Black snowflakes fell that morning, black for the
dreaded few. For the dreaded few, the
snowflakes, soft, gentle, white and pure to the normal, sweet messengers of joy
to nearly all, came laced with the deadliest poisons producing agonizing pain,
overwhelming fear, crippling confusion and unstoppable misery. No pleasant sensations of wonderment, no
holiday cheer, no soft memories, no peaceful contentment at being alive. Only the torments of eternity awaited our
dreaded few. For them, the snowflakes blighted
like locusts and raced full speed towards violent crashes. The snowflakes impersonated monsters and all
the demons of Hell. The snowflakes
confused. The snowflakes horrified. The snowflakes screamed. The snowflakes murdered. For the dreaded few, the snowflakes could
only be evil, not to be understood, not to be withstood. To happy homes and happier minds dreaming
sweetly of a white Christmas drifted the pure, clean, harmless snow, snow as
harmless as a tiny, wet kiss, snow that inspired the imagination to timeless,
long remembered tales. To unhappy homes
came the black snow, the dark snow, the deadly snow. Towards a hospital named “St. Jude’s Mental
Health Center” drifted the black, the dark, the deadly, the haunted snow, the
snow that brought nightmares in the day and worse terrors at night. These snowflakes floated around two human
shapes, one large, one smaller, one older, one younger, walking towards the
hospital’s emergency room automatic double doors. Their footfalls triggered the mechanism and
they entered. The door’s suction yanked
a small hurricane of black snowflakes into the room, hanging and dancing then
evaporating, disappearing with devilish grins, flooding the room, spreading
their poison, making the air toxic. One
of the dreaded few had come home; all the disease ridden black snowflakes
rushed in with him.
Chapter 1
Chris
December 15:
Upon hearing the unique,
“shushing” sound of the opening double doors, Sandra Stewart, clinic intake
nurse on a long 12 AM to 12 PM graveyard shift, averted her eyes from the
ironic problem of “a state of confusion” that was 13 down in her crossword puzzle
and looked up to see a police officer she knew from experience, James Ramirez,
escorting…no, essentially hauling, a slim, almost skinny young man of no more
than 20 towards her desk. The first
three hours of her shift had been uneventful, mostly spent doing paperwork with
the occasional crossword puzzle break.
The clinic tended to see more intakes around Christmas time, though the
first half of that December had been relatively light. From experience, Nurse Stewart knew they
would soon come. They always did. Now, just after 3 AM, the first patient of
her shift had arrived, shivering, lethargic, obviously dazed; on quick
instinct, she attributed it more to a drunken or stoned stupor than a mentally
ill episode. He seemed out of it but not
an agitated kind of out of it. Reading
new patients could be a difficult affair; most were terrified or angry or sad
or wore that blank, empty mask scarier than any emotional expression. A look of
deadness, not of inhumanity but of non-humanity. Not evil, just empty, devoid of being. Appearances aside and without fail, Nurse
Stewart always felt compassion for even the strangest appearances and oddest
body movements that came her way because, from her training, she knew what plagued
incoming patients represented as close to genocide as human beings experienced
without dying: Progressive, mental
deterioration like malignant cancers that eat you up inside without the decency
to end your suffering. The fear of a
death worse than the heart stopping.
Death in life. Ignorance and
insensitivity stopped at those sliding doors because it had to. That’s not how she and the committed
professionals there worked.
I’m healthy. These poor people are suffering horribly, she frequently, truthfully, said to herself, never
letting herself forget it. In this building, my needs don’t count. Their needs do. That was the drill. That was how it worked. As a public servant, she chose pure
selflessness. That place, those
patients, made you that way.
“Hey, James!” she said,
enthusiastically. “Nice seeing you. What’s the story with our young man,
here?”
“Hey, Sandra,” he replied, knowing that she
hated people calling her “Sandy.”
“Possible drug overdose and suicide attempt. I picked him up on a barren stretch of road
passed out with benzodiazepines spilled all over the car. I’m pretty sure he’s drunk, too, but his
heart rate appears steady.”
“What kind of benzos?”
she asked hurriedly.
“Ativan. 2 mgs three times a day. That’s what the prescription bottle read.”
“Let’s
go,” she said. They quickly moved the
staggering young man to the drug overdose unit.
“Has he spoken since you picked him up?”
“No,” the officer
replied. “Just seems to be on the edge
of consciousness, going in and out. I
tried asking him some questions but no response.”
“Okay. We’ll try a gastric lavage just to make
sure.” The process wasn’t used as often
recently but she chose safety over sorry.
She asked Officer Ramirez to hang around until the process concluded and
he agreed.
Once in the poison
control unit, the gastric lavage, aka “stomach pump,” was performed and the
patient, who groaned weakly during the procedure, never quite regaining
conscious competence, was monitored until considered well, eventually rolling
over on his right side on the table with a few nauseated moans. Overseeing the process and eventually
satisfied that any danger had passed, Nurse Stewart let him rest and rejoined
Officer Ramirez outside.
“Thanks for waiting,” she
said. “He’s doing okay. I need the pill bottle, please.” After the officer handed it to her, she
verified the dose. Yep. Ativan, 2 mgs, three times a day.
That’s a lot, she thought.
“Do you have his wallet?”
The officer handed it to
her and the policeman and mental health professional walked back to the front
desk. Thanking him for his efforts, he
returned to his regular patrol and she began to peruse the young man’s
identification.
“Christopher Nowak,” she
said aloud as she checked his driver’s license.
It was the ordinary wallet of an ordinary 18-year old, with the possible
exception being the notification card of his next doctor’s appointment with a
Kenneth McAbee, a local general practitioner.
Nurse Stewart inferred Chris got his benzos from this man, a
non-psychiatrist, making it perfectly possible Chris hadn’t been diagnosed with
any existing conditions, whether they were there or not. Well-meaning GPs often gave out drugs like
benzos to struggling young people.
Benzos were “function pills.”
Just give me something, especially to sleep, so I can function and live
my life. They were dangerously overprescribed
because they were habit forming, not meant to be long term, though they were
often taken that way, and easily misunderstood due to side effects like memory
loss and a hypnotic effect that some GPs weren’t educated to and many patients
didn’t expect. Withdrawals were
agonizing with seizures possible if not phased down properly. On 6 mgs of Ativan a day, young Christopher
Nowak had undoubtedly experienced all those effects, probably without full
comprehension. And 6 mgs a day! What was his problem? Anxiety caused by internal chemical issues or
external pressures or both?
Nurse Stewart pinned an intake checklist to a
clipboard, added a pen and took it back to the poison unit. She woke the dozing and still dazed
Christopher Nowak.
“Hi, Chris. I’m Nurse Stewart,” she said pleasantly. “Do you remember what happened to you?”
“Where am I?” he asked groggily as he sat up.
“You’re
in St. Jude’s Mental Health Clinic,” she answered. “Do you remember what happened to you?”
“Mental
health clinic?” he asked, confusedly.
“What am I doing here? What’s
going on?”
“Did you try to hurt
yourself?” she asked, staying focused on the situation. “Did you take too many benzodiazepines?”
