A Pint of Vodka

The Bob Particle

The last particle was the first. His name was Bob. Bob flitted through the universe for what seemed forever to him. It was lonely and Bob almost worried he was the only one ever until he saw someone in the distance approaching him. Bob looked closely, excited, and realized that the other particle was him, except he was traveling backwards.

It was mostly empty space Bob experienced, but there was one flash of light Bob remembers vividly. It started when Bob became stuck to another particle which, and this Bob found funny, happened to be him. This happened again and again until Bob and himselves formed things. Bob became intimately close with these things. How could Bob not? Bob made them and they were Bob. They, however, had no idea Bob, and themselves by extension, existed, and this made Bob comfortable because some of these things were incredibly destructive, like one mass, Bob remembers, that sailed into a larger mass, forcibly fusing with it in an act that Bob felt was unnatural.

Once, Bob found himself as part of a thing that was a part of a larger thing. The smaller things interacted with each other saying things like hello and good bye, terms completely foreign to Bob. Most of the time, Bob knew, hello was preferable to good bye because good bye meant separation. Bob could relate only in that most of what he’d experienced until that point was loneliness. Suddenly, the fusing of objects didn’t seem so unnatural and Bob discovered a new pleasure in being a part of these things.

Bob’s most memorable thing was a dog named Darmok who lived between a pillar and a slope under a bridge with his owner. Darmok ate trash twice a day from behind a supermarket or from an alley behind a dumpster. They slept beside each other for years. His owner died by the pillar clutching him, sweating even though it was cold out. Darmok wiggled away when the grip loosened, ate, came back to his dead owner, left, ate, came back and slept. This continued after the body was removed even though Darmok had no need for the space.

Bob realized Darmok was trying to maintain the hello aspect of his relationship with his owner, then Bob realized he, too, in the flash of light in which he experienced all of this, was trying to avoid the good byes required between himself and his other selves.

In time Bob left Darmok, he left the pillar, the slope, the freeway, the trees, fire hydrants, and passersby who tossed Darmok change thinking it was a very shaggy old man. Bob left all things on that circling mass, and he left that which it circled, and that which it circled. He saw fewer and fewer particles, fewer Bobs passing by, and fewer instances of happiness. The last one he saw was going backward. Bob thought Darmok would have been better off not trying to maintain the hello because he would have been much happier accepting the good bye. Bob realized he’d be much happier, or less lonely, if he hadn’t learned hello. Hello, he figured, was just as bad as good bye, and he stopped being lonely.

Her brother moved in with her family shortly after his son died.  She wasn’t expecting him and was shocked at his condition.  He was pale and trembling with a fever.  She hugged him, took his plastic bag of clothing into the guest bedroom where she nursed him to health.  He laid on the bed thick with colorful blankets for three weeks before his hands and leg were fully healed.  The infection had left him slow-witted.

She told her husband and two sons he would remain there until he felt like leaving.  They obliged every request he was too ashamed to make, those his sister had to make on his behalf.  She found out he had a son three months into his stay, and two months later she knew he was dead.  She prayed for him every night hoping it would return the brother who left for America when he was twenty.

“His fiancé made it,” she told her husband.  “She stopped sending him money two years ago.  He said she’s working for a family in Phoenix, taking care of their babies, cleaning, and cooking.”

“Has he heard from her since,” her husband asked between sips of his beer.

“He showed me the letters he received last year before Carlito died.”  She pulled the letters out and read them.  His fiancé, Paola, wrote that her employer had divorced his ugly, jealous wife; that his wife beat his children and would go out with other men; and that she decided to stay with the husband to support him and his children who now meant as much to her as Carlito.  She wasn’t paid except for room and board.  The last letter contained a picture.

“Look at her dress,” the husband said.

“My poor brother probably thinks to this day she sewed it herself.  And after all he’s been through—,” she was struck with a pang in her belly and told her husband about the day her brother lost his only child, something she’d promised never to share to anyone.

