The Tragedy of Power

by Ian Withrow

  “I take it we stayed in again today,” Erin spoke with a scolding tone, casting a meaningful look at Lauren's attire.

  Shit.

  Lauren was wearing her favorite 'nightgown,' it was actually a sleek, ivory button-up shirt that had been her mother's. The shirt clung suggestively to her, and it was the only garment she had on, a fact she was suddenly much more aware of. The shirt extended to her mid-thigh, much shorter than just about anything she would consider wearing out, and it wasn't even buttoned up all the way, leaving a lot more of her chest out than she was comfortable with. She realized with alarm that she must look like the cover of one of Erin’s trashy romance novels.

  Lauren felt her face grow flushed. Embarrassed, she half-crossed her legs and crossed her arms in front of her chest.

  “Lauren,” Erin's voice was heavy with worry, and as Lauren's eyes refocused, pulling her from her discomfort, she could see that Erin was very clearly near to tears.

  She wanted to say she was okay again, she wanted to lie to her friend to keep those tears at bay, but she couldn't. On the phone, or in a text message, but not to her face, not into the eyes of her truest friend. Instead, Lauren broke their gaze, looking down at the floor instead.

  Erin took a tentative step forward, putting her arms out for a hug, but Lauren balked, taking a rapid half-step backwards. The pain in Erin's eyes was evident, and she awkwardly lowered her arms. After a silent moment Erin turned back towards the door, but Lauren stopped her.

  “Wait. Please don't g-go,” she stumbled a little over the last word, tears springing to her own eyes as a lump formed in her throat.

  Erin didn't turn around, but her head perked up and she stopped moving.

  “Why,” she said dejectedly.

  “Because it hurts, and I'm alone, and I need you,” Lauren was breathing shallowly now, the memories and the heartache were pushing back towards the surface again.

  She wanted so badly to tell her friend, so desperately to unburden herself. But after so long, she wasn’t sure she knew how.

  Erin turned back to see Lauren's face streaming with silent tears and her shoulders shaking with raw, unfiltered pain.

  Again the silence lengthened between the two of them, until Lauren felt certain that she would turn away again.

  Erin looked around the living room. It was one she had seen many times before, the couch, the bookshelves, it was all familiar, but it had grown cold since last she'd seen it. Gone was the warmth, the feeling of home that used to fill the Corvidae house.

  Lauren watched her friend's gaze wander, and she tried to figure out what she was thinking. At the same time she fought within herself, she raged against the high walls of secrecy she had built. She raged against the fear that spoiled the love she had for Erin, the fear that her gift, her past, would destroy it all. She opened her mouth to speak at least a dozen times, but nothing came out.

  Erin seemed tense, like she was angry as well, but when she lashed out at Lauren it was still unexpected.

  “What the hell are you thinking!”

  Lauren trembled, it was the first time she'd ever heard Erin shout in anger.

  “You 'need me'? Then where the fuck do you get off pushing me away? You ignore me, you ignore most of my calls, my texts, but you 'need me' right? On whose terms? I'm not a yo-yo to get yanked around, Lauren!”

  Erin was livid, her own pent-up emotions spilled out through her words.

  Lauren tried to speak, but was interrupted before she could begin.

  “No, don't you say a word! Look Lauren, I know you're hurt right now, I get it, I know the pain you're feeling. I know it better than I want to, better than anyone should.”

  By now Erin was choking on her words, stuttering through her own tears as she laid her heart out before her friend.

  “Lauren, I've been where you are, I know the pain you're feeling and I know the darkness you're walking through. I d-don't have a f-family, you're all I have and you're p-pushing me away. I loved Gabriel, we both lost him, we don't have to lose him alone. I need you, I don't want to lose you both.”

  Lauren felt suddenly ashamed.

  “I'm sorry.”

  Lauren's voice was meek, quiet, but in the tense silence between the pair it carried well.

  Lauren could feel the tension building between them as Erin visibly contemplated her simple apology.

  “I don't want you to be sorry! Dammit Lauren I want my friend back!”

