I think the older you get, the more lost you feel. That’s my theory, anyway. As a kid I always believed there would come a time in my life where things would make sense, and stuff would click into place, resonating meaning with a perfect explanation of the world. Oh how strange a boy can dream, how high he can try to reach.
So when my girlfriend broke up with me on the day my mother died it wasn’t a shock really. Life had kicked me like a motherfucker before—although I’ll admit not to this degree—and I’d gotten used to the ass-kicking over my 21 years of living. But that didn’t mean it didn’t carve a hole in my brain, leaving dead connections and a settled numbness behind. That could have also been the fault of the alcohol running in my system, the great depressant of the gods, but staring blankly at the rows of alcohol behind a bar not saying a word and, more importantly, doing all this alone necessitated some level of substance abuse. And my substance was whiskey, baby.
My phone was going off non-stop. This was a rare thing as most days I lived like a hermit with no legs, trapped inside my dorm either studying (the least likely) or procrastinating by watching porno and eating pizza (more likely). But it seemed all of my three friends must have heard the news and were checking up to see if I was “okay”. I couldn’t deal with that. No matter how many times they called, I wasn’t going to deal with the mock sounds of their artificial braying as they asked how I was going and if I was alright or whether they should come over to see me. I barely knew them nowadays anyway. Ever since high school ended keeping in touch only meant simple messages sent over the weeks, promises of catching up but nothing ever following. That’s just how life and friends worked sometimes, I guess. Or they had all hated me from the start and only tolerated my presence because of some unseen factor I’m not totally aware of. As I’m a natural depressive, I’ll go with the latter.
I ordered another glass of whiskey, feeling both refined and like a 40 year old alcoholic at the same time, and chugged that down without tasting it. My body was fuzzy, warm, nerves in my hands energetic and spiky, and somehow a smile managed to spread across my lips as I realised just how drunk I was.
There were alot of people in the bar, as was typical on a Friday night, and looking around the strange idea to talk to someone came about. It wasn’t something that normally popped up in my head, but hey, after a couple of glasses of pure whiskey the possibility of me holding a conversation for longer than thirty awkward seconds was much greater than if I’d been sober. It was possible. Not likely. But possible.
At the bar in the stool to my left was a girl with black hair talking to someone who might possibly be a guy but from this angle it was anyone’s guess. The friend of hers she was talking to had short hair, that’s all I could really see, and heaps of girls had short hair nowadays, so I was probably in the clear.
Only talking to people wasn’t exactly up my alley. Not to the extent that my masturbatory skill was at anyway. The brief friends I’d made in high school, and the outliers of people I sometimes chatted to in uni, were made up of those who had come to me instead of the other way around. That’s not to say they had sought me out one day because of some remarkable thing I had done, but rather our relationship was built off them talking to me first, as it was obvious that any social interaction between us would happen any other way. That’s the way things normally panned out for me, socially anyway. I kind of left it to fate to guide people into my life, and I let it kick them out too. Although they weren’t kicked out most of the time, but rather just…faded away. I guess, in a way, I just don’t like much control in my life. So trying to start up a chat with this chick was evidently pretty fucking difficult.
‘Uh, hey, what’s up?’ The words were out my mouth before I knew what I was doing. She wasn’t even looking at me; I was talking to the back of her head. I’m a real fucking idiot, that’s for sure.
But thankfully she gave me the courtesy to turn and see who had spoken, seeming a bit awkward when she looked at me, as if already knowing I was going to cock this up and embarrass the both of us. Or maybe I already had.
‘Hi.’ I said again, feeling like I had to reiterate my point of entry.
‘Hi, nice to meet you.’ She said, smiled slightly, then turned back to her friend. I couldn’t say my heart shattered any more, as it was already in a million crushed pieces with no hope of return, but I certainly felt like I was the last passenger on the Titanic watching it sink, slowly drifting into the cold sea, thinking ‘I shouldn’t have been so fucking cocky about this bitch, that’s for sure’.
