“Thomas Madison,” Chris interrupted sharply, voice as hard and bitter as the alcohol loosening his tongue. He lurched upward from his seat in a chorus of gasps, the shoulders of his black suit growing stiff and compact. He brandished a finger at the lachrymose man behind the podium.
“Was a liar! A liar and a thief!”  He passionately declared, disoriented forest green eyes narrowing into two gleaming shards of hate as he slurred out the last word.
Something shattered in the background as a heavy woman pressed the back of her black gloved hand against her pasty forehead and fell down with a fluttering moan, the two men on either side of her immediately rushing to aid. Plastic chairs began to squeak back as more people bolted to their feet, incredulous murmurs, alarmed gasps, and harsh, under the breath curses filling what had seconds ago been a grave silence.  The security guards made an appearance in the back row, walkie-talkies in hand, sun glassed eyes scoping.
Chris would not be silenced.
“That man stole my shrimp!” Chris added harshly as a way of explanation. He swerved around to face the mourners that made up the crowd and threw his arms apart. “A crime punishable by death in some countries! Just skipped me in the buffet line and stole them! Took the last ones from the tray right in front of me! Then had the nerve to smile at me apologize for my loss before walking away!” A disgusted expression twisted his flushed face, voice high and incredulous, “ What kind of sick bastard does that?”
Someone grabbed his left arm but he fiercely yanked it away. His sense of balance was so far diminished by the last five drinks coursing through his veins that the recoil nearly sent him sprawling into the row of chairs behind him.
“What?! I can’t speak the truth!?” He’d grabbed on to the closest chair before he could fall and slowly straightened himself up on wobbly legs.  “The man is a thief! And I’m sure it’s the same guy who also drank the last of the brandy! I had to settle for scotch, and don’t get me started on the finger sandwiches…”
“My god!” Shrieked a woman clinging to her wide eyed children.
“Charles! Who is that man!?” Burst another, voice flirting with hysterical.
“Terrance!”
From one of the rows near the back, a thin, wrinkled man began to slowly push himself out of his chair with the help of his cane. His thick, bushy brows, as gray as the storm clouds, knitted above stern eyes, currently pointed at Chris. He looked like a war-weathered general or colonel chewed up and spat out by time.
The shuffle of the grieving mob ceased and everyone stared on as the man hunched over his cane began to speak again.
“You’re thinking about Terrance, not Thomas. He’s the one that cleaned out the buffet table.” The old man grumbled, jutting his chin out in the direction of a broad shoulder man sitting in a corner chair.
Chris’ gaze switched over the hefty, middle aged man sitting with his legs splayed and a cup of brandy tipped to his lips. Terrance’s brows bounced in acknowledgement but he continued sipping.
“Oh…” The rage slowly began to drain from his face as his foggy brain work out the details of the statement. He jerked a shaky thumb over his shoulder to point at the priest still clenching the sides of the podium. The holy man looked as pale as the corpse in the open casket next to him. “And…what’d he say?” Chris cautiously inquired.
“Thomas.”
All around him, grieving family members huddled to their close ones, staring like wide eyed doe in the glow of a truck’s headlights at the unrecognizable man before them. With their eyes reddened and raw from the never ending flow of tears, noses moist and clogged so each breath was a sniffle. Ladies with blood red lips and bleeding mascara, men who seemed pale as ghosts in black suits and sunken eyes; all of them, simply staring at him waiting for something serious and deep and apologetic to come pouring out of his lips.
Not expecting in the least, for the man to laugh and collapse back into his chair.
“Whoops! My bad,” A foolish grin settled on his laughing mouth.
After shifting himself to a more comfortable position, he waved his hands at the rest in a shooing motion before letting them fall back on his knees.
“Alright. On with the show.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He slid a good five feet after they’d thrown him, the gravelly alley ground rasping painfully against his entire front until he came to a heaping stop.
Behind him, twin security guards sneered before slamming shut the funeral home’s back door, the audible click of the lock echoing shortly in the dark.
Chris sighed into the ground.
The rank smell rising from the green, metal tarnished dumpster was nauseatingly strong. The brown juice dribbling down its bottom corner and into quivering puddle gave him a vague and frightening insight to what was inside, but he didn’t intend on confirming anything too soon.
Somewhere else, it might as well have been on the other side of the world, something swiftly scuttled across the carpet of small, pointy rocks that made up the ground.
