Till Death

by Kol Anderson

  TILL DEATH

  1

  It was the day everything began and ended.

  I was sitting in a crowded restaurant and couldn’t stop feeling alone.

  Have you ever stood in the middle of a busy street, looking at the people passing you by and wondered where your life went? Not the life you’re stuck in now, but the one you were supposed to live but couldn’t because you were too stubborn to realize you’re not as special as you thought you were? Because everyone was like “follow your dreams, Trent!” “Here’s the participation trophy for the thing you obviously suck at, but I’m sure you have potential so why don’t you pick a profession that’s going to keep you stuck in a cycle of minimum wage and broken dreams forever?”

  No?

  Probably just me then.

  Anyway, now that we’ve found ourselves in the middle of this story, which might seem like it’s mine but it’s not, it really isn’t. I had nothing to do with the fact that I ended up here, so how could it be?

  This is the story of a placeholder.

  You, me… each and every one of us who dared to dream. And who is at the moment, suffering the consequences of their choices, even if you didn’t have a say in how you got here, at some point you were at fault. At fault for thinking that a spouse who said the two of you were “till death do us part” actually meant it.

  Shit, you were so fucking clueless, you even booked a plot for them in your heaven. That’s how in love you were, you wanted them for all of eternity.

  And of course they found someone hotter than you and broke up with you the same week you got your cancer diagnosis. Of course, the love of your life then claims their departure had nothing to do with the test results, but by now you know the truth.

  By now, you’ve realized that the only reason they stayed with you was because it was convenient and they had trouble being on their own, and the worst part of all this?

  You can’t seem to hate them for their choices or for the cheating, or for the soul-sucking arguments because deep down you knew everyone has the right to be as happy as they can be, and deeper, deeper down, you knew how fucked up you always were and how hard it was to be around your constant mood swings and the periods of depression so debilitating you couldn’t get out of bed let alone wash your own hair or take a bath.

  You knew how impossible it was to be around all those millions of insecurities that are your specialty, and how inside you’re still the little boy whose father left him and whose mother stayed drunk and suffered from a severe form of PTSD but no one knew because she kept such a good cover which sounds like a terrible thing but it’s doubtful the system would have done any better for you and your only other sibling.

  Yes, it’s not easy being you but let’s face it, if you still fall for people’s bullshit it’s not the bullshitter’s fault.

  At what point do you realize you have a problem and correct it by changing your own self? At what point do you stop being a doormat and be a little selfish?

  At what point do you give up and consider the fact that you’re no more special than anyone else in a dead end, soul sucking job and unable to pay the bills.

  When does your self-preservation set in? When do you stop being stupid? Not yet?

  Okay.

  How about now?

  Every time I feel like I’ve hit rock bottom, I get up and keep moving. I feel dead inside, but my body won’t stop being stubborn.

  It kept finding a way to live, but this time it’s going to lose.

  Lung cancer. Try getting out of this one you freak! Trent, 1; Body, zero. This is my final knockout blow, my secret move, being dead inside and out is all I’ve ever wanted.

  I’m so happy I could live! Haha. Just kidding, I’m not living, ever. Not going to buy that spiel again. I’m just happy I don’t have to go through the trouble of taking my own life. I don’t think that’s me and frankly I fear that I’ll probably botch it somehow.

  But this, this is beautiful. Almost poetic.

  Almost.

  I mean, it would be if someone was mourning my death I suppose. But me, I’ll probably die in the same apartment that I’ve been stuck in with my loneliness, the one that has a rat infestation because that’s the only way you can get a place that’s larger than a coffin in the big city.

  The American dream! Be a cog of the capitalist machine until the last drop of blood can fuel the engine and then die a pointless, meaningless death; the perfect ending to a pointless, meaningless life.

  The problem with a society that relies on religion, and politicians for morality is that everyone thinks they have the right idea. You become your price tag. You think that just because so and so millionaire can do it, so can we.

  Listen to every successful person out there and ask them why they think they are successful, and what is the one thing that others can do to achieve that level of success, and their answer will be the same: Work hard. You can do it, you can be just like me if you work hard. And the average consumer, they think yes, that’s doable, right?

  So, we go from thirty hours to fifty hours a week and nothing changes, except for your health which goes into an ever-descending spiral that gets dangerously close to death and you think it’ll stop but it keeps going lower and lower, deeper into the trenches, until your body can’t take it anymore.

  Still you have hope. You can totally work hard and get where you want to be.

  The trouble with that is no one factors in the blow jobs you had to give as a kid to TV producers. No one factors in that said successful person is the winner of an international beauty pageant and you couldn’t even get a date to senior prom.

  One day, if it’s not already, all of this will be clearer. One day, when you find yourself on the rock bottom of all rock bottoms, the final episode, the last round, the final mother fucking knockout punch that life will deliver as though before it, your life wasn’t in shambles and your feet weren’t bleeding and your heart wasn’t in pieces.

