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RESURGAM
by Schuyler
Pushing open the door, my nostrils were assaulted by the foul stench of body odor and yesterday’s vomit. I could never fathom how some people spent the better part of their lives “hanging out” in a place like this: men escaping the realities of their miserable lives, sitting by as sterile marriages became unsalvageable, drowning sorrows through endless glasses of liquor. True, not all men were this bad; nevertheless, the overall impression was one of congregating alcoholic has-beens and drunken bar brawls. And yet, despite my initial repulsion, I slowly stepped into the dimly lit tavern.
If only Debbie were here, she would have kept me from stooping down to this low level of self-pity.
The white curling smoke from burning cigarettes made the atmosphere all the more dismal as I walked towards the bar. My eyes roamed over the room’s inhabitants, not one of them taking any interest in my observations. Here, I felt insignificant yet equal at the same time; we all had our own sob stories in varying degrees between pathetic and depressing, and because of this, we were all here to drink ourselves into an inebriated stupor.
Sitting down on a slightly uneven stool, I ordered myself a Gin & Tonic. My fingers nervously drummed on the counter, for it was my first time in such an environment – I was never a drinker, besides swiping those little bottles of Jack Daniels from hotel rooms, or the occasional glass of wine with a fancy restaurant dinner. As the bartender placed my drink before me, I picked it up and sculled it down in one go, toes wriggling inside my shoes as the beverage gradually began to work its magic on the delicate lining of my throat and stomach.
Slamming the glass down, I politely asked for another round, once again repeating my previous actions. My eyes closed as I felt the edges of my mind begin to fog and blur, leaving me content, until I was suddenly interrupted.
‘Mr Broots.’
Fear immediately froze my limbs like ice, barely allowing me to turn my head towards the speaker whose voice I knew all too well.
Lyle.
‘Imagine meeting you in a place like this.’
‘M-Mr Lyle, I wasn’t, normally I d-don’t ..’ I half stuttered, half slurred. With a raise of his hand, I was silenced, preventing any more embarrassment at my expense.
‘Is this seat taken?’ he motioned to an empty stool beside me, seating himself before a reply could be given. ‘The usual,’ was the order given to the bartender as Lyle studied me briefly, his eyes lingering round my midsection. Uncomfortably, I shifted on my seat, effectively breaking his point of focus. He sipped casually on his drink whilst I upgraded myself to a scotch on the rocks, hoping to numb the butterflies I could feel doing acrobatic tricks in my abdomen.
Butterflies. Debbie loved butterflies. She used to own a collection of butterfly clips that she would arrange in her hair every day before school.
A sigh escaped my lips.
In an awkward gesture, Lyle tried to make conversation. ‘Women troubles?’ I shook my head. ‘Is it the little one? What’s her name .. Deanna?’
‘Debbie.’
‘Ah, that’s it. Little Debbie. How is she?’
I wrung a napkin nervously until it ripped into two. ‘She .. died, suddenly .. about a month ago.’
‘Oh.’ He offered his condolences, before asking how it had happened. Perhaps it was the alcohol – yes, that had to be it – but I felt at ease in my surroundings, and having someone who was willing to listen to my problems allowed me to open up, even if it was Lyle. I retold my memory of how I had come home from work to find my only daughter soaking in the bathtub, rivulets of crimson still flowing from her wrists, dried bloodied tears upon her face. He gasped at my tale, clearly surprised at how a young and happy child like my Debbie could mutilate herself like that. I could only shrug.
‘Bartender, a couple of tequila shooters here,’ he called out, and was promptly serviced.
‘To the female species of our race,’ proposed Lyle, handing me a shot glass as he held the other in the air, ‘may we never understand them.’ At that, we threw our heads back and swallowed the liquid. Afterwards, we talked and drank long into the night like old school friends who hadn’t seen each other since graduation. We spoke of things, trivial things like our school years and college ambitions, computers and cars, teenage foolishness and ex-wives.
My ex-wife, now there’s a thought. She couldn’t have cared less when I revealed that her baby girl had committed suicide, no more than she could have sobered up for her funeral two days later. She was a drunk and a junkie, barely capable of looking after herself never mind a fourteen-year-old girl. Thank goodness I had gotten full custody of Debbie; even Miss Parker would have made a better mother.
