Pines

porch and reached out just in time to stop from falling, bracing himself against the door frame. His hands shook uncontrollably as he grabbed the knocker and lifted it off its brass plate.
    He refused himself even a split second to reconsider.
    Pounded the knocker four times into the plate.
    It felt like someone was punching him in the back of the head every four seconds, and burning patches of darkness had begun to swarm his vision like miniature black holes.
    On the other side of the door, he could hear a hardwood floor groaning under the weight of approaching footsteps.
    His knees seemed to liquefy.
    He hugged one of the posts that supported the porch’s roof for balance.
    The wood door swung open, and a man who could’ve been his father’s age stared at him through the screened door. He was tall and thin, with a splash of gray hair on top, a white goatee, and microscopic red veins in his cheeks that suggested a lifetime of heavy drinking.
    “Can I help you?” the man asked.
    He straightened himself up, blinking hard through the migraine. It took everything in his power to stand without support.
    “Are you Mack?” He could hear the fear in his voice, figured this man could too.
    Hated himself for it.
    The older man leaned in toward the screen to get a better look at the stranger on his porch.
    “What can I do for you?”
    “Are you Mack?”
    “Yes.”
    He edged closer, the older man coming into sharper focus, the sour sweetness of red wine on his breath.
    “Do you know me?” he asked.
    “Pardon?”
    Now the fear was fermenting into rage.
    “Do. You. Know. Me. Did you do this to me?”
    The old man said, “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
    “Is that right?” His hands were balling involuntarily into fists. “Is there another Mack in this town?”
    “Not that I’m aware of.” Mack pushed open the screen door, ventured a step out onto the porch. “Buddy, you don’t look so hot.”
    “I don’t feel so hot.”
    “What happened to you?”
    “You tell me,
Mack.
”
    A woman’s voice called out from somewhere in the house, “Honey? Everything OK?”
    “Yes, Jane, all’s well!” Mack stared at him. “Why don’t you let me take you to the hospital? You’re injured. You need—”
    “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
    “Then why are you at my house?” A gruff edge had entered Mack’s voice. “I just offered to help you. You don’t want that, fine, but...”
    Mack was still talking, but his words had begun to dissolve, drowned out by a noise building in the pit of his stomach like the roar of a freight train barreling toward him. The black holes were multiplying, the world beginning to spin. He simply wasn’t going to be able to stay on his feet another five seconds if his head didn’t explode first.
    He looked up at Mack, the man’s mouth still moving, that freight train closing in with a vengeance of noise, its rhythm in lockstep with the brutal pounding in his head, and he couldn’t take his eyes off Mack’s mouth, the old man’steeth—his synapses sparking, trying to connect, and the noise, God, the noise, and the throbbing—
    He didn’t feel his knees give out.
    Didn’t even register the backward stumble.
    One second he was on the porch.
    The next, the grass.
    Flat on his back and his head reeling from a hard slam against the ground.
    Mack hovering above him now, staring down at him, bent over with his hands on his knees and his words hopelessly lost to the train that was screaming through his head.
    He was going to lose consciousness—he could feel it coming, seconds away—and he wanted it, wanted the pain to stop, but...
    The answers.
    They were right there.
    So close.
    It made no sense, but there was something about Mack’s mouth. His teeth. He couldn’t stop looking at them, and he didn’t know why, but it was all there.
    An explanation.
    Answers to everything.
    And it occurred to him—stop fighting it.
    Stop wanting it so badly.
    Quit thinking.
    Just let it come.
    The     teeth     theteeth theteeththeteeththeteethteethteethteeth...
    They aren’t teeth.
    They’re a bright and shiny grille with the letters
    M A C K
    stamped across the front.
    Stallings, the man beside him in the front passenger seat doesn’t see what’s coming.
    In the three-hour ride north out of Boise, it’s become apparent that Stallings adores the sound of his own voice, and he’s doing what he’s been doing the entire time—talking. He stopped listening an