“I don’t want to talk
about it,” he moaned. “I don’t feel
good. I want to sleep. Just let me sleep.”
“I need you fill out a
checklist before I take you on the Unit.
Can you do that for me?”
“Unit? What the fuck is that? I just want to sleep,” he groaned, laying
back down.
“Come on, Chris,” she
said sternly. “Come on. You can’t sleep here. Sit up and fill out this short checklist then
we’ll get a bed for you.”
After a few moments, he
sat up with difficulty, took the clipboard and chicken scratched it as well as
he could. Nurse Stewart took it, helped
him off the table and led him by the arm at a snail’s pace down the hall to the
patient unit, soon reaching an enormous, heavy, thick metal door with a small
window at eye level. As he moaned and
held his stomach, Nurse Stewart looked through the window with squinted
eyes. Seeing no one, she pressed a
dirty, white button on the right wall.
An irritating, electric buzz, no less irritating for the hundreds of
times she’d heard it, sounded loudly in her ears. The door opened and they both entered Unit A
of St. Jude’s Mental Health Center.
The
wing for the most deeply disturbed and symptomatic of the hospital’s patients,
Unit A covered a small area with eight patient rooms separated into two
sections, two rooms on each side, four for male patients and four for
female. A possible suicide attempt fit
into the “danger to himself and others” category so Unit A was where Chris
would begin his mental health stay.
Nurse Stewart took him to one of the men’s rooms, which consisted of two
beds, one occupied by a sleeping patient.
She put Chris in the other bed, where, with both hands on his stomach,
he seemed in a tentative stasis.
“Are
you going to try to hurt yourself after I leave?” she asked.
“No. Go away.
I have to sleep.” He waved her
away with his right hand while still holding his stomach with his left and
rolled over on his left side away from her.
Convinced he wasn’t currently a danger to himself, Nurse Stewart left
the room, closing the door behind her.
She went to Unit A’s tech office, had a brief conversation with the
female tech worker there and left the unit for her waiting room work
station. As she passed through the heavy
metal door, she checked her watch. It
read 3:25 AM.
December 14:
Christopher Nowak, freshman student at the local university, greatly
upset in the moment, masturbated. He
loved masturbating when he wanted to, when in the mood, when seeking
pleasure. Now, he masturbated because he
needed to, even if forced. He needed to
self-medicate pain, to feel good only because he couldn’t tolerate feeling bad. Masturbation as mood changer, masturbation as
dependent activity, masturbation as drug.
Sadness, anxiety and frustration dominated him in that moment because
his anxiety riddled life had been even more riddled than usual that Thursday
morning. His day began gloriously
because he had a girlfriend, his first girlfriend, and he was in love. A poetic soul, he needed love immensely, so
much that he often doubted his masculinity for he needed love with a longing
and intensity usually considered aggressively feminine. Now, finally, for the first time in his life,
love, glorious love, graced his living space and spread flowers on his
doorstep; it made anxiety expendable, so much that felt he didn’t need his
benzodiazepines that morning. Yes, the
benzos worked but it came at a price for they made him feel stoned, tired
and…haunted. The haunting, hypnotic
quality of benzodiazepines which he didn’t comprehend or understand scared him
the most. He didn’t know why…it all just
made him feel tragically lost. Well, it
didn’t matter now. He didn’t need the
drugs anymore! He wanted to feel the
clean, clear exhilaration of being happy like he used to before the drugs muted
his feelings. He’d quit them eventually
so why not now? Yes, he would skip his
morning dose and enter the world with renewed emotion and optimism; even if
stressed, he would cope. He knew he
could do it.
A “suitcase college,” the school Chris attended reserved the main party
night for Thursday with many of the students going home after classes on
Friday. A non-partier in high school,
Chris had settled into a habit of partying every week but only on Thursday
nights. He met his girl, Tracy, while
partying and relished in the joy that he’d see her later that night. Oh, blessed alcohol and the loss of
inhibitions! So glorious and romantic!
His only class of the day included a pretty girl he’d had a crush on
since the semester started. Now that he
had a girlfriend, he wanted to be monogamous but that didn’t mean he couldn’t
pursue beauty, one of his greatest joys, and she had it in abundance. He worshiped beauty and needed to see it,
needed to be around it, needed to ingest it, as much as possible, as much as
could be possible. She would be at the
breakfast hall that morning because he always saw her there at that time. Why not introduce himself today? He was happy!
Everything was perfect! Spread
out into a larger world and be the social giant he knew to be his destiny.
He dressed that morning, grabbed his book bag, weighed down by three
text and notebooks, and prepared to leave for breakfast. On the way out, he looked in passing at the
large mirror above his dresser and checked to make sure the nervous twitch
under his right eye, a pulsing, throbbing, reflexive spasm that had developed
just before leaving home for college, remained under control. One moment, he was smiling and solid; moments
later, the muscle in his eye orbit began contracting so aggressively he
couldn’t look anyone in the face. How
humiliating. He’d couldn’t live down
such things. He just didn’t have the
mental toughness to survive social embarrassment. Never had and probably never would. His twitch subsided when alone and now rested
calm and dormant as he prepared to leave.
As he left the room, he crossed his fingers.
Blow, blah, blow, I’m
fine, I’m good, I’m ready to go, ready to go,
he thought. Mental and physical rituals
had always been a part of his life and he had learned to cope, even to enjoy,
their prevalence and his own oddness.
Poets and writers, creative people, were about as odd as odd could be. Why not him, too? He shut the door but, unable to tear himself
away from his room, re-entered the door combination and stared into the mirror
again. Did he see a slight twinge? Better do it again.
Blow, blah, blow, I’m
fine, I’m good, I’m ready to go, I’m ready to go, he repeated. Duh,
duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, he
added, glancing in the mirror as he turned to leave again. No, he hadn’t done that one right.
DUH, duh, DUH, duh,
DUH, duh, DUH! he thought with alternating emphasis, glancing strongly in the mirror
and aggressively thumping the last DUH
in his mind as he blinked his eyes hard and turned away. That was good. He did it right. Time to go to breakfast.
After arriving at the dining hall, he got his tray of food and his
beverage and approached his original crush, who sat, alone, at her usual table.
“May I sit down?” he asked with confidence.
“Uh, sure,” she responded, taken a little by surprise.
Smiling, he set his tray on the table and plopped down in the seat
opposite her with as much casual bravado as possible, making sure he seemed
completely cool and at ease.
“My name is Chris,” he said.
“I’ve seen you in algebra class.
Boring as hell, isn’t it?”
“Hi. I’m Amber. Yeah,” she replied with a small chuckle. “I’m not really a math person.”
“I’m not, either,” Chris said, smoothly. He felt in control, like he could rule the
world, all the while with a lit cigarette dangling from his bottom lip.
“I’m an artistic guy. I read
poetry and things like that.” Was that effeminate, he wondered? Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. Blah,
blah, blah, he thought compulsively, pushing hard to keep any bad thoughts
and their accompanying anxiety from creeping him. He failed.
Oh, God, it was happening again!
