A Cave of Ice: Chapter 2

My mother flung open my bedroom door just as the sun had risen to the base of the trees.

“Get up,” she said. “We need milk.”

I pretended to still be asleep, hoping since it was a Saturday that she would not wake me for a small errand.

“Wake up,” she said. She placed her hand on my shoulder and jolted my body into the mattress. “We need milk.”

“Alright, Christ,” I replied. “I’m up.”

“Do not say his name in vain!” she scolded.

“I didn’t,” I explained. “I was just professing my joy to him that I’m up on a Saturday at...” I rolled over and looked at the clock on my nightstand. “7:00 am!”

I laughed. She did not.

“Go walk down to the Wawa and grab us some milk. We’re out.”

“Alright, alright, I got it. We don’t have milk. You couldn’t’ve got in the car and got it yourself?”

“If I did, then there wouldn’t be a reason for you around, would there?”

With a groan, I climbed out of bed, put on pants, and walked out the door. My mother hated our home in suburban Philadelphia. She missed her friends and family in Nowhere and made that her only son’s problem.

The sun had risen to the tops of the trees when I finally reached the road outside our house. The red and yellow leaves of the sycamore trees blanketed all the yards on the block. Their leaves would fall at a remarkable rate, and I always felt sorry for anyone who tried to rake them. They fall too fast to even warrant trying. You would rake one half of the yard, and by the time you had crossed to the other, your work would be completely undone. I always refused that chore when my mother commanded and left our yard to be covered in brown, flaky leaves. Occasionally, she would grow tired of looking poor and would try to use the leaf blower. Even she, however, would give up after a few futile minutes of shooting leaves and gas fumes around. Only the wealthy or the insane could keep up yards that have sycamore trees.

I walked to the bottom of the road, where most of the trees had been cut down. When I finally reached the end of our street, I turned to cross Bethlehem Pike, a busy road leading to both neighboring towns. The road didn’t have any clear place to cross, so I ran from the intersection, which was blinded by bushes, and across to the other side while waving at the honking cars. One of the drivers responded by shoving his middle finger in my direction. I shrugged him off and walked down the road to the Wawa.

The parking lot looked empty. I guess not everyone’s mother sends them on Saturday morning milk runs. She had a way of constantly demanding, in even the smallest of circumstances. She loved to flaunt her power in our dynamic by sending me on errands like these or by running me around the house for insignificant chores. It was like she only had a child so that she could be waited on. I understood things like cleaning the dishes and the floors, but her chores would always become obnoxious. She loved to give out one task at a time, which meant she could send you into the same room a dozen times to retrieve things for her. She did not have a son so much as she had an errand boy. And now, her errand boy was off getting milk. Milk. For what? I don’t drink it, and I certainly don’t eat cereal.

A bell rang as I swung open the door to the Wawa. I walked to the refrigerator section, grabbed a half-gallon of milk, and went to the back of the checkout line. Once I had made it to the register, I handed the cashier $20. He put the milk in the bag along with a five-pack of Black and Mild cigarillos. He then handed me the bag and some change. I then went outside to the corner of the store to fashion a seat from the plastic storage crates. I sat on these crates often. Usually, I would just sit. I tried to only buy smokes in extreme cases of tyranny.

Once I had taken my seat, I began to feel unwell. Sweat poured from my skin both onto the ground and into the fibers of my cotton shirt. I had felt fine when I left the house earlier. Now, my legs felt too weak to stand. I let my head drop back and rest against the hard, grated plastic of one of the crates. The sharp edges felt jagged against the base of my skull, but my head had begun throbbing with a headache, so I found it easy to ignore the position’s discomfort.

I tried to close my eyes, but when I did, I felt the world begin to spin in the opposite direction. My eyes stared blankly into the cloud-filled sky. The sun hid behind the dark gray clouds, which seemed to indicate a possible storm. I tried not to think about the weather. The walk home would be miserable if it began to rain.

My blood felt thick as I watched my sweat spill down onto the asphalt. A light flashed in the corner of my eye. It resembled lightning, but I could hear no thunder. I continued to ignore the ominous sky. Suddenly, the tension in my head loosened, and my body relaxed back to its normal state. The horrible sensation had disappeared as quickly as it had come on.

I reached down to open the pack of cigarillos but found, to my surprise, that it had already been opened. My immediate reaction was to storm back into the store, but when I tried to stand, I noticed a small puff of smoke come from my side.

I don’t know why the devil appeared on my shoulder that morning, or why he came without his angel counterpart. He pranced around smoking my cigarillo and filling my head with thoughts. He told me to have fun, to be free, and to not listen to my mother anymore. Surprisingly, no angel appeared to rebuff him. For whatever reason, only the devil came to give advice. His red skin looked coarser than anything human.