He walked home from work and found poor Carlito white-faced with dust, mangled and splotched with dried blood, lying just inside his home.  His shameless neighbors had the courtesy to only drag him ten feet from where he was run over by the cartel.  They should have covered him, or wiped his face.  Instead of eating, he spent the evening digging a grave for his son in the 46 degree heat.  His hands blistered and he worked the entire next day like that, not caring for the pain, but focusing only on bringing home the pesos he was saving to try and get to his wife in America.  That evening he came home to find two coyotes trying to dig up Carlito.  He killed one and chased off the other before securing the grave with more earth.

He continued working for several days, feverish and nearly dead.  When the infection took hold of his body, he made the decision to use the money he saved for a bus ticket here.

“Does he still plan on getting to Paola,” her husband asked, opening another beer.

“I won’t let him.  He can’t think straight after the fever.  It’s best if he stays here, with us,” she said with a sad smile.

“I agree.  We’ll talk with him when he wakes in the morning.  I’ll get him a job at the company.”

Her brother worked for her husband and saved all the money he made except for what he used to buy his nephews gifts.  He wrote, finally, to Paola, but she never responded.

His sister called him for breakfast one random Saturday, fifteen months after he arrived.  She ran to the guest bedroom panicked when he didn’t show.  The note he left thanked her and her family for everything, and explained that even though he knew Paola was no longer in love with him, or had moved on, or had forgotten him altogether, he was still going to find her.  She was his only connection in America, and he had to see her for that reason alone.

She cried to her husband and he consoled her, tucking her face into his neck.  They waited for a phone call or a letter and received a letter the following Saturday.  It was the letter her brother had written to Paola.  They checked the envelope and on it was written Return to sender, change of address.

The mugging of a priest was the most horrifying thing Pierce had ever seen.  It was the type of fear that convinced him he was dreaming.  What shook him awake was the gunshot.  He was in his car smoking a joint, across the street from a church, when two bald Mexicans approached the priest.

The priest smiled at the muggers until they pointed a demanding gun at his face.  The wallet, he said with integrity bogged by fear, had money only for those who needed it.  The muggers tried coercing the priest with expletives, threats, and barrel jabs to the chin, but the priest did not relent.  Instead, he sobbed, threw up choking on his coughs, and cried loudly, repeating that he didn’t want to die like a child whose broken toy was snatched from him.  This was what terrified Pierce.  A priest shouldn’t be afraid to die, but this priest was and he did, leaving only an emptying, ransacked body.

He drove home slowly, taking back streets and winding to avoid street lights.  Once home, he put the milk in the fridge, showered, and told his wife what he saw.

“What were you doing across a church,” she asked.

“Smoking.”

“Weed?”

“Yeah,” he said.  His voice was colorless.  “They took around a thousand bucks from his wallet.”

“1,000?  How do you figure?”

“The guy with the gun counted ten bills.  They looked like 100s.”

“You must have been thirty feet away.  In the dark.  High.  They could have been 1s,” she said.

“Why would they count 1s?”  He paused to find an answer to his question.  “I saw a man die, Brenda!”  His breaths came in an exaggerated staccato.

“Feel,” she said suddenly excited, and guided his hand to her stomach.  “It’s moving!”

“He is six weeks old.  He is incapable of movement and I just realized I didn’t call the police!  Should I call the police?”

“You wouldn’t be so worried if you hadn’t been smoking out,” she said.

He forgot about the murder while arguing with his wife.  What pregnant woman craves just milk, he asked himself.  Eventually, in a way that made sense only to him, he decided he should have a glass of milk and a pickle.  He decided it was the most delicious thing he’d eaten.  His wife gagged a little watching him from the couch.  He looked at his meal as though he were staring into the universe.

