John Dies at the End

Let’s say you have an ax. Just a cheap one, from Home Depot. On one bitter winter day, you use said ax to behead a man. Don’t worry, the man was already dead. Or maybe you should worry, because you’re the one who shot him.

“And you guys will come see me out in Utah? I’m serious about this now. I’m gonna be mad if you don’t.”

“Sure, Amy. You and me can share a room, John can sleep with the lesb-”

“And you’ll look after Molly? And take care of my house?”

By “take care of” she meant “destroy.” We had talked about that, decided to burn the place down. Our only point of disagreement is I wanted to make it look like an accident to collect the insurance money. She wanted to do the opposite, let the insurance lapse and just blatantly torch the place.

We kissed and said some gooey things to each other that would sound silly if you weren’t there. I stood around and waited for her to board, passing through security and letting them check her shoes and all that shit, watched her walk away and kept watching out of a terminal window as her plane climbed and turned into a speck in the sky. I didn’t cry. And if you think I did, good luck proving it, asshole.

On the David Wong Social Awkwardness Scale, with “1” being going to the “Pickup” instead of “Order” counter at a restaurant and “10” being a guy getting caught on national TV having sex with a dead baboon, I’d have to say that the following minutes alone with Amy rated about a 9.6.

“What do you think you’re looking at there?”

John said, “You’re gonna be looking at my fist, and then Dave’s dick, if you don’t-”

“Take a moment and try to understand what you’ve seen,” North said. “You will not be angry once you understand. Your anger clouds you.” North glanced around the room. “I was born here, as I said. One month ago. Do you understand?”

We went into the maintenance room. To John and me, the big, decorative doorway stood in the center of the wall to our right, plain as day and as out of place as the face on Mars. Amy saw only a wall. Until, of course, she tried viewing it through the Scooby glasses. I let the little maintenance door close behind me. John looked at Amy and nodded his head toward the other door and said, “Ghost door.”

I said, “Please don’t call it that.”

Molly trotted past me and went right to the door and sniffed at it. Interesting. John said, “I feel like we should look for a save point.”

I saw a long, curved handle on the door. I let out a long breath and raised the gun. John raised the fire gusher. I reached out for the handle and watched as my hand passed right through.

“Shit,” said John. “It’s a ghost knob.”

I sighed and looked at John, was about to suggest heading back home and curling up in front of the fireplace. But then Amy stepped forward, the wet and wrinkled cardboard glasses askew on her face.

She reached out with her left arm, the arm that, in reality, didn’t have a hand. But with the hand that I could see, the ghost of a hand that was no longer there, she reached out and grabbed the door handle that was also not really there. The handle turned.

SOCIETY IS DOOMED for one very simple reason: it takes dozens of men working months with millions of dollars in materials to build a building, but only one dumb-ass with a bomb to bring it down.

I ran back to the rear door of the Bronco, opened it, reached in and grabbed a red- and- white flip- top cooler. This is my emergency kit. It contained a roll of duct tape, a spare pair of pants, an envelope with two hundred dollars, two bags of dried fruit, two packages of beef jerky, three bottles of water, a roll of those thick shop towels you see mechanics use, a small metal pipe-just right for cracking a skull with-and a fake beard. Look, you never know.

John said, “You know what that is? They used to build these old houses with doors that just led to a big drop, to fool burglars. They’d label that door TREASURY or something like that. The guy busts through the door and finds himself falling straight down. They’d put spikes or something down there. They used to call it an ‘Irish Elevator.’ ”

“Or, John, they tore a balcony off here years ago and just never bothered to take out the door.”

Nobody here. I wandered toward the answering machine, my gut full of snakes. Snow melted in my hair, a droplet of ice water running into my ear. I reached up to brush it back-

And sucked in a shocked breath.

I had found the pistol.

It was in my motherfucking hand.

I dropped the gun like it was made of bees. It bounced onto the sofa and I stared stupidly at it, then stared even more stupidly at my empty palm, fingers pink from the cold. What the-

Now that you ask, it’s a whole ten-foot walk from your heated truck to your front door. Why does every inch of exposed skin feel windburned? Why do you seem to have a pint of snow in your hair?

There’s that feeling again, that fluttery feeling of mental weightlessness, like the times when you wake up in the dark, on the hood of a car, a bottle in your hand, no idea what day it is, some girl shouting at you in Arabic.

I tried to collect myself. Tired. Tired like a zombie. An overworked zombie, one who got hired as a salaried assistant manager at a zombie video store, only to find out “salaried” just means he doesn’t get paid for overtime. My skull pounded, my knees were ground glass. I sat heavily on the sofa and stared vacantly at the little beads of water standing on the sleek, chrome surface of the Smith. I glanced at my watch. Right after midnight.

Okay. You got off at eleven. You came straight home. It’s a twelve-minute drive, figure maybe twenty for the weather. You came right in. So where did the other half hour go, Dave? Did you maybe take a detour and shoot your boss?

No, if I’d shot Wally’s manager Jeff Wolflake, I wouldn’t have deprived myself by repressing the memory, would I?

I took a cab to McDonald’s and had it dump me in the parking lot.

I took a deep breath, steeled myself and approached the sign. I prayed I’d find it back to normal.

Nope. There was Ronald, cutting himself, gutting himself, eating himself. I felt something rigid in my jacket pocket and pulled out a rusty utility razor I didn’t remember putting in there. I dropped it like it was a rattlesnake, then picked it up with two fingers and threw it in a trash can.

I stared down the poster again.

I was hungry.

The inside of the restaurant was closed but they did have a twenty-four-hour drive-through. I walked up to it and, shivering in the chill of the autumn air, ordered two bratwurst.

I sat on the curb across the parking lot and, looking right at the sign the whole time, ate them both.