Death Sucks

by Andrew Mallen

  She’s playing hard ball.

  “What the fuck?”

  “If you can’t or won’t I’ll find someone who will Bobby,” she wasn’t bluffing, her eyes backed up her words.

  “You can’t! That’s not fair,” Bobby sounded pitiful but didn’t care.

  “I can and I will. You’re not leaving me much of a choice,” Maria snapped.

  She was getting angry. It was subtle, a deepening in her voice while her words came quicker, but Bobby heard it, he had learned to read her like a book. “Maria, listen…”

  “No,” she cut him off.

  “You won’t listen?”

  “No.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes you’ll listen or yes you won’t?”

  “Don’t play games with me Bobby! Man up!”

  Bobby felt like he’d been gut punched by Brock Lesnar, “Did you just tell me to man up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow.”

  “Someone had to.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yes or no?”

  “What?”

  “Yes or no?”

  I’ve never seen her so rigid, so obstinate. She’s not going to fold, not this time. If I don’t do this, she’ll find some other Reaper who’ll be more than happy to. They could torture her. They might make her scream.

  “Fuck!” he roared.

  Maria stepped back involuntarily at the outburst.

  “Sorry…I just…sorry,” he moaned and reached out with one trembling hand.

  “It’s okay. How do you want me to stand?”

  “I don’t know,” Bobby replied.

  He wasn’t ready. He’d been so busy trying to figure out a way not to do it and hadn’t even considered the actual method to the madness.

  Maria smiled kindly at him as she waited.

  “Stop that,” Bobby grumbled.

  “What?”

  “Smiling.”

  “Oh,” she said and dropped her head to study the muck between her feet.

  Bobby hated himself. He hated his weakness. If he told her how he felt about her then maybe she wouldn’t want to go, maybe she would stay and they could live out the rest of Roger’s life together.

  No! Stop fucking thinking about yourself all the time! Man up like the lady said. Do the right thing for once in your pathetic existence. Look at her, she’s doing what needs to be done. She’s scared, she’s fucking terrified but she’s doing it anyway. Man the fuck up Bobby! She’s an Angel. She deserves better. She belongs in Heaven, not slumming around the Boogie with a Reaper and two social rejects. Man the fuck up shithead! Grow a set!

  “Ok!”

  Maria looked up, her face as pale and stiff as a mannequin’s. “Ready?”

  “No but I’ll do it,” Bobby griped.

  “So I’ll just stand here?” Maria asked, her voice cracking under the strain of her fear.

  “I’m going to need you to turn around though,” Bobby replied.

  Maria began to shudder as her courage waned. She looked at him with wide, heartbreaking eyes. “Bobby?”

  If I call it off right now she wouldn’t argue.

  “Yeah?” he replied.

  “I’m scared.”

  “Me too.”

  “You believe me right?”

  “About what?”

  “That I’ll find you?”

  You better.

  “I believe you,” Bobby replied quickly, he did.

  “Good. I…this isn’t goodbye.”

  “I ain’t saying goodbye girl,” he agreed.

  “Okay,” she said, a weak smile curled her quivering lips.

  “Okay.”

  He loved her so much. She was everything he never knew he wanted and more. Maria turned her back on him. Bobby didn’t hesitate. He couldn’t. If he did he’d find some other sorry excuse to delay.

  I really fucking love you Maria Sinclair.

  Hoisting his scythe over his shoulder like Jeter waiting on a slow curveball, Bobby aimed and swung with as much power as he could. Fueled by love and self-loathing, the blade sliced through the freezing rain, the driving wind and the delicate neck of an Angel with merciful precision. Bobby closed his eyes as Maria’s head tilted and rolled from her crumbling body. She blinked out of existence before either reached the floor. The telltale flash burned through his clinched eyelids. Bobby howled.

  Dead, alive or in between, he’d never felt such pain. Crushing guilt, stifling regret and spiraling fear assaulted him. His knees buckled and he collapsed then rolled onto his back among the broken glass and cigarette butts discarded by the endless stream of passing cars. Arms wide, his face exposed to the chaotic sky, Bobby roared, purging the pain with his scream. He was as close to madness as he’d ever been yet despite its appeal he would not let it have him. He could not let it have him. When Maria returned he’d be waiting for her and he’d tell her what he should have told her a very long time ago.

