10 

My cat was dying. Not Cabby, who had died years ago. Who I had to visit in my old kitchen one last time, then fall into the road and cry as I listened to all the traffic just continuing on past me. Getting myself picked up from the ground by Shannon, who walked me to my home around the corner and told me to pour myself a drink once I was inside. That she would take care of everything. 

It was Magoo who was dying now. After all these years of having himself filled with memories only he and I shared. All the things that happened in those terrible apartments we moved between that no one else knew and maybe only he remembered. All the places we’d been before we found Sarah, and she brought us in, and let us stay. Giving us a backyard to find the sun in again. Neighbour fences for us to scooch over. Other animals on the floor to say hello to every morning. A place where there was still some love to be found that wasn’t just us loving each other. Which for a long time seemed like enough. Until we got here and realized we had room for more. 

For awhile, both of us full of more love than ever. Full of more backyards than we could have ever imagined if we’d remained in the city, where cats like Magoo don’t get outside much because of the cars. Suddenly realizing ‘ah, maybe this is life’. That life was a thing, after all. 

And it was so good. 

But now, all of this is behind us too. Now it’s us having to say goodbye. Nothing I can do to stop it. 

At least now you’ve got a bigger house, buddy. Basements and closets to hide in as you begin to feel worse and worse. Bushes out back you can try to run to in hopes of dying somewhere all by yourself, with the sounds of birds around you. But mostly not going anywhere and staying in the corner, next to my bed. Not sleeping right next to me anymore. But as close as you can come. 

I can’t believe it will soon be over. That soon you’ll be gone. And all I can hope is that I at least held onto you as long as I could. Before these final moments where all I can do is get down on my knees and look into your eyes and tell you over and over again that I loved you. Even long after I knew you are no longer listening. 

“I love you. I love you. I love you” 

I really do. 

And, I can only hope you heard how much they were trying to sell your pawprint to me for? 

You understand that was ridiculous, right? 

Epilogue Part 2 

The landlord was yelling upstairs at a tenant they were telling to get out. Could only hear their voices through the ceiling as I was slowly surrounded by a procession of old men and women moving single file down the hall. Coming out from the first-floor apartment that used to be ours. Some of them moving towards the back of the house with shirtless children clinging to their legs. And each of their pale, young backs were speckled with black marks, like buckshot. Like ash. Like a dusting of pollen from burning flowers. And I watched as the children reached back and scratched at what they could with their little fingers. Not able to reach all of it. The old people urging them forward, towards the fresh air that waited for them outside. 

“The bugs keep tripping and biting them all the way up the stairs”, I hear someone say as they move past. All of them slowly disappearing out of sight until there is only one remaining. A single woman, hundreds of years old, ironing shirts in the hallway. Telling me about all the times she’s beaten her husband within an inch of his life. Only knowing she’s a woman at all because she is bare chested, and the shirt she is ironing is her own ,and her tits small and drooping, just like her old wrinkled face. A bit of hardened chewing gum that is waiting for me to say something.  

“We aren’t here anymore, are we?" is all I can think to ask, before I leave and begin to walk the streets. Wandering past one street light. Then another. Noticing there is food to eat tangled down in the curbweeds on every corner. That, even though I’m hungry, I can’t be sure is for me. That it must be there for all the people without homes and no one else. And maybe I will still find a home after all, if I just keep walking. 

Epilogue Part 3 

Before I can wake, a hand rests on my shoulder. Draws me into a dimly lit bar. Sits me down at a table full of unfamiliar faces. 

I see it is Old Friend Chris who has brought me here. Haven’t seen him for so long. Or any of the others at the table, who he introduces, one by one. All of them names I know, even if their faces are different. 

“Can I stay here?” I ask them. Just about to wake. My eyes about to open.  

But only one leans forward to answer me. Can’t remember his name. Whispers into my ear. 

