My Ex's Wedding
This is something new,
The Casper Slide, Part 2.
Featuring the Platinum Band.
And this time…we're gonna get funky! (funky funky funky)
I finished the last of my drink just as those familiar tones echoed over the loudspeakers in the corner and laughing people began to move their way out to the dance floor. As I swallow, I look over to where the “dj” (if you could call a teenager with a spotify playlist a dj) was stationed. I can feel the performative smile and the internal eye-roll from here. But maybe that’s just projecting. I’m too drunk for self-reflection. I hate this song. Why did I come here?
I don’t like weddings, generally. Especially not lately. At one end of the spectrum, they’re some quick affair in the Father-in-Law’s barn or some stuffy church, and then everybody retreats to a hotel conference room to eat dry chicken and listen to the same 12 songs they play at every wedding before everyone drunk-stumbles home. At the other end of the spectrum, it’s some beautiful, picturesque farm or beach or skyscraper, and there’s pictures at sunset and an uncle dancing with the flower girl and the Maid of Honor gives a speech so sickly sweet that it makes your teeth hurt just to hear it, so sweet you wonder how she can hold all those words in her mouth without vomiting. And then everybody eats too-dry chicken and listens to the same 12 songs, but now it’s so much cuter because there’s fairy lights everywhere.
Or maybe I’m just bitter. I don’t know. I don’t even care anymore.
Of the two types, Delilah’s wedding definitively leaned towards the latter. The whole thing was in this abandoned warehouse. I guess it got bought up and turned into a venue. They planted a garden on the roof where the ceremony could be held, painted the walls a fresh white to cover the old bare wood, and turned old cable spools into tall tables for the cocktail hour. They had been moved now to make the dance floor everyone was congregating in. The dining tables lining its edges were covered in coarse blue tablecloths with mirrors and plastic greenery in a glass vase in the center. And at the front of it all, a long wooden table on a raised platform with a big wooden arch behind the center, with greenery framing where the lovely couple once sat, and their maids and men seated down the table to either side like a royal court of old. That made me angry. Again, I don’t know why.
The chairs are empty now. Everyone was on the dance floor.
To the left!
Take it back now, y’all!
2 hops this time!
2 hops this time!
When I got the invite, I thought it must be a mistake. I hadn’t heard from Delilah since the breakup. 2 years of radio silence. And why not? We’d only dated about 6 months. We both said shit we’re not proud of. I for one don’t even remember what we were fighting about the last night I saw her. All I remember is what happened after.
Her apartment was on the 4th floor, and all four floors had a no smoking sign on the balcony. No elevator, either. So I had to drag my fat ass down 4 flights of stairs just to get a smoke and cool off. I was huffing and wheezing by the time my feet touched pavement, but I was still fuming by the time I took out my lighter.
It wasn’t the first time this had happened. Wouldn’t be the last time, either. We just kept on doing this. Every week it was some new shit. Why haven’t I fixed the cracks in the drywall yet? I thought you said you were a shoe-in for that promotion, why’d they pass you up? Well if you know I don’t like your Mom, why is she visiting us this weekend? On and on. I’d try to stay calm, hold my temper, but she’d just keep needling and needling, and presenting it as a question all the time, like it’s an interrogation or some shit. As though I was the one who needed to explain myself. Either I’d keep a lid on it and it would simmer until she did the same shit the next day, or I’d blow up and wind up down there, next to my car, trying to smoke my troubles away.
About 2 cigarettes in, and I’d started to calm down. I mean, it’s not like she was the ONLY one to blame for our troubles. I know I can be mean as a snake when I have a mind for it, and I know her friends all hated me. I’m not exactly the cuddliest teddy bear in the lot. Eventually I got to thinking maybe I should go up there and apologize. Say she’s right, make my promises, accept her own half-hearted half-apology, then go back for some okay make up sex. I threw my Marlboro on the ground and stomped it out, and then turned.