The breeze picked up and slapped a wet newspaper to the dirty brick wall as police sirens distantly wailed in the background.
Chris sighed again and made no motion to move.
This was not how he pictured life.


Twenty-one years ago, a small town in relative nowhere coughed up a new born baby boy that would forever change the world we lived in.
At least that’s what he confessed he would do in the fourth grade essay he had to write for English class pertaining to what he planned to do when he grew up. Of course he spent all last night polishing it, making sure to fix every little mistake and thoughtfully picking out the frame he would hang it up in once his teacher doodled a bright red ‘A+++!’ at the top of it.
He had very high ambitions as a child.
The next morning when he strutted through his elementary school’s wide double doors, he felt bigger then he’d ever felt in his short life. He felt as if he could easily look down on the gangly, middle school basket players who always taunted him in the hallways. Heck, he could look down on their coach, who was easily the tallest man Chris had ever seen.
He was floating on air, walking through clouds, those upbeat songs always playing on the radio finally clicking in his head.
He’d clamored up to the front of the class to personally hand in his essay before the teacher had even finished asking for them, and swelled with pride when he saw her smile.
Because he had plans. He was going to be something. And that essay proved it.
But  then, oh, horror.
As he was patiently waiting with his hands linked on his desk like a good student, blatantly ignoring the busy work the teacher had assigned to occupy them while she graded our homework, he saw her pluck his paper from the top of the pile. There was moment of pause as her caramel eyes skimmed over the writing before her lips folded down in a small frown.
His jaw dropped in shock as he saw her not draw the massive and mythical ‘A+++’ on the top of his paper. Not even the lesser revered, ‘A++’.
Not…Not even an ‘A+’! Or ‘A’!
Using her bright red marker like a blade to slash across his precious essay, she flicked her wrist across the laboriously written masterpiece, painting bold, angry red strokes here and there. Circling incorrect words, dotting in the appropriate grammar, ruthlessly slashing out entire sentences whenever it struck her fancy!
By the time she returned his precious essay, he sullenly stared at the raped piece of paper and on his way home, crumpled it up to a ball and tossed it on the grass.
He could hear what she was really thinking when she mutilated his essay.
Chris Silver would never be anything.
He’d never change the world, never be the subject of his anyone’s praising. His dreams were a joke and his entire life was the punch line.
Fast forward into his wild teenage years and Chris Silver was a master at failure. Beautiful, massive failures that fueled parental gossip for months and was responsible for the ego-boosting mantra, ‘Well, at least my kid’s not as bad as Chris…’ whispered out of every father or mother’s lips whenever they felt like throwing in the towel on their son or daughter.
Accidently crashing his car into the mayor’s during a parade, successfully sending the plump, sash wearing man tumbling out of the open top convertible and on to the confetti littered street.
Igniting the fire in the fire department building with only a plastic ramen cup and a microwave as his weapons of choice.
The passing of the bill making it illegal to place small, agitated rodents in mailboxes.
All of it was one boy’s doing. Every day peopled hawked the teen wherever he went, pinning him with suspicious, punishing glares and keeping him in their radar. It was a known truth. The boy was jinxed, and he was trouble.
As soon as he finished his years in high school, Chris knew what he had to do.
His parents didn’t exactly beg him to stay. Sure, they made a pathetic attempt to act disheartened by the news, tentatively asking him to stay with them but never pressing him to actually do such a thing. After all, another parade was around the corner.
Chris packed his bags, purchased the first one way bus ticket out of town, waved his few friends and family good-bye and promised himself a better future. This town was too small. Too frightened of change, not ready to be uprooted from tradition. Chris had a boundless ambition and a bright future ahead of him, and damn what his fourth grade teacher made him think, because he was going to be something.

After sloppily gathering himself on to his feet, he weakly brushed a hand across his chest to clear some of the dirt and gravel from his shirt. He coughed, throat stinging with the burning liquid he’d chugged down half an hour before and sagged heavily against the closest wall. He hung his head, anticipating the return of the cheap scotch. After a few seconds of waiting Chris lifted his head to shout at the locked door.
“Really classy! Throwing me out on the street because I don’t handle the grieving process like the rest of you!”
He staggered towards the door, a hand still clenched to his stomach as if he’d taken a bullet wound there. Anger lighted the glazed jade eyes. Dear god, when did mooching food from stranger’s funeral service become such a crime?