  But at least that final blow will end this misery, once and for all.

  And that will probably be the most merciful thing life will do to you.

  “Can I get you anything, sir?” That was the third time the young waitress tried to break me out of my reverie.

  I looked at her impatient face and realized that once again I was being a burden. I’ve come to hate that feeling but it seems for now there’s no getting away from it. I’m a thirty-seven year old let down without any money in the bank and without a job, and needless to say, without a family.

  Well, technically I had a family but were in New Jersey and that might have been the other end of the world as far as I was concerned. It’s true, I grew up there but I left when I got a job in New York because it seemed like the start of a new life—the life that I was supposed to live.

  But it’s gone now.

  That life ended with Dominic, when I watched him talk on the phone to someone who wasn’t me and when I heard him use the same lines he used to get me to fall for him, the exact same lines and it broke me out of a seven year old trance.

  When I saw with my own two eyes the indifference in his eyes when I was packing my bags. I was nothing but a bad memory he wanted to forget, not a life lived that should be cherished but a traumatic time you want to walk away from.

  “Sir?” the waitress tried to get my attention again.

  I reached into my wallet and took out enough money to cover the bill and left a hefty tip as though I wasn’t drowning in debt and running from just about every bill collector.

  It wasn’t some effort to try to feel like I was better than her, but it was resignation from the fact that anything I did mattered anymore.

  I didn’t even finish half of my steak because somewhere along the path of self-destruction, I had lost my
appetite for food and just about anything else.

  Which was the reason I was a little taken aback at what happened next and how it affected me.

  I stepped outside and was about to head to my sad apartment which I wasn’t looking forward to, when I noticed something going on right in front of me. A lanky young boy, he couldn’t have been more than twenty, stood surrounded by a bunch of guys, all older and carrying rods.

  They were beating him, all four of them, together, and this boy was on the floor trying to defend himself and failing.

  I had no choice.

  I thought everything inside me was dead, so finding him like that, helpless, I started feeling things again with the same intensity that I would have had for Dom, and no one else.

  It was strange but I found myself cutting in, grabbing the largest one and hurling blows at him like a mad man. Maybe it was the madness in me, or the fact that I now owned weapons, a solid switchblade and a gun, a brand new 9 mm that I got from a friend with connections and it’s pretty much untraceable. But I’ve never had reason to use it before, so it took me a while to remember I even had it on me.

  When it did occur to me, I reached for the holster under my shirt and pointed it at the guy I was hitting. I know my friend showed me how to use that thing, but it was the first time I realized I had reason to end a life with its help.

  It took some getting used to but I managed to cock the weapon and aimed it at the man’s face. “Hey,” the guy said in his gruff voice. “We can let him go, if you’re sweet on him.”

  He turned to his men, who stopped when he signaled. The boy was still doubled over in pain and struggling to breathe. He could barely lift his messed up, bloody face to look at me.

  My hand was trembling around the gun, but they didn’t notice. I must have looked more awful than I thought because they had no trouble believing I could use the weapon.

  These were the small wins that I badly needed. I felt like someone had shot me with the strongest dose of coke, and meth in one tiny syringe. That’s what the adrenaline high felt like.

  The last time I had this much adrenaline coursing through my veins was when a bunch of bullies attacked me in high school and I ended up in the hospital for the next few weeks with multiple broken bones that took months to heal.

  I’d felt adrenaline before, but it was the first time I was enjoying it.

  I realized my confidence was the only thing I had going, so I made use of it. “Sweet on him?”

  The guy shrugged. “Look, it’s none of our business who he tricks out with,” he said. “I just want the money he owes me.”

  The boy started to say something but the man cut him off. “He owes me five grand,” the man said. “If you can get me the cash, you can take him, he’s all yours. A broken whore is no use to us anyway.”

  I wondered what he meant by that. Broken. “I don’t have five grand on me,” I said, and my gaze involuntary went to the wedding band on my finger. I kept the gun on him, and used my teeth to pry the ring off my finger and slid it out. I held it up for him. “This should more than cover your needs.”

  He took the ring and studied it carefully. It was clear that he was satisfied the thing wasn’t fake but he still wanted more. “How about this and one grand in cash. That should cover it.”

  “Or how about I lodge a bullet in four skulls and we call it even?”

  “Come on, man. You don’t want to go through that trouble for a thousand bucks, for fuck sake! I need to give my boss something or he’s going to bust my balls for trusting a whore.”

  What the hell, I thought.

  Eventually, I handed him a thousand dollars in cash and the ring, and they were gone. It was as though they never existed. I went up to the bleeding, messed up boy, who, by some awful twist of fate was more fucked up than me at that moment.

  He looked up at me, grateful and a little confused.

  I felt like a badass. I felt powerful. Nothing in my life had ever felt this way. I was oddly protective of him, but I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do now. “Do you have a place to go?”

  That question seemed to make the most sense.

  He shook his head.

