Monstrous

It’s my birthday. Another year ticked off the list of time left. Another revolution of the sun. Another night to crash and burn. I hate birthdays. I hate how bluntly they point out my distance from childhood. Right there in my face, a wax and flame score card. No wonder people blow them out. I hate the ice cream and presents, bribing minds away from the fact that you’re four seasons closer to the casket. I hate how my aunt sends me a card every year telling me to try and enjoy it and not to think about the accident. Oh and they miss me at home. On my actual birth day the first present I receive is a sharp slap from the doctor to start living. Maybe this year someone will give me a reason to keep wanting to. 

            On my way to meet up with some friends at a party, I get a text message from Dallas, the girl I’m currently dating. It says that she’s held up working on a project that will take all night. Oh, and that it’s ok to enjoy my birthday. Thanks for the permission, flake. I drive a little faster and turn the music up a little louder. Before I get to the party I stop and buy a pack of cigarettes. My wince is hardly noticeable when the obese attendant cards me.

            “Happy birthday kid.” he says over his double chin.

            “Thanks” I mutter as I dig in my pockets, searching for the right change.

            “You shouldn’t smoke. You keep up those cigarettes you won’t have many birthdays left. Tobacco kills son.” He tells me as he hands me my license and Lucky Strikes.

            “If all the cheeseburgers and french fries don’t get us first, right?” I smile straight through his scowling jowl as I pay. I get into my car and light one of the kill sticks. Sucking suicide into my lungs I head to the party.

            Down the street and around the corner from the house I find a hole in the fence of parked cars and fill it with my own. Walking to the house I try not to think of how pathetic it is to go to an old fling’s house warming party for my birthday. It’s not like anyone knows what today is to me. As I reach the front door I decide that I’m fine with being a hypocrite.

            Once inside I’m met with a throng of sweaty bodies. Drug and alcohol fueled creatures riding the rhythm issuing from the DJ set up in the dinning room. The DJ that despite his claims will never make it in the nyc club circuit, stick to house parties Digital Dennis. I need a drink. Pressing through the crowd I head for the kitchen. Passing over the keg I find some liquor in the freezer. That’s when I feel five fingers touch my shoulder and pause for a few seconds too long. With a knowing grin I turn and face the caresser. Three and a quarter feet of tanned leg, two feet of black dress, and nine inches of amber hair make up the six foot tall Colbie.

            “Do you have any mixers to go with this shitty whiskey?” I shake the cheap plastic bottle at her for emphasis.

            “Hi Colbie. How are you? I like the new place, Colbie,” she says sarcastically.

            I look at her like she’s an idiot and shake the bottle again.

            “Yes Greg, I do. You still take it with ginger ale?” she asks in a more pleasant tone than expected. We dated for a few weeks before I met Dallas. A few days of ignoring phone calls led to a few months of silence between us. Our chemistry doesn’t mind the chasm.

            “Yep,” I tell her, “Can I get a glass, too?” I hate solo cups.

            She nods yes and begins to dig through her party ravaged kitchen for the ginger and a whiskey grail. Sitting on the edge of a table my eyes are magnetized to her. She knows it. No one keeps glasses or soda under the sink. That and nice girls don’t bend at the hips. Ending her performance she finds and hands me the glass and mixer. “I assume you can find the ice on your own,” she says before slipping off to the rest of the party.

            I pour myself a strong one. Under my breath I wish myself a happy birthday and take the poison in one pull. I make another before taking out my phone and texting Dallas. I ask her if she’s sure that she can’t make it out tonight. I ask me not to think of why I need to make sure. I head outside for a smoke. On the front porch, appeasing some of my cravings I see a familiar face walking towards me.

            “What’s up, you get off work early?” I say to my friend. Jeff’s a bartender at some trendy sushi joint downtown.

            “Hey Greg. Uh yeah, I had to leave early, my brother came into town,” he says without a smile. From the street steps a man out of place. Jeff had left his country roots behind, his brother Stan had not.

            “Hey Stan. What are you doing here?” I ask.