“You know, Thomas and me were like this!” He crossed his fingers and angrily waved them in the air.
It was moments like these where the alcohol making his head swim began to mesh fantasy and reality into one giant glob of confusion. To honest, he had no idea who the hell Thomas Mallory was. They were only very brief acquaintances, having met only once.
At a funeral.
Which incidentally happened to be his.
Still, had they known that when they’d thrown him out into the back alley?
Chris wiped his mouth to the back of hand and a sound half way between a snort and a scowl. His head was throbbing and he’d barely filled himself up enough drinks and free food to call the whole thing worth it.
He turned around and put a hand out to the brick wall the steady himself, the bones of his legs turned to jello by the scotch. He only turned his head once more to look over his shoulder, maybe hoping someone was huddled there with their ear to their door.
“If Terrance were alive today, he’d be disgusted with the way you were treating me!”
Chris staggered to the end of the alleyway in a daze, too numb to really feel the ache and hurt of the newly formed bruises decorating his body. The sunlight was strong and sobering. Once the shados of the narrow alley slipped aay behind him, Chris wiped a hand over his bleary eyes.
God, he needed a drink.
If there was anything going through his mind at the moment it was that, pulsating in his brain like a second heartbeat, making his head swell in pain.
Obediently, he decided to follow the call and began the slow, clumsy amble to Bern’s.
Bern’s as a less then popular bar conveniently located just across his apartment building. It had a steady flow of dedicated customers, nothing too excessive to actually prompt the owner to invest money into renovating the dump. Like the popular TV show tune sang, it was a place where everybody knew your name. Unfortunately, they didn’t give a rat’s ass who you ere and if given the choice, would probably spit on you then ask about how your day went.
But Chris wasn’t looking for a friendly environment to laugh and bond with strangers over a cold beer. He wanted deep, comfy booths, dim, moody lighting, and a bartender with a horrible record for keeping track of bar tabs.
Rounding the last corner before the building slid into vie, Chris stumbled through the bar’s green, paint chipped door and into familiar surroundings.
A large wooden bar stretched across the left side of the room in the shap of a neatly halved oval. Behind it, dozens of colorfully labeled bottles of green and ruby red or white gleamed beneath the hanging lights. Most were drained to the middle from constant use, but even more had their tops still sealed, looking as new as the day they ere purchased if you ignored the blanket of dust they’d accumulated. A few weathered barstools were stationed around the bar table, red seats worn and bleeding their cushiony innards on to the wood floors in small, fluffy flakes. Booths lined up the entire right wall, back to back with flat unremarkable tables in between. Only one or two people occupied these, ther heads hanging low and over their drinks so only the top of their scruffy heads poked up. Beside the thud of his footsteps and the clink of glass against glass as Bern tipped a bottle to an empty cup, there wasn’t a sound as Chris collapsed into an empty booth.
From the corner of his peripheral vision, he noticed a slump shouldered waitress lazily making her way to his booth.
“Glass of water…” Chis mumbled before she could flip open her otepad. He would have noticed her roll her eyes but his heavy head sagged against the arms he’d crossed over the tabletop before he had the pleasure.
The prices for drinks here might have been borering cheap, but his wallet was too starved to even cough up enough money to cover the droopy aitress’s tip if he did order one. And he was fairly positive his bar tab had already exceeded this moth’s rent expense. Best to stick with good H2O.
“Good ol’…free…un-alcoholic…H20.” Chris repeated darkly, tiredly closing his eyes as he sighiedi out the last word.
He felt a cool breeze of slightly perfumed air and heard the quiet clink as something was set on his table. He opened his eyes briefly only to blink them shut again.
My God, he knew the bar was a dump but Bern could at least try to deceive them by pretending he didn’t just scoop him up a mug of dirty, canal water.
The liquid within the transparent mug was a rust colored mixture slowly quivering into stillness.

He tentatively curled his fingers around the half moon handle and tipped the cup towards him. His nose twitched as he gave it an experimental sniff.
That didn’t smell like water.
“Uh, Miss? I didn’t order-“ Chris was abot o wave back the waitress he noticed she’d neverleft from besides his table.
She draped a hand over her sassily cocked hip and pursed her painted lips. Her brows seemed to shoot up past her hairline as she gave him the most condescending look, not waiting for him to finish.  “Compliments from the gentleman at the bar.”
