by Adam Ellis
Ignoring the fact that such a letter could easily be construed as criminal harassment, I folded it up in an envelope and prepared to drop it in my neighbor’s mailbox the next day. It was the perfect crime, I thought, since the letter could’ve come from anyone in the building. I felt calm wash over me, knowing the ordeal would soon be resolved. But that night the girl downstairs had an explosive fight with her boyfriend, which rendered any future action on my part moot. I’d just come home from dinner with a friend and the fight was already in progress, but what I heard was more than enough to make sense of what was going down.
“… in our bed!” the girl was screaming. “Not even our bed, my bed. My bed! It’s brand-new! That bed was from CRATE. AND. BARREL. And now it’s ruined!”
“Baby, come on, you’re overreacting!” I heard the guy say.
“Shut up, Jared! I can never sleep in that bed again! It’s covered in slut germs now!”
“Come on, let’s talk about this! I’m not even gonna see her again.”
“You’re not gonna see me again either, that’s for sure! Get out!” This was followed by the sounds of objects being thrown, ceramic pieces shattering against walls, maybe a mirror breaking, then a door slamming, followed by silence. Several days later the apartment was vacated entirely, assumedly because the “slut germs” had made the air unbreathable and the apartment unlivable.
I felt like I’d weathered a storm, having survived break-ins, arguments, and unbearably loud music. I thought that I’d come out victorious, and was still entertaining the idea that I’d stay in the building until I died when my landlady raised the rent. It was a standard hike and entirely reasonable, but suddenly the apartment was just too expensive for me. The extra hundred dollars a month made my new rent firmly outside my price range, and just like that I fell out of love with the place.
I packed up and moved.
CREEPY FRIENDS
Making friends in a new city is tough. It only takes a few clicks on the Internet to find a new apartment or a new job, but if you troll through the classified ads looking for new friends, you’re likely to end up murdered or cannibalized. Or worse, trapped in a knitting circle with a lonely girl who collects kitty stickers.
They say it gets more and more difficult to make friends as you get older, and I was determined to prove this notion wrong in Portland. At the very least I hoped to be the exception to the rule. That said, I was at a loss for how exactly to make new friends, short of standing on a street corner with a big sign that read FRIENDS PLEASE. So, for a brief time when I first arrived in Oregon, I routinely forced myself to attend every social gathering I could find. I went to a couple of art openings before realizing I wasn’t ready to analyze and discuss art so soon after graduating. I went to a vodka launch and decided professional boozers might not make the most reliable friends. I felt ready to give up on the prospect of friendship altogether, but after some prodding from a friend back in Boston, I decided to give it a final shot and enrolled in a pottery class. I figured at worst I’d come out of the endeavor with a new ceramic vase to store my ashes in when I inevitably died a lonely loser.
I don’t remember what led me to think a pottery class was a smart idea, since my knowledge of ceramics was limited to high school textbooks featuring illustrations of natives making ceremonial bowls, and perhaps that one scene in Ghost where Demi Moore gets molested by a spectral Patrick Swayze. Perhaps it was this last idea that led me to the class, considering my fondness for ghosts. Of course with my luck, I’d probably encounter a decidedly less seductive ghost-predator. Muammar Gaddafi, maybe. Or Bea Arthur.
Unsurprisingly, pottery wasn’t my forte and I struggled through the first lesson, creating lopsided pots, lopsided vases, and my specialty: lopsided mounds of nothing. The class was supposed to be four sessions long, but I decided this would be my first and last pottery lesson, since my lack of talent would surely not win anybody over. I decided to politely withdraw from the class. Oprah says you should turn your wounds into wisdom, and I came out of that class with the wisdom that pottery is stupid and I hate it.
After my surrender, as I stood waiting at the bus stop, two kids around my age walked up to me. I recognized them from the class.
“Pottery’s kinda dumb, huh?” one of them said offhandedly. He was a tall redheaded guy with freckles and a sort of floppy Mohawk. A girl stood next to him, similarly freckled but with a darker shade of auburn hair. I figured they might be siblings, but they very well could have been dating, or married, or members of a ginger cult.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’m not very good at it. I just wanted to make a nicer vessel to store my drugs, but I guess I’ll keep using a hollowed-out box set of Alf.”
