Thanksgiving Hangover

As Ben slowly came to consciousness he could only remember two things about yesterday. It was Thanksgiving and he drank too much. In reality the turkey grease in his beard reminded him of the former and the feeling of dirty death in his body reminded him of the latter.

Throwing up was inevitable, but he was putting it off. He hated throwing up. He couldn´t shake a certain feeling of guilt despite not recalling anything from the previous day. He went to check his phone for clues. The battery was dead. “Lucky phone” he thought. “I wish my battery would just run out one day”

Self-loathing was overtaking Ben. This happened frequently during Ben´s hangovers and hangovers such as this one were happening more frequently as of late. His embarrassment was augmented knowing his whole family bared witness to whatever transpired yesterday. Most had traveled from out of state to see what a sad sack Ben has become.

After a few hours of fighting it, Ben gave into the urge to purge. This made him feel slightly better. He realized he´d better face the family and get it over with. Every hour that passed, the feeling of shame and embarrassment grew. He slipped into some jeans and brushed the taste of vomit out of his mouth.

He embarked on what felt like an interminable trek down the stairs. “Oh, great” he thought. “They´re all there”

He peeked around the final banister and timidly said “Hi.”

“There he is!” a beaming aunt cried, “Our hero!”

“Hey sport! You rest up well after that adventure? You deserve it” an uncle chimed in.

Ben´s head was spinning. What are they talking about? Another aunt kissed him on the cheek as she handed him a cup of coffee. “Special cup for the hero of Thanksgiving!” she said, “Ummmm, someone still smells a little of yesterday´s indulgences” she chided, “Heck, you deserved it!”

Another aunt approached, “Ben, your clothes from yesterday are in the dryer, I even put an extra dryer sheet in there for you”

“Why?” Ben asked, perplexed.

“Don´t be silly” she responded.

“No, really, what happened?” Ben insisted as he put his hand to his forehead.

An uncle started in from the other side of the room “Oh, Ben, you really don´t remember, do you?”

“Not really, sorry” he answered.

“That´s okay! Hell, I was young once, I think I forgot a few nights myself” he laughed “Your little cousin Andy was a playin’ and a slidin’on the ice on the pool; ice cracked and he fell right in. Don´t know why you were there…

Ben knew, he was smoking a bowl at the side of the house.

“…but thank God you were. You jumped right in, not thinking for a second about yourself and snatched little Andy right out of the water, from under the ice, with the quickness. You 100% saved his life”

“Three cheers for Ben!” an uncle cried.

“Hip, hip, hooray!!!” they repeated.

Ben stood there bewildered, but feeling a little better.

 

 

The Long Way Home

*note from author: I debated long and hard if I should post this or not. If you choose to read on, you´ll see it is pretty graphic. X rated, even. A part from a few details in setting, the story is fiction despite the opening line. I really want to make that clear. The exercise was to write a fist person, raunchy story. With that said, reader discretion is advised.

The following story is factually true. Take into consideration it is being told through the distorted lens of a drunken teenage boy. Seventeen years already has history distorting powers. Let´s take into consideration the alcoholic soup the story swims in. Reader discretion advised. Enjoy.

It started off as a typical Friday night. Warm ups included whatever was the cheapest thirty pack of beer the store had to offer and taking turns on the gravity bong. The gravity bong for the uninitiated is simply the most ridiculous homemade device for smoking marijuana. Google it. Ours was a one gallon milk jug in a bucket of water. The same bucket we used to clean the house. Who am I kidding, the house never got cleaned.

We were good and wrecked when somebody suggested we go to frat row in down town New Brunswick, New Jersey to “get fucked up”. We were all attending an educational establishment too embarrassing to mention here, so we piggy backed the party scene at Rutgers University. We decided I was not sober enough to drive so someone else, who was probably equally inebriated but could hide it better, did.

At this stage of my life, Friday and Saturday nights had two purposes. Get wasted on whatever I could get my hands and cumming. The former happened regularly, the latter, at least at the hands of others, not so much. We got to the party and I set my internal radar on drugs, alcohol and any girl with self esteem low enough to touch me. On this fortunate night, I scored on all three fronts.

As I said, full recollection of this story is impossible but some things are still clear. The girl I struck up a conversation with was blond, so skinny she could elicit pity and had awful teeth. I remember the teeth because this is a pet peeve of mine, but I was talking and she was listening so I looked away. I remember playing a few rounds of beer pong when she suggested we find somewhere a little more private to enjoy each other´s company.

