Euphoria
The grocery store was shabby and unkempt. It was in the bad part of town, not far from the University. This was the kind of store you would find populated by the young and disenfranchised. Charles M. Erickson was neither, but he was running late for a date.
Charles M. Erickson was a man who had no time for pleasantries. His work was his life; so to him, going into a run-down grocery store in the low rent part of town was the least of his worries. He had two novels in the works, a paper to be read and graded, and a date that very night. He was indifferent.
To Charles, the idea of buying prophylactics was no laughing matter, and neither was it a run-of-the-mill activity. He did, however, hate them with a passion. Not because of the usual ideas surrounding the use of birth control, but because of the time after coitus, when all the awkward decisions had to be made.
As Charles walked quickly past the toothpaste and hair products, the pungent smell of cologne and ammonia hanging in the air, he grew frustrated. “Should I hold her afterwards?” He thought, confused at his luck, “or would it be alright to go straight to sleep? I do have a lot of work to do tomorrow. I suppose I could ask her to leave, and give her cab fare.”
The line in front of Charles seemed to grow longer as the minutes drone on, the noises of all the customers in the store creating a cacophony of white noise. Charles didn’t notice any of this, continuing to be lost in his own thought. “I shall have to ask her to leave, because I have too much on my plate right now. That is the only solution to this sex issue.”
When the line had petered out in front of him, and his turn had arrived at last, he found his brand exactly where they should be, and a devious plan came upon him, as if by divine inspiration. As he paid for the condoms, he dialed her number into his phone.
“Sheryll, baby,” he said, “I have some bad news.”
“Chuck, is that you?” Sheryll asked, as she put the finishing touches on her hair and makeup.
“How many times do I have to tell you not to call me Chuck?” Chuck sighed, shook his head and continued. “Rhetorical question. Darling, I am going to have to cancel on our date tonight.”
“What? Why? I got my room-mate to leave for the night so that we could enjoy ourselves in the privacy of my home.” She said, pouting the way only a young adult can.
“I have far too much work to do. I have a paper I have to read by one of my students, and I absolutely have to get through another chapter or two of one of the novels. I’m sorry babe.” Chuck said, in the tone of voice only a man dating a younger woman can affect. “Rain Check?”
“Can’t I come by and help you with your work? Or maybe just distract for a little bit?” She asked, thinking about how she hadn’t seen him in a week.
“I’m sorry, Sheryll, but it just can’t be done. How about I meet you for breakfast tomorrow, before work.” He said, distracted by an attractive woman who walked past him on his way out to his car.
“That sounds alright, if I absolutely can’t have you tonight.” Sheryll pleaded, in the sweet tone that only daddy’s girls can affect.
“Sorry Kitten, but I can’t. I’ll call you tomorrow when I wake up.” He said as he got into his car.
“Not if I call you first.” Sheryll said, taking her hair down, thinking about how much she liked it that way better. “Love you.”
“You too, sugar.” Chuck said, starting his car, and turning of his phone. “Well that took long enough; I wonder if she’ll give me a quickie tomorrow morning.” He thought quietly to himself, as a smile spread across his face. His night was free.
Chuck lived in the kind of neighborhood that took the police forever to respond. The rent was cheap, but so was the hotel-like apartment, even down to the horribly disgusting pool in the middle of the complex. The managers seemed to view the complex as an upscale joint, and it reflected in their use of post it notes to let the tenants know that someone had come by the office looking for them.
Chuck was surprised that he had a stark yellow contrast on the green of his front door. It wasn’t often that he received guests, let alone unexpected ones. The note, so eloquent in it’s delivery, told him that “girl came by, she look for you. Sent her on way, she left number.” Except they just wrote the phone number out, instead of taking the time to write the word and the actual number. Chuck ripped the note off his door, then went inside, ready to see what the note was all about.
Chuck called the number, ready for any myriad of possibilities, thinking he knew what it was all really about, but he was wrong.
“Hello?” a girl’s voice said.
“Yes, Hello, this is Professor Charles M. Erickson, my apartment left a note for me with this number telling me that you had called upon my place of residence.” Chuck said indignantly, “What was this all about?”
