“That’s it,” Mercury said. “The flying cars have failed us. Talking screens have enveloped on themselves. We’re spoiled. There’s no room for the sick, or even the bright, or the insane.” He gulped down half his beer and flatly said, “There is no future.”
Roger raised his glass and said, “To the Placebo Affect.”
Mercury stared into the distance for a while. The flames of Hell burned bright outside the windows. The troops marched on through in perfect cadence. The ground had melted away where buildings had collapsed. Cars lay overturned. Dead bodies piled up in the streets. Secretly, everyone knew it would be like this, but secretly we’re all procrastinators.
Mercury laughed. “From television to fast food; all the cartoons and the superheroes, with their big fake smiles.” He scoffed. “Entertainment, art, war, religion, big buildings, big businesses, big sterile faces–it’s all the same. It’s a clown show and it’s all in the shitter.”
“You would think with what we have–shit, we had, you would have thought this world would have advanced. But instead, the economy dissolved and we all grew stupid by our own merit. Drug lords in foreign countries hiding from it all, watching the rest of us eat each other have it made, don’t they?”
They crooned, clinked glasses and drank in the spirit of failure.
“Time to wipe it clean like a bad beer shit and start fresh, eh?”
Outside they heard the brakes of a vehicle screeching and then a crash followed by a rumble. The sound vibrated throughout the building where they were sure soon to die in.
“Remember when we used to buy cigars?” Mercury said. “The ones they had dipped in bourbon?”
“I remember. We used to buy them by the box!” said Roger. “They were a short cut, less than a 45-minute smoke; they had ‘em over that liquor store by Birdie’s. Shit, those were the days . . .”
“I’d give anything for a good ol’ taste of the smoke right now.”
“Stick your head out the window.”
He smacked him in the shoulder.
“I’ll stick your fucking head in the furnace!”
They laughed.
“I used to have me a woman,” said Roger. “You remember Sheila?”
Mercury suddenly felt a tingle behind his ears; he tensed up, nodding to diffuse the attention.
“I remember. . .”
“She was beautiful,” said Roger, “and not like those broads you’d see on the internet. A real woman. Flesh, blood, tits, legs, the works. Boy, she could light up a room.” He wiped his brow. “But hell, that’s all over with, as everything is . . . Where do you think a man can actually find a decent woman these days anyway?”
He was laughing again. Mercury tried to mirror the expression.
“It’s all down there, with the weirdoes,” Mercury said, pointing past the foggy window. “You can find a decent woman if you have patience and a shovel.”
Roger winked. “Well, Lord have a man-purse,” he said. “You can just set me down right now and cover me with dirt.”
“Done.”
They drank.
After a pause, Roger opened his mouth.
“You ever wonder what would have happened if we never had evolved? If we were still like the cavemen? Sure, we’d be less civilized, but at least there would have been a sense of worth. A fairness to it . . . None of this hypocrisy, and governed laws by assholes who abuse free will more than the common man–you just took what you wanted and you were happy with what you got. Simple life.”
Mercury felt uneasy. Memories of past and some kind of dread hovered about his crown. Sure, it was the end of the world, but there was something else dashing and swooping, ready to shoot strait at him, snatch him from his footing, removing any last bit of choice from the equation. He could feel his heart churning, like a swan trying to escape from drowning in hot tar. He wasn’t ready for his fate. What really made it difficult to swallow was that it was all set into motion by his own hand.
“Where’s the peanut butter?”
“In the stove,” said Roger. “Coldest place to store it.”
Mercury reached in and pulled out the peanut butter. He found a butter knife in the mound of disheveled mess in the sink and gave it a rinse. The water dribbled out, followed by a stuttering wail of the pipes that caused the flow to shoot out in hiccups. He shut off the faucet, dried the knife with his shirt and walked back towards the living room. Somewhere outside in the distance, sirens were going off. A helicopter chucked by overhead and quickly vanished.
“So, whatever happened to Sheila anyway?”
“I killed her!” said Roger. He said it with the same enthusiasm one would use to cheer when a runner from their home teams steals second base.
Mercury, shocked by Roger’s brash tone, moved cautiously. “So, that’s, what happened to her . . .”
In the hallway beyond their door they could hear frantic scurrying footsteps and doors slamming.
“The sneaking bitch was cheating on me. Some fucking guy she knew from work, she said. I didn’t believe her, but that’s what she said . . . I also couldn’t believe it when she told me she was pregnant by another man.”
Mercury shuddered. His eyes flared. “Sick, fucking, bastard.” The words just came out. Mercury steadied himself. He tried not to show his sudden stinging rage.
Roger drew his arms out, exaggerated his work.
“. . . I had her in the corner, and she was screaming–of course–putting her hands up, crying ‘Please, don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me!’ and I took my blade to her, first across the neck–mostly cause I was sick of hearing her voice–and the blood just went everywhere! I mean, all over the couch, the lamp, the desk, it just spurt out from her! You’d be amazed at how much blood we carry around . . . Then I dug it real deep into her belly, like this!”
Mercury cringed.
“And I watched as she collapsed onto the floor,” said Roger. “Man, you should have seen the look she had on that face of hers.”
Mercury became a stone. He stopped behind Roger who sat staring at the floor.
“I stared into her eyes as she slowly faded away . . . Yeah, I sent her and that unborn God damned catastrophe to the promised land before those fine tits of her had a chance to succumb to the tragedy of child birth.”
Roger poured himself another beer.