The next morning, his wife hobbled into the kitchen while he cooked breakfast.  “Can you put a little milk in the eggs,” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said and his mind drifted as he stirred the eggs.  Mm, milk.  Milk is so delicious. Why am I craving pickles.  Milk pickle.  I love milk pickle-church-priest—.  “Oh my God, I witnessed a murder last night.”  He plated the eggs.  Half landed on the counter with his mind focused in recollection.

“They’re burned,” she said, poking at the rubber eggs with her finger.

His thoughts raced faster than his words.  In his mind, the conversation was at a point where he should be yelling.  “The killers?  How do you know!  Tell me!” he said.

“No, the eggs.  I thought you were joking about the priest.  Did you really see someone die?”  She asked with the tone of a mother comforting her son.

Before he could answer, their ears perked at what they heard on the television: “Dirty priest gunned down in marijuana deal gone awry.  Story at noon.”  The priest, the news anchor revealed ten minutes later, was discovered by a six year old girl who, in her excitement to attend church, ran from the parking lot to the front of the building.  A search of the area found a half-smoked joint filled with top grade marijuana estimated to cost 700 dollars an ounce.

“700 dollars, Pierce!  You spent 700!  On weed?”  Brenda said, pointing her fork like a trident.

“I stole it actually.”

“Stole it?”

“From a kid,” he said, eating eggs off the counter.  “Flashed my Halloween badge.  Scared kids’ll do anything for adults.”

The anchor continued and explained that the situation of the priest’s death spurred further investigation.  The church, it turns out, was a front, and its sound-proof basement was filled with women, beaten on the outside as well as on the inside for fifty dollars (or five per thrust, one said in broken English, eyes to her feet).  “In other news,” the anchor said, “a man impersonating a police officer was reported to have robbed a local elementary student.”

“Shit, Brenda, I feel awful,” he said.  “I’m scared.  I’m really, really scared”

“The kid won’t remember you.  He was probably high, too.”

“Not that,” he said washing the dishes.  “It’s how the priest died, and his crying.  I need to talk to one.”  He left for the nearest church after showering.  He fought his way through the exiting congregation as though walking into a sentient wave frantic to reach land.  He explained to the priest what he saw and who he was.

“Wait, that was your joint,” the priest asked with roadie enthusiasm.  “You’re  a community hero, man!  Like Batman!”

“I actually came to talk to you about the priest who died.  Or about yourself, too.  You believe in heaven, right?”

“Yes.”

“Are you afraid of dying?”

“Fuck yes.”

“But you just said you believe in heaven,” Pierce said feeling witty like a law student at a party.

“Look, man, I get about two of you per week asking why I’m afraid of dying.  I tell them all the same thing: I don’t fucking know.  Usually it’s a teenager, usually they’re high—you’re not high right now, are you?”

“No.”

“—and usually I tell them to go read the Bible.  They do, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.  All I’ll tell you is that I became a priest because I can’t get it up.”

“That’s . . . I don’t know what that is,” he said.  He kept pulling the padded knee-rest from below the seat in front of him with his foot.  He had absolutely nothing to say, and, after the third time he pulled the knee-rest down, he felt awkward.  Given the setting, he felt the urge to pray for the priest to say something, but he didn’t have to.

“Your wife was in here last week.  She asked me to bless It in her stomach.”

“You mean our son,” Pierce corrected.

“Yeah, that.  And you.  She asked to bless you, too,” the priest said, flipping through a hymn book.  “I hate this song.”

“Did she ask you to bless her?”

“Nah.  Listen, I gotta do stuff.  You and your wife should stop by next weekend.  It’s a great community and it would be great to have a fellow smoker in the congregation.  700 bucks, eh?  Nice.  Keep this between us, please.”

A family approached him before he walked through a door near the back.  He responded to their questions as they expected him to.  He was convincingly graceful, soft, and well-spoken.

When he got home, Pierce cooked his wife a brunch she ate like a duck.  He spied on her as she ate while he pretended to read.  She asked what the hell he was staring at and he put his hand on the bump of her belly.  “I can feel him move,” he said sincerely.

