11-01-2015, 10:38 PM
Elijah woke up with the faint taste of pennies lingering on his senses and the distinct feeling of indistinctness in his limbs. He couldn’t feel his fingertips; his nose was cold. The young man opened his eyes, slowly expecting the light from the dirtied room to pour in but, luckily, he was not so unlucky as to have to deal with sunshine and unpleasantness. The young man’s days were built around a singular idea- avoidance. Since he’d gotten out of the hospital his only concerns revolved around keeping himself out of state care again. He had a rather impressive cocktail of medications lingering in his system that, when mixed with alcohol or illegal substances, did a very good job of making sure he woke up with a primarily blank slate. There is a distinct feeling that comes with having lost time, a feeling of liberation that wasn’t unlike the moment when you decide that you are going to jump out of a swing set and you launch yourself forward, hurdling through the air until you finally feel the sand under your feet.
He’d always been the type to jump, you see. Always been the type to go and hurl himself into the whatever-the-fuck-is-out-here. That wasn’t what killed him two years ago, though. Yes, Elijah’s heart was still beating- though he could feel it hard yet irregular in his ears. The room was foggy, but then again every room was foggy these days. He liked it that way; being in a fog meant that he was given a reprieve from whatever might have lived in that haze. Elijah stayed anchored, in that moment, to what was real around him. The young man stood up from the dingy bed he’d been sleeping on and looked over to the woman with whom he had been sharing it with. Her hair was curled, but not curly. She had the kind of dark hair that came only from a blonde’s persistent insistence that she wanted to be taken seriously. She smelled like hairspray; Elijah couldn’t remember her name. He was, at that juncture, completely fine with this fact.
Her hips curved and the bedsheet- crisp and white- hung over her generous frame. The woman had pinned a tapestry over one of the windows; not a real tapestry, but the kind of thing one bought at a New Age fair and was rife with pseudo-Celtic symbolism. There were stags chasing hares in circles around a triskelion and the fabric looked heavy. It was heavy. It did a good job blocking out the sunlight. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness in the room, he took in a few other things. The woman’s room had floral wallpaper and smelled faintly of a two-pack-a-day habit. She had a Queen Anne chair in the corner and, if Elijah stood very still, he could see the faint outline of where a man should be. He wasn’t’ a creature that stood still, though, and when he turned to face the furniture he’d noticed that it was imagination alone that gave the clothing laid out substance. He was thankful that he didn’t have to look too hard to find his clothes this time. He knows that “this time” is an appropriate length of time. The young man climbed into yesterday’s jeans, stopping only when he slid his hands into his pockets and found a balled up piece of paper in one of the pockets.
It could have been anything. Elijah wasn’t in the habit of paying close attention to the contents of his pockets but the paper didn’t feel right for a receipt. It was thick and heavy, and when he pulled the oddity from his pocket he was greeted by a tidy, blank business card. Elijah had scrawled something across the center of the card- Cthula Junction. The young man frowned, brows knit together briefly as he grasped at the ghosts of the evening before. He rubbed the paper between his fingers, and like a scratch-and-sniff sticker he’d coveted in grade school, it yielded a scent. Burnt match heads mixed with bergamot and clary sage. His eyes traveled from the card back to the woman in bed again. He shook his head again, harsh, then shoved the card back into his pocket. Elijah finished getting dressed without any fanfare.
His phone rang; Elijah raced to answer it lest he wake up the nameless woman still sleeping in what he presumed was her bed.
“What?” he whispered.
“Where the Hell are you?” a female voice inquired.
“No idea,” he confessed to Jenn.
Jenna Laurent was the only person who called Elijah on any level of frequency. They were friends enough that, in this incarnation of his phone, he had not bothered to actually put her number in the address book because he had already memorized it. It was a skill that was rapidly fading among people in his age cohort- being able to remember phone numbers. They’d never really not been without a phone book, so the need to remember how to call someone was no more important than being able to identify all the strings on a violin; the task was not difficult, but completely lost on those who did not feel the need to invest the time to learn.
She’d been the sole witness to what people had started calling ‘the accident’. She had enough Catholic guilt and attempts to remedy the world’s sins that Elijah was convinced that over the next few years Jenn Laurent was going to be canonized as St. Jenna- patron of artists, addicts, and children who became parents long before they could decide to make that decision. She was the first of five children, first to go to college, and the first to actually make something out of herself. Jenn spent her time weighing herself down with her childhood friend and his escapades.