  Erin grabbed a pillow from the couch and with a frustrated half-shout half-growl threw it across the room. She missed, but in doing so she slipped and landed squarely on her bottom.

  Immediately, Lauren’s hands flew to her mouth. She tried not to, but burst out laughing. It broke the spell, ripping through the ugly atmosphere of the room. Lauren was so stunned she couldn't help but laugh. She let out a half-hiccup half-snort, eliciting a giggle from Erin as well. The tension flowed out of the room like a refreshing wind that stoked the glowing ember of their bond.

  “So, what now?”

  Erin answered Lauren's question with a sniffle and a mischievous glance.

  “Put some pants on, I've got to introduce you to the greatest catch-all solution mankind has ever made; alcohol.”

  Lauren had never had alcohol before, she knew that Erin occasionally got liquor from her aunt, but she'd never had any herself.

  “I don't know Erin... It's late...”.

  “Lauren, please. You have to get out of this house. You need air. You need change. You need to live.”

  Nodding, Lauren walked off towards her room, with Erin right behind her. As she walked through her door, she spotted the blood-soaked sock she had hastily thrown there. There was no way that Erin would miss it.

  “Um, hang on,” she muttered, spinning around and blocking the doorway. Erin nearly bumped into her, pulling up an inch or two short.

  “What? What're we stopping for we've got bad decisions to make!”

  Lauren looked for an excuse to keep Erin away.

  “I'm uh, naked under my shirt,” Lauren blushed furiously, both because of her admission and for the fact that it was true.

  “This may come as a surprise to you, Lauren,” Erin said sarcastically. “but everyone is naked under their clothes.”

  Lauren didn't think it was possible to blush harder, but she felt as though her cheeks would burst into flame.

  “No,” her voice was tiny with embarrassment. “I mean I'm not wearing any underwear!”

  It finally clicked in Erin's mind, and she blushed a little as well.

  “Well I hardly see how your panties can be in a bunch about it if you’re running around commando,” Erin attempted to use her trademark wit to cover her embarrassment. “I'll um, I'll wait out here I guess, but slap a hurry on it!”

  Lauren nodded, and dipped into her room, closing the door behind her. First order of business was to hide the sock, which she did by stuffing it deep into her clothes hamper.

  Next, Lauren turned to her dresser. She paused. For once she was actually stumped as to what to wear.

  “What do you wear when you're going to get tanked,” she wondered aloud to herself.

  “Something cute! Dress up for once,” Erin's voice carried through the thin wooden door, her unsolicited advice startling Lauren.

  Hmm, a dress. Lauren decided to break from convention and run with it.

  She pulled a sensible pair of red underwear from her dresser, slipped them on, and then turned to her closet. A few minutes of rummaging around revealed a smooth, dark brown satin dress that she'd received from her grandfather for her sixteenth birthday, but had never had occasion to wear. The dress was slim and form fitting down to the hips, where it flared slightly into a flowing skirt that reached to her knees. It had a long, revealing split on the left, up to the middle of her thigh.

  As she removed her shirt she wondered if she ought to bother with a bra, opting against it since the dress was strapless.

  With the dress in place she gave a
spin in front of her mirror, wondering if her spur of the moment decision was a mistake. She shook her head and moved to take the dress back off.

  An impatient knock on her bedroom door reminded her that Erin was unlikely to appreciate a lengthy fashion decision. The knock also solidified her dedication to her silly prank. Lauren slipped on her gloves and pulled open the door, waltzing past her stunned comrade as though nothing were out of sorts.

  “Oh, now she's speechless,” Lauren teased, full of bravado.

  Erin was just as sharp as ever, quickly composing herself and sauntering past to the front door.

  “Well, I suppose if you feel that's appropriate attire to leave the house in...”

  She let her sentence end in a tone that suggested Lauren had thrown on sweatpants and a hoodie.

  “Oh, so you want me to change then?”

  Lauren turned back to the doorway of her bedroom.

  “Not what I said lovey, you look gorgeous. But if we wait any longer it’ll be legal for us to drink. Now text your dad that you'll be sleeping over and get your fine ass in the truck. If you ride with me on the moped in this weather and that slinky getup you'll catch your death.”

