ANTIAGING SKINCARE PRODUCTS

#4.

Terrorists have kidnapped her and are holding her in a warehouse somewhere in a dirty industrial part of Berlin. It’s all factories and warehouses and dance clubs, all of them having names that are some kind of bad pun on “The Wall.” These are eurotrash terrorists, the 80s and 90s stereotype, not the currently more predominant Islamic type. They’re wearing black turtlenecks and mostly all have long hair pulled back into pony tails. They wear round John Lennon glasses. Their accents are thick and disgusting, disgusting like their breath, which is partially because of all that horrible coffee they drink, and partially because they don’t brush their teeth.

She’s tied up off to the side, surrounded by a wall of crates stacked high. She’s in a wooden chair, hands tied behind her back, her feet tied to the legs of the chair. They took the tape off her mouth a while ago, leaving a sting. Her hair is matted to her face, gross with sweat. Tears have mixed with saliva. Her head hangs low. She is scared for her life, but also petrified that she never was able to tell him that she loved him. Not for the last time. Everyone deserves that, right?

The terrorists are in another part of the warehouse. They’re arming stolen nuclear weapons, or would be if the instruction manuals weren’t all written in Russian, and nursing radiation burns. They’re drinking bad coffee and getting turned on by the idea of stealing chemical weapons. They will soon have the world in the grip of FEAR! Fear that they control and use like currency. Their leader is a man with weird facial hair who wants to make a video tape of his demands and send it to the President of the United States. And the Prime Minister of England. And a few other countries, too, but which? Also, NATO? The United Nations as a whole? Which? He and his fellow terrorists decide to make another pot of their heinous coffee and sit around and discuss this some more.

They never see him sneak in. They won’t realize til later that he broke one of their sentries’ neck , only after they tricked that sentry into knifing the other sentry. His moves are stealthy and determined. He sneaks up behind her and kisses her cheek. She knows it’s him by his cologne, and the way his lips touch her skin. She is shocked. She is relieved. And has been the victim of so many negative emotions in the last few hours, trying to keep afloat in a pool of despair.”What are you doing here?” she asks, more shocked than anything else, but so very, very happy.

“I wanted to know if you wanted to have dinner with me tonight,” he says nonchalantly and then grins. It’s a confident grin, a hero’s smile, instantly distracting and disarming and calming.

She blushes and nods. “Fuck yes,” she whispers as he undoes her hands.

Her wrists, finally unbound, are so sore, her hands feeling almost as if they’re no longer a part of her, but she doesn’t care. She grabs his face as he’s cutting the rope around her ankles and she kisses him so hard.

“I love you so much,” she mumbles against his lips.

“I love you more,” he says.

* * *

#97:

They were visiting an old friend, a poet who had lived a long and romantic life, but who was now sadly dying of a disease that was given to him by previous romance, and dying alone and mostly uncared for in a run down former hotel in Paris. He was the occupant of just one room of many in which someone was slowly, quietly, painfully slipping out of this world. He was on the sixth floor and they had just left his room, essentially having made their goodbyes. They held hands, not saying anything. It was a sad time, seeing this man slowly fading away, knowing there would not be anymore encounters, and that all their encounters with him were now filed away forever as “memories.”

But it made them stronger together. This was something they shared. It was not his memories and it was not her memories. It was their memories. Always theirs.

They headed for the old stairway. The paint was beyond chipped, the colors long faded. The building had been been vibrant and alive in World War II and now was waiting for history to swallow it, hopefully with grace, as they would have wished for their poet friend. But neither was getting graceful exit. They were each crumbling bit by bit, kept alive by those inside, the memories, the warmth of the past, but with a questionable current structural integrity.

And then there was an earthquake.

It was slow at first, easing into life. The hallway shook. In the distance, the sound of portraits and chandeliers crashing. A window breaking. Around them, cracks jutting across the old grey walls, splitting apart wood. Walls falling over. And then a chasm tore through the floorboards between them. They stepped back in awe at the raw power of the earthquake, and then worry. They looked at each other, concerned, worried, and reached for each other.