“You’re supposed to be in class,” she whispered, maternal venom creeping into her voice.
“I had a busy night last night,” Elijah replied, “what am I missing in sociology?”
“Strain theory.”
“Judging by the clipped responses, there is no way in Hell I’m going to be able to get your notes, am I?” he was making his way to the front door. He was finding out new things about the person whose house he was escaping. It was dirty, but not the kind of dirty that comes from one being a hoarder or a generally slovenly individual. No, the house was dirty in that the owner was content to let the standard household clutter gain dust and become part of the scenery. There were shoes littered throughout the hallway. A stray towel discarded and forgotten on the way from the bathroom. Dust sat thick on any flat surface that one could find. It was a house, he had concluded, and not an apartment. Apartments had thin walls, and they all seemed to have the same ugly thermostat hanging in their short hallways beside an equally short set of cabinets.
This place had no cabinets in its hallway, just offshoots to a coat closet, a bathroom, and what Elijah presumed were other bedrooms. The living room was the first room he had entered that actually bathed his surroundings in any kind of light. The coffee table was the only thing that was clean, save for the credit card laying out and some very telling short straws. He inhaled sharp through his nose, feeling the rather disgusting mixture of mucus and blood hit the back of his throat. He could guess what he’d been doing the night before, but hadn’t quite given much care to the thought otherwise. This was his normal now. It wasn’t uncommon to go places and wake up somewhere you hadn’t intended- this was merely a part of partying a little too hard on a Thursday.
Jenn just sighed on the other end of the line.
“I’ll call you after I get out of psychology,” she told him, the edges of defeat creeping into her voice.
“I owe you one.”
“You owe me more than one.”
“Okay, I owe you… what, are we up to seven now?”
She laughed, “We can round down to seven.”
“Go be the responsible one, I’ll let you know about my daring fucked up adventure when I figure out how the Hell I got to where I am,” which seemed to be his equivalent of telling her goodbye. They didn’t end phone calls like normal people, didn’t end with ‘goodbye’ or ‘thanks’ or some exchange of affections. They were both young, and the finality of one’s place in the universe had yet to dawn on them. They still thought themselves quirky enough and individual enough to end phone calls like they were heroes in an action movie.
Elijah walked out the front door, locking it behind him and wandering off into what appeared to be a residential neighborhood next to a car dealership. Behind the small house, there were no fewer than five visible American flags. It was a dead giveaway, as far as he was concerned. He started walking to the car dealership, figuring that he would have an easier time calling a cab from there then he would from a nameless house with a woman whose name he couldn’t remember. He was not yet at the point in his life where losing an evening was a terrifying prospect.
His green eyes trailed down over his phone, checking the missed notifications there. He’d missed a doctor’s appointment; it had intended on being a follow up from last week’s visit. His life had become a series of doctor’s appointments and tweaked dosages since he got out. He’d had an accident two years ago; ice cracked and the young man nearly drowned in a frozen river. Everyone said he’d been really lucky that the water had been so cold, otherwise he might not have come back at all. Jenn said that it hadn’t been a close call, that his heart really had stopped beating. Whatever the case, he hadn’t been the same since then. It all culminated in a psychotic episode two years later. With enough therapy, patience, and medication, Elijah had been assured that he could lead a normal, happy life. He’d been waiting for the normal part to show up, though. It still hadn’t gotten there, and all the feelings and passions felt muted. His therapist said that this might just be a matter of time. Nobody said anything about post-traumatic stress. It was all something shameful that nobody discussed openly, but everyone discussed privately with anyone but the person in question.
He wasn’t looking forward to making that phone call to reschedule. He also wasn’t looking forward to explaining why he had missed said appointment. The young man went through a checklist to try and find some excuse that said he wasn’t snorting lines off a stranger’s coffee table. He somehow suspected his doctor wouldn’t be too keen on that. He thought briefly of Doctor Chastain. Her name was Laura. She was one of those older women who believed that blonde highlights would reclaim the years that medical school had stolen from her. Her limbs were long and graceful; she had a very specific look of distaste and disappointment that crossed her features when Elijah was upfront about missing some of his treatment goals.
