reject from creative writing at university...

[Axanderdeath]

The day Sam went mad

I was driving in to town. I had been driving around just checking out the country. The country was starting to look just like the rest of the world, like a gas station. Any way I saw Sam on the side of the high way and picked him up. He was not hitchhiking. People just picked Sam up when they saw him, a man in his mid 20’s. He really looked ragged today.
“Sam what happened?” There were cuts all over his body and a couple on his face, I noted in my personal log, were gushing. The gushing was not good in my clean car. I gave Sam a Kleenex.
“Thanks Dave. Oh shit I am sorry your car. But man! I was having a good hike this time.” Sam had grown up with me. He was one of the popular kids. Well, up until his girl friend at 16 died one night when they were out at the lake, a short drive out of town.
“I would like to go out with you some day.” I said not thinking. But Sam was over joyed. Me? I was too nice then to say I was making a kind of conversation I always use to do.

At home that night I started to think of high school days. I was a stranger to Sam, but we always acknowledged each other in the hallways and at parties. I was, with long and black hair over my eyes, excepted by the others. I started to bang up heroine in the 11th grade and ran of across the country and came back a mess, by that time Sam had already checked out himself.

I came back shivering in my folk’s house. Screaming for the drugs. The drugs that my parents blamed for my uselessness and hate. a hate I see in pictures from those days, a hate that has made me bitter and soulless, in my more matured years, which I would say are now. I remember, and I hate to remember it, hitting my father in the face saying, “I wish he were dead.” That is the big difference between my shit and Sam’s, mine is self-inflicting, and I have no excuse.

Sam had driven out to the lake with Trish his girl friend. It was dusk, a nice purple night (this affect was added by Bill the bar tender, who told the story at the bars since the town is growing so fast and really had no interesting stories) You could hear a slight rustle of wind in the trees. They were throwing, or rather, Sam was throwing rocks while Trish watched in her smart way. Trish was a straight A student, but some how managed to go off and be crazy. They were drinking. Trish went swimming, and Sam continued throwing rocks, then passed out. Trish never came out of the lake. Although there was no proof that it was one of Sam’s rocks that killed poor Trish, he never forgave him self.
XXX XXX XXX
The morning of July, yesterday Sam knocks on my door. Hello. Hello. I said I would drive us out. He had a case of beer. On the way I bought two more. He wanted to go to lake.
“ Why would you want to go there Sam? I know what that place means to you.” This was the wrong way to say it. Of course I had no Idea.
“ You know do you? Look it is a nice day, and there is a party out there. I know that you have not really been having such a great time since you got back. If you were referring to Trish, well that is completely over with me now, and to be frank, you have no idea!”
“Your right. But I heard that you have not been doing so well, to tell you the truth. Do you have a job Sam?”
“No”
“ I can help with that, I have a concrete company, with the growing….” Sam put up his hand.
“Just drive to the lake.” I did.

We came to a clearing by the lake, there were a lot of people around; it was the “party” Sam was talking about. The man from the clinic was their smoking a bat that was going around in circles. What clinic, it had slipped my mind, had I been in a clinic lately. I did not think so.
“ How are you doing Dave?” He said to me.
“I am fine, how are you Sam.” I was concerned for him, coming back to a place that hurt him so much. He got in to the beer quick, quicker than I did. We sat on the grass. The Clinic man was bugging me with his questions. Apparently he thought we were some kind of unrelated brothers.
“ Man you know, experience, man.” The clinic man said as if that was some kind of divine statement that should have been understood. I had plenty of experience.

