Tag Archives: Jon Cohn

After a horrific incident fifteen years ago, theater director Mike
O’Brien never planned to return to Seattle. But when his estranged best
friend sends him a script he can’t ignore, Mike finds himself back in
the city with a spotlight on his troubled past.

Conversations continue, and with each passing moment, more tension
eases off. A connection is forming with this group. Maybe I have been too
hard on myself for all these years. Perhaps there is a way to be friendly with
my cast and still be a good director.
Nearly an hour passes, and there is no sign of things slowing down.
Cassandra and I chat about the worst shows we have ever been attached to.
She goes deep-sea fishing in the half-melted cooler, trying to find another
drink.
“You want one?” she asks, finally pulling out a can.
“No, I don’t drink,” I say.
She squints at me, as if trying to tell if I am joking or not. “You sure
about that?” She juts her chin at my seltzer.
At first, I don’t understand…until I read the label more clearly. It is not
just a flavored seltzer. It’s a hard flavored seltzer. Meaning, it has booze.
“Oh shit,” I say. The world twists on its axis. No wonder I have been so
loosey goosey. I am three drinks in after a decade and a half of sobriety.
But I don’t have long to ponder my fuck-up before Cassandra returns,
her hand red and dripping from spending so much time fishing around the
cooler. She shakes the ice water off, then drops to her knees in front of the
fireplace.
“I need to warm up after that. My hand’s as pink as the guy in Danny’s
story.”
She reaches toward the fire.
Someone has slid the glass door shut in front of it. A crack in the glass
starts to spiderweb across the pane.
“No! Wait!” I shout, but it’s too late.
The differential of heat and cold on either side of the glass creates a
small explosion. The entire door shatters outward, sending hundreds of
shards rocketing at Cassandra. She screams so loud it becomes the only
sound in the room. Her whole arm is embedded with glass.
But that is not the worst of it.
Her face is a collection of knicks and slashes, with over a dozen pieces
of glass dug into her cheeks, jaw, and…
Oh God, her eye.
A shard, maybe an inch wide, has fully embedded into her right eye. I
have no idea how deep it goes, but more than just blood is running down her
face. A foamy yellowish-green fluid seeps from the socket.
“Call an ambulance!” Elaine shouts.
Danny lurches to his feet to grab his phone but trips over himself and
vomits on the rug.
Cassandra’s hand is shaking like a leaf. It slowly creeps toward the
foreign object embedded in her eye. She barely touches it before letting out a
shriek even louder than the first.
Elaine is talking to a dispatcher. Alex has a towel and is trying to figure
out a way to wrap up Cassandra’s arm, but there is too much glass. Nobody
knows what to do.
It’s an excruciating ten minutes of pure panic before flashing red lights
and a siren pull up to the building. We are running around like chickens with
their heads cut off while this woman wails on the floor, smearing blood all
over the tan carpet. A pair of EMTs eventually hurry in, load her onto a
stretcher, and rush her into the ambulance.
When the van drives away, we are left in a stunned silence.
Maybe it’s the alcohol, but I feel like I need to fill the emptiness. “I
tried to stop her when I noticed the glass.”
“Who the fuck puts a glass door over a lit fire?” Danny shouts.
After another awkward silence, Danny pipes up again.
“That wasn’t a rhetorical question. Who did it?”
“It wasn’t me,” Alex says, preemptively to his next statement. “But I had
no idea you couldn’t put glass over a lit fire. I certainly didn’t think it would
go off like that. Seems like a simple mistake.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Elaine puts a hand on Danny’s shoulder.
He jerks away, shrugging her off. “Yes, it fucking does! Who did it?
Who lit the fire?”
I have a sudden urge to defend myself, even though nobody is looking at
me. “I use the fireplace in my unit all the time,” I say. “I was the one who
noticed the door was shut when she reached out. There was a crack in it, and
I thought maybe that could be why it was compromised so badly. I tried to
stop her as soon as I noticed.”
“Holy shit, this is so messed up!” Danny shouts.
I stand and back away to the door, pulling my phone from my pocket.
“I’m sorry. I have to call Eden.” Then I rush out of the room as fast as my
legs will carry me.
In the aftermath of this horror, even with my inebriation, I don’t fail to
remember which steps to start on for every flight of stairs. By the time I reach
my room, Eden is on the line.
“Something happened. Cassandra’s hurt. She’s going to the hospital,” I
say, hurrying over to the oven and fridge, tapping everything to help calm my
nerves. I even turn the key to my fireplace to make sure it is off.
“What?” Eden says. “Slow down. What happened?”
“Someone closed the glass door on the fireplace. It had a crack, and it
exploded. One of the shards…Oh god.” I belch, fighting back burning acid
and bile in my stomach while I am pulled back into the moment. The awful
colors seeping from her popped eyeball are branded into my brain.
“Where are they taking her?” Eden asks.
“I don’t know. They said the name. Give me a second.” I get onto my
computer to look up nearby hospitals, knowing I will recognize the name
when I find it. But before I do, I see my last spontaneous writing session
sitting on the screen. My eyes are immediately drawn to a passage:
Smash the glass, and take the shards
Shove them into Beth’s face and arms
Carve into her flesh and see
The glass is not for your safety
It’s a weapon, crystal sharp
Slit her throat while in the dark
Drive the glass into her heart
Watch her drain out, thats a start
First, the slashed mesh of the window. Now this. I wrote these words two
days ago. It’s too similar to be a coincidence.
I try to think back to when I lit the fire. I know better than to close the
glass door over an open flame, even if it is supposed to be safe.
So I didn’t do this, right?
“Eden, I’m going to have to call you back.”