The young man was certain she would not have given him the time of day in any other circumstance. Elijah presumed it was unprofessional to tell your psychiatrist that you occasionally fantasized about fucking her on the reception desk. She was a consummate professional, however, and as such there would be no consummating of any kind on any of the desks in her upscale Baton Rouge office. It didn’t stop him from being disappointed, though, and he wondered briefly if telling her about this would mark him as a developmentally appropriate man in his late teens. He presumed that the answer would be no, and whatever the case continued on to the car dealership to call a cab. The rest of the day went on with little fanfare.
He’d always been the type to jump, you see. Always been the type to go and hurl himself into the whatever-the-fuck-is-out-here. That wasn’t what killed him two years ago, though. Yes, Elijah’s heart was still beating- though he could feel it hard yet irregular in his ears. The room was foggy, but then again every room was foggy these days. He liked it that way; being in a fog meant that he was given a reprieve from whatever might have lived in that haze. Elijah stayed anchored, in that moment, to what was real around him. The young man stood up from the dingy bed he’d been sleeping on and looked over to the woman with whom he had been sharing it with. Her hair was curled, but not curly. She had the kind of dark hair that came only from a blonde’s persistent insistence that she wanted to be taken seriously. She smelled like hairspray; Elijah couldn’t remember her name. He was, at that juncture, completely fine with this fact.
Her hips curved and the bedsheet- crisp and white- hung over her generous frame. The woman had pinned a tapestry over one of the windows; not a real tapestry, but the kind of thing one bought at a New Age fair and was rife with pseudo-Celtic symbolism. There were stags chasing hares in circles around a triskelion and the fabric looked heavy. It was heavy. It did a good job blocking out the sunlight. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness in the room, he took in a few other things. The woman’s room had floral wallpaper and smelled faintly of a two-pack-a-day habit. She had a Queen Anne chair in the corner and, if Elijah stood very still, he could see the faint outline of where a man should be. He wasn’t’ a creature that stood still, though, and when he turned to face the furniture he’d noticed that it was imagination alone that gave the clothing laid out substance. He was thankful that he didn’t have to look too hard to find his clothes this time. He knows that “this time” is an appropriate length of time. The young man climbed into yesterday’s jeans, stopping only when he slid his hands into his pockets and found a balled up piece of paper in one of the pockets.
It could have been anything. Elijah wasn’t in the habit of paying close attention to the contents of his pockets but the paper didn’t feel right for a receipt. It was thick and heavy, and when he pulled the oddity from his pocket he was greeted by a tidy, blank business card. Elijah had scrawled something across the center of the card- Cthula Junction. The young man frowned, brows knit together briefly as he grasped at the ghosts of the evening before. He rubbed the paper between his fingers, and like a scratch-and-sniff sticker he’d coveted in grade school, it yielded a scent. Burnt match heads mixed with bergamot and clary sage. His eyes traveled from the card back to the woman in bed again. He shook his head again, harsh, then shoved the card back into his pocket. Elijah finished getting dressed without any fanfare.
His phone rang; Elijah raced to answer it lest he wake up the nameless woman still sleeping in what he presumed was her bed.
“What?” he whispered.
“Where the Hell are you?” a female voice inquired.
“No idea,” he confessed to Jenn.
Jenna Laurent was the only person who called Elijah on any level of frequency. They were friends enough that, in this incarnation of his phone, he had not bothered to actually put her number in the address book because he had already memorized it. It was a skill that was rapidly fading among people in his age cohort- being able to remember phone numbers. They’d never really not been without a phone book, so the need to remember how to call someone was no more important than being able to identify all the strings on a violin; the task was not difficult, but completely lost on those who did not feel the need to invest the time to learn.
She’d been the sole witness to what people had started calling ‘the accident’. She had enough Catholic guilt and attempts to remedy the world’s sins that Elijah was convinced that over the next few years Jenn Laurent was going to be canonized as St. Jenna- patron of artists, addicts, and children who became parents long before they could decide to make that decision. She was the first of five children, first to go to college, and the first to actually make something out of herself. Jenn spent her time weighing herself down with her childhood friend and his escapades.
“You’re supposed to be in class,” she whispered, maternal venom creeping into her voice.
“I had a busy night last night,” Elijah replied, “what am I missing in sociology?”
“Strain theory.”
