Maki looks angry when he drinks but I know he’s wearing a mask. The mask sprouts from his heart, across his entire face. Sometimes it spreads to his limbs and makes him destroy things. One night he smacked his son when he asked, “why are you crying so loud daddy?”
Continue reading “I Called my Alcoholic Friend Sad Satan by Ashlie Allen”
“You’re a little shit, Miguel. He’s going to pick you.”
Juan always had a mouth on him, but to say something like that? It was too much. He hadn’t even managed to brush the dust off his shirt before my fist crunched into his lip, sending him down again.
“Stop,” someone shouted. Hands grabbed me from behind, pulling me away from the other boy. Someone knelt by him to make sure he was alright, but I didn’t get a chance to see who it was.
The world stops. Lincoln no longer hears the sounds of recess through the open kitchen window facing the grade school playground. In the living room, his wife holds fast, motionless, her words clipped as quickly as shears snip a stem. The silence rushes over him the way water envelops a diver. It’s startling and complete.
“Hi, I’m Stacey!”
Oh wow, hiya! It’s been ages since I had somebody cool to talk to in person. You’re cool, right? Yeah, ‘course you are. New to the whole ‘undead’ gig, I take it? Just last month? Yeah, I’ve got a couple of years on you but it’s really not that much. I remember all the changes, it’s super crazy. I guess your master has you covered on the basics and the mouldy old traditions… uh huh, they totally leave out the important stuff! No worries, I’ll fill you in. Oh, and you can call me Stace for short. Anyway, where was I?
Jake drove his convertible Mustang up Highway 1, the Pacific Ocean stretching into oblivion on his left, his girlfriend Samantha sitting far to his right, as if she planned to throw the door open and roll onto the blacktop at any moment. They were on their way to a little B&B that Sam had discovered online (one Yelp reviewer called it ‘kitschy but tolerable’), and although neither of them said so out loud, they both knew that if this weekend was a disaster, their relationship would never recover.
He limps home from the war with a lopsided gait. A cripple with a dark green uniform hanging on his gaunt frame. They stare at the colorful ribbons and shiny dangling medals on his chest as they avoid his vacant, hollow eyes hidden in bony valleys of dark flesh.
I’m one lucky son-of-a-gun. I’m not boasting or complaining. I didn’t create my good luck. It was something that just dropped on me. I’m not talking about that fool’s gold good luck of winning the lottery or a bet on the Kentucky Derby. I’m talking about the real meal deal like when you bend down to pick up a dime, and there’s a hail of bullets hitting the wall where your head was seconds ago. My kind of good fortune steers me out of harm’s way, and when I do enter the danger zone, I leave pretty much intact.
I was driving at 85. The night was darker than it should have been. There was nothing on the road, not in the windshield, not in the mirrors. I was so sure that we were not coming back. That we would go into the dark and then never appear at the other side of the road. She lay on the back seat staring at me like a voodoo doll. Oh, and she was dead. Did I tell you she was dead? She was. The wind whistled past me through the window like running away from something. The trees beside the road ran back. I looked at her once and she blinked. I turned back and focused on the road.
She sat in the chair waiting. Let it come, she thought. I am prepared for every eventuality, and when it comes I will not be surprised. Nonetheless, she was tense, apprehensive, alert, and when the doorbell rang her blood froze. Now, she would say. Here it comes. She tried to hide, inside the room, inside herself, but still she heard the sound of the doorbell like someone screaming in her ear. She tried to make herself smaller and smaller and sometimes even fled to the farthest corner of the room. The farther away she was the less she felt the threat. Sometimes she turned her face to the wall and began to count, ring by ring, and if the ringing did not stop began to mumble words of entreaty or supplication.
“I do not like Indiana. I do not like the weather or the politics or the terrain. Listen, Bubbles, when your Mom comes home we’re going to have a family council. All three of us and the only item on the agenda is, should we get the hell out of Indiana ASAP. Are you with me? Can I count on your vote? Alright! I knew you had my back.”
