The Worst Story You’ll Ever Hear(part 2)

V.
Work was a gas station on the edge of the city limits.  I took over the cash register from the guy who worked thirds there.  He said he worked the graveyard shift because he was up anyways.  “Business sucked tonight,” Vic said.  I cracked open an energy drink and took a big gulp.  “Of course it did,” I said.  “You work thirds, Vic.”  He cracked a smile.  “God, I love it when you come in, Steve.”  His voice was gruff from chain smoking all night.  “Why’s that?” I said.  He stroked his beard, combing some piece of crust or other out of it.  “Because you remind me that my life isn’t so bad.” he said.
Vic was a fat man in his mid thirties with a thin, receding line of graying brown hair and a patchy, wiry that matched.  He was going through a quite nasty divorce.  Vic said that he went home one night about four months ago and found his wife in bed with another man.  Now, when I say in bed, I use the term loosely.  What he really saw was his wife with a ball gag in her mouth and a latex thong and spike heels on being whipped mercilessly by their neighbor, whose wife was working an extra shift at the post office so their kid could go to college.  Vic said that his problem with the whole ordeal was the fact that his wife was cheating on him with someone who was older than him.  He said he’d be able to understand if it were a fit, young guy in his twenties with a giant schlong and ripped abs, but not some saggy balled 45 year old dude.
The shittiest thing about him saying his life wasn’t so bad when he compared it to mine was that it was true.
I went outside and smoked a cigarette with Vic.  He got in his car and left, and I went inside.  I finished my energy drink and leaned on the counter.  Twenty of the longest minutes of my life passed before I had my first customer.  Early mornings like this, most people just bought a paper or smokes or coffee.  They don’t want to talk about the president or gas prices or goddamn football.  They’re not like the customers who come in on the last three hours of my shift.  Ever since Rosalyn broke me the way she did, all I want is for people to shut the fuck up.  I used to be such a nice guy, too.
I got off work at three in the afternoon.  Chugging the last of my third energy drink, I lit a cigarette and started working towards my car.  There was no love lost between Rebecca and me.  She worked afternoons, and had a nice, normal little life.  The fact that she was one of Cassandra’s best friends didn’t help matters.  On the occasion I tried to talk to her, she usually just flipped me off.  If she was in a good mood.
I decided to go to my friend Ronny’s house after work.  He was sitting in his living room drinking a beer and playing video games.  Ronny hadn’t worked since he got hurt on site at his old construction job last year.  Workman’s comp had set him up pretty cheery.  It’s the least they could do for the poor sod.  Ronny had been working on a bridge construction job, welding aluminum pans into place along the L beams when the generator that was attached to his welder exploded.  To start things off, he was electrocuted from the short that ran through the wire.  The heat of the electricity had melted the welder to his hand.  It took several surgeries to fix, and by fix I mean the doctors did just enough that he didn’t have to have his hand cut off.  The explosion from the generator had thrown shrapnel everywhere.  A few of the other workers had caught some small pieces, but Ronny got the worst of it.  The left side of his face was all fucked up from scar tissue.  He had bald spots on his scalp where hair wouldn’t grow anymore because of the damage done to the hair follicles.   He had a twitch in his neck now.  The shrapnel that hit his left arm had ruined the sleeve tattoo he had.  It was such a beautiful piece, too.  Much better than my own shitty murals spread on my arms and chest.  Ronny had sunk at least fifteen hundred dollars into that arm.  And now it looked like nothing like the gothic artwork he’d meticulously worked on with his tattoo artist.  Now it just looked like scorched skin.  That was the part that pissed Ronny off the most about the whole incident.  He always had a positive disposition about it though.  At least it didn’t fuck up my jerking off hand, he’d always say.