The Rutgers frat houses are strange structures. They are the old mansions of Johnson and Johnson executives from a century gone by. They are full of little hidden hallways, staircases and rooms that are hard to imagine what purpose they once served. We found an unoccupied room that only fit a bunk bed. You had to contort you body just to get into the thing. Bingo! We found our love nest.

We started making out and I managed to get her clothes off. She was too drunk to get mine off so I was obliged to help. I don´t remember much from this passionate encounter but I remember a few things. First, we did not have sex. As you will see, it would have better if we had because I would have been able to break her evil spell, get away from her and the rest of the night would not have gone down the way it did. We were then interrupted by a chubby fellow and told to leave the ex slave´s quarters immediately.

I pretended to like her for a few more hours with the hopes that she would make that sneezey feeling in my crotch that seemed to be the focus of my life. The party was winding down and I noticed my ride had left. She offered her place to crash. What a coincidence. I wish I could give more details of what happened next but I really don´t remember.

I do doubt we had intercourse because no black out is stronger than an orgasm. No matter how drunk or high I was, I remember them all and file them to be later used in search of manual relief. When I refer to this night in my mind, a message comes up “file empty”. But the story does not end here.

I woke up in a strange place. I was cold. In fact I was shivering. I pulled the covers over my shoulders. Colder yet. What gives. I looked around. I was clearly in a girl´s room but there was no girl. I put my hand down on the mattress. I realized what had happened. Exactly what I feared most as a twelve year old when I slept over at friend´s houses had happened. I made water in her bed, Miss Daisy. It was a gusher too. Everything was wet. My mind raced despite the pounding headache. I thought about gathering my things and jumping out the window. We were on the third story.

I did what any honorable man in my position would do. I pulled my jeans over my pissed in underwear, put the rest of my clothes on and went down stairs. She didn´t even look up from the television. This I remember as if it were yesterday. I told it was fun and it was nice to have met her. I even remembered my manners and told her she had a lovely home despite the fact it looked like a future hoarders episode. It was a few years away from that but that´s ok because the show hadn´t been invented yet. Like the gentlemen I was, I offered my phone number. She told me to write it on the dry erase board on the fridge. It had the grocery list and I felt bad about erasing it so I left it alone.

This was an age before cell phones. I had no cash for a cab and not even the bus. I was a good five miles from where I lived. Talk about walk of shame? This was the Bataan Death March of shame. I put my head down low and took that walk. I threw up a few times along the way but I made it. I was greeted with a round of high fives. I regaled them with my tale and I was awarded the “green hit” from the gravity bong for my troubles.

Work Makes Free

Rudy needed to be shaken out of his destructive patterns. His partying, which started out as fun on the weekends, had started to seep into the work week. His mind started to see Wednesday, the middle of the week, as a bridge to the next weekend. Then Tuesday became a bridge to Wednesday, Thursday a bridge to Friday night, until Rudy realized he was not partying anymore but strait up abusing drugs.

Rudy was honest with himself. He knew what he was doing was wrong but he could not stop himself. He would wake up saying to himself that this was going to be a clean day. Cut to moments after work, he found himself in the gas station in check out with two tall boys in hand asking for a pack of cigarettes. On his way home, the two beers would give him the courage to say no to saying no and he found himself at his pickup spot and yet another night was forgotten and another morning was difficult to face.

Rudy decided to call his uncle, who lived on a farm an hour outside of the city, and asked him if he could crash there for a while. His uncle understood why without Rudy even having to say so. Rudy´s uncle was a wise man so he made Rudy tell him regardless. He wanted Rudy to admit it to another human, out loud, knowing this would help Rudy manifest the necessary changes.

Rudy was fortunate to not have physical withdrawal. He was using for such little time that his body never adapted to the point it needed it. In fact, Rudy didn´t even miss getting high. Being on this other path made Rudy´s brain forget the need for escape. The only hard part for Rudy was waking up so early. Breakfast was at five in the morning and they were at work by five thirty.

After a week, even the early wakeup call became easy. Rudy´s uncle was getting used to the help. It was a big farm and good help was hard to find. When he did find it, it did not last long as the workers were generally migrant and did not stay put in one place for too long. Rudy felt great. He believed his system pretty much reset to zero. Rudy felt he could go back and face the world.