  Sure you will.

  *

  The ambulance roared to life snapping Bobby back to his reality. The dual axle’s four tires spun before grabbing hold, giving him the time he needed to dive through the doors and into the sterile cube.

  “Pedestrian struck, White Plains Road and Randall Avenue. Please respond?” the radio squawked.

  “85 on it, three minutes out,” Lenny answered as Roger wrenched the powerful rig onto the asphalt and gunned the motor.

  Bobby sat on what he thought of as Maria’s bench as they bounced along the potholed streets. He wanted to curl up and go to sleep, to close his tired eyes and make it all go away. He hadn’t realized just how tired he was until that moment.

  A few years without sleep will do that to ya dude. Sleep’s a luxury of the living. Fuck the living! Fuck it all!

  Anger was easier to deal with than sadness.

  “On scene,” Lenny chirped into the microphone while reaching for the door handle before the wagon screeched to an unnecessarily dramatic stop.

  “Hey asshole, why don’t you take it easy on the breaks? You ain’t Vin Fucking Diesel!” Bobby roared.

  Roger looked over his shoulder with a frown of confusion as Lenny threw himself out of the cab. “Okay back there?” he asked when his partner was out of earshot.

  “Oh, now you ask you silly fat fuck!” Bobby shouted. “Now you give a fuck!”

  Roger craned his neck, he’d heard something.

  “That’s right chubs, you can hear me. Hear this! Fuck you! Fuck you and your little friend! Fuck this whole fucking world, the universe and everyone in it!”

  Lenny pulled open the back doors, grabbed the crash bag and looked up at Roger who sat staring at nothing. “What’s up dude?” he asked.

  “Nada,” Roger lied knowing something was.

  “Then get off your ass, we got a bleeder,” Lenny snapped.

  Roger did as his partner ordered, he got moving.

  14.

  Life and death went on. Day after day and night after night, Bobby was the invisible third wheel in Lenny and Roger’s life. He eventually overcame his self-loathing and settled into a brooding, lonely despair. When he wasn’t worrying about when and if Maria was ever coming back, he longingly recalled their time together. The memories were all he had to hold on to all he had to keep him going.

  Winter reluctantly gave way to spring. Spring embraced summer and Bobby’s fear grew bigger and bolder with every passing moment of every hour of every day. Lenny and Roger’s happiness only made it worse. Seeing it, living in its shadow, soured him with jealousy.

  It had been coming for a long time. Everybody knew it, everyone felt it except for the two fools it involved. After a marathon session of Ghost Recon that ate up nearly twenty hours of their forty-eight hours weekend, Lenny and Roger sat eating cold pizza at the kitchen table as the sun rose.

  “Those two dudes from Chicago really knew how to roll,” Lenny said, thrilled to have finally found two worthy teammates to complete their four-man
squad.

  “Yeah, StinkyFarts88 can really rock the fifty cal,” Roger was just as stoked.

  “Nutz4Gutz is nearly as good as you with the sniper rifle.”

  Nobody messed with Roger’s long distance skills, “Bullshit!”

  “You see how he popped heads in the desert assault?” Lenny loved teasing him.

  “I could’ve done that shit. His head shot ratio is nowhere near mine,” Roger growled and stood up to get something from the fridge.

  “Maybe?” Lenny realized he’d pushed his friend too far and backed off.

  “Want one?” Roger asked from in front of the fridge that bathed him in its blue LED light as he popped open a Mountain Dew.

  “Nah,” Lenny cleared the table and carried the trash into the kitchen to dump it in the cabinet that housed the trashcan beside the fridge.

  Swinging the fridge door closed Roger came face to face with Lenny. Their chests were almost touching and their shocked eyes less than a foot apart. “Oh…sorry,” Lenny stammered as his face flushed.

  “Ah…awkward,” Roger smiled nervously.