Sounded like someone was bitter.
She need not bothering pointing out the man. Out of the dozen barstools lined up against the table, only one was currently taken,  occupied by a slim, long legged man with his back to Chris. A thin thread of smoke twisted up from the cigarette loosely balanced between the man’s bronze and slender fingers. In the same hand he held a glass glowing with an amber colored nectar.
Chris watched it disappear as the man drew it to his unseen lips, the back of the dark haired head tilting back slightly.
It was a few moments of simply watching this before Chris blinked himself out of his drunken stupor.
“Huh?” He responded intelligently, immediately releasing his hold on the cup as if he’d just been informed it held a lethal poison. Not that alcohol wasn’t exactly that, but he was thinking something along the lines of cyanide.  His gaze bounced from the drink to the man then shot up to the waitress’s bored, half lidded eyes.
“Wait, what? You mean, like…for free?” He asked, uncomprehending.
The waitress slowly nodded her head as if she was doing an act of charity just by speaking to him. “That’s what ‘on the house’ implies, hon.” She arched a brow at him to make him feel extra stupid.
Before she could turn and start to walk away, Chris abruplt spoke again. “Whoah! Ait, hold I,” Henearly spilled out of his booth trying to pull back her attention. Glassy green eyes darkened in confusion, his mouth twisting slightly. “You’ve got to be confusing me with someone else,” He gaze darted to the man again, “I don’t even know that guy.”
“Honey, when some guy buys me a free drink, I don’t ever wonder what it mean.”
She ended the conversation with a short, dry laugh and walked away, tucking her unused pen behind her ear as she did so.
Chris stared at his beer.
The cogs in his mind that bad been ticking around at a slow and quiet place before suddenly came to a grinding halt.
His eyes went wide with realization.
Oh, shit!
Was that guy-?! Oh my god! Was he trying to pick him up!?
Calm down now, he was not trying to get picked up by a weird, creepy guy in the middle of a bar! No, that was not happening! Ugh! But what was with that look that waitress gave him! It made him feel queasy and violated. There had to be some kind of law against this kind of thing somewhere!
It was with some difficulty he eventually hoisted himself out of his seat and sauntered on over to the other side of his room. He felt like the legs working beneath him weren’t his own, like the bar was located in a ship currently cruising through the Bermuda triangle.
By some miracle, he managed to swing over to a barstool besides the smoking man, plopping his drink on the table and his rear on the stool.
The beer splashed over the rim as it set it on the tabletop, raining a few droplets on to the sleeve of his funeral suit which. He made, perhaps, a bigger scene then necessary trying to brush them off while waiting for the other man to offer him an acknowledging word or smile.
After a few more seconds of forced fussing with his sleeve, Chris began to adjust his collar and tie, briefly clearing his throat. His hands resettled around his mug, nervousness radiating from his body like static electricity.
Smoke clouded the air as the man beside him released a slow, breath of smoke. He seemed caught in a trance.
“Um…” Chris inhaled sharply and anxiously thrummed his fingers on the lip of the bar.
Finally, he let the breath whoosh out of him sigh out of his like it had been burdening his lungs.
He made sure to keep his frigid gaze riveted on the wall ahead as he pushed the mug horizontally to the stranger.
“I’m sorry, but can’t accept this.” Chris said numbly, eyes averted, chest clenched.
There was a few seconds of silence in which Chris thought the man had not heard him.
“Oh?” A soft, amused smile flickered across the man’s lips. “Not much of a drinker?” Those last few words his voice became sardonically flat. After all, the air was thick with not only smoke but the drunken air of Chris’s alcohol laden breaths.
Immediately, Chris jumped to reply, the other man’s answer probably going right over his head. “Look, I’m sure you’re a very attractive man with very impressive qualities,” His hand sliced through the as if he chopping carrots.
“And maybe in another world, another lifetime, another time we could have been friends, but I’m just not looking for the same things as you right now. I don’t think we can get along the way you want. I’m just not that into you, basically.”
Guilt struck hard in his heart before he could even let the other react, Chris’s resolve crumpled along with his stance and apology seeped into his expression and voice.  
