Fear of High

 

“I’m exhausted” Adie said aloud, though to herself, as she poured vodka into a glass. She had just put her baby, Belle, to bed after much fussing. As she put the bottle down, she reached for a half smoked joint. She went right to the kitchen window and smoked what was left.

The alcohol and marijuana always offered the same one-two punch. The booze numbed her while the weed sunk her into a pit of guilt and memories, deep inside her mind. She sat down on the couch with a familiar feeling of satisfactory intoxication and echoing regret.

“Why am I here again?” she pondered. The feeling was compounded by knowing she told herself she would “take a break” today, when she woke up with a slight headache from the previous night’s exaggerated indulgence.

These thoughts vanished like a puff of smoke in the wind when she heard a desperate scratching at the front door of her apartment. At first she thought it was a cat. Then she thought, but how? None of the neighbors on her floor even had a cat.

Furthermore, how would a cat get through the front door of the building and past security? After that feat, it would have had to either used the elevator or managed to open two fire doors and climbed the stairs to the fifth floor.

She was petrified with fear. The scratching continued, slightly more frantic now. Belle started crying. Belle only woke if she was sick. Something must be dreadfully wrong. Adie rushed into the baby’s room and immediately locked the door behind her.

She soothed the agitated baby; herself shaking all over. She couldn’t focus on a single thought of the many swirling in her head but they were all colored by terror. “What kind of mother am I?” she thought. “I can’t even protect my daughter, I’m so high”

As Belle calmed down, Adie fought back sobs. She put the baby back down to bed and went to confront the threat.

“If I die tonight protecting Belle” she thought, “At least my life was useful for something. Up to this point I’ve been a worthless loser” Calling for help was completely out of the question when Adie was in this state. Her paranoia of people didn’t even let her answer her phone when she was like this. Hearing footsteps in the communal hall sent her into panic so she knew she had to conquer this on her own.

She fumbled with her purse for the mace and stun-gun she had never used. Everything fell to the floor. Between the panic and the inebriation, her motor skills were compromised.

The scratching reduced but had not ceased. As she walked to the door, she played out many scenarios in her head. None ended well for her. After what felt like a long journey, she made it to the door.

First, she undid the chain, then the bolt. When she went for the lock on the doorknob the scratching picked up in intensity. She threw open the door. A shadowy figure darted for the couch. In the melee she couldn’t make out what it was.

Her eyes focused. There sitting on the back of the couch was Hope, her very own cat. In her intoxication she had forgotten she had one. That night she promised she’d reel it in and clean herself up. It wasn’t the first time she made that vow and it wasn’t the last.

 

The Hill Climb

Mary came home from a long day of work and immediately changed into her running gear. It was a hard day so she really wanted a challenge. She decided to take the shorter, but very steeply inclined route behind her apartment complex. The route was a dark, 3 KM hill climb that she liked to push herself up, than coast back home with her heart pounding and thighs pumped.

She passed the guard shack at the entrance of her complex and gave a thumbs up which was in turn, returned. She rounded the perimeter wall and entered into the darkness which was the welcome mat of her challenging route. She passed a few houses and waved to the people on the porches.

There was one small obstacle, an outdoor bar she hated passing due to the drunken hoots and hollers she received as she went by. As she climbed the first incline, the Christmas lights strung on rusty poles came into view. She had already switched sides of the street to give a wider berth. She wished she could momentarily become invisible.

As she braced herself for being in full view of the bar and within earshot of the drunken grossness, she was relieved to see only two patrons at a rickety, makeshift table and the barman. She even briefly fantasized they hadn’t seen her at all.

That fantasy was shattered when she heard “Damn, dinner is fast tonight!” followed by, “Why don’t you get over here and meet the man of your dreams and sit on his face?”

Though she was skeeved out, she had heard worse. She blew by the pickled trio and forgot about them. About ten minutes later, on the second steepest incline, she heard foot steps behind her. They were far, but apparently close enough to be audible. She was worried that she was worried. Although rare, she has seen other runners on this route but something was making the hairs on her arms stand up. Her instincts were telling her something.

Mary tried to run faster but didn’t have it in the gas tank. Her lungs were burning. She had been climbing for most of the run. The plodding footsteps behind her were getting closer. She looked back and saw nothing but stumbled when she looked forward again. Fear and fatigue were making her clumsy.

Wild thoughts made the tips of her fingers tremble. Her thighs started to weaken. She starting giving into the idea that she was going to be raped, murdered and thrown into the sugar cane only to be found after the harvest.

Her heart froze over when she heard a “Hey” followed by quickening footsteps. She looked around for a weapon but found none. She thought of running into the cane but it was too thick to get far and besides, the leaves hanging from the stalks would cut her to shreds.

