Well, shit.
I wasn’t so much annoyed by the blackout as I was by the sudden end of my game. I’d been on track to beat my own record from moments earlier.
Checking my phone to reassure myself that I was still connected to the world, I gasped in shock. Eighteen percent charge!
Double shit.
This was bad… really bad. Nothing induced panic in Millennials quite like low battery levels. Never mind that I was buried deep in the basement of some increasingly creepy-ass mansion. Talk about horror movie fodder.
“This blows,” I muttered.
I had no choice but to use my remaining battery on the flashlight app just to get up the stairs. All I could hope for was that the power would be restored before my phone plunged me into total radio silence.
After a few wrong turns, I found my way to the master suite and settled in for a night of mind-numbing boredom. With no power, I really had nothing better to do than go to bed… at 9:25 at night. I hadn’t retired this early since Kindergarten.
But as it turned out, mother nature had other plans. The howling winds kept me wide awake as they raced through the trees at highway speeds, sending tattered branches to collide with the windows at full force. The house groaned and creaked under the weight of the monstrous gusts. If Santa Ana had her way, I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep.
Then I remembered the fancy airplane emergency kit complete with useless essentials that I kept in my bag. Well, useless until tonight anyway. Extracting the pillow soft sleep mask, I tossed it aside. And then I found them, tucked under the small bottles of lotion and mouthwash—earplugs.
“That’s what I’m talking about.” My voice echoed across the vast space. Here, alone in the dark, I was surprised to discover the isolation felt eerily familiar. It occurred to me then that, although people surrounded me on a daily basis, I never really connected with them. Even the security guards who’d been with us since the beginning were nothing more than strangers. Aside from their names, I couldn’t tell you another thing about them.
The thought bothered me enough that after popping the earbuds in place, I laid awake pondering just how much of my life I’d wasted in the pursuit of someone else’s happiness.
Enough is enough.
Tomorrow morning I’d do something positive for a change. Maybe I’d buy a bunch of sandwiches and pass them out to the homeless by the pier. Or I could just drive up the coast and stop at a roadside cafe and engage in conversation with real people. Yes, I liked that idea. Feeling positive about my future for the first time in a long time, I closed my eyes and, within seconds, was out like the lights.
5
Bodhi: The Devil Within
Asudden boom ripped me from sleep. The dream I’d been residing in now dangled on the edge of my consciousness and, for a moment, confusion hung heavy in the air. I checked my ears, because surely the plugs had fallen out if I was hearing this kind of commotion. But no, they were still in place. Prying them out, I was shocked by the sudden increase in noise.
A series of popping explosions cleared away the haziness, and I bolted to my feet, the sheets sliding to the floor. An eerie orange glow pulsated off the dark walls. The shrieks of what sounded like a train barreled through the house, sent me racing to the window. But before I could get there, a punishing blast shook the house, flinging me forward toward the glass. At the last moment, I caught myself, bracing my hands on the window frame. Staring through the fragile glass, a flickering flame caught my eye.
“What the…?”
While I’d slept, nature had set a blowtorch to the landscape, bringing a raging inferno right to my doorstep. A blanket of red crested the mountain, fanning out across the dry and delicate terrain. The utopian forest in the back was now fully engulfed in flames. Embers, carried by unearthly gusts of wind, settled amongst the branches, turning the majestic trees into brittle victims of a cataclysmic wildfire.
Even through the window, I could feel the heat and smell the smoke. Or was it inside the house? Before I could fully wrap my head around the idea that the fire was closer than I’d first imagined, an explosion redirected my focus. As if doused in lighter fluid, the trees were detonating in fiery displays of rage. Nothing made sense. Where had the fire come from? When had it started? And why was it suddenly bearing down on me?
As I watched the scene unfold, too stunned to move, flames began to crawl up the windowpane. It took a moment for the enormity of the situation to hit me. But when it did, I whirled around and headed for the door. The steady crackling brought on a fresh wave of panic. The fire wasn’t just confined to the backyard or the side paneling of the house. The devil had made its way inside… and it was coming for me!
Dropping to a crouch, I blindly searched for the clothes I’d discarded before bed. Finding my shorts almost immediately, I yanked them on before continuing my hunt. My shirt was nowhere around, but my feet found their way inside the leather Rainbow flip-flops with relative ease. Not the best footwear for outrunning a fire, but then I hadn’t been expecting to awaken to Armageddon.
Yanking the pillowcase off the king-sized pillow, I ran into the bathroom to douse it with water, while trying desperately to remember what else to do in case of a fire. I’d never set foot in a classroom, so I wasn’t present for any official fire safety training, but I had played the son of a firefighter once on a made-for-TV movie. That should count for something, right?
No, idiot!
Chastising my inner voice, I wrapped the wet fabric around my nose and mouth, tying the ends in a tight knot behind my head. The sounds of exploding glass hastened my speed. With flames fully draping the window, the only way out of the room was through the door. If I was met with fire on the other side, I wasn’t sure I’d survive.
Maybe I hadn’t made my intentions clear to the karma gods, but I really, seriously wanted to live. Suddenly the past three months of struggle seemed inconsequential. Faced with my own mortality, I wished I could take it all back. The tantrums. And the acting out. Because none of it mattered. Not the letter from my long-lost mother. Or the feud with my father. I just wanted to make it to sunrise.
After a useless search of the shadowy floor for my shirt, I decided it could be sacrificed, as well as my suitcase. But what about my guitar? My mind flashed back to the person who’d gifted it to me all those years ago and I knew there was no way I’d leave it behind. Finding the leather strap, I flung it over my shoulder, and then crawled along to the nightstand to retrieve my phone and wallet. But in the darkness, I knocked them both to the floor. With the mounting smoke, I conceded defeat. Dammit! My phone deserved better. I could only hope its demise would be quick and painless.
Knowing enough about house fires to stay low and check the doorknob for heat, I was somewhat relieved to discover it was cool to the touch. Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe the crackling sounds and the breaking glass had been outside all along. But the minute I opened the door, I saw how wrong my wishful thinking had been. The beast was inside all right, and currently ravishing the entire right side of the mansion. Like a three-headed dog, the flames guarded the main entrance and exit to the home.
Every hair on my body stood at attention. I’d never been tested like this, nor had I ever been tasked with critical decision-making. I wasn’t sure if I could trust my instincts, but what choice did I have? If I was going to survive, I had to become the man no one had ever allowed me to be.