His uncle asked him to stay for at least another week. He explained to really make these changes concrete, Rudy would need a little more time. Rudy felt confident. He wasn´t even thinking about getting high. With a lot of reprehension in his heart and an open invitation to return, Rudy´s uncle said his farewells. There were even a few tears shed by both men during the farewell.

As Rudy pulled into his apartment complex parking spot he felt and acute, heavy darkness. He looked around at all the fairly new, financed to the gills, fancy cars, the dilapidated low rent buildings and felt a little confused and a little disgusted. This is life, he asked himself? Live in a particle board box, go to an unfulfilling job just to drive a car that is barely affordable on a month to month basis. Rudy didn´t have the tools to stop such negative thinking. He climbed the rickety stairs to his one bedroom apartment.

He opened the door and a waft of familiar smells greeted him. Stale cigarettes, a glade air freshener and musk attacked his senses. He hadn´t had the foresight to clean his apartment before his farm retreat. In the ashtray were two half smoked cigarettes. One was a standard tobacco cigarette and the other a hand rolled marijuana cigarette. His first impulse was to throw them away. But something told him not to. That something told him that he paid money for those things and one does not throw money away. If he wasn´t going to consume them, at least a friend could, he thought. Of course he was kidding himself because he had no friends.

He put the ash tray under the sink and turned the TV on. At the farm, he would have already been sleeping by now. After flipping through the channels he realized how bad TV was. He hadn´t noticed before because he was high. Even commercials seemed to reveal  deep secrets of the universe while high. He told himself he should go to bed but again, something convinced him he was not even tired. That something told him to light the marijuana cigarette. It would at least make this unbearable television more palatable.

He gave in and smoked the joint down until it burned his fingers. Then he lit the cigarette and waited for that familiar feeling. As the cigarette burned down to the filter he realized he felt no different. There was no altered feeling, no euphoria, no giddiness. Nothing. The feeling of nothing actually made him feel worse. Why did he break his drug fast if he weren´t going to feel high? Since he had already started the engine, he was going to have to at least “go deep” as he liked to call getting high.

He got in his car and drove to the pickup spot. He got his usual little plastic baggies and barely drove away before pulling over and consuming the contents. He was desperate. He could not get the drugs into him fast enough. He used more than the normal dose and immediately nodded off. As he rolled in and out of consciousness thoughts of the farm passed through his head. As he did chores in his mind his physical body, planted in the front seat of his car, went through some of the motions.

He would come to, see where he was, cry a little and nod off again. This went on for a few hours when his dealer knocked on the window. He rather impolitely told him to take his party elsewhere. Rudy obliged. He was so out of it in his mind he was starting the tractor and not his car. He told his dealer that lunch time was over and that he´d get back to work. The dealer, perplexed, told him to go wherever he wanted, just to get out of there.

Rudy made his way towards his apartment but missed the exit. He kept driving. He came to and found himself on the highway. When he was not driving slowly on the highway, he was cleaning pig troughs or spreading fresh straw. He drove until he found himself back at his uncle´s farm. He opened the car door, stumbled a few steps, fell down on his face and passed out.

In the morning, Rudy´s uncle walked outside and on his way to the barn saw Rudy´s car. A smile came to his face. As he walked to the car his smiled vanished in an instant when he saw his nephew face down in thick mud. He ran to the boy´s body. He tried to wake him. There was no pulse. He was not breathing. He cried for help despite the fact he was the only soul for miles.

Rudy´s uncle called an ambulance. Rudy was pronounced dead on the spot. Only an autopsy would reveal if it was the drugs that killed him or if he was asphyxiated in the mud. Rudy´s uncle could not shake the chills from the irony if it were the latter. The farm offered salvation to Rudy but in the end might have been his demise.

El Gringo pt. 6

Part One     Part Two

Part Three  Part Four

Part Five

 

Gary asked for an officer who speaks English, which wasn´t all that uncommon to have. The receptionist called for Officer Medina.

Officer Medina came up to the front, greeted Gary warmly and asked him to follow him to his office. After leading him there, he sat him down and offered coffee which Gary was more than eager to except.

After throwing back the bitter black liquid and feeling a slight buzz of energy, Gary told his story, again, what he remembered. Officer Medina just shook his head in a show of disappointment. Then, his eyes opened wide expressing surprise. He threw his finger in the air in a Eureka like moment.

“Oh, Gary. I think I know why you are alive today. Let me make a call” Officer Medina furiously dialed a number on his touch tone phone. He was wildly gesticulating and speaking Spanish at 100 miles per hour.