Blah, blah, BLAH! He felt his eye twitching; he quickly looked
down at his tray, making sure he kept smiling, his body now rigid, his butt
glued to the seat, unable to move freely, unwilling even to squirm. He tried to pick up his drink. Impossible.
His neck stiffened as if a steel rod had been thrust up into it. His hand shook as he lifted the glass, but he
couldn’t tilt his head to sip.
Oh God, oh God, oh God, he panicked. Still smiling, the shakiest, phoniest smile
ever to crease his face, he sought an exit strategy, one that could get him out
of there as quickly as possible without making him look like the fool he
was. Putting the glass back on the
table, he moved his upper body down enough to take a sip. His eye now pulsed like a thudding heartbeat. He locked his gaze onto the table just
between her and his tray, smiling and nodding like in control of himself and
the situation.
“Yep, I’m the man,”
was the message he was trying to transmit.
Just get out of there, just get
out of there, was what he thought and felt.
Walking her to class became a dead gambit. Surviving to the next minute seemed the only
reasonable goal.
Amber felt the odd situation and executed her own exit strategy.
“Well, I’ll be going,” she said smoothly with a smile. “See you in class.” She went to the appropriate counter, dumped
the contents of her tray and left the hall.
Rigid as a carved wooden figure, Chris stewed in distress for several
minutes, unable to move, separated from his physical self like an out of body
experience. He couldn’t even shift his
eyes lest someone be looking at him, aware of his discomfort, smiling,
laughing, mocking. He knew he would pass
out if he saw anyone comprehending his trouble.
Finally, five minutes after Amber had left the table, seemingly five
hours to him, he rose slowly like the Tin Man in need of oil. He felt exhausted.
If only they knew what
was going on with me, he thought as he picked up his tray.
I would never live it down. I would never live it down. His energy had run a marathon in that fifteen
minutes. He could barely finish dumping
his tray’s contents. Once accomplished,
not being able to turn his head and forgetting his book bag, he turned his
whole body towards the small, sparse groups of students eating that
morning.
You all saw me. You all know what’s going on. I know it.
In truth, no student had paid any attention to him other than the
ordinary, polite passing glance but, in his mind, he had bombed on Broadway on
opening night. He felt sick to his
stomach as he exited the dining hall.
Class was out. There was no way he could go now. The thought of it reminded him that he’d left
his bookbag in the dining hall, but it may as well have been on another
planet. He’d have to go back later. His head began spinning at the thought of
it. Just short of his dorm building, he
lost his sense of balance and dropped to his knees to avoid passing out,
pressing his head to the concrete.
I can’t believe this
is happening. I can’t believe this is
happening. I can’t believe this is happening.
Several deep breaths followed over the next thirty seconds. The respite calmed him enough to get his
bearings. As he rose unsteadily, a sense
of shame and incompetence flushed him.
Clenching his fists angrily, he perfunctorily made it to his dorm room
and slammed the door behind him.
Grabbing a soda from the room’s tiny refrigerator, he found his
benzodiazepine bottle marked “Ativan, 2 mgs three times a day,” and downed
three of the disgusting little blue pills, cringing at the bitter taste. Collapsing face first on his bed, he barely
noticed the pill bottle and soda as they hit the floor, both spilling their
contents. He slipped into
unconsciousness moments later.
He lifted his head three hours later.
Despite the rest period, a fierce headache followed by fatigue marked
his first sensations, the fatigue so great his arms gave way when he tried to
rise sending him face first back onto the bed.
He had no body, no muscles, no strength.
The fatigue, combined with his headache, irritated him greatly. Harnessing a tiny slice of energy, he rolled
off the bed and thudded onto the thin carpet on his rear end, the sensation of
spilled soda soaking into his jeans.
While there, he collected his benzos and put them back in the
bottle. The short fall jarred him enough
to stand up. Pinching himself, he
resisted the urge to ooze back to the floor.
After stretching his back, he tossed the benzo bottle onto his bed and
accessed the dorm’s tiny refrigerator, secured a caffeinated beverage and
chugged half of it. He waited until he
felt the small kick, wiped his eyes and, his memory freshly flooded with the
frustration and humiliation of his morning, quickly left him both irritated and
agitated. Head down, he began to pace in
a circle around the small room as he chugged the rest of his soda.
What if anyone
saw? I’d never live it down. Never live it down. Never live it down. Shut up!
I’d have to kill myself. Couldn’t
live with it. No, couldn’t live with
it. I don’t think anybody saw. Was that guy looking? No.
Maybe I can stay out of there for a while, let this blow over. Let it blow over. It’ll pass.
My damn bookbag!! I have to go
back. This always happens to me. Always happens to me.
He bit and gnawed at his lower lip with his front teeth.
Get yourself
together. You’re happy. You have to be happy. Tonight, is a happy time. Yes, tonight.
You’ll see Tracy, and all will be well.
Okay. Breathe. Good.
Okay. Yes. Computer, computer, computer.
His
head snapped up.
"Computer, computer,
computer," he said aloud. He knew
where the damn thing was in his tiny dorm room yet still looked around for it
like he’d completely lost his memory. He
just wasn't thinking right. He had to
end his agitation. Closing his eyes, he
got the correct mental picture and gently shook his head in self-contempt. In addition to his other problems, memory
lapses had been plaguing him for the last several months, since he’d started
his benzodiazepines. Simple things,
things he used to remember easily, seemed near to his consciousness but
irretrievable like all the secrets existed but the door became padlocked.
His computer, a
relatively small desktop one, rested on the large desk that made up part of his
dorm room furniture. Since old enough to
figure out how to do it, at least properly, masturbation had been his primary
form of relaxation when highly stressed.
He didn’t drink or smoke, except when he partied once a week, didn’t
exercise and hadn’t taken any prescription pills until recently so pleasuring
himself had become his first, and usually only, method of anxiety relief. He often felt guilty and didn’t know why but
he didn’t stop. He told himself he
could, and would, when the time came; the hard truth, that he lied to himself
about, was that he couldn’t. He often
wondered if he was hurting himself but always shook it off. The orgasm medicated pain and brought
pleasure. Without question, he wasn’t a
pervert. He was just having fun. He certainly wasn’t odder than anyone
else. Highly curious as a child, he had
delved into the mysteries of his parent’s large walk in closet by his early
teen years. He found his Dad’s porn
magazines and videos; perpetually bombarded with unstoppable testosterone, he
drank in the intoxicating images and sounds as often as he could, meaning
whenever his parents were out. He began
to treasure such moments of aloneness, waiting with bated breath and growing
excitement for when he could grab a magazine or video to masturbate to. For a boy developing into a man, it irresistibly
overpowered him. He didn’t stand a
chance.
Like
all moderately well off young people, he’d had his own computer growing up, but
he’d always been too afraid to surf the internet for porn, mostly out of terror
of being caught by his obsessively overprotective mother. Besides, he enjoyed watching his Dad’s videos
on his old VCR still hooked up for the sole purpose of occasionally popping in
a video much more. He enjoyed it more
and felt safer. Unknown to him, his
mother had helplessly tolerated her husband’s porn use and tried actively to
prevent Chris, not knowing he had already indulged in the collection, from
going the same route as her husband into lifelong porn use. Pornography became the top issue underlining
the many differences that eventually became blatant between Chris’s parents,
leading up to their eventual divorce he still hadn’t gotten over.
