Band-aiding the Bullet
PG-13, slight Cronenberg-style organic horror. Not gross, just unsettling.
For the first time ever, Dean "got" country music. Not the modern, perky, poppy stuff churned out by Nashville Inc. No. This country music was of his childhood, hidden beneath the surface of Mary's rock and roll and John's Chicago and delta blues. Mary had denounced both country and western as the stuff of Hee-Haw and hicks, while his father ignored it completely, didn't even register George Strait, let alone Garth Brooks or the Dixie Chicks.
No, the country of Dean's childhood always existed in other people's lives. Rusty AM feeds where it bled through Charlie Rose and Cubs games. In honkytonks full of an equal number of bar flies, drunks, farm laborers, bored farmers still high on marijuana after harvesting corn, and finally rat-tailed toddlers. Places that had made the Roadhouse look like the Cheers bar or a Bennigans.
That country was all twang and pre-irony PBR's and pain and misery and being dead at fifty.
And he finally got it.
He'd lost his home, his brother, his angel, his prophet, his self-respect, his soul. Benny had been right about the forgiveness of country music. That it wasn't about finding absolution, but about accepting oneself, fangs and all. But Dean still couldn't shoot that gun.
Hours passed until he could no longer see straight, the music indecipherable, and the car's gauges all bleeding into one. Pulled over into some backwoods motel, ignored everything, went mute in colors and sounds as he entered the grey-infested room, still clueless on what to do next.
Entered the shower, he lathered mechanically, washing, scrubbing everything, felt it.
The wrongness.
Looked down in the steam and water, saw the small indentation burrowing into flesh. Water dripping down into it, cascading off. His fingers went up, prying, not feeling anything except skin, physical contact, and the nothingness of a hole.
Tripping out of the shower, shin banging on the fiber glass tub, he slammed against the mirror, rubbing away moisture as he tried to see himself distorted in water tracks.
Gently, ever so gently, he pushed a fingertip against it, met no resistance, pushed in further. An inch in, sensed blockage. Something metallic and blood warm, its diameter matching the hole.
As the shower spewed unnoticed, he retrieved the first aid kit, pulled out a pair of forceps, gauze, and the hotel bottle of Jack Daniels he had stolen months ago. Chugged the drink hard, he inserted the clamp in several inches, hit metal, winced a little as he eased it around the intrusion, and clicked the handle shut.
Dean closed his eyes, fully prepared to bleed out in ten seconds, steadied one hand against the wall, and pulled everything out, groaning not in actual pain, but in ill-defined terror.
And then nothing.
The tip cleared his chest, revealing a bullet. He dropped everything onto the floor, waiting for his blood to spurt endlessly. Dying in a shithole of a motel bathroom. Not how he expected to go, but better than most scenarios.
Still nothing.
He went cold as he looked, couldn't register the lack of blood, pain, and death.
Went mute as he realized that he wasn't dying, the mark on his arm growing warm, soft; could feel the hole start to heal- filling in from the inside out until all that remained was unmarred skin and thin tufts of reddish hair. Touched the flesh, prodded at it, looked in the evaporating mirror, saw only his body healthy and whole.
Exhaled, looked into his eyes, tried not to, finally whispering the truth to himself.
"I'm a monster."