I saw the stairs waiting for me. Four flights of them, climbing back up. 48 one-foot steps to make an apology to a woman who had probably about had enough of my shit. To go back and grovel for the right to do the same thing again next week and the week after that. Did I want that? Was I the kind of guy who wanted to go up 4 stories just to keep going nowhere? I looked at those stairs and decided. No. Four flights of stairs is too much work for some mediocre pussy and a rolling argument. I turned around again, got in my truck, and went home. I broke up with her over text the next day, we arranged to get our things from the other’s apartment when they weren’t there, and that was it. That was the last time I saw or spoke to Delilah.
Until about 2 months ago when I got the invite in the mail. Which brings me back to my original question: why the fuck am I here.
Sliiide to the right!
Sliiide to the left!
Cha-cha now y’all.
Turn it out.
They look happy, those two. The groom (who’s name I can’t be fucked to remember) is a 6-foot fridge with a head wearing a suit just a little too small, just enough to show his toned body when he takes the jacket off. He smiles at her like a labrador, and looks about like he has the internal monologue of one, too. It pisses me off, how much I can’t hate him. Delilah, for her part, has lost some weight, and obviously called some very expensive people to do her hair and makeup. Unlike her groom, I KNOW I can hate her, but I don’t want to. I spent enough time doing that while we were together. So now I’m just sitting here, watching them move as one to the instructions over the speaker, whispering and laughing and dancing in the twinkle of a beautiful night. I shake my head and drain the rest of my glass. God, I want to throw up.
Maybe it was spite. I’m pretty damn sure she only sent me the invite to rub how happy she was in my face. She never wanted me to actually come, she just wanted me to know she was getting married. Maybe the reason I came was to call her bluff, to show her that I didn’t care. But then they didn’t seem to care, either. They didn’t even say hello when they were making their rounds after dinner. They just sat me in the back with the second cousins and other black sheep, never even looked my way. My only evidence they even know I’m here is the name card at the seat. Gilded and cursive and printed on cheap cardstock, like everything else here.
I thought about going up and talking to her. I figured “Shit, if they’re just going to ignore me, I’ll just make myself damn near unignorable.” I thought about making a scene, too. Getting sloppy drunk and hitting on a bridesmaid, maybe getting offended over some minor shit and decking the father-in-law. But I didn’t. Like I said, whether it’s just being tired of it all or something else, I just can’t bring myself to hate them that much. So now I’m just sitting here, milking the free bar for all it’s worth before I find a way home. This was a bad idea, I never should’ve come out. I should’ve just-
“Another double of Woodford, sir?” comes a new voice from behind the bar, cutting off my train of thought. It’s gruff and deep, and not at all the voice of the 30-something woman who’s been tending bar all night.
Now it’s time to get funky!
To the right, now!
To the left!
Take it back now, y’all.
I turn, and the bartender has been replaced. The woman who’s been giving me whiskey and threatening to cut me off has been replaced by a man who looks to be in his 60s, much older than all the other people working the venue. He’s tall and skinny as a whip, but his arms seem to have a wiry strength I have trouble describing. His face is what takes most of my initial attention, though. It’s puffy and leathery to the point it looks like an old catcher’s mitt that someone gashed up with a boxcutter until it looked approximately human. His hand running through the shock of white hair remaining on his head, he looks at me expectantly.
“Uh, yeah. Sure.” I slide my glass back towards him. “What happened to the other bartender?”
“She took a break. I’m covering for a little while. Rocks?” His voice came back, and I thought I heard a very slight accent, though I can’t quite distinguish where from.
“Nah, neat.” He nods as he turns to grab the bottle, and I get a better look at the rest of him. His clothes are old and stained, but orderly and well presented. A burgundy vest covering a tired white dress-shirt with the sleeves rolled up. There’s something in the back of my brain, a little voice muted by the alcohol saying something’s wrong. He moves smoothly, like an assembly line worker on the job, constructing my drink more than pouring it. He’s certainly acting like he knows every nook of the bar, like he’s worked it before. Like he belongs. Still…shit, what the hell do I care. I’m leaving after this drink anyway. He turns back and sets the whiskey down in front of me.