I let myself in through the back door and grabbed a beer from the fridge.  “Hey, man,” Ronny said.  “You got any smokes?”  I tossed him my pack from my jacket pocket.  He lit one and threw the pack onto the chair he was leaning against.  “Thanks,” he said.  I helped myself to one as well.  “Fuckin’ Alexis called here a few times today, man.”  Fuck.  I’d totally forgotten that I was supposed to call her. Oh well.  I’d take care of it later.  I took a swig of beer and watched as he played.  He was pulling some old lady out of her car.  He took out a baseball bat and promptly beat the old woman to death with it, then took the little cartoon stacks of money that popped up from her bloody corpse.  Then he got in the car and drove off at break neck pace in rush hour traffic.  “So what’s goin’ on?”  He asked.  I grunted, waving my hand in front of my face nonchalantly.  “Fucking work,” I said.  Ronny worked the controller awkwardly with his deformed left hand groping at one of the joysticks and his right doing all the real work.  “Getting some new ink done?” I said, motioning towards the fresh work on his right arm.  It was the outline of a half sleeve on his right arm.  Ronny had never bothered getting any corrective work done on his left.  The scar tissue wouldn’t have held the ink, anyways.  “Yeah,” he said.  “It’s gonna be the Tree of Life.  Like, you know, from Celtic myth.”  Ronny was as Irish as his great grandfather, who had stepped off the boat into America in the twenties sometime.  “Cool,” I said.  Ronny looked back at me for the first time since I’d walked in the door.  “Jesus, dude, you look like hell.”
“Yeah,” I said.  “Long fucking day at work.”
“It shows.  Anything exciting happen?”
“Does it ever?”  I crushed the beer can and tossed it in the trashcan sitting next to the chair.  Ronny was running over pedestrians at a crowded outdoor mall.  He hopped out of the car and collected all the little cartoon money, then got back into the car and drove off.  I went and grabbed a couple more beers from the fridge.  Ronny had switched games while I was in the kitchen.  Now he was on an alien planet, blowing away cosmic bad guys.  He used a chain saw to cut one’s head off.  I tossed him a beer.  “Thanks,” he said.  He caught it with his good hand, which allowed for the alien scum to start blasting him.  “Oh, fuck, fucking shit!” he said.  He grasped the controller and started blasting away, throwing grenades and hacking with his chainsaw, but all to no avail.  The aliens tackled him to the ground and started sucking his brains out.  “Christ,” he muttered.  He reached up with his mangled hand and switched the game system off.  Ronny cracked open his beer and took a healthy gulp of it.  “So what time’d you start drinking today?” I asked.
“About noon,” he said.
“Right on, right on,” I said.  He smiled and stood up, helping himself to another of my cigarettes.  I did the same.  “So, I take it Nicole’s not going to be coming by today, then?”  I asked.
“Nah.  She’s got some shit she’s doin’ with her mom today for her birthday,” he said.
“Wait, Nicole’s or her mom’s?”
“Her mom’s.  They went to Michigan to some fuckin’ spa or some shit.”
“Sounds like a bitching good time,” I said.  He grunted and took another drink of beer.  We walked out into his back yard and sat on the patio, smoking and drinking beers.  Ronny had always done right by me, but I didn’t feel like he deserved to have my problems dumped on him, just the same.  “You must be sweating up a fuckin’ storm, man,” he said to me.  I hadn’t realized my coat was still on.  I was still coming down from the smack, so I didn’t really notice the heat of the day.  “Nah, man,” I replied.  “I’ve been feeling kinda sick the last couple of days.”  Ronny nodded.  I stayed and had a few more beers, then left around six o’clock.
VI
On the drive home, I started feeling the beers.  It wasn’t enough to make me a danger to anyone.  It was just enough to get my mind wandering.  I started thinking about the video game Ronny had been playing, where he was running people over at a shopping mall and beating old ladies to death for their stacks of cartoon cash.  I lit a cigarette.  It’s a sad realization of our culture.  We are more free within the constructs we make than in the real world.  Trapping ourselves in the four walls of our houses, we can go anywhere we want.  We can commit any sort of atrocities against little pixels on our television screens and no one bats an eye.  We can turn on the television and travel to anywhere on the planet.  We can go to the crowded streets of Los Angeles to track down murderers, or we can go on solitary trips to the Sahara or the Amazon.  In the real world, trips like that take loads of schooling and cash.  We’re self contained prisons, and it’s not even because we’re afraid of the consequences of real life; it’s because real life is just too damned expensive.  A fifty dollar video game or a life sentence?  A twelve hundred dollar television or eighty thousand dollars worth of college?