“That’s just gas,” she said through a mouthful of bacon.

He smiled and cleaned up after his wife.  When he was done, he went to the backyard and smoked another joint and thought about both priests, his wife, and what he hoped would be a boy.  He thought about how he would convince his wife to go to church next week but realized he didn’t have to.  He felt coddled.  All he wanted now was a glass of milk and a pickle.

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This is a new test.

These are responses to questions/prompts I received in class today.  They were meant to be fun, whimsical maybe.  I wrote these and may expand on them.

Where did I come from?

I exploded into existence one morning and compressed 19 year old Cormac Rosey to pieces.  I blew through him and felt his jaw crush against my skin.  I touched his friend,  Celes Martinez, next and tasted her flesh, hair and bone marrow at once.  I looked inside myself and saw her grey flesh draining into wet dirt.  As I died, I thought of my creators, their smiles and children, and how they will likely end up like the pieces inside me.

What happens when I die?

I like to think that when I die, the universe will remember me.  My vibrations will echo everywhere and coalesce back into me in time.  I hope my vibrations aren’t amplified with anyone else’s lest I be turned into some freak amalgam.  If that does happen, I hope it’s with my wife, but her vibrations are probably too far for me to reach. I remain hopeful.

What brings me the greatest joy? [I was short on time from here on.]

Everything is just okay.  Joy, excitability, giddiness are so foreign to me now that I have to pretend my stomach feels them, but it’s like touching a shadow.

Why are we here?

I was raised on a farm and learned that animals are unaware they’re being farmed.  I figured we’re probably in the same situation and we’re slaughtered of old age.

Who is our enemy?

My enemy is eight-toe Joey from down the street.  He raped my parents, my dog, and my houseplant.  I’ll never forgive him for that.

I told my boyfriend we wouldn’t stay too long because his anxiety makes him physically uncomfortable. He told me that when he gets anxious, it feels “like a vial of poison explodes in my intestines and tries to force itself out.” Once I put a laxative in his breakfast at a diner and got on the 405 during rush hour. His face was red and wet, and his legs shook the stopped car. We were on the freeway for 90 minutes before he ruined his pants. We haven’t had breakfast out since. He starved himself today because I asked him not to tug at me every ten minutes asking if we could go home because he didn’t want to use my friend’s bathroom.

He was nervous and complaining of cramps when we pulled up to her apartment. I told him to try and ignore it and ushered him to the kitchen where we took shots with my girlfriends. He reminded me that I promised not to get drunk with a whisper in my ear. I poured him another shot and handed him a red, plastic cup with rum and put him on the computer where he updated his Facebook status: “Party!” I’m feeling better, he said, my stomach doesn’t hurt anymore.

In the kitchen, I welcomed more of my girlfriends with more shots. I was somewhat drunk, but kept drinking not because I forgot my promise, but because I remembered it. We talked about our boyfriends and when it was my turn they asked what he was doing on the computer, so we walked to Jackie’s room quietly and peeked in without him knowing. He was leaning back like he’d just run several miles, doing nothing but refreshing his Facebook page as though keeping a beat. My girlfriends were huddled behind me in the hallway and I told them that nodoby’d commented on his status. They hushed an Aww and suggested to one of the new arrivals that she respond. “How is it,” she typed on her phone. His response, “Great =)” was provided less than five seconds after her asking.

He came out an hour later for a refill. I gave it to him knowing he hadn’t eaten, and my friends shooed him to the computer like a puppy and he left smiling. We took several shots and passed out on the living room floor.

My boyfriend woke me by stumbling over my girlfriends’ bodies on the floor. He asked me if I could drive and, even though I never asked her, I told him No, go to sleep on Jackie’s bed, she doesn’t care. He went to the kitchen, turned on the lights and drank from a bottle of cheap tequila for a few seconds. He bumped his way through the hall and to my friend’s room and it sounded like he missed the bed.