“Thanks,” I say, and start to go back to watching the dance floor.
Criss-cross!
Criss-cross!
Cha-cha now, y’all.
“Why the long face, son?” The old man speaks up behind me, before I can go fully away from the bar. I turn back and see him, leaning on the polished wood of the newly constructed bar that didn’t fit at all with the old wood wall behind it, arms making a steeple-shape with his head at the top.
“Excuse me?” I respond.
“Well I came in about 5 minutes ago, and you’ve been standing there the whole time looking like a whipped dog, so I figured I’d just ask what’s eatin’ ya.”
“I-. Nothing. I’m just waiting.”
“Ay, sure. Waiting. Done an awful lot of that in my time.” The slash in the leather of his face that he’s been using for a mouth curled up into an approximation of a polite smile. I smile politely back and make up my mind to finish my drink here and now. Just as the rim touches my lips, though…“May I ask exactly what it is you’re waitin’ for?”
I set the glass down, and with a little more annoyance in my voice than I intended, respond: “I’m sorry, who are you and why do you care?”
His gnarled hands uproot from the bar as he raises them to his shoulders, palms out. “No offense meant, sir.” His palms are so calloused and scarred, they look less like flesh and blood and more like river stones loosely covered by rawhide. He continued: “To answer your first question, my Christian name is Oleander Carfax. Most people just call me Ollie, though. And as for your second, I just figured you looked like you had something on your mind and you might want to talk about it.”
“Well, Ollie, I promise you that if I did, you’d be the first to know. For now though, I’d just like to finish my drink and leave, and I’d like to do that without getting any of your damn advice. Can you do that for me?”
“Sure, sure.” A shit eating grin crosses his face as he puts his hands back down. He’s mocking me, I know it. He’s going to go home and tell his wife or his caretaker or his stray cat or whoever about the sad sack at the bar with a bug up his ass, the one who kept watching all the happy people dancing, and just kept getting more and more sour. Well fuck him, I don’t need his opinions any more than I need Delilahs. I take another drink, but this time I don't turn back. If I keep watching the party, I’ll be stewing here all night.
Cha-cha now, y’all.
Let’s go to work!
To the left!
Take it back now, y’all.
That name rang a bell, stupid as it is. Oleander Carfax. Have I heard it before? The music’s so damn loud, even from here I can’t think over it. My eyes slide back towards the old man, pulled by his gravity. When my gaze finally gets to his, I find him staring right back at me. His pinprick, beady eyes gazing right into my skull. The grin is gone from his face, and his knuckles have gone white where he’s holding the bar. I quickly look away. I know he’s still watching me, though. When his voice comes again, I can hear his smile is back, dripping like melted wax into each word. “Do y’know your sign?”
“Huh?”
“Your sign. Star sign. Do you know it?”
“Uh…no.”
“I’ll bet you’re a Cancer.”
I nearly spat out my drink. “What the hell did you just call me?”
“Cancer. It's one of the astrological signs. Means you were born between June and July. Symbol is a crab. As in the kind that can’t ever escape buckets.” He speaks as matter-of-factly as if he were describing the weather. But those beady little eyes keep boring into me.
“Oh.” Because what the fuck else are you supposed to say when some old bartender starts spouting off about astrology?
“So are you one?” he says.
“What the hell does it matter?” God, I can’t believe I’m stuck talking to some new-age nut here. I swear, if he starts getting out crystals I’m throwing my drink in his face.
The old man starts to lean forward. “It matters quite a bit, son. You can discern an awful lot about a person from their star sign. Take me, for example. I’m a Taurus. Symbolized by a bull. Taurus’s are naturally aggressive, assertive. And I was, when I was your age. I fought and fought for everything I wanted, and then took more. My old man had to kick me out of the house, I spent so long fighting him. But I found my own way. And here I am now. And there you are, sitting at the end of the bar trying not to look at me, almost as much as you’re trying not to look at that pretty girl in white over there dancing.” I have to fight to stop myself from craning my head back around to the dance floor. He continues, “If you were a Taurus like me, you’d walk right over there, grab her away from her husband, win her back here and now. But you aren’t going to do that, so I’m guessing you’re a Cancer.” He spits the last word out like a slur. Or an accusation.
