In Gene’s bomb shelter for 36 hrs, you have been searching for an out. You watched Alien and you watched Alien2, and sure he has a really nice microwave and a backlit fish tank full of serene and brightly striped tropical fish.
You say, “I’m gonna go to the graveyard and eat my sandwich.”
And you do. Gene does not leap in front of you with his bionic prostheses and block the stairwell to the exit shaft. He knows you will be back.
Outside it is so bright that you can see the pulsating blood vessels of your retina for a moment or two until you blink and squint your way into seeing where you are going.
You walk through the southern Kentucky bramble, over and through the places where cicadas sleep, and out toward the I-65 access road, and follow that toward the cemetery entrance.
It has recently rained. Although there is no moisture actually detectable, it feels like it has just rained. And the earth is in the middle of a long satisfied exhalation, like a man who has just enjoyed a home-cooked breakfast. And the gravestones are like paperweights keeping the land from ascending. Moss growing in certifiably organic colors in the goofily carved out family names. Good American names like Wood and Newsome and Wilcox.
Conventional wisdom dictates that Gene Rayburn is dead. Sure. He has abandoned his mansion to spouse/posterity. He has left Southern California for good. His quest for immortality has actually been reasonably successful so far. He is an altogether decent boss, although at times possessive.
Every immortal person, I suppose, probably requires a mortal assistant. I know this seems backwards and analogous to slavery and whatever, but I can’t see any way around it. You have to have someone to bring supplies to your sterile bomb shelter. Food, fish food, batteries for your lungs. You need someone to talk to.
The sandwich is tuna, mixed with mayonnaise, corn and horseshoes of celery on multigrain bread. The sky is populated by innocuous white clouds, milling about like overfed tourists in heaven. The ground where you’re sitting: pillows of grass and their striated vasculature of roots of trees that no longer exist. 5.5 acres of died-for land.
Eric Arnold lives in Dallas, where he studies medicine. Two of his poems recently appeared in The Labletter and others are pending publication at New York Quarterly, The Monongahela Review and Porchlight Magazine. His short fiction has appeared in Elimae, Pindeldyboz and Monkey Bicycle.