HTB Chronicills - Harold's Explosive Exit

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:

1. “My most attractive feature was my alcoholic blackouts.”
2. “It’s not mine officer. I swear.”
3. “That’s mine officer. I swear.”
4. “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!