Reeling from exertion, he reached out to gain stability from a nearby vertical timber. The absence of the protective coat exposed his arms, revealing large red-blistered splotches he once associated with severe sunburns, and flesh peeling off in delicate but profuse ribbons of pink skin. He knew his condition was not related to the Sun, but rather from the massive doses of radiation he received creating Adam and Eve. He stared, cringing at the sight; it made him sick.
Damn, it’s getting worse. How much time do I have left? Weeks? Months? He rubbed his thinning arms, bursting the blisters to loosen more flesh and then, grimacing at the pain, pulled the tabs until they separated into long tendrils, membrane by translucent membrane. As each ribbon broke free from his inflamed skin, he licked the tab end, reached up, squeezing it between his thumb and forefinger, and added it to the ragtag collection of dead skin strips dangling from the overhead rafter.
He smiled as he stared up and admired his artwork swaying in the ocean breeze. He was losing it as he expected he would, but it was happening far too soon for his plan. He still had much work to do and pi day--his day of final retribution--was just around the corner.
With his arms cleared of the bothersome dangling skin, he sighed aloud, sat on a nearby fuel drum, and lit a cigarette. His mind was beginning to lose the concept of causal connections so it seemed like a perfectly reasonable place to rest, particularly since he must avoid the killing radiation on the other side of the boathouse at all costs.
After a long first drag, he coughed and spewed forth more yellow bile now mixed with blood from his lungs that landed on the graying boards near his feet. He tried to look away but became transfixed by the bubbling yellow and red slime oozing in random streams on the floor.
Oh, now that’s going to make me ill. I have to clean that shit up. He rose, almost falling backward, took several tentative steps, and then reached out for the coiled yellow garden hose hanging from a nearby wall.
A single turn of the spigot handle caused the cleansing water he needed to erase the reminder of his illness to flow fourth from the hose. Flooding the floor with the ample stream, he watched with delight as the bubbling yellow, red and blended orange pools of phlegm floated around his feet and slipped effortlessly through the cracks in the rotting wood floor.
Now satisfied that he had washed away all traces of his sickness, he attempted to drag on the cigarette again but failed. Crappy cheap cigarette, he thought, not realizing that the back spray from the flooring had extinguished it. Angrily he reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out the cigarette pack, and crushed it in his hand. Such an unhealthy habit, anyway. Why did I start this crap again? I can only die once and I don’t need any help. He tossed the crumpled pack into the slip surrounding the boat and watched it bobble in the waves until it disappeared under the decking.
Stumbling toward the doorway, he glanced around the cobwebbed decaying boathouse, now consumed in dark shadows from the dwindling light, and muttered, “That will be quite enough for today. Now I must rest.”
As he reached the doorjamb, the water-wrinkled calendar hanging by the door caught his attention. He paused to read it. St. Valentine’s Day! What a wretched day my valentine left for me. In twenty-eight days plus one, they’ll all pay the piper. Damn leap year! Another day to wait. He clasped his fingers over his wrist searching for a pulse. Good. Ninety-eight beats per minute. A little weak but fast enough to keep going for that long. I must be there for their apology.
He swayed, trying to retain his balance and continued through the boathouse doorway onto the pier, turned and closed the weathered wooden doors behind him, then fumbled the open padlock into the rusting hasp and locked it.
The first few steps between the boathouse and the pier were always treacherous since several boards had rotted and fallen away a few years earlier, but he had become adept at stepping over them. It took a short-long-short-long step pattern. He could do it blindfolded, if need be, but he still had his vision.
In the fading light, he struggled off the pier, across a short stretch of sand, and into the beach elevator, closed the cage door and watched the ocean fall away below his feet as the lift carried him upward to the cliff’s edge. He loved the ride up as the world grew smaller, but the trip had become jerky and labored with the salt-air corrosion of the elevator’s shaft, motor, and gears. Its safety worried him. At the top, it took his full strength to open the binding rusty gate and continue forward onto the mansion’s lush lawn.
Stopping as he always did, he glanced up the hill to his prized Victorian home, modernized but replete with the original widow’s walk, dark green hurricane-shuttered windows, and turreted tower. The vision from below renewed his energy so he continued upward without stopping to rest.
Though its whitewashed exterior had faded to a matte gray over the years, he cherished his home on the Dana Point coast more than the day he bought it ten years before, just after receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics for “Reducing safety risks in the purification of aerogels including FOGBANK.”
His novel discovery, although highly classified, made significant inroads into the reprocessing of nuclear materials recovered from outdated W76, W78 and W88 thermonuclear weapons. In addition to selecting him for the Nobel Prize, his peers dubbed his research the work of a mad genius; he was in his heyday. If only he had refused the bribes offered him four years later. Using his newfound celebrity to promote the global warming alarmists’ agenda he had amassed over two million dollars in dirty money. He hated his greed, but hated more the conspirators who discovered his payoffs and deceptive data. It was merely one degree high, yet it ruined his life.
He remembered past that time, back to the Nobel award, one of the most esteemed moments in his fifty-two year life, and thought of the two mementos he saved from his research, one of which he had just dropped into the Pacific Ocean; the other on his workbench still awaited delivery. He smiled and increased his gait as he passed the courtyard’s elaborate topiary, tennis court, and maze, then neared the massive beveled-glass inset rear doors. They had always provided him with safe haven against approaching storms, and they were continuing their protection through this, his final tempest.
SANCTUARY
Inside the shadowed sunset room, he swept his hand across the wall and lit the overhead crystal chandelier, bringing the plush Victorian-appointed room and its furnishings into light with a brief accompanying flash. The nine-foot ornate ceilings that once had comforted him now hung low over his head, smothering him.
He glanced up at the dim light from the three remaining bulbs in the chandelier and through gritted teeth murmured, “Damn lights! Quit failing me, as does everything else. Yesterday, you were four; today you are three. Do you dare leave me in total darkness?”
Falling into a deeper depression, he moved to the adjoining kitchen in the weak light from the fading chandelier, removed a crystal decanter from the liquor hutch, and poured three fingers of Navy Strength Plymouth Gin into a silver-rimmed etched-globe glass. Once a Smirnoff connoisseur, he rebranded his taste upon his receipt of the Nobel Prize award, and from that day forward used only the best of everything. Plymouth Gin, his preferred spirit was from the oldest British gin distillery in Plymouth, England and their Navy Strength blend weighed in at one-hundred-and-twelve proof.