“Another one? Really?” it spoke to him in the darkness of his apartment on some Tuesday night in late June. “We must work on that. Have you been reading those articles I selected for you? Alcoholism is no laughing matter.”

“Cool it man, I know exactly what I am doing. Stop counting my drinks and politely piss off. Mind your own damn business,” Andrew snarled in reply.

“Oh, but you ARE my business. You are nothing but my business my silly little friend. Let me simplify it for you, let me lay out all the details so you may never get things twisted,” it spoke with an authoritative tone. “You are like a puppet with strings running all through your body; a toy to be played with and laughed at. You are a sponge that will soak up the crap content of any mess I tell you to. You are foolish should you think anything else aside from what I tell you to think.”

Andrew stared straight ahead saying nothing. He looked at the cabinets in his apartment and wondered why they were cracked so nicely. Long, smooth little cracks. He always admired broken things; they gave him some sense of joy while others only became angry or frustrated with the lack of perfection. Beer in hand, Andrew got up from his couch, careful not to make yet another permanent stain, and walked sluggishly to the kitchen.

It began to speak again, “Andrew, must we always have this same song and dance? I grow so tired of imagining the bland basics of everything as you continue to dull your mind each night. I paint the walls beige for you and erase excitement from your life; stomping out any sign or smell of creativity. There are only so many valves in here and I have such limited access.”

Andrew entered the kitchen, carelessly ignoring the judgment cast. He checked his blurred surroundings with a pang of disbelief, like a groundhog looking for his shadow only to find the freaky faces of impatient strangers. He spotted the hairs, dust clumps, loose toenail clippings, food crumbs and other wonders dotting the white tiles of his kitchen floor. “The maid’s been out for quite some time, eh?” he mussed. Andrew always had a way of making himself chuckle, among others or all by himself. He drew closer to his dorm room sized fridge in the kitchen and toyed with the tacky Christmas lights dangling on its sides before pulling opening the small, lower door.

Inside were the many treasures most common bachelor’s hoard: an overturned half-full bottle of cheap Sake, four loose Heineken cans, a tiny airplane carry-on bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream, a Budweiser tallboy, six eggs, a misshapen stick of butter and of course, a nearly empty bottle of ketchup.

The voice chirped up quickly and with thick condescension, “Dear God. Your life could make the Pope and Gandhi give up hope in the same afternoon. An existence no more worthy than a human stump lacking arms, legs and the ability to speak or shit. If I did not have so much pity on your existence I might suggest throwing yourself off your cramped balcony, end it all just like that, quick and painless, right? Unless of course you keep a firearm in your apartment, but any half-alive moron would never sell you one. Then again, in the Good Ol’ U.S. of A. one could make a case that you are so looney that they should gift you the whole goddamn armory, free of charge!”

The words hit and ricocheted violently in Andrew’s head like crazed toddlers in a bouncy castle. He began to rub his protruding prized beer-belly with slow and easy movements. As he contemplated his growing hops-fed child, Andrew looked out his window and admired a simple pine tree that was coming into early adulthood. He saw the thin needles sticking out on all sides; the deep and dark green colors that made him think of Christmas songs and should he have stuck his head through the window and smelled the tree, he would have been transported to a convenience store. Once inside, he would sample all of the air-fresheners before selecting pine, as he had always done.

If the world hesitated to take an interest in small, trivial things the way Andrew always did it might simply stop turning or, by extreme comparison, hurl itself into the sun out of boredom. This gave way to anger from his inner voice. It began to chastise him once again saying, “You dirty dope! Snap out of it! Do you even know what day it is? Have you checked your calendar recently since you lost your job at that rundown supermarket? They have hired ex-cons prior to you with greater qualifications. What else could I possibly say to wake you up from this marathon of a sleep walk through life?”

As usual, Andrew covered up this white noise quickly and moved back to the couch: a comfortable home base during this war on himself. Andrew had previously had a large group of friends who have seemed to do alright at life after all. They stopped calling him recently since he always answered their inquiries with a rapid and prepared, “No” or a meek and tepid, “Perhaps another time.” It was not long after that even his own parents started to lengthen their hold on him. They now only called once or twice every few months, each call answered by his automated robot voicemail.

