There was a party on the mountain. There was the promise of fire and friendship. That’s why I decided to go. That’s why I left my Northern home—way up there in the doom-metropolis where I rot, way the hell up there in Baltimore. I needed badly to feel warmth and to see human faces.
Most of all it was warmth that drew me out of the shadows. For weeks I had been desperately reaching around for the heat of another human body. I wanted to be held and told I was loved. It mattered not who held me, or who said they loved me. So long as they had two arms with which to wrap around me, and a heartbeat with which to confirm life, and warmth with which to share—that was enough for me. The party on the mountain couldn’t have come at a better time. There would be people there. I knew that much.
I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of a grocery store when I decided the mountain was where I needed to be. I got up. I walked into the store. I needed alcohol to loosen me up and make me hilarious. I needed help making me worthwhile.
I picked up an enormous box from the beer aisle. It was filled with apple cider intended to be consumed by adults. It was filled with four different flavors—one of them being seasonal. I was excited as hell. I was happy.
I walked over to the register and slammed the box down. I hadn’t even bothered to take off my sunglasses. The girl at the register couldn’t read my eyes, which were dark and circled in red—and full of misery. She asked for my driver’s license. I asked her how old she thought I was.
“Seventeen,” she said. “But then I can’t imagine how you thought you’d be able to buy this.” She pointed at the big colorful box on the conveyer belt.
I laughed. I pulled out my wallet and flipped it open. “My birthday is written in red, at the bottom.” She glanced at it and smiled.
“Twenty-three, huh?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “Unfortunately.”
“Well, twenty-three is nothing. And anyway you look much younger.”
“Yes,” I said. “That seems to be the case.”
I slid a plastic card through a little machine. It deducted fifteen dollars and eighty-six cents from my bank account.
“Thank you,” she said. It didn’t feel perfunctory. It felt real.
“I should say the same to you,” I said. “I’m going to need this stuff.” I picked up the box and walked away.
• • •
By the time the wheels of my car met with the road leading up to the mountain, the sun was fast retreating behind the trees that lined the horizon. Planet Earth was getting dark. The sky was slowly lit up dimly by little white pinholes which pierced the void overhead. My headlights cut through the blackness of the mountain roads; they illuminated trees and dirt paths and mailboxes and little else. I felt as though I were navigating through an endless screaming black hole, way up in space. I felt lost and weird. I couldn’t figure out why I was doing anything at all.
Yes, and when I finally found the address to the mountain gathering which had brought me so far from home, I was as much relieved as I was terrified: relieved to be somewhere—anywhere—terrified because I would have to be myself until my veins were tingling and engorged with alcohol.
I parked in a patch of darkness and stumbled dumbly along a dirt road which lead to the house. As I got close I heard laughter and the low rumbling of a man’s voice. What I did not hear was the crackling of fire. Nor did I see light of any kind. Suddenly I heard my name being called out from the darkness. I recognized the voice instantly. It belonged to Genevieve Wilson.
“Come over here,” she said. “It’s nice to finally see you again. We thought you’d disappeared.”
I made my grand reappearance by tripping up a flight of wooden stairs which lead to a canopied deck. The bottles in the box I was carrying clattered and bounced around but did not break. I readjusted myself and stood up straight. My eyes began to quickly adjust to the smoky darkness. I wanted to see the faces of friends, which were only partially visible through the gentle light pouring out from a sliding glass door.
I was offered a chair but declined. I put the box of cider on the ground and sat down on top of it. The box had two holes on either side for hands to carry the unwieldy thing, and it was from one of these holes that I pulled out the first bottle. The bottle was red and had a picture of a woodchuck on it. He was holding a little red apple in his little woodchuck hands. The bottle said “Amber.” One of the guests, a man named Billy, gave me his bottle opener. I cracked it open. I swilled down a third of the bottle in four seconds.
Genevieve introduced me to her boyfriend, who was named Andy. Andy was great. Andy quickly became my favorite person. We talked about opening a pencil factory together—it seemed like the thing to talk about after four ciders. Andy said we could use his new apartment as the company headquarters. I asked him if I could live in his walk-in closet, if he had one. He said, “Of course!” with such gusto that I sensed he was probably serious.