“I thought if I ever saw you again, I’d feel better”, the voice says, softly, delicately. Trying to soothe me. “But I don’t” 

And as I rise up onto my elbows and look around my bedroom, I already know you aren't going to be here either.  

And that on this day, I won’t bother looking.

We are no longer out in the grass. Laying in the lawn those last few moments.

We have gone away.

Jinnistan wrote:

I had very similar sentiments around both my cat of 17 years, Chaka, and my dog of 11, Bear, both of which represented the longest pet relationships I've had, especially in my adult life.  I still dream about them, and when I do I'm so happy that they're still here after all.

They are unbearably painful losses.They always are.


 

THE HAPPINESS 

They came into the kitchen to find me up on the kitchen counter, covered in blood. Screaming while they stood there in their sunglasses. Holding bags. It was time for my presents. 

But first dishcloths, pressed to my head, where I cracked it on the corner. Running into the kitchen to let everyone know they were finally here. 

“They’re here! They’re here!” 

And my skull splitting in two as I kept running towards all of them at the table. Quite a sight I’m sure, gushing everywhere from my exposed brain. Covering my whole family in blood too as they smoked their cigarettes and picked me up and didn’t know where to put me and dropped their ashes on the floor.  

Putting their hands all over my throbbing head as an enormous clatter suddenly announced their arrival. The thing I had known before any of them. What I had been trying to tell them.  

Rejoice! Rejoice! 

Cathy and Evan were here. 

The front door swinging open and smashing against a dresser. Their boot heels pounding across the front hall tiles. Already yelling like they were already arguing with everyone. 

And now everyone knowing they were here. Hardly needed my help, after all. Just got too excited when I saw them from the window. Getting out of their car and carrying bags. Cracked my head open for no reason and would now bleed all over whatever they had brought me. Whatever thing from the city they were giving me this time. 

Maybe comic books with tits in them. 

Maybe something that would make my grandfather’s cigarette explode.

 Maybe a shrunken head on the end of an oversized pencil.

Holding my arms out towards them as they stood there watching me bleed from behind their sunglasses. Making it clear I saw the bags they were carrying, even as my eyes began to stick together. More blood than all our dishcloths could contain. 

LEARNING 

1 

I will not work for a living. Evangelize these future plans of mine to a pile of laundry detergent on the carpet in the middle of the room. It knows I’m not lying about how I do nothing. Has been there all year long. So long it is covered in dust. Think I remember knocking over a box of it my first day here and it spilling into this attentive pyramid where it still stands. Grey and covered in hair. And now me just ranting and ranting and the girl sleeping on the mattress on the floor isn’t listening. Just me and a pile of powdered soap and all this excitement over how I have no plans to do anything at all with my life. So enthusiastic, I begin to write my ideas all over the bedroom wall in black marker. Then the girls make-up when the marker runs dry. Then with my blood when it starts to come out of me. Broken glass also in my carpet, along with detergent. 

“I just need a forest”, I keep telling someone. “I just need to go into a forest and wait there” 

I scribble the secrets of my good life on little pieces of paper, then tape them all about the house. On the doors of my roommates. On the refrigerator so they will know what was going on inside my head tonight as soon as they get their breakfast in the morning. Deserve a chance to know what they are missing inside this bedroom I never invite them into, but that maybe tomorrow they will line up to get inside of. Spill themselves onto the floor for whatever sermon I might come up with. Whatever comes out of me once I refill my head with whiskey. Will probably leave a bag of ice out on the kitchen table to melt and dribble all over the floor. Something they are always yelling at me for doing, night after night after night, but tomorrow they will be here to listen and understand why I never bother putting it back in the fridge. 

I’ve made it to a third year of university. 

Haven’t gone to a single class all year. 

I don’t know what my teachers look like. 

All I eat is Taco Bell.  

