by Lee Pletzers
A smile.
The firefighter stared down in amazement. “What in the hell could make him smile like that?” he whispered in quiet wonder.
Rick felt Matt’s smile transfer to his own face, like a parting gift.
“Serenity.”
Back to TOC
It would probably be better for the society at large if our various vices only impacted US, and not affect our friends and families. As we all know, that usually isn’t the case. As seen on HBO’s “Intervention” series, a huge number of addicts would self-destruct if it weren’t for their friends and families.
But perversely, often our friends or families can be hard-partying “Enablers” that can either ‘jump-start’ our addictions, and/or cheerfully match us shot-for-shot down the left-hand path. Harry Mora now poses the question: which of you will reach the end of the road first?
THE TURNING
By Harry Louis Mora
“I WON’T WAIT FOREVER!” he screamed after her, though he was sure the sound of the engine as Jessica drove away drowned out the pathetic threat. “I will not wait forever,” he whispered again—to himself—as the first pangs of pain began their convulsive trek from his heart to his brain. He slammed the door shut as the tears reached his eyes. Better to lock himself away then let the world know he had been torn apart—for the hundredth time—after having promised himself to never let that part of him need again.
The winter had brought self-loathing, betrayal and ultimately, guilty love. The spring had been magical, a storybook romance. The summer brought squabble, a breach in the idyllic life he had led for one blissful season. It was the first hint of an underlying sickness in their relationship. It was the first hint that it would all end in tears, as it had time and time before.
However, this time he would not wait forever for her to return. He had promised himself that; just as he had promised not to let himself be dragged along, clinging to the shreds of his heart when it started to go wrong. He would end his own suffering long before the world offered to end it for him this time—and he did. So why did this unbearable pain cleave his heart and close its fist around his throat?
He cried, long, drawn-out peals of sorrow and an endless river of snot and tears. He cried until he seemed to be incapable of producing any more liquids. He cried until the sounds of his anguish would no longer come. Only then, when his ragged breath only came in stuttering gasps did he stop.
He looked at himself in the mirror—tears, snot and heartbreak plastered his face. He let the water run—
I won’t…
—he washed up—
WAIT…
—and looked at his reflection again as he smiled.
Forever!
Watching himself smile—a smile of victory, not of warmth or compassion—he felt something was different now. He’d turned, somehow, either toward something, or into something.
Wearing this mask of happy contentment, he returned to his friends. He returned to the life of hard work and harder play. “Memento” memories; that was what he and his friends had termed those drunken nights when you lost minutes, sometimes hours of your life with no memory, regret or shame.
After a while, the mask he wore for the world changed him. He grew as dark, cold, smooth and slick as the front he displayed for everyone. He smiled his mischievous grin into the mirror and patted himself on the back. How many girls had that smile bedded? How many had that look sent away crawling into the same little hell he had become master of?
He took a broken, lonely soul and remade it in crimson and black, leather and tattoos. He created a villain to resurrect the naive white knight that had fallen. He knew many women; but never fell in love with any. He would not allow himself to be hurt again. He would not allow himself to be loved again. Without realizing it, he had become something he never would have imagined.
The Flight Up Bar that night was dark, hot and alive with drunken laughter and voices. The usual assortment of jocks, sorority girls, old men and tattooed freaks wandered drunkenly around the bar, jumping from conversation to conversation.
Jason popped a few more painkillers as he downed his eighth Long Island Tea. Mike the bartender knew Jason well; he always had a strong L.I.T. waiting around 9 PM and from that point on Jason never had an empty glass in front of him. Mark, Nate, and Leo arrived an hour after Jason. Nate was already well on his way to a drunken coma before he even stepped up to the bar.
Jason wondered what drunken hilarity Nate would cause tonight. As he shook hands with everyone, he got his answer. Nate took his hand and pulled his ear in close to whisper.
“Hey, whassup, Nate?” Jason asked, slurring a bit.
“Hey, man, uh, don’t tell anyone but…I’m pissing my pants right now.” Nate smiled that Cheshire cat grin of his. Jason jumped back; he looked down and saw the stream of urine flowing down Nate’s leg, past his shorts.
The evening that followed was typical. The band started playing around 10 PM, which is when the shots would start going back and forth between Jason’s crew and them. How Rudy stayed up on stage some nights was anyone’s guess. The man had catlike balance when it came to drunken stage walking. As Jason stood on his seat with the bands’ encouragement and sang loudly along with them, he noticed the tiny redhead looking at him.
Jason started playing his game, giving the redheaded girl in the tight black skirt a glance now and then, making sure she was still looking at him. The game went on as Leo, Nate, and Mark grabbed Jason and poured the remains of a bottle of Southern Comfort down his throat. He drank the dark liquid expertly; he pulled his head away from Mark laughing and saw the redhead laughing with him.