I got ballsy after that. It was the cider. I asked if maybe I could share the bed with him, and if we could move Genevieve to the walk-in closet. Genevieve was playfully indignant when I said that. “You two can have each other,” she said. Andy laughed. I laughed. Everyone who mattered laughed, too.
I reached across the wooden deck table and helped myself to watermelon and little roasted potatoes that were covered in basil and rosemary. They smelled delicious. I stared at the potatoes with big hollow eyes. I knew I was in for a toothsome meal.
“Who made these God damn perfect potatoes?” I said.
“I made those,” said a voice. That was Cameron—or Cam, as he told me to call him, but I refused.
“They look wonderful, Cameron,” I said.
“Thanks,” said Cameron. It was a cold and automatic reply.
Cameron dipped his head low and stared down at a pad of paper. He was drawing a basketball player with an enormous afro. He was avoiding having to talk to anyone he didn’t wish to talk to, which was everyone.
I offered Cameron a position at our ficticious-but-quickly-becoming-a-reality pencil factory. I told him he could sleep on the fold-out couch of our would-be office. I assured him that though I had known Andy for only an hour at that point, I was positive he was a man who would have a nice sleeper couch in his apartment. Cameron shrugged. He said that was okay with him, he guessed. He wouldn’t play along. He just sat glumly in a deck chair and worked on the basketball player he’d been drawing since I arrived.
“I know you, man,” I said, sipping down my fifth cider. “I know you, all right.”
It was true: I knew Cameron—knew him as, God help me, Cam. He was what some would call a townie. His hair was mussy and full of dirt and leaves. He wore a flannel shirt, of course, and slim jeans, and a pair of boat shoes without socks. He was something all right.
“Oh, yeah?” he said, not looking up. He sounded like he couldn’t be bothered to give half a shit about anything I could possibly say to him.
“Yeah,” I said. “You dated some girls I know. I’ve seen you around before.”
“Huh,” he said. “Well, I know all about you, too.” He didn’t offer any details. That made it ominous as hell.
“Oh, God,” I said. “I think I’m going to have a few more of these rosemary-basil potatoes, Cameron.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean—as long as you don’t mind. I don’t want to eat all of them.”
“Sure.” He didn’t look up once. He kept drawing. I gave up on trying to get Cameron to be nice to anyone.
• • •
I was seven ciders in and feeling slightly sick by the time I realized how late it was. I had become badly intoxicated, and was full of potatoes and watermelon. The mountain was now completely covered in a hateful non-color. There was no light anywhere. Our faces were visible only when a cigarette was lit. It was a bad place to be.
“Well!” announced Billy, whose bottle opener I had been relying on. “I’m getting out of here before it gets too late.” He turned toward me and pointed in the direction of where our cars were parked—way out there in the smear of darkness that was the mountain. “Did you see that car when you came in? The nice one?”
I had, so I said so: “Yes.”
“You know who paid for that shit?” he said. He pointed at his chest with his thumb. “Me. I paid for it. My fucking parents—God. I’ve done everything by myself, ever since they fucking disowned me. It’s been all me, baby—me.”
I had no idea why I was being told this. No one else seemed to know, either.
“Fuck it,” he said. “I’ll talk to you all later.” He flip-flopped down the stairs and vanished into a thicket of uncaring blackness.
• • •
Genevieve asked about my little sister. She wanted to know if she was still dating the idiot degenerate who had twice made her eye socket black and blue. I said she was. Genevieve contorted her face and said something under her breath. A voice called out from the black mountain. It was the owner of the house, and the celebrated creator of the gathering we were more or less enjoying. It was Vi.
Vi approached the table. Her chest was heaving. She was tired as hell. A gangly puppy came out from behind her legs. She was at an awkward teenage-dog phase. She looked dopey and adorable. “Violet,” said Vi. “Say ‘hello’ to Ryan.” The dog approached me. I let her sniff my hand. She raised her head and let me scratch her ears. We were friends after that.
“What’s this about your little sister being beaten?” said Vi.
“Oh—oh, it’s nothing. My sister is dating a human garbage bag. He’s hit her twice, and she’s lied about it both times.”
“I need her number,” she said with a sudden urgency. “I need her number right now.”