  Lenny’s heart beat as if war were on the horizon. Roger’s breath hitched and he struggled to control it. Lenny reached across the tense void and gently took Rogers trembling hand in his own. Their eyes widened at the touch and hearts skipped like a flat stones on a still pond.

  “Dude?” Roger whispered in an uneasy blend of confusion, fear and excitement.

  “I…I don’t know if this is right?” Lenny stuttered in the same conflicted tone.

  Roger’s mind reeled. Lenny’s touch, his closeness, it felt so real. It felt so wonderful.

  “Holy shit! Just kiss him already!” Bobby screamed from his front-row seat on the kitchen’s small island.

  “I don’t think I’m gay,” Roger said almost in disappointment.

  “I know Rog but…but…” Lenny couldn’t find the words to explain what he felt inside.

  “It’s just…we’re friends and I don’t want to mess that up, ya’know?”

  “Me neither,” Lenny agreed but inched closer anyway.

  “Lenny?” Roger didn’t retreat.

  “I think I love you bro,” Lenny finally confessed what he’d been feeling for what seemed like forever.

  “What?” Roger’s heart tripled its cadence, his mind back flipping, his head tilting invitingly.

  Lenny pressed his chest against Roger’s as his warm pizza scented breath washed over him. “Lenny?” Roger asked not expecting an answer.

  Lenny leaned in while rising up on his toes to match his best friend’s height. Roger closed his eyes and waited. Lenny breathed deep and followed his heart. They touched lips. Roger’s heart erupted in pure delight. The warmth, the thrill, the passion he’d been waiting for his entire life to discover had been hiding right beside him in plain sight. All the years of loneliness, rejection and sadness was washed away in the space of a moment with one simple kiss.

  Lenny pressed into the big man even harder. Fireworks exploded in his head, his body tingled and his heart sung. He did what he’d been so afraid of at last. It wasn’t romantic and it wasn’t fancy but it was perfect. It was nothing like he thought it would be and nothing like the multitude of fairytale scenarios he dreamed up but it was exactly what it was supposed to be.

  The kiss intensified, breathing shortened, hands caressed and tongues danced.

  “Dude!” Roger pushed back suddenly, wiping at his lips with the back of one shaky hand.

  “Rog?” Lenny struggled to catch his breath.

  “Dude, this is crazy.” He couldn’t look at his roomie.

  “Why?” Lenny had the same argument internally a thousand times and had yet to find a reason to ignore the feelings that haunted his every waking hour.

  “We’re not gay…I mean I’m not gay, but…” Roger shook his head as if it were a magic eight ball and whatever answer it gave would solve everything.

  “But what Rog?”

  “I never looked at guys like, ya’know, like that.”

  “Okay,” Lenny replied with a shrug.

  “So why did you kiss me dude?”

  “Same reason you let me Rog.”

  Roger saw Lenny, he really saw him. A vulnerable young man with a huge heart, risking everything they had for what he felt. He was always so brave, always doing the right thing and always being the person Roger wanted to be. Lenny was a guy and Roger wasn’t gay but there was no way to deny what he just felt, what he’d been feeling for a long time. He’d been kissed before but never felt such power, such complete, intoxicating, all-encompassing fulfillment. “Lenny, it felt…I don’t know, ya’know?” he tried to explain what he couldn’t understand.

  Come on Roger! You can’t be that stupid!

  Bobby wanted to reach out and slap the living shit out of Roger. Even he felt the electricity when they’d kissed and he was dead. It was like that scene in every chick-flick where the entire audience goes ‘Aww’ but Roger still had his blinders on. “Dude go for it!” he screamed as loud as he could.

  Roger looked around the kitchen uncomfortably.

  He’s ashamed because I’m here. No way Roger, don’t be a fool, love is love dude.

  “It felt right,” Lenny finished Roger’s thought.

  Roger nodded. Lenny was right, nothing had ever felt so right. Lenny held out his hand and Roger took it in his own without hesitation. They stepped closer simultaneously. Roger’s free hand cupped the side of Lenny’s neck. Lenny shivered and closed his eyes as Roger leaned down and pressed his lips firmly onto Lenny’s. They kissed long and hard, the long imprisoned passion inside each of them liberated in a torrent of desire. Groping and gasping, whispering and encouraging, the two men wrestled each other up the stairs and into Lenny’s bedroom with all the grace of a blind, four-legged, sex-crazed monster and slammed the door behind them.

