Chapter 2
The
saying still rings true, I suppose, except now I’ve just given in; the “can’t”
has come sooner than expected. My cynicism and disparagement in life comes with
the territory. It started back when things were simpler, before the shakes and
the seizures. The doctors told me that when they started, the alcohol was
weakening my immune system. When paired with the chronic smoking, it all just gave
me a greater chance to meet the reaper through the exact same hand my father
had been dealt. Having never been that great at poker, I chanced my life with a
bluff, and bet it all into the pot of gold that was part of the delusion that
the disease reflected at the bottom of each bottle that I drank nightly and
with each hourly cigarette. Eight years later, now at forty two years old, the
doc handed me some papers with eyes that said, “I told you so.” I’d be dead
within a year.
My
father, who had actually never smoked a day in his life, cursed God for the
deceptiveness of the fortunate hand he’d held. He had been given a winning four
of a kind, only to be duped by the high and mighty royal flush. As for me, I
looked down through squinted, drunk eyes and continued to see a winning hand
through and through, only to look a little closer when I sobered to see four
suicidal jacks staring back at me. God plays a sick game, so I’ve folded in
shame. I always hated poker anyways.
-----
The
apartment I sit in stands empty, with everything sold to support this gruesome
habit. All that’s left is my computer, TV, and recliner chair, where I sit
nightly, watching the world go by without even a nod to my existence.
Tonight,
on TV, postmorts are rioting downtown. The government is trying to pass a law
that would have them all sent off to some sort of segregated holding camp where
they can all rot and die “in peace.” City workers are tired of scraping the
remains of the rotted homeless and outcasts out of alleyways and street
gutters, and everyone seems to be getting as sick of the smell as I am. It’s
hard to walk the streets these days without spotting one, unlike before, when
one would be hard-pressed to see even one dead shuffler a week. Their droopy
grey skin, missing teeth, and yellowish eyes are always dead giveaways. Shit,
half the people in my meeting look that way in their post relapse days. It’s a
sad day when one realizes that the company he chooses to keep are the walking,
talking, symbols of zombies.
I
pick up the beer off the table next to me and take a long gulp. My stomach grumbles in hunger as the
near-warm liquid hits it. I pick up my phone and hold down the number two
button—the speed dial to the Jimmy John’s down the street. After two rings,
someone picks up, but it sounds like they fumble the phone in the process.
“What’s
up Casper?” I hear when they finally get it together. I cringe—it’s my
brother’s voice.
“Jared?”
“Yes?”
he says, elongated and higher pitched. I want to punch myself for my mistake.
When had I switched the two numbers?
“I
didn’t, umm, hi,” I say.
“You’re
drinking.” His words come out just as I remember my mother saying them to my
father back in her day. Somehow, she always knew.
“Don’t
start, please. It’s the last thing I need today. So, what’s the good word?”
“Nothing’s
really new from the last time we talked,” he pauses for a moment, “whenever
that was.” Everything good with you, besides the normal things wrong?”
“Everything
is normal,” I sigh and take another drink. “I’m fine. Just watching the news.
World’s going to shit, so yeah, nothing new.
You see the news yesterday, about the couple?”
“Yeah,
I saw. It seems like it wasn’t supposed to go down like that. The wife
committed suicide by taking some pills and the husband came home and found her.
I guess they had made a pact that if either one of them had died then they
would end it again for each other, just so that they wouldn’t have to drag out
the prolonged goodbye and suffer through it. The husband shot her with the gun
they kept. I guess she wasn’t even dead yet, not even close; she was just unconscious.
He’s going down for murder now. He’ll be suffering through her death for a lot
longer than he ever anticipated, it seems.”
The
story makes me think of my fate and what I would become. How long would I have
to suffer? How would my brother do with the same agony? I begin to cough and
hold the phone away from my face. The fit is bad, but I end it by alternating
holding my breath and taking deep breaths, a tactic I’d learned through the
last few months. “Sorry,” I say when I begin to breathe easy again.
“God,
you sound like you’re dying,” Jared says passively. His voice bears the weight
of sarcasm yet his words sting with a shock of intense gravity, as if he had
said that he was disowning me as a brother. I feel the tears in my throat
before they reach my eyes. I swallow them down with another gulp of beer then
rotate the can in my hand as I stare at it, looking for answers.
“I
am,” I hear myself say.
“Are
what?” Jared asks.
“The
doc says it could be three months, possibly more. He’s surprised I’m still
functioning so well without the oxygen, like dad had to get. I guess it’s in my
blood now too or something.”
“Or
something?” he exclaims, more serious now; the weight is getting heavier. “Casper,
what are you saying?”
“Cancer
is a hell of a thing, Jared. I guess I’ll get our answer sooner than I had
hoped.”
There’s
silence on the phone for longer than I can handle. The walls of the room feel
like they are creating a pressure in my head, as if I were deep underwater,
drowning in the depths of the secret that I had kept from my own brother for so
long. “How long have you known this?” Jared finally says.
“Six
months. I’m sorry bro.”
“Don’t
be fucking sorry Casper. You should have told me, but—are you, are you in the
city still?”
“Same
place.”
“I’m
on the first plane I can find. I’ll call you back in a bit.”
“No
Jared!” I say with force. “Don’t you fucking dare.” I hear the phone click off
before I can finish talking. I don’t want to see him, at least not the way I’ve
been going lately. I can’t call him back because I don’t know how to say such a
thing.
I
finish the beer in my hand and throw the empty can against the wall. On
television, the empty yet angry protesting eyes of the dead stare back at me.
-----
They
believe they still have souls. They believe they all have rights. They seem to
be multiplying, just like the flies on their corpses. Is our world just that close to death that God sent his
walking carrions to remind us of the fact? I walk senselessly, day by day, and
am reminded at every corner of how lifeless life has really become. It has
gotten harder for me to differentiate between the living and the dead; both are
caught in hypnotic trances and mundane zombie tasks of the everyday laborer, all
carried on by repetition and routine. Corpses, all of us. Rotten to the core.
We stare at our phones and drool over videos while walking without a care or
notice of where we are going. Not a day goes by when I don’t feel stuck in this
pathetic hallucination. Each body is just a shadow of the next, walking in
unison down the line toward finality. I’m the worst of them—an apparition of my
former self, buying and stealing beer, waiting to fall in that line to catch a
glimpse of His last laugh. A person can’t even escape anymore, at least not the
old-fashioned way. No cutting, pill taking, hanging, or the like. They say a
shot in the head is best, or burning. I think about this as I walk into the
corner mart. The man behind the corner is no longer Asian-American. His tone is
no longer vibrant. His eyes are no longer fixed or aware. He just is. He exists on this world for no other
reason but to die again. When did he
pass¸ I wonder. I want to ask, and how, but his eyes—the only emotion left—
are as sad and droopy as a sick puppy’s. There’s no life left, I realize. No
drive. He doesn’t belong. His destiny is elsewhere now. He is just like me.
I
walk out with my beer in tow, feeling like my only purpose in life, my only
task, is complete.
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