KATHARSIS (Chapter Nineteen)

        Nobody from Buddy’s family ever returned to pick up his stuff. Mr. Braddon sent a couple emails but never heard anything back, so on July 4th we rummaged through and took all the valuables— a gold watch, several unworn convenience store t-shirts, Prison Break on DVD— then we put the rest of the shit out on the street, even the big bed and its frame. The only other thing we kept was a little painting, clearly done by Buddy’s daughter, that said, “My dad is as strong as the Hulk, as brave as Captain America, and as smart as Iron Man— but best of all he’s my dad!” We put it up in the hallway as a little tribute, but everything else we threw away. After that, the roaches disappeared. They had overextended their reach, and once the heart of their civilization was taken away the food shortage drove them to extinction. There was a disquieting stillness in the house then. My eyes still flickered with insect movements, but when I’d track the movement to its source I’d find nothing there. Nothing was moving anywhere except for the useless breeze from the AC units. The whole house was dead quiet and desolate, and the only roaches left were the dead ones that no one had bothered to throw away.
        For my roommates, things quickly went back to their peculiar version of normal, so quickly it was like the death had just been a loud and unpleasant noise that took their attention for a few hours then rang in their ears for a few days. Perhaps it was part of their grieving process, but Buddy’s death became a sort of joke they kept coming back to. Only a few hours after we’d finished putting all his possessions out on the street, we were out on the third floor balcony and Marv proposed a toast to Buddy that ended in us all “pouring one out” for him, but somebody said the beer we had wasn’t cheap enough for Buddy, only PBR or Natty Lite would honor him properly, so we found one of each in the fridge and poured those out too, as if the dirt and the gravel in the back of the driveway had somehow become Buddy’s spiritual mouth or stomach, like bread and wine for Jesus’s body and blood. After we’d emptied the PBR and the Natty someone said there’s no way Buddy’ll be satisfied after just three beers, we gotta go get him some vodka, and so Bobby went and found some vodka he’d been hiding, which turned out to be the same bottle of mine that Buddy and I’d shared on his last night alive. Bob gave us each a shot of it, poured out a shot for Buddy that landed indifferently in that same puddle of mud and beer, then he put the cap back on and said he needed to save the rest for later instead of wasting it on Buddy, who’d already drank more than his fair share in life. I never bothered to mention it was my vodka bottle he’d stolen. I was too busy thinking of Buddy’s empty shell, lying face-up in a box under the ground somewhere, as we force-fed his spirit more of the same cheap shit that helped ruin his life.

        Many things changed for me over the next few weeks, though it seemed I had no part in the decision-making. I was just being tossed around indifferently from one wave to the next, no idea where I might end up or even where I wanted to go. Sarah, who had graduated in May, left town and took a job in Florida, ending any chance I might have had at reconciliation or closure. At some point the bottle of Katharax that had been in the glove compartment of my car found it way into my bedroom, and, without telling anyone, I started snorting half of a pill each night before bed. I didn't have any significant blackouts from this small dosage, but my dreams finally came back, extremely vivid ones each morning, and I returned to my routine of deciphering the symbols and prophecies and looking for recurrences in my waking life. Somewhere in there I got fired from the deli I was working at, not for any particular reason, and not so much "fired" as just passive aggressively left off the schedule every day of the week until I understood I wasn't needed anymore. A few days later I got a job as a delivery driver for East Bay Deli, but I still went back to the other deli all the time because I liked the sandwiches, and the lady that ran the place, my former boss, would still greet me kindly as if nothing had changed. I'd play chess against her senile father who always hung out in front of the store looking for an opponent. He was the former chess champion of South Carolina, and he must have played thousands and thousands of games in his life because chess was the only thing he could really remember anymore. He couldn't remember my name or even recognize me, no matter how many times we played each other, and each day he introduced himself anew, "Hello there, young man. My name's John. Say, would you be interested in a game of chess?"
        He played more from muscle memory and impulse anything else. Each time it was his turn it seemed he was only then realizing that he was seated in front of a chess board and that he was expected to make a move. He'd forget where he was and who I was every few minutes, then he'd look at me curiously, look at the board, seeing everything for the first time, and not knowing what else to do he'd just move a piece, always the perfect move for the situation, and several awakenings later he'd have me in check-mate. No matter how confused he got he always seemed happy to be in front of a chess board, except on one occasion when I think he realized just how much his mind had deteriorated. I was playing as white, he was black, and we were halfway through a fairly competitive game when he picked up a white bishop, moved it forward like a rook, placed it next to the white king, and said, "Check-mate."
        I looked at him quizzically, not wanting to say anything that might embarrass him, then he looked down at the piece in his hand and said, "Oh. Oh my. I'm so sorry." He rubbed his chin with his hand and stared at the piece as if frightened by it or suspicious of it. I imagine that in his head it had been one thing, and a few seconds later it had transformed to something else. "Forgive me," he said. "I-- Please forgive me." He stood up from his metal folding chair, took his U.S. Navy hat from the railing beside us, then he departed with his head hung low, ashamed and bewildered at what had become of his mind.

        A day later I was at Ben Gould's house with Hunter and our friend Jay, and I was feeling a little weird, a little dissociated, thinking I'd rather be at home getting ready for bed, preparing myself a line. It was around 9:30 at night and we were all playing Cee-Lo on the front porch in the dark. Cee-Lo is a dice game where you bet dollar bills and roll three dice. When two of the dice say the same thing, the third die is your score, but if you get a 4-5-6 then you win instantly, trumping every other roll. I've always hated Cee-Lo because there's no skill involved, it's strictly chance, and I always seem to have bad luck. I end up losing a decent amount, then I have to listen to the winner gloating about all the money they made off me. This night was going the same as usual, I was losing dollar after dollar, Jay was raking it in, and Hunter and Ben were more or less breaking even. Jay and I had tied on the last pot, so now we'd both put in another dollar and were both rolling again to see who'd take the six-dollar pot. I rolled first-- nothing on the first roll, nothing on the second, then on my third attempt I sent the dice flying off the wall and scattering in every direction. I looked around at their faces to see what I'd made, and as soon as I'd seen it was a four, five, and six I said, "Aha! Finally! Gimme that money!"
        Jay and Ben looked at me confused, and Ben said, "What do you mean? You rolled a one-two-three. You lose."
        I was baffled that they could misread the dice so badly, but nothing had been moved yet so I said, "What? Look at the dice!" but just as I was saying that I looked at them myself, and now they said one, two, and three, as if they'd been swapped before my very eyes. No one had touched them, of that I was certain, so I was speechless as I grappled with the possibility that I had vividly hallucinated something so banal. I apologized and let Jay take the pot, and I made some excuse like my eyes were tired or I was too drunk. Really, I knew it was the fault of all the Katharax I'd been taking. It was starting to play tricks on me.
        Later that night, Hunter said to me, "You know, I didn't say anything earlier because I was so confused, but I saw it as four-five-six too. It was like one minute it was one thing, and the next minute it was something else, like bad editing in a movie." I was glad I wasn't the only one who'd seen something different, and yet I was worried all the same, because I knew then that Hunter'd been doing Katharax too. I'd suspected it for some time, but I'd never had any real evidence. A shared hallucination wasn't concrete evidence either, but something clicked, and instantly I knew. The process had already begun then, of slowly falling apart, and while we ought to have confronted each other then, our mutual shame kept us silent, and when I announced I was heading home I knew the next time I saw him there'd be slightly less of him remaining and, perhaps worse, slightly less of me left to care.

TO BE CONTINUED