“Professor, I’m sorry to bother you at home, but you weren’t at your office hours, and I really needed to talk to you.” The girl persisted to not reveal her name.
“Look, child, I don’t even know who you are. If you are in one of my classes, then please, tell me your name so that I can put a face on you. If you are just some crazy person looking for someone to grift, you have found the wrong man.” Chuck said while running through all the beautiful girls in his classes, thinking of who might own such a nice voice.
“I apologize professor, my name is Shannon, I’m the girl who was gone for a couple weeks, from your short story class. My dad had died. You have my last paper. I was wondering how I’d done on it, because I am completely lost on this new paper. I could use some help.” Shannon pleaded.
Shannon! Of course, that was the girl’s name. I should have known, with a body like that. But how did she find out where I lived?
“How did you find out where I lived?” Chuck said, shocked that he hadn’t wondered that earlier.
“I, sort of, followed you the other day.” Shannon sounded embarrassed.
“Why would you do that sort of thing?” Chuck said, feeling the walls closing in around him, ever so slightly.
“I can’t help it. I like to see if I can follow someone without them noticing, but only people that I know, so that if they do see me, I’m not that crazy girl who follows people.” Shannon said, turning red in the face, as she rolled over on her bed, facing the door.
“Stalking is a game? That’s the first I’ve heard of it. Not to mention the invasion of privacy and, Jesus, you can’t tell anyone else about where I live. I get really tough on some students, and they can be vindictive.” Chuck said, remembering his first semester as a professor, the disaster that it was.
“Professor, I wouldn’t tell anyone about our interaction outside of class.” Shannon said, standing up and walking to the mirror. “Do you think I’d be able to talk to you tonight?”
“Excuse me?” Chuck said, hearing that certain tone creep into her voice.
“About the paper, silly.” Shannon said, laughing at how she had him going.
“No, I haven’t finished grading it yet. Perhaps tomorrow. If you’d like, I could give you a call at this number letting you know to meet me at my office, and we could discuss the paper.” Chuck said, clearing his throat.
“You can call me anytime at this number. I won’t mind, Professor.” Shannon said, flopping back down on the bed. “Good night Professor.”
“Good night Shannon.” Chuck said, hanging up the phone. He stood up from the chair that he had sank into during the conversation, and wandered about his apartment. After he passed the pile of books that had to be read for the third time, he found what he was looking for, Shannon’s paper. Pushing his belongings off of the couch with the least of care, because they were useless to him at that exact moment, he grabbed his red pen and set to work.
By the third read through the paper, he was finally able to write on it. The paper was beautifully written, looked at things that no one he could ever think of had ever thought of before, and was worded and grammar-ed perfectly. Chuck was stunned. This girl was a menace, and so he did what he needed to do. He gave her an A, but he dipped the paper in red ink, cutting it and making it bleed everywhere he could see a chance, and quite a few he couldn’t. When he was done, it looked like a vicious wolf had had it’s way with a suckling pig.
As much as it should have made him feel better, Chuck was devastated. Never in his life would he have been able to write analysis like that, but he wasn’t ashamed of his meager attempts at destroying something beautiful. “I guess it is true, those who can’t do, teach.” Chuck thought, reaching for his scotch glass, and filling it with the ingredients that made it’s name.
After about three hours of television, Chuck decided he should go ahead and write. After all, it needed to be done. So, stumbling over to his typewriter, being as careful as possible to not spill the bottle of scotch onto his first drafts of his manuscripts, he put paper and ribbon into the machine, successful after enough tries, and started to type.
In his mind, he saw all his frustrations float before his head, and counted them. Women were the major source of his stress, he decided, even down to the fact that his agent was a woman, and she was always riding him, but never the way he would have liked. He thought of Sheryll and the way she always wanted to be with him, and he even thought of Shannon and how violated he felt because of her, which frustrated him to the point of tears.
When the fog cleared from his head, he wiped away the tears, wondering where they had come from, and looked at what he had just done. Chuck had written a poem. He was a bit confused by this, because he had never been a poetry writer. In his drunken state, it seemed like an acceptable work, and so he set off to go to bed, having accomplished his goals of the day. He quickly, and deftly, fell asleep.
