I was coaxed into a Hansel and Gretel fucking furnace.
"Come down to the country, Peter! Meet my Polish family, Peter! Relax a little, Peter! You'll feel great, Peter!"
I shudder to think about the last 24 hours . . .
. . . I woke up, took a little bit of the quiche that was left over from our video mix party, got dressed, and four of the household ventured down to Eden Prarie to try out Marta's father's new sauna. I made the mistake of not drinking enough water the morning prior, what with all the alcohol intake I had had in the past week. My pee was a darkish yellow. Not a good sign.
On top of that, Taylor made espresso. The heart started to race as we stripped down to our boxers and stepped outside into the subzero frigidity of Minnesota. We had to walk fifty feet basically naked.
Inside the sauna, we immediately felt relief. The temperature was at a nice 100 degrees, but was steadily climbing to 200. Marta warned us that the sauna could potentially reach dangerous levels if not contained properly. That had never happened . . . yet.
About the 150 mark, we started sweating buckets. About 170, my speech started to become worse than my drunkest rants. Breathing became difficult. I started moaning about a strawberry field I once saw in Alberta, with hundreds of bunnies prancing through the nearby meadows thirsting for strawberry juice.
Marta's father came in, said his hellos, and the rest of us went outside to take a quick break, leaving him by himself. My body was confused beyond all reason, as I felt great in the deadly temperature. Steam rose from our bodies in thick clouds. Marta's father was inside, listening to us talk. I'd like to think he was chuckling from our speech, as that happened to be the last blessed moment of his life.
After about 10 minutes, we heard a rustling inside the sauna. A steadily rising scream started to pierce the wooden boards of the hell chamber's walls. Then, to all of our horror, Marta's dad came bursting out of the door.
He was on fire.
Screaming and calling out to his Polish god, he ran around the backyard, his trusty dog trailing behind barking all the while. He jumped around and around. A thought came into my head at this moment, a warning from my biology classes years ago . . .
The rest of the group grabbed their towels and ran toward him, trailing smoke behind their backs. I started to move, but the dehydration had taken its toll on me. I had a terrible sense of vertigo, and I fell on the ground, trying to yell what had occured in my mind just before. All I could muster were quick pants and grunts.
The skin, when viciously burned, becomes steadily chaotic. The particles that make up our epidermis begin to shake violently. If they are cooled rapidly, they continue to go in the direction of their last tremor, basically falling apart.
This was what I was trying to tell Louie, Taylor, and Marta. They were going to melt him.
Louie took his towel and jumped on top of Marta's father. They both crashed into the snow. It was a cloud of fog and screams.
Marta started to shout "PAPA!! PAPA!!" Taylor vomited his espresso and quiche. Louie stood up, covered in what looked like beef jerky sludge.
It was the skin of Marta's father's back. It had fallen off of his body, and Louie was wearing it like a parka.
Marta's father was moaning in Polish. Everyone stood watching him, dazed and confused. I was still laying thirty feet back, literally and figuratively frozen. What happened next will haunt me for the rest of my life.
The dog came up, sniffed the charred muscle tissue of the poor man's back . . . and started to eat his exposed tissue. Ravaging and mad, he tore off his meat in sheets. At this point I said "Damn my lack of water!!" I lumbered up and ran stumbling over to the dog. I grabbed its tail and started to pull. It turned on me, dowsing my legs with the man's innards. I felt hot teeth sear into my arms. I let go, falling, unable to regain the strength due to the dehydration.
Just then I saw a large bat thwat down on top of the dog's head. A loud whimperish scream emitted from the canine's throat, and I saw the raging eyes of Marta's younger brother looking down at the horrible sight. He was in his skivvies as well, looking more like a primitive Neanderthal than a loving son.
The dog limped away. The boy dropped the bat and crawled over to his father. He didn't want to turn him over, for fear that he might spill the remaining guts of his dad all over the snow. He only asked "Papa, Papa, what should we do?"
Through the dying moans came a choked gargling, hardly distinguishable, but we were able to hear what he had to say.
"Don't . . . don't tell your mother I died like this. Tell her . . . tell her I died doing something honorable."
The boy cried "Papa, I know just what to say."
He choked: "You always were a good boy."
And then he died.
We stood there for ten minutes, silently weeping and stunned.
I turned to Marta's brother. I asked, "What are you going to tell your mother? How are you going to say he died?"
He looked at me like he had known me all my life. He looked at everyone else.
He turned his eyes on me and said slowly, "I'm going to tell her that he let us use his prized sauna. The sauna he built with his own hands. And he died knowing that he had brought joy not only to his own heart, but to friends' as well."
Thank you for letting us use the sauna, Mr. Haftek. We'll remember you always.
Bloodhound Gang -- "Fire Water Burn"
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