At that I stand up straight. I can feel the heat in my face has hit my temples, and I slam my glass on the counter. Louder than I expected, but I don’t care. Ollie doesn’t flinch. A decent amount of brown liquor sloshes over the edge and onto the bar Ollie had just finished cleaning. Good. Fuck this bar, fuck this wedding, and fuck this old-ass, inbred-rat-looking, bat-leather-faced bugman. If I make a scene now, at least I can ruin the afterparty, too. I open my mouth to start telling him off, to start the nuclear chain reaction that’ll for sure get me kicked out of the wedding, but then I see something that makes me falter. It’s something small. Trivial, even. I see one of the caterers, past Ollie, cleaning up near the door. Most notably, I see his uniform. All black pants and shirt, long sleeves, and a red tie. I remember all the workers for the venue, all in black and a red tie. In particular I remember the bartender who served me before Ollie showed his face, a kind woman in her 30s, wearing exactly the same thing.
And I look back at Ollie, in his white frumpy button-up and threadbare maroon vest. All my anger, everything I was about to say gets stopped at the back of my throat. He’s still smiling, but it’s not the same shit-eating service smile he had before. It’s sharper, meaner. And it doesn’t reach his eyes.
Reverse, Reverse!
Reverse, Reverse!
Cha-cha, now, y’all.
Turn it out.
“You…don’t work for the venue, do you?” I asked.
“Can’t say I do, son.” he replied.
“Were you invited?”
His eyes broke contact with mine, looking towards the ceiling as though in thought or prayer about how to respond. His hands started moving, as though automatic again, removing a crumpled box of cigarettes from his pocket. I could feel my temper cool into a strange unease. A worker calling me cancer is one thing, a complete stranger is another. I look back at his arms, and I can see the scars among the wrinkles, white as cotton on his leathery skin.
He removed a cigarette and placed it in his mouth, and finally responded, while his hands aimlessly searched for a lighter: “In a fashion.”
“That’s…that’s not an answer.”
“I thought you didn’t care. I thought you were going to go ahead and finish your drink and get out of here.”
His eyes broker no argument. He’s right. Why the hell DID I care? I should just finish my drink and get the hell out of here. I glare at Ollie, before touching the glass to my lips. I take a long pull. There’s more in here than I remember. I must’ve been drinking slower than I thought. I open my throat and the high proof burns all the way down. I take a big gulp. And another. And another. I try to shoot the whole thing down my gullet, try until the sting of the alcohol forces my mouth closed and I put the drink down to come up for air. When I put the glass down it’s still nearly full. As my eyes widen, I smell burning tobacco, and look back at Ollie to see his cigarette lit. Did I hear a lighter click? He takes the cigarette from his mouth and blows the smoke out his nose. He looked for all the world like a cartoon bull. That sharp, mean smile still curled his lip, and his eyes still bored into me hard as flint.
“In any case,” he said, “I’m here on business. Which is certainly more than you can say, Jonah.”
FREEZE!
Everybody clap your hands!
The hall is drowned in the sharp sounds of clapping
He knows my name.
How in the hell does he know my name?
Did I tell him?
Did he-?
“Maybe I read the guest list.”
Yes, exactly, he probably read-
I feel the thought stop there as I realize he had been the one who suggested it.
I want to run, to fight, to do something, anything, but my legs refuse to move. I’m kept in place by the tight stare of the man across the bar.
“Who…” I start, but can’t finish.
“Oh come now, Jonah. I know you’re stupid, but you’re not deaf. I already told you my Christian name.” He takes the cigarette from his mouth and puts it out on the bar, leaving a hole in the varnish. A flash behind him catches my eye. A warped reflection in the bottles on the shelf. In the fairy lights and darkness, it’s hard to make out, but it’s standing exactly where Ollie is. It’s massive, and in the second before it’s gone I think I see horns and antennae and eyes and exoskeletal carapace and fur and eyes and slick skin like an eel and eyes and eyes and eyes. And then the flash is done, and the reflection is gone, and it’s just the back of Ollie’s balding head as my attention turns back to his bat-leather face “Do you really want me to go through all my other names, as well?”
