharmore around the corner, I need earplugs.”

“K.”

John followed Steve without opening his eyes. He was used to following in a blackout.

A week later the brothers walked into their building to find a coroner taking a lightweight body bag out, Ms. Leibowitz, and animal control taking two well-fed cats.

* * *

Steve turns to the corpse of his brother. The slab of loose flesh shackling him to the bed. The thing that forced Steve to watch a slow suicide of his best friend.

Why didn’t you help yourself?

It wasn’t Steve’s fault. He shouldn’t have been the one to help. He shouldn’t have been the one to help Ms. Leibowitz either.

Guilt and shame rise. It doesn’t sit well, so it turns into anger. Steve curls his fingers into tight fists; manicured fingernails dig into palms—bloody. Steve draws back his right fist and sends it flying, punching the body the best he can.

“You asshole. Why didn’t you do something? Now you’re dead.”

He punches until gasping for breath, which isn’t long after. By then he’s barely pushing the body. Steve grabs onto it and cries, but there isn’t enough moisture in his body, so only dry heaves come out. The heaving’s drowned out by the continued music and pounding in his head.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

* * *

Two years ago, the bass shook the inside of a club and gave rhythm to dancers and drinkers. The twins sat at a small, round table with their back to a wall so they could people watch. John’s face came up from the table while rubbing his nose.

“Come on, your turn,” John said.

“I’m cool,” Steve said.

Steve sipped his plain tonic water with lime and looked around the club at the hopeful comedians, actors, and dancers: all on cloud nine, with a little help. Dreamers ready to leave Norfolk and end up in New York or LA. He didn’t share their drive anymore.

“You’re cool?” John said, staring at his brother.

“Yeah, I’m done for good. You saw how I almost got fired this week for being late and hung over. I don’t wanna lose my job. It’s too important.”

“Your ad job is too important? That’s just to pay the bills. What about your art?”

Steve shrugged.

“Sellout. Your loss loser,” John said.

“I’ll bargain with you: if you stop doing coke, I’ll pay your half of the rent.”

John contemplated the offer for a second then shook his head.

“You don’t have to give up drinking, just coke and other drugs,” Steve said.

John was about to dismiss the offer again until he looked into his brother’s eyes and saw the desperation and care. His brother was always there to look out for him. He always did what was best.

“What the hell, let’s do it. I’ll be a better man for it.”

The two shook hands and laughed as they relaxed while watching people around them.

* * *
Tiffany plays on the radio. Three hours left.

Steve’s eyes open to the tingling of bugs crawling on his scalp. Little legs scurry around the roots of his hair. Their antennae brush faintly. They must be cockroaches here for the decomposing body next to him. In a fury, he rakes his head, pulling out hair and scratching his scalp. Steve brings his hands close to his eyes to see exactly what kind of bugs were crawling on him but finds nothing. Nothing but his own brown hair that slips from his shaking and spasming hands. They’re twitching and vibrating like he’s on a bumpy car ride, but Steve’s locked in bed. Control is slipping. Legs don’t work. And now his upper body slowly betrays him.

Steve’s body is finding it more important to keep his lungs and heart working than his circulatory system.

No one’s coming to help. It’s time to help himself. The phone he keeps in the hallway is about 20 feet away. 20 feet is all he has to crawl if he wants to live. Oh, how Steve misses going outside and feeling the sun. Misses the warmth on his skin, misses feeling like a living person. Being in the dark was John’s thing. Now for the first time in his life Steve can do what he wants. Be his own man. His own person. Just get to the phone and finally get that separation operation that would normally kill his twin.

When Steve and John were four, they moved as one unit in gymnastics. They’ll do it again. Steve rocks left to right, building momentum while placing his arms at his side. 1, 2, 3—with a loud grunt he rolls over and on top of the body. He wraps his right arm around its musky underarm and grips its flabby back. The body’s stiffer than he expects it to be considering how fat it looks. Together they roll back on Steve’s left side, then his back. But they don’t stop, they keep rolling even as they go off the side of the bed. There’s a rush like flying for three feet that ends with a crashing to the floor.

