“I can’t stop thinking of ways to
kill her. Sometimes, I've just got a keyboard swinging. The USB cable’s flapping around and whipping me. I feel like a sting ray trying to murder its
prey but also slaying itself simultaneously.
“I thought up one the other day
where I snapped my laptop in half on her face, then said something like,
‘What’s the matter? You used to love Facebook,’ as she’s crying on the ground.
It’s funnier in my head.
“They’re not all about computers
though. Like, in a recent one, she was asleep on her stomach on the bed. I went
into the kitchen, grabbed the set of cutting knives her dad bought her a few
birthdays back. They were ceramic. You never had to sharpen them. Nice shit,
you know? And while holding the wooden container or whatever it’s called, I
took the biggest knife out and held it like Norman Bates during the shower
scene, then put it right in the top of her spine. She screamed and tried to
move around and shit, but I got on top of her and took the next biggest knife
out and put it right below that big one. One after another after another until
I was out of knives and she wasn't moving anymore. I got off her, still holding
the wooden container and admired how she looked like a red stegosaurus.”
“That’s some dark shit, Lewis,” Alex
said, returning from the kitchen with two beers. “Maybe you should start
smoking pot again. Calm yourself down a little, you know?”
“No, that just makes it worse.
Cemetery tunnels,” Lewis said as he took one of the beers from Alex.
“Cemetery tunnels?”
“Say you’re having a conversation
with someone like we are now. We’re both leaning on a gravestone having a
conversation.”
“How did we get in a graveyard? And
what’s the name on the gravestone?” Alex asked.
“Doesn't matter,” Lewis said. “The ground
we’re standing on is consciousness. The current conversation. The current
subject. You know what you’re talking about and I know what I’m talking about
and they usually coincide when we’re both engaged, but often, while I’m
talking, you’re beneath the surface, in your head, your subconscious, digging
tunnels.”
Alex’s head tilted.
“By the time I finish what I’m saying,
you’re not even at the same gravestone I’m still leaning against. You've been
digging tunnels all the way across the cemetery and pop up near someone born in
1923 because you saw that one of these dead people had been in World War Two
and that led you to make a connection with what it was like to grow up during
The Great Depression and then you started wondering whether someone who grew up
during The Great Depression felt better once they fought in the war because
they got to take out all this pent up aggravation they had against society on
these men in different colored uniforms representing a different, bad society. It’s all contingent, you
know? Cemetery tunnels. And when I’m stoned, I’m the fastest fucking digger on
the planet.”
“I think you’re the only one who thinks
that way.” Alex said. “I get what you mean, but I don’t do that. I’m pretty
present most of the time. I mean, I might do that a little when I smoke, but
most of the time I just forget what’s being talked about. It’s not because I’m
making a line of connections though. I’m just stoned.”
Lewis worked in a gun manufacturing
plant. Twelve hour days. Weekends off. He only drank on weekends. It was the
weekend. He was drunk.
“I remember the first time my dad took
me hunting,” Lewis said. “Just doves. Now that I think about it, it’s funny
because my dad was such a fucking Christian, a Christian killing the most Christian
bird. I don’t mean Catholic. I mean the contemporary,
make-it-up-as-technology-grows type. The kind that is so far passed where it
all started from that all anyone knows of the clothes that were worn back then
is based off of the crappy paintings some retired grandpa does in an attempt to
absolve himself of his sins.
“My personal favorite is the one of the
heroin junky being held up by the pale-skinned Jesus, toting a beard and hippie
hair. And I know some biker somewhere is staring at that painting saying, ‘You
know, if I didn’t find Jesus, I don’t know where I’d be.’
“Anyway, my dad gave me this .410 and I
shot the first bird I saw sitting on a branch. He ran over to it, elated as all
shit, picked the dove up and handed it to me. Have you ever seen how a dead
bird’s head hangs? It’s like there’s no spine at all. ‘Put your index and
middle finger on either side of its neck,’ he said. ‘Squeeze them together and
pull. It’ll pop right off.’ I did and it did. Then he said, ‘You kill it, you
clean it.’ He forced my thumb through the skin just below the dove’s breast.
The skin broke easily and when the guts smoothed against my thumb I got the
same feeling I had when I pissed my pants on a camping trip with my dad and his
friends the year before. I looked up and saw my dad grinning over me. Everyone
just needs someone’s approval.” Lewis trailed off, staring through his knees.
Alex flicked a bottle cap at him.
“Sorry. It happened again. I had my
thumb in that dove and I looked up at my dad and then when I looked back down,
I was riding the red stegosaurus again. I had taken out the lowest knife in her
back and was hitchhiking through her spine.”
“You’ve got to quit doing that,” Alex
said. “Do you remember the first rule you screamed at me when we were in that stupid
club downtown after Laura broke up with me? You said, ‘There are rules to
getting over someone. The first is, ONE: you have to fuck someone else.’”