“I…” I don’t know where this sentence is going. I just know that if I’m still talking, I’m still alive. I still can’t move. My hands, planted firmly on the bar, are the only things stopping me from collapsing. In desperation I spit out the first sentence that comes to mind: “What are you doing here?”
Then, for the first time since I’d first seen him, Ollie gave a genuine smile. “I’m glad you asked.” He motioned back to the dance floor, and my eyes instinctually followed.
How low can you go?
Can you go down low?
All the way to the floor?
How low can you go?
The scene looks very similar to what it was when I last cast my eyes upon it. Everyone at the wedding is out on the dance floor, young children laughing and running around, older adults chasing them, and in the middle a block of people dancing, following the steps as they were sung out over the speakers around them. Right now they were crouched on the ground; “getting low”, as the song commanded. And at their head was Delilah and her Labrador Groom.
It’s only when my eyes scan over Delilah that I start to see things wrong. I can see dark streaks running down her face. She’s still smiling, but it looks more like someone pinned the corners of her mouth back than actual mirth. The thing called Ollie starts speaking behind me:
“After you two parted ways, she decided she was done with the dating scene. ‘Been hurt too many times,’ those were her words when she called me up.” She’s looking at me. Her eyes seem to be pleading. “Sure, the summoning was old-school, but I’m a fan of the classics, and how could I turn down a woman in need? So I listened, and we came to an accord.” She opens her mouth, but if any sound comes out it can’t be heard over the sound of the music. My stomach drops as I realized she’s trying to scream. “I would give her what she asked for…” her Labrador Husband leans close to her, then laughs like she just made the best joke he’d ever heard, “for a price to be named later. Well, collection day has come.”
I look around the crowded wedding, but nobody seems to notice anything wrong. Everybody's laughing and drinking and talking and dancing. Nobody else sees what I see, as the song demands they-
-bring it to the top?
Like you never ever stop?
Can you bring it to the top?
One hop!
-Delilah jumps. I finally break from her face and see the rest of her body. Her hands are mangled beyond recognition, and I can see places in her arms that are crooked where they’re not meant to be. As she lands, she hits the ground far harder than should be possible, and I see her left thigh bend inward above the knee before quickly straightening out. She gives out another silent wail, stumbling slightly forward, before something jerks her back straight. She keeps moving. How is she still moving? I can see the tears streaming down her face, but her muscles, like her smile, seem fixed to what they’re doing. It dawns on me that she could no more stop of her own accord than an executioner could stop his blade mid-swing.
“Did you know,” says Ollie behind me, “that the human body has over 206 bones? Now some of them are in very hard to reach places, like the base of the skull, but did you also know, that over half of them are in the hands and feet?”
Right foot, now!
“All that to say, that while it can take hours to break EVERY bone in the body, you can break nearly 80% of them in just under 5 minutes?”
Left foot now, y’all!
“5 minutes. The length of a song. And I can make a song last a mighty long time.”
Charlie Brown!
I feel my legs finally gain purchase underneath me, and go to take a step towards her. But before my foot even falls, I feel a cold vice grip my shoulder. It’s one of Ollie’s gnarled hands. “Oh, what’s this? Finally find yer balls?” With hardly any effort at all he spins me around to face him. His face is inches away from mine; I can see my reflection in his eyes and smell the rot in his teeth and tobacco in his breath. He is no longer smiling. “That girl is my property, son. At the end of tonight, she and her new husband will be in a truck wrapped around a tree, tragic victims of drunk driving. Eyes toward heaven, souls bound elsewhere. But not before I’ve taken my price. Unless you’d like something similar, I’d suggest you cool off.” I felt his thumb dig into my shoulder, and a patch of warmth spread from it. I looked, and saw I was bleeding. I finally nodded, and Ollie let go. His salesman smile returned, and he sat back on his heels as I slumped against the bar.