The carpet on Steve’s side of the room is immaculate. Nothing litters the brown shaggy carpet, ever. Except, when one of John’s bottles rolls from his side.

When Steve hits the ground, he hears breaking glass first. It takes a couple of seconds to register the broken bottle entering his back. The pain opens his eyes, screaming for him.

* * *

“Your turn,” Steve said while rubbing his nose. Three years ago.

He drank half of his vodka tonic in one gulp and watched John make lazy circles with his whiskey and Coke.

“Don’t be a dweeb, it’s good. It stings a little, but it won’t kill you.”

The lazy circles continued.

“Look around you. Everyone here will be a success and so will you. We’re not even at our peak. We’ll get a ticket out of here with my art or your stand up and go to New York. You’ll see,” Steve said. “Ok, so Star Search didn’t work out. But that’s nothing to be down about. That crowd was stuck up and afraid to laugh at a conjoined twin comic. You don’t care about those kinds of people anyway, so try this. It’ll cheer you up.”

John felt uneasy around drugs but trusted his best friend. Steve wouldn’t lead him astray. He snorted his first line and came up a new man. For the first time, John felt whole. Complete.

“I want to feel like this forever!” John said.

The two got up and moved as one. They went to the center of the dance floor and swayed. They were too buzzed and high to see if people were afraid or grossed out by them. They felt like they were the same as everyone else. Steve looked over at John laughing while a woman with teased out blonde hair in a black leather jacket danced up on him. Steve swore he could feel his brother’s heartbeat pounding—Boom, Boom, Boom.

* * *

Blackness and silence like floating in a void. Breathing hard to grasp; shortened. His hearing comes back first, picking up Tiffany on the radio, again.

Two hours left.

His eyes come into focus next, two murky shapes. The bulging, bloodshot eyes of the body staring back at him. It’s hard to breathe with the body pressing on his lungs. What air he can suck in smells of bile and death. Steve tastes stomach acid. Vomit that had been logged in the body’s throat came free when they landed by some sort of accidental Heimlich.

The broken glass is firmly embedded in Steve’s back. It’s becoming a part of him. He tries to ignore it and focus on the 20 feet to the phone, the 20 feet to survival, but the body isn’t letting him move and the dark room is getting darker. He just needs some oxygen for a bit so his brain can come up with a plan. As he lays on the ground slowly suffocating, he thinks of all the dumbbell curls he did every day. What’s the point of all those curls if I can’t lift a body to breathe? Steve counts back from three then lifts just enough to breathe. He sucks in putrid air ignoring the aftertaste. With the body slightly lifted, he inches to his right. The glass in him rubs against the carpet and sinks deeper. It’s excruciating, but necessary. Every inch he moves to the right he pushes the body more to the left. By the time Steve’s right shoulder is up against the wall the body is propped against the bed staring at him. Gravity and the angle forces its face down, making the tongue pop out.

The body is a mocking child.

The next problem to solve is how to get on his stomach to crawl to the phone. With his left arm wrapped around the body’s shoulders, Steve puts his right hand flat on the wall, presses in and pulls up. The pair inch up and forward further and further along the wall until they’re sitting up. The body cracks the whole way up. Blood drips down Steve’s back from the glass. It aches to be free.

Steve leans forward and lets gravity take him to his stomach. The body crumples next to him. It’s just out of eyesight, but Steve knows it’s there staring at him still.

18 feet to the phone.

Steve’s side and back fight over which hurts more. He ignores both and puts his shaky arms out in front and pulls on the carpet. Steve moves a foot. The body follows.

17 feet to the phone.

It’s like a fire on his side. Like something needs to get out. Steve’s jittery hands grab onto the carpet again and pull. The long, soft, brown fibers give way this time, so Steve digs into the floor and tries again. His immaculate nails bend. The middle fingernail on his right hand tears back bloody. Steve moves up another foot. So does the body.

