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

Happy Hour

I had gone there yesterday and the day before.

“It’s not a good time, I’m just too tired,” the woman had said.

It was never a good time. The dumpster sat there, mostly empty. It was a large dumpster. It was too large. It would get taken away on Monday. It would get taken away and all that trash would remain, in her house, on her front porch, and her son would never come to take his things.

I knocked on her door and waited. It was 2:30, and overcast, and all the trees were dead.

She opened the door.

The inside of the house smelled like rotten food. The stove was broken and pulled out. All the food was going in the fridge. The seal was cracked, and the warmth was seeping in, and the whole thing would have to be thrown away.

She had large bags under her eyes. Her hair was thinning and gray. It was pulled back in a tight bun. The way she talked, the way she moved her lips, I could tell she wasn’t happy with how things had turned out.

“You can’t come in right now. I have people over. They’re old friends from out of town. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to throw my things in that dumpster,” she said.

She was the only one in the house.

“Fine, that’s fine. But is there something I can do while I’m here?” I asked.

“My son left all his things on my front porch. He doesn’t have a car. He used to be a construction worker. He doesn’t live here anymore, but all his things are still here. He’s doing well now. He’s thirty-five and lives alone. He’s never gotten married. I don’t have any grandchildren. It would be so nice to have some grandchildren, but he’s never gotten married,” she said.

“Sure, sure, but is there anything I can do to help?” I asked.

“You can put all of his things in garbage bags, so that it's easy for him to pick them up.”

“Alright,” I said.

The porch was filled with his things, they were in bags, and boxes, strewn about without order.

There were waterlogged shirts, Jackets, pants, unending forgotten clothing. Old boots caked in mud. Pictures of his father. DVDs of pornography. There was a note written on a yellow sticky pad dated 2007. The note was from an ex-girlfriend. She had stuck it on his windshield. She was sorry. She loved him, but she couldn’t do it any longer. It was too painful to tell him in person. There was a court summons envelope, unopened. There was a large stack of childhood drawings. A tree. A house with wisps of smoke billowing from flat chimneys. Stick figure people holding hands. 

There was a small box containing needles with a little black heroine still inside. A bit of tinfoil with burnt powder. A plastic spoon. A lighter. An Empty jewelry bag.

I thought about throwing away the box containing the remnants of black heroine, but I did not. I was trying to be more empathetic.

If I were him, and I arrived at my mother’s house, after suddenly remembering that I had left a few used needles that may still contain the remnants of black heroine, only to get there and find that the possible residual heroin had been transported to some unknown landfill, far away from anything I understood, to be picked at by plastic birds, I wouldn't be happy at all.

I did not wish to cause him sorrow.

I wanted to be a good person.

So, I placed the pornography, and the dashboard note, and the box containing the residual bits of black heroin, and all of those old molding clothes, inside the black garbage bags, and knocked on the front door.

Have I ever told you about the dreams I used to have? They were empty landscapes, buildings falling in on themselves, everything turning to dust or sand. Without trees, without plants, without wind. Nothing had ever lived in those dreams. No one had built those decaying structures. I had those dreams every night. I would drink before bed to stop the dreams, and when that didn’t work, I would drink in the mornings as well. I don’t drink in the mornings any longer, unless things really stop making sense, and I drink very slowly then, and only beer, but if I do drink liquor on those mornings when things stop making sense, I mix it with coffee, so my senses won’t be dulled, and I’ll be able to function as people expect.

When the woman opened the door and stepped onto the porch, she had aged ten years. But maybe it was only the sun that had escaped from the clouds whose light accentuated the wrinkles and lines running across her face, which acted as a map revealing her past.

“I’m finished,” I told her.

“What happened to the other half of you?” she asked in response.

I wasn’t sure what she meant until I looked down at myself. I had only one arm, one leg, and when I reached with my single hand to touch my right eye, it was not there either.

The right side of my body was gone.

It must have left while I had been sorting all these items which her son would never come to pick up.

It must have gotten bored while I was working and walked away, or more likely, simply became tired of me in a general sense and decided to leave.

I wasn’t happy about this

The bar next to my apartment had happy hour until five pm

The beers were two fifty during happy hour

After they were six

I thought about searching for the other half of my body

I wouldn’t make it in time

END