Harold
couldn’t see the use in it anymore. He wasn’t even sure what “it”
was, and he was completely befuddled on whether it was a inquisitive,
“What is it?” or a declarative, “What it is!” Of course,
Harold never considered anything at these depths, but he probably
wouldn’t even if he could because Harold couldn’t see the use in
it anymore. Life was bleak, uncaring, and sobering.
The first two he considered an inconvenient truth, but the last had
him looking for an exit sign.
He
had already decided exactly how he would take himself out of the
world. The same way he’d come into
it...
Whiskey and Propane. Yup,
I said, “Whiskey and Propane.” But
that's a different adventure all
together completely
a shambles. The
Devil’s water and an explosive gaseous hydrocarbon would be the
implements,
and he had whittled the whole process down to three easy steps:
MisStep
One: Drink the whiskey.
MisStep
Two: Turn on the gas.
MisStep
Three: Figure the rest out later.
Maybe
turning on the gas first would be better. Get things moving along
right away. It would be a real time saver, like showing up at the bar
already drunk. That little gem had shaved at least 25 minutes off the
unproductive front end of his binges. Added together that would
be…Fuck it! What’s the point in doing the math? Math is so
subjective anyway. You can do the same problem twenty-five times and
never get the same answer once. Math is the Universal language but
to Harold it was all gibberish. Pi is the same way and that’s math
too.
Whiskey,
propane, and pie! Now, that’s the way to go! His final meal, his
last supper, well,
last dessert, but what kind of pie is most befitting a Kevorkian
closure? And easily shoplifted? Marion
Barry!
Marion
Berry was one of Harold’s favorite pies. It reminded him of crack
and hookers, although he couldn’t remember why. It didn’t
matter, there was no use in anything anymore to the exclusion of
whiskey, propane, and Marion
Barry
pie. Oh, and a good epitaph. He would need one of those. He’d spent
last night working on the candidates, and pulling lint from his
navel. He’d come up with the semi-finalists:
-
“My
most attractive feature was my alcoholic blackouts.”
-
“It’s
not mine officer. I swear.”
-
“That’s
mine officer. I swear.”
-
“Fuck,
shit, damn it. I swear.”
He’d
work out the winner by accident after he took care of his little “S”
word
problem. This was going to take some effort, which Harold was
unaccustomed to exerting, or even considering. In fact, this may be
the first time he’d be putting an effort into anything worthwhile.
He
needed inspiration via inebriation for a show stopping epitaph. He
also needed a bath, $1,740.00, a McGriddle (Sausage only, please),
and a better way to control crotch odor in a sleeping bag, if you’re
on the bum’s registry otherwise none of these are germane to this
story line. [Narrator: Peeks his nonexistent head up to see if anyone
in the audience is buying the claim.] The kind of epitaph that makes
you set your beer on the headstone and bend over to read it up close,
and after a minute or so you remember that you were urinating when
you noticed the epitaph, and you still were. That’s the kind of
epitaph he hallucinated.
He’d
had great success last night,
but a higher blood alcohol content would make him smarter, women
better looking, and even the slightest incline treacherous. Popeye
has
spinach, Bugs Bunny has carrots, Bob Marley had pot, and Harold had
every mind altering substance known to man, plus his personal
discoveries. Three month old goldfish water to
mention one.
Maybe he could encapsulate that into an epitaph. Probably not.
Harold
half shuffled, half wandered, and fully flailed his way to his
favorite 24
hour grocery store.
Roughly twenty-two and a half hours later, Harold was lowering
property values in the liquor department.
His
instinct said, “Go with the good stuff.”
His
common sense remained conspicuously absent.
The
rest of him said, “Drink. Drink them all. Now!”
Then,
something inexplicable happened, Harold resisted all counsel and
picked a reasonably priced single malt whiskey from Scotland, and
walked to the self checkout line. Weird? Extending his peculiar
behavior, he stood in line like a normal person. Everyone else
wandered out of line shortly thereafter. Weird. He scanned the bottle
just like in the commercials. Truly, a unique experience. He hit pay
now, and starred at the display.