They laughed at my joke and introduced themselves as Harrison and April. This is it! I thought. You’re making friends, Adam. Don’t blow it, kid. Keep your cool! We made small talk for a while longer. My bus appeared in the distance and I began to panic. It seemed to approach at a snail’s pace, crawling toward me ominously. I could feel time slipping away and, with it, the potential of newfound friendship. I was considering intentionally missing my bus so I could stay and talk more when Harrison said, “April and I are going hiking. You should come with us if you’re not doing anything.”
“Yes.” I said automatically and robotically. “Let’s go. Yes.” Like a puppy, I followed them away from the bus stop to where their hatchback was parked and climbed into the backseat. The car was clean and organized, but it smelled a little odd. There was a faint but familiar odor that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I tried not to dwell on it because really, whose car is perfectly clean? The ensuing ride might’ve lasted twenty minutes or ten hours; I was too entrenched in the awesome friendship that was blossoming in front of me to notice where we were headed or how long it took to get there. When we arrived at their house, we were in a part of Portland I’d never seen before: some grungy suburb that wouldn’t be out of place in a Harmony Korine movie. Their house was a shabby hovel decorated lovingly with uncollected garbage and discarded bits of furniture. I noticed a few broken appliances leaning against the side of the house, which seemed to be sinking slightly on one side. I passed by a homemade wind chime dangling from their hovel-porch that should’ve sent my spider-sense into-overdrive.
Sun-bleached skulls hanging from the roof should be a fairly obvious red flag, but since I have minimal common sense as it is and a penchant for decorating my own digs with morbid items, I ignored the first in a series of glaring warning signs that day. April offered me a drink and I obliged. I took a seat on their front steps, Harrison following suit. April stepped inside and emerged a few minutes later with a mason jar full of amber liquid. I assumed it was iced tea, but I wasn’t sure. I was raised on a steady influx of SunnyD and purple Kool-Aid, so I’m not sure I’d recognize iced tea if I drank it. It could’ve been anything, really, but I was so excited at the prospect of my new friends that I didn’t think twice about it.
I sat there for a time chatting with the possibly incestuous ginger cult siblings. It was a sunny, cloudless day, and in the cooling breeze I found them accessible and genial. I learned that April had heart palpitations and had a spent a number of years in a back brace. I discovered Harrison once got stung in the butthole by a jellyfish. And yet I somehow neglected to glean whether or not they were related. When I mentioned I’d recently graduated from art school, April chimed in.
“I did a semester at Pacific Northwest College of Art,” she said. “I was gonna major in video but, y’know, shit’s expensive.”
“Yeah, shit’s so expensive,” I agreed, happy to have some common ground with my new friends.
Harrison kicked a golf ball-size rock loose from the dirt with his foot and suggested we get a move on. I’d almost forgotten there was a hike planned. April momentarily disappeared around the side of the house and returned with a backpack and something zipped up in a large, semicircular nylon case. I didn’t know what it was, but I didn’t think much of it. We
set off behind their house, following a bike path that led into some trees, and soon we were surrounded by foliage. Before long we deviated from the path and the trees grew thicker. Sunlight weaved through the branches and I was struck by how lovely it was, realizing how long it’d been since I’d experienced nature. The concrete grayness of Boston had never offered much in the way of natural wonder. After a while we came upon a clearing and I glimpsed a rabbit in the distance grazing on clover. The only thing that passes for wildlife in Boston is the rats that feast on discarded pizza crusts, so I was struck by the novelty of seeing an actual rabbit. It looked impossibly soft. Its little nose twitched as it chewed. I pointed it out to Harrison and April, but they’d already taken notice. Without a word April handed the nylon case she was carrying to Harrison, and he quietly unzipped it. When I saw what was inside, my heart skipped a beat. It was a bow. An expensive bow. The kind with which one kills adorable bunnies.
My mouth agape, I watched silently as Harrison readied an arrow in the bow, aiming ahead into the clearing.
