Pressure

by Jeff Strand

  “The pictures don’t even bug me.”

  “Bullshit. Okay, look, I’ll make you a deal. Tear one down. Just one. You’ll feel better, I promise.”

  “I’ll feel better when you let this drop.”

  “I’ll let it drop when you tear one down.”

  “Fine.” I glanced around the wall and located a picture of a woman’s body lying on a mortuary slab. I removed the pushpins and took down the picture. “Are you happy?”

  “Crumple it up.”

  “No.”

  “Just that one. Crumple it up.”

  “He’s been collecting this stuff for years.”

  “And you have the power to take it away from him. This stuff isn’t enriching his life, Alex. Somebody who would subject his roommate to this crap without asking permission deserves to lose it. Crumple it up. When he gets back and asks what happened to it, look him right in eye and say that you did it. There’s not a thing he can do.”

  I set the picture on Will’s desk. “I think you’re still drunk.”

  “C’mon, one picture. Wreck one picture. Or an article. Wreck an article. I’m sure he’s got copies. Wreck one of them and I swear I won’t say another—”

  I slashed at the wall like a cat, ripping down several of the articles. “There! Now will you leave me the hell alone?”

  “I certainly will.”

  “Crap.” Pieces of the articles were still stuck under the pins, so I removed all of the pins and scraps. “Will’s gonna throw a fit.”

  “So what if he does?”

  I gathered up all of the articles and photos and set them on my own desk. I wasn’t sure what Darren’s problem was all of a sudden, but I didn’t need a friend who acted like this. I had Melanie. I could handle my roommate disputes perfectly well on my own, thank you very much.

  I refused to admit that ripping down those articles had felt pretty good.

  And I refused to admit that instead of dreading it, I was actually kind of looking forward to seeing Will’s reaction when he got back.

  He returned about forty-five minutes later, while Darren and I were watching television. He walked into the room, got himself a soda from the refrigerator, then frowned.

  “What happened there?” he asked, pointing to the blank spot on the wall.

  “Oh, jeez, I’m sorry,” I said. “We were messing around and they sort of got—”

  “We tore them down,” Darren explained.

  “Oh.” Will snorted a laugh. “What were you guys doing, having a wrestling match?”

  “No,” said Darren. “We just felt like tearing them down.”

  Will looked at him as if unsure whether or not he was kidding. “You didn’t throw them away, did you?”

  “We burned them.”

  “They’re on my desk,” I said.

  Darren looked at me expectantly. “Ask him.”

  Will frowned. “Ask me what?”

  “Oh, uh, do you think you could tone it down a bit? The pictures, I mean. Melanie might come over this weekend and I don’t want her to get creeped out.”

  “Yeah, sure, it’s not a problem.” Will picked up the decapitated head photo from my desk and glared at me. “Did you do this on purpose?”

  “No,” I insisted. “We were just roughhousing. I’ll pay for it.”

  Darren punched me in the arm, so hard that I winced.

  “If you two have become gay lovers, that’s fine with me,” said Will. “You can do all the S&M you want, just keep it on your own side of the room.”

  I tried to think of a joke to add to that, but nothing immediately came to mind. Darren stood up, making no attempt to hide his frustration.

  “I’m outta here. If you want people to push you around your whole life, that’s fine. I hope you’re happy. Maybe you’ll luck out and Melanie will be a necrophile. See ya.” He left the room, not slamming the door behind him but certainly shutting it harder than was necessary.

  Will gave me a confused look. “What the hell was that all about?”

  I shrugged. “No idea.”

  “Why were you hoping that Melanie is a necrophile?”

  “I wasn’t. It’s…it’s hard to explain. I’m not sure what his problem is today.”

  “Well, if the pictures and stuff bothered you, you should’ve said something. I asked you about it before.”

  “I know, I know. Actually, though, I’m going out with Melanie on Friday and if we decide to come back and watch TV or something it might be nice if you could maybe, I dunno, get rid of some of the sicker ones.”

  “Sure. It’s your room, too.” Will didn’t sound like he believed it. “Don’t harbor stuff like this, Alex, it’s not healthy.”

  “I wasn’t harboring anything, I was just…uh, thanks for taking it down.”

  “No problem.”

  I lay in bed, almost asleep, wondering what to do about Darren. I still thought of him as my best friend, but he was getting way out of control. Threatening to accuse me of touching his dick in a crowded library to get me to talk to Melanie was something I could live with, but demanding that I rip up Will’s property for no good reason was going too far. The incident with Trisha I’d blame on alcohol, even though Darren hadn’t seemed drunk and I hadn’t smelled any booze on his breath.

  I wondered if that creepy kid from Branford Academy was still there. Not the one who mutilated dead dogs, but the one who took great delight in knowing how much power he had over me. I could still see the sadistic glee in his eye when we spoke that last day before school let out.

  “Don’t lie to me. I bet you spent every day scared that I was gonna get you.”

  I fell asleep. I dreamed of mummies bursting from their sarcophagi and tearing long, bloody strips of flesh from my bones.

  Chapter Fourteen

  My date with Melanie was a disaster from beginning to end, and one of the best times of my life.

