CHAPTER 10: ON CLOUDLESS NIGHTS
I wake up in the hospital with doctors pacing back and forth busily around me, like I’m not there. I look to my left and see an empty bed, and to my right there’s an old lady, sleeping, with tubes tied up to her like some hospital marionette. I have only one tube tied up to me, and it doesn’t really look all that important. I’m just lying there, looking for some kind of sign that tells me what part of the hospital I’m in, but there’s nothing. Only doctors and nurses, all walking around like clockwork.
“Doctor, do you have the tests back for Mrs. Deightree?”
“No, not yet. The labs backed up. I’m sure I’ll get them in the next hour or so. Definitely looks cancerous though. We’ll just have to see.”
When he’s done talking, he turns and looks at me.
“Ah, I see we’re finally awake. You took quite the fall there. Luckily, it’s only a mild concussion. So we’re going to keep you here another day or so.” The last thing I remember before waking up was the apartment door opening.
“I imagine you’re pretty scared right now. Confused I suppose.”
“Where’s Patrick?” The doctor takes a long breath then puts his glasses on.
“Patrick is no longer with us. I imagine you assumed that, after seeing what happened, at least. I imagine that was your last memory before you blacked out.” My best friend, swimming in a pool of his own blood.
“Yeah.” I wince.
“They’ve already gotten everything settled though. The police won’t need to speak with you, that is. His funeral will be two days from now, and you’ll be out and able to go if you wish.” He takes off his glasses and puts his hand on my arm.
“What you saw, and what you went through are very traumatic things. I don’t expect you to grasp what happened to its fullest extent. Not just yet, anyway."
“From what I can remember, I saw my best friend with his skull all over parts of the mattress.”
“So you do remember what happened?”
“I think so. Parts are fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure I do.” My head is throbbing.
“That’s good. Well, good and bad. There are some things we want to forget.” I start shaking and he pats me on the back.
“It’s going to be okay. We’re going to get you set up with a psychiatrist from the hospital if you’d like to talk to her. We think that might help. But the best thing for you to do now is to get some rest.” He gets up and goes back to the counter, then disappears in a crowd of white coats.
“How old are you?” The sleeping woman with albino white hair wakes up and says to me.
“Twenty one. How old are you?”
“Eighty seven. I heard what the doctor was saying. Trust me when I say you’re going to be fine. You’re young. You have a long life ahead of you. Still have time to get married and have kids. You still haven’t graduated college. Just think of how proud your parents must be.” I turn over and stare at the empty bed until the old lady stops talking and falls asleep.
The old woman eventually leaves and so do I. They give me a ton of pain killers, but the only one I care about is the Valium. I take three of them and take a cab back to my apartment, which walking into, smells like it was flooded with bleach. I walk into Patrick’s room and see that it’s completely empty. It looks like nothing happened here. Like Patrick just moved out, and took all of his stuff with him. I want to cry, and I want to scream, but I can only muster a look of sadness, and then acceptance. I go to my room and everything is normal there. Still looks neat, and all of the dirty clothes are still dirty. I go to my phone and there’s a voicemail from Ashley. She’s just worried because I haven’t talked to her in two days, and just checking to make sure everything’s okay. I text her after listening to the voicemail and ask if she wouldn’t mind coming over later. She says yes.
The next call I make is to Patrick’s family, to find out what time the funeral will be. His mom is hysterical when she answers the phone, still crying from two days ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if she hadn’t stopped crying, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t stop for weeks. She says it’s at twelve this afternoon, at a church near their house, about an hour away. I tell her I’ll be there, and she says it’s a private funeral, so don’t bring anyone else unless I really have to. I tell her okay and go to my wardrobe and pick out the darkest colored pants I can find and the darkest shirt, and the darkest everything, because I don’t have any black pants, or black shirts, just dark grey. They aren’t ironed, and I don’t know how to iron them without putting iron shaped burn marks everywhere, so I just put it on and start driving.
