Silverback drove the 16 miles from Cottonwood Heights to Salt Lake City. His solid-black Harley motorcycle glistened like exquisite onyx. He cut in hard using the controls, darted like a black fly, and split highway lanes nearly unseen.
The big frigerated trunks, Greyhound buses, and RVs he fired past.
He held tight to the grips of his stock handlebars. Sweat and blood glossed his sunburned skin and painted his bald eagle tattoo with plum feathers, dripping off his forearms to his wrists onto the shiny metal controls.
Silverback was fighting an invisible wall of formidable darkness, working hard to get freed; however, he stopped it from swimming to the surface. He thought, How long can I hold The Gray Wolf back? Silverback barely missed a red Ferrari in his careless distraction.
The frightened driver cursed him blindly as his prescription lenses fell underneath the seat when he steered to the shoulder and braked.
Silverback looked next to him at the other lane and then at the highway behind. The roads united and enlarged grotesquely. The sun appeared like an orangish ornament over the borderland of Northern Utah’s rising sand cliffs, slot canyons, and eerie, shy mountains. A surprising flash of fiery brightness caused the illusion of abstract lanes on the gravel shoulder.
Behind Silverback was Mouse, wearing a black hood, gloves, and a helmet adorned with a terrifying gorilla design. Riding.
Silverback decided to pass the billboard for “The Points” bagel shop and the gas station. He gained optimism about losing Mouse and shook off the mediocre theory that Bill was itching to find Ivory, taking her to the canyonlands. It was absurd that Bill would continue what he started in the backseat of the Jeep Wrangler. The isolation, starvation, thirst, and horrors of The Gray Wolf make it improbable and suicidal.
No one would voluntarily face the Mountain Gorilla gang or the Utah desert except the unknown maniac who haunts the remote canyons. Or the red-bellied piranhas, who feared nothing in the air, rocks, or waters.
Silverback glanced at his round mirror dotted with dead mosquitoes as he flew by and onto an exit ramp. He still didn’t see Mouse and was satisfied that Mouse wasn’t following. He signed in relief. Mouse was a dangerous man, and it made him worry.
Silverback absorbed the sobering sight of his scars and was darkly anxious. But their removal would be a challenge. However, Ivory’s mother had an ex-husband, a doctor. Plus, Ace was excellent at creating motivation by applying blackmail. A remarkably experienced surgeon was necessary. Besides, he’d done ugly things, the esteemed Doctor, and he’d rather have them stay buried. Silverback was reluctant; he didn’t like owing Ace any favors.
He turned the motorcycle into the guest parking lot on the west side of the large hospital. When he switched off the battery power, his Harley seemed to purge the mechanic’s repair checklist. He spat his gum into the trash can when he stepped onto the sidewalk and put a brown boot on the low bench. He had ridden to Florida with the Mountain Gorilla gang and pledged never to do it again.
He was tired of being chained to the Mountain Gorillas as their leader. Silverback smoked a brand of cigarette he had never smoked. He needed something to soothe the agony of exhaustion. He wasn’t going forward. He put the pack of cigarettes back in his brown boot. Adam did not fear lung collapse, as The Gray Wolf was his new friend, but Ivory hated the smell of the brand.
No, I was forced to stay as their leader, back to help Ivory.
Silverback’s wristwatch blinked the caller’s name in red. “Where are you?”
“Hunting thieves, they’ll be dead crows once they offer up The Scarlet Owl ring,” Mouse said. “Snuffing out merry motherfuckers, who spoiled our cash block and messed with my sister Ivory.”
“Nelson and Bill,” Silverback unzipped his side pocket and put his lighter inside, “No one else deserves your charitable murder talents .”
“One unlucky extra, The Boss.”
“What about The Boss? Silverback laughed. Mouse demonstrated his annoyance with a blast from an automatic pistol.
Mouse yelled, “The older man you almost side-swiped in the red Ferrari was The Boss.”
“Alright, Alright. The boss is a son-of-a-bitch, a drug, weapons, counterfeit money, and a human trafficker. “
“Right.” Mouse ended the call.
Ivory will love the new modifications to their mutual obsession with custom cycles. Silverback thought: Right now, she and Mouse wanted Bill more than fucked-up. The Scarlet Owl ring, however, possessed her complete attention.
Silverback had injected and bled out the motorcycle’s gasoline lines, trying to find the Scarlet Owl ring before Mouse. He’d visit with Ivory. Then, he would look for Bill and Nelson. Bill hinted that while he’d been captive, the antidote to Nelson’s disease lay in the Scarlet Owl ring. The single way to eliminate The Beast of the Utah Canyons and The Gray Wolf.
The Scarlet Owl ring had two sides, which Silverback had in common with it. Good and Evil.
Silverback looked at his motorcycle for a while, then walked a few laps around the dark structure of the steel and glass hospital building. He noticed the Doctor’s cars: a burgundy Porsche, a white Corvette, and a green Mercedes. He liked his ride best.
Since the horrible accident, he had to lock his emotions in a vault, which meant his most minor and significant desires and their opposites: total rage and total sorrow. Ivory supervised these specific emotions, and The Gray Wolf strictly ruled itself. The dark-winged canyons, he called it, for mysterious reasons, demanded blood.