“I don’t think that will help anything—“
“No, I need it. I do things like this. I work with girls. Give me her number and I’ll take care of it.”
“Um,” I said. “Okay.” I gave her the number.
Vi stepped toward the table and took a swig out of an enormous bottle of vodka. It smelled vicious and sinful. She lit a candle in the center of the table. The light revealed the faces of bored party-goers.
She walked around everyone and sat down next to Cameron, who was still giving everyone the silent treatment. She filled half a tall shot glass from a small water cooler. Inside was a red-purple liquid. There were berries floating around the surface. She unscrewed the cap on the bottle of vodka she had been carrying and filled the remaining space in the shot glass. She downed it in one gulp. Her expression didn’t change.
Taking out another tall shot glass, she filled it with the same strange combination of fluids and handed it to me.
“God, no,” I said. I put my arms up to form an “X”. “No more.” My head was humming. I felt dehydrated and warped and lonely.
“Here,” she said. “I make this stuff myself.” She was referring to the part of the shot glass that wasn’t vodka. “Fresh-picked berries, you know—from the forest.”
“Um,” I said. “Just one.” I drank it down quickly. I made a face. I sneezed four times and apologized to everyone for my intolerance to grain alcohol.
“Oh,” said Vi.
• • •
It grew later still—and darker. I had been waiting all night for a big fire to appear; for there to be warmth and orange glowing faces gathered in a circle. But there was only cold and endless black corridors of trees. Nothing made sense, and everything was worthless, as far as I was concerned.
Genevieve and Andy stood up. They said it was time to leave. “We both work in the morning,” said Genevieve. I couldn’t fathom what that felt like—to have to work in the morning. I had nothing planned for the rest of my life. I could have gotten up and left, too, but I didn’t. I stayed put. I stayed on the mountain.
I hugged Genevieve. She towered over me. I felt like a stuffed animal in her long arms. It felt good to be held, especially by a person who really did love me. I had known her for just over a decade. That made it a special kind of hug; it was a hug shared by old friends.
Andy hugged me next. He opened his vast arms and picked me up like I weighed nothing at all. “You’re always welcome at our house,” he said. “You’re welcome whenever you want someplace to be, pal.” That that melted my insides into tar. It lit my brain up like a Christmas tree. I trembled and nearly wept with joy; but I didn’t. I laughed instead. It was a nervous laugh.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you, thank you. I will come over. I will.”
They too disappeared from the deck. I heard their car start. Yellow beams pointed in the direction of the bottom of the mountain, and their car vanished roared off. The sound continued for several minutes. They were looping down the windy roads.
I found myself suddenly alone. I wasn’t particularly wanted anymore, either.
“Oh, um,” said Vi. “You can stay, I mean, uh, if you’d like to. There are couches and beds and floors . . .”
Floors.
“Yes,” I said. “I don’t think I have a choice. I can barely navigate this mountain in the light of day.” I was drunk as hell. I was giddy. I ate some more potatoes and said awkward sentences. No one laughed or acknowledged them. After a while I stopped doing or saying anything at all. It was just as well, I thought.
Vi and Cameron talked to one another. They didn’t talk to me. I felt I was listening in on a private conversation. I felt like a ghost. I sat on my box of cider and waited for something to happen.
At some point, finally, a breakthrough:
“Let’s go to my parents’ room,” said Vi. “There’s a television up there.”
• • •
I followed two shadows through the dim sunken house. There were lights on behind closed doors in the upstairs hallway. Everything was spooky and hidden from sight. We made our way up to the master bedroom where a king-sized bed lay smack in the middle of the room. It was covered in clothes and old newspapers. On the opposite side of the room was an easy chair and a footstool. I immediately knew where I was going to spend the next two hours.
Vi pulled out a long glass tube and inhaled the dying embers of a plant which turns people stupid. She then excused herself from the room and disappeared into an unlit part of the house to do God only knows what. Cameron sat on a bench at the end of the bed and played around with some sort of wooden stick. He curled both of his index fingers into his thumbs, creating two circles, and placed the wooden stick inside. He moved his arms up and down, up and down. The wooden stick spun between his index fingers. His eyes were closed. He was inside his mind—inside a trance.
“What is that?” I said. “The stick.”
