Everyday Madness - Chapter Five

         The house my parents bought me years ago, my house, sits alone on fifteen acres of flat, pine green land.    The driveway is long and cuts through the trees and passes a tiny lake, maybe just a big pond, before it runs into the two-story wood sided home with the wrap around balcony and elevated deck.  I’ve named the house Herbie Bellows in the tradition of the British.  The trees are cleared out an acre on every side of Herbie, and we keep the grass mowed down in the summer with a rusty old Snapper.
The sky is melting sea green.  From the edges of my vision, I can see brown clad Russian spies darting among the trees.  They must want something from me, probably my brain, maybe just my hair.  It’s long and blond, just the sort of thing the KGB would covet.  I haven’t slept in five, no, four days.
         The dogs hear the gravel crunch and groan under the thirty five inch tires on my truck and they break from the tree line in long, leaping strides.  Blue is a female black lab and Fred is a little brown and white hound.  Lucy is a tan greyhound I adopted to save her from being murdered when she grew too old to race the tracks.
         “There they are,” I coo, taking their heads between my hands and rubbing their ears.  They use their shoulders to bump each other and work for the position closest to me while their hair sheds from the heat and clings to my hands.  “There’s my good dogs.  Y’all been good?”  I take a handful of treats from the truck and toss them out in a rotation.
         Paul comes out onto the porch and throws up an arm.  “What say, boss man?”
         He’s tall, near six and a half feet, with a neck that disappears into his shoulders.  The lid under his left eye hangs low and pink, crying constantly so that he has to carry a linen kerchief to dab the tears.  We met in high school, playing against each other in football.  I scored a touchdown with Mike on my heels, turned around, and told him he was a weepy eyed pussy who just ate my asshole.  He took off his helmet and beat me with it.  Deeming myself wiser, I left my helmet on and tried to take his hits with my shoulder pads. 
We didn’t see each other for years after that, until our sophomore year of college, when I recognized the droopy eye sitting next to me in U.S. Politics.  We got drunk and I invited him to move in with me.  I’ve found that, being an asshole, it’s wise to keep large angry men around me for protection. We get along fine.  My only complaint is that Paul is a bi-sexual sadist.  His dates usually leave the house with dark bruises and rope burns.  One early morning, while I laid on the couch near comatose from too much heroin, a man came down the stairs weeping.  His hands were deep in his pockets and little pink cigarette burns laced his arms.  Not the kind of thing that gets me off, but who am I to judge.
We go into the house, followed closely by the dogs and the metallic jangle of their tags that sound like loose change in my pocket.  The main floor of the house has the living room, a couple bathrooms, the kitchen, and my bedroom, as well as a spare room we use for piano and drums.    Paul’s room and bathroom, along with a small sitting room, are upstairs.
         The floors are all hardwood, upstairs and down.  There’s a big wrap around couch I bought from Goodwill and a few chairs, most of them from garage sales and second hand stores.  There’s usually dog hair everywhere, on everything, as neither of us like to clean.  The walls are covered with my art; abstract paintings and some colorful sketches that are the products of long nights on speed.  The day he moved in, Paul nailed up a wooden crucifix with a weeping Jesus hanging on it.  I left it up.  It’s nice to be reminded that even the best of us suffer.
I fall onto the couch and Paul sits in the gray La-Z-Boy.  Fred jumps up next to me and Lucy pokes me with her nose, leaving a cold wet spot on my bare arm that I wipe off on my jeans.
         “You alright?” Paul asks me.
         “Same as always.  How’re things here?”
         “Blue’s been throwing up.”
         “Damnit.”
         I call her over and check her eyes.  She stares up at me with her brown eyed gaze and pants stinky breath into my face through a plaque toothed smile. 
“You alright, baby girl?” I ask her. “You sick?”  Then to Paul, “I’ll take her to the vet this week.”
         “Damn mold’s been hittin’ all the plants I used that Super Bud Booster on.  They’re just too fucking dense.”
         “Hmm.  I heard that can happen.  It’s alright.  Next time I’ll add some silicon.  We might be able to save those moldy plants for honey oil, though.  Just have to keep them isolated.”
