for the fiction class
A dark shapeless figure entered the room. It slid among the shadows of the blinking LEDs of various electronics. In the left corner of the room there was a bunk bed, and two college freshman were sleeping, serenaded by a dull snore. The figure moved with a gentle glide to the side of the bed, and lowered himself to peer into the lower bunk. It gently held the boys head, and grabbed a handle that was attached to the top. The handle was held by a cord, the other end of which wrapped tightly around the boys brain. A gentle tug. *Brump brump brump phtp* It pulled it again, this time with more determination. *BRUMP brump brump brump brump phtb* It tweaked the choke a bit, as the boy seemed to be running a bit lean from the night before. A quick pull of the handle and *BRRAAAP BRAP brump brump brump brump* And the boy was awake. A jumble of thoughts rushed into his head, lacking any definition.
“Hmm,” he thought. But before that lackluster mirage managed to form into anything coherent, he was siezed by the urge to rush to the toilet. After his morning prayer to the porcelien goddess he drank a large glass of room temperature water straight out of the tap. He needed food in his stomach, too, but the will to leave the bed and go out to forage was somewhere else. The library, maybe, where he should be.
“You awake?” The voice came from above, like the voice of god. It was his three hundred pound roommate. His voice was as deep as the sea; it cradled Harry, giving him some comfort.
“Yeah. Feel like shit”
“Well did you see what you did to that bottle of Bombay?”
Harry, the one seeking heart disease through other means than obesity, walked over to the minifridge. It hummed in the left corner of what appeared to be a poorly lit jail cell. The walls were solid concrete and the floor was was a mix of lenolium and trash. The whole room had a yellow tint to it, like R. Kelly used it as his secret hide-a-way. Add the dark of the early morning to the floor with its various plastic inhabitants, which equals a mine field of pokey things to step on. He found a thumb tack. Suddenly his brain was working again as he hoped around the room on one foot. The only thoughts it was working on, though, were a long series of curse words.
He limped up to the fridge and opened it. Behind the little hatch that covers the ice tray he saw a blue bottle. It was cerulian, just like the Crayon, only transparent. On the sides were lists of the various herbs and berries that were contained in the clear liquid. On the front it read “Bombay Sapphire”. Something about being too broke and spending too much on gin sizzled in his head.
“I drank the whole thing?” he said, not really surprised.
“Yeah, and that’s not the half of it.”
“Fuck. Well you’ll have to tell me after class. This logic prof. is gonna be the end of me.”
He meandered his way to his logic class and sat down, still in a fog of post-binge. The words of his roommate, Big Mike, were stuck solidly in his head. “Yeah, and that’s not the half of it.” It was stuck on repeat. Someone had broken the record. After a few minutes of trying not to vomit, he set about reconstructing the night before.
Ok, he thought, so I was drinking. Where was I drinking? Pete’s. Yes it was definitely Pete’s, he rememebered this vividly. They were playing beerpong with gin and tonics. Or was that earlier this week? Fuck, he couldn’t remember. Ok, so he was pretty sure he was at Pete’s. And he was pretty sure they were playing beerpong with hard liquor. The hangover was starting to make more sense. The first game was vivid in his mind. He remembered throwing the little white ball at red cups. He remembered the Hendrix poster on the wall behind the table. He remembered below the poster were two girls. They were giggling, and their tits were about the explode out of their tops. Tits. He remembered those as if they were the second coming of the messiah. Ok, next he was in the garage. They were smoking. Someone was loading a bong. He was. Or was he? Someone was loading a bong, but he was certainly hitting it. There was a lot of talking, and various bands from the late 60’s were making their way out of a stereo from the early 80’s. Wait. There was something else. A girl in the corner. She looks tired and about to fall asleep. Her coordination is poor, but she isn’t holding a drink. Pregame maybe?
“So how’d the test go?”
“Terrible. I hate that class almost as much as I hate blackout drunk. Spent most of the time trying to remember last night.”
“You should call Annie man, I think you really hurt her.”
“I did what?”
“Just call.”