I don’t listen to music on the ride there, because music would ruin everything. It would mean that every time I wanted to listen to that goddamn song that it would remind me of this moment, of me driving to my best friend’s funeral, and watching them put his half scattered brain into the ground, and I can’t do it. But music starts playing in my head, because I need to concentrate on something else. It’s “She Said, She Said” by the Beatles, and the only part I keep repeating is the first line, “She said, I know what it’s like to be dead.” And I start to wonder if Patrick knows what it’s like now that he’s dead. That if he was in heaven, or hell, or wherever the fuck he ended up, that he would finally get the song. Then I start thinking, that maybe I can’t do this. That maybe I should turn around and go back home, because I’m afraid that when I get there and see his family, sobbing, and everyone who was invited, sobbing, and they see that I’m not crying, they’re going to think I’m a sociopath, and that I wanted him to die. But they don’t understand, because Patrick never told them about my parents. Because Patrick was a good friend. Was a good friend. Everything I say about him now has to be put into the past tense, because there is no more Patrick. There is no more Patrick. The only Patrick that exists is the Patrick in my memories, and the thought of that makes me dizzy, and I pick up my bottle of Valium and swallow as many as I can and throw the bottle back into the passenger seat.
I remember the church that he’s being buried at, because that was the church my grandparents used to take me to. I would sit there beside Patrick and play tic-tac-toe, and not listen to a word the preacher was saying, because we were kids, and to sit in an un air-conditioned room for two hours is torture, especially for a kid. But I remember those memories because my grandma would always join in at some point, and want to play whoever won the most games out of ten. And grandma would always win. No matter what. And those are happy memories I have associated with a place that’s going to rain a shit storm down on any good thoughts and happiness I can pull from it. It will swallow them whole, until there’s nothing left but the color of the walls, and the big statue of Jesus behind the preacher.
I get there at about a quarter to twelve, and I sit in my car until eleven fifty five, and I’m in a daze. The Valium is definitely keeping me numb to this situation. I should be numb to this situation. It’s only fair that I remain numb for the rest of my life. I see the tent set up in the graveyard, and I see a couple of people sitting down in front of the casket, which makes me assume that there won’t be a service. The preacher won’t put us through his boring sermon about where Patrick will end up, and that we’ll go there, he’ll say some words, we’ll say some words to ourselves, say amen, and then I can drive as fast as possible back home and see Ashley, and then I can sleep for a week, or maybe a couple of years, and wake up with a beard, and Rip Van Winkle this entire experience out of my life.
“Is everyone here?” The preacher says, as I’m walking up to the green tent. The green hideous ass tent that they use at every goddamn funeral with holes and stains on it, from mice and rats chewing it up.
“Sorry.” I say, and I look at his parents, and they’re both crying, and the preacher is crying a little, and his entire family is there and they’re all crying, and I’m as far back as possible to avoid being seen. To avoid being roped into a never ending hug that will pass all of the sweat from one of his aunts onto my grey shirt.
“Brothers and Sisters of Christ, we now lay our Son, Patrick down into the ground, and give his body to the Earth, but his soul to Jesus Christ almighty. For in this life, Patrick will no longer suffer, for his body has reached its end, and his soul is now with God in the heavens above, where there is no pain or suffering, but only joy. And He will keep Patrick in his hands, and hold Patrick, for all eternity.”
Everyone’s sobbing their eyes out right now, and I’m holding onto the pole of the ugly ass green tent, trying not to collapse, because the Valium is definitely kicking in, and it’s getting harder to stand. I look around the crowd of family, and notice that Sarah’s not part of them. I’m sure she wanted to be here. I’m sure she wanted to come. And I’m sure that Patrick’s mother would have murdered her on the spot, and then they could dig another grave, off in the woods, and mark it by a stick, but leave it just shallow enough to let the wolves tear her body to pieces. The preacher finally finishes, and we all say amen, and he walks up to Patrick’s mother and gives her a hug, and gives his father a hug and then gives the rest of his family a hug, and I walk as fast as I can back to my car, before anyone can catch me fleeing the scene.
The entire ride back, I keep on punching the steering wheel. I punch the steering wheel enough to make my knuckles bleed, and make the steering wheel look like it just got painted red. I start to think about finding Sarah and going off on her for doing what she did. Fucking whore. Fucking two faced whore. She was one of my best friends. I’m driving, and I’m blaming her for all of this. I’m blaming her for what Patrick did. It wasn’t her new boyfriend’s fault that Sarah’s a goddamn tramp. But he killed himself because he couldn’t live with what he had seen. Patrick the monk. Patrick the guy who never snapped, who never went off, who never did anything mean to anyone who didn’t deserve it. My first dinner with Ashley pops into my head. “We all have our demons.” Patrick was just keeping his hidden, and he hid it for twenty years of his life.