            “Came to see my baby bro. Get out of town for a night.”

            “That’s cool. Nice boots…” I poke.

            “Thanks. How’s your birthday going?” He pokes back. Stan knew my deal with birthdays.

            “Anyway,” interrupts Jeff, “We’re at a party. I’m off work early. You need a drink. I need a drink. Stan definitely needs one. Let’s get strange.” Jeff the diplomat heads for the door. “You coming?”

            “Give me a minute. You guys go ahead.” Before following them inside I check my phone. Dallas writes back to tell me she’s sure. She’s going to have to pull an all nighter. I heel my cigarette out with a sharp stomp, startling the formerly sleeping drunk slumped in the corner. “Get your shit together man, it’s not even nine yet,” I tell him as I walk inside. He looks at me and vomits.

            Back inside I find Jeff and Stan in the kitchen. We proceed to drink enough booze to float a medium sized boat. Later as the music picks up, people begin switching off all the lights. A guy with a beard and Buddy Holly glasses produces a box filled with glow sticks and other phosphorescence. Another guy with a tie dye shirt hands me a fistful of pills. He says they’ll make me jump higher. Before I have a chance to inspect them I overhear someone say “…the guy with those boots is creeping on Colbie…” I stuff the pills in my pocket just as Jeff comes up to me.

            “A rave house-warming party is too strange, even for me. I think I’m going to head out. Have you seen my brother?” asks Jeff.

            “Uh yeah. I think he’s out back.” Ten feet before the back door I hear the southern spiced yells of Stan.

            “Oh, so everyone can sleep around with anyone they want except ME?! And fucking Greg, who doesn’t even know what’s going on, he can!” bellows Stan. I couldn’t hear Colbie’s attempt to reason with the steer, it was covered by Jeff yanking the door open. I stand next to Jeff as he and Stan awkwardly stare each other down outside. Fine, I’ll say something.

            “What the hell are you yelling at her for?” I say with cocktail confidence.

            “None of your damn business, Greg!”

            “How is a guy, that I know, screaming at a girl, that I also know, not my business?” I look over to Colbie, who is watching all of this through a grimace. For some reason I feel like I need to protect her.

            “Just stay out of it. I’m warning you.”

            “Are you threatening me? Hillbilly!” Clearly the wrong thing to say.

One second was all Stan needs to close the gap between us. Two more seconds was all he needed to punch me in the ear. Abruptly I am aware of  how much more drunk I am than Stan. Holding my ear I look over and see Jeff standing off, watching. I know it is his brother but at least calm him down. Colbie is no where to be found. With no other option I make my move. I tell him his boots look ‘faggy’. The oaf actually looks down at them. I stick my right knuckles as deep into his eye as possible. I feel something crunch. I feel another crunch as his fist crumples me.

            Laying on my back, my vision goes blurry. I see Jeff standing over me talking on his phone, his eyes fixed on the brown boots, currently making themselves cozy in my ribcage. Before the black takes me I wonder who he is talking to. I hope it’s an ambu-

            Later I wake up on Colbie’s front porch. The drunk guy from earlier tells me to get my shit together. And that I’m bleeding all over the porch. Fair enough. My head still foggy I ask him what happened.

            “Some redneck beat your ass, man. Here,” he says and hands me a flask.

            “I meant where is everyone? Is the party over? How long have I been out?” I need to calm down. I settle for what’s left in my porchmate’s flask. My head pounds.

            “Dude…I woke up for a bit when the two dudes and that hot chick with the sleeve dragged you out…I passed out again after that.”

            “Thanks for the drink,” I hand him back the empty flask. Getting to my feet I limp over to the door. “Wait, did you say a girl with a sleeve was with them?”

            “Yeah. They left with her too.”

            “What did the tattoo look like?”

            “Like ink on skin man. I was more interested in her ass.” I can almost see the stone gears turning in his Neanderthal skull. “Damn dude, if you know her you should for sure hit that. You got her number?” I worry that I do and tell him to get his shit together. I leave him on the porch.