I waited ten minutes and pulled an enema from my purse. I walked into the bedroom, turned on the light and noticed smudges of blood on the white carpet and some of it hardening in his wet hair. There was more on the corner of the desk beside the bed. I twitched with a guilty pang, but remembered how much he deserved it, so I pulled his pants down just far enough and inserted the enema. He clenched in his sleep, but I emptied the bottle as a doctor sedates a frenzied patient.

I woke up before my girlfriends and entered the bedroom. It smelled awful and there were more stains on the carpet and my boyfriend was gone. I woke Jackie and told her how embarrassed I was, that I couldn’t believe it and that I’ll clean it. She didn’t say anything.

We had breakfast out and I went home. I found my boyfriend with red, puffy eyes and he apologized crying. He walked six miles home with his pants sticking to his legs. I thought for a second and told him he better call Jackie right now and apologize or I’d break up with him. He did and I made him clean up his mess.

I bit the three packets and squeezed.  One wasn’t open enough and it shot passed the paper plate to Manuel’s shirt.  His mother hit him for it and he slept crying while I squirmed all night with undercooked corndog grinding in my stomach like swirling gravel.

We had another corndog in the morning without ketchup off the same paper plates.  I forced it down hardly chewing.  This made vomiting even harder as chunks of meat coated in acid lodged in my sinus.  I could only snort and swallow them.

The entire house smelled like used kitty litter and the yard was filled with the choking scent of carcass.  We played catch barefoot with a balding tennis ball.  I asked him to toss it just over my head so I could make leaping catches, but he threw several feet too high each time.  When I got thirsty, we drank from the hose.

Inside we watched TV quietly so as not to wake his grandmother who slept on the recliner.  Her skin was crumpled paper stained with coffee and spread.  We watched cartoons I didn’t know from the floor and my neck hurt from craning as if perpetually drinking.  Each position I sat in became uncomfortable so I asked if we could play some more catch but his mother said it was too dark.

When my mother came for me I asked her if I could stay another night.  Then I said why and why and please and I don’t need to.  Manuel was in his room getting my clothes.

My eyes welled as I waved at him from in the car.  An hour into the drive, looking through my bag, I saw the balding tennis ball.  I asked my mother if she could buy two baseball gloves for my birthday, or even just one, and she said yes.

The greatest thing about Roy was how unabashedly she mentioned she was an alien. Not an illegal alien, though I suppose technically she was that, too, but an actual alien from inside a star.  Before she disappeared—literally, she dematerialized. I saw her do it. Or unsaw her, I guess—she told me she was too frustrated to live here.  I was baffled by her change of heart, and kind of hurt, so I asked why and she said she couldn’t stand our polluting the universe. She said our attempts to order chaos and mitigate entropy were unnatural. “Why don’t you all just stop doing that. You’re all as crazy as gravity,” she finished before vanishing.

I received a package from Roy shortly after a supernova across the galaxy. Inside were a weightless revolver and one bullet.

The greatest thing about Roy was how unabashedly she mentioned she was an alien.  Not an illegal alien, though I suppose technically she was that, too, but an actual alien from inside Jupiter.  

She was robotically smartwise.  She retained information like a trap, but asked questions like why didn’t you give that man your spare change?

“Because he smells drunk,” I replied.

“But he’s hungry,” and she’d do this daily.  

Before she disappeared—literally, she dematerialized.  I saw her do it.  Or unsaw her, I guess—she told me she was too frustrated to live here.

“In Los Angeles?”

“Earth, silly,” she said with a smile.  “Your living is weird.”  I was baffled by her change of heart, and kind of hurt, so I asked why and she said she couldn’t stand our polluting the universe.  She said our attempts to order chaos and mitigate entropy were unnatural.  “Why don’t you all just stop doing that.  You’re all as crazy as gravity,” she finished before vanishing.

I received a package from Roy a few months after she left.  Inside was