The ground lurched again, and they were thrown away from each other. He got up first, calling to her, assuring her that he would get to her. The ground disagreed and there was another shake and he was thrown off nearest staircase. In a mad scramble, he grabbed at the frame of a giant painting that was firmly fastened to the wall and overlooking the large lobby below. It was a painting of Marie Antoinette lounging about and his feet were kicking at the canvas around her cleavage as he desperately tried to get a foothold. But there was none. His arms hurt and his hands were pained by the poor grip he had on the top of the frame.

She stood up, saw this, and looked around. From him, flailing and seconds away from pulling that painting off the wall and falling the six stories down or just loosing his grip and falling on his own, to the chandelier nearby, swaying with the aftershocks, but still firmly attached. She saw the large window nearby and she smiled. She remembered the truck of kitty litter they had seen parked just outside it when the driver of the truck and the driver of another vehicle had had a dispute in the middle of the street.

It was a simple plan. Get to the chandelier, then swing over to him, grab him, then swing both of them to the window and out of it, and then land safely in the kitty litter truck below. She took her coat off and cracked her knuckles. Simple.

He looked over her and she saw the petrified look in his eyes. She saw the terror. She saw him trying to mouth something to her, to desperately tell her something before it was too late. She gave him a little wave of her hand as she stood up on the railing of the staircase overlooking the chandelier, the large painting with the man she loved clinging on for dear life, and the gorgeous huge window about fifteen feet of open space away. And she saw how the staircase spiraled hundreds of feet down to a checkered floor lobby below. Simple, she reminded herself. “Piece of cake,” she said aloud.

“Get out,” he yelled to her, his voice sounding weak, from the emotional and physical strain. “Could be aftershocks… get to safety and…”

“Shhh,” she said. “I need to concentrate for a moment.” Her eyes darted around, making the calculations that would be required for this, the mental and gymnastic finesse.

He realized what she was about to do and started to yell his protest to such a blatantly dangerous and outright insane idea but she gave him a look that stopped him in his tracks. He knew that she would do this no matter what. His life was at stake and she would risk hers in any way she could to save his.

He smiled through the grimaces. “I love you so much,” he told her amidst the sound of crumbling and screams in the distance.

She smiled back. “I know,” she said.

And then she jumped.

* * *

#11:

Their jeep jumped a short hill at a very high speed and for just a fraction of a second, they were completely airborne. They were flying. She reached for his hand there on the gear shift, and squeezed it.

And then the jeep crashed back down onto the ground, metal vibrating and growling, and their stomachs flying all about their bodies. He pressed harder on the gas pedal and she told him to watch out for that tree ahead. He veered appropriately and then made another sharp turn, swinging in another direction before crashing into jagged rocks.

“The trail is fading fast,” he said through gritted teeth as he gripped the steering wheel.

“Can’t you go any faster?” she asked.

Five high speed seconds later, they drive along side a cliff, a rock wall on one side of them, a massive drop just below. She turned back around as he drove, checking out their pursuer.

“How close?” he asked. The rear view mirror had fallen off.

“Close,” she said. “Faster would be better.”

He half smiled, slamming his foot on the gas pedal even harder.

She held tightly to the back of her seat. The lava flow was not slowing down, only coming after them faster and harder. It was big and red, molten and alive, like the sweat of Hell itself. It appeared to be living and angry and hungry. It wanted to devour them as badly as they wanted to survive. Who wanted it more though?

“Asleep for all these years,” she said loudly so she could be heard over their tortured screams of the engine. “Who figures the long dormant volcano is going to explode into life now?”

“Seriously,” he said. “And on our vacation too.” The wheel slammed into something and the jeep shook violently, but kept moving, overcoming whatever it was. “Hold on.” He made a sharp turn, getting them away from the cliff and soon they were plowing through thick jungle again. She watched as lava spilled over the side of the cliff, heading for the greenery and villages and coast of this small island below. Soon everything would be melted and ashy and lost. Everything on what was left of this island was downhill and they desperately needed to get to their boat, and…

He made another sharp turn, throwing her into him as he tried to avoid a large rock formation that was hidden in overgrowth. “Sorry,” he said.

She put her arms around him. “It’s okay,” she said and kissed his cheek.

“I love you,” he said.

“Love you more,” she said, nibbling on his ear playfully, then whispering, “but can’t you go any faster?”

* * *

#23:

The passengers were screaming and in the tiny cabin, with nowhere for the sound to go, it was murder on the eardrums. It was making it incredibly hard for her to concentrate.

