Trigger Warning: The content may not be suitable for children or those with a fragile psyche

A Cure For Depression

It was two pm on a Monday and the entire world was hollow. I was sitting on a bench and looking out at the water. The water was black, and all the fish had died. I was hoping that a woman would walk by. She would have long black hair. The hair would drag behind her as she walked. She would walk up to me and invite me over to her house. She would let me sleep in her bed for one thousand years. But no woman like that existed.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a fifth of whiskey which was half full. I drank a little of it and put the rest in my pocket.

I looked at the crows as they foraged for small bits of moldy bread. I looked at my fingers and pretended that they were someone else’s. I sighed, and decided it was time to go to work. I got off the bench and left.

I went to the lab where we tortured mice to try and find a cure for depression.

The room was small and ugly, full of cages, smelling of shit.

The doctor had a dark face. It was hard to make out his eyes. His hands were large and shook slightly.

When he wasn’t looking, I took the fifth out of my pocket. It was still nearly half full. I could have a quarter of it now, and a quarter of it later. Thinking of a quarter of a fifth later, I felt a bit better about things.

The doctor took a mouse out of a cage. He placed it on the table. With a scalpel he cut a deep X across its stomach. It was so deep that its stomach was just four flaps of skin, protecting pierced, bleeding organs. He looked over the mouse carefully; the mouse was still depressed. He jotted something down in his notebook.

That was how the rest of the day went.

While I was scooping up shit out of one of the cages, preparing to refill the water container that stood hooked to the side of the cage which was painted black and peeling, looking at the mouse I was holding, its small fragile face, its body trembling in my hand, the doctor turned to me and said, “Why don’t you take off early.” His face was tortured.

So, I did, and I went to a bar.

The bar was called Freddy’s and it was where I spent most of my life.

I sat down at the stool and ordered a whiskey and a beer chaser. The place was dark. There was no television.

The people seemed interesting, but soon their faces melted into a single dull clarity.

There was a man walking around the bar. No one was talking to him. They kept their eyes turned down when he walked past. He looked like an empty house, furniture removed, dry wall in pieces, copper piping torn out and sold by junkies, ready to be bulldozed.

He was skinny. He had a hat like an English gentleman which he had worn every day since he turned sixteen.

He sat down next to me.

“Why is no one talking to me?” he asked, his voice was high and beautiful like a children’s choir.

I didn’t respond. I stared into my beer.

“Why are you crying?” he asked.

I was crying because a few days ago he had driven drunk and crashed into a tree and his car had become a xylophone and he had broken into pieces. He was my father, but he didn’t remember because his eyes were pearls from taking so many pills and his entire past was lost. I couldn’t look at him. If I told him what had happened, he would disappear, and I loved him even though he used to beat me for making too much noise and smiling at inopportune moments.

Eventually, he walked off to try his luck with somebody else.

A woman entered the bar whom I had slept with on and off for three months. I remembered one day when we went to the beach and sat by the water drinking port wine as the children laughed and played around us. I had felt good inside of myself at that time. I still could not believe that I had been with her. She had a face that smiled easily. Her laugh was little bells. It felt good to be around her when she laughed.

She approached me and said, “It’s nice to see you,” and I did not respond because her voice reminded me of her.

She walked off. I would never see her again. She would be with another man, and I would be left with no one to love me but myself.

To my right sat a man who was looking at his empty beer glass. He was angry at the glass because it reminded him of his empty life, and he ordered another beer to solve the problem.

I had four more whiskeys, three more beers, then I left.

I walked around aimlessly for a time, as one often does when nothing of importance can be found.

I came across a homeless man. He had a kind face. The world had taken a lot away from him, but it had not taken away his face. He had a big orange coat on that made him seem larger than he was.

He was crouched over on his haunches, looking at something. I went over to him and bent down as well.

“What are you looking at?” I asked.

He turned to me, there were tears in his eyes.

“It’s two raccoons. They lost their mother. They don’t know what to do. They’re starving.”

He pointed.

I looked where he had gestured. Two tiny pink bodies, their ribs showing tight under their skin, emaciated, soon to be corpses. They were walking around in tiny circles, whining softly, angrily, at the cruelty of this world.

“What should we do?” I asked.

“There is nothing we can do,” whispered the man.

And we waited there, watching, until one of them stopped moving. It just lay on its side breathing tiny breaths. The other one walked around it, ever so often nudging it gently with its nose. Then the breathing stopped. The other one lay down next to his dead sister, his small paws gripping her fur, then after a while he died too.

And it was nothing but two dead baby raccoons, in some alley, next to trash cans full of Chinese food.

The homeless man put his hands up to his head, covering his eyes with them so he wouldn’t have to see, and began to sob.

I stood there for a while, unsure of what to do, then I left.

I was walking home when I realized there were many things we could have done about the racoons. We could have fed them, or taken them to a shelter, or I could have taken them home and kept them as pets, feeding them bits of bread as they looked up at me with their large eyes. Instead, we did nothing.

Then I thought about the quarter of a fifth that I still had, resting in the front pocket of my jacket. I would drink the rest of it while lying in bed.

I had a nice view from there

a window just across from my bed

so I could look out at the street and watch the cars as they drove by

I forgot about the racoons

END