“Shit. I didn’t intend for that to come out sound so harsh. That was stupid, sorry. I just…I don’t want you to think I owe you something just because you bought me a beer. I mean, if that was what you’re planning than you might as well take it back now. Because you can’t buy me like that. I have value. I’m my own person.” He straightened his back a little, feeling stronger after saying those words, “I deserve better than this.”
He was looking at the other a little regretfully now, unable to meet the stranger’s coolly lidded eyes.
“Is this the part where I’m supposed to sob uncontrollably and beg you to stay for the sake of the children?” The dark haired stranger mused in low, unaffected tones.
Chris pursed his lips contemplatively. “I’m sorry.”
The man’s lids rose halfway over two brilliant, passionless eyes. They were startling, completely unexpected to say the least. Dulled by boredom, but brimming with intelligence, the pair of whiskey orbs narrowed into slits across his sharply cut features. Chris had assumed it had been the low hanging lights that had dusted his skin with the golden glow, but on closer inspection he could see the man had a soft, natural tan to him. Healthy, not distracting. Most likely from his background. Though he hadn’t said much, he had exchanged enough words with Chris for him to unearth and accent. It was faint, but it thrived there beneath the his dark and unimpressed tones, strengthening the roll of his r’s and and giving his words a charming accent that gave away his Italian roots. Second generation, it had to be, Chris deduced. Not strong enough to take away from his English enunciation but enough to deliver an attractive cadence to his voice.
A tanned hand rose, and with a slow flick of his wrist he kissed the cigarette and inhaled.
“I bought you the drink, not because I have any interest in you,” The man explained just as impartially, removing his gaze from Chris and sliding it back on to the opposite wall as if he was too tiring to look at. “But because you honestly looked like you needed it. No thanks is necessary.”
Chris hadn’ taken notice to what the man was drinking. It seemed like one of the finer choices of the bar. Bern had probably had to tear open the seal on one of the pricy bottles he’d been kicking himself about purchasing for years. He was probably had a giddy fit in the backroom right now, Chris couldn’t help think, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips at the thought.
“Well, you got that right.” Chris felt the smile drip away. A weariness filled him at the mere mention. He rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward, letting his forehead droop against the palms of his hands. He groaned and rubbed circles on his temples with his thumbs, “But I don’t think a beer is gonna fix my problem. Not that it doesn’t help.”
“Mm?” The man made a small, faintly intrigued noise. Although he could just as well been trying to feign polite interest.
“I’ve got myself up to might neck in debts. I’ve made deals with thrifty characters and now I’ve got loan sharks running me to the ground, asking for cash I can’t deliver. I’ve about to be evicted and tossed into the street, and even if I do manage to come up with rent money it’ll probably slip through my fingers like water at the first sight of a slot machine. Or a black jack table. Poker too. That’s where they really eat me up.” He laughed, face alight with a drowsy grin as he confessed all his troubles like sins to a priest.
The air warmed with smoke. “Money’s a curse.”
It was an unexpected reply, but one that had lost all truth to Chris ever since deflated his bank account.
“You think so? Most people would kill to have money.” Chris smirked.
The stranger surveyed him carefully. A slender brow rose over his depthless whiskey eye. “Isn’t that what makes it a curse? The fact that people are willing to murder for something as simple as a piece of green paper?” Bored golden eyes disappeared halfway beneath his falling lids. “That any human in this world would cast away their morals and do the unspeakable for the right price?”
It was hard to keep his smirk alive. “It’s just survival. You break us all down and were all the same person.” Chris answered, a tone and sentiment that implied a steady belief.
Instead of being put off by this cruel way of thinking, the stranger paused before speaking again. He turned his face so he could study Chris more carefully, finely tuned composure settling over his face like a mask, hiding everything but a small, nearly unperceivable flicker of intrigue in his eye.
“What about the natural goodness in people? Or don’t you believe in that?”
There was something vaguely challenging about the way he asked that. Almost as if he was a college professor asking for any poor chap to dismiss the theory of relativity for extra credit on the test, chuckling inwardly at those poor souls who dared tried.
Chris felt his face heating up, but he couldn’t blame his drinks this time. It was for the sudden hate boiling up inside of him. Natural goodness, what a joke.