He came back from the cockpit. The look on his was grim. Stony. She saw it and knew.

“Damn,” she whispered to herself.

“Wait,” asked one of the flight attendants, realizing something horrible was going on, but not knowing what it is. “What is it? What did the pilot say?”

He smirked, and she knew him so well. He’d try to make it sly, wry, possibly a joke. “The pilot… uh, well, he actually said ‘Grurrgghh.’” Anything to make it not as deathly serious as it was.

The flight attendant looked even more confused.

“The pilot’s dead,” he clarified. “Sorry. The co-pilot, too. Their food, most likely. It was poisoned.”

The flight attendant understood all too well now. She looked back at the ripped up carpet and open hatch in the floor just down the aisle way.

Another passenger stepped forward, having been listening in. “I don’t understand now,” the passenger said.

The flight attendant explained: “The other flight attendant – the fake one – the one who just left with our only parachute? She was the one serving the meals to everyone. She must’ve poisoned the pilot and co-pilot.”

“Oh shit,” said the passenger.

The flight attendant agreed.

He looked to her, where she was kneeling there in the aisle. “It’s worse. I tried the controls, but they’re completely locked out. The autopilot’s seized up somehow and that mountain range? It’s coming up.”

She looked up at him. “How fast?”

He looked into her beautiful blue eyes, the color of an ocean you’d want to sail away forever on. “Fast.”

The flight attendant covered her mouth and looked away.

“Oh my God,” said the passenger. “We’re all going to die. Aren’t we? WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!”

“Not necessarily,” he started to say, but something about the way she looked up at him stopped him from saying anything else. He knelt beside her, their faces close. Whatever she was about to tell him, it was heavy. “What?” he asked in a whisper.

She didn’t say anything, just opened up the bag, the bag of the fake flight attendant/saboteur who had just parachuted away, and showed him what was inside: Several thick squares of putty with all sorts of wire attached to them. And a digital timer that was counting down. It was just minutes away from zero.

“Fuck,” he said.

“Yeah,” she agreed.

“But…” he looked in her eyes, his beautiful blue calm center, and he thought for half a second. “But… She crawled through that hatch, down a crawl space, and then probably went out through the landing gear compartments, right? I’ll just take the bag down there and chuck it out into the clouds…”

She gave him a half a smile, a smile that said that it would be a good plan. Then the smile faded. There was a But.

There’s always a but.

She lifted the flap of the unzipped part of the bag from where it had been shoved under one of the seats and showed him the metal chain connecting the bag to the seat. This bag wasn’t going anywhere unless the metal legs of the chair were taken off, and that would take more time than they had.

The flight attendant saw the dour looks on their face and instantly began sweating.

And so were they, knelt there together, looking in each other’s eyes. Whatever source of strength he saw in her eyes, she saw the same in his. And right now she also saw one tiny bead of sweat forming at his hairline and starting to work it’s way down and she brought her fingers to his forehead, catching it, stopping it. Her hand then went to his cheek and he leaned in and kissed her.

“Okay,” he said, “so… one of us needs to get our rusty flying skills… uh, well, unrusty, and the other…”

She grabbed her purse and pulled out a pen and a paperclip and unzipped more of the bag, already getting ready to start disarm the bomb. “Yeah,” she said with a smile.

He kissed her forehead. “I love you,” he said into her hair, hands holding her face as she looked down at the bomb. She turned up to look into his eyes and an understanding passed between them. Then he got up and raced back towards the cockpit and for the first time, the passengers stopped screaming and just watched him go, confused and dumbfounded.

Her fingers kept moving, grabbing clumps of wire, trying to group them without pulling on them too hard yet while the clock was silently ticking away, but for just a moment, she lifted her head, watching him run to the other end of the plane. “You better,” she said softly. And then she looked up at the flight attendant, gesturing to a few of the wires she was holding. “So, what do you think? The green one?”

* * *

#52:

Their speed boat cut through the water at an amazing velocity, just tearing through the ocean around them. “Faster!” she screamed over the roar of the engine and the sound of the waves all around them.

“Hey, give me a break,” he said from the controls, keeping his eye on the elusive horizon ahead. “I only just learned how to drive this thing like an hour ago.”