  I helped him to his feet and allowed him to put all his weight on me. I wanted to tell him that I had nowhere to go either but I didn’t want to stop being his savior just yet. I wanted that feeling to last, it was the only thing that seemed like it could begin to heal the wounds Dom had left. It was the only thing I could feel and after a lifetime of coldness, these feelings I had for him made no sense, but it didn’t matter.

  I tried to give him warmth, and felt some of the coldness leaving my heart.

  I found my car keys in my back pocket and opened the door and helped him in the passenger seat.

  In the street lights I saw his face, handsome, and green eyes that kept staring at me as though he kept waiting for me to turn into another villain, another user, another man who would take him and abuse him until he was nothing and then tossed him aside because it was too much trouble, or because it wasn’t convenient anymore.

  He was waiting for me to stop being his hero.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was no hero. That I was just as messed up inside and that it was sheer coincidence that we ran into each other and helped each other out. I got in the driver’s seat and took us to a nearby motel. I peeled the bloody clothes off him and washed him from head to toe, and he never once showed sign of being in pain, never cried, so I didn’t know what to do with him.

  Maybe the man was right.

  Maybe this boy was broken beyond repair. I couldn’t bear the sight of his expressionless face, so I claimed one side of the bed and called the guy at the desk to see if they could send us some food.

  The boy had a towel wrapped around his waist and he stood and faced me. His eyes searched for a point in the carpet, as he stepped up closer.

  Without wasting time, he dropped the towel and it fell to the floor. I couldn’t believe that he had done it. I was still a little confused, but then he was standing right with me, and close enough to touch. “You can fuck me. I won’t mind.”

  The thing is I’m not a saint. And he was so damn good looking, I had a constant hard on ever since I first laid eyes on him. But I’m not a monster, I don’t think. I couldn’t see myself actually doing something with him, the way he was then.

  But I realized it was the only kind of affection he knew. It was kind of sad. “What’s your name?”

  “Justin.”

  “Come here, Justin.” I tapped the space next to me on the bed.

  He left the wet towel on the floor and climbed the bed and got in beside me. I only had to look at him once to know that he was high as a fucking kite on a space station. That’s probably why he didn’t seem to be in any pain.

  “Justin, I don’t want to fuck you,” I said. “I didn’t save you from those bastards so I could use you.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “Listen to me, kid. If it never happens for you again, I want you to remember that once someone did save you because you deserve to be saved and taken care of. It doesn’t matter what you’ve been told, or what they’ll say tomorrow. I want you to know that this is real. That someone cared about you enough to help you.”

  Suddenly, he was breaking out in tears.

  2

  Justin was a strange kid. He told me he was twenty-two and been on the streets since his foster parents refused to look after him a few years back. He ended up with a pimp when he was seventeen because he couldn’t go back into the system.

  The guy took care of Justin and things were not great but manageable but then his pimp got him hooked on drugs.

  The drugs took everything away and left the boy helpless because now he needed drug money on top of everything else.

  Business was slow for a couple of weeks so Justin turned to a gangster guy for a loan. He didn’t realize that he was just dragging himself into an even worse situation.

  “Y
ou see the guy they were talking about,” Justin said one night as we were sitting on the sofa, having a drink. “Their boss, he has a thing for me. He wants me to end up as his whore but he doesn’t want to pay. So, he just keeps trying to make my life miserable so I would have no choice but to go to him.”

  “And no one can help? Not even the people you work with?”

  “That guy’s just too powerful. No one can touch him. The last two boys who were with him, they came out of his house in body bags. And not in one piece.”

  “Fuck.”

  “You see, I don’t mind dying. If I’m gone, I’m gone. Rather it be me than some other poor kid. No one’s going to mourn me, so I couldn’t care less about it. But it’s the other stuff that scares me. Being tortured in some fucked up way or having your dick cut off... they do that kind of thing you know.”

  “Justin, I’m sure there are people who will miss you.”

  “I really don’t. I don’t make friends except for the junkies and they’re too self-absorbed. I don’t have a family, and thanks to all the shit with that gangster guy, I don’t have a pimp either.”

  I finished my drink so I could pour myself another because this was becoming too much for me. I wished I could help him somehow. I was just sitting there and not knowing what the hell to do.

  “I don’t want to bring you down,” Justin said. “We should talk about something else.”

  “You’re not bringing me down, I just feel like a failure. I want to help you. But I don’t know how.”

  He smiled and sipped his drink. “You can’t help me.”

  I felt perplexed. “Are you trying to hurt me?”

  “God no! That’s not what I meant. I just meant... you don’t know me. I’m a bit of a freak.”

  “What do you mean? Freak in what way?”

  He was blushing. “I like weird things when it comes to sex.”

  “Justin, you can tell me.”

  “Okay, well for instance, I find you incredibly attractive. But that’s not the only thing I feel. I feel like we’re supposed to have a connection. I know it sounds dumb.”