JOSH

 

After I left Charlie to those pigs, I ran into darkness, heaving down bumps of coke from my powder pot and gulping on a bottle of bourbon I’d bought at a seven-eleven. I just chugged along through the terrible city streets, wandering into strange, boarded-up neighborhoods. Everything looked rotten, including the people, and I walked along in a daze, not worried that a guy so finely dressed as me might get attacked.

Eventually, everything became a blur and I can’t remember any of it except the dark dreams I had that night when I finally found sleep. They came to me like ghosts, swirling around my head in a storm. Every one of them contained my mother and Heather. The surroundings would change, but the two of them would always be there, standing together at the edge of some field or at the back of some room, both of them looking at me with sad looks, Heather watching me with her one bright, brown eye, a fleshy cavity where the other one used to be, her long brown hair matted with blood. I never imagined her any differently from the way she looked that last time.

Next to her stood my mother with her bright red lipstick, black hair like the wings of a raven, sharp cheekbones and oval eyes. She was so beautiful, my mother. Of course it was only a constructed image of her that followed me through my dreams, one based mostly on photography and home movies.

You see, she died when I was only three and I have practically no personal memories of her. One night, a masked intruder broke into our home and woke my mother in the midst of his larcenous work. She caught him in the act and they fought. That is when I’m told the two came bursting into the bedroom, where I was sitting on her bed. I was suffering chickenpox at the time and sleeping in my mother’s room. And that’s why I was present during her murder. I can’t remember any of it outright, only the occasional strange dream of a blurred struggle happening right in front of me. Nothing more, I’m afraid. I spent most of my childhood in therapy and was even put under hypnosis. But all they ever managed to retrieve from me was the blur.

In the middle of my stormy dreams, I found myself standing in front of the green-eyed girl. We were back on that desolate street, and I found that particular nightmare terrifying. Among the smirking faces of the crowd I saw the familiar forlorn figures of Heather and my mother. I had both their eyes as well as Green Eyes peering into me, condemning me. Then, like a flash, another bloodied figure appeared among them. A terribly beaten and mutilated figure that popped up from the ground like a sprouting corpse. I knew straight away who it was.

It was Charlie.

He was looking at me with a pitiful look and my glance constantly flashed between him, Heather, my mother and Green Eyes. I felt myself sinking into the ground, their bodies towering over me, and they all began whispering at once. “Do you love me?” Heather wanted to know. “What have you become, my boy?” Mother added at the same time. “You are so guilty,” Green Eyes pronounced like a death sentence. “All I ever wanted was to be your friend,” Charlie repeated over and over. The four of them continued to chant their separate mantras and the cacophony erupted in my ears until I shoved my hands over them and bit my teeth together.

“HUH!” I cried out as I bolted upright in bed.

I sat gasping for breath for a moment, the eyes and laughter still with me, echoing in the room.

“Bad dream again?” a female voice inquired and I wondered if I was still asleep.

Glancing to my right, I saw the familiar back of Amy Houston as she brushed her long black hair in front of her dressing table. Checking my surroundings, I realized that I was in her room on the other side of campus.

“You’ve been getting a lot of them lately,” she commented while looking at my reflection in her mirror.

“Everyone gets bad dreams,” I replied in a gruff tone.

“Mm, but some more than others.”

I’d known Amy for two years, ever since we started having sex at some house party and continued it on from there. Amy was like me, and I guess you could say that we were each a single side of the same bad penny. She didn’t want any attachments and I always appreciated her cold manner toward me. We’d sleep together and then I’d be shown the door. That wasn’t the only similarity between us either. She too came from frivolous wealth, her father a famous stockbroker, and she drifted through life without a care, knowing that no matter what, she was always covered. Having been spoiled rotten her whole life, the rot had kicked in and Amy had become desensitized to almost everything. Nothing excited her anymore and all was ash. I think the one thing Amy truly lacked from her parents was real love and attention. Like myself, she’d been raised by nannies and boarding schools. A new pony is one thing, but a real mother and father is another completely.

“How’d I get here?” I muttered, still feeling groggy from the booze and drugs.

“You called me at three o’clock this morning asking to come around,” she replied nonchalantly as she carefully applied her ruby red lipstick.

“Did I say anything?”

“Not really. You were pretty wasted. We just sat for a while, smoked a joint and finished the rest of your coke. You were very gloomy and taciturn last night, but you know me: I don’t want to know. The only real drag is that when we got to the sex you couldn’t get it up—which has been happening regularly with you lately, Josh. You really should knock off the drink and drugs.”

“You’re one to talk!”

“I know my limits. I know when to abstain,” she said in a snooty way, blowing herself kisses from her newly painted red lips. But then she abruptly sat up in her chair, as if some sudden thought had occurred to her. “You know,” she began, turning to me, “it might not be the drink and drugs at all.”

“How’d you mean?”

“Your overindulgence in recreational activities could merely be a symptom of the same thing your lethargy in the bedroom is a part of. It’s all psychological.”

“What’re you, a shrink?”

“I’ve been to enough to know a thing or two.”

In my current state, I really wasn’t feeling up to this type of discussion, so I changed the subject by asking her why she’d let me sleep the night; she never had before.

“I tried to get you to leave,” she replied, turning back to the mirror, “but you wouldn’t. You insisted that you couldn’t face your own room and needed to stay here. You were really wasted and looked like you were about to cry, so I just let you sleep it off in my bed.”

“Thank you,” I uttered, maneuvering my way out of said bed.

“No worries.”

I got dressed and went to leave, but Amy called me back when my hand was on the door handle.

Gazing gently at me, she said, “You know, I’m real worried about you, Josh.”

“Lay off. You don’t give a shit about anything, that’s why I like you. You’re cold like me.”

“But not so cold that I can’t see when someone else is hurting. I’m not all cold, you know. I can see things as a human.”

To this I merely shone her a crooked smile and went on my way.