He hung up the phone. “I was right! I know why you are alive today. The jungle saved you my friend”

“How so?” Gary asked.

“I just confirmed that two people were found torn to shreds, probably by a jaguar and it is around where you say this happened. I will send a crew to check it out. Wanna ride along?”

Gary felt uneasy but he thought, with all the help he had received, maybe this would help with the investigation. “Uh, ok” he obliged.

Gary got into a World War II era jeep and was off with Officer Medina and his crew. Gary could not have known this as his memory was so spotty, but they were on the same road that lead him to his captivity and ultimate escape. They started down a jungle road and came to an abandoned car.

“That´s it! That´s the car! I am sure of it” Gary screamed.

“I´ll be damned” remarked Officer Medina. “Let´s take a look around” They all jumped out of the jeep and walked towards the car.

“Take a look in the back seat Gary. Make sure you didn´t drop anything there” Officer Medina said.

Gary was sure he had left nothing but he knew the officer was being nice so he obliged. As he bent forward he felt a prick in his buttocks. Then he felt pressure that smushed him to the bench seat not letting him get up. The crew was speaking in Spanish and the more he tried to understand, the more he couldn´t. He started to feel the same way he did in the bar that night. Maintaining consciousness became labor some.

As the tunnels he was looking through became more black he heard something in Spanish that he could make out.

“Gringo guts gonna get us paid” then he heard laughter. Then he heard nothing.

 

 

El Gringo pt. 5

Part One 

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four 

“Hello….Ola” Gary stammered.

“Deus mio! Un gringo?” the old man responded.

“Si, un gringo” Gary answered.

“What da hell you doing here?” the old man asked.

“Chico led me here” Gary answered.

“Who da hell is Chico?” the old man asked and pumped the shot gun. The sound of the cartridge being chambered dropped Gary to his knees.

“I´m sorry, I gave your dog a name… Chico. I followed him here” Gary said, on his knees with his hands reaching for the sky. “I escaped something terrible. I mean no harm, I need help”

“Oh. You can get up” the old man lowered the shot gun. “I´m sorry about this” he said nodding towards the gun. “Around here, you can´t be too careful. A lot of crazy people”

Gary stood up and offered his hand. “My name is Gary”

“My name is Guillermo, nice to meet you. Come inside. Do you think they followed you?” the old man asked.

“I am pretty sure, no” Gary said feeling hope for the first time.

Once inside Gary told Guillermo everything he could remember. Guillermo explained how he was able to speak English. He had lived for twenty years in New York saving his money to one day go back to his native country and buy a piece of land in the bush and live off the grid.

“I am pretty sure they wanted your guts, but why they left you there, I don´t know” Guillermo said. “It´s pretty common around here. Don´t take it personally either. They do this to locals too. Gringo guts no more valuable than local guts. They saw an opportunity”

“When it light again, we get my truck. I take you to town. Nobody bother you here” Guillermo continued.

Gary thanked him profusely. Gary slept on what might be described as a couch in what might be described as the living room. Chico slept on the floor beside him and did not stir until sunrise.

When day broke, Gary, Guillermo and Chico hiked a few kilometers to where Guillermo kept his truck. It was well camouflaged in a makeshift garage made of cut bush. It was an engineering feat, Gary thought to himself.

When they made it to town, Gary thought it best to go straight to the police to report what had happened. They stopped off at an ATM first. Even though his wallet was gone, they didn´t find his emergency fund ATM card tucked in his underwear. Gary withdrew the equivalent of around $100 USD which was a handsome sum for a person of humble means in these parts. Guillermo refused. “You just come visit me at least once before I die. That payment enough”

They stopped in front of the police department. They said their good byes and the pickup was off, kicking up dust from the dirty cobble stone street.

Part Six

El Gringo pt. 4

Part One

Part Two

Part Three 

After what felt like hours, but in reality was more like twenty minutes, Gary was aroused by the sound of movement in the bush. It sounded frantic and without direction. It was coming toward his direction and getting louder by the moment. It took all he had not to cry out. He sat up with his knees tucked into his chest. Tears were flowing down his face. As the movement crept ever closer Gary decided he would succumb to whatever fate had in store for him. He didn´t have it in him to fight.

The rustling now was right outside of the tree that was hosting him. The braches started to move. He let out a childish weep and with that an animal burst through the lower bows of the tree. Gary closed his eyes and waited for death.