Nate made his way to the front of the stage. Jason knew that it was almost closing time. Nate always made his way to the front to cause a minor riot just before closing. He had a built in alarm when it came to bar hours; Nate never did anything to get him or his friends kicked out of the bar until he knew it was already time to go anyway. They never left without a grand exit.
As Nate started to amp up the crowd in front of the stage, Jason made his way over to the redhead and struck up a conversation with her boyfriend.
Stephanie had been so innocent. It began with convincing her to just spend time together, talk and be friends. As she became bolder and less careful of the time she spent away from Phil, he began the seduction; the playful touching, and the whispers that were faux kisses, the wiping away of a strand of hair that became a caress of the cheek that became the real kiss.
She had known only one man before him. The lover she shared a home with for two years, Phil, always slept unaware as Jason would take her in the shadows of the yard, in the other man’s car or on the street in his own car. He would always have her somewhere close to her home, somewhere close to the man she so loved when he first met her and tried to take her out. She would go back to her bed with a smile. She was a villain now, too.
When Phil, slapped her and kicked her out of their home after she confessed, Jason just looked at her, disgusted by her actions. “Why would you fucking confess? Real villains don’t feel like they’ve done anything wrong….You were stupid to tell him!” She cried those same pitiful sobs that he remembered having cried himself what seemed a lifetime ago.
He left Stephanie at her mother’s house, weak and crying. He drove away before she even walked through the door. He was long gone before she drew the hot bath, before she swallowed her mother’s Percocet. He had driven away from her and forgotten her before she even had a chance to bleed out in her mother’s bathtub, still gripped by those painful, gasping sobs. He wouldn’t have cared if she had done it in front of him, anyway.
It was not that he was heartless. He didn’t want her to take her life. The tired, over-loving heart that once beat in his chest and drove him mad with grief, was simply worn out; bled dry by years of abuse. He could not bring himself to care for anyone, not even himself. He indulged in near-death nightly. Many a morning began with the familiar cocktail of Xanax, wine,
and Vicodin.
He felt Nate and Mark’s hands grab him roughly under the armpits; the Xanax and Bud Lite had done their trick again, creating a moment lost in chemicals forever. Jason had been back in time, thinking about the first night he met Stephanie here. That didn’t explain how he got over to this side of the bar. Why where his friends carrying him out of the bar? Who was that girl whose pants his hand had been in? The questions and answers would have to wait as they dragged him down the rickety steps to the exit of the bar, barely keeping their balance.
Leo was already in the car waiting for them. “What the fuck, guys?” Jason started as they let go of him.
Mark opened the back door and pushed him into the car. “Shut up, Bro…Leo, get us the hell outta here!” Leo hit the accelerator and peeled out of the dirt lot leaving a cloud of dust with Phil and his friends behind them. Jason didn’t know they had been out to catch him.
“Is anyone gonna tell me what the fuck is going on?” Jason blurted.
Mark started to tell him the evening’s events. “I saw that guy Phil in the bathroom and heard him and a bunch of guys talking about taking some punk out back for a boot party and then curb-jawing him. The first thing I thought of was your drunk ass. Anyway, when I get upstairs there you are swapping spit with some lil’ girl and fingerin’ her right at the bar. I grabbed Nate and we got you out of there just as these guys were walking up to kick your ass.”
“It was like the Marines doing a rescue on a downed pilot, man!” Nate couldn’t hide his excitement about the whole scene. Jason started laughing. They slowly joined him and in a few seconds, the whole car was laughing and celebrating Jason’s adventure.
Through the laughter and congratulations, something caught Jason’s attention out of the corner of an eye.
What he saw wasn’t possible.
Someone he could not have seen was walking along the street. He must’ve been feeling the effects of the Percocet cocktail he had been drinking all night.
He could not have seen that long red hair or that confident strut.
He lost himself in the song that his friends were all singing badly at the top of their lungs. Atreyu’s “The Curse” was the soundtrack of their drunk nights and not one could end without the album being played—and sung full blast—until whoever was driving was about to pass out. Tonight would be an extra long night. Mark brought along some amphetamines.
They turned onto Route 21. The light drizzle, which threatened hours ago, finally came through on its promise of rain. The skies broke open on them as they took their first turn on the squiggle that was a ten mile stretch of highway. It didn’t matter; pretty girls were bleeding mascara…and song and laughter filled the car.
Leo took the turns like a pro. They knew this road so well they could drive it home under the influence of any substance known to man, and probably had done so. They roared towards the last set of S curves that would bring them past the cemetery and into the streets of Newark.
The cemetery bordered Route 21, Jason stared absently as the trees, and grave markers zipped past him. He jumped as the face pressed itself against his window. The green eyes and red hair he knew, but that mouth was not as he remembered. The mouth he had seen was gaping, twisted, as if someone had forced their fist down her throat and ripped her soul out from inside with a violent hand. He looked at his friends, still lost in song, and shook off the vision.
