Beer

What you’re about to read actually happened. This is all true.

At 3:30 this morning, I was awakened. There was sort of a Thud-Bang then a loud POP and the sound of broken glass. I was reminded of the time I went to that cabin with my family and a branch crashed through my window. I thought it happened elsewhere and went back to sleep, only finding in the morning that I was surrounded by broken glass and had a large branch a couple feet from my head.
This time, I was wide awake. I could have sworn it came from inside my room, but I didn’t see anything. A couple seconds later there was another loud POP and the sound of breaking glass. This time, I could tell it came from the livingroom. Ryan yelled out. I asked if he was okay. Ye said yea and asked if I was okay. I said yeah. He said we should check it out. We were yelling. I said yeah. Lets go. I hopped out of bed. He was in the livingroom and yelled asking where I was. I yelled that I was right here. I emerged from my room and saw a bunch of brown glass on the floor of the livingroom. Everywhere. I saw Ryan. We looked around.
He thought it had been somebody breaking in. I thought someone had been shooting our windows out. There was something missing. There were actually a few things missing.
Here’s a brief description of the house for those who haven’t seen it/been there. As you enter the front door, on your left is a couch facing the middle of the room pressed up against the wall. Moving along the wall, next to the couch, is a games cabinet with a microwave on top of it, and a 6 of really shitty beer on top of that. Next to the cabinet are the garbage cans, then the sink and counter of the kitchen.
I was looking head on at this panoramic view, and noticed that where there had been 6 24 oz bottles of beer, there were now only 3. There was NOTHING left of two of the bottles. One had only a jagged base about 2″ high. There was a rancid beer smell everywhere and, as I said, glass covering the carpet. Ryan and I stood there looking at the little chunks of glass and watching the beer dribble down into the vent covering on top of the microwave. There was a suggestion to unplug the microwave before it short circuited or something. Before that dream could be realized, one of the remaining bottles exploded in our faces. I was in my room before I could blink. Ryan asked if I was okay. I said I was fine. I asked him how we was. He was fine. I grabbed a towel to wrap around the remaining visible bottle of beer (we couldn’t find one immediately) to take it outside. I commented that I wished I had eye protection. I figured that the towel would be fine. I advanced, having donned shorts and a sweatshirt, with the towel outstreched before me. Ryan asked me to unplug the microwave while I was over there. I got to within about 2 feet of the bottle when it exploded. I screamed a cuss word and lunged for the electrical cord. I pulled it out. I stepped on a chunk of glass and cut a toe on my right foot.

That was pretty much the end of the excitement. I went to the bathroom to bandage myself (which took about 10 minutes… it’s a deep cut and about 3/4 inches long.) while Ryan began cleanup. I emerged and started to clean up as well. After about 5 minutes, we found the remaining bottle which had been blown off the top of the microwave into the garbage can. It was still intact, so I wrapped it in the towel and took it outside. We finished cleaning around five.

There was glass covering the kitchen. There was glass in the washing machine on the other side of the room. There was glass in the bathroom down the hall. There was glass that bounced under the doors into our rooms. There was beer in the carpet. There was beer on the linoleum. The beer in the microwave pooled in the main area where you would normally put your food. We took it outside to… well… to not smell rancid inside anyway.

The beer was 2001 christmas beer made as a terribly small batch at Central Coast Brewing for Clear Channel Radio. Ted Devancis, the host of the “Finally it’s Friday” show had given it to us months (a year? more?) earlier. Ryan was saving it as beer you could drink when you were already kinda drunk and didn’t care what you were drinking. That level of drunkenness hadn’t happened at our place in a long time, obviously.

Written Thursday, December 18, 2003 around 10:45 AM

Expedition

“Just black will be fine. Thanks.”

“Here you are, Mr. Thompson.”

The younger gentleman returned to the spacious tent with the tea. He passed it gingerly to the older gentleman. The younger was France Jacobs, financier for the expedition. Archibald Thompson had the experience and contacts for the trip to the newly discovered tomb. Neither particularly enjoyed the other�s company, but they both saw the enormous potential, historically, for the excavation of the site.

“I understand you’re making progress.”

“We’ll be at the king�s ante-chamber tomorrow, and with a little luck, the actual sacred burial chamber will be revealed to us within a week. We are being most meticulous in cataloging each relic. No stone remains unturned, no door unopened.”