“Yeah, of course I remember the
rules. I fucking made them up.” Lewis said. “The next rule is, TWO: if you
can’t manage that, find a good porn site.”
“Well, let’s go take care of number
one.”
They went outside, covered in
jackets. Lewis breathed heavier than usual to see his breath. It was assurance
his body was still working.
“I’ll drive,” Lewis said.
They slid into his black Jetta. The paint
was corroded. It looked gray and bored when it was light out, but you couldn’t
tell once the sun was down.
Four blocks and three stop lights later,
they pulled up to Gentry’s. A full parking lot next to a busy street is always
a good sign. Men in dark jeans either leaned against the brick exterior or the
even tougher women with sleeveless jackets and boots. If you went outside, it
was to smoke while a band wasn’t playing. Everyone was outside. Everyone was
smoking.
Lunging more for a drink than a
conversation about how someone’s father never loved them or how their mother
died, Lewis went directly inside, followed by Alex.
Bartender’s eyes are lax, but
attentive at the same time. The only thing that keeps them being helpful is a
decent tip. At least one dollar per drink. If not, you’re a prick. You get spit
in your road soda and no attention the next time you need another. They don’t
want to be there. It’s a job. They have to make rent. That’s it.
Lewis and the man wiping the bar
nodded to one another.
“Can I get a whiskey double? Well.”
The man pointed to Alex.
“Budwiser, please.”
Lewis turned to his left and watched
two men on stage hefting an amplifier the size of an overweight human into
place. The bartender returned.
“The whiskey’s eight. Budwiser’s three.”
“I’ve got this round,” Alex says.
“Here’s to Fuck her.”
They put the glass and bottle
together. Alex swigged his beer. Lewis took his whiskey down all at once, like
a child forced into cough syrup for saying he was sick and couldn’t go to
school.
“Cigarette?” Lewis asked.
Alex stepped outside first.
“Hey, Shithead,” a voice shouted,
approaching from the parking lot.
Alex squinted. Mike, Lauren’s
fiancé, came out of the dark, attacking the asphalt in his march until he was
an extended finger away from Alex’s chest.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
Alex said, lifting his beer.
“He seems fun. Let’s party with this
guy,” Lewis said.
Mike glared at Lewis out of the
corner of his eyes.
“Why don’t you get the hell out of
here and go beat up some girl after you tell her you love her?” Mike said,
looking back at Alex.
“Oh, is that the most recent story
she has now?” Alex asked. “How many times has she changed it up on you yet?
It’s funny; she told me the same thing about the guy she was sucking off before
me.”
“I said, get the hell out of here.”
“Let me finish my beer first,” Alex
said, lighting a cigarette.
Alex hardly put his lighter away before
Mike’s arm started extending. Alex looked up. Mike’s fist first touched the
cherry of the cigarette, gripped stiffly between Alex’s lips. Alex’s eyes
widened. An invisible knife carved lines in his forehead. In Alex’s attempt to
turn, his cigarette snapped. The filter flew away from his mouth and the
cherried end floated for a bit between Mike’s knuckles and his upper lip until
it was caught against Alex's face. Alex dropped backwards, without even attempting
to stay on his feet. Mike stepped between Alex’s legs, lifted his boot towards
Alex’s teeth, and started to show his own, gritting. Lewis crossed Mike
directly in the jaw, catching him off balance and knocking him onto the
asphalt. Alex flailed in retreat and Mike began to stand back up, turning
towards Lewis.
Lewis scrambled away, escaping Mike’s
swing, and ran to the trunk of his car. He pulled out his .38 snubnose, thumbed
the hammer, and looked over the upright trunk door. Mike lifted Alex against
the wall and kneed him in the groin. Lewis looked back down at the gun and suddenly,
there she was, in the trunk of his car, tied up, make-up streaked down her face
and staining the duct tape over her mouth. Her pupils expanded and her eyelids
retreated into her sockets. Then, he finally saw it: genuine fear, like a
beaten dog shaking and shitting itself in the corner of a barn in Buttfuck,
Wisconsin, population 372.
Lewis smiled at her, put the snubnose
under his shirt, in the back of his pants and grabbed his tire iron. He slammed
the trunk and ran screaming towards Mike, tire iron raised over his head like a
psychotic Olympian carrying the opening ceremony torch. He came down on Mike’s
neck, hard. Mike fell, harder. It was easier than Lewis thought, crushing him
like a ball of paper that was once a useable sheet.
He gripped Alex by the collar and forced
him to walk faster than he could to the car. Lewis opened the passenger door
and threw Alex in. Rounding his Jetta, he knocked twice on the trunk as he
passed, smirking. He sat down behind the steering wheel, started the car, and
turned to Alex.
“People are fucking nuts, man,” he
said. “You never know when someone has just completely lost it. Sometimes, Los
Angeles just gets to you, I guess.”