Once
in college, with his computer and the absolute freedom to use it, he became
entrenched in the seemingly endless world of internet porn, indulging his
existing fantasies while realizing he had several more previously
undiscovered. His personality, a true
romantic at heart, never embraced hardcore porn and never would. He lived in a mental world of creative sexual
fantasy. The act itself rarely turned
him on. The idea of the act, the
imaginative qualities it entailed, excited him more than the reality ever
would. Erotica was his sexual world. He loved softcore imagery such as damsel in
distress bondage scenarios and lesbian foreplay. A black and white thinker by nature, he liked
the idea of opposites; new fantasies involved yin and yang sexual scenarios
like older people having sex with younger people, known as age play, and
interracial sexual situations. He looked
for specific sequences that involved buildup like hugging and kissing. The rest usually shocked and disgusted him
and he avoided watching it. He perused
hardcore porn for softcore activity.
Now
he felt the overwhelming need to feel better anyway he could. Thursday party night and the alcohol
connected with it relaxed him, but he needed something before then. His roommate, a 21- year old Hispanic from
Mexico with a helter skelter academic life, occasionally left on Fridays but
usually on Wednesdays after his classes were done to be gone all weekend,
giving Chris the run of the tiny room until his roomie came back Sunday
nights. Thursday night glowed with a
happy shine and that happiness started now.
Chris crunched his empty soda can, threw it in the garbage, rapidly snapped
the window curtains shut, pulled off his shirt and pants, grabbed some Vaseline
from his dresser drawer and some tissue from the dresser’s top, put them around
his computer, turned it on, sat down in a reclined position, propped his feet
up and waited for the computer to rev to life.
His left hand grasped for the mouse; once found, he furiously left
clicked several times.
Come on…he
thought impatiently. The computer screen
lit up. He pulled down his underwear,
lubed Vaseline on his penis with his right hand and typed in a website with his
left as he became hard. The computer screen went to a dark background with
naked bodies dotted across it. As he masturbated, he jumped from site to
site depending on his mood and what he wanted to see, alternating between
photos and snippets of videos, keeping a running mental commentary of what he
saw with every click of the mouse. He
always chose either lesbian activity, damsel in distress bondage or a
combination of both. He chose the latter
now.
Lesbian, bondage, lesbian
bondage…What’s the name of that website?
Oh yes. Yeah that’s good. Very good.
Okay…bondage. Damsel in
distress? Meh. Don’t like that tape gag. Sloppy; the ends aren’t even smoothed
out. That looks like a very painful tie
there. No, that’s very painful. Oooh!
Awesome OTM gag! Oh, that’s
beautiful. That is a very hot image;
very sexy. She’s furious. Not going
anywhere, sweetie! Let’s see. She has so much shit shoved into her mouth.
Wow. That one…wow, that’s very hot! Oh, yes! That’s kind of nasty and not a good
nasty. Don’t think I like that. God damn
popup screen. No, that’s terrible. Way
too graphic there! That looks very violent and painful. No.
It’s all staged, of course; you know that; none of it is real so I guess
they know the limits. Whoa! How silly.
I bet they all had a good laugh after that shoot was done. What possesses them to do this amazes
me. These videos are all over the
world. I could never put myself out
there like that. Porn stars and serial
killers. They fascinate us like no
others. Another popup. That’s good.
Oh yeah, very good. Oh, that’s
fucking awesome! Click on that, enlarge
it. Good. Very good.
Let’s download that…shit! Shove
your membership. That looks fucking hot,
too. Duos, duos, duos here. Let’s find
that Holy Grail.
He
always looked for the best damsel in distress style bondage sequence he’d ever
seen, either in the professional or amateur ranks, his Holy Grail, but those
were very rare to his snobbish tastes.
It proved elusive this time, so he decided to switch to lesbian
foreplay, transitioning to his favorite sites.
He tried a few different kinks before deciding to come to orgasm to
lesbian age play.
Let’s see...interracial…okay,
that’s okay. No. No.
Not that one. Not that one. No.
That’s okay. Yes, that’s good!
Okay. Let’s get it done here. That’ll work.
That’ll work. Oh, that’s good. Yes. God, that’s an ugly chick. What about…yow, that’s even worse. Another God damn popup! Okay, that one’s good nasty. That’s a nice combo. End on this one? Let’s see…no.
This one? No, that’s not
good. Let’s run this link…download
here. Dead fucking end. This one.
This one. Oh yes. Oh yes, this is the one. Oh, yes!
Ah, ah, ah, ah!
His body thundered in
ejaculation, semen erupting onto his chest, and his mind surged with ecstasy
and contentment as he came down. After a
few relaxing moments, he grabbed several tissues, cleaned himself off, set the
wadded mess aside on the desk and pulled his underwear back up. Freshly energized, he sprang up and stretched
so strongly that he felt lightheaded and had to sit back down until his balance
returned. Ready for the shower, he
pulled an old fresh T-shirt, some knockaround shorts and a pair of fresh boxers
out of his dresser drawer; after setting the fresh boxers on the desk, he put
on the T-shirt and the shorts over the boxers he had been wearing then picked
up the wadded tissues and put them in his pocket. He had a little basket that contained
toiletries like toothpaste and his toothbrush that he took to the shower. Throwing a towel and the fresh boxers over
his shoulder, he prepared to take the short walk to the bathroom when his cell
phone rang. Grabbing it from off his
dresser, he didn't need to wait until the voice at the other end said
anything. He spoke first.
“Hi,
Mom,” he said.
“Hello,
sweetheart!” the female voice answered, joyful, maternal yet also sexual, a
seductive combination of sultry yet motherly.
“How was your class?”
“Fine,”
he replied, lying. “It was fine.” After 22 years of so called wedded bliss, his
beloved parents had divorced. The
separation, finalized a year ago, had taken a brutally hard toll on Chris,
further stoking his natural anxiety and tendency to emotional upset.
“Oh! That’s good,” his mother replied. Her voice sounded desperate for something
cheerful like she had been in jail for six months and was hearing another human
voice for the first time since.
"How are you doing?"
"I’m fine. How are you?" He cringed, knowing what her reply would be.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been very depressed lately.”
“Really?”
he asked, flatly. The band repeatedly
played the same tune, but he always listened.
Even if he didn’t consider it an obligation, he cherished his mother and
would always be there for her, even if it turned his insides to mulch.
“It’s
your father. He's an asshole. Your father is a disgusting man. Do you know that he wanted me to give him a
blow job in the car right after we were married? In the car!