“We might be an advanced civilization and it’s a total blow to our ego to be reminded that we’re still related to those animals in the zoo, but it’s true. And guess what?” Chris shook his head and glared at the table, “You take away the friends, the family, all the luxuries that make us human and put us in an island and tell us to survive and you’ll be surprised how that goodness disappears. Face it, we’re all cold. We’re all after our own things, and the moment someone turns around and becomes an inconvenience to you, you dump them like a bad
“I rarely have to argue with people on my point.” The stranger commented with a faintly amused smile. “People like to believe there’s a light in people that doesn’t go out. They’re very above crime and poverty and prefer to deny the evil in people to be able to sleep soundly at night. But as you go lower on the food chain, you notice we become more and more aware of just how horrible human beings can be. How disappointedly low we stoop to serve our selfish needs. How easily we trample others who get in our way without a twinge of guilt.” He sighed out his last breath of smoke before neatly stubbing his cigarette in adjacent ashtray. “You’re not there.”
It was entrancing to watch, the focus the man attracted when he moved. Motions that might have seemed average and insignificant when done by other people, they became a slow, unraveling performance when he did them, moving always with a deliberateness that spared no slack. He twisted the butt of his half-cig once then twice before letting it die on the plate, linking his now unoccupied hands like a bridge beneath his chin as he watched him.
Chris seemed rattled when they locked eyes and immediately sat straighter. “Actually,” He confessed, feeling suddenly uneasy but going through it with the truth. “I’m not so far from that.”
“So can empathize better with the common criminal? You can understand the reasons they’re willing to deconstruct themselves for the sake of living a wealthier life?”
“Isn’t that what we all want? Just find the loophole to life and just do as little while gaining a lot?”
“Then what’s tethering you to this side of the law?”
“Lack of opportunity?”
“You sound like a very cold man.”
“I’m not cold…” Chris wearily smiled, wanting to laugh but feeling the sound of it die half way up his throat. Because he was felt exposed at the bold honesty of his words and how easily this man had managed to unearth the shameful wonderings that’d always nibbled at the corners of his mind.
“I’m desperate.” Chris finally replied in a tone that implied just that. It confessed just the depth of the statement, leaving everything unsaid but still laid out on the table for the other to see. The wreckage of his life. The horrible weighing pain of debt, the empty hallowed hunger for something higher and more satisfying then this cycle of maximum labor and minimum wage.
“Like you said, it’s just something that we deal with so much at this level that it kind of numbs your sense of morals. You can cross the line anytime and not risk getting stuck worse off then before. It’s made me feel I’ve got nothing to lose” The smile that bloomed on his face was at odds with the sadness in his eyes. “I’m the perfect candidate.” His voice had gotten smaller, as if he were consoling himself with his own words and had all but forgotten about the man next to him. “I’m desperate.” He repeated quietly.
He tipped his head, viewing his despondent reflection in the faint shivery mirror in his beer, wondering when he’d gotten to such a low point in his life. When had such a game he’d first thought of exciting and entertaining had become such a self destructive vice? So much it had plunged him into the pit of debt and despair, struck a wedge between his family and friends and shackled him to the one of the most costly addictions out there. It made him a begging fool, a funeral crasher, and an embarrassment. But never a crook.
The silence stretched between them and eternities seemed to pass before Chris heard the faint, metallic squeak of the bar stool turning.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the man stand and place something on the table, pushing it in Chris’ direction without sparing him a glance.  The bartender had hobbled past Chris from the other side of the bar table, slapping his wet rag over his shoulder and leaning an arm on the table in front of he stranger who must have beckoned him while Chris was in thought. A few murmured words passed between them, their heads hung low as they spoke a shortly but discreetly.
. Chris looked up, but by then the stranger that finished with his conversation and the bartender was nowhere to be seen. Passionless golden eyes coolly assessed him once more. Chris swore he saw a hint of a smile lift his lips, but it could have been his imagination.
“Desperate affairs require desperate remedies.”
There was a seriousness in his tone that made Chris listen. When he left, Chris remained staring at the door for a few long moments before he redirected his gaze to the souvenier the stranger had left behind.
A business card.
----------

Chris woke up the next morning with weight of last nights memories floating through his groggy brain like shards of glass glittering with faint, but recognizable details of drink and faces, and smiles and words, but all dying like quiet murmurs in the background of the incessant throbbing in his head. His bones ere heavy with weariness he hadn’t felt snce he’d been running laps in gym in freshman year and the dull, but painful swell in his head continueing to throb like a second heart beat, pulsing pain through his heavy head. He felt his blood run ike syrup through his vein and the ache for sleep pinning his body to the ground like a heavy armor suit. He could still taste the bitter poison in his mouth when he swallowed, making a guttural sound at the back of his throat before rolling over and breaking the string of drool connecting his mouth to the dark patch on the Welcome Home mat.
