This is the first short story I've written in a long time that I'm actually editing and editing and editing until I'm satisfied. So, feel free to tear it apart.
Warnings, maybe: alcohol is a big part of this, it's depressing, and someone dies.
Stagnant
I wake up at noon on Saturdays, because I don’t have a real job. I fix computers for oblivious college kids during the week; usually all I have to do is a quick virus scan or disk cleanup, but it pays, so I put up with it. So I waste the weekends on the couch in my underwear, a glass of whiskey in one hand and the TV remote in the other. I ignore the phone a lot. My parents used to call every Saturday and insisted on talking to me for hours on end about the happenings of my small hometown and how the neighbors crashed their car on the ice-covered highways. I put up with it at first, sitting in my tiny apartment with the windows open, because around here, the median January temperature is seventy degrees Fahrenheit.
I quit answering the phone after a while, for whatever reason. I guess I feel guilty talking to my parents while holding a tumbler full of whiskey or bourbon, hell-bent on forgetting everything. When I did answer the phone, I’d avoid detailed discussions for about ten minutes and then make an excuse about a term paper or an exam on Monday, and eventually, they called less; they don’t want to bother their hard-working college student.
Saturdays are days on which I can shut off my brain and marinate my innards with alcohol, try to forget about everything that happened from Sunday morning through Friday night, try to forget what I know, what I don’t know. Try to forget about him.
It never works, and I know it, and I don‘t deny it. I don’t think, ‘Maybe
this Saturday, bourbon, rather than vodka, will work!’ I know nothing can and nothing will, and truth be told, I’m not sure I really
want to forget him.
Starting college was nothing like the terrifying experience that books and TV shows made it out to be. My parents helped me move all of my stuff into my dorm room, I bought my books, paid my fees, and went to class three days later. It could have been bad, I suppose, but everything went smoothly, in the financial aid and registration areas.
My roommate’s name was Alex, and after a week, he moved out of our dorm and into one of his friends’ apartments. So I essentially had my own room, and I was perfectly okay with that.
My neighbors’ names were Thomas and Pete; they were closer than best friends and fought worse than siblings. They were both biology majors, and their intelligence was a bit intimidating during the first week of school. I mustered up the courage to ask Pete for help with my remedial biology class one night, and by three am, my homework was done, and we were thoroughly inebriated. Thomas stumbled in at about that time, reeking of booze and pot, and we spent the next three hours playing drunken Go Fish.
I went to biology class the next morning with a hangover and two hours of unproductive sleep, but my homework was done, and I understood everything on it. So, Thomas and Pete became my friends and tutors, and I helped them with history and writing. We spent hours sitting on the floor in my dorm, listening to jazz music and drinking Jack and Cokes, talking about the dumbest things that our minds could come up with.
Pete introduced me to him towards the end of my first year of college. He was suave and witty and when he grinned and shook my hand, I knew he was my friend. During the last two weeks of the semester, we went out for coffee nearly every day, and spent a good amount of time stumbling home after countless end-of-term parties.
His girlfriend, Carrie, hated me. She said I was a “bad influence,” and that I would get him into trouble. She only said that when we were both too drunk to stand on our own, each of us holding up the other. We laughed at her, telling her in our jovial slurred ways that she was uptight, and that maybe a shot or two would lighten her up.
Finals week arrived, and we BS’d our ways through math and biology and English exams, knowing we’d be fine, but worrying we’d fail miserably. We both finished on the same day, and he bought a hefty supply of alcohol, enough to keep us thoroughly intoxicated until my parents came to take me home for the summer.
Pete and Thomas joined us a day later, and even Carrie loosened up enough to have a few drinks. We built a big fire, not quite a bonfire, but not small enough to be a simple campfire, in the fire ring in the woods. We didn’t do anything crazy, just sat around and talked. The philosophical drunk thing. As such discussions usually do, ours turned to religion, and I was suddenly intrigued. I had never asked him what he believed; it had never mattered. But I was curious. So I asked.
“I don’t really believe in anything,” he explained, “just that we’re here, and when we die, our spirits probably go somewhere else. Maybe another life. I think there’s something out there, but I don’t think it does anything, really. We just
are, and we just have to try to be good to everyone and everything.”
To any sober eavesdropper, he would have sounded
overly philosophical, but it resounded deeply in me. It finally made sense, and I wasn’t afraid of Hell or God or whether I was being
moral enough for Heaven. I wasn’t rationalizing my life; I was done lying to myself.
Carrie got tired around midnight and staggered off to her dorm, and the four of us huddled silently around our dying fire. We didn’t say anything; all we heard was the crackling of the fire and the soft breeze in the pine trees above us. Pete and Thomas left an hour or so after Carrie, and it was just him and me.
“Hey,” I whispered, feeling like an intruder in the silence of the woods, “what are you doing this summer?”
He shifted to face me, thinking carefully. “I don’t know. Haven’t thought much about it, yet.”
I leaned back and looked up into the pine trees, trying to glimpse a tiny sliver of sky through the thick canopy of needles. “Wanna go to Canada?” I asked.
He was silent, and I turned my head to watch him. He was grinning a bit, a small, amused smirk, like he thought I was joking. He laid back on the blanket of pine needles, his head resting his hands. “Well, I guess,” he said finally, “I don’t have any reason
not to. Canada’s far away, though.”