Did you know that he always wanted anal sex? He wouldn’t even look at me, the son of a
bitch. All he ever did was treat me like
a whore. I should never have married
him. I should have married someone like
you. Men are such violent jerks. They don’t understand us women. I’m glad that I raised you to be so
sweet. That’s what women really
want. When you start dating, you’ll
understand that. Women want a man who
will make them feel worthwhile, put them on a pedestal and treat them like a
queen. You know what I mean? Anyway, I’ve been depressed lately. Your father hurt me very badly. You know that, don’t you? I’d understand if you want to go and beat him
up or even kill him. He deserves
it. He just treated me very badly,
Chris...” her voice trailed as she choked up.
He could hear sobbing noises on the other end; he felt like crying,
too. He couldn't help it. His mind stretched over the miles and
embraced her. He listened to her pain
and felt like killing his father many times over, a man he’d never had a beef
with in his life. His Mom collected herself,
audibly sucked snot into her nose and continued.
“Anyway, I’m not sorry I
left him and I’m not sorry I moved away.
I had to get away from him. I
hope you understand that. I wasn’t
leaving you. I was leaving your
father. I need you. As long as you need me, I’ll be okay. I’m a little busy now so the next time we
talk we’ll plan your visit to come see me.
We’ll go out and have fun. You
can even sleep with me in my bed like you used to, if you want. You're my rock. Now I have to go, sweetheart. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? Mommy loves you very much.”
“I love you, too, Mom,”
he said. “Please don’t cry.”
His mother responded
radiantly, as if her mood had risen from the dead. It surprised him.
“It’s okay, honey! It’s okay!
I’ll be okay! You have a great
day and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Chris felt a great weight,
even greater than what he had felt that morning, lash itself to his
shoulders. Tomorrow, it would start all
over again. She would start all over
again.
“Okay, Mom. Bye.”
He waited until she ended the call then pressed the red button on his
cell phone and tossed it on his bed. He
sat down and put his head in his hands, fighting back tears.
That son of a bitch, he thought of his
father. How could he do that to
us? She’s dying, and I can’t help
her. I have to go and save her; she
needs me to save her; I could tell. But
I’m stuck here. I have to stop being
selfish.
He began to feel
disoriented, so he repeatedly curled his toes and made rapid, compulsive hand
movements. He needed to relax, needed to
relax yet again; always needed to relax.
He went to the room’s little refrigerator again and
pulled out a wine cooler and another caffeinated soda, sipping both
alternately. His legal age roommate had
the fridge stocked with booze and allowed Chris, who only raided it on Thursday
nights, to help himself. Chris needed
alcohol and benzodiazepines to feel relaxed; he needed masturbation to feel
happy; he needed caffeine to shake depression.
As he drank, he grabbed his benzodiazepine pill bottle from his bed and
took another. Prescribed three a day, a
very heavy dose for Ativan, he had just taken his fourth over the course of
four hours. He did that sometimes when
in emotional crisis, when he couldn’t cope with a situation in any other
way. He closed his eyes as the pill
quickly took effect and stiffened his backbone, making him feel he could get
through life again.
Okay, okay, he thought, trying to get
his head together. Shower. Let’s shower and get this shit going. He
gathered his shower materials, grabbed the towel and his fresh clothes again
and made for the bathroom. As he exited
his room, he cringingly realized he had wadded up tissues with semen on them in
his pockets while he talked to his mother.
Ugh. Well, what she didn’t know
wouldn’t hurt him. He fast walked to the
bathroom, not wanting anyone to see him while he had used tissues full of…stuff
in his pockets, sighed with relief when he realized himself alone, flushed the
tissues down the toilet, urinated and took his shower. Wearing his fresh boxers, shirt and shorts,
he returned to his dorm room feeling clean and blissful, even whistling a
bit. He changed into his party clothes
for the evening, jeans and a men’s V-neck pullover, ignored the half full wine
cooler he had left, grabbed his favorite plastic glass from his dresser and
rummaged through the refrigerator.
Let’s see…beer, wine
coolers…didn’t finish mine…mickey…cinnamon Schnapps? Let’s go with cinnamon Schnapps, shall we? He
talked to himself like two different people; one his usual self, the other a
silly, foppish cocktail party host like in a bad comedy.
Putting the bottle of
Schnapps and plastic glass next to his bed, he took a book of collected
romantic poetry, his favorite subject, from a corner of his desk and plopped
down on his bed with it. For the next
several hours, he immersed himself in a different era, one he loved, one of
emotion and passion and darkness and beauty, an era not soiled by technology or
pollution, an era he could imagine shined in nothing but intense wonder, even
pain shining gallantly and beautifully, suffered for the purity of feelings, an
imaginative place of old ruins of lost worlds and nights spent telling ghosts
stories. He bled Romanticism through and
through, a young man stuck in the wrong historical period, one willing to face
the evils and ills of the past if it meant he didn’t have to face the evils and
ills of the present. He belonged in the
early 19th century and knew it.
He didn’t care if he died young of tuberculosis or any other major
disease of the period. That even had an
appeal for him.
For the next few hours,
he read from the great poets of the age; from Wordsworth and Coleridge to Byron
and Thomas Hood and Thomas Moore to the great female poets Felicity Hemans,
Mary Robinson, Charlotte Smith and Letitia Elizabeth Landon. He read several of his favorites, from the
sweet and sadly sentimental Matthew and Lucy poems of Wordsworth to the intense
silliness of Byron’s Don Juan series to the darker, gothic poems like Mary
Robinson’s Haunted Beach, Matthew Lewis’s Alonzo the Knight and the Fair
Imogene and, of course, Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. While endlessly respectful and appreciative
of the brighter, happier poets like Shelley, he loved and connected with the
mystery and horror of Dark Romanticism most, his reading interests beyond
poetry consisting largely of Poe and Lovecraft and novels like Dracula,
Frankenstein and Phantom of the Opera.
It all fit his depressive nature, as much a part of him as breathing,
eating and lusting.
The liquor went down
smoother and easier as the time slipped by.
The magical refrigerator spewed forth more joyful gifts during his
reading time; a few mixed drinks of soda and sloe gin followed his Schnapps,
all merging into an incredible buzz just short of drunkenness. In addition to the liquor, he’d consumed over
half a two liter of Coke and the large amount of sugar and caffeine that went with
it, walking then stumbling to bathroom trips every hour. When he first started drinking three months
before, he’d had a tough time knowing when to stop or slow down to avoid
getting sick. He’d worshipped the porcelain
god numerous times, each a harder lesson than the last so, for the moment, he
slowed his drinking to a few intermittent sips.
Unlike earlier, he wanted
to be seen now because, thoroughly buzzed, he knew he could handle it. Fully convinced himself a genius and the
coolest guy in the dorm, he would kiss any lady he came across because he was
that damn beautiful and that damn slick and that damn desirable. Women would be honored to be kissed by him
and he would be honored that they would be honored. After all, he loved women and wanted them to
love him. That’s how he knew he wasn’t
queer. On one-bathroom trip, he passed a
guy who lived down the hall and a guy that lived on one of the above
floors. He smiled at them. No, he wouldn’t kiss them because they were
guys. On another trip, he passed a girl
he’d never seen. He wanted to kiss her
badly and resisted the urge to hug her as he went past. She smiled politely, and he almost fell over
trying to strut as manly as he could.
She took the exit stairs and left the building. He swelled his chest, felt like a man,
urinated in the bathroom again and went back to his room.
