A Toast

So here I am sitting here on my second cup of Crown, two and a half hours until the forty-third anniversary of my birth and the only thing I can think is I can't believe I made it this far. Never in my wildest dreams did I see myself living to actually turn forty-three. I always figured my time would have ended long ago but no. It seems that this world has use for me still. I don't mean to sound down about the whole situation, I'm really not. I'm very happy with how things have turned out for me. I have an amazing son who thinks the world of me and I him (did not see that coming). I'm happy at my job (really would have liked the promotion but oh well). I have great friends and family that support me in all my endeavors (still working on DHC😄 TBA). It's been an amazing ride and I hope it continues for many, many years still. So to myself I want to say Happy Birthday, Mr. Freeman and may you be blessed with many more. Tener buena salud

Hiatus

I have never told anyone about a very significant incident that happened to me several months ago. I say significant because it changed my life. Even those close to me have no idea about what took place on that summer evening. But part of me feels it may be time to relay the events that transpired. It happened one night after work. I'd been working extremely long hours for a very lengthy amount of time and the word exhaustion barely scratched the surface of what I was feeling. I'd finally made it home after doing another twelve hours and I was dead tired. After dragging my weary body up the stairs to my apartment, I felt something was off, even before I put the key in the lock. You know that feeling you get when you're used to things being a certain way but deep down, you feel a change in the air, that's what I felt. I currently live alone, so when I get home, it’s usually pretty late and this evening, my apartment was as dark as a crypt. 

As I stepped through the doorway from the bright light of my hallway into the blackness, I immediately became aware of a presence in my living room. My eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness so everything was blanketed in shadows.

I went for the nearest light switch, which is along the wall leading into my bedroom, but something froze me to the spot. I became aware of a familiar scent, one I had not smelled in a very long time: Egyptian sandalwood.

Instantaneous recollection of who the aroma belonged to sent a chill down my spine. It had been nearly ten years since the last time I’d been around that smell and every nerve ending in my body was cranked to eleven. I lowered my hand from the switch without turning it on and spoke the only words that came to my lips: “Hello, Hyde.”

My eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness and I saw a plume of smoke rise from the figure sitting on my sofa. The red-orange glow from a lit cigarette cut through the shadows and came to rest on the arm of the couch almost seeming to float within the darkness.

“Hey, Lil Pup. What’s good?” replied the man-shaped shadow. His voice was a little gruffer than I remembered but it was definitely the same one that had spoken to me all those years prior.

My paralysis finally broke and I was able to hit the switch chasing the shadows out of the room like scurrying roaches. The figure sitting on the couch was slightly smaller and I noticed the hair around the temples had gone much grayer over the years since the last time we were together but there was no mistaking who the figure was. As I stood near the wall, Mr. Hyde got up from the sofa and turned to finally face me. He had definitely changed, it would seem. He was no longer the towering giant I once knew but merely a man of regular proportions. His clothes hung off him like a drape, almost several sizes too big for the frame underneath. There were dark half-moons under both of his eyes and his skin was ashen. He looked as if he hadn’t slept or had a decent meal in quite some time. Yet the form that stood before me still had that same swagger as if no time had passed at all.

“What, no love for a long lost friend?” he said, a sly, devilish smile touched the corners of his mouth exposing teeth that appeared to end in points like those of a cannibal. As frail as he looked, I knew, given the right incentive, this man would attack leaving nothing but ruin in his wake. He held his arms out to his sides like an acquaintance awaiting the embrace of a forgotten comrade. Another chill raced along the length of my back.

When he saw that I wasn’t going to move any closer to him, he simply lowered his arms and let out a little chuckle.

“I see you ain’t changed a bit, Lil Pup,” he stated, his eyes never leaving mine.

“Don’t call me that,” I replied coldly as I began to remove the random items from my pockets and placed them on the desk opposite the wall with the light switch.

“What? Lil Pup? It’s what I’ve always called you. Although you ain’t so ‘Lil’ anymore.” This brought a raspy fit of laughter from him as if it were the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he started once the laughter was over, “I helped myself to a tasty beverage from the fridge while I was waiting on ya.” He emphasized this by holding up a bottle of beer he’d been sipping on, placed it to his lips and swallowed the remainder in two loud gulps. When he finished, he smacked his lips and let out a tremendous belch. I saw several dead soldiers around the base of the sofa, so it was clear that he’d helped himself to quite a few.

“Why are you here, Hyde?” I stated trying to mask the slight tremble I felt in my voice knowing full well that he heard it none the less. Another smile creased his lips

“C’mon Lil… oops, sorry, I done forgot my manners. C’mon, Fam, don’t be that way. You and me, we go waaaaay back, don’t we? We used to be tight as virgin booty in a prison.”

“I can see you ain’t changed all that much either. Still just as vulgar as ever.”

He feigned as if I’d said something that truly wounded him, then in an instant, the smile returned.

“C’mon in, have a seat. We ain’t seen each other in a grip. Let’s have ourselves a lil chin waggin’.” He walked over to me and placed his arm around my shoulders. I could feel the body within the clothes was even more fragile than they first appeared. The smell of Egyptian sandalwood grew even more as we walked into the living room. Although I would have sworn that there was another odor lingering right below the surface. Something I couldn’t quite make out at the time.

We made our way over to the sofa, me taking a position on the love seat, him returning to the spot he was in when I’d first arrived. The cigarette he’d been smoking had burned down to the filter leaving a long length of ash dangling at it’s tip that threatened to fall to the floor but miraculously it never did. He gently slid what remained into the opening of the beer bottle he’d been holding and let it drop inside.