“Cash”
Nope.
“Credit”
Not going to fill out forms today.
“Other
stuff I don’t understand” Weird!
No
shoplift button? How inconvenient.
Damn!
Whoever claimed the power to tax is the power to kill must
have been a prophet because these taxes were killing his ability to
kill his liver. A double homicide!
Oh,
shit! The pie! Fuck this paying shit. I have to get my last, just
dessert. Harold grabbed the bottle, stuffed it in his pants, and
staggered away from the ill-equipped machine much to the delight of
all in olfactory range.
In
the bakery, Harold sleuthed
out a fine, mold-free Marion
Barry
pie. Once more, the images of crack cocaine and hookers danced
provocatively between his two remaining brain cells. Harold gyrated
in unison. Damn! It was getting
hot
in here. So, he popped the seal on the whiskey and guzzled an ample
portion and a half. Now, it was really getting
hot
in here! Back to the bottle once more. As Harold approached the
produce section he was approaching saturation, and damn it was hotter
than a desert iguana's asshole in this place. The register was just a
few feet behind him. So, he kept walking, sort of. An undefinable
increment of time later, Harold had committed three infractions and
one gross misdemeanor without foreknowledge and absent any
rearknowledge either. His rear was currently putrefying the seat below him
in the cabin he and the boy had commandeered before he’d left for
school.
School…
Harold recoiled at the thought of the word, and all the thoughts that
it implied. The boy could have stayed right here and got all the
education he needed with Harold as his tutor. All he had to do was
listen to everything Harold said, then do something, nearly
anything else. He would have been fine. Maybe, even employed.
With
the ritual precision of Japanese seppuku, lacking anything precise or
remotely cool, Harold turned the gas on full, and drank heavily while
eating his pie barbarically. The darkness crept over him, then
scrambled for a cleaner place to sleep. Silence… followed suit.
The
two toxified brain cells were alternately projectile vomiting into
Harold’s ear canals, and ogling what they thought to be a Jennifer
Aniston photo, but was, in fact, Michael Jackson’s mug shot.
The
brain cells eventually graduated to dry heaves and passed out on or
around their broken Q-tip swab decor. Mostly silence followed with a festive
smattering of gallbladder gurgling and flatulence in accompaniment. The duet set the ambiance in Harold’s cavernous head.
THROB!
THROB! THROB! Gurgle! THROB! THROB! THROB! Gurgle! THROB! THROB!
THROB! Gurgle! Like some gigantic percussion artillery slamming out a
nauseating discord reminiscent of a 1980’s Swedish death metal band
of tone deaf elk smashing their hooves against the strings.
[The
narrator pushes his limits and opines, “They all sounded like that,
except for Yngwie. He was amazing.” Noticing the Author’s raised
eyebrow, the narrator skulks behind the paper thin defenses of the
book.]
THROB!
THROB! THROB! Gurgle! THROB! THROB! THROB! Gurgle! The band played
off, way off in Harold’s splitting brain bone. Hours later, much to Harold’s
dismay, he awoke. The real issue in this coming of consciousness was that he woke alive!
That damn gas was bum-proof! Damn it! Rather than a killing blow, all he had dealt himself was a slightly
discounted intelligence quotient and an augmented ill-tempered
gallbladder. "What a fucked up way to start my day, after unsuccessfully ending my life", Harold thought as
he lit his last cigarette before the flash. Slow
motion combustion ensued. The fizzle seemed like a lightning bolt
fuse which
zig-zagged through the air between himself and the couch upon which the little lightning bolt came to rest. All time stood still but only for a brief reprieve as the Fates giggled like little girls again. In the explosion, the couch took
Harold through the kitchen window, hyperspace, and something far more
painful. That was all he remembered, except for the squirrel
spirits which briefly tormented Harold’s soul before kicking
him out in the cabin’s
smoldering foundation’s yard.
We
will gnaw through your nut sack!