         The basement below us is divided into three parts: the wall’s of the grow room are lined in reflective Mylar, and four 1000w high pressure sodium lights and four 1000w metal halide lights hang above the short bushy plants.  This room is subdivided into two smaller rooms; one that gets 24hrs of light while the other half is on a 12/12 light/dark cycle.  The next room is completely dark.  It houses the drying plants and the terrariums where the mushrooms grow.  The last room is a big storage area lit with strong halogen bulbs and filled with chemicals and soils.  There’s a baby gate at the top of the stairs to keep the dogs out.
         Paul works on a blunt while I watch the television and pet the dogs.  We have surround sound, and occasionally I’m startled by footsteps creeping up behind me.  I whip around each time and Paul laughs.
“I quit school today,” I say for the second time in a few hours.
He’s lit the blunt now, and passes it to me.
“I’m surprised you lasted as long as you did.”
         “Thanks.  I’m seriously debating suicide,” I tell him, failing to mention my earlier, unsuccessful attempt.”
         “Yeah…you should probably hold off on that.”
         “Why?”
         “I don’t know.  I like having you around I guess.  If you weren’t here I’d have no place to live.”
         “But if I’m miserable almost every moment of everyday, why should I be alive?”
         “Maybe things will get better.”
         “I doubt that.  They never have.”
         “You never know, something could change.”
         “People always say a tragic event changes a person – something cruel or terrifying or gruesome – but those kinds of things happen to me all the time, and I just stay the same.”
         “I really don’t know what you want me to say.  Except don’t kill yourself.”
         “Yeah. Thanks.”
         “Just shoot up a bunch of heroin or eat a shitload of mushrooms.  Get as close to death as possible.  Get it out of your system.”
         “I already tried that.  It didn’t work.”

         Occasionally, I pause during insignificant things that occur throughout my days – stubbing my toe, spilling shampoo on a tile floor, turning on a gas burner – and time slows as I wonder if this action will begin a series of events that will ultimately climax in some bizarre death.  So far, nothing has.
*
         That night I go to the bar.  The lights are dim and the music – some pop shit I’ve never heard before - is so loud that everyone has to scream at each other to be heard.  The air is hot, full of pheromones and musk.  I sit on a stool and drink rum and ice until the world becomes a better place.  A beetle keeps running laps on the back of my neck, but no matter how much I swat at it, it just won’t go away.
         “You see that Braves game?” the bartender screams at me as he scuttles around behind the counter pouring drinks.
         I ignore him and turn to watch the crowd.  A woman with long curly red hair stands out as she shuffles around the floor.  She’s tall and too thin, with small breasts and small feet.  When I notice her gray eyes my dick starts to move around in my pants.
         “Hey!” I yell when she comes to the bar for a drink.
         She looks me over and nods.
         “What’s your name?” I yell.
         “April!”
         “Oh yeah?  That’s a month, too, isn’t it?”
         “Yeah!”
         “Is that what you’re named after?  The month?”
         She’s looking at someone behind me.
         “I guess!”
         “I’ve got drugs!  Back at my place!  And a huge cock!  It’ll probably tear you in half, you skinny bitch!”
         “What kind of drugs?” she yells.
         “Marijuana!  Cocaine!”
         “Do you eat?”
         “Eat what?”
         “Pussy!”
         “Oh!  Yeah, all the time!”
         “Okay!  Let’s go!”
         I smile, grab her arm and lead her to the parking lot.
         “Get your car and follow me,” I tell her.
         “What?”
         “Get your car and follow me.”
         I unlock the Audi with a chirp.  April’s wearing a thin green dress with a low cut bust.  It blows against her and outlines her legs.
         “Really?  Most guys like to ride together.”
         “Not me.”
“Why?”
         “Because I don’t want to have to drive you around after.  I’m not a fucking chauffeur.  Now get your car.”
         “Okay.  What’s your name?”
         “Reilly.”

         Back at the house, my bedroom door’s locked.  I can hear grunts and wet sucking sounds and slaps through the cheap wood.