So he calls. There is no answer. “I must have done something terrible. Fucking blackout drunk,” he thinks. The area between his ears was functioning a little better now, so he tried again to remember what had happened. But he was having trouble. He’d been on a binge for a week now. Six handles of vodka and a liter of gin in seven days. He had a hard time remembering why he was doing this to himself; what was tearing him up on the inside and making him punish his liver. Seven days converged into one night, and his mind was playing tricks on him. In his head he played dozens of games of beerpong, and made dozens more trips to the garage. The fog wouldn’t lift, and the brighter he tried to shine a light, the more it was reflected back at him, blinding him to his own actions.
He picked up the phone and called Annie again. No answer. Worry started to spread over him like fear when you enter a dark alley. He had done something terrible. He remembered rage. He remembered the blood in his face and the anger that soaked his voice. But he couldn’t remember what he said. He knew all this pent up fury was directed at her, but he couldn’t remember anything but his own malice. He reached deeper into the black pit of his head and still all he found was the stinging tar of his own hate. How had it come to this? He could hardly remember himself. Two years of wanting it to work, and for nothing. Two years and she leaves you to find happiness with your friend. Two years you work to try and lift her up out of depression, and then this jackass swings in, masquerading as a friend, and lifts her up. And so you drink.
And so he drank. But now he was left with a puzzle, and all the pieces looked the same. Fragments of memories. Drunk. High. Anything but sober. Anything but facing the truth.
He looked around the room. The top bunk was bare of bedding. There was a deep bend in the middle, where a large man may have once slept. He realized Mike had been gone for a week, ever since the first night of drinking. He’d wanted a new roommate, someone more stable, someone with more sense. And so he left. Harry was left alone muttering to himself, turning a monologue into a dialogue.
He noticed something on the door. A news paper clipping.
OBITUARIES:
ANNIE PAULSON, 19
BELOVED DAUGHTER AND FRIEND. SERVICE TO BE HELD AT CULLMAN FUNERAL SERVICES, COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS. SURVIVORS INCLUDE FATHER, JIM, AND WIFE, MONICA. WAS TRULY LOVED.
A wave broke over him. It crushed him. He fell back. Behind him was a desk chair, made of aluminum with cloth on the bottom for some measure of comfort. The base of his head where the first vertebra, the atlas vertebra, makes its connection, hit the back of the chair. He felt a slight pinch, and then cold all over. He couldn’t breath. His mind kept telling his lungs IN, OUT, IN, OUT, but they never got the message.
“Hmm,” he thought. But before that lackluster mirage managed to form into anything coherent, he was siezed by the urge to rush to the toilet. After his morning prayer to the porcelien goddess he drank a large glass of room temperature water straight out of the tap. He needed food in his stomach, too, but the will to leave the bed and go out to forage was somewhere else. The library, maybe, where he should be.
“You awake?” The voice came from above, like the voice of god. It was his three hundred pound roommate. His voice was as deep as the sea; it cradled Harry, giving him some comfort.
“Yeah. Feel like shit”
“Well did you see what you did to that bottle of Bombay?”
Harry, the one seeking heart disease through other means than obesity, walked over to the minifridge. It hummed in the left corner of what appeared to be a poorly lit jail cell. The walls were solid concrete and the floor was was a mix of lenolium and trash. The whole room had a yellow tint to it, like R. Kelly used it as his secret hide-a-way. Add the dark of the early morning to the floor with its various plastic inhabitants, which equals a mine field of pokey things to step on. He found a thumb tack. Suddenly his brain was working again as he hoped around the room on one foot. The only thoughts it was working on, though, were a long series of curse words.
He limped up to the fridge and opened it. Behind the little hatch that covers the ice tray he saw a blue bottle. It was cerulian, just like the Crayon, only transparent. On the sides were lists of the various herbs and berries that were contained in the clear liquid. On the front it read “Bombay Sapphire”. Something about being too broke and spending too much on gin sizzled in his head.
“I drank the whole thing?” he said, not really surprised.
“Yeah, and that’s not the half of it.”
“Fuck. Well you’ll have to tell me after class. This logic prof. is gonna be the end of me.”