As the club didn’t open
until ten that night, he still some time to burn. Yanking back the curtain that had remained
closed since he’d masturbated revealed winter’s early black night being
peppered with heavy falling snowflakes, a soft though decent sized amount
having built up on the earth since he’d last been out. Both emotionally deep and silly in the same
moment, he tried to write a poem and, as usual, failed to produce anything
substantial. He could put words one
after the other like any educated person and often felt the desire to write,
wanting to be creative, wanting to be exceptional, but had never really found
his proper poetic soul aka his true subject matter, the poems that would be
uniquely his, the poems that would make society take notice. Those he wrote
always ended up being about azure skies and intimidating mounds of snow and all
that unoriginal stuff that poets had been writing about for centuries. He tried to write a love poem to his girl but
quickly reached a dead end. After a few
clunky, uninspired stanzas, he crumpled the paper up in frustration and threw
it against his shadow on the wall with a “Here’s to you” toast. Silly, numb, happy, bored and enjoyably
worked up, he listened to some music with the TV on in the background and
engaged in his usual mental rituals.
Another big positive of being buzzed and numb was he could laugh at the
rituals that often immobilized him when sober.
We’re having fun now.
La da dee da dow. We’re having
fun now. Bottoms up, my friend. Ha!
You’re disgusting. Clean yourself up.
Go take a shower. Wait, I did that
already, didn’t I? Ha! I love it.
Where’s my drink? Oh, it’s in my hand.
He followed the beat of
his music in his head and made up new lyrics.
You’re weird, weird,
weird, you’re queer, queer, queer. Wait
a second. I’m not queer. You’re
queer. Go to the mirror.
He laughed, stood up and
went to his mirror.
Mirror, mirror on the
wall. I’m not queer so fuck you!
He laughed after nearly
every thought now.
If I walk away from this
mirror and turn my head back, that means I’m gay. If I don’t look back, then I’m straight.
He turned his head,
fought an overwhelming urge to look back and went to his bed. I’m not queer. That proves it. Uh, huh, yeah, yeah. I’m not queer but I’m happy…I’m happy and I
know it clap my hands.
He clapped his hands
twice, then three times, four times followed by claps once, twice, thrice.
Damn! Do it
over.
He clapped his hands
twice, three times, four times, then once, twice, thrice, four times.
Perfect! Now I
can go out tonight. I got it right, so my plight is alright! Ooh,
yeah!
He laughed for several
seconds and thought himself brilliantly creative.
I’m massively talented. I just am; that’s all there is to it. I shall be a genius one day; no, right
now. Clap your hands if you’re a genius.
He clapped his hands,
paused, then clapped his hands twice, three times, then stopped.
No! You did it
right the first time. No, the second
time. Ah! Anyway.
Good enough. Good enough? Good enough.
Ten o’clock arrived
almost without his notice. Time to see
his girl! He felt goofy, though he
figured no more goofy than usual.
Convinced he could drive like a NASCAR veteran, he pulled on his jacket,
found his car keys and checked himself in the mirror. Satisfied with his appearance, assured his
eye tic would not be a problem, he turned to leave then stopped, contemplating
taking his benzo bottle just in case of trouble. He grabbed it and shoved it with difficulty
in his pocket. He always felt more
confident when he had his bottle. Just
because he knew himself to be omnipotent, one could never be certain of
things. On his way out the door, he
couldn’t resist a final glance in the mirror.
Not glancing correctly, he grunted, looked again and quickly looked
away. Good enough. He went out the door then came back. Not good enough. He glanced yet again, did several double
takes, happily realized himself too drunk to care, and left the room and the
dorm.
Exiting the building with
empty bravado, he slipped on the ice on his first step and landed on his rear
end. Feeling no pain, he happily sat
there and laughed, watching his cold breath expel like smoke and played with
it, exhaling in different amounts like gibberish smoke signals. Remembering the
club, he tensed, rose, almost slipped again, laughed and made for his car in
the parking lot. He unlocked the used
silver RX-7 that his parents had bought him for his seventeenth birthday with
some difficulty as the lock had slightly frozen, started it, turned on the
defrosters, pitched his pill bottle on the passenger’s seat amidst a sea of
junk and went about clearing off the fresh snow and scraping free the thin
layers of ice that had collected on the car since he’d last driven it. Students crisscrossed the lot on their way to
house parties or a movie theater in the nearby town or were perhaps going home
at this late hour or maybe going to the dance club. The surrounding dorms, rimming the parking
lot like frogs rimming a pond on a rainy night, looked dull white and blocky
against the night sky, their many windows lit up with happy revelers inside
warmly celebrating the evening like an early Christmas present while the now
heavily falling snow sliced through the air like a flurry of tiny, smiling
figure skaters gliding across the ice.
The scene instilled in him such a sense of wonder that he felt like
dancing; he intelligently avoided the urge because, in his drunkenness, he
would have slipped again and hurt himself.
On top of the world, this magical scene, so cold yet so warm, heavy yet
thin, dark yet light, dazzled him; a cosmic sense of beauty enthralled him; a
treasured desire for eternal life pervaded him.
After adding this scenery drinking to his other libations, he got in the
car, checked to make sure the defroster had done its duty, brushed off the new
small, fresh coat of snow with his windshield wipers and pulled out of the parking
lot with some timidity due to the external conditions and his own internal
distortions. The main drag through
school led to a largely traffic free back street which soon led to the dance
club a half mile away.
His first weekend at school, the first weekend away
from home he’d ever had, suffering from horrible homesickness, he’d been
invited to the club by his junior year Hispanic roommate, very experienced with
the area, to tag along with he and his compatriots, who consisted of his
younger sister and several cousins not attending the school. Before going to the club, his roommate had
bought them all alcohol, which they drank in their room. Chris, not having tasted alcohol in any large
quantities until that evening, found the social interaction even more
intoxicating than the malt liquor he slammed.
His roommate’s sister and a female cousin flirted with him; this being
his first party, his first taste of sweet inhibitions removed, he flirted back
hard and didn’t feel a bit of shame about his behavior; what he said and did
all seemed right and, if it wasn’t, he was too anesthetized to care. He wanted to stay forever in that swirling
place, that surreal, impenetrable zone of perfect social happiness that he had
never known until then. Now he knew
what he had been missing, why all his acquaintances had decided to go to
parties rather than hang out with him.
He finally got it; now part of the gang, he never wanted to go
back.
After he and the
Spaniards, which he dramatically called them with no malice though they were
Mexican, were either drunk or close to it, they all shuffled, stumbled, and
wobbled the half mile to the club, laughing and joking as they went, his
roommate very careful, from experience, to make sure they all walked instead of
driving. Chris’s roommate platonically
had his arm around the waist of one of his female cousins and playfully pinched
another on the read end. Chris, arm in
arm with his roommate’s 16-year-old sister, trailed just behind the rest of the
group. He felt, rather stupidly, like
one of the smiling fools in beer commercials and loved it. They reached the club. Girded with liquid courage, he knew he could
approach any girl and not blow it. He
felt strong and indestructible, like his bones and muscles were made of
iron. Invincibility deluded him. A long line stretched from outside the club
around a corner though it moved quickly and, a few minutes later, they all
descended a long staircase which faded into darkness at its bottom, music
pulsating very loudly, treble screaming, bass booming, strobe lights spinning,
human voices shouting. They entered the
large room with a large dance floor rimmed by tables and chairs near the
walls. Thick smoke spewed from the DJs
area, a futuristic looking large cubicle manned by an older black man with
thinning hair and a full beard.