Lyle nodded in agreement. ‘Ex-wives are a curse, I’m telling you Broots. Their display of love is ripping your heart our through your bank balance.’
‘Here here,’ I encouraged, now raising a glass of straight Vodka, smoke puffing out from a cigarette balanced precariously on my lips.
‘High maintenance, that’s what they are, expecting you to buy flowers and clothes and jewelry to show how much you love them. Damnit, well maybe I don’t want to do that! Maybe .. maybe I want to show her love the old fashioned way: fuck her senseless.’ I couldn’t help but smile. Lyle being in love with a woman was just too strange a thought for my clouded mind to process.
‘You’re lucky your wife left you with a kid, if only for so long. Sometimes I wish I had a daughter; I’d teach her what a real man is like.’ To this, he turned back towards me, placing a hand on my shoulder in what seemed like a comforting gesture. ‘Debbie, now she was a real looker for a girl her age. It’s too bad she’s gone Broots, she would have been a beautiful bride.’
I’ll never get to meet the boys she would’ve brought home for approval, or see her graduate high school and college, and walk her down the aisle at her wedding. God I miss Debbie more and more as each day passes.
I threw my cigarette butt into a nearby glass ashtray, nodding at his words. ‘Yeah, I reckon so.’
My head spun wildly as I stood up, clutching the bar for support as I tried to get my focus into play. Lyle had less luck, tripping up over his own feet and falling to the ground, the grimy floor hitting him square in the jaw. Unable to hold it in, I burst out laughing at his body lying in a heap before my own feet, and was rewarded with a swift hit in the shin. Helping him up, we stumbled across the room towards the door, the other occupants of the tavern once more ignoring another couple of drunks, too involved with their own misery to care.
As we made it outside, Lyle immediately let go of my shoulder and retched beside the exit, gagging noises echoing in the stillness of the night. The cold air sobered up my mind slightly; I sat on the hood of a car and stared up at the twinkling dots in the dark sky, amazed by their beauty and simplicity. Concentrating on one particular star, I imagined that it was Debbie’s window from Heaven, looking down on me, at what I had become after her death. The night’s events ran through my head like a slide show; the drinking, the smoking, the socializing with Lyle. Disgust surged through my veins at the picture I had painted of myself.
I can’t live like this anymore.
Wiping away the traces of vomit still pasted round the edges of his mouth, Lyle leaned back against the wall of the tavern, and stared down the barrel of my loaded handgun. I watched as the shock briefly registered on his face before returning to its standard composed state. He had already known I carried the weapon.
‘You won’t shoot me Broots, you haven’t got the nerves for it.’
I shot him once in the left shoulder.
‘Debbie’s first birthday was a picnic in the park. She loved feeding the ducks swimming in the pond.’
‘Nobody can kill me. I will rise again, you know I can. I’ve done it before, and I’ll keep on doing it, just you wait and see.’
I shot him again, this time in the right shoulder to even things up.
‘Her second birthday, we had a party at the house. I rented a clown to entertain all the kids, but they were scared of him and his antics. It was a complete disaster, but little Debbie.. she had fun just digging into her cake.’
‘She loved it Broots, every minute of it. Had a mouth like a Hoover –’ With the third gunshot, Lyle groaned loudly in pain, as he began to slide down the wall into an undignified slump.
He was wrong; it wasn’t about having steel nerves to be able to shoot someone, it was about holding the firearm steady and letting my finger work in automaton, pulling the trigger over and over again. In total, I discharged fourteen rounds into his body. Fourteen. One for every year she lived, until Lyle had ambushed and raped her one day after school, leaving Debbie so violated that ending her life was the only way she could be at peace. The perverted psychopath, thinking he could console me about her death like he was any other person, as if he had a right to.
Dropping the gun in a ditch and making sure he really was dead, I pushed away any thoughts of what would happen to me now that I had killed the Chairman’s son and re-entered the bar, sitting back down in the same seat I had vacated earlier.
‘What’ll it be?’ asked the bartender as he wiped down the bench top.
‘Whiskey,’ I replied after a short pause, and with a smile, added: ‘oh, and they guy I was in here with before, put it on his tab.’