Sheryll unlocked Chuck’s door and went inside, about ten in the morning. She had been calling him for about two hours, because he hadn’t shown up for breakfast. She noticed him passed out on the bed, still semi-clutching the empty bottle of scotch. She took it from him, and on her way to the trash, she saw a paper in the typewriter.
“ He must really have had work to do,” She thought, “I’ll just take a look at it, I do love his work so.” She picked up the paper, and preparing for his inevitable frustration with her, begun to pull out excuses like winter coats from the closet of her mind.
Glancing over the flower of a poem she had plucked from the typewriter, she was blown away. This was the best poem she had ever read, and she knew that that was the last time she would ever think that, about a poem. She began to memorize it, and ceased to read it anymore, the poem playing through her mind, on constant repeat, reverberating through her skull, making her eyes leak and a smile to spread across her face. She set the poem down with all the reverence for it, and walked over to the bed where Chuck lay, passed out from the night before.
The final thoughts that rampaged through her head, as she started to lose consciousness, was how amazing it was that something so beautiful and romantic had come from someone so cold and harsh. She began to lose words, with the darkness closing in on her mind, while the voice shouted so much louder every second, deafening her to her own cries of pain. Her final thoughts centered around how she wished there had been more to the poem, “why had it been so short? Why couldn’t she make the feeling last forever? That feeling of, the way that it was, the, happy, love, the, it, was, definitely, had to have been, only expla-, meaning, wish it, stay.”
Euphoria.
Euphoria was the word that she was she was grasping for, like someone drowning in quicksand, as if it could have saved her, but she missed it horribly. This was also the first word that Chuck thought of when he woke up, which struck him as odd.
Chuck climbed the five miles out of bed, and wandered over to the bathroom, and relieved himself for what seemed like hours. When he walked back into his bedroom, resolute in his decision to sleep for the rest of his life, he noticed Sheryll lying in the bed. This struck him as odd, and he thought to himself, “I don’t remember inviting her in. But then again, I was really drunk last night.”
As Chuck sank the much less distance into bed, he rolled over at looked Sheryll in the face, thinking about maybe trying to get a quickie in before going back to sleep. When he saw her face, time stopped for about five years. He had never seen a dead person before, but he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that was what she was. If the look of her wasn’t a dead enough give away, the blood trailing from her ears and eyes and mouth definitely was a sign that something had gone horribly wrong.
When Chuck was able to get himself moving again, time sped up, as if to catch up for the time that he had laid there, unable to think or do anything. So, the police came and went, the body and bed sheets were taken as evidence, and he was covered in a blanket at some point, then it was taken away, and he was finally left alone. He had been told not to leave town, but Chuck didn’t think he could leave his own apartment.
As he was finally coming out of his shock, he received a phone call, from his agent. She was happy, telling him that he had finally sold his second novel, and that all they needed now was any of the changes he wanted to make to it, and then she told him the ones the publisher would have liked. While Chuck was listening to her talk, he saw the poem lying on the floor. Suddenly, the fact that he had written something that he thought he had liked last night, came back to him, and he picked it up.
While his agent droned on, he read the poem. He was amazed by it. The wording was beautiful, and when he thought about it, it worked really well as a foreword to his new, soon-to-be novel. He stopped her tirade, for a second, and told her that he was going to fax over what he wanted as a foreword, and that on the dedication page, he wanted, For Sheryll. Then he told her that the publisher could screw themselves, he had done what he had done, and they had liked it enough to buy it, so they can print it the way he gave it to them. She was at a loss because of his sudden outburst, apologized, told him she’d tell them that, and then forward the fax and dedication to them, and that she was sorry for calling him so early.
With that out of the way, Chuck sat on the couch. He hated himself enough for having written a romance novel and it actually selling. Then they want him to change it, to take out whatever literary merit it did have? “No,” he thought, “that won’t do.” Stretching out on the couch, he took a nap, resolute in his position.
Chuck awoke to a knock at his door. Confused and disoriented, he grabbed a robe and went to the door. He opened it to find Shannon standing there, looking beautiful, and menacing at the same time.
“Hi.” She said, as she walked past him into the his apartment.