I pulled into the parking lot of my apartment complex and got out of the car.  Alexis’ car wasn’t anywhere in the parking lot.  I shrugged and went upstairs.  I unlocked the door and went inside.  There was a note on the counter from Alexis.  “Went to work early today.  Leftovers in the fridge,” it read.  She’d signed it.   I tossed the note into the garbage, which was full.  The note slid off of a paper plate and onto the ground next to the trash.  I sighed and tied the garbage bag off and took it out of the trash can.  I walked the trash out to the dumpster in the parking lot and threw it in.  It, too, was overflowing.  Like a miniature version of the apartment complex itself; stuffed to the brink with shit.
When I went back into the apartment, the phone was ringing.  I took it off the hook and answered, “Hello?”
“Yes, he..hello? Is Alex there?” the voice on the other end was shaky.
“No, she isn’t.  Can I take a message?”
“Does she have a cell phone?” the voice asked.
“She does,” I said, “but I’m not going to give it out to some dude on the phone.”
“It’s Jason.  Is this her roommate?”
“I thought you couldn’t take her shit anymore, Jason,” I said.  I swear to God, if smirks could transmit via telephone, mine would have been a yell.
“Look, man, you were real fucked up last night, and I was drunk, and I just…I don’t know man. But you’re alive at least, so does that mean she has to keep taking care of you?”  And his would have been a cut on the hand.
“Fuck you, man,” I said.
“Look, listen, just tell her-”
“No, you listen, fuck stick.  Alexis thought you were nice, but I see through  you.”  There was an awkward pause.  Somehow this was running more smoothly in my head.
“Whatever, junky,” he said.
“Don’t call here anymore.”  He started saying something else, but I hung up the phone.  A few seconds later it started ringing again, and I ignored it.  I went for a cigarette and found the box empty in my pocket.  I went to my room to get a new one out of the carton on my dresser.  Jason’s voice was shouting something over the answering machine.  I went to the phone and picked it up and promptly hung it up, then disconnected it from the wall.  I didn’t bother listening to the half-message he’d left, just erased it.  Why had I just done that?  Alexis didn’t need protecting.  She was an adult, fully capable of making her own decisions.  I rubbed my forehead and sank back into our shitty couch.  The springs creaked in defiance.  The heater in the apartment clicked on.  Sitting there in the dark in our cramped little apartment, my thoughts drifted.  Alexis would be getting off work in a few hours.  I didn’t know what she had planned for the night.  I didn’t really care, either.  Not really.  I went to the fridge and took out a beer.  There isn’t ever anything worth doing in this city, anyways.   I gulped the entire beer down and grabbed another.  This is how it’s going to start, I thought.  I don’t necessarily have a Zen-like view into my own soul, but I know myself.  And at that moment, I knew myself well enough to know that another bout of depression was imminent.

VII.
They always start the same.  Round One:  Three or four beers, then two cigarettes.  Take a step out onto the balcony and watch the traffic on the highway passing by our apartment.  Think about everything that’s gone wrong in your life.  The failed adulthood.  The fact that you’re living with someone you can vaguely call a friend that you fuck occasionally when you’re feeling down, but not this down.  Drink a beer.  Think about how the only girl you’ve ever loved is not only marrying someone else, but the fact that she doesn’t even really love you.  Smoke a cigarette.  Think about how she doesn’t call you anymore, and the only contact the two of  you have is when you call her drunk and leave a voicemail she probably doesn’t even listen to.  Drink another beer.  She probably doesn’t even like you anymore.  Probably she forgot your fucking name.  Have a beer.  Now go inside and put on a play list of your most depressing songs.  Make sure it’s dark in your apartment.  Smoke a cigarette.  Turn it up fucking loud so you don’t have to hear yourself think about how her boyfriend’s probably railing her right now.  He’s probably got her held up against the wall of their apartment, or maybe on their bed or couch.  Think about jumping.  Chicken out.  Then have a beer.  Had enough yet?  Well, we’re just getting started.
