4

  BRAD

  “Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven!” The four guys holding me up got to the end of the thirty second challenge. Here I was literally head over heels for the giant keg of bud light that someone was able to get their hands on, and somehow get it here without being pulled over or busted.

  “Three! Two! One!” They cheered as I let go of the spicket and they flipped me back over.

  “Fuck yeah!” I was still riding high off Cody and mines win the other week. The four guys holding me upside down, teammates, brothers in battle. Thought that expression would come to carry new meaning for the four of us.

  God damn did I love booze in my youth. I asked Cody and Susie to omit my problem with alcohol from their renditions of our time in that world. While my problem will always be a shame I carry, I can tell you that these days I’m a twelve stepper and proud of it. Actually, got my 3-year chip a few weeks before I sat down to write this. I’ve written for a while, not about this. Just a few short stories, a few novellas, things I would never show to anyone and things that wouldn’t sell even if I did. It’s a therapeutic exercise, writing I mean, you jumble all your thoughts together and you can filter your feelings through a medium as harmless and random as fiction. I don’t know how good I’ll be at writing a memoir, it’s a different animal then just vomiting out every random idea that comes to you and trying to make it work like you do when you’re writing fiction. The big problem with a memoir is that this must be true, and I’m going to be true, for my best friend Cody, and for another friend, Christian. Cody wanted some kind of record of this to exist. Even if this sits on some computer zip-drive never to be read by anyone like so much of what I’ve written has been relegated too, Cody told us it could be healthy to get all our ideas down in one place. If this was ever published, we agreed we would sell it as fiction. No one can know that what happened to us was true, we knew that from day one, we knew we couldn’t tell anyone. If in addition to what we did they also had to deal with an entire government body invading it, I don’t want to think of what those people would be subjected to.

  Christian would eventually start tutoring us in every subject, I shared a Civic’s class with him and, after a few visits and discussions about how we should handle the existence of the other world, Christian went into a rant about how every time throughout history when a more advanced society comes in contact with a, let’s go ahead and call it indigenous society, it always ends in death and chaos. It’s happened before, it would happen again, a man with my racial background can understand Christian’s concerns about what a conquering force can do to a so-called, less advanced, people.

  I, of course, wasn’t thinking about any of this then, all I was thinking about was beer, booze, and the fastest way to get it into my body and have a good time. I can see Christian’s weaknesses in myself. When I started the program, I was told about the warning signs, but as I was told them I realized that we probably should have seen them all developing in Christian. As an alcoholic I have a better understanding then some people how enticing the chance to escape from this world is. To be honest, I had even less of an excuse then Christian did to want to escape to some fantasy world. If he didn’t find his own kind of drunk, I’d be worried he probably would have found another.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Enough about the perils of addiction and accepting a higher power. Cody doesn’t want us to preach to people with this, he wants us to try and give our viewpoints on Christian. I thought he would want an unbiased account, but then I remembered he’s asking three different people to provide viewpoints on the same sequence of events. If that’s not going to give you a biased account, I don’t know what will. Maybe this writing is as therapeutic to Cody as my own personal writings are to me. We could all use some therapy after what we saw. I’ve decided to approach this project with an open mind, try and wrangle some kind of meaning out of what we went through. But I’m not a writer, I just write, I do apologize if the few tricks I’ve picked up after years of journaling give you some kind of false impression of the person I used to be. The years and the sobriety have matured me in a way, back then I was just a man with a problem, a small problem during the time where most of this story takes place, but still a man with a problem. But this isn’t a story about my own personal demons, this is a story about Christian’s demons, or demon to narrow this down. We’re writing a story about a man who had nothing, and then he got a problem, and then he thought he solved that problem.

  I wonder where he is sometimes, I mean, I know where he is, but I wonder where he is as a person if you can understand what I mean. Did he find what he was looking for? Did he find his meaning, did he find whatever it is a man who’s lost everything already can hope to find again? I hope he did. Susie would crucify me if I wished that man well, but I do. He was a good friend for a time, for a wild, adventurous, and in all but a few respects, a fun time. I’m typing my section on my old underwood typewriter. It used to belong to my mother, she was a secretary growing up and herself wrote a few short stories, even published some in the eighties, she confided that in me when I told her I found therapy in the written word.

  So here I am pumping away my word count to try to bring something serviceable for whatever it is Cody’s goals are. I would like to think they’re noble, defending a man no one knows needs to be defended. Even then, there’s the puzzle of Susie contributing her own chapters, Susie came to hate Christian. I’ve never seen a woman who thought a man was so vile. It wasn’t that bad, I mean, it was bad, kind of fucked up forgive my language. It wasn’t that bad, not as bad as Susie thought, yet not as worthy of forgiveness as Cody thinks. A little worthy, but Christian wasn’t a saint, and he didn’t pretend to be. I think that, in of itself, is enough reason to understand what he did, as Christian told us on that fateful day he came back from the other world for the last time. Don’t condone or condemn me, just understand. I understood. I always felt like I was that middle road between the opinions of Cody and Susie. Cody condoned, tried to convince us that everything could work out in the end. Susie, however, she condemned him, I’ll never forget how red her face was when that poor girl was asked to take a step aside as Susie just laid into Christian like he was a man who made every wrong decision a man could possibly make.

  I think my penchant for writing has extended this, the first of my chapters in this story, I don’t want to take up too much of your time, you reader, the one judge Christian may ever have that can have total ambiguity to this situation. Cody condones, Susie Condemns, and it falls on me to be the one that just, understands.