I left the bar after that. Well, after ordering another shot of whiskey, having moved down the length of the bar so I was away from the crime scene of my utter devastation. The night was young, the sky was silky black, and the sounds of drugged and drunk idiots filled the streets with a sweetness to it that was almost innocent. There were so many places to go, so many people to see. Except all the places to go were shit, and the people I wanted to see would barely give me an ounce of their time, while the people I didn’t want to see hounded me like a starved bitch hungry for meat. Alas, that was the nature of life.
So I walked with no real goal in mind. I was healthily distracted from any possible thoughts lurking around in my head by the growing numbness pervading my body, and the jolt of energy lighting a wire up my legs with each step I made, my vision blurring but finding pockets of visual stimulus in the form of girls walking down the streets or strange faces poking out of the crowd that were interesting to look at. It was a strange feeling, wanting to cry and laugh and celebrate life at the same time, wanting to enjoy all the melancholy and merriment required, nothing more and nothing less. But instead of doing those things I continued to walk blankly, hoping I’d just find my way somehow.
I made it to a club with a blue neon sign out front reading, “Poni”, and I wondered whether it was a spelling mistake, or some adherence to the 21st century style of changing words just for the sake of it. I didn’t think about it for long though; I saw the queue to get in was pretty short, and soon I was walking up the colourfully lit stairwell after paying the entry fee of ten bucks. The music was bumping under my feet as I climbed, and after making it to the top and rounding a corner, the whole club was in view.
The bar was packed, uni students trying to buy drinks amongst the crowd, the rest older men and women who looked far too comfortable in this environment. The dance floor was a bombardment of lights, white, green, blue, purple, dashes of yellow, and it was less crowded than the bar, but no one dancing looked like they knew how to dance, or that they even wanted to. Or maybe that was just my addled mind, my perception out of whack. Though it wasn’t far from the truth to say that most people in the world were horrible dancers. Not that I was excluded from that count, of course.
I moved instinctively to the dance floor anyway, a terrible trap song playing through the speakers, the DJs up on stage looking like the only ones having a good time. It took awhile for me to get in the groove of things. People were looking at me, with small glances and such, and I knew they were judging me for being alone just from their eyes alone. I wanted to slink away, leave the club, but the dance floor was getting pretty crowded, and I didn’t want to push myself out of everyone’s way. Besides, I shouldn’t let people dictate what I should or shouldn’t do. I should be having fun for once.
So, I moved around a bit. Let my body loosen, my muscles relax, and started moving freely. Allowing the whiskey to do its work I went slow at first, not to the beat of the song at all, but faster as I went on, the alcohol liberating my mind, my self-awareness. Any embarrassment I might have had instilled in my soul, I found it was slipping away, circling the drain of oblivion. My eyes closed, I was away, gone.
But then I opened them, just for a second mid-dance to glance around, and I saw there at one end of the dancefloor…Brittany. There was no doubt it was her. Shoulder length red hair, cute tight waist, the dress she was wearing…she wore it to our first date. A red, tight dress that accentuated all the right places. And there she was, dancing with another guy. She smiled at him, and the guy, faceless except for his teeth, smiled back. The lights started going crazy, and they were lost in the crowd. But when they returned to normal, and my gaze found her again, hers had as well. She was staring at me. And so, naturally, I did the one thing any self-respecting guy in that situation would do. I ran.
I was out the club, the cold air piercing, lungs screaming. I tried to keep my mind from growing too chaotic, from thinking too many thoughts, but everybody knows that’s useless to try for anyone besides old men sitting up in mountaintops meditating. And then, without knowing what I was doing, or at the very least knowing any sort of intent, I started walking, not bothering to notice the tears in my eyes, or the heaved breaths I was making. I wiped at my eyes when people walked by, but I couldn’t do anything to change the way my face looked, so everybody stared as they passed, some with mournful approach, others with unrestrained amusement. I’m surprised none of them didn’t just walk up and laugh right in my face.