He grunted lowly as the flat of the front walk pressed again his back, releasing  pressure pushing his lungs into the cavity of hi chest and sucking in a deep breath of air. Sunlight burned through the curtain of his eyelids, strong and sober. He winced them open just slightly, immediately pinching them close again after a blindful eyeful shot a shooting pain down his head, triggering another pulsing migraine.
Just as he as reaching out to rub the sleep out of his eyes, a feat that required lifting his arms hich at the moment felt as heavy as anvils, something smacked his chest.
It collided with him just as he was starting to get up, stealing the breath from his lungs in a loud ‘whoosh’ that made his eyes bulge comically before he was groaning in pain.
His hand came around the heavy item, groping the heavy loaf shaped item as his body limped to flat down position again. Chris lifted it up over him, squinting sightlessly as he focused in at the item that’d inflicted him, lips sagging the corners when the first blurry words of newspapers broke free through the fog in front of his eyes.
Ugh. It had to be Sunday edition. No wonder it hurt.
The crisp, cheery jingle of a bike bell made him turn his head just in time to see the newspaper boy gliding away.
“Little piece of…” Chris was already groggily murmuring, rolling on to his side. He coughed and cleared some of the hoarseness from his throat, craning his head up to shout.
“I know where you live, Tommy!”
The bike swayed to the left and right then straightened back into it’s route,  another cheery ring stuttering from the silver bell. He saw a specific finger come up without the boys head even turning from ahead.
“Get a job, bum!” He could hear distant laughter bubbling up.
Chris indignantl  sat up straighter, trying to look as auhorative as anybody could in a suit more rinkled then an elephants hide and last nights drool still sticky on his chin.
“I’m gonna have a serious discussion with your mother about your behavior, young man!”
“Screw you, Chris! At least I have a job! ”
Oh, that little BEAST.
His arms shot up to clutch the edge of the stone railing, using that to pull himself on to his feet. He swayed and nearly doubled over it, his voice slicing through the tranquil morning air like it had been shouted from a megaphone.
“And then I’m gonna bang her! And be your new dad and send you off to fricking military school, you demon spawn!”
A faint voice coupled with another jingle echoed back in response, “She doesn’t date unemployed  homeless freaks!” Laughter tapered the last shout, bike drawing half moons on the sleek city streets.
“You were a mistake!” Chris shouted quickly just as Tommy rounded the last house down the street and disappeared into the next.
His body sagged over the thick, stone railing, nearly doubling over the thing from how far he’d inclined forward. Slowly, almost painfully so, he flipped himself around and dizzily pushed himself on his own legs. He’d snuck the newspaper under his arm and now slowly pulled it, ignorant to the shuffling going on behind the door he’d fallen asleep in front of.
There as a brief interval as the person behind it worked out the locks, the clink and jingle catching Chris’s attention enough to make him expectantly look up when the door finally parted open. A cool swell of air conditioned air breezed over the tired man on the doorstep. James sniffed and coughed, his coffee mug filled halfway to the brim with the dark, caffeinated liquid and the other half desperately trying to bring life to the lifeless looking body beneath his pink robe. Of course, James’s would arguedit was fuchsia, but Chris knew pink when he saw pink.
Sleep mussed raven hair sticking in all directions, a few strands flopping over his drowsy, half opened eyes and a frown weighing down his mouth. He finished the look with a pair of fashionable white bunny slippers, the left one a Cyclops, the right missing half a floppy ear.
Just before he could habitually bend over to scoop the morning paper off the doorman, Chris popped up into view.
“JAMES!” Chris rejoiced, gushing with relief.
James staggered backwards and lost half his coffee on the process, mouth twisting in an unexpected grimace as his heart nearly jumped up his throat. It took about a moment for recognition to set in and bring down his arms from defensive position. Agitation replaced surprise on his face.
“Oh dear god, no.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and tiredly sighed into his hand, his voice a near undecipherable moan, “Please tell me that was not you I just heard harassing my paper boy again.” He bumped the back of his head against the white door frame.
“That boy is a violent, angry child.” Chris answered with the strictest conviction, surreptitiously striding past his friend and into the house uninvited, James still wearing down the skin between his eyes.