16 feet to the phone.

His eyes close as he feels a pulse coming from the exposed fingernail—Boom. Boom. Boom.

* * *

Five years ago. The applause was thunderous. People slammed their hands and stomped their feet.
“You killed!” Steve screamed.

Steve turned and hugged his brother. They were backstage at a local comedy club. It was hard to hear anything over the laughter. John looked stunned with tears in his eyes. Because of Steve’s encouragement, he finally faced his fears and followed his passion. Comedy.

“I want to feel like this forever!”

* * *

Tiffany’s bubblegum voice snapped Steve awake. One hour left.

Steve can’t recall what it’s like to feel healthy. The pain of slowly dying is all he remembers. His face lifts and turns back and to see the body still staring. Murky dead eyes and bloated tongue hang. Ignoring it, Steve turns back and tries to push on, but the body won’t let him go any further. It’s weighing him down too much. The pain is too complete. He grabs the body to sit up against the wall and rest but can’t. He has to stay on his stomach, 16 feet away from the phone.

A shot or two right now would ease the pain.

There’s a bottle of whiskey John keeps next to the bed with two shots left in it. The plan was—if Steve ever relapsed and wanted a drink, John would be ready for him. Steve never craved the drink until now. Now he needs it to move on, but can’t reach it and John isn’t alive to join in anyway.

When I survive this, I’ll earn a drink, he thought.

He’ll have those shots in honor of his brother, if he can reach the phone before he shuts down.

The big piece of glass throbs and radiates like fire. It’s impossible to crawl forward. Steve reaches back to find it. His fingers tremble while slipping on blood as they trace over smaller, insignificant pieces of glass. Finally, he finds it near the center of his back. Steve grips it tight and pulls the chunk out while his right hand grips the black curtains. A small stream of warm blood spurts out and splatters the wall. The curtains were yanked hard enough they ripped and now a small stream of light pierces the room. Steve wants to see how big the piece of glass is, so he turns back to peek. That’s when he sees the black veins coming from their shared spleen. Dark spider webs paint his side. Their tendrils trying to make their way to his heart. Steve needs to separate from the body now. The headache’s back and this time with a deafening ringing.

Steve inspects the sharpness of the glass by pushing it into his right arm—it draws blood.

This could work.

It stings when he presses the jagged glass into where they meet but presses harder with quivering hands. Once in deep, he saws. Skin parts like a book to reveal vulnerable, dark red meat. The burning, stinging pain of raw, split flesh is too much. His nose fills with the copper of fresh blood. The headache pounds harder and the ringing blocks out the music. For the first time ever, Steve hears nothing. That’s when he hesitates. In that second, he sees John. Not the drunkard. Not the body. His brother. His best friend. The man before Steve pushed drugs on to him. Before he pushed alcohol on to him. Before he ignored the suffering it caused, as he had ignored Ms. Leibowitz’s cries while being eaten. Steve drops the glass. With bloody fingers he caresses John’s face. Steve’s mouth can’t open, but if it could, it would finally say sorry. Sorry for ignoring him. But that ends now. Steve knows deep down that even if he can stay alive long enough to escape, the phantom limb pain of his lost brother would haunt forever. So he lays his head down and smiles. All he thinks about as the world darkens is acceptance.

* * *

Twenty years before, the twins were lit only by a living room TV. Their bellies full of chicken noodle soup and ginger ale. Nights when they were sick their dad let them stay up and watch The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. With a Pabst in one hand and the other holding his belly, their dad laughed harder than they had ever seen or heard before. John observed his dad in amazement and then the TV, then back at his dad. He took it all in and then laughed with his dad. One day, he thought, he’ll do that to his dad. Steve didn’t know what was funny but relaxed in the warmth of his family. Soothed by the rocking of John’s laughter.

 

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