I shrugged, pulling my gaze from his face and back to the canopy. “My car’s reliable.” I looked down again. He was grinning widely.
“Okay.”
I smiled back and laid down next to him, staring into the dark. The vodka and whiskey had thrown a pleasantly hazy blanket over me, and everything was good. I glanced at him quickly, and our eyes met. I sat up, propped on one elbow. He didn’t look away, and neither of us said a word. He breathed in, and I ducked my head quickly and kissed him.
He didn’t do anything at first, and somewhere in my drunken consciousness, I panicked a bit. But after a moment, he responded, sitting up slowly, and I felt his hand on my face. A strong breeze blew through the forest, and we both shivered despite the warm temperature. He broke away first, resting his forehead against mine. We both smiled, intoxicated on whiskey and ambition, and our big plans for the future.
My brother died three weeks later, two weeks after I came home from school. He was riding his bike on some country road, and a drunk kid in a pickup truck clipped him with the mirror, knocked him over; he fell over a bridge onto the river boulders. The cops told us he was probably unconscious and then died of blood loss because the stupid kid in the truck didn’t stop to help him.
He was eighteen, ready to start college in the fall, my protégé, I suppose. My world was over. I went to his funeral and watched him lowered into a muddy pit. My stomach churned; I thought of the cadavers Pete used in anatomy.
I holed up in my room for the rest of the summer. I had an old friend from high school who was 21, so I was liquored up more often than I was sober. My parents left me alone; they had their own grief to deal with. If they ever smelled alcohol on me, they didn’t do anything about it. Somehow, I don’t think they did. I slept all day, never ate, and only left my room at night, when I’d walk the empty streets with a cigarette hanging from my lips, the paper pack in my pocket dwindling rapidly.
Sometime around August, I decided I had to get out of that town, so I applied to a school as far south as I could find. My parents were shocked and slightly worried at my sudden decision to leave the state, but they didn’t try to stop me.
As I packed my things, I found a slip of paper with his name and number on it. I smiled a bit, and felt a twinge of guilt for never calling; thinking back, I’d never expected to go to Canada, but I should have called. I thought about calling him then, but what would I say? ‘Hey, yeah, sorry, I’m going to school like a thousand miles away. How’s life?’ I crumpled up the paper and threw it in the garbage on top of a box of expired Chinese take-out.
I moved myself into my dorm; I had gotten a single, just because. I thought about introducing myself to my neighbors, but I had seen them while moving in, and they seemed unkind. Maybe it was me, maybe I was withdrawn or depressed, but making friends in this place just didn’t happen for me.
I went through the year scraping by in my classes, a bottle of cheap whiskey my constant companion. I moved into an apartment after the first semester, and my life consisted of class, work, and whiskey.
The phone rang one night, and I decided to answer it on a whim.
“Hello?” The voice was familiar. “Hey, this is Thomas.”
My brain died. I put my glass down and sat up, scrubbing a hand over my face to knock some of the drunkenness out of my head. “Hey, hey Thomas! Long time, hey?”
“Yeah, what the hell happened to you?”
I spun a quick lie, a witty quip about sunshine and warm temperatures. I asked how life back home was.
“Oh, it’s good, it’s good. Pete changed his major, the cheating bastard!”
“Oh?” I replied, taking a large swig of my drink. It was supposed to be whiskey and Coke, but it was mostly just whiskey. “To what?”
“Psychology,” Thomas said scathingly, “can you believe it? Psychology!”
I laughed at his disgust, but it was clear that he wasn’t actually angry.
“Oh,” he said, “Carrie got married a few months ago.”
I froze. My heart stopped. I forced myself to say something. “Oh?” Just fill the silence. “To-?” I stopped, something catching in my throat. Probably just the whiskey, nothing else.
“Yeah,” Thomas said cheerfully, genuinely happy for the couple.
My heart sank to the floor. “Yeah, that’s…that’s excellent,” I said weakly. “Well, I’ve got a night class to go to, Thomas. It was great hearing from you.”
“Yeah, you too! Come visit us this summer!”
“Yeah, I’ll see. Bye, Thomas.”
“Bye,” I heard the line click, and sat there holding the phone to my ear until it started beeping obnoxiously. I set it down gently and stared at the wall for several minutes.
My hand was shaking, and there was a feeling in my stomach like I was going to cry, or be sick, or something bad. My jaw clenched involuntarily until my teeth hurt, and I forced myself to relax.
I shouldn’t have felt the way I did, I know. But I did, and I do, and I always will. I only knew him for a month, but it felt like a lifetime. It’s corny and sappy, but there’s no other way to say it. I know that nothing is anyone’s fault, that I couldn’t have been expected to call him while I was grieving my brother, but that doesn’t stop the feeling of regret.
Pete would have told me that regret and sorrow are negative emotions, and that I should meditate and rid myself of all negativity. I figure a vodka stupor is close enough to a meditative trance, so I drink my drinks, and live in this stagnancy.
The phone rings less and less these days, and when it does, it’s someone from work looking for a shift replacement, or one of the bill collectors looking for money that I don’t have. I usually don’t bother answering anymore, because if I’m not at work or school, I’m in no condition to do either one.
Every day is the same, but I remember a time, very recently, when every day was a new experience, and I had everything to look forward to; the world was exciting, and I was ready to see everything I possibly could, hopefully with him right there beside me, either as lover or friend; it wouldn’t have mattered.
