“Your theatre is gone! There’s nowhere to perform! Just let me go!”
“You’ll still perform the show…in hell!”
“Then you’d have to go to hell yourself to see the performance! Find something else to do!”
Nathan realized that Mongrel was pointing a gun at him. He fired six bullets, one after the other, but his aim was abysmal due to a combination of the bumpy road and his blind fury, and none of the bullets successfully punctured their target.
“Quit shooting at me!” Nathan shouted.
“We’ll do no such thing!”
Nathan wanted to explain that he’d spent several days in jail merely for biting another child on the arm, an infraction that was much less serious than shooting a little boy off a horse. From a strict “not spending the rest of their lives in prison” scenario, it made much more sense for Mongrel and Kleft to turn their car around and let him go.
Mongrel began to reload.
Nathan looked over at Steamspell. His hair and clothes were still billowing. He’d rolled down the windows to let the smoke escape.
Nathan pressed himself down against the horse as tightly as he could, and whispered into its ear. “I appreciate all you’ve done for me so far. You’ve been outstanding; I’ve no complaints. And I don’t know if you understand me, but if you do, when I give the signal I ask that you leap into the air as high as you can.”
Mongrel finished reloading the gun, and pointed it at Nathan again.
Nathan tugged on the horse’s mane. “Jump! Leap high into the air!”
Did the horse understand his words? Did it somehow sense his command? Or did it simply feel like jumping at that particular moment? The answer to this will be forever unknown, but the horse leapt into the air, higher than perhaps any horse had ever leapt, and Nathan let out a victorious cheer as they soared through the air, almost as if they were flying.
The bullet sailed directly underneath the mighty steed.
Through Steamspell’s open window.
Past his nose.
And harmlessly out the other window.
Mongrel fired a second shot, but this one was wildly off target and wouldn’t have hit Nathan or the horse even if they hadn’t been in majestic flight.
Though the bullet did not strike Bernard Steamspell, the jumping horse incident did cause him to recall his youth. As a young boy, he’d wanted nothing more than a horse of his own. He’d ridden branches and broomsticks and anything he could find that was remotely horse-shaped, and he’d make the appropriate neighs and whinnies, and he’d pretend that his horse—Thunder—could leap all the way over the sun. But his parents would never buy him a horse. The closest he ever came was when his uncle said “Hey, Bernard, guess what Fido is eating?” So as he watched the horse, his eyes filled with tears at these long-dormant memories, and he felt almost as if he were riding the steed along with Nathan, both of them shouting happily, urging their horse on to greater and greater heights.
And, thus, he was not paying attention to the road.
Had he driven off the left side of the road, he would have crashed into some trees and perhaps lost a limb or two. Not an optimal scenario for him, but something he would have survived and from which his screams of terror and agony would have eventually subsided. Unfortunately, going off the right side of the road involved a much steeper incline. He cried out, said a terrible, terrible word, and then plummeted over the side of the hill, striking the rocky bottom with such impact that the vehicle was crushed all around him.
Were any physicians present, they would have been astounded to see the vast number of body parts it is possible to smash, pierce, twist, remove, and otherwise destroy while remaining very much alive and conscious. Even the most reckless gambler would not have bet upon Steamspell receiving injury to so many different places without dying instantly. Those less experienced with medical matters might even have expressed surprise by how many parts were available to mutilate.
The pain was not insignificant.
As a reminder to those who set this tale aside and returned much later without full memory of the incidents that transpired before, Bernard Steamspell had been burnt head to toe, meaning that his plethora of injuries, which would have been excruciating even on healthy skin, hurt even more.
He would have screamed, had the parts of his body necessary to scream been functioning, or even attached.
His grandmother had always told him that in times of extreme stress, he should imagine a peaceful ocean with waves lapping upon the beach. He tried this, but instead of water the imaginary ocean was filled with acid. Laughing demon faces floated on the surface, their voices mimicking the sounds of those he’d loved and lost. Their giggling grew louder, louder, louder as a spike-laden whirlpool formed, sucking him down into a vortex of serpents and pitchforks.
He returned to reality and cursed his grandmother. Such a foul crone!
The pain grew even worse as some spilled fuel leaked upon him.
The pain grew exponentially worse as his still-smoking hair ignited the fuel.
If you asked most professionals how long a human being could survive a full-body burn, they’d think about it for a bit and then ask why you wanted to know. When pressed, they’d give you an incorrect answer while surreptitiously checking to see if you were in possession of matches. But even the most optimistic estimate would not have come close to the thirty-six days that Bernard Steamspell spent mangled and aflame in that car.
Every day, he prayed that he would starve to death. And every day, the former orphan who lived at the bottom of the hill provided him with a glass of water and a crust of bread, just enough to sustain his life.
Steamspell did not have a last will and testament, nor did he have any living family members. So ownership of his orphanage empire was determined by a grueling race, where ten participants raced across untamed territory for nearly a week to reach the finish line. The winner was to receive Steamspell’s vast fortune, while the losers received death by hanging.
Though Tyler Rothenwurt won the race by committing acts of which he would never speak, not even to his wife, he was a kindly orphanage owner, and the children all loved him and flourished under his care, going on to live long, happy lives. The downside was that most great accomplishments are borne of resentment, and had Steamspell remained in charge, a certain Clovis Hart would have discovered the cure for the common cold as well as a means of healing broken bones in half the time. Instead, he settled for a life of blissful mediocrity.
Elsewhere, Mongrel fired again, the bullet missing Nathan’s head by barely an inch.
“Please stop doing that!” Nathan shouted. “I’m sorry your theatre is no more!”
Mongrel shot and missed again. This had to be embarrassing for him.
“Can’t we bargain?” Nathan asked.
“You’d have to do eighteen shows a day, seven days a week, for fifty years to make up for the damage you’ve done!”
Nathan considered the offer. Then he remembered that he’d burned down the theatre in an effort to get out of doing a mere one show. “No deal!”
“I wasn’t offering you a deal! I was explaining how a deal is impractical, you little fool!”
Nathan felt a bit sheepish. Then Mongrel fired more bullets, missing with every shot and emptying his gun, and he didn’t feel so bad.
“That’s it!” shouted Mongrel. “I have become so frustrated that my own safety has stopped being important!” He grabbed hold of the steering wheel and twisted it to the right.
“I still care about my safety!” Kleft said in protest, but it was too late.
The art of the Unreliable Narrator is a tricky one. When the narrator has specifically said that a noble horse will survive, is it wrong to later reveal that the horse did not? Would this sever the bonds of trust between the storyteller and the reader, or would it perhaps strengthen them, causing the reader to realize that this is a tale without a safety net, where anything could happen, where perhaps even Nathan himself might perish with dozens of pages remaining?