France felt something tugging behind the words, a bit of tension surrounding the king. It had been there a long time now. Thompson was undoubtedly the best man to be leading the expedition. Nobody else could have proceeded so far so quickly. France, though, felt as though some reason other than professional pride that kept him working ever faster and more precisely toward the king’s chamber. He thought about bringing it up, but remembered how Thompson had reacted previously to his suggestion to lighten up. Archibald had exploded, his universally proper and calm demeanor crumbling as he screamed that Jacobs knew nothing about excavations, and that the only reason he was around was to pay the workers. Jacobs had given him free reign since then with all matters, simply pulling out the pocketbook when matters required it.

“I must get back to the site, though, to supervise the evening cleanup. I’ll be back at the usual time. Good day.”

“Good day.”

Archibald left, leaving France to worry himself to sleep.

Less than a week later, the innermost chamber was breached. Archibald himself located the secret door and led the men in. The room was small, only large enough for five men to stand in. The room was dominated by a huge stone pedestal that rose eight feet from the floor and was topped by an intricately carved stone lid. Archibald had the coffin lid removed. The king lay wrapped in vestments, as he had for millennia. France had just entered the room when Thomson�s face contorted slightly.

France stood back, aghast, unable to move as he watched the expedition leader commit the most egregious act of sacrilege. Archibald forced his knife from the sheath and plunged it into the chest of the king, repeating this simple act five times. He reached down and pulled out the desiccated, crusty shards of the king’s heart. He held them in his fist above his head. Then, as Jacobs watched, he yelled an incoherent syllable and stuffed the dried fragments into his mouth. He chewed the ancient heart and swallowed it.

France turned and vomited. He collapsed against the wall, the blood draining from his head.

Archibald, the glint of madness in his eyes, sheathed his knife in his own breast and climbed, bleeding gently around the blade, into the coffin with the king. He lay down on top of the king, removed the knife and died.

France Jacobs later had the body removed and returned to America.

Phone Call

Puking his guts out, he smiled. As he lay in a pool of his own and other people�s vomit, he grinned. He lay dying, with lightning bolts of pain firing like ancient cannons down his spine. His caretakers were gone; he was completely isolated. Confined to a broken hospital with broken, useless equipment: bloody scalpels, used syringes. The electricity and phones were out. He was almost completely unaware of all of this. The hospital itself was now boarded up and the occupants were all dead: Doctors, nurses, other dying people, all except him.

He stood up. Slipping on a pool of bloody feces, he hobbled to the doorway. The lights were out. He suppressed a giggle. Then the phones had gone out in the middle of a conversation he was having� it left him giddy. Surrounded by sterile death and decay, he had heard a voice of brilliant, solid health. Then the phones went out and people started dying faster. He had fallen asleep for a month, then arose to depart. In his half-gown he made up his mind that this was not a place for such creatures as himself. There were other, half-dead people around him, but they were content to lie puking and eating the flesh of the already dead. He had heard a voice.

He found a window, but it was boarded up, and he didn�t know if he was on the ground floor or on the roof. He had been unconscious when he arrived at the hospital, but he knew that by the time he left, he would be more alive than he�d ever been before. He found a fire extinguisher and broke the wooden board covering the window. He swooned slightly at the dizzying height. He looked down again and examined the exterior of the building. It was pitted and bruised by bullets and fire. A ring of rusting razor wire crouched atop a hastily constructed cyclone fence surrounding the hospital grounds. Broken bodies lay sprawled like dirty laundry on the earth. He turned away.

He found a staircase and started to descend. On the next floor, he discovered a vending machine. He pounded on it for a while, then sought out a supply cabinet. He pulled out a fistful of scalpels. Returning to the vending machine, he whittled away at the plastic shielding that kept crackers and cookies from his salivating mouth. As the sunset began to bleed through the cracks in the building, he sat ravenously consuming peanut butter crackers and oatmeal cookies. This floor was cleaner, he thought, than upstairs. There wasn�t so much blood. He found a bed with an old, dead occupant. He tipped the corpse out of its resting place and changed the sheets. He lay down to sleep.

Upon awakening, he found that the corpse had managed to crawl over to the crumbs of his feast and was slowly licking them up. The poor creature wanted to live, but it didn�t really have a chance. It had no motivation. It was living out of habit. It hadn�t heard a voice over the telephone. A soft, living, excited voice. A voice connected to a living being. He stepped over the corpse as it continued to breathe and excrete. He made his way to the staircase again and descended a few flights before coming to a stop. The path ahead was clogged. Desks, chairs, broken glass and corpses lay piled to the ceiling. There were dead soldiers here. They lay with scalpels in their backs, empty syringes in their necks. He could not proceed down the staircase here. He exited to the hallway. Examining the rooms, he found one with an unbarred window. He was three floors from the ground.