We stood there silently for a while, looking at each other while the music played. Now that I knew to listen for it, I could hear the crack of bones with each command given. I dared not to turn around to see her again. I opened and closed my hands while the whiskey churned in my stomach. I’ve been powerless before, but never this dejectedly so. Eventually, Ollie scoffed, and started speaking again. “I really don’t know why you’re so upset,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and returning to mechanically cleaning the bar. “I mean, I only invited you because I figured you’d want to see this, with you hating her guts and all.”
I feel my strength completely leave me. HE invited me. Not Delilah, not her husband. No ex-lover’s malice or remorse. Just this thing in a vest, approximating the shape of a person, who thought I’d enjoy this. I look down at the bar. Then I swallow hard, and look back up.
“What if someone else paid for her?”
Ollie stopped his cleaning. He gave me a curious look and leaned towards me. “Come again?”
I take a second to steady myself before starting again: “You seem like the type to make deals. You said this, her soul, all of this was the price she was paying for your deal with her.” I open and close my hands, not looking at Ollie.
“And you’re saying you want to take up her debt?”
I close my eyes, and steel myself. It’s easier than you think to jump off a cliff. Just 3…2…1… “Yes.”
The word hangs in the air for a second. The whole world seems to go quiet.
Then the silence is broken by Ollie’s uproarious laughter.
I look up to find him, doubled over behind the bar, laughing so hard I think I see a tear fall from his cheek. “You…!” he points and has to take a break to keep laughing. “You want to trade your soul for hers?” I take a step back in confusion. He has to catch himself on the bar to stop himself from falling to the floor.
“I…What’s so funny?” I say.
“YOU ARE!” replies Ollie, finally collecting himself. He continues: “Son, have you ever heard the phrase ‘why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?’”
I go slack-jawed. “What?”
Recomposed now, he says: “Jonah, your soul’s already mine. You gave it to me a long time ago.”
I start to get angry. “That’s a lie! I’ve never seen anything like you in my life!”
Ollie chuckled again: “It’s because you never had to, son. Delilah, that poor girl over there, had to be driven to me. Summoned me up out of an old dirt crossroads, she did. I corrupted HER. You?” he said, motioning towards my whole person, “You did that yourself. Every decision you’ve made, every opportunity to be happy you turned down, every chance to be a better person you refused, every wrong path you ever walked down and never turned back, it all led to me.” He motioned to himself now. “It didn’t even take a trap or temptation. Just gravity. All I had to do was stand at the bottom of every low road, and you would find me. Every. Single. Time. And now? Shit, you’re my number one guy.”
“N-no, that’s not true.” I’m stammering, why the hell am I stammering? This guy’s fucking torturing someone in front of me and I’m stammering. I can feel my anger rising again. Or is it fear? It’s all the same, isn’t it? Come on, Jonah, get it together. “I..I know I’ve made mistakes, but-”
“But what?” Ollie interrupts. He clasps his hands together in some cartoonish impersonation of innocence “But ‘somewhere deep inside of you, you‘re a good person?’” He drops the act, grabs my shoulder and pulls me closer again before continuing to speak: “There is no ‘deeper’ to you. You are a pest, a weed in God’s garden. You came to a wedding specifically to see if you could ruin it for the bride, a woman who you had known for 6 months 2 years ago. What kind of ‘good person’ fucking does that? And what for? So you could make her as miserable as you are? So you could take one happy day from her? Shit, you don’t even know why, do you? Never got that far in your reasoning? Well I’ll tell you why.” He had pulled me closer and closer, and I could suddenly see an intensity in his beady, rat’s eyes. A madness, or a foaming mouth fanaticism that drained all effort to fight out of me.