While Gary braced himself for excruciating pain he felt something wet and cold on his face. He opened his eyes. It was nothing more than a mangy dog sniffing him all over. He couldn´t hold it in. He started to cry. As the dog sniffed him over he embraced the wiry haired creature. Though it looked like a feral dog, it was quite domestic in the way it interacted with Gary. Gary pat the top of the dog´s head and the dog responded in kind. The dog rolled over and presented its belly to Gary. Gary pet the dog’s belly, tears flowing.

This renewed Gary’s spirits. He did not even think of the danger the dog offered, making even more sounds and in turn making it easier for his foes to track him. He decided to set out again with the dog in tow. He decided to call the dog Chico, which the dog seemed to immediately respond to.

Gary walked and the dog followed. The dog suddenly stopped and stared into the distant for a few moments.

“What´s wrong Chico?” Gary whispered.

The dog came to and started walking at a brisk pace. It was clear that he wanted to take the lead. Gary was all out of options so he decided to follow. The dog was sniffing furiously. It was clear he had a chosen path. After about a kilometer or so they came to a clearing in the bush. There was a rusty wire fence that was practically falling over in places. Chico was beside himself. He was jumping excitedly nuzzling Gary with each jump. Even in the dark it was clear that there was a little shack in the middle of the clearing.

Chico lead Gary towards the shack. As they approached, Chico bolted for the door. It was slightly ajar and he was able to open it with his snout and he entered. Once inside he began howling. Gary heard some extra movement in the house then a voice speaking groggy Spanish.

The door flew open and an elderly man was standing there with a shot gun screaming unintelligibly in Spanish. Gary understood when he heard “Who goes there?”

Gary was in a panic. This was either his rescue or his demise. It was a matter of time before the old man saw him, so running was out of the question. He decided to approach slowly with his hands over his head.

Part Five 

El Gringo pt. 3

Part 1

Part 2 

Gary sat just there for a while, alone. He started to feel better physically but emotionally he was falling apart. He was beating himself up for being so stupid. He was ashamed that he drank so much and fear started consume his mood. He heard some rustling in the bush. He wanted to call out the woman´s name but he had forgotten it. He thought to leave the car and look for help but he had no idea as to where to go.

A good amount of time passed and Gary gathered the courage to leave. He scavenged the car looking for anything that might help him find help. As he was sitting in the driver seat he noticed there was blood on his hands. He examined them. There was not a cut to be found. Then he checked his body. Nothing there either. Then he noticed a shimmer coming from the steering wheel. That was the source of the blood. There was thick coagulating blood all over it. This freaked Gary out. He jumped from the seat. He took a few moments to gather himself. He walked around the car to the passenger side. In the glove box he found a flash light that was so dim it was hardly usable. There was also a pair of pliers, a nail cutter and to his great joy, a map. He checked the rest of the car but found nothing useful.

Gary set out down the road that had brought the car to its current location. He quickly realized the folly that he was making. If the people were to come back to the car, surely they would use this road. He decided to cut through the jungle. The bush was absolutely alive with noises. Gary was shaking. The dim flashlight barely lit the area around his feet. He had to fight the urge to lay down and curl up into a little ball and cry.

He walked for about ten minutes when he thought he heard footsteps. He froze in his tracks. He felt paralyzed. It may have been his imagination because after a few interminable minutes he heard no further sign of someone or something walking around. He made up his mind to enter into the bush until he found some kind of hiding place where he could wait out the night and continue his trek with some daylight.

After some time he came to a large tree that was overgrown with vines. It provided almost a teepee like structure. He gathered up the nerved to look inside. The prospect of what was waiting for him on the other side was almost as scary as the prospect of being found by an enemy who he had no clue was.

He peeked his head inside and shone the dim light around. To his relief, there was no sign of life. Gary went inside and succumbed to the urge to lay down and curl up into a little ball and cry.

Part 4

El Gringo pt. 2

Please read the first installment here. 

“I told you I was not ok!” Gary slurred.

“You´re fine. You just felt a little sick in there. You´ll feel better soon. Maybe you should come to my place and relax” she suggested.

Gary was not sure about the idea. It was not that he felt any imminent danger, but he did not want to suffer the embarrassment of getting sick again in her home.

“Maybe I shouldn´t” he said.

“Why not?” she asked.

“I don´t want to make a mess in your house” he answered.

“Don´t worry. You´re fine anyway. Let´s go” she said.

He felt very dizzy as he got up. His legs felt weak. He knew he was going to throw up again and it was only a matter of time before he did.