            The bottom floor was deserted. I must have been out for a while. I check my pockets. Every thing is there except my phone and cigarettes. My head is a lightning storm. Was it Dallas? Why did I fight Stan? Why did she leave?   I can’t sort any of this. Too many questions.  I need to think. I need to talk to Dallas. My throbbing ear doesn’t help. I find my phone in the kitchen. It’s dead. I remember that Colbie has the same phone and head up the stairs to find a charger.

            After a few wrong tries I find Colbie’s room. Sitting on her bed, waiting for my phone, I try to relax. Colbie crosses the room in nothing but a bra and panties. My head hurts a little less. She starts some vinyl on her record player and comes to sit by me.            I tilt the ear without ringing towards the music. “I like this song.” I tell her.

            “I know.” She responds like it isn’t creepy. And right now it isn’t.

            “You look like shit, are you ok?”

            “Yeah I’ll be fine. Strong Like Bull.” I don’t mention Dallas. “Why was Stan being such an asshole?”

            “Some guys don’t like being told no.”

            “No guy likes being told no.”

            “Lucky for you, you’re one of those guys who doesn’t hear it often.” The combination of booze, bruises and narcissism keep me from seeing the web she’s spinning. “Your eye looks pretty bad.”

            “Shit. I have a black eye?”

             “Mhmm. Let me see it.” She takes my face into her hands. I feel the warmth of her lips on my forehead. I don’t stop her. Before long my worries about Dallas are on the floor next to our clothes. Make no mistake about it, we are all monsters. Some of us are just better at hiding it.After having our fill of each other I stare at my phone across the room. With the push of a button it will bring reality crashing down around me. I decide to enjoy my discretion a little longer.

            Colbie had been quiet, watching me watch my phone. She says “Don’t stress about Dallas. You didn’t date her long enough for it to bother you.”

            “For what to bother me?”

            “Greg you of all people shouldn’t be so naïve.”

            “So she was here.” I already know the answer. Colbie nods.

            “While you were passed out.” She pauses for a few seconds before dropping it on me. It seems choreographed, the dance of lies and ignorance.  She tells me how Dallas and Jeff have been seeing each other for the last month.

I stare at the John Lennon poster hanging above Colbie’s TV.

She goes on to tell me how everyone knew and how they all think it’s messed up.

He’s holding up a peace sign with the Statue of Liberty in the background. I think of how his most devoted fan gunned him down. How love and obsession turn to violence. A lot of good peace did him. I now hate John Lennon.

             She tells me all of this with her breasts in my face. Two round reasons not to shoot the messenger. Clever girl. She asks me if I’m ok as she places her hand on my shoulder.

            I brush her arm off. I tell her that her poster disgusts me as I get dressed. I only half lie when I tell her that I’m stepping out for a cigarette.

On my way out I stop by the kitchen and steal a bottle of Chivas from one of the roommates. I get to my car and realize I left my keys in Colbie’s room. The all-night gas station isn’t too far and I don’t mind walking, it will give the scotch and me time to work some things out. After the first block I find the pills tie-dye gave me. I throw them in my mouth and chase them with the scotch. As if I’m not already numb. By the time I make it to the gas station I kill half the bottle. I notice how the gas station looks like a Dali painting.

 I make sure to call them cancer sticks when I ask the same fat man from before. I try not to stare at the lard melting and bubbling off of him. I try not to slip in the puddle of it on the floor and grip the counter to steady myself. Remembering me from earlier he asks what kind of person gets their ass kicked on their birthday. Even without whatever pills I took his words still would have been the match that lit the fire. Tonight had pushed it out of my head. Outside smoldering, I sit on the curb as the night’s events blitz me. That whore was cheating on me with my coward best friend. His loser brother gave me a fucking black eye. I was sure his faggy boots had bruised at least one rib. A part of me dies. The pain behind my ribs turns to indifference. I don’t realize that I’m walking until the cemetery gates materialize ahead of me. After passing the bottle through, I scale the iron gate.