She resolved to be a difficult victim. She imagined that when the news spoke of her attacker, they would mention how mauled he had been by his victim. She stopped dead in her tracks and faced the approaching footsteps.

As the owner of the footsteps approached it was made apparent it was one of the patrons from the bar. She recognized him immediately as the one who called her “dinner”. His tee-shirt was drenched in sweat and his face was tomato red.

“Hey” he called again.

“What do you want?” Mary shrieked.

“Just wait” he called back, huffing and puffing.

“I’ll wait” she thought “and claw your fucking eyes out and bite your balls off”

As he came closer Mary saw he had a wild look in his eyes. He was breathing so heavy; Mary thought he might throw up. At least she had that going for her.

“Ma’am” huff, huff, huff, “You dropped your license in front of the bar”

“What?” Mary shrieked with her shaking hands making a pathetic attempt at a defensive guard.

“Shit, I ain’t run that far since high school, I might puke!” The man said “I saw your license fall from your shorts. I done lost mine once; it was a pain in the dick to replace it”

Mary slowly put her hands down. She felt the area around the small of her back, where she usually tucked her license into her compression shorts, it was gone.

“Oh my god, I don’t know what to say” she stammered. “Sorry”

“Huh?” he said, perplexed.

“I mean, thank you! Thank you so much”

“No problem, little lady. I’m gone crawl back to the bar now”

“Here, take a twenty and buy a round for your troubles” Mary offered.

“I couldn’t, wouldn’t and won’t” he refused “And sorry for hasslin’ you when you run by. We’re bored. We don’t get many people going by. We’re just joshing” he might have been blushing but it was impossible to tell, his face was burning hotter than the sun from the run.

“Oh, it’s ok” she said and offered her hand.

As he took it he looked into her eyes and said “You take care on this here hill. The world is full of crazy ass folk”

 

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.

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.

 

Heavy Question, Simple Mind

“Energy drinks! We need to get some energy drinks!” Brad said excitedly.

Jeff paused for a moment soaking in the irony of such and energetic person making such a claim. “You´re too damn hyper as it is, man. Let´s just get a few beers and get out of here”

I want vodka and energy drink. We can get the generic brand. It´s cheap. That with the plastic squeeze bottle of Popov will be cheaper than a twelve pack and get us much more wasted”

Jeff had to admit, he had a point and neither of them had a lot of money on them nor had many prospects for changing that situation.

“Instead of getting drunk tonight, maybe we should do us somethin that´ll make us a little money” Jeff said.

The two looked at each other and started to crack up in the middle of the supermarket.

“Let´s get the damn booze and get the hell out of here” Brad said. “I don´t want to get to the party too late, all the slutty chicks will be with someone already”

Jeff silently agreed and steered them towards the liquor section.

A few moments later the transaction was made and they were on the road mixing a strong communal drink in a discarded McDonald´s cup that Jeff found under his seat.

After taking a deep sip, making a twisted face of horror from the burning sensation in this throat and extending the cup to his good friend since childhood, he pondered aloud “You ever wonder what this is all about? Like why we are here? I´m sure it ain´t to drink cheap vodka and try to make out with girls who are probably worse people than we are”

“Don´t think about it one bit” Brad said honestly.

“Never?” Jeff asked.

“Never. Don´t cross my mind. I think we´s just here to be here. Asking why? Ain´t no point in that” Brad added.

“Ain´t no point in drinking cheap vodka and hooking up with skanky girls neither, now is there?” Jeff said. He took another long deep sip. This time there was no burning. The first sip had already anesthetized  him.

“I guess not” Brad said, getting slightly irritated.

“Fuck it. Let´s put on some music” Jeff offered, noticing the irritation in Brad´s voice.

“That´s more like it! Crank it up!” Brad said, all anger blowing out the window along with the first few puffs of smoke from his freshly lit cigarette.

The party was exceptionally good. Although there weren´t the most attractive women in the world, there were plenty of them and they most certainly weren´t the kind that use good judgment when making decisions.

Brad started sweet talking a woman who could be described as a human sausage for she tried to squeeze much more body than she should have into a younger, thinner woman´s clothes. They started kissing on the couch and Brad suggested they find a place with more privacy. She obliged and they headed upstairs.

They found themselves on the smallest bed in the house. It was the host´s four year old daughter´s room. The question Jeff proposed kept echoing in Brad´s head. What was the point of all this?

As things progressed, she asked if Brad had a condom. Of course he didn´t and she said she didn´t mind. She couldn´t get pregnant anyway. She mentioned something about a botched surgery involving a severe case of HPV.