  First of all, somebody stole all of my laundry out of the dryer. This was an ongoing prank at our dorm. If you weren’t watching your clothes, the unknown culprits would swipe them and return them in an amusing fashion. Our next-door neighbor found his clothes on a female mannequin that had been placed in the kitchenette. The guy down the hall found various pairs of his underwear clogging each of the toilets. Nobody knew who was responsible, or how you could even get a mannequin into the building without anybody noticing, but we’d already had two mandatory meetings about the situation and it was supposed to stop immediately.

  I knew that I deserved whatever creative fate befell my clothing, simply for being dumb enough to leave the dryer unattended, but my favorite blue shirt had been in there and now I had nothing nice to wear. Will, ever helpful, offered to let me wear his black Charles Manson shirt, but I declined.

  Then I accidentally dropped my electric shaver, breaking it against the bathroom floor. So I had to shave with a regular blade, which meant that I acquired several lovely nicks and attractive pieces of toilet paper stuck to them to stop the bleeding.

  Not to mention that I was having a bad hair day. Admittedly, I was not the kind of person who ever had good hair days, but this one was particularly abysmal. Cowlicks I’d never formerly possessed sprung up like weeds and no amount of hair gook would keep them in place. Will helpfully suggested that I shave my head and offered to track down a machete to speed up the process, but I declined.

  The walk to Melanie’s dorm passed without incident.

  Melanie looked gorgeous. We weren’t going anywhere fancy (I hadn’t yet gotten a part-time job and my money was running low) but she was wearing a red blouse that looked new and was wearing just a hint of makeup. Her roommate Sally gave me a good-natured interrogation, and then we were off.

  My car wouldn’t start. Though it was a crappy car and had been crappy when I bought it, this was the first time it had ever failed to start. I lifted the front hood and spent a few minutes pretending that I knew what I was looking at, all the while making jokes that were much funnier than my usual s
tandard of nervous jokes.

  When it became clear that my car wasn’t going to start without professional assistance or supernatural intervention, we returned to Melanie’s room to get permission to borrow Sally’s car. The interrogation this time was substantially less good-natured, but we were allowed to borrow the car after promising that if we were in an accident, we would bleed on the pavement and not the upholstery.

  Then Sally’s car wouldn’t start. After a few frustrated tries, I realized that this was because, like a dumb-ass, I was using the key to my own car and not Sally’s. Fortunately, instead of taking the more reasonable approach of shaking her head sadly, getting out of the automobile, and leaving the dumb-ass to live a life of well-deserved solitude, Melanie had a gentle laugh over it and we finally got on the road.

  When we got to the movie theater and bought our tickets, I realized that I’d misread the starting time and that the romantic comedy Melanie wanted to see had been on for half an hour. She didn’t seem bothered by this, and we decided to see Threads of the Noose, which neither of us had ever heard of.

  I bought us each a small drink and a large tub of popcorn to share. I allowed Melanie to take on the responsibility of butter application, and she drenched it with more butter (technically, butter-flavored product) than I had ever personally witnessed coming into contact with popcorn. I was pretty sure that an alarm went off at a nearby hospital, preparing them to dispatch an artery surgeon at a moment’s notice. But even though I generally liked dry popcorn with just a hint of salt, sharing this semisolid glop with Melanie sounded delicious.

  Threads of the Noose sucked. I mean, really, really, really, really, really sucked. It was boring and depressing and badly acted and incoherent and featured not one, not two, but three graphic shots of the actors throwing up, which is not what I pay to see when I go to a movie, especially when I’m eating from a tub of semisolid popcorn glop. But we were the only two people in the theater, which allowed us to loudly and gleefully share our disdain for the movie and have a wonderful time.

  When we got back to Sally’s car, I couldn’t get Melanie’s door unlocked because, again, I was using my own keys. I acknowledged that I was a dumb-ass, while stating that in my own defense, at least I wasn’t the kind of dumb-ass who would make a movie like Threads of the Noose.

  We went to dinner at a small, inexpensive seafood place that turned out to be inexpensive for a reason. But though we left most of our food untouched (I was full from the butter-flavored product anyway) we stayed there until closing time, just talking and laughing and thoroughly enjoying each other’s company.

  “I really had a good time,” said Melanie as we drove back to campus. I was still basking in the personal victory of using the right key this time.

  “Me, too. I had a great time.”

  “We should watch more crappy movies together.”

  “Absolutely.”

  We were silent the rest of the drive home, but it was a nice, comfortable silence. We didn’t have to say anything.

  I walked her back to her dorm. We looked at each other for a moment, she let out a soft giggle, and then I put my arms around her and kissed her.

  The rest of the evening had been an enjoyable disaster, but this first kiss was perfect.

  When we finally parted, Melanie pushed up her glasses and smiled in an almost giddy manner. “Do you want to do something tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.”

  She kissed me again, quickly this time, and then went inside the building. I stood there for a moment, just collecting my thoughts, then decided that I didn’t want anybody to think I was the kind of creep who stood around outside girls’dormitories after dark, so I went home and walked in on Will having sex with a Goth chick in a position that didn’t look comfortable for either of them or good for his desk.