2 

It was a better year last year. A better bedroom, where I'd tell people I was going to be a great writer one day. Might not have done it yet, but I would. Maybe wasn’t writing anything at all, but was real good anyways. Knew better than anyone how to do it and had a big wooden chair I smoked cigarette after cigarette in. A bear skin rug to curl my feet into. Looking like a real big shot in a room full of music. Playing it loud so everyone could be as happy as me. 

Everyone loved me and I knew it. Even that girl who gave me the finger a month ago. Was sure she loved me more than all of them.  

Because it was both fingers. 

Because she stuck them right in my face. Shook them around and nearly took my eye out before running onto the dancefloor to find her boyfriend. 

Right then, I knew it. 

I saw through it. 

And I told myself, if I ever saw her again, I was going to tell her I loved her too. 

Rock wrote:

crumbsroom wrote:

I don’t know what my teachers look like. 

Jesus Christ.

Possibly.

Rock wrote:

Sorry, I meant to quote the part about eating Taco Bell. This is what happens you post after a long day at work.

I ate a lot of Taco Bell.

It tastes bad.

Rock wrote:

lol

I didn’t skip that many classes but did frequently doze off during them, often while sitting right at the front.

I slept through my highschool classes. Then graduated to not going at all in university.

I was on the honor role in final year, so went to a few classes by then, I guess.

Basically, university is a fucking joke.

I knew one person who got kicked out for being a lousy student, and I still have no idea how anyone could have been worse than me. It definitely felt like, if you pay them your tuition, you aren't going anywhere.
 

4 

I met Paul in first year, on the first night away from home. A giant nose in a bucket hat dancing to Beastie Boys. Thought he was the lead singer of Jackyl. Looked just like him. Drank enough to become convinced of this then introduced myself by pretending to rev a chainsaw and walking away. No need for names anymore. This was university and we’d come here to find new and better ways of communicating. 

And I was already getting newer and better.  

It hardly mattered if he’d even seen me revving my chainsaw, his eyes shut tight and shaking his head to Sabotage. We could now consider ourselves friends. Because this was a new world and everyone was my friend here. Or at least that was what it felt like. 

Making friends for life in lineups to bathrooms. Sealing blood pacts with strangers next to you at the bar who buy you a shot. Body slamming into the same dance floor idiot for all eternity. 

And so suddenly me and Paul such good friends I would feel completely at ease interrupting his Kerouac recitation when I came across him another night sitting on the end of a bed in some strangers dorm room. Still didn’t know his name, and still not telling him mine, but thinking it more important everyone hear about how the guys in the room upstairs from me had filled every drawer in their dresser with magic mushrooms. 

“Ten thousand bucks worth”, I said, everyone turning their attention away from Paul and his book, “Filled right to the top. And not so much as a t shirt in it” 

Told my new friends how they put all their clothes in garbage bags on the floor and how they were giving all that good stuff away by the handful.  

“My handful hasn’t kicked in yet though but if you’re interested....” 

Paul reaching for his Ferlinghetti, but it was already too late. Everyone filing out of the room and leaving him there alone. Already regretting our friendship, I’m sure. Me standing in the doorway and just staring through him. 

“How could my friend do this to me”, he would find himself crying little more than a year later. The night after my party. The one he’d had such a good time at, even if he had suspected something was going on whenever he left Paula alone with me. Even before he heard about how Paula took a cab right back to my place as soon as she was out of his sight. After she’d dropped him off at his door and didn’t want to come in with him. 

“Dave was my friend”, he would tell his confidant, who years later would tell me this. As if I had broken his heart. 

“Give me a break. Do you think I have friends”, was all I could say when I heard this. “Do you even know me?” 

Because me and Paul hadn't been friends. Not really. 

That actually isn’t the age for that kind of thing.  

You need to be younger. Or older. Or just better, since there can be no friends when you are terrible.  

Unless we’re talking about Paula.  

The kind of person you become terrible for. The one person in the whole world you came to university to meet. 

Fuck the rest of them.