  Oh, right. Lauren had forgotten for a moment that it was early January. Time had lost much of its importance to her these past five months.

  “Well, I could drive us both in the truck y'know,” Lauren said, realizing that Erin must have already braved the weather once to get here.

  Erin didn't hesitate.

  “Good idea, it's freaking cold out.”

  After donning a pair of fur-lined boots and a warm jacket, Lauren led the way out into the snowy landscape of the yard. The girls locked up the house and rushed as quickly as they could to the ancient machine in the driveway. The trucks discolored paint job was hidden beneath the snow, but Lauren knew it bore the scars of the abuse she had put it through the day she had lost Gabriel. She had insisted that her father fix the broken truck, rather than get a new vehicle. She clung to it like she clung to every memory of her brother, with desperate obsession.

  Erin sensed the storm clouds brewing in Lauren's mind and nudged her.

  “Come on thundercloud,” she said softly, reassuringly.

  Lauren smiled weakly, but did as she was told, putting the truck in gear and heading off to Erin's.

  Lauren hadn't visited much these past months, less and less as time had gone by in fact. Not because she didn't want to, but because she had been slowly sinking deeper and deeper within herself. She didn't realized how much she'd missed it until she stood there again.

  Here was a place that still felt like home.

  “Alright dove, pick out a movie,” Erin said, tossing her jacket aside and kicking off her boots. “I'll get the booze and we'll make this a proper slumber party.”

  Lauren kicked out of her own boots and headed for the DVD shelf in the bedroom. They'd watched most every movie Erin owned, many of them more than once, but they had a few particular favorites. Usually sappy romances from the golden age of cinema.

  Erin's collection spanned a vast breadth of genres, from gritty horror films, which she enjoyed considerably more than Lauren, all the way to the feel-good redemption stories and tear-jerker romances that Lauren preferred.

  Lauren thumbed through the titles, reminiscing on the many nights they had spent together eating popcorn and pining after the kind of love that seemed only to exist on screen, or huddled in terror at some new and horrific slasher film. Eventually she settled on one of their favorites, 'The Breakfast Club.'

  She was just popping it into the tray of the dvd player when Erin reappeared, she held a frost-covered bottle of pale yellow liquid and a pair of shot glasses. She also had a small grocery bag, but its contents were impossible to determine through the dark plastic.

  Smiling, Erin shook the nearly full bottle, sloshing its contents.

  “You're in for a treat,” Erin said in a sarcastic tone. “My aunt seems to have purchased the cheapest, shittiest bottle of tequila she could find. Probably why she didn't finish it.”

  Lauren grimaced, “Fantastic. Y'know maybe we shouldn't drink it? We could wait till we get something better...”

  “Did you pick out the Breakfast Club? Oh honey no, that's not a tequila movie,” Erin set her supplies down amidst the blankets of the bed and began to search through the film selection for herself.

  Less than a minute later she paused.

  “Hey Lolo, have we watched 'Wild things' together yet?” Erin looked back over her shoulder at her friend on the bed, who was peeking inside the grocery bag.

  The movie didn't ring a bell, so Lauren shook her head no.

  “Are we doing the thing with the limes and the salt?” Lauren asked hesitantly. She knew that there was some special way you were supposed to take a tequila shot, but she certainly didn't know how to do it properly.

  “Yep, if you're gonna do it, do it right,” Erin said playfully. She paused, giving Lauren a funny look before continuing. “So whaddya think... try something new?”

  She waved the case at Lauren, who shrugged and nodded her consent.

  As the dvd played previews for other movies Erin began to explain the process of correctly shooting tequila.

  “Honestly, this might be easier with your gloves off?”

  Lauren hesitated, but shook her head no. Erin shrugged, she was long-used to Lauren’s peculiar hang-up regarding touch.

  “Alright then, first, lick your hand, right there between your thumb and index finger.”

  Erin laughed at Lauren's obvious confusion, and demonstrated. Lauren followed suit,

  “Next, you pour some salt on your hand, right on the same spot,” she said, taking Lauren's gloved hand and pouring salt on it from a shaker she got from the bag.