  He paid me ten bucks to sleep out in the lounge, and I cheerfully accepted. The couch was uncomfortable and too short, but I got the best night’s sleep I’d had in a long time.

  I woke up all hot and sweaty, feeling like there was an incredible weight on my chest. There was. The jackasses who’d stolen my laundry had left the pile on top of me while I slept.

  “If you could kill one person, who would it be?” asked Darren, nibbling on a piece of pizza.

  “I dunno. I wouldn’t kill anybody.”

  Darren shook his head. “Cop-out answer. You have to give me a name. Somebody at this school.”

  “I’d kill my English teacher for giving me a B-minus on that paper. That was a good paper.”

  “Who else?”

  “That’s it.”

  “C’mon, that can’t be it. Let that inner hostility out.”

  “Let’s just drop it.”

  “Dude, it’s just a conversation starter. I’m not saying, ‘Let’s go out and kill some people,’ I’m just asking who you would kill if you could.”

  “Yeah, then tomorrow morning their heads will end up in my bed.”

  “Nah, I’m a strangler, not a decapitator.”

  We were sitting out on the lawn in front of Booker Hall. I’d just been sitting out there studying, but Darren had noticed me on his way back from the cafeteria and joined me.

  “So who would you kill?” I asked, picking off a mushroom before taking my next bite.

  “I’d probably take the teacher route like you did. I hate that they think they can rule me, telling me to do homework and take tests and all that shit.”

  “Yeah, those damn teachers ruin college for everyone.”

  “They sure do.”

  “So why’d you go to college anyway, if you don’t like people telling you what to do?”

  “What are my other options? Military would be a million times worse, or I could get some lousy job and have a boss order me around all the time. College seemed to have the most freedom.”

  “You could always be a panhandler.”

  “Nah. I don’t do well without my creature comforts. Like this pizza.” He took a great big bite.

  “You didn’t even ask how my date with Melanie went.”

  “How’d your date go? You fuck her?”

  “No.”

  “Couldn’t get it up, huh? I’ve got a little crane you could borrow next time.”

  “I’ve got a piece of pizza I could smear in your face.”

  Darren held up his own piece of pizza in a defensive pose. “You know I’m just kidding. How’d it go?”

  “It was great!” I told him about the entire evening from beginning to end, not even censoring the part with the car keys. Darren listened to the whole tale, laughing in the right places and seeming genuinely happy for me. One thing I’d always liked about him…even if he had a tendency to ignore protests on matters of sleeping with drunk women named Trisha and ripping down photographs, he did always listen rather than just wait for his turn to speak.

  When I told him about the kiss, he slapped me on the shoulder to congratulate me for a job well done. “Well, I’m thrilled,” he said. “I’m so thrilled that I won’t make my usual crude comment.”

  “Oh, go ahead. I wouldn’t want to cause you psychological distress.”

  “Okay. When’re you gonna fuck her?”

  I punched him on the arm.

  “Sissy punch,” Darren noted.

  I hit him harder.

  “That one hurt. Don’t do that again.” He chuckled. “Yeah, I can see it now. You two will be spending all your free time together, and there’ll be no room for Darren Rust. I’ll just stand outside your window, making puppy dog noises for attention.”

  “And if you’re really good, we’ll let you come inside and stay in a cage.”

  We both laughed, but it occurred to me that it was kind of odd that such an outgoing guy didn’t seem to have any other friends. At least none that he spoke about, although it wasn’t like we spent every free moment together.

  “We could always take her fishing,” Darren said.

  “Or we could
fish out of the library toilets and have just as much success.”

  “Yeah. You know, my parents have a cabin and some property, about a twelve-hour drive from here. I was going to go up there for Thanksgiving break. We could all go together.”

  “You have parents?”

  “Of course I have parents.”

  “You’ve never said anything about them. I figured you were a test-tube baby, or else you spontaneously generated from the muck underneath a city or something.”

  Darren grinned. “I wish. Wanna know why I never talk about my home life? Because it’s so boring that you would slash your wrists with a tin can lid before I’d gotten five minutes into it. You cannot imagine how boring my parents are. My dad goes to work at an office Monday through Friday—I don’t even know what he does there—and my mom vacuums the house and watches daytime television. They’re like zombies without the cool flesh-eating. Do you have a tin can lid handy?”

  “In my other pants.”

  “They don’t even use the cabin. They inherited it but have never been there. Walking into my house is like walking into this energy-sucking pit where all creativity and inspiration just goes whoosh. They’re like nonentities. I have no idea how I turned into such an interesting guy. Man, they suck.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “So what about the cabin idea?”

  “Believe it or not, Melanie has a family that would miss her if she didn’t come home for Thanksgiving.”

  “Imagine that!”

  “Yeah, it’s freaky.”

  “Well, if you ever want to go up there, let me know. It’s too far for just a weekend trip, but Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring break—any of those are cool.”

  “Is it a nice cabin or an outhouse with a bed?”

  “Real nice cabin.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll let you know.”

  Darren made it a point to ask at least once a day if Melanie and I had finally fornicated. Five weeks and a day after our first date, my answer changed.