(c) copyrighted 11.04.00 , 05:25:57
RESURGAM
by Schuyler
Pushing open the door, my nostrils were assaulted by the foul stench of body odor and yesterday’s vomit. I could never fathom how some people spent the better part of their lives “hanging out” in a place like this: men escaping the realities of their miserable lives, sitting by as sterile marriages became unsalvageable, drowning sorrows through endless glasses of liquor. True, not all men were this bad; nevertheless, the overall impression was one of congregating alcoholic has-beens and drunken bar brawls. And yet, despite my initial repulsion, I slowly stepped into the dimly lit tavern.
If only Debbie were here, she would have kept me from stooping down to this low level of self-pity.
The white curling smoke from burning cigarettes made the atmosphere all the more dismal as I walked towards the bar. My eyes roamed over the room’s inhabitants, not one of them taking any interest in my observations. Here, I felt insignificant yet equal at the same time; we all had our own sob stories in varying degrees between pathetic and depressing, and because of this, we were all here to drink ourselves into an inebriated stupor.
Sitting down on a slightly uneven stool, I ordered myself a Gin & Tonic. My fingers nervously drummed on the counter, for it was my first time in such an environment – I was never a drinker, besides swiping those little bottles of Jack Daniels from hotel rooms, or the occasional glass of wine with a fancy restaurant dinner. As the bartender placed my drink before me, I picked it up and sculled it down in one go, toes wriggling inside my shoes as the beverage gradually began to work its magic on the delicate lining of my throat and stomach.
Slamming the glass down, I politely asked for another round, once again repeating my previous actions. My eyes closed as I felt the edges of my mind begin to fog and blur, leaving me content, until I was suddenly interrupted.
‘Mr Broots.’
Fear immediately froze my limbs like ice, barely allowing me to turn my head towards the speaker whose voice I knew all too well.
Lyle.
‘Imagine meeting you in a place like this.’
‘M-Mr Lyle, I wasn’t, normally I d-don’t ..’ I half stuttered, half slurred. With a raise of his hand, I was silenced, preventing any more embarrassment at my expense.
‘Is this seat taken?’ he motioned to an empty stool beside me, seating himself before a reply could be given. ‘The usual,’ was the order given to the bartender as Lyle studied me briefly, his eyes lingering round my midsection. Uncomfortably, I shifted on my seat, effectively breaking his point of focus. He sipped casually on his drink whilst I upgraded myself to a scotch on the rocks, hoping to numb the butterflies I could feel doing acrobatic tricks in my abdomen.
Butterflies. Debbie loved butterflies. She used to own a collection of butterfly clips that she would arrange in her hair every day before school.
A sigh escaped my lips.
In an awkward gesture, Lyle tried to make conversation. ‘Women troubles?’ I shook my head. ‘Is it the little one? What’s her name .. Deanna?’
‘Debbie.’
‘Ah, that’s it. Little Debbie. How is she?’
I wrung a napkin nervously until it ripped into two. ‘She .. died, suddenly .. about a month ago.’
‘Oh.’ He offered his condolences, before asking how it had happened. Perhaps it was the alcohol – yes, that had to be it – but I felt at ease in my surroundings, and having someone who was willing to listen to my problems allowed me to open up, even if it was Lyle. I retold my memory of how I had come home from work to find my only daughter soaking in the bathtub, rivulets of crimson still flowing from her wrists, dried bloodied tears upon her face. He gasped at my tale, clearly surprised at how a young and happy child like my Debbie could mutilate herself like that. I could only shrug.
‘Bartender, a couple of tequila shooters here,’ he called out, and was promptly serviced.
‘To the female species of our race,’ proposed Lyle, handing me a shot glass as he held the other in the air, ‘may we never understand them.’ At that, we threw our heads back and swallowed the liquid. Afterwards, we talked and drank long into the night like old school friends who hadn’t seen each other since graduation. We spoke of things, trivial things like our school years and college ambitions, computers and cars, teenage foolishness and ex-wives.
My ex-wife, now there’s a thought. She couldn’t have cared less when I revealed that her baby girl had committed suicide, no more than she could have sobered up for her funeral two days later. She was a drunk and a junkie, barely capable of looking after herself never mind a fourteen-year-old girl. Thank goodness I had gotten full custody of Debbie; even Miss Parker would have made a better mother.