“I mean, could you imagine me, trying to help her raise some fucking other guy’s kid?”
Not too far away, an explosion went off.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Mercury said.
“It’s nothing. Call it, doing her a favor.” He paused. “Sheila.” He shook his head, drew in a breath. “God, I loved that woman.”
Mercury crumpled his angry face and quickly plunged the round butter knife down into Roger’s neck as hard as he could.
“Aaaarrrgggghhh! You son of a bitch!”
Roger jumped up, hand at the thing sticking out of his neck, hot stinking blood spurting. He coughed several times and blood sprayed from his mouth on the third cough. He put his hand out to catch it, looked at the blood on his fingers, then at Mercury who had circled around him. Water in his eyes. The two studied each other.
“What the fuck?! What did you do that–“
Then it hit him. Roger could feel the emptiness more than the certainty of imposing death.
“You mean?” he pitifully asked between gasps.
Mercury was breathing heavy. All these years he knew, but was too caught up to say anything. Or he was lying to himself.
“You fucking piece of shit!” he screamed.
A blank stare from Roger returned the comment at first. Then panicked question.
“Me?!”
Roger almost had the knife out of the wound. “You were the one fucking my woman BEHIND MY BACK!”
“You killed my son!”
Mercury threw his right fist square into Roger’s jaw. “You killed my child!”
Another punch landed as quick as the words escaped Mercury’s lips.
Roger stumbled back, watched Mercury and then hucked a mouthful of blood in his direction.
“You knew she was mine!”
“You never saw her in the same light,” Mercury relented. “I loved everything about that woman.”
“You fucking swine!”
Roger kicked out with a right leg and caught Mercury below the gut but not quite in the groin which was where he aimed. Mercury fell back and spilled what remained of the beer as the table went down underneath him.
Roger finally got the knife from his neck. It made a suction Thwap! sound as it came out. Black fluid came in chunky spurts.
“Gotcha in a good place, didn’t I?” Mercury taunted.
Roger screamed undiscernibly in a rabid timbre, something about “You fucked my woman!” The tone was thunderous; it was a sound that had filled the battle fields in every war known to human memory.
As he landed on top of Mercury a rope of his blood splashed Mercury in the face, causing him to flinch, then recoil.
“You dirty fucking pig!”
Roger swung with the knife.
It peppered Mercury under the chin. The way it had hit, the skin separated in a dark red dotted-line pattern.
Mercury grabbed Roger by the throat, hoping to hold him back long enough before the lack of blood took over. Roger’s eyes were full of betrayal and madness–pure fucking madness.
“No,” he gurgled, “You’re not getting me first.”
He tried another pass with the knife but Mercury blocked it, sending the knife out of his hand and somewhere out of reach. They both for a second flashed their eyes in hopes of finding it first.
They grabbed, tore, punched, kicked, scuffled, spat at one another. Their hatred fused until all they were staring at were each other’s soul.
“Doesn’t matter what happens to me,” Roger said, “As I see it we’re both dead . . .”
Mercury quickly gazed out the window at the bombs going off on the other end of town. Big brown clouds were expanding in their direction. The building began shaking. He looked back at Roger.
“Yeah, genius?” he said sarcastically. “How you figure?”
“No doubt my blood is in your blood. Something I never told you . . .”
Roger whipped his head back and came forth and spit as much blood as he could into Mercury’s face.
“I’m HIV positive! Hahahahahahahah!!!!”
Roger laughed like a hyena and flashed his menacing smile and coughed and spit and shook his head.
Mercury tried to shake the weight that was bearing down on him but Roger had him pinned to the debris from the shattered table and the broken glass was in the small of his back and he couldn’t find the leverage. He shook his head back and forth, coughing and screaming. Roger’s laughter cackled high and proud.
“We’re both goners!”
“Look outside you fucking imbecile,” said Mercury, fighting the weight on top of him. “They’re gonna wipe us out no matter what. Doesn’t matter one way or the other. This joke has a flat punch line . . .”
The distant drone of the jet engines grew to a closing roar as the bombers reached this end. As the building rumbled on Roger murmured the words, “You don’t say . . .”
The windows rattled. Dishes began to falter off the counter top and crash down on the shitty linoleum floor. Over Roger’s dying laughter and everything else Mercury could hear something falling from the sky as the jet engines disappeared. He fixed his gaze on Roger.
“This is it.”
As soon as he could feel Roger relaxing his grip, Mercury leapt at him, catching his right cheek with his fangs. Roger screamed. Mercury chewed off a quarter-sized chunk and swallowed it. He watched as Roger flung back holding his face.
“Happy Birthday brother.”
Roger stopped.
The words calmed his cries. An unexpected gesture. Suddenly he no longer felt the blood pouring from his neck. The pain from the bite was instantly gone. Nor the rage, the betrayal, the images of Mercury sneaking around with Sheila, the two taking passionate hold of one another. Nothing mattered. He set his vapid eyes on Mercury with a sudden cheerfulness.
“You remembered.”
Before Mercury could respond a pop went off and suddenly he heard nothing. Blind of sound. This was it, indeed. No longer time to fuss, or to fight, to hold qualms, to seek revenge. If there was an afterlife, he may get to see his son yet. Maybe Sheila. He tried to shake it off, this numbness in his ears, but the hard pressure he was feeling kept any sound from getting in. By the looks of it, he could tell Roger was experiencing the same thing.
They both turned to the window as the light washed over their retinas and the inferno swept through the building.
Author: Lawrence Goodwin
