Left, The Last Chapter.

Cafe Locked out

To start at the start follow the links

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

The Last Chapters

Underarm, Jarrod gently tosses the lighter into the pit, but even before it has left their view, they can both see that the flame has gone out. "Fuck!" goes Steve. "Now what do we do?"

Sonya hears the lighter clink as it bounces off the windscreen's frame. Jarrod rushes over and looks down into the pit, but the lighter has vanished. "Sonya, the lighter didn't work," he says. "Can you reach the cigarette lighter?"

"Will that work?" asks Steve. "Can you do it?" asks Jarrod.

The winch groans. The tree creaks. The engine races.

Sonya, while still holding the accelerator down, uses only her memory to try to find the cigarette lighter. In the darkness of her foil cocoon, she presses everything as the foil rips, until something pushes in. She waits. She waits. Then it pops out. Nothing happens. So much sound. The winch, the tree creaking, the engine.

"Drop it into the cup holder!" yells Jarrod. "There's some paper in there that might catch fire."

She tries to, but at this angle, the cigarette lighter falls out of the cup holder and into the pit. "Shit," she says, then leans back quickly and shoves her hand against her other arm. Up top, Steve and Jarrod pull back into their harnesses. Jarrod can see the winch's wire cutting into the blackened tree.

To Sonya, it feels like the tips of her fingers are naked. And they wait. And they wait. Nothing happens. The tree starts to seriously crack. The winch groans. The engine screams. But nothing explodes.

"Shit!" goes Steve. "Now what?"

"The lighter," says Jarrod. "I'll have to switch off the winch and go down and get it." The gas is so thick it can now be smelled up here.

"Stay here," says Jarrod as, still in his harness, he moves towards the hole. The hole explodes.

Inside the explosion, no one can hear Sonya roaring, not screaming, as she rips her foot off the clutch. The four tires scrape the wall as they try to spin. The brothers, initially blown back by the force of the explosion, are now up and pulling with all their strength because the truck is already in view. The explosion has blown it up and now its front wheels are well clear and spinning in mid-air.

"Pull!" they yell. Each leaning back, their heels digging into the earth as the winch whines. "PULL!!"

The ravens are airborne and cawing. The tree is cracking, the brothers are pulling on the ropes for all they're worth. The truck is bathed in a volcanic eruption of fire.

"Pull! PULL!!" They both yell. And then the truck tilts.

"Keep going!" Steve yells. "Keep going!"

The paperbark tree explodes now. Huge chunks of wood fly forward, smashing both brothers forward and down as the freed winch's wire, like the devil's whip, slashes the air looking for a victim. It smashes against the front of the truck and stops.

Then, as the brothers are still crashing forward to the dirt, the truck lurches forward and thumps down onto the earth where its front wheels find traction and drag it forward until its rear wheels find the edge of the pit and drive it up and over until, fully out, the truck stops.

Sonya's arms have already burst out of the foil and her good hand is ripping off the foil mask. Freed, she inhales like she's just broken through the surface of a sea to taste the air that she thought she'd never taste again.

Jarrod is up and celebrating on one side of the truck as Steve celebrates on all fours on the other, then he too gets up. The birds are scattering. There is no portion of the sky that doesn't own a cawing bird.

Jarrod has run around the front of the truck and is celebrating by giving his younger brother a hug. Then, still in Jarrod's arms, Steve looks up to the cawing ravens and flips them all a two-handed bird. Jarrod does the same. It is a victorious cheer that ends suddenly as they both stop and look at Sonya.

The vehicle's engine is still running and in their excitement, both have slipped out of their harnesses.

"Sonya," says Steve. "Why don't you switch the engine off? We need to check it."

Sonya does not.

"Sonya, it's okay," says Jarrod. "You did it. You should switch it off."

"Sonya, switch it off," says Steve.

The passenger window is broken. As Jarrod approaches the driver's window and says, "It's okay, Sonya, we did it," he can see Steve stealthily moving around the back of the truck in an effort to open the rear doors or reach the broken passenger window.

Sonya drives forward and stops well out of reach.

"I'll leave a note," Steve yells from the rear of the truck.