Electronic dance music flooded the place. Technicolor splashes blazed
over the dance floor. Packed with
college students, most too young to go to the bars and either unable to find a
house party or unwilling to look for one, the place radiated physical
activity. His roommate’s sister pulled
Chris towards the steaming hot dance floor; they danced until drenched with
sweat, the DJs station periodically shooting the acrid smoke, popular for some
reason, onto the dance floor like a fire breathing dragon, the move designed to
add to the atmosphere.
An hour passed. Exhausted, Chris waved off further dancing
with a smile and sat down at one of the tables in a corner, propped his back
against the wall, and relaxed.
Intoxicatingly free from stress and anxiety, he never felt more
relaxed. He felt free; his emotions felt
free. No more fear. Just peace and happiness. The music swirled around him and penetrated
him; it dug into his being and moved and throbbed inside his body. He breathed everything in; everything lay
before him. The young people danced and
kissed and hugged and laughed everywhere; the smoke seared and reeked of gun
powder; the flashing lights exploded like confetti. Everything made sense. He never felt happier in his life than in
that moment. Hours later when, still
drunk, he sank hypnotized into his bed, perceiving life a wonderful dream, he
considered that night the best of his life.
He had been back to the club several times since then, every Thursday
night, a few times with his roommate and his relatives, the other times by
himself. Having bonded so well with his
roommate that first night, he had unlimited access to the alcohol in the fridge
and he always exercised that privilege to its maximum extent before
clubbing. Confident with experience,
ignorantly feeling he could handle his liquor and benzos with no discernible
side effects or long-term damage, he ruled over mankind.
Back to the present, his
car slid a few times as he drove to the club.
Normally, that would unnerve him but tonight he felt especially
bulletproof. A night of pleasure awaited
after he hooked up with his girl and magical possibilities tickled him. He found a parking spot at the back of the
crowded parking lot and soon, after a short stay in line, invaded the building,
the freezing air replaced by the club’s oppressive humidity. The treble screamed, the bass boomed off the
walls and the people shouted as usual.
His stoned joy lit up when the dance floor opened like curtain shades
being pushed aside to see golden sunlight.
He walked around the right edge of the room towards a bar in the back
where legal age drinkers ordered beverages.
In passing, he peered at the drinks on the bar, mesmerized by their
colors or brand names or whether they had ice or not. Everything mesmerized him in the moment. He next passed by the club’s set of three
dart boards, where he had first met his girl…and there she was! Golden hair on a gorgeous, curvy 18-year-old
body. Truthfully out of his league, he
reveled in having been chosen by her.
She had just thrown a dart, clapped, smiled, removed the dart and
bounced into the arms of a large, older man in a nearby seat.
What?
She kissed the man on the
lips and Chris died.
No. No. It isn’t.
It can’t be.
She smiled a broad smile
at the man.
That’s MY kiss!
That’s MY smile! he ranted to himself,
devastated. The alcohol he had consumed
now made him feel sick. The benzos made
him feel dead and emotionless. He
staggered to the end of the bar, put his right hand on a seat for balance and
crouched slightly, his knees weak, his head spinning. Smiles of bar patrons began to look like
happy pictures from a photo album not his own; happiness evinced only from a
distant planet. The world changed and he
with it. In his pain, he quickly became
enraged.
Needing answers, he
stormed towards the dart boards and stopped a few feet short of where his girl,
or rather no longer his girl, still smiled and laughed in the arms of the older
man who seemed to grow bigger and more muscular with each new look. She looked at Chris and asked loudly over the
music:
“Hi! Do you need help with something?”
Do I need help with something?! Do I need help...?! Why was
she talking to him like that? He became
confused.
“Can I talk to you a
minute?” he yelled, resisting being choked up with all the strength he had
left.
“Why?” she asked with a
laugh. The muscular man looked on him with suspicion. She seemed to fit into his body like a baby
pressed against a gorilla.
“CAN I…can I just talk to
you for a minute?” Chris asked, his voice cracking slightly. She said something in the ear of the gorilla
and approached Chris. He spoke first.
“I would…I would have
hoped that you could have at least told me about this. Who is that guy? How long have you known
him?”
She looked at him with
amazement.
“I’m sorry. Do I know you?” she asked. The world had gone mad. Did he exist?
Did she exist? What was
happening?
“We, uh…we…we played…we
played darts together. I think.”
“When?” she asked, now
clearly creeped out. Who was this person
talking to her?
“Last…last week,” he
said, his voice trailing so timidly she couldn’t hear, tears now starting to
wet his eyes.
“Wait a minute,” she
shouted. “Oh, wait…yeah! Wait, did I make out with you?”
Her words pierced his
heart. She didn’t remember.
“Yes!” he shouted. “Yes.
You said I was handsome. You said
I was fun to be around.”
“Oh, yeah!” she shouted
with realization. “Yeah, wow, I was
really bombed that night. I’d broken up
with my boyfriend, this is him, his name is Steve, and I wasn’t feeling well. Yeah, I was pretty fucked up. I needed to make out with someone. Thankfully, you were there so…thanks! You were very sweet. Steve and I got back together a few days ago
so…” Her voice trailed, the message an uncomfortable,
undeniable “you were fun in the moment now goodbye.”
His head swirled, and he
needed to throw up. The gorilla, even
bigger on his feet, strode over to the two of them. She took a step back and looked to him. He got in between her and Chris with a stern
stare. She took more steps back and
Chris reached towards her. The gorilla
grabbed him by his jacket collar with both hands and methodically throttled him
back towards the bar. Chris weakly went
along, a child’s toy in the gorilla’s hands.
Seeing the throttling, the bartender came out from behind it and had a
brief talk with the gorilla who then released Chris. “Steve” handed off Chris to the bartender,
who took him strongly by the arm, then went back to HIS girl.
“You’re going to have to
leave!” the bartender shouted over the music in Chris’s ear, the words stabbing
into his stunned, dazed brain.
“We can’t have anyone
bothering women in here,” the bartender continued.
Bothering women?!
Chris thought,
horrified.
The bartender led him a
few steps towards the exit, released his arm and pointed towards the
stairs. Intensity triggered by the upset
now besieging his brain, Chris bumped into two guys and a girl on his way out,
drawing looks of disapproval from all three.
At the foot of the stairs, too weary to dodge, he slammed into a thin
man that looked all of 16 who yelled: “Fucking watch it!” on his way past. Staggering, close to passing out, Chris made
it outside, the cold air blasting into his nostrils like a frozen flood,
entering his chest and shooting throughout his body like frigid lightning. He stumbled to the side of the building, found
a snow drift, and threw up.
