David

“Hey Randy.  Why don’t you go spend the night in the old haunted house on the hill?” David asked like the piece of shit he was.  I mean, look at him.  His eyes were too close together, his mom slept around leaving him with deep-seated trauma and a lasting distrust of others, oh and when we were five he ate my french fries.

 

“Hey David, why don’t you spend a night in go fuck yourself?” I quipped like the sexy virile young man I was.

 

“Very mature.  You’re 21 now.  Old enough to drink and old enough to get buttfucked by a ghost,” David said, rolling his eyes.  I hoped they would pop out of his head, bounce down the street, and roll into the gutter to be pissed on by some rats or something.

 

I shot back the fakest smile I could muster.  “That house isn’t any more haunted than your house.  Remember that?  When you thought that the sounds o—.”

 

“You’re a dick, you know that?” David asked, his words oozing out of his fetid mouth like the worthless sewage they were.

 

“Yup,” I said, proud of every one of my accomplishments in life unlike this shit-for-brains friend of mine whose wife got knocked up just out of high school and he stupidly decided to help her raise the kid instead of the real dad and then she left him to go do meth on some beach I can’t pronounce in California.

 

“Fine, pussy shit.  I’ll spend the night with you like we used to when we were kids,” he offered, completely glossing over how in the absolute fuck a pussy would shit.

 

“Sure don’t forget to bring the crippling depression and alcohol,” I said as I headed home to grab a bag of shit I really didn’t need but was legally obliged to gather for a sleepover in a haunted house or whatever dumb kid shit David was using as another avenue to escape from his loveless marriage to a whiskey bottle.

 

We met up at the old abandoned house that had stood atop the hill of our childhood street for countless years.  I don’t know what was more perplexing: the fact that we were back in this neighborhood or that the city couldn’t be fucked long enough to tear this eyesore down.  Like, seriously guys what the fuck am I paying taxes for if all you’re going to do is build another roundabout and fuck my commute up by another half hour when this city is only a few miles across.

 

I pushed open the door to the shitshack and musty, disgusting air filled my lungs.  It was much like the last time I ate out David’s mom.  Everything inside was covered in a thick layer of dust, much like David’s parental duties.  

 

“Wow, so very spooky,” I said, as interested in the place as any woman would be around David and his tiny, tiny dick.  He made me look at it once in high school and I punched him in the throat and told the whole school.  Now that I’m thinking about it, fuck knows why he still hangs around me.  Maybe he’s like, I dunno, a lost puppy?  Like no one else can feign putting up with him for long enough.  Maybe I fucked up somewhere in life and actually instilled in one of his few surviving brain cells that we could be anything in the same zip code as friends.

 

David didn’t respond.  He instead immediately set about scouting a location in what I assumed was once the living room and set up shop.  Tent, bedroll, everything short of a fire.  Once I had watched that fucking spectacle unfold, ignoring why in the fuck damn he brought a tent to a house and nailed that fucker to the floor like we were roughing it in the jungles of Ikea, I watched him produce several bottles of hard liquor from his bag.

 

“Well I’ll be goddamned.  You actually brought one bottle for each of the fucking steps of that program you’re gonna fall down, didn’t you?” I said, both equally disgusted and finally impressed by something he had done.

 

“Oh lay off it,” he whined like the small diaper-pissing child he was.  “I don’t drink that much.”

 

“My dude,” I said, choking back the sudden rush of bile that hit my throat at that display of how wantonly ignorant one person could be.  “You have enough liquid there to drown a toddler, never mind your liver.  How you survived this long is beyond me.”

 

It wasn’t beyond me.  Ever wondered how some parasites survive when their host dies?  They move on to a new host just like David does when he’s finished bleeding them dry financially and emotionally.  He’s really got that shit down to a science.  Or would it be an art?  Aw, who cares.  I certainly don’t fall for his shit.  I just babysit him on his idiotic ideas and ventures and then pawn him back off to whatever foolish person he’s sucking off—err on—this week.

 

David ignored me and proceeded to take a hearty swig out of the closest bottle.  It was some unpronounceable Russian vodka that I could smell from where I was and was pretty sure tasted like a cross between paint thinner and floor clearer.  I, on the other hand, unrolled a sleeping bag and sat on the floor like the sad sack of shit I felt like sitting in a long-abandoned house with my half-ass friend.