I stopped walking when I made it to an intersection, the streets relatively busy, ubers and taxis towing drunk citizens looking to get their night on. I thought of stepping out of the comfort of the sidewalk and killing myself, but that was a stupid thought. Of course it was stupid. Wasn’t it? Then it all came tumbling. Mom, Brittany, the utter loneliness that surrounded and made me bleed. Fuck it all. What was the point of it? If I wake up tomorrow, what’s in store for me? Talking to my dad and the rest of the family about the death, about the funeral, about coming back to sort things, to mourn with everyone else. And then there would be the pity. The needless pity. An insurmountable amount of that would doubtlessly be in the near future. Was that all I had to look forward to? Just more suffering?
I made a step on the road, looking both ways, seeing the cars were going relatively slow for now, the traffic congestion slowing things up. But I just had to wait. Wait for everything to get to its normal pace again. And then I would run. Flat out in front. Boom! Hit, snap, dead. And that would be it. Hopefully, anyway. I guess I would have to make sure the impact actually killed me, otherwise this was all useless. That’s probably what kept most people from attempting suicide. The thought they might just cock things up and end up with some physical affliction that makes their life even worse. Like being paralyzed or something.
Waiting on the side street, in the gutter, looking out to the streams of traffic, I thought only of the process of running out there and getting hit. And of the distant thought of being paralysed, but that was distant. And having no thoughts was quite nice, actually. There was nothing else to distract me. Nothing at all. Just one’s imagination, and the created scenes of my imminent death. And then I saw it. My big break.
A car was speeding down the road, a sleek black sports car, and I knew this was it. The guy or girl steering the wheel was probably out of their mind, and they would realise too late what I was doing. I was so out of my fucking mind as well that I hadn’t even noticed that I was stepping out onto the road already. When I became conscious of what I was doing, I put all my effort into it, saying, ‘Yeah, this is it. This is right. Come on. Do it then. Do it.’
I was in the middle of the lane. The car was still speeding. There was a horn, screeching of brakes. But it was too late. Then somebody was screaming.
‘WATCH OUT!’
Somebody slammed against me. There was a sickening crunch of metal, glass shattering. I
scraped against the asphalt road, cheek blazing, red hot. There were screams, there were shouts. Somebody was saying, ‘CALL THE COPS! HOLY SHIT! CALL THE AMBULANCE! CALL SOMEBODY!’, but my mind was too addled to understand any of it. I felt myself moving into a deep, restful sleep, but then something tugged me out, and when I opened my eyes I saw two girls struggling to pull me up, both talking to each other in panicked tones, the words blurring into nothing. There was a crowd, people running onto the road, surrounding the car. And in front of the car, below the bumper, was a man, face first on the ground, not moving. The crowd was growing, some shouting, some trying to calm others down.
‘He just ran in front of the road—,’
‘—and then that guy just jumped out and—’
‘—that guy saved him, shit. Holy shit.’
All their voices were too loud, too scattered. And that same person was still screaming, ‘SOMEBODY CALL SOMEBODY!’, and by this point I hoped his request had finally been taken up. I pushed myself from the two girls carrying me—I didn’t deserve their help. No, I deserved horrible pain, sadness, and torture, that’s what I deserved. I moved close to the man while everyone around kept in a thinly held circle, everyone scared to do anything but stare. I might have been the same, if it wasn’t my life he’d saved. I kneeled down and hoped he was just sleeping, or unconscious or whatever, and kept expecting movement, just something, anything. But he remained still. So very still.
There was blood pooling around his head, which was shaved down to the scalp, and on his neck was a tattoo of a cross. Knowing I could do nothing like everyone else, I just stared as well, rubbing my face at times, feeling the burn and scratches there. After a while an ambulance came rolling up, and all the drunken idiots, including me, were herded to the side, relegated to the pathway.
I watched as he was put on a stretcher. I watched as he was wheeled up and onto the back of an ambulance. I watched as nobody joined him in there, now knowing he had been alone, all alone. And I watched the ambulance speed off, sirens wailing.
I just watched. It was the only thing I could do.
Hey look, another writer. 