The woman hailed a cab. She started speaking Spanish rapidly to the driver and her demeanor changed. She was more forceful, almost aggressive with the driver. The driver nodded at the instructions and off they went.

She turned to him and her demeanor went back to the soft, sweet version she used in the bar. “How you feeling? Better now?”

Gary tried to speak but decided against it. It was all he could do as to not throw up again. The waves of nausea passed over him. When the car slowed up to stop signs, Gary kept going forward, at least in his head. The car drove for at least twenty minutes before Gary realized that they were in the car for an inordinate amount of time. He was too busy just trying to keep it together before to notice. He also noticed that they were no longer in an urban area.

Buildings became more spread out and there was noticeably more green. Gary was not in a state of mind to really take too much notice or make anything out of this. The woman whose lap he was using as a pillow lit a cigarette. The waif of smoke did not calm Gary´s churning stomach.

He mustered enough energy to mutter the question “You smoke?”

“Only when I drink, dear” she answered.

Very out of character Gary said “That´s gross”

“I know dear”, she said as they went along.

“Where are we going?” Gary asked.

The woman was noticeably irritable. “My house. I already told you”

“You live far” he said childishly, slipping in and out of consciousness.

“You´re drunk. We´ve barely been driving at all” she said. She then blurted some rapid fire instructions to the cab driver in Spanish. The cab just kept on going. Gary completely passed out.

When Gary came to he was in the back of the car, stopped and it was very dark. He was alone. He could tell he was away from civilization because of the sounds of insects in surround sound all around him. His head was pounding. He had an awful taste in his mouth. Some people keep condoms in their wallets, he always kept an aspirin. He reached for his wallet but it was gone.

Part 3 

El Gringo pt. 1

*Note from the author. This will be a six part series. Please, give it a chance. It really pays off. Thank you.

Since he was young, Gary had always felt the need to leave his hometown of Shelding, PA. He never felt that he fit in. The problem was that he never felt he fit in anywhere he went. He would find reasons to leave and move away in constant search of home. He spent a beautiful summer in Chile backpacking around from hostel to hostel. He thought to himself he could drop anchor for at least a year without too many complaints. He decided he would rent a small apartment in Santiago and teach English for a living.

One night while sitting at a bar he caught the eyes of a beautiful woman. Her eyes stayed fixed on his gaze and a small smile came to her lips. Gary is very shy with women, especially one as beautiful as this one but her smile seemed so inviting. It put him at ease. He thought of a way he could approach her. “I´ll offer her a drink” he decided. “I see it in the movies all the time” He reached into his pocket to verify how much cash he had on him and noticed it was all gone.

He panicked. He knew he left the house with enough cash to get him through the night. His mind raced. Where could it have gone? Did it fall out of his pocket when he bought that street barbeque? Did someone pick pocket him? To make matters worse, the woman started to approach him. What was he to do now? He could not offer her a drink. Without that card up his sleeve, he had no idea how to engage this beautiful woman. After what seemed like an eternity of avoiding her eyes as she glided across the dank bar she arrived. In perfect English and with little accent she asked “Can I buy you a drink?”

Gary was taken aback. He momentarily locked eyes with the woman and was rendered speechless. He knew he had to say something.

“Uh, sure” he mustered. “Yeah, please” he added, worried his initial response was not worthy.

A few moments went by with Gary just staring at the woman. “Well, what will you have?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah” Gary fumbled “A beer. I like beer.” These words echoed through his head. “I like beer? I´m so stupid” he thought to himself.

“I like beer too” the woman said. “Dos cervezas, por favor” she called to the barman.

“Si, senhorita” the barman called back.

Gary waited in awkward silence as the bar man walked back to the cooler to retrieve their order.

“So, what are you doing here?” the woman asked Gary.

He thought it was odd that she did not ask his name first, but he remembered he was in another country with another culture so he didn´t give it much more thought.

“In this bar?” he asked back.

“No, I mean in Chile. I can see you are not from here. You work for a multinational company?” she asked.

“Oh, because I am in this bar… because I wanted to have a beer or two…. Not too many though. I don´t drink that much” Gary was getting the cold sweats. Why did he just say that? He had no control of his mouth. The woman giggled. She was amused by Gary´s social awkwardness.

“I´m sorry” Gary said. “I´m a little nervous”

“Nervous? Why? I won´t hurt you” the woman said in a seductive way with her head slightly tilted forward as to look up and she exaggerated the movement of her lips on the word “you”.