         “What the fuck,” I yell and bang on the door.  “You better not be fucking on my bed, you droopy eyed fuck!”
         I turn to April and smile, shrug.
         “Gimme a minute,” Paul calls back.
         “Fuck.”
         I seat April on the couch and plop down next to her.
         “You see that Braves game?” I use the bartender’s words while breaking out lines of white powder on a small mirror.  It’s custom made, with “Cocaine” spelled out in the Coca-Cola font just under the surface.  Long grooves have been ground into it’s surface to hold powder.
         “Um, no,” April says.
         “Me neither.”
         There’s half and ounce of coke in little rows on the mirror now.
         “You like dogs?” I ask.
         “Sure.  I guess.”
         “Come ‘ere, Fred!” I scream.
         He comes sliding into the room on the slick floor and leaps into my lap.  His fronts paws catch the mirror and flip it through the air.  A little cloud hovers, then falls and settles on the throw rug and the back of the little hound.
         “Fuck!” I screech.  “God no!  Why, Jesus?  Why?”
         The little wooden man on the wall doesn’t answer.  I fall to my knees and use my fingertips to try to pull the fine powder from the threads of the carpet.  Fred runs around me, frosted like a donut, baying and hopping on his hind legs.
         “Gimme the straw!” I yell at April.
         “What?”
         “Gimme the mother fucking straw!”
         I hold Fred down and use the little plastic tube to vacuum his back.  I can taste and feel the chemical numb the back of my throat, but little flakes of dander, hair, and some fleas get sucked up with the drugs and stick in my nose.  After a few minutes, I hand April the straw.
         “Your turn.”
         “I’m not going to sniff coke off your dog.”
         “Then do it off the rug!” I roar.  “We’re not wasting this!”
         My bedroom door flies open and a naked woman runs out.  Her fingers are buried up her vagina, scooping out what looks like clear white mucus while she repeats “fuck” over and over until she disappears into the bathroom and slams the door.
         “Well.  Don’t see that everyday,” I say to April.
         Paul follows the woman out.  He’s naked too, except for a black leather mask that has a zipper where the mouth should be.  He waves his arms and makes a bunch of muffled grunts.
         “What?” I ask.
         He unzips his mouth.
         “The goddam condom broke!”
         “Oh,” I look at April. “That sucks.”
         “Fuck, man!  I can’t get this bitch pregnant!”
         “It looked like she was doing a pretty thorough job of ridding herself of your…seed.  Her fingers were really up there.”
         “Don’t underestimate my boys, man!  I just shot a million little swimming ninjas up her twat!”
         “Oh well.” I gesture to the carpet. “I’ve kinda got my own problem here, guy.”
         Paul’s pacing back and forth.  Fred wiggles free and runs into my bedroom.
         “I can’t have a little Paul running around, man!  I’m not ready for that shit.”
         “Get an abortion then.  If she’s even pregnant.”
         April stands and slides her purse over a shoulder.
         “I have to go,” she says and heads to the door.
         “No!  Wait!” I cry to her back.  “We won’t have that problem!  I never even use a condom!”
         The door rattles the house when she swings it closed.
         “That didn’t even make sense,” Paul says and pulls of his hood.  “If you don’t use a condom, you’ll have the same problem.  She’ll get pregnant.”
         “I meant the condom breaking problem.  Don’t over think it.”
         “Fuck.  What am I gonna do?” he asks me.
         “You just cost me pussy, asshole.  I don’t care what the fuck you do.  That girl was good to go!”
         “Fuck that.  I just got a girl pregnant.”
         I throw him one of the little pillows from the couch.
         “Cover your dick.  I don’t need to see that much cock right now.”
         I take the straw and start working on the rug.
         “Why were you in my room anyway,” I ask, sniffling.
         “Your shit’s nicer.  I thought it would impress her.”
         “Well now I have to burn my sheets.  Is that condom still in there?  No, Fred!  Put that down!  Drop it!”
         “I’ll go get it,” Paul says. “Worthless latex shit.”
         “Fred,” I call.  “Come here, buddy!  Daddy needs to clean you up.”