“Judging by the clipped responses, there is no way in Hell I’m going to be able to get your notes, am I?” he was making his way to the front door. He was finding out new things about the person whose house he was escaping. It was dirty, but not the kind of dirty that comes from one being a hoarder or a generally slovenly individual. No, the house was dirty in that the owner was content to let the standard household clutter gain dust and become part of the scenery. There were shoes littered throughout the hallway. A stray towel discarded and forgotten on the way from the bathroom. Dust sat thick on any flat surface that one could find. It was a house, he had concluded, and not an apartment. Apartments had thin walls, and they all seemed to have the same ugly thermostat hanging in their short hallways beside an equally short set of cabinets.
This place had no cabinets in its hallway, just offshoots to a coat closet, a bathroom, and what Elijah presumed were other bedrooms. The living room was the first room he had entered that actually bathed his surroundings in any kind of light. The coffee table was the only thing that was clean, save for the credit card laying out and some very telling short straws. He inhaled sharp through his nose, feeling the rather disgusting mixture of mucus and blood hit the back of his throat. He could guess what he’d been doing the night before, but hadn’t quite given much care to the thought otherwise. This was his normal now. It wasn’t uncommon to go places and wake up somewhere you hadn’t intended- this was merely a part of partying a little too hard on a Thursday.
Jenn just sighed on the other end of the line.
“I’ll call you after I get out of psychology,” she told him, the edges of defeat creeping into her voice.
“I owe you one.”
“You owe me more than one.”
“Okay, I owe you… what, are we up to seven now?”
She laughed, “We can round down to seven.”
“Go be the responsible one, I’ll let you know about my daring fucked up adventure when I figure out how the Hell I got to where I am,” which seemed to be his equivalent of telling her goodbye. They didn’t end phone calls like normal people, didn’t end with ‘goodbye’ or ‘thanks’ or some exchange of affections. They were both young, and the finality of one’s place in the universe had yet to dawn on them. They still thought themselves quirky enough and individual enough to end phone calls like they were heroes in an action movie.
Elijah walked out the front door, locking it behind him and wandering off into what appeared to be a residential neighborhood next to a car dealership. Behind the small house, there were no fewer than five visible American flags. It was a dead giveaway, as far as he was concerned. He started walking to the car dealership, figuring that he would have an easier time calling a cab from there then he would from a nameless house with a woman whose name he couldn’t remember. He was not yet at the point in his life where losing an evening was a terrifying prospect.
His green eyes trailed down over his phone, checking the missed notifications there. He’d missed a doctor’s appointment; it had intended on being a follow up from last week’s visit. His life had become a series of doctor’s appointments and tweaked dosages since he got out. He’d had an accident two years ago; ice cracked and the young man nearly drowned in a frozen river. Everyone said he’d been really lucky that the water had been so cold, otherwise he might not have come back at all. Jenn said that it hadn’t been a close call, that his heart really had stopped beating. Whatever the case, he hadn’t been the same since then. It all culminated in a psychotic episode two years later. With enough therapy, patience, and medication, Elijah had been assured that he could lead a normal, happy life. He’d been waiting for the normal part to show up, though. It still hadn’t gotten there, and all the feelings and passions felt muted. His therapist said that this might just be a matter of time. Nobody said anything about post-traumatic stress. It was all something shameful that nobody discussed openly, but everyone discussed privately with anyone but the person in question.
He wasn’t looking forward to making that phone call to reschedule. He also wasn’t looking forward to explaining why he had missed said appointment. The young man went through a checklist to try and find some excuse that said he wasn’t snorting lines off a stranger’s coffee table. He somehow suspected his doctor wouldn’t be too keen on that. He thought briefly of Doctor Chastain. Her name was Laura. She was one of those older women who believed that blonde highlights would reclaim the years that medical school had stolen from her. Her limbs were long and graceful; she had a very specific look of distaste and disappointment that crossed her features when Elijah was upfront about missing some of his treatment goals.
The young man was certain she would not have given him the time of day in any other circumstance. Elijah presumed it was unprofessional to tell your psychiatrist that you occasionally fantasized about fucking her on the reception desk. She was a consummate professional, however, and as such there would be no consummating of any kind on any of the desks in her upscale Baton Rouge office. It didn’t stop him from being disappointed, though, and he wondered briefly if telling her about this would mark him as a developmentally appropriate man in his late teens. He presumed that the answer would be no, and whatever the case continued on to the car dealership to call a cab. The rest of the day went on with little fanfare.