My mother always warned against the devil. In Catholic school, they taught us that he was still alive and well. Our teacher always said that he would tempt you into sin and lead you down the path of damnation. We always laughed at those kinds of scare tactics. No one believed half of what we learned in religion class. Mrs. Miller was old and kooky, and many of us suspected that she suffered from some level of dementia.

We laughed and called her crazy, but I’d be lying if I said her warnings didn’t make some small impression. The idea of hell scares even the most calculated atheists from time to time.

They paint the devil as the epitome of evil and despair. If there’s even a 0.01% chance that a being like that could exist, then I couldn’t rest easily without eternal hellfire crossing my mind from time to time.

I found myself less afraid once I had met him. He claimed to be misunderstood and kept referencing some guy named William Blake’s idea of Christianity. Blake, according to the devil, understood that God was actually the bad guy. The devil, in Blake’s eyes, was more of a reformer than a force of evil. I didn’t know shit about William Blake, but the devil seemed far nicer than expected. He agreed with my frustrations about my mother.

We spoke for what felt like hours about life and the fun you can have if you let yourself go. He made a lot of sense. Why not live a little? Christ, I mean, everyone wants to go to college and have kids and a 3-bedroom house. Why not run around and have a little fun? What’s the alternative? Having a midlife crisis at 43 because you wasted your youth? Fuck that.

The change happened swiftly. I felt free from my mother as the devil disappeared in a cloud of smoke. He didn’t ask for anything in return, which also seemed odd given what people say about him. He gave his advice and didn’t once try to talk me out of my soul. The guy really gets a bad rap. I half expected him to pull out some sort of contract that I would have to sign by cutting my palm with a knife.

I sat upright in my seat of crates, which I now saw as a throne on the side wall of the Wawa. The asphalt had become my new kingdom. I sat and watched over my newly conquered domain, while the smoke of my cigarillo infused with my gums and melded me into an attuned state. Observation leads to discovery, and I discovered a number of odd and vexing creatures during this short rule. Most of these discoveries, however, prompted little more than a second glance and the twisting of an eyebrow. One such creature was…different, however; and could not be overlooked.

A morbidly obese man driving a cherry convertible pulled into one of the parking spots in front of me. The surprisingly agile beast flung himself from the car and made a mad dash for the door. He scurried into the store and left a trail of sweat droppings behind him. Once he had passed my line of vision, I proceeded to stare at the fine piece of American engineering. Its intoxicating cherry exterior glistened despite the muggy atmosphere. Its complexion was near perfect, with the only fault being the large sweat-stained crater in the front seat. My eyes traced across its body until they eventually met the gaze of the headlights. The soft hum of its motor called me closer. He had left the car running. She was a looker, and like a drunk at a bar, I was about to stumble up and make her acquaintance.

Suddenly, I found myself hurdling over the side of the car and into the front seat. My body sunk quickly into the abused leather. Its moist softness was weirdly satisfying as I shuffled myself into a comfortable position. It felt like falling into a cloud… A sweaty and disgusting cloud that hugged itself to your moistening cotton shirt.

The heavyset man paced in front of the counter and waited for his hoagie. In the extra minute and thirty seconds it took to prepare his chicken strip sandwich—which I assume he ordered—I put the vehicle in reverse. Maybe the brute forgot his license plate number. In my experience, these creatures tend to be careless and forgetful. They find themselves more preoccupied with their next meal than they do with any minute details. A grizzly bear doesn’t think about his cave when he sits and rips salmon out from the river. This man, like his cousin the grizzly bear, seemed too fixated on food to think of anything else.

I released my foot from the brake and pressed lightly onto the gas pedal. The convertible drew back before lurching to a halt with a loud clank. I could feel the back corner of the car crunch into itself, as a car alarm began to blare. Some god damned maniacs had parked behind me!

The door to the convenience store flung open, and out came the beast in full attack mode. They say the average bear can run up to thirty miles per hour in an open plain. I would need to create separation quickly, or the beast would certainly maul me. I continued backing into the Honda behind me.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” he howled as slobber flung out from his slapping jowls. “I’m going to fucking gut you.”

Laughing uncomfortably, I flung my head back around and tried to get moving. The cars crunched together loudly, bending my bumper into their passenger door. Luckily, I managed to make enough room just as the beast had reached the pavement and had lowered his head to charge. I whipped the car forward and turned the corner onto the street. The beast roared in outrage. He tried to chase me down, but I had the vehicle racing down the road in a matter of seconds.

The ground shook from his enormous footsteps even after the store was well out of sight. I shifted into the left lane to turn onto the turnpike. The light was red, but there was no stopping while the mountain troll continued to run after me. I cut the vehicle across traffic and rushed towards the entrance. It was a near-perfect escape, and now, I found myself the proud owner of a modern wonder of human achievement.