Endgame
        Chapters 2 - 4
 

So, it would be finished in a car bomb, Danny thought.

When his mother took him, at age 14, to a park bench on a glorious spring day and stole away with his innocence and security, Danny had known always after that a violent end was his fate. From those wide-eyed moments sitting beside his mother on that bench, he had felt death approaching as swiftly, as surely, as the apocalyptic pale horse. From that day on, his life had been the product of such knowledge. From that day on, his last thoughts before sleep overtook him were whether his eyes would open to Heaven, hell, or home. So he chose to live his life intensely. There could be no other way, or it would all be for nothing. He wanted no regrets. He wanted to be ready.

How stupid, he thought.

Instead of his past flashing before his eyes, it was his future he saw; Michelle. The realization of never making love to her, to be ever unable to cradle their newborn hope in his arms was unbearable.

I’m not ready, God.

The force of the explosion lifted the rear wheels of the Corolla high in the air, and yet the front wheels remained grounded. The car was propelled forward. With no seatbelt to restrain him, Danny slammed into the back of the passenger seat. He grabbed hold of it, bracing, waiting to be incinerated.

Ray, seatbelt fastened, instinctively hit the brakes to keep from careening into the oncoming traffic of the street. The car nearly flipped rear over front. Instead, the Corolla came almost perpendicular to the driveway before gravity overtook and slammed it back into the concrete.

Danny was about to thank God when-

"Oh, God," he uttered, relief becoming horror as he turned to look out the shattered rear windshield.

"MICHELLE," he screamed..

"MICHELLE," Danny screamed so painfully, running, with Ray barely a step behind. Shards of wood, siding, and glass rained down, slicing into them.

Danny felt none of this. "Get there, get there" was screaming within him, out of him, he couldn’t tell. He felt like he was caught in the nightmare where danger is chasing him, but his legs can only move as if they’re wading through some invisible glue.

Finally, they reached the grim scene that lay before them.

The heat, thought Ray, Oh, God, please, no.

What the bomb had failed to obliterate, the fire was quickly consuming. Danny ripped off his jacket, threw it at Ray, frantically ordering,

"Get my phone. Dial 911!"

He turned to enter the burning wreckage. Grabbing the back of Danny’s shirt, Ray pleaded, "You can not go into that, Danny! Wait! I can already hear the sirens, man. Somebody’s already called. You’re no good to anyone d-"

Without warning, without words, Danny swung around, grabbed Ray’s arm, and twisted it until Ray thought it dislocated. It had always amazed him that Danny, muscular, but slim, could bring someone like himself to his knees. Survival was Danny’s explanation.

Reflexively, Ray recoiled, holding his shoulder as he doubled over in pain. When he looked up, he caught a brief glimpse of a tear-streaked, ravaged face. A face he knew would haunt him lifelong.

Before Ray could recover, Danny had dived into a wall of fire. Ray was left alone, his screams to Danny drowned by the roar of flames and the wail of sirens.

Crouching to avoid the flames that rolled from the floor to the disintegrating door frames and walls, Danny looked up, ready to call out Michelle’s name; but his voice faltered briefly as he took in the ceiling above him. Danny was caught deep underneath an ocean of fire, with its surface of distorting, rolling, hypnotic waves. There, in that moment, his hope went up in those flames. Even while screaming her name over and over, Danny knew he would receive no reply.

And he did not.

The smoke filled his lungs as water. He was drowning, melting, burning.

Good, he thought.

If Michelle could not walk out of this with him, why should he,

why should he.

Desperation leading him, he stood up to face this voracious demon head on, one last time. Still calling out to her, choking, stumbling, dying, Danny’s body finally relented. He went down,

down;

low,

low;

fading into a beckoning silence.

And this was to be his endgame.

When Danny decided it was time to view what lay on the other side, his eyes opened, focused, and locked onto those of a murderer as Michelle’s opened to utter darkness, complete and total, once again - blind.