Cameron kept rolling the stick around, moving his arms in the same robotic motion. When he felt like acknowledging me, he did. It took several minutes.
“It’s from the back of a chair,” he said, his eyes now pointed upward at the ceiling. He couldn’t have been less interested in communicating with me. It was then I noticed he had placed a woolen cap on his head at some point without my knowing. At last this outfit was complete. It somehow made him exponentially more boring—and fake.
“The back of a chair, huh?”
“Yup,” he said.
Vi returned and sat on the bed. She turned the television on. She flipped to a random channel. It was a show about police detectives whose job it was to ask a lot of questions. I returned to the easy chair and stared at the wall.
Cameron moved to the bed. He too inhaled fumes out of a long glass tube. Suddenly everyone in the room found themselves to be stupid in one way or another.
An hour passed uneventfully. I stood up and walked into the bathroom. It was a nice bathroom, all covered in an earthy brown tile. I stepped into the enormous walk-in shower and wondered what it would be like to bath there every day. I heard murmuring coming from the other room. I wanted to vanish but couldn’t. I took off my shoes and lay on the cold floor. I closed my eyes. I fell asleep.
My dreams were abstract and weird, were simple colorful shapes drifting about before a black background. There were some shapes floating freely, and other shapes of neon flowing in and out of one another. Some of the shapes were simply outlines. Everything was vibrant and rainbow-colored. I woke up. I opened my eyes and put my shoes back on.
When I reentered the bedroom, Vi and Cameron were sitting near each other. The room was flooded with an eerie blue light emitted by the television. The corners of the room were dark and smeary. The faces of the humans I was with were unseeable. I wanted badly to leave.
“Would you like to sit with us?” said Vi.
“Yeah,” said Cameron.
“No,” I said. “I’m fine right here.” I again sat down in the easy chair. “In fact I think I’ll go to bed.”
“You can sleep here if you like,” said Vi. She meant the bed.
“Oh, that’s okay. Can you take me someplace else in the house? I need to lie down. I’m feeling ill, actually.”
I felt like I was about to erupt. I wanted to lie down and sleep for years. Vi and Cameron were persistent—as much as they could be, anyway. For Vi that meant coughing up smoke and assuring me that it was okay if I wished to sleep in the master bedroom. For Cameron that meant twiddling a piece of wood in between his fingers.
“You really can stay here if you’d like,” said Vi.
“Can I stay in the bedroom next to this one?” I said. “That way I’m still close!”
“Oh, um, okay,” she said. She got up and lead me out of the bedroom we were in and straight into another one. It was a tenth of the size of the one we’d occupied seconds prior. It was painted brown and full of books and toys and tools. It looked like a treehouse.
“You can sleep here,” she said. “This is my bed. This is where I usually sleep.” The bed was covered with junk of every kind. She swept it off and pointed toward the pillow. “There you go.”
I groaned. I was deflated and yet full. I felt sad that I had no place else to go. This was it.
I lay down on the bed and removed my shoes without using my hands. Vi approached the side of the bed and tucked me in like a child.
“Oh, and here,” she said, reaching up to a wall-mounted shelf which contained, among a lot of weird crap, a few stuffed animals. She plucked a little penguin from the grasp of a stuffed bear. The bear didn’t show any change in emotion, but surely felt the pangs of loneliness immediately.
She placed the penguin in the corner of my arm. It was the size of a baseball.
Vi stood up and walked towards the door. “Um,” she said. “Um, okay, yes, good-night.” She turned out the light and pulled the door halfway shut. The room was bathed lightly in the same ghostly glow of the television. It was pouring out into the hallway and into the room where I lay. It made me feel nauseous and creepy.
I soon fell into a stark dreamless coma. It was black and devoid of sound. It was the sleep of the dead.
• • •
I was pulled back into the world fifteen minutes after I’d left it. It was my phone that resuscitated me. The voice on the other end was as familiar to me as the voice of my mother. It was good old Ryan Butler.
“Ryan, I’m sick—I don’t know if I can move,” I said.
“I can come get you,” he said. “I don’t mind.”
“Okay,” I said, “but only if you really want to.”
“Sure, sure.” He hung up. I turned my phone off.