Every tendon in my body was wound like a bunch of rubber bands, each ready to spring into action at the slightest sign of trouble. The bad part about it was I knew that it would all be for nothing. Mr. Hyde may have dwindled in stature but he was still an animal unleashed.

He reached down between his legs and produced two bottles of Yeunglings, holding them by the necks between his bony fingers in my direction. I noticed his fingernails had grown quite long over the years and resembled the talons of a predator. Looking further along his hands, I noticed the skin had drawn tightly around his gaunt knuckles, bringing to mind an image of the Crypt Keeper from the old Tales From The Crypt series.

“No thanks,” I declined not wanting my hands anywhere near his.

“Take the damn beer, man,” he nearly growled as he stood and shoved the bottle into my hands. “I ain’t bout to be drinkin’ alone.”

I fumbled with the twist off cap briefly and once I got it open, took a tentative swig of the frothy brew. I don’t know how long he had been sitting in my apartment in the dark, but the drinks still had a nice icy chill to them. He unscrewed his own drink and downed half of it in a couple of audible gulps.

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, I repeated my previous query. “What are you doing here?”

He was about to take another swig of the beer but stopped with the bottle inches from his lips. He stared at me out of the corner of his eyes then proceeded to lower the beer from his mouth. Placing his hands between his scrawny legs and lowered his head as if he were in deep thought. Seconds later, a sign slipped between his lips, then he sat back against the rear of the couch.

“Why?” he asked not looking in my direction.

“Why, what?”

“Why’d you leave me?”

The question caught me off-guard and I wasn’t prepared in the slightest. I knew it was coming but it still caught me unaware. My mouth sated to feel somewhat dry so I took another hit from my own drink.

“We was partners once. Ace boons and all that. But you just took off like I wasn’t shit. No ‘Hey it’s been real but I gotta jet’. Nothin’”

“It wasn’t like that,” I tried to defend myself but he quickly cut me off.

“Bullshit, Fam. You was out like the light at closing time.”

I could since that familiar spark building behind his eyes and knew from experience, he was on the verge of an outburst. But my tongue lay limply on the floor of my mouth. What he’d said was for the most part factual and I had no comeback.

Finally, my mind began to recall all that had occurred since our last get together.

“Look, some shit happened,” I began. “I had a kid and that took all my time.”

This seemed to calm him some, not much, but enough to keep the beast at bay. He eased back onto the sofa but continued to glare at me none the less.

“So where Lil Dude at then?” he asked suspiciously. Disbelief was written all over his face.

“With his mom,” I quickly replied

“No shit? Man I’d love to meet him...”

“Hell no, you ain’t getting anywhere near him!” I snapped nearly jumping from my seat.

That look of feigned agony briefly drew across his face again, and once more was replaced by the horrid cannibalistic grin.

“Do you think I’d ever let you get near him?” I asked, an unexpected chuckle rose to my lips. “Why? So you can do to him what you did to me, you sick fuck?”

“What did I do to you? Huh?” he countered. “I showed you worlds beyond your imagination.”

“You showed me some of the most horrendous shit I’d ever seen in my life.”

“Oh, please,” he flapped one of his scrawny hands towards me. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“I. Was. Ten. What ten year old needs to see those things?” I nearly yelled. “Why would any sane person want to see what I saw? Those images, man, I still have nightmares about some of that shit.”

He leaned forward in his seat, that sinister smile nearly splitting the upper portion of his face away from the lower. “But you had fun though, right?”

“I…,” How could anyone enjoy something like that, is what I wanted to say but what escaped my lips was “Yes.”

“Fuckin’-A right, Pup,” he exclaimed as he was overtaken by another fit of laughter.

I felt horribly ashamed as the realization dawned on me. I did enjoy those things he’d shown me. I even found pleasure in writing some of them down and re-reading them later. I even went so far as showing others what I’d written and hearing them tell me how it would make them feel. Oh God, I’m a psycho.

As these thoughts ran through my mind, I began to take notice of a change in the creature that was sitting across from me. He seemed to grow slightly larger right before my eyes. The clothes that sagged from his gaunt shoulders a few moment ago, slowly began to fill out. His hands, only seconds before, mere skin and bones started to thicken like Ball Park franks.

All the while, that laugh seemed to echo throughout the entire apartment.

I felt like screaming until my head exploded, yet all I was capable of was sitting there silently. I could feel the pulse in my temples thrumming rapidly beneath the skin. A dull ache began to spring up behind my eyes. Not a true headache, but still, after so long, quite recognizable. I used to get them whenever the stories and images would take shape in my mind and I knew the only way to make them go away was to get them out. To put them onto paper where they would fully take their true form.

I glanced down at my hands and saw that my phone had suddenly appeared. I was sure I’d left it on the desk when I came home but had no recollection of retrieving it. On the screen was a blank word document just begging for the stories in my head. Before I knew what I was doing, my thumbs were sliding across the glass face quickly tapping the small keyboard.

All of the trials and tribulations I’d gone through over the past decade – the car accident, losing my job and my home, even the loss of my last computer – faded to distant memories all but forgotten once the words began to roll across that tiny screen.

Meanwhile, Mr. Hyde stood over me, once again the brutish figure he used to be. The gray gone from his locks as if they never existed. The dark rings from under his eyes: gone.

And yet, that carnivorous smile remained.

For someone his size, he moved silently around behind me and leaned over my shoulder. The odor of stale beer, cigarettes and musk enveloped me like a blanket. And when he spoke, it was like the whisper of a lover.

“Welcome back, Lil Pup.”

South Bend, In.

2019