The Devil's Escapades

The sound of dripping water and fluorescent lights buzzing above was filling the silence between Steve and I. A draft was moving throughout our building because the insulation in here is shit. Whenever it gets cold, my feet are the first to go; they just become these ice cubes.

“Almost got hit by a trunk on the hike over here.”

“What? You didn’t look both ways.”

“No, I was piss drunk and jumped right in the bastard’s way.”

“Couldn’t even do that right, could you?”

“You’re a dick, you know that, right?”

“So are you.”

“How’s the wife?”

“I don’t have a wife.”

“You don’t.”

“No, see, you’re showing your dickishness. Seriously, how did you almost get hit by a truck? Even when you were a drunk, something like that wouldn’t have surprised you.”

“It just came out of bloody nowhere as if the trunk was some magician.”

I grab one of those paper cup cone things (why are they cone-shaped?) and pour some water into it, taking a sip from the cone.

“Thirty-two years. My god, you’re getting up there in years.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s your birthday! Christ Almighty, I didn’t know you already have Alzheimer’s.”

I start to look around for any cubicle that was hanging a calendar. Finally finding one with a bloody calendar and thirteen days were cross out with a red Sharpie. The date is December 14th, 2011.

“Christ, it’s that time again, isn’t it?”

“Yup.”

“Fucking December.”

“You want to grab a drink after work.”

“Sure, I’ve got nothing better to do on a frozen Wednesday than to get the good old hammer. We’re doing a fifty-fifty split on the bill.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

I took a glance at the clock and pulled out my pocket watch to check if it was right. “Looks like it’s time to put the nose back to the grindstone.”

“Well, see you at dinner.”

“Yeah.”

Man, thirty-two goddamn years. It’s been fourteen years since that thing; ain’t that a kick to the head? What is happing to the time… Well, can’t complain too much; spent most of those years boozing and smoking, wasting away in that little apartment. Weren’t too awful, all those years in stupors, mostly because I don’t remember a damn thing about them. All those years and I kept this fucking job… I don’t even know what we do here; it’s just my job five days a week.

Fucking thirty-two years… Fuck me.

My mind drifts from topic to topic while pushing papers, waiting for a good five long hours to pass. The cartridges of cigs and flask keep on calling me, but it wasn’t time to open those. Who knows when it will be? After we have our fill of drinks, what should I watch when I get to the apartment? I’ll say gotta watch “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” skipped it last year. Should I rewatch Apocalypse Now Redux and Blue Velvet or just Apocalypse Now Redux? Could always just watch the second half of Redux and the whole of Blue Velvet. Well, I guess I gotta see how drunk I am by night's end.

The workday had ended, and Steve and I went out on the streets of Tokyo. Screens lit up the grey skyscrapers, someone always trying to sell you something. But that’s true with all cities; good old Philly proved that back in the day. With the Tokyo Tower piercing the sky, the sky that was once thought to be the heavens. Just a bunch of bollocks these days, isn’t it?

“So what’s the plan, Steve?”

“I'm thinking about doing this Korean barbecue buffet that's nearby.”

“I’m in the mood to fill myself with some cheap booze and cheaper meat, so I am all in.”

The two of us were walking through the streets of good old Tokyo. Guess I've been living here for about fourteen years as well.

“You used to be a heavy drinker, right?”

“Right.”

“What did you do about the hangovers?”

“A prairie oyster, hair of the dog, and enough aspirin to kill a baby horse. But that last step was only for special occasions like a work meeting. You know, at the job I was pretty much drunk for twelve straight years.”

“How come you stopped?”

“I never stopped; I just don’t drink as hard, and I don’t smoke anymore. Never did like the smell of smoke. All this talking seems to have filled the walk over here.”

The sun was setting over the country that once stood as the rising sun. We enter the restaurant and are hit with the smell of cheap booze and meat. With the lingering smell of stale cigarettes, but that goes for any good bar here in this city. The place was somewhat empty; maybe Wednesdays aren’t one of their big nights. The waitress brings us over to the open table, and we grab our seats. We glance over the menus and order our food and drinks.

“How's the job?”

“Same as always, just damn paper pushing. You know what I’m interested in? How do you not know what we do when you've been working there half my life?”

“Jesus, when you say something like that, I actually feel old, and I know what we do in the broad sense is rather hard not to. But in the specific sense of if we sell something or work with clients that I have no clue on. Hell, we could be working for a death squad, and I won’t know. I just show up from six to five and finish every paper that stacks upon my desk. Then head back to my apartment to get ready for the same the next day.”

“… Why do you get to work at six? The place doesn’t even open till 9.”