I lay my drowsy head back down on a pillow which inexplicably smelled like cedar chips. I then realized that everything in that room smelled like God damn cedar chips.
I went quickly back to death.
• • •
I was awoken again by the gruff roar of an engine. The mountain had been eerily silent otherwise. A sound of any kind meant change. This change involved Ryan Butler.
My head was still full of lead balls, but I raised it high enough to allow my ears to work. From an open window they heard voices down below. The voices could be distinguished and understood. I heard Ryan Butler, God bless him, and my heart fluttered to think that he had driven all the way up the mountain to rescue me from my tormentors. He and Vi were talking about things no one on Earth would find interesting. I heard my name a few times. He laughed nervously. I could tell he wanted to leave. I drifted in and out of consciousness.
Soon I was shaken from darkness by the flick of a light switch. Ryan stood in the doorway and signaled that he wished to leave. He was flustered. He said he’d almost died coming up the mountain, and that it took him an hour and a half to find the house.
“Leave,” I said. “Go on without me. I’m hopeless. I’m sick—I can’t move. I can’t move.”
“Really?” he said. “I drove all the way up here.”
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. If I stand up, I’ll throw up.”
“Okay,” he said, annoyed. “Well, good-bye.” He flipped off the light and pulled the door halfway shut.
Little sparks of electricity fired and popped behind my dreary eyes. I collapsed into a fever dream. I went the hell back to sleep.
• • •
The fourth time I was awoken was different from all the others. It was the worst of them all, too.
It was the sound of screaming human voices that jolted me from the dark recesses of my mind. Suddenly I was back in the junk-filled room that smelled like cedar chips. I opened my eyes. Everything was bleary and horrible. And then the screams came ringing out again. They were pleasured screams, for the humans emitting them were in ecstasy. It was a chorus of carnal repulsion reserved for the second circle of Hell.
I sat up in bed. My internal organs pleaded desperately to evacuate my body. Suddenly a torrential blast of vomit came pouring out of every hole in my face. I threw up clear liquid for somewhere between two and four minutes—threw up until my stomach was completely empty. And then the smell hit me: rosemary and basil—and potatoes and apple cider. No watermelon, thank God. The watermelon had been reduced to lubricant.
In the other room two human beings continued to fuck stupidly and loudly. “This was a good idea,” said the female creature. “Sleeping with you was an amazing idea.” The male creature didn’t offer any comment. The melancholy storm continued on unabated.
I jumped up out of bed and immediately collapsed to the floor. Thankfully it was noiseless. I crawled over to the door, still covered in my own fluids, and, bringing myself to my hands and knees, crept out into the hallway. I had no idea where I was or what I was experiencing.
The hallway was lit up ominously by blue-white light. I stood up and approached the master bedroom. Those assholes had left their door open. I squinted at the television, which had appropriately transmuted into fuzz and static. A horrible noise was coming from the speakers. It was hateful and grating. I then became fully aware that two people were having sex right in front of me.
I tripped backwards and fell to the floor. I crab-walked back into the smaller bedroom in reverse. My face was fixed with a frenzied expression which combined horror and disgust.
Back inside the womb of safety, I carefully closed the door. The static and blue-white light were shut out instantly. The room became terrifyingly dark.
The screams and bizarre conversation became muffled but were still audible. I stood up and placed my back against the wall. My heart rattled furiously against my ribcage.
“We can switch, um, if you’d like,” said the higher voice. “Um, oh. Oh!”
Another wave of nausea hit me. I again threw up all over myself. I was immediately sober. I also smelled like a God damn roasted potato. I flipped on the light.
I stumbled toward the bed and examined the damage my sadness had caused. Everything—the pillowcase, the sheets, the little penguin—was covered in a sad empty liquid. I jerked the fitted sheet off the bed, threw the pillowcase inside of it, and balled it up tight. I tied the corners of the sheet to keep everything inside. It smelled like a landfill on a rainy day.
I took a crumpled towel from the floor and cleaned off the little penguin who had given me comfort in an uncomfortable world. I placed the him back on the shelf, back into the arms of the teddy bear who missed him.