They hit the city and made the turn down to the river that would take them home. As Leo swerved around the corner onto the bridge, Jason saw the girl in the middle of the street. She stood frozen in their drunken path. Leo did not see her. He was lost in the song on his lips or the drugs in his mind. Jason reacted instinctively; he jumped forward from the back seat, grabbed the wheel from Leo and jerked it to the left, away from the poor deer in headlights that stood in their way. “Jesus, Leo, LOOK OUT!”
“JASON! What the fuck are you do—” Leo’s final words never got finished.
The scream of metal meeting metal drowned out Nate’s cry as his door met the rails of the bridge and crumpled crushing him. Bits of glass twinkled in Mark’s empty eyes as the car made its first flip onto the bridge’s narrow walkway. Leo’s head struck the ceiling with a sickening crack.
Jason was flung back into his seat by the initial impact and now just sat and watched his friends die, as he was sure he himself would when their car hit the water. But the feeling in his lungs lasted much longer than he thought possible. As the icy water flooded the car in torrents—and turned even darker as his friends’ blood seeped into it—his brain desperately chanted Hold your breath, don’t inhale, hold your breath, don’t inhale…It took three minutes and thirty-six seconds until the air in his lungs burned away, and he finally inhaled the blood-water. It felt like acid was filling his body as everything went black.
Jason felt as if the world had flushed him like so much shit. Water dripped from him, and stank of death. He looked around trying to clear his eyes of the muck that ran down his cheeks. He didn't recognize the road he was on, it looked like something out of an 18th Century painting of hell. He suddenly felt someone in the dimness around him.
The tall, black figure that loomed in the darkness before him stepped into sight. He was beautiful—not frightening, as Jason had imagined all his life. His smooth, light features were almost androgynous. As the pale blue eyes looked him over, he could feel himself becoming aroused…but aroused by a man? Jason’s desire shrank in disgust.
His eyes met Jason’s and he felt all the awesome power hidden beneath them. He could feel his soul being touched, molested…raped. Jason saw and felt every deed he had ever committed to bring him here, but not as he saw it in life. He saw all his actions through the pain and tears of those that he had hurt.
“You have done a fine job, my dear Jason, a fine job. I could not have asked you to be a better servant. Even if I had struck a bargain with you that night and told you what you would be doing for me, I do not think that you would have served me better than you have.”
Jason couldn’t speak—but he didn’t have to. The entity in front of him had no use for his words.
The tall man caressed Jason’s cheek with one strong, velvety soft hand, drawing blood with the long fingernails that tipped each of his digits. He brought them to his mouth and obscenely licked away the blood. He gently took Jason’s face in one powerful hand, removed the fingers from his mouth and slipped them inside Jason’s own to feel the rough, wet texture of his tongue. The taste of herbs, smoke, and altar wine filled his mouth. His soul pleaded for this to stop, but his body gave into the beauty before him, as disgusted as his mind was by this action.
“Did you not feel it, all this time?” The figure asked. “You took your life that night you said you would not wait forever. That is what you said, and you did not. You simply swallowed all of your favorite pills and you stopped waiting.”
Jason saw events replay in his mind…differently, now. He saw himself standing in front of the mirror again, his face covered in tears, but this time he smiled at himself as the pills spilled into his hands and gulped lethal mouthfuls of them as he washed the snot from his face. He saw shadows closing in over his limp body on the bathroom floor. They played their hands across his body as he lay there. Suddenly they dispersed. He could hear laughter—deep, seductive laughter. Then he woke up from the floor.
“You just could not remember to lie down and die, as you cannot remember some of the nights that you’ve lived since then. Typical; so euphoric that you did not even know you were dead. You were the perfect agent for me. You wanted to be a villain and in your drunken death, I made you to be just that. You corrupted the innocent, you helped others on their way to sin and the tastiest moment of all, you led your best friends to their deaths. You were a better collector than even Jessica.” He laughed a cold laugh and the gleam in his eye brightened.
“Jessica?” Jason could not believe what he was hearing or seeing. This is not happening. It CAN’T be happening.
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The tall man laughed. “Now, now, do not pretend that you never wondered how someone could make you commit what to you was the ultimate sin, and still make you feel so good, so right about it?”
“No!” Jason was finally able to speak; the accusation of having caused his friends’ deaths stirred something in him. “YOU killed us, not me; you put that girl in front of the car…”
“What girl, Jason? There was no girl. I do not believe in ghosts…and the souls that come here do not get to seek vengeance. That is part of their torment. There was nothing there but your chemically fueled imagination, Jason.” That deep laughter filled the chamber again and seemed to come not from the man but from the air itself. “Ghosts! HAHAHAhahahaha…”
Jason’s frail grip on his composure broke. “NO!” he clawed at his tears; fell to the ground and punched slabs of rock. “God! Why, God?” he screamed as his knuckles broke. Blood and tears flew from him like sweat as he clawed at his own wet cheeks.