“What are you doing here?” He asked, frustrated at this further intrusion of her into his life. “Listen, I have your paper, but I’m not going to talk to you about it. I am dealing with some personal issues at the moment, and I can’t help you with yours.”
“Aw, c’mon,” She said, poking him in his belly, “Are you sure that maybe I couldn’t help you with your problems?” She cocked her head and glanced up into his eyes. “I’m a very good listener.”
“I’m sure you are.” Chuck said, thinking about how sexy this girl looked. Then, he remembered the way Sheryll looked, and he shivered. “But I have to ask you to leave.” He walked across the living room, her following his every step, and grabbed her paper from his desk.
“Here you go.” He said, holding it away from him as if it was a rotting piece of meat. She looked over it, very closely, sitting down as she read his critiques, and then jumped up at the end, when she saw the A.
“After all those red marks, you still give me an A.” She said, smiling and moving closer to him. “Are you sure you didn’t give this to me, for all the wrong reasons?”
“Yes, quite sure, it was a solid piece of work, just with a lot of little holes in it. You don’t have to earn anything.” He said, just before she kissed him.
“Stop it!” he said, pushing her away. “Look, I don’t want this, and you shouldn’t either. I’m ten years older than you. And I’m your Professor. So please, just leave.”
“I don’t understand how you could tear my paper apart and still give me an A, unless you wanted something from me. Am I really that wrong to think that you didn’t want something from me?” She said, moving closer to him again, but this time without getting off the ground.
“That is the best critique. The one that praises you, but tears it apart. If I didn’t tear it apart, then I did no good helping you with your paper, did I?” He asked, stepping backwards and bumping into his desk. “Look, here is a poem I just wrote, I’ll read it to you and you can rip it apart if you like, it’ll be an exercise. Just please, step back!”
Shannon was shocked by his response, but assumed this must be apart of his game. So she obediently sat down on his couch, while he stood before her and read the poem. She concentrated on what he was saying, barely noticing his voice cracking nervously, the sweat upon his brow. She was looking for a problem with the poem, but she couldn’t find one.
Chuck stared at the poem, trying to ignore that he was reading it to one of the most beautiful women he had seen in awhile. He had never been good at readings. His voice cracked at first, and he was sweating loads, but as he read, his voice picked up the lilt and rhythm that the poem carried with it. He became confident, manly, and was enjoying the poem thoroughly, only frustrated by the fact that it ended. Looking up from the paper he held in his hands, he saw the second dead person he had ever seen in his life, having only attended closed casket funerals, being afraid of dead things in general.
All at once, as he lay sobbing on the floor, the realization hit him. They were both smiling. Shannon, over there on his couch, Sheryll, lying in his bed, they died happily. But so painfully, or so it would appear. Then he realized he had killed them. He remembered leaving the poem in the typewriter the night before, and he realized that she must have died while he was reading the poem, both the women who had seen or heard the poem had died.
“I have to get that out of my book.” Chuck said, panicking. “It’s a fucking romance, for God’s sake.”
Chuck called his agent.
And called his agent.
And called his agent.
Laying on the floor, wondering about whether or not anyone would hear the phone ring, he began to think about the kinds of people that read romance novels. Or rather, what he thought of them. He began to think that maybe his book wouldn’t be that widely received, and maybe it wouldn’t be that big a deal. “And besides,” he said, “what percentage of people even read the forewords?”
Hanging up the phone, walking around the body that he would have to get rid of later, one way or another, he went into the bathroom and took a shower. As he sat underneath the shower, and allowed the water to wash away the tears he was shedding for the people he had killed, he decided that he couldn’t let it go to print. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself. He called the police, and they held him in custody for three days, until both of the autopsies could be performed.
He called the publisher directly, and after the three days of horrible agony, he was able to get it removed from his book. Due to his own pride, and for other’s safety from it’s harmful effect, he kept the poem in a safe under his bed. His writing became successful, and he kept meaning to destroy the poem, because of it’s danger, and because he didn’t need to read it anymore anyways.
Upon his tragic death in a skiing accident, his greatest students went through his works and composed an anthology. One of them found the poem that he had always told them about, but never let them read, and he had it put in as the first work, the greatest work, that Charles M. Erickson had ever done.
The anthology was a best-seller.