“Don’t enjoy sleeping… Maybe that's why the truck almost ran me over. Bastred was just asleep behind the wheel.”

“Do you even get paid for those two hours?”

“Maybe, don’t really look at the paycheck. The only thing that matters is if there’s enough for the rent and food.”

The meat and booze had arrived while we talked, and we had put the meat on the stove. The booze was what an individual would like when cheap booze and its taste are brought up, but the meat wasn’t awful; it was almost great. The night continued on with boozing, eating, and talking.

“You know…”

“I don’t.”

“Would you let me finish my thought, you dick?”

“All right, what were you saying?”

“I was saying that U read the damnest thing the other day…”

“Which is?”

“I’m getting there, Jesus Christ. You're the worst person to tell a story to. So if am allowed…”

“You are.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Ha!”

“Fucking Christ. Like I was saying, I read this article the other day about these disappearances across the world. Before all of these disappearances, there was always this brilliant ray of light that appeared.”

“Man, what the fuck have you been smoking?”

“Oh, piss off! I didn’t write the damn thing. I’m just telling what I’d read.”

“What type of new website or whatever the hell writes about disappearing people and links them to brilliant bloody light? How would someone even find something like that.”

“I’m just telling you what I’d read… so you never lose something and swear it must have just disappeared.”

“Well yeah, but I don’t go telling bloody folk tales about why I lost my keys. I just buy a replacement pair and get on with my day.”

“Well, I thought it was interesting.”

“They probably just killed themselves or got murdered and thrown in a dark hole no one could find… or eaten.”

“Jesus Christ, man, I’m trying to eat here.”

“I didn’t bring the topic up.”

“You brought up eating people.”

The time move on and we drew drunker… And filler.

We went on with our conversations, but our night was coming to an end.

I pulled out my pocket watch and checked the time.

10:40.

We stumble out from the bar/restaurant.

With more than just a mere buzz.

We were standing in front of the restaurant, and I decided to reach out my hand.

“It’s been fun, old pal.”

“Sure has,” Steve said, returning my hand with his own. “Goodnight.”

“Yeah, goodnight.”

We start to walk away from each other, but before we get too far from each other, Steve yells, “I forgot something!” Steve rummages through his pockets and throws a golden-wrapped Zippo lighter over to me.

“I remember you saying something about losing your old one, and I couldn’t figure out anything else to get you so there.”

“Thanks.”

“Check the body.”

So I did, and I found a quote from Doctor Faustus: "The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike: The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned!" How much did this cost that crazy bastard?

“Thank you, Steve. Have a good night.”

“You too.”

Oh, that cheeky bastard made me chuckle to myself a bit in this frozen land. A city is never quiet, but tonight it seems like I was the only man on Earth. The sky that was clear only a bit ago was now cover in a layer of clouds. (Nimbostratus clouds (the dark/grey clouds), if I remember correctly.) Snowflakes start to fall upon me. I always like the day after a good amount of snow, the beauty of it all, before I have to go out there and freeze my ass off. The land of pure white is so blinding that I’m thankful I keep sunglasses on. I doubt there will be that much snow. Well, I can only wait to see it tomorrow.

The silence was creeping me out a bit at this point, so I put in my earplugs into my MP3 player, and I put on a song for myself to fill this endless silence.

“The past seems realer than the present to me now,

I've got memories to last me,

When the sky is gray,

The way it is today,

I remember the times that I was happy.

Same old sun,

Same old moon,

It's the same old story,

Same old tune.

They all say

Someday soon,

My sins will all be forgiven.

Gentle rain,

Falls on me,

All life folds back,

Into the sea.

We contemplate eternity,

Beneath the vast indifference of heaven.” —(The Indifference of Heaven live at by Warren Zevon at Biskuithalle, Bonn, Germany.) Good old Warren Zevon, the best that ever was. He died too soon; well, only the good do.

My eyes were once more drawn to the sky. I wasn’t sure why; I just knew I should look.

Well, there was a bright light that cut through the gray of the cloud and the black abyss of the sky. In total, three formed across the city, and then there was one on me.

“Well, I’ll be damned, you crackhead; I guess you were right.”

A feeling that I could only explain as if a thousand cuts all over my body happen to me within a millisecond. They all felt so familial but distant at the same time. As if they were echoes of the future. My mind couldn’t comprehend what was happening, so instead of a screech or a yell, I just stand here in immense pain. The blinding yellow that seems to have been taken from the sun and surrounds me.

In both my pain and confusion, I was standing there like a deer in headlights (excuse the cliché simile). With all this happening, an explosion of white light surrounds me; the next thing I hear is that of a bird chirping, and the taste of dirt fills my mouth.

“Fucking hell…”