  “Definitely a Hallmark moment,” Bobby chuckled as he slid from the counter. “Wish you were here to see our boy now Maria Sinclair.”

  Their poor, sad, lonely Roger had found love at last. He’d come a long way since they found him on the beach in Queens. Bobby felt like a proud parent on his only son’s wedding and wished, more than anything, that his fellow parent was there to enjoy it alongside him. Bobby knew she’d be delighted for them. She’d clap and dance and smile and cheer. He’d love to see it. He missed her so damn much.

  *

  The grunting intensified upstairs. Bobby felt like a first class perv and hurried into the game room, dropped his hood, grabbed a pair of headphones, powered up the PS4 Pro and dropped into an online battle to free Paris from the Nazis.

  Shit’s going to get real uncomfortable around here if these two go all fifty shades on me. Wherever you are girl, hurry the fuck up please.

  He smiled thinking about how mad she’d get when he dropped the f-bomb. Death wasn’t the same without her.

  *

  “Am I going to Hell now?” Roger asked, as serious as a heart attack.

  “Catholic right,” Bobby replied, it wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah?” Roger didn’t get it.

  “Being gay isn’t a sin dude,” Bobby wanted to hug the big, guilt riddled idiot.

  “But when I was in Sunday school they said…” Roger began to explain the warped thinking forced upon him as a kid.

  “All bullshit bro. Nobody ever ended up in hell for loving someone who loved them back. I’m no preacher or nothing but I do believe you are who you are because you were made that way, right?”

  Roger nodded unconvincingly.

  “So, if you’re you and God made you then you being gay is what he wanted.”

  Another cautious nod.

  “White people don’t go to hell for being white,” Bobby laid out his philosophy as simply as he could. “A guy isn’t going to Hell for being a guy or a chick for being a chick. We are who we were made to be Roger. If you dig dudes, then dig dudes. If it’s who you are, it can’t be wrong bro.”

  “
You make it sound easy,” Roger said and stood a little taller, Bobby’s words sounded far more logical than any of the brimstone and fire crap he’d learned in church as a boy.

  “K.I.S.S.”

  “What?”

  “It’s an AA slogan, right?”

  “Oh yeah, keep it simple stupid,” Roger said with pride.

  “That last ‘s’ is the key, especially in your case,” Bobby took a shot to break the tension.

  “Easy there deadman,” Roger snapped with a smile. “So no biggie then?”

  “No biggie as far as Hell goes but holy shit dude, about fucking time!”

  “You know you’re supposed to be the bad guy right? Big scary weapon, spooky outfit, dead and all pale and stuff, ya’know?”

  “They messed up in HR,” Bobby loved that one.

  “Ha! Always blame management,” Roger did too.

  “Where’s Lenny?” Bobby probably should have asked that first considering he was just hanging out, playing video games with his hood down.

  “Out like a light. I wore him out,” Roger boasted.

  “Dude, TMI! Let’s keep that to a minimum.”

  “I thought you were all open and progressive and stuff?”

  “Yeah but I don’t go around watching gay porn just because it doesn’t freak me out,” Bobby explained. “I still don’t want to see man junk.”

  “No worries dude but if we…if this…well, ya’know, I can’t guarantee we won’t do stuff,” Roger blushed.

  “Hey, it’s all good. Your place, I’m just a guest right? Maybe just pick up some wireless headphones and leave your iPad in your room so that I have somewhere to hideout when things get heated,” Bobby figured it wasn’t too much to ask for.

  “Ya, sure, no problem,” Roger agreed enthusiastically, the idea of privacy was priceless.

  “Thanks,” Bobby was truly grateful to have an escape plan.

  “Any news on our girl?”

  “Nope,” Bobby replied, his mood crashing.

  Roger saw the pain the question caused and tried to stop it, “She’ll come back.”

  “Hope so dude, for both of our sake.” Bobby’s doubts were growing stronger with age.

  15.