He spoke low, now. Almost too low to hear. “I said you were a Cancer earlier, and I meant it. In more ways than one. Son, you are a disease to everyone you meet.. You hate that your life is going nowhere, refuse to do anything to change it, and then hate when other people find any form of success without you. It’s not enough that you fail, everyone else must go down with you. You're my bottom bitch, the whore I use to keep all the rest in line and drag new whores in. You’re a crab in the bottom of my bucket, fighting and clawing and maiming everything that tries to escape because even if you’re dying, the thought that someone else is better than you is worse.” With his right hand, he reached up and patted my cheek. It feels like being caressed by stinging nettle.
Finally, I let myself boil over. I plant my feet, and with my left hand throw the hardest punch I can while I wrench my shoulder free from his grip. I feel my shoulder pop from its socket before yanking myself free. I don’t even feel if my punch connected, I’m already turning and running for Delilah. She’s still moving, writhing. I can see the broken bone roiling below her skin, and her eyes closed and mouth open in a permanent, silent wail of agony. But all the while, her body mimicking the illusion of normality, dragging her foot along the ground as the speakers demand she-
Slide to right!
Slide to the left!
Take it back now, y’all
Before I can even get close, I open my eyes and I’m on the floor. I didn’t even feel the impact, all I can feel is the stickiness of fresh blood on the back of my head. Before I can even react, I feel the sharp toe of a boot (hoof?) impact my side like a sledge hammer. I immediately double over on my side, and finally throw up for all the times I wanted to. The blood from the back of my head mixes with the bile on the floor, and makes for a putrid, acrid-iron smell that I feel in the back of my throat as I writhe on the ground.
I feel a hand grab me and turn me over on my back. It’s Ollie, of course. He delivers one more stomp to my chest before leaning in close. “Come now, son. Look at the mess you’ve made.” He kicks me again, this time in the shoulder where he stabbed his thumb into me. “You aren’t going to give up your life for this girl.”
Yes, I am! I can stop all of this! I can-
Another stomp to my chest cuts my thoughts off.
“You certainly weren’t willing to change your life for her.”
That was then! This is now! I-
A blow to my groin brings me to wheezing.
“You weren’t even willing to climb some stairs for her.”
I…
“Now go, before you’re not able to.”
A final kick to the head, and everything flashed white. Then, all went dark.
When I finally come to, I’m driving. I’m on the highway, outside the city, heading west towards home. I can see the towers of the downtown rising out of the concrete mess on my right, only distinguishable against the black of night by the innumerable windows, like holes in a termite colony, shill shining their lights. The clock in my car says 12:02, and I feel every inch of pain in my body. I need a break. I pull over to the shoulder and throw on my hazards. I need to think.
As my mind clears, I remember where I am. I remember the way back to the warehouse from here. I remember Delilah, and the way her mascara ran down her face into her open, smiling mouth. I can see the way her eyes pleaded with me to make it end.
I remember the look on Oleander Carfax’s face. The hardness in his beady eyes. The sharpness of his razor-blade smile. Go. Before you’re not able to.
I put the car back in drive, and keep going west. I drive and drive, away from the city.
Right foot let’s stomp!
My right foot stays on the gas. I miss the turn off into my neighborhood. I keep going west. I don’t know where to. I don’t know when I’ll stop. All I know is I have to keep moving. Keep rolling, keep turning. Keep running.
Left foot let’s stomp!
The sun’s coming up now. I can change. I can be someone different. I know I can. I do not belong to that monster. The cycle can break, the turning can end. But soon, not now. Now I need to keep going, get as far away as I can. And even if all my moving doesn’t take me anywhere, even if I wind up right back where I was, I still have to keep going. For even the chance that my next step might be the one that breaks me free.
Cha-cha, now y’all.
I have to keep going. I can break the circle, it just has to turn a little bit more. Then I can break it. For Delilah. For myself.
Finally, out of exhaustion, I stop in the parking lot of a little roadside bar. Just some rest, then I’ll keep going. Maybe I’ll step in to grab some food, listen to some music, maybe have a beer. Then I’ll be back out. But first some sleep.
That damn song is still playing in my head. Ollie said he could make a song last a damn long time, and he was right. My God he was right. But it has to end sometime, right? All songs end?
Turn it out.
With that thought, I finally drift off to sleep.