He meandered his way to his logic class and sat down, still in a fog of post-binge. The words of his roommate, Big Mike, were stuck solidly in his head. “Yeah, and that’s not the half of it.” It was stuck on repeat. Someone had broken the record. After a few minutes of trying not to vomit, he set about reconstructing the night before.
Ok, he thought, so I was drinking. Where was I drinking? Pete’s. Yes it was definitely Pete’s, he rememebered this vividly. They were playing beerpong with gin and tonics. Or was that earlier this week? Fuck, he couldn’t remember. Ok, so he was pretty sure he was at Pete’s. And he was pretty sure they were playing beerpong with hard liquor. The hangover was starting to make more sense. The first game was vivid in his mind. He remembered throwing the little white ball at red cups. He remembered the Hendrix poster on the wall behind the table. He remembered below the poster were two girls. They were giggling, and their tits were about the explode out of their tops. Tits. He remembered those as if they were the second coming of the messiah. Ok, next he was in the garage. They were smoking. Someone was loading a bong. He was. Or was he? Someone was loading a bong, but he was certainly hitting it. There was a lot of talking, and various bands from the late 60’s were making their way out of a stereo from the early 80’s. Wait. There was something else. A girl in the corner. She looks tired and about to fall asleep. Her coordination is poor, but she isn’t holding a drink. Pregame maybe?
“So how’d the test go?”
“Terrible. I hate that class almost as much as I hate blackout drunk. Spent most of the time trying to remember last night.”
“You should call Annie man, I think you really hurt her.”
“I did what?”
“Just call.”
So he calls. There is no answer. “I must have done something terrible. Fucking blackout drunk,” he thinks. The area between his ears was functioning a little better now, so he tried again to remember what had happened. But he was having trouble. He’d been on a binge for a week now. Six handles of vodka and a liter of gin in seven days. He had a hard time remembering why he was doing this to himself; what was tearing him up on the inside and making him punish his liver. Seven days converged into one night, and his mind was playing tricks on him. In his head he played dozens of games of beerpong, and made dozens more trips to the garage. The fog wouldn’t lift, and the brighter he tried to shine a light, the more it was reflected back at him, blinding him to his own actions.
He picked up the phone and called Annie again. No answer. Worry started to spread over him like fear when you enter a dark alley. He had done something terrible. He remembered rage. He remembered the blood in his face and the anger that soaked his voice. But he couldn’t remember what he said. He knew all this pent up fury was directed at her, but he couldn’t remember anything but his own malice. He reached deeper into the black pit of his head and still all he found was the stinging tar of his own hate. How had it come to this? He could hardly remember himself. Two years of wanting it to work, and for nothing. Two years and she leaves you to find happiness with your friend. Two years you work to try and lift her up out of depression, and then this jackass swings in, masquerading as a friend, and lifts her up. And so you drink.
And so he drank. But now he was left with a puzzle, and all the pieces looked the same. Fragments of memories. Drunk. High. Anything but sober. Anything but facing the truth.
He looked around the room. The top bunk was bare of bedding. There was a deep bend in the middle, where a large man may have once slept. He realized Mike had been gone for a week, ever since the first night of drinking. He’d wanted a new roommate, someone more stable, someone with more sense. And so he left. Harry was left alone muttering to himself, turning a monologue into a dialogue.
He noticed something on the door. A news paper clipping.
OBITUARIES:
ANNIE PAULSON, 19
BELOVED DAUGHTER AND FRIEND. SERVICE TO BE HELD AT CULLMAN FUNERAL SERVICES, COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS. SURVIVORS INCLUDE FATHER, JIM, AND WIFE, MONICA. WAS TRULY LOVED.
A wave broke over him. It crushed him. He fell back. Behind him was a desk chair, made of aluminum with cloth on the bottom for some measure of comfort. The base of his head where the first vertebra, the atlas vertebra, makes its connection, hit the back of the chair. He felt a slight pinch, and then cold all over. He couldn’t breath. His mind kept telling his lungs IN, OUT, IN, OUT, but they never got the message.