As the woman started to undo Brad´s pants it was painfully obvious that Brad´s manhood was not as into this fine woman as much as Brad´s cheap vodka soaked brain was.

“What´s the matter hun? Drink too much?” she asked.

Brad was aloof. What was the goddamn point of all this? Jeff ruined his night. He apologized, put the rest of his clothes back on and just left the party. He didn´t even tell Jeff he was leaving.

Three months later Brad was at an AA meeting receiving a chip symbolizing 90 days of not drinking. He just shared how frustrated he was by his day at his work training program but that he was grateful that he was able to resist the urge to go to the liquor store and continue on his new path. He still hadn´t talked to Jeff since that night he proposed that heavy question. Brad was no closer to having an answer either but he felt that maybe, just maybe if he lowered his head and pushed through life, a hint would come his way.

 

Liquid Werewolf

 

For Rick, reality seemed as slippery as a bar of soap in a prison shower. It didn´t help that Rick was altering his consciousness on a daily basis. He would celebrate good occurrences by “going deep”, as he put it. He would escape the bad movements by “tuning out”, as he put it. But this had to change when he met Pamela. He was in love with her and Pamela did not approve of such behavior. He loved the feeling she gave him more than that of the substances, at least for now. Of course that feeling will fade and the sudden urgent hit of the substances will call him back. Not to mention the high will be increased by his abstinence making it harder to say no. But for now he is towing the line.

On a rainy Sunday afternoon while lying in bed after a hardy fast food lunch that made them sleepy, Pamela hit Rick with some shocking news.

“Rick, what do you think about kids?” she asked.

“They are great. Far from me” he answered. His words felt like a well placed punch in Pamela´s stomach.  “Why?” he asked.

“No reason” she said, trying to hide her real emotions.

Over the course of the next few months, Pamela did everything she could to hide her ever growing belly from Rick. Besides what he said on that rainy afternoon when she tried to tell him the news, deep down she knew he´d be a lousy father. He was 35 years old and living in a room in an old woman´s house. Their deal was, he´d keep the grass cut and the rent would be cheap.  The grass was knee high.

Pamela´s belly got to the point that no garment would hide it. She was nervous. She had a strange attachment to Rick even though she knew she could do much better. In her heart she knew she had to do better for herself and her unborn child. She wanted to have a dialog with Rick and she thought that maybe a few beers would loosen him up so she picked up a 12 pack on her way to Rick´s house.

When she arrived she offered him a beer. A wave of fear washed through Rick´s stomach. It was as if a self aware werewolf saw the first sliver of a full moon.

“Oh, I shouldn´t dear, I just took a Tylenol and that´s not good for the liver” he said, proud of his own quick thinking.

“Just one, hun. I´ll have one with you” she insisted.

“Just one” he said.

That first beer went down his throat as if it were honey descending a silk lined golden tube. It tasted so good. The slight alteration in mood felt so familiar. The air smelled better. The future seemed to not matter yet so much brighter at the same time. If one beer made him feel this way, another would make him feel that much better.

“Pass me another on, hun, that hit the spot” he said. He was careful to form the words perfectly. He did not want his tongue to defy him. He knew that it was already becoming a little rebellious.

“Sure” she said as she past him another.

He drank it down even more greedily than the first. The bright warm feeling starting to turn a little dark with this beer. The future seemed to matter even a little less, though the brightness was gone. The switch was thrown.

“We really need to talk” Pamela said not knowing that the chemistry of Rick´s brain was changing like a hot summer afternoon with a storm rolling in.

“Sure, babe, pass another beer” he said.

“Ok, but take it easy, you don´t want to get drunk, do you?” she said jokingly.

He didn´t pick up on the playfulness in her words and said “What is it to you if I get drunk. We are together for a few months and you already want to control me?” he felt an old anger that has been with him for years. “I want a cigarette”.

“You smoke?” Pamela asked with a shocked expression on her face.

“Sometimes” he said as he reached passed her and pulled the third beer from the box.

“I didn´t know that” she said.

“Yeah? Well, there are a lot of things you don´t know about me” he said with a face that was not hiding the sourness he felt in his soul. He chugged the beer without even taking a breath. He reached for the fourth.

“What´s going on here?” Pamela asked.

“You told me to” he answered. This really confused Pamela.

“I have to go” Pamela gathered her things and went for the box of beer when a hand grabbed her wrist and pulled it away.

“You can leave that” Rick said.

“Ok” she said with tears in her eyes.

That night Rick went on a bender that ended three days later. When he finally passed out in a burned out house on a pissed stained mattress in the seedy part of town, Pamela had already crossed the country to lay her head on the silk pillow in the luxurious guest room of her sister´s home.