Once satisfied with my cleanup job, I slipped on my shoes and tiptoed toward the door. I flipped off the light. I stood by the door, resolving to dash out as soon as the moaning ceased. The two of them wormed around sloppily and mindlessly for another fifteen minutes. It was cruel agony. I had no choice but to stand like a martyr-sentry and hear Satan’s symphony play on. All I could think of was this: for God’s sake, why hadn’t they shut the door?
• • •
“Would it be all right if I held you?” said the higher voice.
“Ung, yeah,” said the lower voice—the boring one.
“Um, o-okay. Um, good-night.”
“Yeah.”
• • •
With the balled up sheets in my hand, I jerked the door open with terrifying velocity. I nearly ripped it off the hinges. I stomped out into the hallway and proceeded to fall down the stairs, my arms clattering against the bars of the staircase. I rolled down eight stairs and felt no pain. I was immediately back on my feet, clomping around in untied shoes, seeing with my hands where my eyes could not. I made my way over to where I assumed a washing machine would be. The room was solid black, but there were tiny green lights flickering on the washer and dryer. I opened the hatch, which made an unpleasant mechanical scraping noise. I untied the bundle and threw it in with the same motion I would use as though I were chucking it into the fiery chasms of Hell. I dumped a liter of translucent blue detergent on top of the foul-smelling bundle and slammed the door shut. I pushed some buttons. I hoped for the best.
The machine grumbled and hummed and whirred. It roared and clicked. Finally it began doing what I had hoped it would do all along, which was to clean vomit out of someone else’s sheets.
I opened the side door connected to the laundry room and kicked the screen door open. I slammed both shut with great aplomb. It was my weak and petty way of saying, “Fuck you.”
• • •
It was blacker than sin outside. I felt as though I’d been stranded on the dark side of the moon. I ran fearlessly into the abyss and was swallowed whole. I also tripped and began rolling down the mountainside, which was covered in dead leaves and spiny branches reaching upward. I rolled and rolled. I was afraid I’d never stop.
I grasped the loose terrain with feeble hands and dug my feet into the dirt. Finally my body turned from a hapless human log to an inert bag of blood and guts who wished desperately to be anywhere else. I gritted my teeth and said a variety of swear words. So much for warmth and friendship, I thought. So much for this God damn mountain.
Finally I reached my car, which was parked precariously on the edge of nothingness. I hugged it. I really did. I hugged that car until my arms began to droop from exhaustion. I got inside and kissed the steering wheel. I put the key inside the ignition to bring it to life. We were happy to be reunited.
With my headlights on, I sped down the winding roads toward anything—anything at all that didn’t remotely resemble the nightmare I had expelled myself from. The visions in my head were giving me grief. They were centered solely on the very near past. I felt like throwing up again.
My car pulled me from the aching blackness of the mountain and thrust me into a night filled with starry skies. The moon’s light shone down lovingly, guiding my path from one edge of oblivion to another. I was never happier to see that pale white rock.
I turned on the stereo and listened the same song I’d been listening to for weeks, and exclusively at night, which was “Take It In” by Wye Oak. It calmed me as much as I could be calmed. The car sped on. I felt like a passenger. I felt like I was being taken somewhere. I was ineffective and motionless and numb.
“Don’t worry,” said my car. I was hallucinating. “We’re going to real warmth and friendship.”
We were well on our way to the house of Ryan Butler.
• • •
My car rolled into the driveway and dropped me off near the garage. Its engine became silent. It shut off its headlights and went to sleep.
“Good-bye,” I said.
I walked around the house, opened a gate leading to the back yard, and stopped once I’d shut it behind me. The moon was casting an ethereal glow on the treetops for miles in every direction. There was a ring of ice surrounding it. I glanced over at the pool, which was erupting with midnight fog and illuminated by the white light from overhead. It was just about the prettiest thing I’d ever seen in my life.
I approached the basement door, which was made of glass, and which lead to Ryan’s room. I peered inside between cupped hands. The room was dark and sleepy. I knocked gently. Ryan appeared several seconds later. He opened the door. “Yeah?”
“I need a place to sleep.”
“Come in, come in.”
I sat on the couch and took my shoes off. I fluffed a pillow and lay my head down gently. Ryan walked back over to his bed and sat down. “I didn’t really care for either of them,” he said.
“No, Ryan,” I said. “I didn’t really like them either.”