Young Writers Society

A/N: Here's an old story of mine I decided to clean up and share. As it's old, I have the sensation it will have a few tense issues, but I did proof-read this. However, it's one of my few pieces of realistic fiction, so I figured I'd share it.

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The group of guys had gathered around the dining room table. It was a three-legged table with a jagged-cut broom filling in for the fourth leg. There was dust over every surface in the house, a stack of pizza boxes and Chinese take-out containers, and the floor would turn the soles of your feet black. I assumed that was true even on the shag carpet here in the living room.

The guys around the table were playing cards. I wasn’t sure which game. I was never a gambler or much of a card player. I could beat cheaters without quite knowing the rules, but I never liked it. So I sat on the couch, across from the heavily intoxicated man in the armchair. He had bleached tips to his hair, a nose ring, and drool dripping onto the front of his shirt. The armchair looked like it had been picked up off the side of the road. Arnie had complained about mice over the phone. I’d been sympathetic. Now? I understood. If I was a mouse, I’d totally live in Arnie’s dump of a shotgun house.

Then again, how many versions of shotgun houses were there? I shouldn’t be surprised. I grew up in one. I should’ve taken one look at the swept yard outside and known I was in for quite a treat. I assumed it had never been swept, going by the six foot tall weed by the mailbox and the broken toy truck. There weren’t any children in this house and never had been. To the left of Arnie’s house there was a dead house’s foundation and grass three feet high and to the right there was a house that had narrowly avoided being burnt to the ground. Vacant.

Then again, the whole neighborhood felt like it was vacant. It always had. I hadn’t seen a soul, just a small army of skeletal stray cats that came up to me and mewed, a sound near to a death rattle.

I’d dropped the remains of my bag of chips and walked on.

It wasn’t like I carried canned cat food in my pockets.

There was a dog at Arnie’s house, though. Brindle Boxer with white feet and a stripe down its nose. Its eyes looked a bit more glazed than the intoxicated man. I had to wonder if that was caused by cataracts. I hoped it was cataracts. Otherwise? I wished my apartment took pets. I always wished that. Now more so.

The three dead goldfish slowly rotting in a bowl on the kitchen counter by the dead English Ivy plant and bag of nacho cheese chips made me wonder how long the Boxer had.

By the time the kudzu and weeds died outside and the humidity didn’t make one feel after a five minute walk like a condensation ring on a table left by a glass of ice water , I assumed the Boxer would be another thing buried in Arnie’s backyard.

I assumed archaeologists would someday find Arnie’s backyard and have a field day. Then again, it would be the police to come first, wouldn’t it? Some future owner of the house might dig about to plant a flower bed, pool, or something else nice and find a burial ground. The next action they would take would probably be dropping an emergency call.

I heard Arnie let out a loud “Yes!” and heard the sound of someone jump. I turned my head, taking my mouth away from the neck of the beer bottle I’d had pressed to my face, cold enough to maybe help with the bruising goddamn Mickey Taylor had thought nice to leave as a goodbye present, and notice Arnie seemed to be raking in chips.

He’s winning. It isn’t surprising. The house always wins. Isn’t that the saying? I shook my head. I placed down my beer bottle on the coffee table, littered as it was with food-related rubbish, and stood up. I walked over to the game table, stepping over the red-lipped blonde sprawled out on the carpet, vomit trickling out her mouth but back still moving up and down with breath, and stood beside Frank, one of Arnie’s closer friends.

We were best friends, Arnie and I. Two years ago. Not so much anymore. But I still come to parties. I’m not sure why. I suppose to make sure he doesn’t choke on his own vomit. It’s like I owe it to him. I’m not sure if I owe him anything anymore, but I come all the same.

Arnie was--maybe is--a golden boy. That blonde was probably his date. Arnie could be a male model, I knew. He could’ve done anything if he’d had a few more brains cells and hadn’t killed off almost all the rest with alcohol and drugs. Then again, his father died face-first in a ditch. His grandfather died of liver failure. His great-grandfather died of lung cancer, smoked a cigarette every day from the age of thirteen to fifty-six when he dropped stone cold dead. Arnie had talked about that. About how his family had been German and had to be careful not to be tossed into any sort of camp during World War Two. He’d talked about his mother and how she’d cried at the drop of a hat. How Arnie, during fourth grade, had been shaken down for cash once a week by Toby Richards for the entire year and no one had done anything about it. Arnie once had a little sister, Theresa, before she died in a car crash three years ago, and had an orange kitten named Morris that died of FIV when Arnie was ten.