He let the arrow fly. It was clear he had done this before. The arrow hit its mark, and there was a sudden spray of crimson as the rabbit was taken down.
“Nice shot,” I muttered, bewildered, eyes wide, unsure of what else to say. Immediately I realized why their car had smelled funny. I’d smelled that same odor only a couple of times in my life, once as a kid when my neighbor had butchered a deer in his driveway, and once when my friend’s mother had worked in a butcher shop for a summer. The car had smelled faintly of death. Harrison lowered his bow. He and April headed in the direction of the rabbit. I observed them, alarmed, racking my mind for some prior mention of this being a hunting trip. I couldn’t recall either of my new friends mentioning murder being on the agenda. I suddenly felt unsafe.
“That’s a nice one,” April said to Harrison with a sly smile. “He’ll be tasty.”
Of course you’re going to eat it, I thought. And afterward I bet you’ll make jewelry from its feet and eyeballs, you creeps. My faith in these new friends was shifting. And yet there was another side of me that was curious to see what they’d cook, because actually rabbit is pretty tasty… and all I had to eat at my apartment was a moldy lime and an expired Lean Cuisine pizza. Maybe I’m judging them too soon, I thought. Maybe it’s admirable that they hunt their own food. Back to the land, and whatnot. On the trek back to the car I tried to hide my unease. What I thought would be a quaint hiking excursion had taken a dark turn, but I couldn’t decide if I was overreacting. I’d grown up in Montana, where hunting is common, but I’d never experienced it outright, save for that one instance of seeing a deer carcass hanging in my neighbor’s garage, blood draining from it and trickling down the driveway. I remained as chipper as possible on the ride back to the house, the limp bunny carcass still warm, resting on the seat next to me.
Back at their house, April and Harrison immediately set to work planning dinner. Their kitchen was small and cluttered with pots and pans, cooking utensils, and more spice jars than I thought possible. It had the permanent savory smell of a kitchen that sees regular activity. April nonchalantly rattled off ingredients she planned to include in a rabbit stew and asked if there was anything I was averse to eating. Besides Thumper? I thought. I mumbled that whatever she cooked was fine, paying minimal attention to her. I had my eye on Harrison. He’d taken a small knife from the backpack and was turning the rabbit over in his hands. The bunny flopped about limply. It barely resembled the animal I had seen grazing serenely before. I flinched as he made a few cuts into it. He motioned to April, and she joined him. They fumbled a bit with the rabbit, each grabbing a different end, and with a skilled, practiced motion ripped the fur clean off the animal.
I was immediately light-headed. My mouth felt dry. I’m not sure I would’ve been able to speak if I’d wanted to, and yet I still couldn’t determine if this was normal behavior or not. Surely this rabbit met a more humane end than the chickens used to make my Boneless Barbecue Chicken Blaster Bites, so who was I to object? I concluded I was being overly sensitive.
Dazed, I continued to watch Harrison work. With the knife he made another calculated cut into the rabbit, and its guts suddenly spilled forth, seemingly in slow motion, glistening like diamonds in the afternoon sun.
I was thoroughly grossed out. Stop being a wimp, I told myself. The Native Americans used every part of the buffalo. I bet buffalo guts are way bigger than rabbit guts. I tried to picture how large buffalo guts might actually be, and that notion led my brain on a tangent about that scene in Star Wars where Luke sleeps inside a tauntaun to keep warm. I would’ve digressed completely into a pop-culture spiral of nonsense were it not for April’s voice snapping me back to reality.
“All right, let’s get dinner ready!” she announced, nonchalantly wiping a bit of blood on her pants. Harrison and I sat at the kitchen table while April hacked away at things on the countertop, throwing chunks of vegetables and bits of herbs into a pot. I palavered with Harrison, not knowing what else to do; all the while in my peripheral vision I could see April breaking down the rabbit into pieces until it no longer resembled an animal at all. I could hear the crunching of rabbit parts, and somehow, I still clung to the hope that these people might just turn out to be the best friends I’d ever known.
