Jacob's Ladder

Jacob stared at the spotless patch of carpet where the Playstation used to be – a crushed section of pale blue that stood out pretentiously from its dingy bruise-colored surroundings, a sneering square of celestial purity. He heaved an aggravated sigh, cursed his uncle, and returned his sullen gaze to the television screen, where Steve Irwin was holding the tail of some fanged snake, going on and on about how perfectly safe he was. Jacob stifled a snigger – if Steve Irwin knew so much about handling danger, how come he was dead?

Dead. His stomach knotted as the word pulsed hollowly through his brain. He’d forgotten for a second and now the reality of what happened two weeks ago stormed him again. It really wasn’t Jacob’s fault, though. True, he hadn’t been at his station, but he’d spilled a full bag of Skittles all over the deck, and was trying to salvage them from the warm puddles of chlorine water threatening to dissolve them into a bleeding rainbow of sugar. He didn’t notice the spidery girl clinging desperately to her pink arm floatie, straining to keep her lips above the water. She had probably cried, bug-eyed, for help, but her thin protest was submerged in the roar of the pool’s other occupants, swarms of children all clamoring for attention, all desperate to be noticed. There was no way for her small brown voice to rise above the boisterous Tennessee vigor that crowded the pool alongside inner tubes and melting sunscreen and abandoned goggles. The other children paid no attention, but who could blame them? It’s just that children don’t understand death, Jacob reasoned. They just don’t have time for it.

Jacob himself hardly believed in death, for all those videos he was made to watch about first aid during lifeguard training. Glass stabbed in people’s toes, bloody gashes in suspiciously kosher locations: Why were these people always getting cut in the least interesting places? The forearms and knees are so third grade; he thought someone should make a video in which someone’s gut was flayed open, or their ear chopped off. Real emergencies looked more like what happened in the arcade games he played in the lobby of the hotel where his mother worked – digital bodies peppered with bullets lining the streets, digital blood spraying the windshields of digital cars – Jacob would try to shoot mostly bad guys, but occasionally an innocent bystander or two would go down, and he would smirk even as he winced at the anguished digital moans of the dying. After all, the fact of life is that you win some, you lose some. Life is about avoiding as much bad stuff as possible, and trying to enjoy the good. And that afternoon at the pool, Jacob had concentrated intently on the good: scurrying across the rough cement, scooping up clumps of drowning candies and adding them in great handfuls of strawberry, orange, and lemon to his already stuffed mouth.

Now he would swear off candy altogether if it would do anything to appease the hurricane of emotion that was ravaging the town. Already two weeks since that little girl died, and he was still hiding at his uncle’s ranch to avoid being mobbed by gangs of angry parents, angry bosses, angry town officials, angry friends. Even his dumpy old bachelor uncle was angry, and had punished him by taking the Playstation, the mini-fridge, and the computer out of the old barn where Jacob was now forced to pass his days watching idiot snake-handlers petting the bellies of poisonous vipers. Jacob’s legs jigged with pent up frustration. He was terribly antsy to get back to the arcade, but the thought of another interrogation by his boss made him weak with anxiety. With an air of heavy resignation Jacob left his place on the couch and shuffled to his bedroom to hunt for something to take the edge off his misery and confinement. He remembered he’d stashed some candy in his bedroom when he’d first arrived, but now he couldn’t remember where he’d hid it, or even if there was any left.

Jacob made his way past the plaster Indian Chief who stared accusingly from under his lampshade on the bedside table, and came to the looming dresser, which hunched like a gargoyle above the rest of his uncle’s garage sale furniture. He leaned toward the grainy mirror that hung above it reflecting the cavernous room, and saw a pale and dowdy zombie looming toward him with desperation written on its face. This was pathetic. Jacob turned from his reflection and gave an irritated yank on the top drawer. It had rained earlier in the week, and the badly insulated back room had gotten damp, so all the wood was swollen and groaned and creaked like some second-rate horror flick. He began with the top drawer - lighters, change, bottle caps, receipts, empty cigarette packs. Next were socks and rumpled underwear, then a drawer that should’ve held jeans but was empty because he hadn’t gotten around to doing laundry, now T-shirts and some dirty magazines hidden underneath. He looked resignedly at the bottom drawer – it was heavy, maybe off its tracks. Jacob tugged and the whole bureau tipped forward with a shudder.

He heard Skittles scattering inside, and a fat bead of drool eased onto his lower lip as he anticipated the comforting sweetness inside. He braced one hand against the bureau, gripped the drawer’s dirty bronze handle with the other, and roughly yanked until he could just barely shove his hand inside the opening. He squeezed his arm into the drawer’s musty darkness, congratulating himself on having found his hidden stash.

Before he reached it, however, a sudden and agonizingly rude pain between his ring finger and pinky finger caused Jacob to scream and jerk his hand toward himself, only to find it stuck in the narrow opening. He tried in vain to take his hand out, but was too shocked by pain and fright to relax his muscles enough to pull free. A second time he felt a sharp stabbing, this time in his fleshy middle finger. He began to shriek in panic, desperately begging for someone to help, but he knew even as he shouted that it was in vain: his uncle wouldn’t be home till six.

Great swirling waves of numbness pitched Jacob to the floor, and the dark walls whirled around him like towels in a dryer. His fingers scrabbled at the matted carpet as he wheezed through his rapidly tightening throat… now his swollen tongue was making it impossible for him to breathe, let alone call for help. He gasped against the oppressive tide of nausea that swept over him, staring helplessly at the plaster Indian Chief, who leered back down at him. Jacob would not blink – he locked his eyes in a staring contest with the Chief. The light bulb protruding from the Chief’s headdress zoomed into close focus, now shot up into the farthest corner of the room, now approached again, slowly growing brighter. Jacob’s eyes burned as he gazed fixedly at the vision of hot glowing wires that grew waveringly larger. A fat tear slid to his chin. His lips contorted into a silent infant wail as his eyes finally grew accustomed to the harsh light. Jacob tasted something sweet.