  “Next, you take a slice of lime,” she pulled a small tupperware container of freshly sliced limes from the bag as well, taking a single slice out and handing it to her companion. “No no, in the same hand as the salt.”

  Lauren could tell that Erin was having a blast enlightening her, so she patiently followed her instructions to the letter.

  “Ok,” Erin continued, after setting herself up as well and pouring each of them a shot. “So the order is this; Breathe out, lick the salt, pound the shot, shove the lime in your mouth and bite down on it, got it?”

  Lauren looked unconvinced. “I'm going to bite into a lime. Like straight into it?”

  “Trust me, it'll be better than leaving nothing but tequila in your mouth,” Erin replied, laughing at her friend's lack of experience.

  “Ready? We'll do it together.”

  Lauren took a deep breath and nodded.

  Erin nodded as well, raising her shot to cue Lauren in.

  They began simultaneously. Lauren thought the salt was bad until she got to the tequila. It tasted like death. Stale death. Immediately, she regretted her decision as her body tried to decide whether to gag or simply stop breathing. She scrunched her eyes shut as they watered, then forced them back open, waving her hand in front of her open mouth hoping to fan out the gasoline she had just filled it with.

  Erin was mumbling something from around the lime wedge in her mouth, pointing at Lauren and clearly trying not to laugh.

  Lauren coughed, sputtering until Erin reached out and shoved the lime in her hand up to her mouth. Surprisingly, it helped. A lot, actually.

  After a moment Erin took out her own lime wedge. she was holding her sides and howling with laughter. Eventually Lauren followed suit, spitting out her lime and scowling at her friend.

  “I'm sorry, but that was adorable. How do you feel?”

  Lauren felt a little lightheaded already, but that was likely from the horrible aftertaste of the tequila. She was, however, unwilling to admit defeat to her more experienced friend and so instead she did her best to act nonchalant.

  “Nothing to it,” she lied.

  “Oh, I'm sure, all that coughing was because it went down the wrong pipe right,” Erin repli
ed winking.

  The video was finally at its main menu. It featured a pair of sultry, scantily clad women and a rugged looking man. Her cheeks flushed a bit while her mind raced.

  “What is this movie about,” Lauren inquired, her curiosity piqued at the risqué menu screen.

  “Well, it's kind of a thriller. A drama. With um, with a bit of dark romance, I guess you’d say?” Erin stumbled a bit over the words, which was unusual.

  “You'll like it. Oh, and we can play a drinking game with it too!”

  Lauren was certain that Erin's sudden excitement spelled trouble.

  Maybe it was the tequila, maybe it was the funk she had been in lately, but Lauren decided to throw caution to the wind.

  “Fuck it. What's the game?”

  Erin's confidence was infectious, and before she had even explained the game Lauren caught herself grinning as well.

  “Well, this movie has a ton of... surprises in it, but you're also pretty smart,” Erin began innocently. “So I propose that every time you are taken by surprise - anytime something really, truly unexpected happens - we take a shot?”

  Lauren's eyes narrowed.

  “And I alone will decide when I am surprised? That seems overly sporting of you. What's the catch?”

  Erin feigned offense.

  “Lauren! I'm hurt. Yes of course you alone decide if you’re surprised... or if you’re gonna chicken out.”

  There it was.

  Erin knew her well, and knew that she would be honest to a fault, and likely too proud to turn down a drink.

  “Deal.”

  The movie had been on for less than an hour, and Lauren's head was swimming. The girls were six shots in, and giggling madly at the drop of a hat. The room was spinning suspiciously in the corners of Lauren's vision and it felt like someone had turned up the heat in the house by at least 10 degrees.

  Erin was pouring another shot as the two women on-screen went from trying to kill each other in a swimming pool to passionately making love.

  “I didn't say I was surprised,” Lauren protested, failing horribly at keeping a straight face.

  Erin spilled liquor on her long-sleeved shirt in response.

  “Dammit, don-don-don't you try to deny it. There's no way you saw that coming!”