Three ravens silently swoop down now, leaving Jarrod gasping as Steve, besieged by ravens, stumbles backward and falls into the pit, screaming all the way down.

"Steve!" Jarrod cries as he runs to the pit but then he stops when he hears it. Sonya has pressed the horn. When he turns and looks back, the truck is waiting. He stands there watching her as she waits. He sees her hand come up and motion him to her. He looks back at the now silent hole, then he turns back to the truck and says, "I can't leave him. He's my brother."

A moment later, without ever looking back, Sonya drives off.

For a short time, he watches the leaving truck hide itself under a cloud of dust. Then he looks up at the birds and then he turns to the shaft and peers over.

"Steve?" he calls. "Steve?"

"It's okay."

"You're alive? How?"

"Is she gone?"

"Yes."

"Then that's it, then."

"Yes."

"I can't get out."

"Okay."

"I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"This."

The bullet smashes into the top of Jarrod's head and throws him back. Down in the hole, Steve lowers the rifle, then looks down at the skeleton and says, "What? It's better this way? The birds would have ripped him to shreds."

Something is wrong with Steve's left leg, and there are still fires burning behind him. The smoke is making it difficult for him to breathe and to see clearly. Then he smells it. Petrol? But why? Where? One of the jerry cans is here. It's on its side and its lid is open. It must have fallen instead of exploding. On the floor, between his feet, is a nugget of gold. Steve picks it up, rolls it in his palm with his thumb, then he smiles and slips it into his pocket. That done, he turns the rifle around and in the moments before the spilling petrol reaches a flame, he places the barrel in his mouth before looking up at the birds he can see flying across the square patch of sky.

"F--- you," he mumbles and pulls the trigger. It clicks.

"F---," he says, and then the spilling petrol reaches the fire.

Outside the shaft, the shadows of the birds are crisscrossing Jarrod's closed-eyed face, as next to him a smoking hole echoes his brother's horrific and forever unanswered calls for help.

~

When Jarrod wakes, the shadows are longer than all they belong to, and the sun is within reach of the horizon. Bringing his hand to the top right of his head, he finds dried blood and another significant wound to explain his thumping headache. It takes him several moments to remember where he is and then a few longer ones to accept it. He looks around but the truck is missing, even its dust cloud is gone. After managing to get back to his feet, he moves to the shaft and calls out to his brother; his voice is hoarse.

When Steve doesn't reply, he gingerly looks over but there is nothing but darkness to see.

"Steve... Steve!"

No one replies.

In every tree, the birds are perched and watching him. When he looks up to the darkening sky, they are there too. Then, as the sun marries the horizon in a blurred kiss, he smiles. Chin up, he walks, without his limp, to a clear place of burnt ground and lays down on his back, using one arm as a pillow, then fills his eyes with what he knows is the last blue of his life. And it is a deep, unmarked blue.

Her skin is white and also has no marks. Her smile is the proof that God is probably a man and is overly fond of beauty and a mercy that cruelty creates rather than corrupts. Without saying his name, she slips a hand behind his head and brings his head up so she can kiss him. There is moisture on her lips. It's like she's half made from a gentle and sweetened water. Then she climbs aboard, like she always used to do, and makes love to him and like this they cross the line from all of this descending darkness into another brighter, more nurturing light, as in the black eyes of an observing raven, Jarrod disappears under a black feathered frenzy of birds.

~

The broken shovel did not hold. It was blown into the truck and pierced the only seat left. There, the broken end of the blade cut through the seat deep enough to enter Sonya's back. She drove until she could no longer take the pain of holding the accelerator pedal down, and eventually the truck rolled to a stop and here it is sitting, where it stalled as the night continues to fall. To her right, the last sun of her life is preparing to leave. She doesn't know what's stuck in her lower back. It hasn't broken through to the front. But she knows that whatever it is, it is too deep.

In the rising cold, she drifts back under the surface of life and looks for the ghost of Martin, but as yet he is not here. She grunts her way back to the surface of the leaving light and laughs without sound at the faces of those people who one day will find her here, wrapped in foil. Above her, thin clouds are becoming lusciously pink as though somewhere further than this world there was a great fire. The beauty of it all is overwhelming. At this time of day, this place is not a terrible place to die. And then she goes under. Submerged in the endless darkness and cold, she looks for him, but still Martin, with her rope around his neck, is missing. Then once again, just out of nothing else but a stubborn defiance, she grunts and forces herself to break through the surface and reach the last of this day's light.