Ivory hadn’t convinced Silverback that he was the maniac of the Canyons. What remained from the deadly assaults were numerous skulls, just like rusty cans and wrinkled snakeskin curling beneath the unrelenting punishment of the desert sun.
Am I capable? Silverback asked. The rage he experienced spat like hot lava, ghost chili, and the madness of unresting souls.
I couldn’t kill innocent persons in a blackout or a state of consciousness. However, he had some doubts. He swallowed the piranhas, he recalled. He caught them from the sink and ate their pet piranhas. They were irresistible with pepper, and their taste awoke something inside him. Ivory brought him this curse as the motorcycle accident altered his life.
She was nude in a hotel window. She wore only a sparkling pink, purple, and silver eyeshadow, blue hair color, and a gold bracelet with a ring hung on a gold link, its sole charm.
The Scarlet Owl.
He took the stairs after receiving the guest’s badge from the host’s desk. Elevators were not his usual mode of transportation, as they made him apprehensive. The sensation constantly flooded his head and stomach with memories of the past, when he was an eleven-year-old child, and he had left his little brother, Luke, age eight, alone. The button to the elevator doors had stuck, and they shut, trapping him inside.
Luke was left behind in the lobby, kidnapped, and lost.
On every floor, his stomach growled with the old memory. He emptied his last energy on the stair climb, and three levels remained. His memories of Luke closed when he received a text at the top of his list of messages: Confirm your appointment with Dr. J. Kisperr.
Tomorrow? The scars were fresh burdens, and he had limited time to erase the disfigurement. Yet he was pressured to reschedule, and it was a delay he might regret. No choice.
The hallway floor was just as messy as the broad sidewalk outside, littered with brown coffee lids, face masks, and visitor name tags. The emergency entrance’s effect stirred the intense dark realities of a hospital. Where the gate of both life and death opens and closes unendingly. He felt the gate; it wasn’t anything terrible. He saw the gate at the time of his motorcycle accident, the beating by Bill in the lavatory. But Luke made mortality different. Silverback thirsted for the appearance or resurrection of his little brother, and the gate denied that.
Ace grabbed his shoulder, “An iced coffee for you.”
It was a bit late, but no less desired.
Ace handed him the cold plastic cup when he arrived on Ivory’s floor.
“Thanks.”
“Mouse?”
Silverback hesitated and nodded no. The elevator doors were closed, and he felt Luke’s spirit rise like curled smoke as the floor changed. Silverback felt a strange chill of a nearby threat as they looked for Ivory’s room.
The hallway sign read: 11th floor, room 229-259.
A shadow crossed the joining corridor. Silverback and Ace gazed at it, and the figure was somewhat familiar. A tall doctor came into view and passed them; the shadow was likely that of the male nurse who accompanied patients.
Ace gestured to Silverback and went up the corridor to confirm it was empty, but it was Ace’s instinct to search further. Ace’s ripped jeans poorly concealed a folded serrated pocketknife; it shone like dull, unpolished quartz. It could slit a throat or uncork a bottle of wine quickly.
“The shadow has a head; I’ll cut it off,” Mouse whispered. He arrived off the elevator to assist Ace’s paranoia.
Silverback glanced at the time on his iPhone, which was housed in a black, turquoise-studded case. He wore a black t-shirt with an island graphic that Ivory enjoyed.
Ivory drank her orange juice and handed Silverback a chunk of floating ice from the clear plastic cup. Silverback kissed her, and her damp blond hair reflected blue for a moment.
When he returned, Ace picked up a chair and took it outside the room behind the doorway. Ivory turned her face, and Silverback’s lips touched her pink cheek but missed her chapped lips.
“As bad as you want out of the Mountain Gorillas, I want to go home.”
Silverback gave her an understanding look. He opened the curtain blind and warned Ace to watch nearby and forget what he had overheard. At his command, Ace stood farther away from the front of the doorway.
The room appeared smaller beneath the fantastic ceiling light and the broad scope of the door. A tabletop bladeless fan spun soundlessly, sending a couple of pink rose petals through the oval disk it picked and swept from the plant’s stems.
In a glass vase were five baby Piranhas. Ivory moved in there. “Call Squirrel, Mouse, Demon. I don’t give a fuck his goddamn name.” She got out of bed, pillows and tears falling as she adjusted her hospital gown.
He walked closer to her and hugged her at the edge of the bed.
Silverback picked up the pillows on the floor. She threw the small hair comb at the door, frustrated with him and her tangled, half-dry hair. “I got to get out of here,” she said, examining Silverback’s appearance harshly. You look terrible; you think I’m not, okay?” Ivory said with deep sarcasm.
“Thanks, I didn’t realize I was so unpleasant.” Silverback placed his palms flat on the scarring on his forehead and chin.”
She braided her hair in silence. Her tone softened when she saw that she hurt Silverback and said, “You’ll be handsome again.”
Silverback turned around from her. The scars were increasing and bothering him as well. “Does it matter? Or just another general cost of being the leader of the Mountain Gorillas?”
“No, I won’t let you suffer for me, the Mountain Gorillas, or the fucking Scarlet Owl ring. Got it?” A spasm of pain pierced the whole side of her body.
He gently put his hands over hers and kissed her injured shoulder. “Will get the Scarlet Owl ring back.” He covered the Piranhas with a napkin. “I deserve it. I may be responsible for the horrible crimes in the park’s canyons.”
Celia Garza 