Arnie could’ve done something. Now he was a piss poor mechanic that got by on thinly veiled trickery and luck and got blitzed on the weekends. I assumed he’d be dead before he turned thirty.

He was twenty-two-years-old.

I was beginning to wonder if I should knock the number down to twenty-five.

I was beginning to wonder if I should drag him into some place that made PSAs and let him be their poster child. Say, “Look. Here’s an alcoholic junkie who spends most of his money on beer, cheap vodka, and cocaine. Take him around schools to terrify kids for a bit and then bathe him and return him when he’s sober. Thanks.”

But I didn’t do that. I continued to stand by Frank, beefy Frank with the red face and throat and shiny black hair and eyes glazed worse than the Boxer. I was pretty sure Frank was losing. He was swearing, I thought. I wasn’t sure. It was incomprehensible.

Arnie won because he could hardly get drunk anymore. It took a lot. I’d counted what he drank when we were kids, sixteen or seventeen, and what he drunk now.

He should be dead of alcohol poisoning by now.

I looked around the house then. I looked at the intoxicated man; the passed out woman; that other woman, the brunette, by the dead potted tree by the door; at the Boxer; at the dead goldfish a few feet away in the kitchen; at the way Arnie Frank, Denny, Ears, Earl, and Bill were almost falling to the ground now, laughing about something I probably wouldn’t find funny. Arnie is tearing up and that dip between his collarbones is scarlet red.

I run a hand through my hair. I’ve cut it at about an inch with my new job, and over my face--smooth for the same reason, the new job--and think of my decent apartment. I think of how I clean the bathroom once a week and shower every other day and how whenever I have neighbors or coworkers over, they always compliment my home. I think of how all these guys would think of me if I came in my suit, or if I ever let them know where exactly I live. They’d probably beat me up, far worse than the lucky shot Mickey got before I made him piss his pants--I hadn’t lost my touch--and how I wasn’t sure I didn’t quite deserve it.

They were living the life I’d clawed my hardest to get out of, not caring who I scarred up in the process. I realized that, yes, I did owe Arnie something.

Keeping him alive. It would continue to be my side job.

Even though as I looked around his place, all I wanted to do was yell at everyone to get out, shoo the Boxer out, and then set fire to the place.

Instead, I casually bump into the false table leg, sending the entire table crashing to the ground, and apologize profusely. One of the guys grabs me by the collar of a shirt I only wear to this side of town, but Arnie tells him it’s okay. They split the money equal with Arnie’s charisma in full use, and then Arnie’s friends leave.

“I guess I’ll sleep then. Nothing else to do. Television’s busted.” Arnie gives me a look, hands in his pockets, and I can tell he knows I ruined the game completely on purpose.

“Sounds good,” I said.

“This can’t keep happening, Tony.”

I looked around and then looked back at him. He has the self respect to look at his shoes. And, yes, he wears his shoes indoors. Because how could anything tracked in make the house any worse?

What, bar me being beaten to death in his home, could’ve made tonight any worse? I thought it for a brief second, then realized I could name ten other things.

So I plastered on a fake smile, patted Arnie on the arm, and told him goodnight, I’d see him again maybe the weekend after next because I had to be in Florida for a meeting, reminded him to give his dog water, and then I left.

I hoped he wouldn’t find a way to die in a fortnight.

And, God, if that didn’t remind me of all those fantasy books we poured over, sprawled in his bedroom, painting our own reality while everyone and everything suffered around us.

I thought we’d both get out.

When I startup my car, parked in front of the church down the street a bit, I have to wonder why it was I was the one who got out.

The teachers and professors and all them at school always told me it was because I applied myself. But I didn’t get a scholarship, I just stopped drinking enough to work along with attending college.

It wasn’t really an accomplishment.

It didn’t feel like it. It was almost hateful.

One girlfriend, a psych major, once told me I had survivor’s guilt, joking around. Dumped her the next day.

I noticed one of the feral cats has fallen asleep on the hood of my car and feel glued to the earth.

I thought of honking, but decided to sit for a bit, see if it moves. I wasn’t not quite sure I could drive myself home.

I ran a hand through my hair again and then closed my eyes.

Tomorrow I’ll wake up and I won’t remember. I won’t remember. I won’t remember anything before the second year of college. I’ll go to work. If anyone asks about the bruise, I’ll feign a shower accident. I’ll live like a normal person. Not like I had anything to do with the bad, bad man buried in Arnie’s backyard. Not like I wished he was dead, and Artie decided that it needed to happen. Not like what has happened to him is all my fault. Not like I probably owe him my life.