Burn my flesh to ash but set my soul on fire

  “Mother fucker!” Gradie yelled into the phohe hostess up front cleared her throat and someone ughed i.

  He called the number again. It only rang once.

  The number you are dialing is disected or no longer—

  “Shit!”

  He jumped up and ran across the tables and knocked a chair over. Someone yelled as he bolted out the door and the exit bell sounded like a punch line. He wondered if a dine and dash ted as something drastic as he peeled out of the lot onto the access road.

  You son of a bitch. I’ll show you drastic.

  Careful with those strong coffees.

  So, he was watg, somehow.

  An idea bloomed in his head, sudden and irresistible. He merged through three o a chorus of horns pushed the gas until the drive-thrus and strip malls smeared across the windows. That other, frightened, e of himself fell away with it all and his spirit fred up in the driver's seat. Five minutes melted away and he pulled into a quick trip.

  Irunk he found a gas , and with it the memory of watg a friend dip it in his tank on the side of a hundred-degree highway months ago. The memrabbed him for a moment, trying to take him down, but dissolved in the face of his belief. There was only one Gradie, and he was here on business.

  He smiled at the camera as he filled the , thinking of all the crimes solved with quick trip footage. Maybe in a few hours, he’d see himself on the news.

  The sloshed in the passenger seat as he tore back down the road. He turned back around the mall and the edge of one of its big empty parking lots rose ahead of him. Perfect.

  He parked in the middle of it and got out. Wind blew around him like the top of some urban mesa. There was nothing in sight but mall and suburbaops, sandwiched between sky and crete. He dug around in the ter sole and found a month-old half-smoked paarlboro red 100s that some other him had bought, smoked, and fot about during a night of drinking. Inside was a quarter full pstic Bic lighter. It glittered in his hand like a token of some other world.

  He rolled down all the windows ahe car running with the A full bst. Wind whipped up the fumes as he circled the car tossing amber-colored spshes of gasolihrough the windows. Whe half-ounce of gas resisted his efforts, he popped his pho of the wallet case a on the ground, theurhe gas a a st undramatic drip fall onto the card holder. He tossed the through the window, picked the wallet up by the wrist strap and flicked on the lighter.

  The faux leather caught fire instantly. He ducked bad threw it away in a reflex. It sailed through the air like a spell and flew through the open back window. He had just enough time to wonder if he was far baough before the gas ignited.

  He stumbled away from the rush of fme and the heat followed him as it grew. Dark smoke rolled off into the sky. He stepped batil his ph. It was an unlisted number.

  “Hello?”

  “gratutions Gradie. Wele to the Hardworlds.”

  “Fuck yes!” He yelled and jumped in the air and ughed hysterically. The mania was like nothing else. The universe had split itself open and molten possibility was flowing out through the ndscape. He looked around, eager to take everything in, and saw it all with a new focus.

  The sun gred off the ft grey lot and shimmered through the wavering haze around the fire. He traced the lines on all the leaves of a live oak stig out of the median, listeo the traffic sounds from the distant road, smelled the gasoline and burning pstics, and bli the clouds, light and wispy like quick brushstrokes.

  The Hardworlds. It was all real. An alternate dimension. A differey. Memory of his doubt broke through the euphoria and his breath caught in his chest. What if Michael found out how close he had e to losing it?

  “Don’t worry if it seemed like you made it by the skin of your teeth,” Michael said, once agaiing his thoughts. “It always feels like that.”

  Gradie ughed into the phone.

  “Alright. You pig me up or what?”

  “Yeah. Should be there before the cops. See you soon.”

  He hung up.

  Gradie watched his car burn some more. Panic set in again as he thought about the versation, already hazy, distorted in memory. Did it really happen? He’d never halluated before. How would he be able to tell?

  The hood supports blew and it flew open and smmed into the windshield, shattering the gss. A mier, the tires exploded in hot molten rubber, and a car sped into the lot.

  It was a bck early 00’s Jaguar S type, gliding over the ed crete like a skater on an ice rink. It stopped smoothly in front of him, fmes shimmering in its mirror surfaces. The passenger window rolled down and an almost familiar face looked at him, but the voice was different.

  “Get in.”

  She poi the back seat. Gradie just stood there.

  She was still beautiful, but smaller than he remembered, and definitely real. Her eyes, no longer burning saphires, were a less vibrant grey-blue, protruding doe-like above soft dark bags and below mascaraed shes. Her pale skin, struck through with blue veins and uhe por from memory, was mostly hidden under a well-worn bck hoodie rolled up at the sleeves.

  Michael looked back at him from the driver's seat. No otherworldly glow or unnatural shadow around his face. Just a big man pushing forty in a charcoal suit.

  It was ridiculous, and such a trast to their angelis iherworld, that he felt sure for a moment he was dreaming and it was all a lie.

  “You want to stay here and give the cops a statement, or what?” Michael said. His voice still held its power.

  Gradie climbed in with a massive smile on his face.

  “Holy fug shit.”

  They sped off across the lot and EP cracked her window, letting in the faint sound of a firetruck clearing traffic.

  “You smell like straight up gasoline,” she said

  Gradie ignored her.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the clubhouse,” Michael said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You will find out whe to it.” Michael made a U-turn on the access road.

  Gradie looked out the window and watched a bck finger of smoke rise over the trees as they sped down a back street. Houses flew by and his mind wahe memory of his car burning, all the things left in his wallet, came to him with the sirens through the window, aarted to panic.

  I just threw my god damned life away.

  It was just a moment, brief, but terrifying, before he got trol of himself.

  No, that’s not me.

  “Gradie,” Michael spoke in a warning growl, and Gradie found his steel-grey eyes, like a guard dog o, fshing in the rear-view mirror.

  “You o be mindful here. The self will take over if you let it. It’s the default, the incumbent ruler.”

  EP looked back at him, watg him, judging him.

  “I’m fine. I got it,” he said, and k was true, like the words had been a spell.

  Michael readjusted the mirror aurned back around.

  The highway zipped by, that familiar sery. Everything glowed and even the roar of the traffic was musical. It felt like the ultimate weekend of his life.

  I am the prime me. ime, Gradie meets the team, and his destiny. episode: The Clubhouse.