Round Two:  Now think about how she probably tells him that she loves him every day, before he leaves for work.  To his good job.  To his career.  Think about how she cooks for him, and how she doesn’t have to worry about working because he’s pulling down a respectable salary.  Smoke a cigarette.  Drink a beer.  Think about how he’s a college graduate and played football and baseball and was on the student government.  Think about how handsome he is.  Think about how charismatic he is.  Drink a beer.  Think about how if it weren’t for the girl you’re in love with being in love with him, he’d probably be a guy you could sit down and have a beer with.  Speaking of which, have yourself a beer.  Smoke a cigarette.  Think about how she’s probably not even in love with him, but in love with what he represents.  Think about how much she’s always valued stability and reliability and trustworthiness and honor.  Think about how unstable and unreliable and untrustworthy and dishonorable you are.  Drink another beer.  If you’re keeping count of the beers you’ve had, you haven’t had enough.  You should be fucking numb by now, but it’s not enough.    Go get your cell phone and call her.  Leave a message.  Drink a beer.
Round Three:  Now go to your bedroom.  You may have to crawl to get there, it’s alright.  It’s of dire importance that you have a cigarette right now.  And a beer.  Open the top drawer of your dresser, where you keep your heroin.  Carefully remove your underwear until you get to…right where you…where the fuck is your stash?
VIII.
Okay, so this wasn’t part of the game.  I’d torn everything out of my top drawer, and it wasn’t there.  I know I had some junk left.  I sat on my bed, sifting through underwear and undershirts.  Even if I didn’t have any smack left over from last night’s binge, I knew damn well there were some needles in here.  The cigarette hanging from my lips was scattering ashes all over my bed.  No matter; my whole room was a mess.  I threw everything off my bed, starting to sift through the rubbish on the floor.  Nothing.  I took the drawers out of my dresser, one by one, and dumped them out, sifting through their contents.  No heroin.  I flipped the dresser itself over, looking underneath it in a drunken stupor-turning-to-rage.  Nothing.  Fuck.  Fuck, fuck, fuck!  I started ripping through my closet, tearing clothes down off their hangers.  Ratty old jeans, faded and torn shirts.  No luck there, either.  I slammed my fist into the wall of my closet, and the cheap drywall gave way.  I didn’t expect it to, and as my fist lunged forward, I lost my balance and toppled into my closet, sliding down the wall like drool on a baby’s face.  After a minute, I pulled myself back onto the floor of my room and just laid there, breathing heavy.  Guess I was just going to have to go on the beers for tonight.  About that time, I heard Alexis say, “I threw it out.”
“You what?” I said.  My words were heavily slurred.
“Your stash.  I threw it out,” she said.
“Well, why?” I asked.  But I already knew.
“I was worried about you,” she said.  She didn’t move from the doorway, just stood there, leaning on the wall with her arms crossed.  I sat up and threw my arms in the air.  “What the hell’s there to worry about?  I’m havin’ a party here!” I said.
“A party?  Where’s everyone else, Stephen?”
“It’s a party of one,” I said.   I reached for my cigarettes.  If I weren’t so drunk, I’d have been able to see the genuine concern on Alexis’ face.  As it stood, I could barely see the damn wall in front of me.  Then Alexis was helping me up, we stopped by the bathroom.  My stomach was churning, and my face must have given it away, because Alexis opened the door.  I stumbled in and unleashed the beer I’d been drinking over the past several hours into the toilet.  It was then that I noticed I hadn’t eaten that day.  When you binge drink, things like food and general health slip your mind.  I flushed the toilet and stumbled back out into the hallway, where Alexis helped me into her bed.  “Listen, Alexis,” I slurred, “I really don’t think I can-”  She touched her finger to my lips.
“I know,” she said.  The room was spinning.  I propped myself up on my elbows in her bed.  “You need to rest,” she said.  “Are you actually trying to kill yourself?” she asked.  I looked at her, head swimming.  She ran one of her hands through my hair.  Her maternal instincts must have kicked in.  Hello, my name is Stephen, and I’m a fucking child.  She laid my head back on the pillow, and I passed out.