Unexpectedly, Milo - Matthew Dicks [17]
Edgar Allan Poe had been his savior on this particular occasion.
As Milo sat in a recliner beside Arthur Friedman, drinking hot chocolate and listening to his client read the story of a black cat and its alcoholic owner, Milo reveled in the now constant, cacophonous call of conflagration, knowing it would soon be satisfied. The word was now searing his brain, the acupuncture needles heated before insertion, the intervals between words now less than ten seconds—but somehow, knowing that the moment of liberation was upon him made the pain almost bearable. Thrilling, even. The combined pressure of the word and the anticipation of fulfillment exerted itself throughout his entire body, forcing his hands to ball into fists, his toes to curl inside his sneakers, and his mouth to clench shut. He found himself unconsciously holding his breath and had to force oxygen into his lungs. All other thoughts ceased as he braced himself for the moment of release. Though he had dreaded the initial demands of the word as he did all others before it, these final moments, when relief was so close, often made the struggle seem almost worthwhile.
Thankfully, the demand for words like conflagration took up residence in Milo’s mind half a dozen times a year or less, so following the completion of today’s mission, he would likely be issued a reprieve of several weeks or even months, though on one or two occasions, the time between words had been considerably shorter. The last word to assume a place in Milo’s mind prior to conflagration had been garner, and that had been more than four months before. In that case, Milo had circumvented what he thought to be the U-boat captain’s original intent and had used James Garner, the television and movie actor, as his solution. He had learned long ago that simply asking a person to repeat the word or read it out of context would never satisfy the demand, and attempting to do this would often cause the demand to become more insistent and more painful. Instead, the word needed to come naturally, in the course of normal conversation, its ultimate significance unbeknownst to the person actually speaking the word. In the case of garner, for example, the solution had been a simple question about The Rockford Files, a crime drama that James Garner had starred in during the late 1970s, asked to the right person at the right time.
Other demands would arise in the time between words. Jelly jars. Ice cubes. Bowling. But at least these demands, as equally insistent and inexplicable as the words like conflagration, could be resolved without the assistance of others.
As the moment of conflagration approached, Milo straightened in his chair, anticipating its arrival. In Poe’s short story “The Black Cat,” the unreliable narrator had already gouged out the eye of his cat in a fit of alcoholic rage and, unable to bear the guilt and shame of his actions, had just hung the poor creature from a tree by the neck.
On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames. The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife, a servant, and myself, made our escape from the conflagration. The destruction was complete.
Milo had read the story more than a dozen times before arriving at his client’s home and knew the paragraph containing conflagration by heart. Poe’s prose seemed to hum in the air as the magic word drew near, full of energy and heat, and when it finally came, the breaking of the tension, the satisfaction of the demand, the utterance of conflagration by someone other than himself, Milo sighed so audibly that Arthur Friedman stopped reading for a moment and looked up, wondering what might be wrong with his audience of one, before returning his attention to the page and finishing the story.
It turned out that Milo had done more than