I remember getting back home; it had been at least two years. Mom and Dad grudgingly excepted me into their home. I remember thinking that their bathroom was the very thing that made me feel like a prick. Using the washroom for me was never comfortable out on my own, and here back home it was almost so comfortable I felt so happy and so comfortable that felt like a demon. A demon, shiting in their lovely, loving home. Friends came around, but it was clear that I had gone to far away from them, the eyes looked wet and concerned all the time.
XXX XXX XXX
I woke up, and the clinic guy was past out next to me. It was dusk and the party was still going on. I saw that Stephanie was talking to some other guy. I had been trying to pick her up earlier, and was to be completely honest, it was working a bit, and this fuck was moving in on my territory. I said nothing and moped. In my mopping I noticed that Sam was not around.
“Where is Sam?”
I asked and it echoed around the party. Where was Sam? “ He the guy who killed his girl friend here” some fuck said, and I walked up to him.
“What’s your problem man?”
I said standing over him (I am 6’3 feet tall). He knew who I was and I him.
“Fuck off Dave, no heroine here” This enraged me. What kind of fuck? I swung at him. A quick fuck he was and ducked and got me in the belly. Now I was not one for fighting but I knew enough to know that the one who throws the first punch is defenatly at the disatvantege.

In some town of far off memory I remembered looking across some street that I now forget the name of, and is not important. There was this guy there, just minding his own business, and I walked over and just smacked him in the face. My so called friend at the time, the people I was getting high with at the time, and they liked me because I was trained and could support my habit and theirs, said:
-Why did you hit him-He was out cold.

He was out and maybe this is why I thought this aproch would work at this time.

I was rolled over, and when I came too in the bright lights, desperately needing to a take piss, I cried. I just let it out like a girl, sobbing, with moments I thought the sneeze-crying spasm would come and did not. The nurse came, I asked her how I came in, what happened? She told me I came in yelling and swearing at everyone, but said it understandingly. I took from this and her black eye that she was use to drunks. She must have seen my piss boner because she then got standoffish. I broke the okward silence with:
“Is there a washroom I can use?”
“Yes Mr. Toll down the hall and follow the red red line, to the blue, 60 passes and the down the reddish brown, and the first right.” I took from that that they the hospital took my wallet.
XXX XXX XXX
After the hospital, after some hopeless inquirers about Sam I walked down to the poor part of town where all the whores were. I bought me one, and asked her to talk it over with me.
“You get the same time as the rest of them” I was determined to get her to give me the time she gave the old and very drunk. Sally a girl, probably about my age, with sores and crack pipe burns on her face was more than she seemed.
“I have this friend, and he is real depressed. Have you ever been depressed?” I asked her and she smiled. It was a real fake smile; it was probably the first time any one actually asked her something like that. Not like her pimp that probably told her he loved her and then beat her.
“Well that is a strange question. What do you want me to call you mom or something big daddy?” This girl was destitute, and was not the girl to talk to so I left. then I was worried about Sam, but I was also a drunk, and X-junky. Then it hit me! My car, where the fuck was it! I had to lay some Concrete shit for the school that Sam and me had went to in the morning. I sat down. I thought, it must be at the lake, so I caught a cab out there, I walked the long path, the sun was coming up. Sam was walking towards me.
“Sam! You’re not… How are you doing?”
“Dave buy me a beer.” Sam said in a low drunk voice, he was not him self.
“Yes yes Sam, you see my car?” And then I saw it, right where now remember parking it. There was a note on the widow, an apology from someone that drank it all all night. I got in and Sam next to me. We drove back in to town, a short drive. I pulled in to Mcdonald's because there was a payphone there. I got out and Sam stayed in the car. He took out of his pocket a small knife, and made like he was going to kill him self. I opened the door tiredly and said:
“Sam you will have to do better than that!?”
“HA! What you think I was doing?”
“Nothing Sam, come get some breakfast.”
“More booze, Dave, you said.”
“Yha, why do you think we are at a place like Mcdonald's.”

It is hard to judge, for me at least, when a person snaps. The worse part is you may think the start is half way down the spiral. Sam is still a drunk, and I am to to be serious, and drinking with Sam the day I lost my car just proved it. I lost my job, gone freaked out, and live on beans now….





A story by:
Geoffrey Alexander Parsons