Free Infernal Angel by Edward Lee

there. Now—go home!”
    Walter was crushed and, as promised, he turned and left. He would’ve been even more crushed if he’d overheard what the desk girl said in the phone right after the door closed behind him. She said, “Thank God, he’s finally gone. Tell Bucky I said hi, Candice.”
     
    Eventually, Walter’s dejection transformed into more denial. She was probably just real tired, from her classes. She’ll call tomorrow and apologize. Of course she will! She loves me! He meandered across campus, as night fell. Two jocks in letterman jackets passed without even noticing him. “You put the blocks to Candice yet?” one asked, and the other responded, after chuckling, “Couple nights ago after the finals mixer—shit. I didn’t just fuck her, I stuffed her like a turkey.”
    “What a woman!”
    “She’s like a machine you can’t turn off. Just fill her with beer and let ’er rip!”
    Walter scowled at this rough talk, and certainly they weren’t talking about Candice—not his Candice. Some other girl named Candice, some jock tramp. When Walter turned the corner at Campus Drive, heading back to his own dorm, he spotted red and white lights flashing stroboscopically. Ambulance, he quickly realized. Then he saw cops and several tow trucks. Someone in a gold Dodge Colt had run the red light at the circle. Walter peered closer, then thought, Oh no ...
    A pedestrian had been hit in the crosswalk, a philosophy student, no doubt. Spiral notebooks lay flapping in the street, along with copies of Sartre’s No Exit and Soren Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Dread. A guy with glasses and a trimmed beard lay on an ambulance gurney, his neck obviously broken. Dead, Walter saw. He noticed the odd tattoo on the guy’s left arm: NARRATION IS MY ENEMY. No, Walter thought. Reckless drivers are. The two EMTs by his side didn’t even bother with CPR. The Colt had front-ended the flag pole in the center of the circle, a campus cop handcuffing the fat, inebriated driver. “Fuckin’ pedestrians, Jesus Christ, the guy just walked out in the middle of the street.”
    “Yeah, because he had a walk light, asshole,” the cop said. “Thank God for the new drunk driving laws. Five years, no parole, on any DWI/vehicular manslaughter charge.”
    As the EMTs scribbled on clipboards, Walter just kept staring at the dead guy on the gurney. His eyes were crossed, tongue hanging from an agape mouth. He wore a white t-shirt that read PIL: THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT, THIS IS WHAT YOU GET.
    “Fuck, the shitface is gettin’ froggy with the cop,” one of the EMTs observed.
    Walter looked over. The fat guy who’d been driving the car only had one wrist cuffed; now he was swinging at the cop with his other hand, shouting, “All I had was a couple of beers! I ain’t going to prison for five fuckin’ years!” and—SMACK!—the loose cuff hit the cop right in the face.
    “Kid! Hold this for me!” the EMT said and slapped the clipboard into Walter’s chest. Walter took it, startled, as the two EMTs rushed the fat guy and aided the cop. The scuffle didn’t last long, but Walter, for a reason he couldn’t identify, couldn’t focus. He wasn’t watching the ruckus, he was looking at the dead man on the gurney.
    The dead man was leaning up now, on one hand behind him. His other hand grasped the back of his own head by the hair, angling the broken neck. A few vertebrae crunched as he did this. The dead man was holding his head so to look right at Walter.
    Walter’s bladder emptied.
    “Sartre was wrong,” the dead man said. “Hell isn’t other people.”
    “Huh?” Walter managed to respond.
    Then the dead man said, “The showerhead knows more about us than we know about ourselves.”
    Walter gaped. “What?”
    Then: “Hell is a place, a city. A big city.”
    Walter spun toward the EMTs, shouted, “Excuse me! This guy over here! He’s not dead,” but after a moment of dumbfoundedness, he stood still, blinking. When he’d shouted