TATER

He was pinned where he lay, in cold damp darkness, unable to breath but the shallowest of inhalations.  He attempted to move his arms, but they were pinned against his chest.  He was unsure where he was, and scrambled to place himself in this terrifying blackness.  He could feel the panic begin to swell in his chest.  He tried to focus on the next breath, his mind racing through his options.  Through the muffled silence, he heard a siren bleeding on and off, on and off.  His thoughts were scrambled by the excruciating pain behind his eyes at this new sensory invasion.  He took the deepest breath he could muster, and shot out his arms and legs in unison, in an attempt to create space around his body.  His left arm punched through, and he heard the loud crash of glass breaking, and the rush of fresh, cool air.

The siren was louder now, and his foggy brain began to register it's genesis.  His hand fumbled over objects until he felt the familiar source, and managed to hit the snooze button.  His head was on fire, his throat raw and ragged, as if he had swallowed sand.  He pulled himself free of the covers, and managed to push off the stranger who had been passed out on top of him.  The man grumbled and rubbed his eyes, waking in fits.

They looked at each other in confusion.

You need to leave now.

What?

Get dressed and leave.  Now.

Oh, yeah.  Okay, uh whatever.  Where are my pants?

Silence.  His head was being periodically thumped between two bricks, trying desperately to clear out the nightmare of his life, the recurring theme which all the drugs and alcohol failed to keep at bay long enough.  The room was spinning and he needed this person gone, before he was sick to his stomach, before he could humiliate himself any further than he had already managed.  He stuck his leg off the edge of the bed, seeking solid ground, something to pin him to the earth's gravitational pull, and stop the free falling rotation of the room around him.

Did you find them?

Yeah, I got everything.  Hey thanks I guess, you know where to find me if you feel like getting together again.

He didn't know.  He had no idea.  Shame was added to his list of the morning's achievements.

I'll let myself out.

okay.

His foot had found him momentary stillness, but now his sense of smell had returned.  Stale cigarettes, and fresh alcohol washed over him in a nauseating wave, and he just managed to get his head over the side of the bed before his stomach contents followed.  His eyes perceived the broken bottle of Dewars on the floor, next to the overturned ashtray, the cigarette butts littering the hardwood floor like little tombstones.  The cold dampness he was wrapped in had resolved itself, but he was beyond caring that he had wet the bed during the night.  The sobs seemed to come up from his toes, and nearly carried off the top of his head as his body was wracked with each expulsion of grief.

He had thought he was beyond tears, beyond the ability to find any tender or soft spot amidst the rocky landscape of his life.  A momentary crack in the facade was all it took to feel all that pain wash through him again.  So many unanswered questions, and undelivered expectations, they hung from his neck like a millstone as he tottered above  the surface of things, struggling to keep from being pulled down and under.  He cried himself back to sleep, back into the nightmares of his childhood, back to a single day he couldn't chase back into the past where it belonged.

The phone pulled him back from the deep, it's ring a fresh wound to his splitting head.  He managed to pull himself out of bed to answer it, dodging broken glass across no man's land to the kitchen.  He answered it on the fifth ring.

Yeah?

Where are you?

He recognized his boss' voice.

Well you called me at home, so I guess that's where I am.  Listen, I'm sorry I didn't call earlier, but I'm feeling really sick today--

You are sick. You need to see someone about it.  Don't bother coming in, just stop by Human Resources tomorrow morning.

Click.  He hung up the receiver and slumped to the floor.  Great. He laughed to himself a bit as the absurdity of the last few years overwhelmed him. He heard a thunderclap and looked out to see the rain coming down.  He watched as the first heavy drops made their patterns on the wooden deck.  Fuck it all.  He picked himself up grabbed the open bottle of vodka off the counter and took a long pull.  He searched an ashtray, found a roach and sparked it up.  The first hit seared his throat, and he nearly wretched again, the second, though raw, managed to start his mind floating.  He needed to steady himself for act three.

He waited until the lightening started, and then trudged across the roof of his apartment building.  He was quickly soaked, but the vodka was keeping the chill in check.  He made his way to the roof’s edge, and took hold of the steel railing, separating him from 18 floors of empty air and cold concrete.  He looked out across the city, watching the lives around him continue to ebb and flow through their habitual routines. He wondered how so many others could function like clock work from day to day, as he struggled to give himself reasons to keep waking up? 

He looked to the heavens, relishing the rain splashing across his face, coursing down his body.  He thought of his brother again, how dirty and muddy he was when they finally pulled him out from under all that dirt.  He wanted to be clean again, he wanted a peaceful sleep free of guilt and that look on his mother’s face, the expression she couldn’t conceal. That look that said he had failed her, had failed them all.  He prayed to the heavens for intercession as he held tightly to the metal bars.  He watched the lightening streak down nearby, and repeated the same prayer from the previous times he had occupied this very spot.  A long ago fear giving way, to a desperate plead for its visitation upon him.