In all of this self-pity and self-deprecation, Andrew lived his happy life of a newly unemployed, friendless and family-ostracized individual. The most bizarre part was that he seemed to enjoy it. Every day consisted of alcohol, substance abuse and daytime TV talk shows, or reality TV if he ever felt like really shaking things up. He had loved each day of leisure so much that he steadily forgot which day he was currently living. Bills went unpaid, newspapers unread, messes untidied and he showered to the tune of inconsistent water pressure with arctic temperature encores. His descent into madness was less of a steep cliff and more of an escalator at an old folk’s home. Shortly after he reached the end of the magic moving stairs he began to hear the voice in his head. What started as something of a cute Jiminy Cricket conscious call later turned into the sound of a grizzled war veteran who had been smoking Marlboro Reds and drinking strong Irish Whiskey seriously since childhood.

Atop the coffee table on front of him Andrew picked up a purple Bic lighter and began toying with it. He shortened and lengthened the skinny flame, again and again, even going as far as to wave his hand over the powerful concentration of heat. Since he could not smoke inside of his apartment, or so his landlord had once advised him, he had been cutting down to about a pack and a half each month. While nobody is perfect, Andrew’s lungs never stopped singing his praises inside his body. These hymns hit the other organs and innards which were constantly working unpaid overtime. No job like keeping someone alive. No job as frustrating as warning one person about one problem one thousand times; only to have them double their drink orders and increase their prescription medication.

“Andrew,” it calmly called. “Why not give up? Why not just phone this one in? Or maybe, give me complete control and let me steer you in the right direction. Let me take you for a ride through this life and when we reach the end it will be on terms all our own. Would you like that? Oh certainly you would my friend.”

Andrew smirked. He quickly drained his can of beer, belched proudly and then fully reclined on his sofa. He closed his eyes and said, “I have been having trouble sleeping, you know? There are melting pains in my eyes from all the screen staring, sharp pricks in my back from the days bent over at a desk and even pumping palpitations in both my hands; all ten fingers too. With this extra time, rather than waste it trying to sleep, trying to dream up a life more eventful, more noteworthy, well . . . I just dream in the daytime.” He opened his eyes. The pain that normally sizzled behind both eye sockets was gone. The thumping in both his hands ceased. The invisible sharp pins and needles had been meticulously removed with gentle equally invisible hands. Andrew started seeing butterflies and other beautiful storybook insects flying around on his ceiling.

Perhaps the greatest revelation of all was that the voice had seemingly converted back to its old Crickety ways; both in volume and tone. “Say Andrew old pal,” it seemed to chirp. “What do ya say you and me see what’s going on out there? Take a trip to the window, get yourself another can a suds on the way. Plenty more to do, plenty more to see. So much time in a day.”

Andrew giggled on his way up from the sofa and into the kitchen. “I must tell you the truth, I am no Pinocchio but I will do my best to keep this nose short and clean.” As instructed earlier, he grabbed a can of Heineken on the way to the windowsill. He cracked it open, took a few swings before going back to watching the trees sway, the sun fall and the winds change. Back to his new life filled with countless old problems and common addictions, as well as one entirely and wildly inconceivable one.

Should any normal onlooker stumble upon the scene that unfolded that day in Andrew’s tiny apartment they would surely have lost their minds too. They would have immediately done one of the following: called for the police, ran screaming for help from the nearest able body, reached for the can of mace in their handbag and simply inquire what Andrew had been taking and where they themselves might get some too. However, for Andrew, words like insane, crazy, bonkers, wacko, cuckoo or even fucking nuts had no real meaning. The world he lived in was shared with his weird brain. The world he lived in was like a driving instructor’s vehicle. All the parts and pieces were there and if you chose to examine them you would find that they are all in working order. But, on the passenger’s side of the vehicle, below the dashboard there is an addition brake. One that could stop the car at any time with the same power as the one on the driver’s side.

Andrew had control of most of the machine, but there were a few times when his instructor pumped the single brake to the floor, halting the vehicle they both shared an intimate relationship with. Andrew often thought that there are some people in this world, maybe even on other worlds, who have no additional brake at all. How quick their lives must be. How stupid and full of unnecessary pain each day must be. Do these people not trust themselves? Do these daily drivers not look both ways before stopping to smell roses or count blessings on all ten fingers? But that is their problem. Andrew would stop worrying about them and start dreaming again, always in the light of day. “Andrew my friend,” there it was again. “Have you ever flown before?”

© Conor J. Josten