“Faster!” she said from the stern of the fast moving craft.Then she looked back behind them, seeing that the ginormous evil octopus was still there, still catching up to them, and gaining on them with incredible menace. And he appeared to be getting bigger too.

She looked back forward and saw him as he gripped the little wheel of the boat, turning them a little, trying a zig zag pattern to shake up their pursuer. She saw that the right side of his vintage Hawaiian shirt was completely torn and his right arm was covered in red. The shirt was just barely hanging onto him and would probably have been carried away from his torso by the wind if parts of it weren’t pressed into the cuts. In fact, she could see the blood still pumping out of the multitude of wounds around his bicep.

“Fuck,” she said, coming closer. “How did this happen?”

He looked at her, not sure what she meant, and then the wound, which the adrenaline had helped him forget about. “Oh, that,” he said. “Those sharks back in the, uh… the thing, I believe.”

“Damn,” she hissed, and looked around. There was nothing that she could use to tie around his arm, and she needed to. If she didn’t stop this bleeding soon, he’d pass out. Or die. Or both.

With no other options and very little hesitation, she did the only thing she could think of. She took off her bikini top and wrapped them around his arm, tying it tight, hoping to put pressure on the wound and stop it. “This will work for now,” she said, “but not for too long, I don’t think.”

“Hopefully it’ll last just long enough for you to kill that thing,” he said.

“And how do you propose I do that?”

He smiled at her. The wind was crazy, blowing their hair all over the place and mist was flying about them, but that dangerous, reckless clam was in his eyes. His fiery, very much alive eyes. “With this,” he said and he used his foot to point to something he had just discovered: a speargun.

“Holy shit,” she said, reaching down and picking it up. It was no ordinary speargun. It was bigger, for starters. Modified. Almost as if it had been meant to kill giant evil octopuses that seemed like wicked creatures from another dimension.

“But you’re going to have to get frighteningly close,” he warned her. “Well, we are.”

“Can we?” she asked.

“Can we?” he repeated with a smirk. “Baby, we can do anything. Hold on.”

She did just that, wrapping her arms around him, her legs stiffening, and he turned them sharply, and soon the speedboat was a barreling back towards the giant creature of the deep, on a collision course. But hopefully not a literal suicide run.

“Good luck,” he said, kissing her cheek, and then her lips.

They held a deep kiss and mumbled declarations of love. And then she lifted the speargun, steadied herself as best she could and took aim at the monster’s huge, blinking eye.

* * *

#47:

They held hands and took a step back. “We’re completely surrounded,” he whispered to her as he kept his gaze even and on those surrounding them. The few trees above were protecting them from the sweltering jungle sun above, but nothing else.

“Yes, I noticed that,” she said with a playful sarcasm.

All around them, the previously undiscovered and savage tribe kept their bows and arrows aimed at them. The arrowheads weren’t normal arrowheads, but some kind of large animal claw that was most likely dipped in an agonizing poison. The bow strings were pulled taut. The savages, most likely cannibals, were just waiting for the signal from their leader to fill the two of them with holes.

“What do you think they’re waiting for?” she asked.

“Me,” came the voice from behind the group of archers in loincloths with bodies painted in animal blood. A few of the natives parted and their leader walked out to face the two captives.

Squeezing her hand just a little tighter, he said, “That… I was not expecting.”

“No one ever does,” said the chief of the tribe: A six foot tall ape wearing a suit and standing as upright as he possibly good. The ape snorted. “No one ever sees the likes of me coming.”

“Uh… yeah,” she said, swallowing hard.

The ape laughed hard. “And no one ever survives seeing me!” he said along with his weighty, insidious guffaw.

“I don’t even care why you fools are here,” the ape said with a hint of an accent. “Why you’d be stupid enough to leave the safety of your ‘civilization’ means nothing to me. I imagine it has something to do with the treasure in the temple over there, but honestly, I could give a shit about that. All that I care about right now is that my people,” and with that, he gestured to the tribe facing them, before continuing, “are well fed. And that I have a little fun in doing so.”

And then he drew a sword from a sheath attached to his belt. The blade caught a little glint from the sunlight filtered through the trees. Then he swung the blade around threateningly and impressively, demonstrating a keen skill with it. But he was just showing off, wanting to both impress them with his skills and make them realize that they were clearly doomed.

They just squeezed their hands together tighter as they pressed closer. “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”

She looked at him. “Yeah,” she said. “And you know what I’m going to say back, right?”