But it's too hard to remain, so death's gravity pulls her under again, and this time she vanishes without leaving a ripple upon the surface of life. Still no Martin, just all this uninterrupted and empty darkness. And then in the far distance, a dog is barking. It is barking as though it is excited to see her. And it is this unconditional love and its complete forgiveness that pulls not only a few tears up from some place of worth still hidden within her but sees her break the surface for what she knows is the last time.

The raven is perched on the edge of the broken windscreen. The leaving sun is now a lighter shade of black in its eye. It is an eye offering to hold her up as sturdy as a hand of someone leaving over the side of a boat. As sturdy as the hand of any God. The last of her tears flow now, they flow down her dried face for her, and they keep falling as she reaches out and allows this bird to become the first to fly into her. Then, as the sun leaves, the darkness once again takes possession of the world, leaving no one to see all the ravens crossing the ancient burnt land to circle and wait, like a diminishing life-preserving-murder, each waiting, some all night, for their time to fly into the truck's broken windscreen and into Sonya, as her blossoming darker and now freezing soul makes room for them all.

~

Dena Proudfoot leans back and studies Sonya.

"How's your arm?"

"It's good. Thank you for asking."

"No loss of movement, no pain?"

"No," says Sonya. "Like I told you. It's fine."

"How about your back?" asks Boris. "I heard that the shovel just missed your spine but hit your spleen."

"That's fine too."

"Remarkable," says Dena. "You are one lucky woman."

"Funny," says Sonya. "I don't feel lucky."

"Yes, well, if that drover's dog hadn't found you," says Dena, "you wouldn't be."

"I guess everyone is allowed one miracle," says Sonya.

"I read," says Boris, "that the experts are predicting that your gold claim is on track to be one of the country's richest."

"Which means," says Dena, "you are on track to becoming one of the country's most powerful and influential citizens."

"Is that a question?" asks Sonya.

"No," says Dena, "but we have plenty of those."

"So do I," says Sonya.

"Bullet holes in the truck," says Boris.

"Jarrod's skeleton picked clean," says Dena. "Steve, a burnt corpse and two other skeletons, both over a hundred years old, brothers as well, and you with a second husband lost."

"And you called me lucky," says Sonya.

Dena nods and Boris leans back in his chair then gently rocks back and forth.

"Is that it?" asks Sonya.

"How did you find it?" Dena asks. "That desert is so big and yet there you were. Right on the spot."

"I picked it," says Sonya.

"You picked it?" asks Boris.

"Steve had this map. Before we left, he told me to pick a spot. So I did. Randomly, that's it."

"So it was destiny?" asks Boris.

"I guess."

"One lucky woman," says Dena.

"Is that it?" Sonya asks again. When the detectives don't reply, she goes to stand only to stop as Boris places a skull on the table.

The skull's empty eyes are full of secrets and it is laughing at her. Sonya sits down but says nothing.

"All we're wondering," says Dena as Sonya looks at the skull's face, "is if you can explain this."

Boris turns the skull around and on its back Steve has carved one word: "Murder."

Sonya jolts, and inside her soul, the ravens take to wing and caw and cry until the waiter, whom she's just startled, walks over and asks, "Ça va?"

"Oui," she replies, then looks around and then looks around again. It takes her a moment to accept that there are no detectives here, but as she returns to where she actually is, those ravens in her soul re-land on the ir perches.

She orders another Bloody Mary and as the waiter returns to the bar, she tells the detectives, who are not there, "The birds used me to escape. I'm their vehicle."

She thinks about this as she feels them calming inside her being. "What do they want?" asks Dena's ghost.

"I don't know," Sonya replies, before relaxing into the view. Behind her is the chalet, owned by the new man she’s seeing, a rich industrialist from Madrid, and before her, a paraglider is rising into the air above the deep blue waters of the French Riviera.

Michael Gray Griffith

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