Skad clings to the gun, his flesh fusing with the textured plastic grip, every muscle strained and exerting maximum pressure until it's a miracle the weapon doesn't fire. It is the only thing keeping him from sinking beneath the ground, his lifeline. The lawn has turned to quicksand and it sucks greedily for him, drawing him downward, absorbing him. The sharp musk of earth and the vegetal tang of grass fills his mouth. He pulls harder to keep from going under.

A scream explodes out of his guts but loses itself somewhere along the length of his esophagus, scraped raw from swallowing so many pills. The dirt is trying to steal something which does not belong to it, and he fights to make a noise, a sign of his rage and resistance.

When the silence breaks, it is not with a cry for help but with a deep guttural cough. The wet, phlegmy bark spews up a Pollack painting of dissolving capsules and whiskey on the ground inches from his face.

He lies on his stomach at the bottom of the front steps, where he landed after his fall. How long he's been there, he cannot say. His right hand holds the gun, in his left is the antenna and a circuit board. The green sheet swarms with diodes, resistors, transistors, capacitors, inductors, and switches, miniature and innumerable, glittering in the moonlight. Modern angels dancing on the head of a pin.

It is an omen of a great calamity in the universe, The sight of it drove him from the house, fleeing the accursed, night-haunted den of misery and misbegotten memories.

No. That's wrong. He ran toward something, not from anything. But what?

To help. To the car.

Skad pulls himself up into a crouch but teeters back over on his side. The drugs have supplanted his blood with thin verdigris sap. It flows in anemic currents that echoes the placid lapping of the lake. His vital ichor is depleted. In its place watery spittle has taken residence like a mockingbird impostor. This new substance, plasmal and tidal, ties him to the natural order. His eye tics along to the lascivious chirp of crickets. A whippoorwill cries and his heart trembles in sympathy. Breath escapes him following the same rhythm of the sporadic wind. And it hums in unison with the million blades of grass, singing their majestic paeans to the heavens.

He hasn't moved. He'll never get to the car. He should go inside. Call for help. 911.

Can't. No more phone.

He needs to act. He'll lose consciousness soon. Might never wake up again. The rasp from his mouth doesn't carry. Not even someone close by would hear. The lighter in his pocket could light twigs and dry grass. But campfires are common enough. No one would care. If only he had a flare gun.

After the thought occurs to him, it takes a glacial age before Skad links it to the revolver in his hand.

Folk around here might ignore shots. No shortage of gun-happy drunks. Why get involved unless you were being shot at.

The house on the hill shines with all the grace of an airport.

Bullet in the window, Bastard calls police. The best plan he's got.

Aiming takes time. Hand waivers. Vision blurs and doubles. With gun in both hands, steadied by ground, sights line up, centers on glass.

The pistol pulls free of his grip, and a voice from some infinite height above him says, "Christ, what the hell are you doing? Give me that."

The whippoorwill issues it lonely lament in the humid night. Perhaps it's the bird that spoke. The lakeshore is so deserted it seems more likely than any other possibility. He could turn onto his back and look but it's probably the bird.

"Can't count on you not to fuck everything up," it says. "You were supposed to use the gun on yourself. If I didn't come down, you'd have woken up tomorrow with a hangover and I'd be out my security deposit. If you'd manage to hit the broad side of the house." The laugh that comes is tainted with grim humor but still manages to be familiar.

"Ed?"

"God. Look at you. What a pathetic mess. How'd you think this was going to work? You could never make it to the water after taking all that shit. You should've taken it on the dock. Duh. But don't worry, brother, I'm here to help."

Hands flip Skad over onto his back. Ed's face, lined and lean, looms over him. Twelve-years-old and sixty at the same time. He scrunches his mouth in determination for a second before seizing Skad by the armpits and hauls him across the lawn.

The universe has become untethered. Celestial objects move in erratic and unsteady orbits. Light bends and twists, refracts and splits, as if every molecule is a prism. Every drop of moisture a lens, making distant objects macroscopic and ones nearby minuscule. Questions drop from the sky like caskets, the pine boards splintering on impact, releasing their corpses. The leperous cadavers pile up in his mind fighting one another for predominance, clawing and wrestling to be in front. Skad is bombarded by a melee of carcasses and does not know what to ask first.

"Wha-wha-wha?" Ed mimics. "And pops thought you were the smart one. Shows what a dumbass he was." He's breathing hard and can't talk without panting every few words. "Parlor tricks. If you didn't think the world revolved around you, you might've gotten suspicious. Hell, if you bothered to pay attention to what came out of that big mouth of yours, you might've recognized those calls from old radio interviews. You can find anything online nowadays, You'd know that if you weren't such goddamn Luddite." He gasps and it's almost a sigh. "Going to be a long night. Lots of cleaning up to do. You might not be able to spot hidden cameras in the wall paneling or speakers in trees, but the cops might. Even the bumkins they have around here."

"Why? Money?"

Ed laughs again. This time it's fresh, boyish. "Is that what you think this is about? I got another investor weeks ago. It didn't take long to sell someone on the new design. The industry might think our products are obsolete but the technology is sound. Hell, you were utterly taken in by the older model I used, weren't you? Once we get the new lasers, we'll be back in the game."

He keeps talking, rattling on about his company and philistine gizmos and gadgets. Skad stops listening to the dull patter that blends in so neatly with the other night sounds. At this moment, he can care less about his brother's work with holograms. None of it matters anyhow. He speaks nothing but lies. Ed could never understand. He never understood. His comprehension of the world is myopic, a nearsighted perspective on inconsequential subjects. He has never lived grandly, never known the sweet tang of life, or felt the ever-encompassing embrace of love. These are feelings for a king, not an engineer.

Skad's heels dig trenches in the mud and a soft splash of water comes from above him. Or rather, ahead of him. Ed is grunting with effort. Cool liquid seeps across Skad's back and he floats.

The lake. He's arrived.

He tries to call out. "Evie."

"That poor girl. I tried to tell her what a shit you were. But she only had eyes for you. At least, she listened when I told her how hard being a single mother would be. You know, I almost threw out the film I took of her a dozen times. It disgusted me watching her beg someone who didn't give a crap about her. Glad I kept it now." In a tone of sudden relief, he says, "There. That should be far enough. So long, Bobby. I hope you rot in hell."

A minute ticks by or an hour. Time is a fleet owl riding unseen air currents. Updrafts sending it soaring and down gusts speeding it along. Its course, fickle and capricious, unknowable by human senses.

Mosquitoes swarm Skad's face as it buoys above the surface. He attempts to blow them away with his feeble breath, until they begin to speak.

"She is coming," says one haloed in moonlight.

"You will be together forever," another says close to his ear.

"A wedding. A wedding," A chorus of them cry.

A smile breaks across his face like an ancient fault line rupturing a continent.

From boyhood, Skad has known the magic of Lake Sauvage, perceived the ruleless wonder of the chaotic world by the water, felt the anarchic freedom of it all. But now, here in the last stage of his life, he knows that the real magic lies beneath, where the cold hands of his love clutch his ankle and draw him downward.