The ape beat his chest with his free hand and let out a loud, inhuman screech.

He looked in her eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

And then the large ape charged at them, sword raised high, ready to slice them in half.

* * *

#92:

“Well, there goes dinner…” he said with a sigh and got up from the table, tossing his napkin onto the plate. He was wearing a tuxedo and came over to her as she stood at the edge of the rooftop, looking over at the large crowd below. She was wearing a gorgeous evening gown, something very cleavage-y, and she had noticed his eyes wandering there all night long.

“Afraid so,” she said, frowning. “Unless the menu’s changed.”

Below them were a lot of people, in fact, probably every single person in the city, they now assumed. And the smell was absolutely wretched. In the distance, there was still a bright light from the fire were the meteor had crashed into that part of the city. A thick black column of smoke was moving up to the stars, but never quite making it all the way to the large, gorgeous full moon hanging overhead.

Having seen enough, he took one of her hands in his and pulled her to him as he stepped back from the edge. His other hand moved to her hip and they looked in each other’s eyes and fell into a familiar spinning loop, dancing and swaying together. “For now,” he whispered into her ear, “this whole rooftop is ours, right? Let’s enjoy it.”

“A lovely idea,” she whispered against his neck, feeling his one day stubble against hers.

The music from the record player he had set up nearby was still playing. It was almost just enough to drown out the moans and groans and screams of agony from the city all around them. They waltzed for what felt like hours.

As they passed the table and chairs he had set up here on the rooftop, the lights and the candles, the vases of flowers, she just smiled. So lovely. So beautiful. Then she frowned again, wishing they had had more time to enjoy it. This was always what happened to them, wasn’t it? Time just keep running out, turning against them.

“So,” she asked. “What did I do to deserve all of this?”

“Hmm?” he asked, his mind having wandered into the happy place he entered when with her.

She gestured to the romantic set up he had put together as a surprise for her.

“Oh,” he said, and for a second, his face reddened, almost blushing. “Well… this was certainly not how I envisioned the night going, obviously, but…”

And he stepped back from her, his head lowered. He looked solemn and his hand disappeared into his pocket. It stayed there and he raised his eyes to her. He started to lower himself down, falling onto one knee and pulling a small felt box from his pocket.

“Oh my God,” she said, her hands covering her mouth. Her eyes were watery. Her knees felt weak.

He reached for one of her hands, kissing it, opening it and placing the now open felt box with the ring inside in her palm.

“Oh baby…” she whispered.

He just looked up at her, the question unspoken, hanging between them like waves of electricity. And she didn’t say anything in response, just smiled. He knew her answer, the same as her. They both knew the question and the answer from the very first day they met. She pulled him up and kissed him. Deeply, intensely, hungrily, passionately, madly, deeply. And for a moment, there was nothing else in this world besides this rooftop and them and their future of infinite possiblity. They kissed and held each other forever.

Afterward, their foreheads rested together, and she watched as he held her hand as if it was the most delicate thing in the world and slid the ring on. Everywhere around them was a world on fire and voices drained of life screaming out for brains, but all they could feel was their hearts beating against their chests like drums.

“Fuck,” she whispered, almost laughing. Her fingers caressed his cheek and his neck, and the collar of the tuxedo he looked so good in. “I hate zombies,” she said and they laughed together.

* * *

#87:

She was alone in the dark room, the lights flickering over her face. She didn’t know what she was looking at, just a series of bright images, constantly changing, with volume that didn’t seem to sync up. A light flicked on behind her, for just a moment, and he was silhouetted in hallway behind her.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Don’t know,” he said, looking at the TV, and then came up behind her on the couch. She tilted her head back and he came down and kissed her forehead. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling big.

He came around the couch and sat next to her, holding a bowl of fresh, hot microwaved popcorn. She reached into it, grabbed a handful and brought it to her lips. He ate a little, and then set it on the coffee table in front of them.

She grabbed the blanket and lifted it up, straightened it out and then placed it over both of them. They put their feet up on the coffee table and his arm moved around her back as she leaned into him. She rested her head on his shoulder, against his neck and they nuzzled into one another. He found the remote under the pillow and changed the channel from whatever it was that was currently on.

“What should we watch?” he asked her.

“Anything,” she said.