He examined himself. The half-gown, crusted with vomit, shielded his privates from view. He had no other possessions. He pulled a pair of boots off a dead soldier to cover his scabby, bloodied feet. The grin he�d been maintaining began to sharpen. He laughed. He danced for a few moments to music only he could hear, then ran room to room, ripping bed sheets from their owners and occupants. He sat down and began tying square knots. He found an open window and secured the end of his improvised rope to the bed. He descended, landing gently on the soft soil. The sky above was blue and the rusting tanks and barbed wire ahead posed no threat. A car pulled up. She called out to him from the window and he leapt into the vehicle. His smile relaxed into satisfaction.

Grandpa

The bathroom. That’s where grandpa died, really. I mean. That’s where he lived, practically. Grandma had the rest of the house. I’d seen his office before. He had a trophy in there… tennis. It spun in circles… it was quite well balanced. His desk was heavy. It had a glass top with pictures and papers underneath. There was a phone there someplace. Now there’s a computer there, but it feels awkward and out of place. It’s a piece of technology that just doesn’t fit with traditional weight and value of that desk. But I was talking about that bathroom.

I suppose a physical description will do to begin. The doorway is standard height and width. The door opens inward and to the right, bumping up against the wall with one of those metal door-stops at ankle level. The interior wallpaper has vertical gold elements, and there is a mirror extending the width of the wall facing the entry. It stands over a sink… marble, I think, with some soaps shaped like seashells. These are the things that every bathroom has.

Step inside. Close the door. Sit down. You know where. Just for a minute. There’s a clown on the ceiling with a cluster of balloons holding him up, he’s got his hand to his eyes, looking out… looking forward somewhere. There’s another on the wall there. The poor tyke is suspended between two balloons, sitting on a swing.

There is a painting on newspaper. A gentle older clown, smiling somewhat sadly. Just his face. There’s another painting of a less distinct clown, standing lanky, back to the artist. There are three little acrobatic clowns on the counter. They spin and swing… and do loops. That’s my grandpa. He’s right there smiling from the wall, from the little ceramic (or is it mache? or plastic?) clowns. I go in, I smile as I sit down, and I let him know I’m doing okay. And I have a feeling like he’s looking in and I know he’s doing okay too.

The Rage Game

When he was eight years old, Jim sat across from his brother in the living room playing a sick game. Neither of them wanted to play, but it seemed necessary. Each would sit and stare at the other, not moving, just smiling, trying to drive the other into a blind rage. The first person to physically assault the other lost the game. Jim got very good at the game. Jim and his brother were pros. The ability to silently contain a rage and inflict it through body language upon another was such a powerful skill that Jim rapidly advanced in our Darwinian society. At the age of 34, he was a successful professional spy for the United States government, working in the mid-east. At the age of 35, he was a valuable prisoner of a mid-east government.

His first torture session was the most difficult because he was unprepared. He emerged with blisters on his back from the boiling tallow. He had managed to hold his mouth only through force of will. He knew that his strength flowed from success, not pain. His next session was a little easier. As the interrogator asked him questions and Jim failed to cooperate, the interrogator feigned anger. Jim permitted a little smile to seep to the surface of his face. When the interrogator got upset and stuck fishhooks into Jim’s fingers, Jim felt the thrill of victory. He felt like he was home again, back with a conventional adversary he could fight with a glare or a chuckle. This was a game he could play.

The next few weeks found Jim at varying levels of bodily pain. Jim’s spirits, however, steadily rose. He could see the toll he was taking on his interrogator’s psyche. The interrogator was getting confused. He did not understand how a man could smile subtly as a ring of molten brass was pounded into shape around his ring finger, searing the flesh and bone. It was not within the worldview of this man that a prisoner, offered the opportunity to go free or face having his toenails ripped off, would choose the latter. Jim chuckled as the flesh tore. He spoke calmly and reasonably, always dignified, even while wracked with spasms as his ears were electrocuted. He watched his interrogator deteriorate before his onslaught of subtle, enraging gestures. He once ventured so far as to proffer his middle finger, upright, to the interrogator. It was severed. He snickered.

Jim knew the end was near. The interrogator could not take much more. It was about halfway through the regular session, as the interrogator thrust a red-hot length of rebar against Jim’s right eye, that Jim let out an almost haughty laugh. The interrogator snapped and discharged 8 rounds from his sidearm into Jim’s smiling face. Jim won.