Gary swallowed hard. He thought a little laugh would break up the awkwardness but it came out a little creepy. Then he blurted “I teach English. That´s what I am doing here”

“Oh, really? That´s nice. I can use a little help with my English” the woman said.

“Not really” Gary said. “You´re English is really good. Trust me” If Gary could, he would punch himself in the stomach at this point. He recognized that she was flirting with him but was clueless as to how to flirt back.

“Well, thank you” she said.

They just sat there awkwardly looking at each other when Gary blurted out, “Have you ever walked on the beach at night?” Really, he thought to himself? Any other good questions for her, like, have you even drunk coffee? Do you brush your teeth on a daily basis?

She was very kind and very forgiving of Gary´s lack of ability to communicate well with her. “Why, yes. It calms me” she answered, tilting her head to the side and whipping it back to the other side to take a sip from her drink.

“Yeah, me too” Gary said.

“Maybe after these drinks we could take a walk on the beach” the woman suggested.

Gary fumbled with the words “Uh, that would be great” he said before his eyes dove down to the floor. Her gaze felt like it had a force field around it. If he tried to look into it, his own gaze was only forced away.

He finally came up with a good idea. It was to ask little, simple questions about her day and just let her talk. He would nod when he thought he should. It was working. She was talking away and he was loosening up with each cold drink that he nervously poured down his throat.

A few hours and many drinks later, Gary found himself drunk. He went beyond socially lubricated and went right into slippery reality. The woman kept telling him he was fine despite the fact that his vision was blurred and his hearing was off. He felt as though he was in a packed club and not in the busy, yet quite neighborhood bar.

Gary suggested ordering a bottle of water but the woman insisted on another round of drinks. When Gary put the glass to his mouth he projectile vomited as if his body was saying “no mas”.

The woman took Gary by the hand and led him outside. They found a bus stop bench and sat down.

Part 2 Click here

The Swimming Hole

 

Terry was an eccentric man. He inherited a very large estate when his grandfather died. It was a sprawling piece of land with a main house, a beautiful mansion that was a sixties take on modernism and a garage with a two bedroom apartment above it. He made the apartment his home while letting nature retake the mansion. He only entered it to get tools from the basement. The mansion always made him feel uneasy. When he did go in, he always felt he could not get out fast enough.

His grandfather was a self made man. A Greek immigrant, he went from cleaning the floors of restaurants to building a restaurant supply empire. His name was on the donor list of every major building back in town. The mansion was the location of the most extravagant parties that the local society enjoyed for two decades. His grandfather fell ill and the parties stopped. Then the guests stopped. When people wanted to feel alive, they came from all around to drink and dance until the early hours of the morning. When he was sick, nobody wanted to go and be reminded of their own frailties.

It took over two more decades for the illness to finally claim Terry´s grandfather. The estate fell into disrepair. Terry didn´t mind. When he got the news that he had inherited the estate, the timing was perfect. He was being evicted from yet another flop house for his strange behavior and not to mention, heavy drinking.

Terry didn´t work. He didn´t have too. Along with the estate he inherited a few bonds. These mere pieces of paper were worth more than a few million dollars. He cashed them in and with the help of an advisor, invested them in a way where the principle was never touched and he could live off the interest.

To keep himself busy, Terry would come up with projects around the estate. Some that made sense and some that didn´t. An example of the former was a vegetable garden which was quite productive considering Terry´s agricultural education came from a few borrowed library books. An example of the latter would be when he tried to build a mirror system on the top of a hill that would send beams of light into outer space trying to make contact with aliens.

With the news of an impending heat wave, Terry got the idea to dig out a swimming pool. There was a back hoe in the garage that he became quite proficient in its use. He surveyed his land and found the perfect spot. It was at the foot of the hill where his alien communication system stood in decay.

Terry marked out a twenty food by eight foot rectangle and started digging. For more than three days, a few hours a day, his hole in the ground started to take the shape of a proper swimming pool. At the deep end he got to almost six feet deep while maintaining a somewhat perfect rectangle shape. On the fourth day as he started digging out the deep end, he noticed the earth was getting a little muddy. He felt it odd as it hadn´t rained in weeks. The more he dug, the muddier the earth. He got to a point where water started to bubble up. He dug a little further and more water started seeping up. It started making digging difficult and now Terry was getting frustrated. If he struck water, how was he ever going to finish the pool with cement as he planned.