 

We sat there for what to me seemed like an eternity but for him probably seemed like a few minutes on account of the amount of booze he was chugging.  I was so enamored by his ability to drink like a man who had just come back to civilization after years stranded in the desert and had just rediscovered what running water was that I almost didn’t notice the pale, female specter descending the staircase.

 

“Who dares intrude in my house?” the spooky looking bitch grumbled.

 

“Yo, chill out,” I said.  “Pull up what’s left of one of your chairs and enjoy some of this decade’s finest swill.”  I pointed to David’s stash.  Well, what was left of it.

 

David, obviously, did not react.  This man was fuuucked up.

 

The ghost moved toward David.  “You have damaged my poor baby,” it said, pointing at the idiot’s tent that was, might I remind you, perplexing there.  Like, come on.  Can you believe he nailed that son of a bitch to the floor?  Why did he even have it if he had a sleeping roll?  Fuck!

 

“Fuck your baby,” mockingly slurred David, much like the methed-out mother of his child did.  

​

The ghost was pissed.  She reminded me of her, actually, what with the way she angrily stared at him.  She did it very similarly, but probably not that fucking eerily if I recall.  I mean she looked like a goddamn meth ghost but she was still alive.  Well, legally.

 

“And you!” the ghost shouted in my direction.  “You are—.”

 

I didn’t let her finish.  “Hey, hey, hey.  Calm yourself.  I’m just here to make sure this ‘friend’ of mine doesn’t do anything we’ll both regret or be liable for.”  I made sure to use very exaggerated air quotes around “friend” and meant it.

 

“Leave this place and never return,” the spirit demanded.  Honestly I was ready to fuck off at that point.  I wasn’t afraid, more so just annoyed that this wasn’t the first time this man had done something that would be the near death of me.  I mean there was that time at a bar in Texas where we had to flee while getting shot at but was neither here nor there.

 

“Yeah, I’m going to take you up on that offer if that’s okay,” I said, standing up and prepared to leave the sleeping bag behind as I gathered my pack.  It was, like, what?  Ten bucks?  Ten dollars...my life.  Ten dollars...no fuck that.

 

“Don’t be a pussy shit,” David casually slurred, still glossing over how the fuck that even what?

 

“Suit yourself, ballsack,” I said as I turned to leave David to his fate.  I stopped dead in my tracks as I heard the sound of snapping floorboards and bone.  I whipped around to see that goddamn ghost beating the everloving fuck out of him with a piece of wood.  “Holy shit you really don’t fuck around do you?” I asked, inching closer.

 

After she had finished caving his stupid, dumb, ugly face in, she turned to face me, board at the ready.

 

“Wait.  Hold on,” I said, holding my arm out as I approached the smear on the floor that once was David.  “I just...need...to...get...one...thing,” I grunted as I fished his wallet out of his piss-soaked jeans.  Then, just for good measure, I kicked his corpse a few times.  

 

I looked at David, then at the ghost, then up at the chunk of floor she held.  “Could I get a few swings in with that too?  He was kind of a shit person if I’ll be honest with you.”

 

“You...have issues,” she muttered as she vanished up into the ceiling, somehow taking a corporeal object with her.

 

“Spoilsport,” I muttered, giving the shitbag another kick, this time in his nuts.  He spasmed satisfyingly.

 

I nicked the rest of his unopened booze and made my way out to my car, intent on returning to my life, far removed from his miasma of failure.  I cracked open the scarred leather treasure chest to find a handful of bills, some old receipts, and a folded up collection of lined notebook paper.

 

Curiosity got the better of me and I pulled them out.  It was a note, written for me.

 

Randy.  This is David.  If you’re reading this, then something has happened to me.  I probably killed myself or have gotten myself killed.  Either way, I wanted you to know that I love you, man.  You might be hard on me sometimes, but I know that deep down you really care about me.  You’re the only friend I have ever had in this world.  Thank you.  I hope to have something I can leave behind for you when I die but all I can guarantee you is the memories of the times we shared together.

 

Neat.

 

The rest of the pages were crudely hand-drawn pictures of him and I at various times in our lives.  His art style reminded me of Picasso...if Picasso was cross-eyed and had no fine motor control...and was ten.

 

“Wow,” I said to myself, catching a tear in my eye.  “He really left me something amazing,” I said as I drove off.

 

“I was going to buy toilet paper but this’ll keep me going for another few days at least!”