After balancing himself
on the icy drift with his right hand, he uncaringly wiped the vomit from his
chin with the jacket sleeve of his left arm. The shock of the cold numbed his
brain but the intensity he felt made it liquid nitrogen, burning rather than
relieving. The snow pounded down, a
developing blizzard, and rapidly covered the landscape in thick whiteness. He stared in a stupor at the small line of
people still waiting to enter the club, their cold breaths cutting the air in
small swaths, their expressions showing the excited anticipation of the night
ahead, young people waiting happily for an amusement park ride Chris had
already taken and thrown up on. He
stumbled past the line towards his car, glancing at everyone he passed, before
making a small misstep and falling to both knees. He tried to smile, tried to seem cool and
nonchalant, tried not to think about how many of them thought him ill or drunk
or sad or broken or finished or just stupid.
A harsh word from any would have smashed his face like a sharp jab but
none spoke. He creaked to his feet.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah!!!! he thought,
each compulsion increasingly intense and out of control each passing
second. Instead of making him feel
better, the rituals infuriated him with their inevitability, laughed at his
powerlessness, reigned over his incompetence.
They trapped him. He shivered and
wobbled, not from being drunk but from an instability and exhaustion that
staggered him like he’d been hit on the head.
That’s it. It’s
gone. It’s too late. It’s over.
I’m better off dead. It’s all
there is now. All there is now. All there is now. You have to go. Time to leave. Time to leave for good.
His stomach boiling and churning
uncontrollably, he wandered around the parking lot before finally finding his
car. He threw up again just before the
driver’s side door, drowning the snow in more vomit. The evacuation left him even more
exhausted. The club music thudded in his
head and drowned him in thunderous bass.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
BOOM!
He turned the freezing door handle and sat in the
freezing driver’s seat. Everything
outside froze; everything inside burned with flaming darkness. He sat for several moments absorbing the
cold, feeling the burning, thinking of the darkness, his breath cloudy, his
body shivering, his mind searing.
Slowly, with great difficulty, he pulled his keys out of his pocket,
turned the car on, activated the front and rear window defrosters and turned on
the heater to its highest setting. As
the car thawed, he began to cry. Such
wonderful potential to the evening and to life.
All gone. No shady lanes, no
hidden gardens, no private liaisons, no pinks and greens, no romance. None of the things he wanted and badly
needed. Only death could save him
now. Only death could stop the pain that
spread like a forest fire through his mind and body. He squeezed the steering wheel hard, released
it, made fists, shook them in the air then slammed them down onto the
wheel. He would never be good enough
for anyone. Crying uncontrollably, he
gently put his head onto the steering wheel.
Tears came hot and hard, falling noiselessly, dripping onto the steering
wheel then onto the soft, velvet material of the car floor. He wrapped his arms around his stomach. He cried until he felt emptied then stopped;
his brain gave him no solace.
The only way to be free
is to end this. It doesn’t matter
anymore. You don’t matter. You’ll never matter. Time to go.
He loathed himself more
than ever in a life of self-loathing; however, he also felt the strange sense
of peace many feel when resigned to death, knowing the world’s problem’s past,
now forever irrelevant. He put the car
in drive, maneuvered it out onto the treacherously slick road and drove off
into the face of the powerful driving snow.
He fixated on only one thing:
Finding a nice place to die.
He drove for half an hour
into white nowhere as the blizzard began to ebb, the landscape black and white,
the black sea of sky above and the white sea of powder. The black sea, empty in a starless, lifeless
evening, weighed on Chris’s head like the Earth on the shoulders of Atlas. The white sea stretched beyond the horizon,
an infinite blank canvas. Slow going in
the face of driving snow, he had driven through several pastures, passing
occasional farms with nothing in between.
The farms and trees wore white; the blizzard had shrouded everything. He passed no cars shortly after leaving
town. His car wobbled and T-boned
several times, coming to a stop.
Somehow, he always managed to get enough traction to start again and
continue his drive, as if the Grim Reaper had salted the road for him. Other than his car’s struggling engine, an
unmolested stillness covered the isolated stretch of countryside; his window
down, he inhaled it like a drug, uncertain if he entered the stillness of
Heaven or Hell; convinced it was Hell, he rolled the window up. Juxtaposed with nothing, the pathetic little
engine sputtered, sad and defeated, looking for a spot to settle down, a dying
car lugging a dying person. The young
man behind the wheel, though drunk and completely, intensely insane, was picky;
the spot, the final spot of his short life, had to be perfect. Finally, he chose his spot, a spot identical
to every other one he’d passed for the last five miles. An intuition convinced him this one was
special; this was the one. He stopped
the car, the thankful engine happy to have worked its last. He couldn’t initially find what he wanted in
the passenger seat. Panicking, he
attacked the mess of junk on the seat, shoving gum wrappers, fast food bags and
one of his school books onto the floor.
He groped under the seat, felt hard plastic and relaxed, pulling out his
pill bottle from where it had slid. He
looked at the label: “Ativan, 2 mgs, 3 times a day” and cringed. Drugs and more drugs. They’d become his life. Now they were to be his death. He took the top off.
This won’t hurt, he said to himself.
No, I’ll just go to sleep.
As the moment came, he
cursed himself in frustration as he realized he had no beverage to wash the
pills down. His mouth dry since he’d
vomited, he had no spit. He tried to swallow
one; it stuck in his throat, the bitter taste making him choke and cough. Enraged, he hurled the pill bottle towards
the passenger seat window; it clanked against the glass, pills scattering
throughout the right side of the car.
I’m so tired, he thought. I can’t do this anymore.
His head moved gently
from left to right and drooped. With his
seatbelt not fastened, his upper body shifted to the right, his right shoulder
easing against the passenger seat and his chest resting next to the gear shift. Now unconscious, he rested, immobile, pills
scattered around his head like tiny, white, acrid stars.
Time passed. The car, now nearly buried in snow, resembled
an enormous, buried rock. Save for the
occasional piercing blast of wind, the dead quiet seemed a morgue fit only for
snow and darkness. Into this wide tranquility
came the sound of an engine, it’s power crackling like a radiant beacon. The engine belonged to a police car, manned
by a single officer, the car’s black and white façade fitting perfectly into
the landscape. Noticing the buried
“rock” and deducing it for what it was, he pulled up slowly and smoothly,
stopped, leaving the engine running, got out, flashlight in hand, and
approached the driver’s side window.
Brushing away the snow, he flashed the light inside, making out the
figure draped onto the passenger seat.
His knocks and calls met with silence and, sensing a crisis, he opened
the unlocked door. The pills around the
passed out young man were clearly visible.
Realizing the deadly seriousness of the situation, the officer scooped
him up with some difficulty, carried him over to the heated police car, managed
to open the back door, laid the young man in the back seat, reentered the car
himself and shut the door. Insulated
from the elements, as secure as a vault in a mausoleum. he sped as rapidly as
the road allowed to the nearest hospital, one that could provide the double
duty of a stomach pump along with a possible mental health issue: St. Jude’s Mental Health Center.