Terry decided to call it a day. He put the back hoe back in the garage cursing as he removed mud from the shovel. The cursing grew harsher with every sip of rye he took, thinking the rye would calm him down a little.

He woke up the next day, feeling a little rough, with an empty liter of rye on his bed stand. He decided to walk over to the pool. To his surprise, it was completely full of water. At first, Terry cursed his fate. Then he thought to himself, he was not going to receive guests so who cares how rough the pool is. It is a swimming hole now. And he would not have to fill it. He never even took into consideration the plumbing aspect of this job so this was a blessing in disguise.

It was unusually hot so Terry got down to his underwear and decided to test the water. The first thing he noticed was that the water was cool to the touch but absolutely refreshing in a way he had never felt before. The next thing he noticed was that his hangover was completely gone. In fact, he had not been without a hangover in so long that the feeling was foreign to him. He lived his life in a constant cycle of being hung over or drunk.

Terry suffered from a terrible skin rash that when it flared up, it oozed puss and blood. He wanted to be careful not to get it wet as water sometimes led to an outbreak. Due to the viscosity of the mud below his feet, he slipped and was submerged to his neck. He sprang back up and immediately examined his should to see how the rash would react to the water. To his surprise, there was no reaction. Terry felt relieved. He sat down waist deep in the water and felt the cool refreshing water on his legs. He looked back to his shoulder to make sure the rash was not getting wet. To his surprise, the rash was completely gone.

Terry jumped up and cried “What the…..?”

Terry ran back to his house not even caring that he was tracking mud foot prints all over the floor as he made his way to the bathroom, the only room with a mirror. He confirmed what he had seen. The rash was completely gone.

This was cause for celebration so Terry went to town and bought a more sophisticated drink than his usual rye. It was gone in no time and there was little time before the liquor store closed. He set off for town once again. To avoid another DUI he took his bike. Night was falling fast.

Terry was on the dirt road leading back to his house taking nips along the way. He could have sworn he heard music in the near distance but that would have been impossible. He hadn´t a neighbor for miles around him in any direction. He was feeling pretty good and he knew that when he felt pretty good, his mind had a tendency to play tricks on him. As he approached his home, the music grew louder. It sounded like jazz. He heard the murmur of a crowd. He took another nip and shrugged it off. It would not have been the strangest aural hallucination he has had in the near past.

As he came to the hill that led down to part of the property where the structures stood, Terry froze dead in his tracks. The mansion was completely lit up. There were people going in and out the front door smoking cigarettes, with drinks in their hands. The men wearing thin ties and neat suits. The women wore skimpy dresses with collars and ironed straight hair. There was laughing and dancing.

To his ultimate shock, through the huge glass window of the great room he saw none other than his grandfather with a martini glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He was entertaining two beautiful young ladies who were laughing hysterically at every utterance he made. Terry was paralyzed. Thoughts were going round and round in his head but not one would stop long enough for him to focus on it.

His gaze wandered over to the makeshift swimming pool. It was gushing water. It was bubbling from the point where he had first seen the water with the force of a broken water main. He followed the small stream that came out of the shallow end with his eyes. It made its ways right up to the house. It seemed to touch the walls and run all the way to the other side of the house and ran off at the far end.

Terry turned his bike around and started peddling furiously for town. He didn’t make it too far. His front tire hit a rock and it sent him flying over the handle bars. He tried to brace himself as he fell but a fallen tree branch had gotten between his head and the ground. Terry was out cold. He slightly came to, dragged himself towards the bushes and laid down. He mustered all his available strength to bring the bottle to his lips. The whole night Terry slipped in and out of consciousness. A few times when he was awake he heard cars roll by with big band music playing and people hanging out the windows letting the world know they were at that moment having the time of their lives.

At sunrise, Terry came to. He felt awful. His head was pounding. His mouth felt as though he had been chewing sand the night before. He vomited where he laid a few times. He then remembered the pool. He thought that it could make him feel better again. He also remembered the scene from the night before so he was a little anxious to return to that part of the property as he had no idea what was in store from him. With the strength of an invalid, and the movements of one, Terry made his was back home. He left his bicycle lay. He didn´t have the strength to roll it back.

When he got to the apex of the hill that over looked the house he let out an audible gasp. The mansion was back in its dilapidated state. There was no sign of a grand ball. There was no sign that merriment and mirth had transpired there for years, decades even. Then his gaze went over to the pool.

The crooked rectangle, not much more than two feet deep at one end and four feet at the deep end was completely dry.