I find the two tombstones engraved with my last name and today’s date. It had been almost thirteen years since I last came to see them. Sitting against the cool granite I raise the scotch in a toast. I tell them that I no longer blame myself for putting them in the car that killed them. It wasn’t my fault the bakery gave you the wrong cake. I was ten. I didn’t care what cake I had. I tell them that I haven’t had a cake sense. The guilt that kept me away after the funeral was the same that robbed me of enjoying something as normal as a birthday. Standing up I yell to the damp soil. Believing my words will reach them I tell them that they’re the lucky ones. You don’t have to deal with the human condition anymore. The disease can’t reach you six feet down. Don’t you see you lucky bastards I cured you with that car crash. Concluding my toast I drink the remainder of the scotch. I shatter the bottle on my father’s headstone christening the departure of their hold and the birth of the new me. I see them watching. My mother cries into her maggot infested hands. My father stares with disappointment through empty eye sockets. I laugh as I turn my back on their rotting corpses.

The town is small and it doesn’t take long for me to kick the leaves to Jeff’s house. A few hours before sunrise I creep through the bushes unnoticed. I look through the cracked window of the pre-war house. Before, some family built this wooden cage to hold their happiness. We’re always at war. I don’t feel the roots tearing into my knees. I don’t notice my blood mixing with the earth. Through the window I first see Stan. His boots are off. He’s snoring away the night’s libations. My eyes dart to the tattooed sleeve of the four armed fiend feeling itself up on the couch. The couch that I gave to Jeff. The couch that I sprained my ankle moving into his living room. It is someone else’s memory now. The monster splits at the lips as I hear someone walk into the room. Blocked from my view a disembodied arm hands Jeff and Dallas two glasses of wine. Their mouths unhinge like serpents as they sip. They hiss inaudible whispers to the specter’s hovering arm. I see Jeff wipe her taste off of his lips. A long time ago I would have savored it.

His eyes leave Dallas and follow the phantasm floating into view. Three and a quarter feet of cold, two feet of calculating, and nine inches of cunning manifest as Colbie. I press my ear to the glass and hear her tell them “…look at you love birds…I told you it would work out.” I know they are talking about me. Stripping away humanity it all makes sense.

We are all caught in her web. Jeff was the first snared when he introduced me to Dallas, in hopes of having Colbie to himself. Dallas, blinded by her lust for Jeff, dates me to get closer to him. Colbie uses her power over Jeff to get him to date Dallas. If it wasn’t for Stan causing vibrations the spider would have feasted.   

A bottle of wine later Dallas pulls Jeff’s gaze away from Colbie with a beckoning of her finger. Colbie gets the message and begins readying herself to leave. Dallas unzips Jeff’s zipper. I move from shadows by the window to shadows by the door and wait for her. I pounce on Colbie as she shuts the door behind her.

            “It was you!” I shout.

“Jesus Greg! Have you lost your mind?” I skip the obvious answer.

“You bitch, why did you do this to me?”

“I was bored.” She says coldly.

Fire burns inside me. The anger finding my heart dead and cold pools in my fist. I give the fury to her nose. Three drops of blood float in the air where her face used to be. I drag her limp body back into the house. I peek in the living room and find Jeff and Dallas already a naked tangle snoring. I silently look through Jeff’s bar until I find a bottle of one hundred and fifty proof grain alcohol. After jamming the front door I open the bottle. I let the spirits soak into the old carpet and drapes. I place the bottle into Colbie’s unconscious hand. Taking out two cigarettes I put one in each of our lips. As I light them I tell her that she shouldn’t smoke, it will kill her. I drop my still lit lighter next to her, igniting the puddle of booze by her hand. I put out my cigarette on the back door as I walk through it.

“These old houses go up quick.” The firefighter tells me later. “You know the kids that live here?”

“I used to. Today’s my birthday,” I tell him. It felt good to say it.

 “Sorry your birthday turned to tragedy.”

“They always do.” I tell him as I watch the pyre, my first birthday cake in years brighter than the rising sun.