Lyle nodded in agreement. ‘Ex-wives are a curse, I’m telling you Broots. Their display of love is ripping your heart our through your bank balance.’
‘Here here,’ I encouraged, now raising a glass of straight Vodka, smoke puffing out from a cigarette balanced precariously on my lips.
‘High maintenance, that’s what they are, expecting you to buy flowers and clothes and jewelry to show how much you love them. Damnit, well maybe I don’t want to do that! Maybe .. maybe I want to show her love the old fashioned way: fuck her senseless.’ I couldn’t help but smile. Lyle being in love with a woman was just too strange a thought for my clouded mind to process.
‘You’re lucky your wife left you with a kid, if only for so long. Sometimes I wish I had a daughter; I’d teach her what a real man is like.’ To this, he turned back towards me, placing a hand on my shoulder in what seemed like a comforting gesture. ‘Debbie, now she was a real looker for a girl her age. It’s too bad she’s gone Broots, she would have been a beautiful bride.’
I’ll never get to meet the boys she would’ve brought home for approval, or see her graduate high school and college, and walk her down the aisle at her wedding. God I miss Debbie more and more as each day passes.
I threw my cigarette butt into a nearby glass ashtray, nodding at his words. ‘Yeah, I reckon so.’
My head spun wildly as I stood up, clutching the bar for support as I tried to get my focus into play. Lyle had less luck, tripping up over his own feet and falling to the ground, the grimy floor hitting him square in the jaw. Unable to hold it in, I burst out laughing at his body lying in a heap before my own feet, and was rewarded with a swift hit in the shin. Helping him up, we stumbled across the room towards the door, the other occupants of the tavern once more ignoring another couple of drunks, too involved with their own misery to care.
As we made it outside, Lyle immediately let go of my shoulder and retched beside the exit, gagging noises echoing in the stillness of the night. The cold air sobered up my mind slightly; I sat on the hood of a car and stared up at the twinkling dots in the dark sky, amazed by their beauty and simplicity. Concentrating on one particular star, I imagined that it was Debbie’s window from Heaven, looking down on me, at what I had become after her death. The night’s events ran through my head like a slide show; the drinking, the smoking, the socializing with Lyle. Disgust surged through my veins at the picture I had painted of myself.
I can’t live like this anymore.
Wiping away the traces of vomit still pasted round the edges of his mouth, Lyle leaned back against the wall of the tavern, and stared down the barrel of my loaded handgun. I watched as the shock briefly registered on his face before returning to its standard composed state. He had already known I carried the weapon.
‘You won’t shoot me Broots, you haven’t got the nerves for it.’
I shot him once in the left shoulder.
‘Debbie’s first birthday was a picnic in the park. She loved feeding the ducks swimming in the pond.’
‘Nobody can kill me. I will rise again, you know I can. I’ve done it before, and I’ll keep on doing it, just you wait and see.’
I shot him again, this time in the right shoulder to even things up.
‘Her second birthday, we had a party at the house. I rented a clown to entertain all the kids, but they were scared of him and his antics. It was a complete disaster, but little Debbie.. she had fun just digging into her cake.’
‘She loved it Broots, every minute of it. Had a mouth like a Hoover –’ With the third gunshot, Lyle groaned loudly in pain, as he began to slide down the wall into an undignified slump.
He was wrong; it wasn’t about having steel nerves to be able to shoot someone, it was about holding the firearm steady and letting my finger work in automaton, pulling the trigger over and over again. In total, I discharged fourteen rounds into his body. Fourteen. One for every year she lived, until Lyle had ambushed and raped her one day after school, leaving Debbie so violated that ending her life was the only way she could be at peace. The perverted psychopath, thinking he could console me about her death like he was any other person, as if he had a right to.
Dropping the gun in a ditch and making sure he really was dead, I pushed away any thoughts of what would happen to me now that I had killed the Chairman’s son and re-entered the bar, sitting back down in the same seat I had vacated earlier.
‘What’ll it be?’ asked the bartender as he wiped down the bench top.
‘Whiskey,’ I replied after a short pause, and with a smile, added: ‘oh, and they guy I was in here with before, put it on his tab.’
(c) copyrighted 11.04.00 , 05:25:57