Dinner was served on faded plates that could have been hand-me-downs or purchased from Goodwill. We drank out of mismatched glasses; mine was a Weight Watchers mug. The stew was delicious—rich, hearty, and with a depth of flavor I’d never be able to match on my own, though I couldn’t get over the fact that the food I was eating had been hopping through a meadow earlier that day.
This might have been a turning point for future vegetarianism, had I dwelled on it. I made a loose connection between the animal on my plate and the pets I’d cared for in the past, but April’s cooking was so good that by the time I’d finished eating, I’d decided that if she cooked the Taco Bell dog in a casserole, I’d gladly devour it.
I helped clear the table, my faith in Harrison and April somewhat recovered, but I looked forward to getting home. I still had little bits of dried clay under my nails and I needed to unwind. I wanted to scrub the ceramic dust from my fingertips and wash the image of glistening bunny innards from my brain. I was about to thank Harrison and April for dinner and make my exit when Harrison cut me off.
“April, you should show Adam your video before he leaves!” he exclaimed, displaying a level of enthusiasm I hadn’t yet seen in him.
I was momentarily confused, but then I recalled April mentioning her art school film. I blanked on viable excuses to leave, so I shrugged and agreed to watch it with them. I situated myself on their slouching, faded green couch, and April selected a nondescript DVD from a nearby shelf. My distress over the day’s events had given way to general ennui at this point, but truth be told, graceful exits were never my strong suit. In high school I worked in a toy store and sprained my ankle one day on the job, but limped around for three hours until my shift was over because I couldn’t think of an eloquent way to tell my boss I needed to go to the hospital.
April poked the power button on the television and it came to life. She popped the disc, labeled “Final Project,” into the DVD tray. She clicked a few buttons on the TV, then took a seat on the couch with Harrison and me. The film opened with a close-up shot of a pair of freckly breasts, and to be perfectly honest I expected nothing less. Tits are de rigueur for art school students. What happened next, however, was somewhat unexpected.
Off screen, someone began tossing baby carrots at the exposed breasts. They bounced off the girl’s chest, making her boobs jiggle ever so slightly.
The camera panned back, and April was revealed to be the owner of said breasts. She was seated in a wheelchair. She wore a diaper. The word vegetable was scrawled across her forehead.
Okay, I thought. Carrots are a vegetable. And she’s supposed to be, like, a human vegetable or something? It’s sort of conceptual. I get it. It�
�s stupid, but whatever, I get it. The film continued for six or so minutes in this fashion, with various other small foods being tossed from somewhere out of frame. Wedged between April and Harrison, I wondered how long this nonsense was to continue, but I feigned interest in the video to be polite.
On screen, the camera rotated slowly and aimlessly around April. I desperately hoped the film would end soon. I was trying to formulate an excuse to leave when April did something unexpected. Quietly and discreetly, she put her hand on my knee.
April’s hand rested there for a moment, gentle and motionless. Neither of us said anything. I couldn’t fathom why April felt this was a suitable time to put the moves on me, but I wasn’t sure how to delicately avoid the situation. I have a tendency to freeze up in awkward situations. One time in middle school I accidentally walked in on the deaf janitor pooping, and I stood there in the doorway of the stall for way too long. He hadn’t seen me, so I stayed there frozen until I could snap back to reality and quietly exit the scene. I sat on the couch now, inert, willing April to move her hand away. I felt dizzy. Beneath me the couch seemed to sway slightly, like a canoe on the water. I opened my mouth to speak, and that’s when Harrison put his hand on my other knee.
“I HAVE TO GO,” I blurted suddenly. The notion of a tactful exit was a lost cause. I leapt up from the couch and scrambled to find my jacket before realizing I’d never had a jacket. I halted briefly at the door and artlessly added, “Dinner was… great, thanks.” I left before they had time to formulate a response.
Outside, I glided past the creepy wind chime and across their cluttered lawn. On the sidewalk, I brought up bus schedules on my phone and calculated a route home using the GPS application. I took no heed of the neighborhood I was in, focused only on getting away. I stared at my phone like a treasure map, following the little blue line on my screen to safety.