Chapter Two – Part 1
Chuck Wilson felt like shit. He was drunk, damp, and clutching a paper bag containing a forty‑ounce bottle of Colt 45 whose origins were lost in the fog of his memory. Worst of all, his head was throbbing again and the beer was barely able to keep the pain at bay.
He'd been wandering the empty streets of Euclid Heights since he'd left that geek, David Greenbaum's party. David-fucking-Greenbaum. The guy was a high-pitched squealing twip who wouldn't be worth the effort to grind into the pavement.
If it wasn't for the fact he was Allison Boyle's boyfriend.
"What a match."
Chuck shook his head, and the gesture ignited the pain behind his temples. He raised the bottle to his lips and found it empty.
"Fuck!"
He threw the bottle, paper bag and all, at a stop sign. The bottle shattered. Foamy glass flew everywhere, one splinter biting his cheek.
Belatedly, as the sign's gong echoed into the darkness, he looked around for cops. Fortunately, now that the bars were closed, the streets were vacant. No witnesses except for an idling van far down the street from him.
He exhaled in relief and wiped his cheek. His fingers came away beaded with blood.
No cops was good. A tangle with the Euclid Heights Gestapo was something he didn't need. He already had one DUI this year, and had managed to get his car impounded and his license suspended. The cops in this town were really into harassing him.
Now that he was eighteen, once one of the local Nazis got a hold of him he'd be in serious trouble.
"Ah, never happen."
He took a step and bumped into the stop sign.
"Boy am I fucked up," he said to no one in particular.
He staggered back, holding on to the pole. A sliver of glass ground into his middle finger.
"Shit."
He stepped back onto the sidewalk, sucking the wound.
As he stumbled down the darkened street he wondered when, exactly, his life started going to shit. It was a drunk question and it didn't really have an answer. Life and shit had been equivalent terms for as long as he could remember. . .
The headaches and what they brought had only confirmed Chuck's opinion of the universe.
In fact, if there was a God, the only break He'd given Chuck was a girl named Allison Boyle. And, like usual, that had gone balls-up with everything else. He knew four girls who'd go down on him if he just said the word— or at least bought enough beer— and the one turned out to be some uptight ice-bitch.
Chuck thought about the cooler upending and it was almost funny.
Why her?
Chuck stumbled out into the middle of the empty street and yelled at the sky, "Why her, you bastard! Haven't you fucked enough with my head?" His words drifted skyward on a wisp of fog. Above him, a single stoplight flashed on and off, rocking gently on the wind.
I'm asking to get busted, ain't I?
Chuck looked around for cops again. All he saw was empty houses and empty streets. No cars were left on the curb. Euclid Heights ticketed them after three in the morning.
As he glanced around, one of the streetlights fractured into concentric rainbows. He felt a spike drive into his forebrain-
«breathing, heavy rapid breathing.»
Chuck grabbed his temples to try and force the thoughts back.
«warmth. sheets damp with sweat and fresh semen.»
"I don't want to know," he whispered.
«gut hanging over milk-white thighs. slack penis in a bony hand. sense of exhaustion. magazine slipping from left hand.»
Chuck wanted to throw up.
The beer was a refuge, but sometimes it played traitor, making it hard to push such alien thoughts back. Even as he managed to push the other mind out of his own, he knew where it came from. It was a lit window, shades drawn, across the street from him.
Before he'd gathered the pieces of his brain back together, a pickup, the back filled with kids, blared its horn and swerved around him, barely slowing. Chuck jumped back as someone tossed an empty can at him.
He gave the finger to its shrinking taillights. "Shit-eating fuckheads!"
Chuck wanted to gut one of the motherfuckers. Cut one of those fuckheads bad—
He realized that the middle-aged jerk-off was out of his head. Chuck breathed a sigh of relief. That had been a bad one. So bad that it left a sour taste in his mouth. He found himself rubbing his hands on his pants, as if he could wipe away the memory of. . .
"Ignore it," he mumbled. "Forget it. Go home. Sleep it off."
Chuck stumbled off, down the street. He had long ago figured he had gone a little nuts. Voices in your head; that was a sure sign you were psycho. The voices had been in Chuck's skull ever since he was thirteen— nasty, ugly, voices.
Worse than the voices was the fact that Chuck had to believe them. They were always right. And anyone who thought he could see into someone else's melon was a candidate for the nut factory. He'd been trying to shut out the images for years now, and the effort was turning him into a drunk and a half-assed junkie.
In all the time since other minds had began forcing their way into his own, he had found only one reliable way to shut them out. Somehow, for some reason, when he hung around Allison Boyle, the voices shut up.
And she had to be a stuck-up bitch—
Well, she wasn't going to be rid of him that easily.
Chuck staggered home. He was too drunk to notice the van following him.