I text Ashley when I get back and tell her to head over, and I take off all of my clothes and take a shower, and put on my pajamas, and a clean t shirt, and I just sit on the couch, with no music playing, no TV on, nothing but silence, because silence is golden. I hear a knock on the door so I pick myself up, compose myself, put a smile on my face and then answer it.
“Hey, come in.” Ashley looks like she’s about to burst into tears.
“Are you okay?” She hugs me until I can’t feel my arms anymore.
“I’m okay. Do you want anything to eat or drink? We don’t have much.” I don’t have much.
“I’m good. What happened? I haven’t heard from you in two days. Is everything alright?”
“Well, that’s a tough question.”
Then I tell her the story, at the end of which she runs over to me and she’s crying so hard her mascara is running down her cheeks and onto my shirt, and she’s apologizing, but I can’t think of what reason she should be apologizing.
“It’s all my fault! I should’ve never taken those pictures. I should’ve just kept my nose out of other people’s business. I’m so sorry.” She kisses me on the cheek repeatedly, and I’m holding her and stroking her hair.
“It’s not your fault. He would’ve found out eventually. It could’ve gone a lot worse. So I think in doing what you did, you helped it out as much as possible.” I wish they were burying three bodies.
“I don’t know. I just feel like complete shit now. I feel like I messed up everything.”
“You didn’t. I promise. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“How are you so calm after all of this?” I turn around and pick up the bottle of Valium and shake it and she gives a look of disapproval, with so much sadness peppered on it, you’d never tell.
“I’m doing my best to stay as numb as possible until it passes. When it does, I’ll be okay. Then everything will fit back into place, and I’ll go on with my life, as it is now, and I’ll be fine. You’d never be able to tell that I ever even had a reason to be sad.”
“What about school?”
“Oh, I’ll just take the rest of the semester off. Go back in the spring probably. I’ll have to drop all of my classes now though, so they don’t fuck up my GPA.”
“So what are you going to do with your life until the spring?”
“I don’t know. Maybe just stay in and sleep. Hang out with friends. Go on dates with pretty girls. Whatever I can do to occupy my time.” She kisses me, but it’s more of a peck, and then she pecks at me again and again, and then lays her head on my shoulder.
“I don’t know what to say. Are you going to get another roommate? How can you afford rent?”
“That. Oh, I’ll be okay. I’ve got my rent paid off already. Patrick’s is paid off too. We’ve got a year lease on this place. I’ll just take summer classes and then be done with it. That should work out okay.”
Ashley stays over and makes me dinner, and she spends the night with me, but we don’t sleep together. We kiss a lot, but at no point do I feel the need to grab her body and shove it against mine. It was just nice having her there, to hold onto. To have something permanent.
I dream that night that Patrick and I are sitting at a restaurant, just talking, like nothing has happened. Like he’s still alive. It’s not until he gets up to use the bathroom that I notice the back of his skull is missing, and blood dripping down on the back of his shirt. I start to look around, and see people dressed oddly. Like I was at a carnival. The waitress comes up to me, and maggots are pouring out of her mouth as she’s talking, and dirt is falling out of the cuffs of her shirt as she’s moving.
“Where am I?” I ask her.
“We all go back to where we came from. The earth made us, and the earth swallows us whole. Then we are reborn.” She looks at me, and her eyes are black.
“Everyone here has passed, and look at how happy they are.” I look at the other people in their carnival attire and notice they’re all smiling, but have limbs missing or blood coming from some part of their body.
“Where am I?”
“You’re underground. Below the surface. You’re only visiting though. Because you can’t stay here until you’ve left for good.” She picks up her arm and a long cut down her arm is bleeding.
“I made this place my home when I was thirteen years old. My father used to rape me. He can’t touch me anymore. He’s in a place much further down. Much warmer than this place. This place is temperate. Enjoyable. We’re all happy here. If you’re feeling down, you should join us too.”
I wake up in a very hot sweat, and my head hurts, so I go to the bathroom and take some of the painkillers and then I go back to sleep.