He snugged the ‘JBL Flip 5’ speaker into the Matrix’s cup holder, then…
“Oh, no!”
His mobile phone lay out there somewhere on the bottom of Lake Cowichan. So much for his downloaded Music to Go By list. All that picking and choosing, wasted… down there in Davy Jones’ locker, along with his collection of family photos.
No time for mourning.
He duct-taped the EEK’s flexible hose into position around the tailpipe, lodged the other end into the opened hatchback window, and sealed the surrounding gap with towels, clothes, his sleeping bag, and more duct tape. Leanne would have a field day with this, he figured, checking over his do-it-yourself euthanasia capsule.
It’ll hold, he judged.
Settling into the driver’s seat, he pulled the door shut, shrugged off his instinctive urge to fasten his seat belt, and twisted the key in the ignition. The engine caught and purred patiently, waiting for someplace to go. The gas gauge was nudging toward empty. “Ts’okay,” Buddy figured. Even when the little yellow indicator blinked on, you could still drive for miles; there’d be plenty of fuel to get to his final destination.
Spiritually? though. Emotionally? intellectually? “Pretty accurate read,” Buddy declared.
He reached down for the seat adjustment lever and tilted himself back until he was reclining comfortably, gazing up at the car’s upholstered ceiling and through the top of the windscreen into the starry night sky.
I just want to stay here and fall into midnight… A fragmented version of the synthesized rhapsody, composed by Alesso and Liam Payne, flitted into memory. Don’t need the Bluetooth speaker after all, Buddy sighed, relaxing…
Inhale. Exhale. Let go.
He imagined himself asleep. Sank deeper into the car seat, letting the music carry him away. But instead of soothing, the song’s yearning iterations pulsed fervently—harmonized with intensifying surges of anger, regret, and despair, that threatened to erupt, and his quickening heart-rate and breathing as his oxygen starved body gasped for air.
The melody taunted and tormented…
Suddenly, he felt stupid. Wanted to cry.
Gloria had introduced him to the track during her and Robbie’s upgrade of the dad app to a more current version stint. “It’s something recorded in this century that might still appeal to you, Father,” she’d teased, bringing up the tune and adding it to his playlist.
A smile flickered, Buddy remembering how happy they’d been, making fun of him. And how happy it made him to be the object of their delight.
A shot of guilt infused the stifling gas he inhaled—the smothering poison that was killing him and any redemptive hopes he might have harboured. How could he re-label that paean to young love as Music to Go By?—a double-entendre neither he nor they could have been aware of at the time—What kind of betrayal was that?
The memory of Gloria and Robbie’s cajoling, laughing faces morphed into masks of confusion, anger, sorrow… and guilt!
So turn off the engine!
“No!”
Want nobody else, now,
only you feel right…
“Andy?” he pleaded. “Sorry!”
He closed his eyes, shut them tight, hoping to drift off wherever the lulling fumes might carry him.
This song’s for you too…
It was the orchestral phrases that broke him, the deliciously agonized refrain awakening Buddy to the horrifying scope of his crime. He imagined Gloria in love, and wondered if it was shameful for a father to see his daughter that way—to bless the perfect joy she could achieve with a perfect lover… someone stepping into their lives from her unknown… out of the blue…
And what about Robbie? Leanne?
Wouldn’t they have moments he’d want to witness too? All of them?
No! he groaned.
No means yes, No?
No! Don’t want to!
Don’t want to live. I know.
“Don’t want to die,” he mumbled, his delirious plea stifled, as if shouted through a mouthful of dirt.
Then turn it off! Turn it off!
He strained, but his limbs wouldn’t obey. Dizzy and numbed, he couldn’t break the anaesthetizing inertia. Sadness swaddled Buddy, weighing him down. Unable to prevent or wipe them away, he felt tears welling, rolling down the fleshy channels between his nose and cheeks, then round his upper lip and down his neck.
The song’s crescendo played over and over as the lethal poison seeped in, immobilizing even hope, killing him, and damning him with the certainty that he had committed a fatal error and would not be forgiven.
Like a rock I was set in my ways…
That was the last lyric Buddy heard before going under.
Next: Inside Doubt