James had the type of house that really lured people into the city. It’s brick and stone structure spoke of majestic age and history, and it was squeezed between an entire street filled with identical clones like soldieries lined up on the battle front. It seemed larger then it truly was from the outside, but that could have been due to the fact that James cluttered up both floors with all the useless objects of his possession. From floor to ceiling, every nook and cranny was crammed with items from his travels, bookshelves hunched with massive volumes or the instruments of his work which, ironically, happened to actually be instruments. A musician born and bred in the world of noise and music, he’d taken to playing since he was still young enough to plug bendy straws up his nose and wail like a walrus with Chris and now made a decent living playing in night clubs. Chris relied on his friend just as much as he had in his elementary school years and although the dynamics of the friendship were unstable and filled with a lot of bail-me-out-of-jail phone calls in the middle of the night, they stuck through.
Chris stepped around the carpet of music sheets scattered around the wooden floor and slunk into the kitchen at the end of the hallway. Towards the smell of coffee.
“He’s ten years old.” James unenthusiastically informed. He slid his hand into his robe pocket and slowly shuffled down the same path, drawing the mug to his lips. He cherished the sip, mouth warming with the blissful, revitalizing nectar.  “And his mother is convinced you live here from all the times you fall asleep on my doorstep so I keep getting calls,” James reached the kitchen’s doorway and slumped a shoulder against the frame, cup still hovering close to his chest. He narrowed his eye’s on Chris’s back as his friend stretched to reach the upper shelves of his pantry. “ I’m not paying for his therapy, Chris.”
“No therapy can save that monster.” Chris grumbled under his breath, rummaging through the cans of tomato sauce and tuna, bending his knees to search the bottom rows.
He eventually found what he was looking for hiding behind a bright green tin can of crackers and packet of instant ramen, plucking a colorful cereal box from it’s hiding place and turning over face his friend’s frown.
“Why are you here?”
It seemed obvious the question would pop up at one time or another. Chris’ eyes of course drifted to the ceiling wonderingly, as if he too was pondering that same question. He casually moved to the other side of the kitchen with slow, relaxed steps, swinging open a cabinet to reach out and take a bowl. He slid open a drawer and took a spoon, grabbed the milk from the fridge and then slowly fell to a sit on chair of the small blue table centered in the kitchen. James eyes had narrowed to a pair of calculating, dark blue slits, following him with sniper like precision.
Chris thoughtfully chewed his first few bites of the cereal he’d quietly prepared, his head cocked to the side in deep thought.
A few more thoughtful bites of froot loops and James was growing impatient.
“Well?!” He crossed his arms tightly across his bathrobe, tired eyes gleaming with irtation.
Chris lowered his spoon of colorful ‘O’s and gave him an insulted look. “Well, what?! Can’t I drop by to visit my own friend without the third degree?!” He snapped back just as irritably. He quickly scooped up another spoonful of soggy frootloops and crunched them down almost rebelliously as James gathered his breath to snap back a reply.
“It’s six ‘o’ clock on a Sunday, you’re wearing your funeral suit, and Bern called last night around two to inform me that you’d run out of the bar after stealing the decorative, stuffed Marlin off the wall and making violent threats about freeing Tibet.”
A long important pause settled thickly over the kitchen like a blanket. Chris bowed his head down and quietly thrummed his fingers on the cereal bowl between his hands. He chewed his bottom lip as if determining weather the best course would be to lie and deny everything or try to grab the rest of the cereal and run. He sighed.
“A hobo stole the Marlin back.” Chris murmured dejectedly, deflating slightly.  He looked at his friend regretfully, eyes sad. “He tried to eat it.”
James arched a brow inquiringly and leaned forward with crossed arms. “He…?”
“… ‘We’.” Chris corrected sullenly after a moment, stirring his cereal quietly with his spoon with the air of a scolded child.
While James might have been a little less then surprised to gather the news, it of course had little baring to him at the present moment so he released all last nights troubles with a sigh and put it out of his mind as he was sure Chris would do. His bottom feeder friend my have been a poor and gambling lightweight drunk, but his habits never dragged downhis conscience or his mood.  
He sagged into the opposite chair while Chris drove another spoonful to his mouth. James contemplatively sipped, unseeing eyes fixed on the clear blue skies framed by his kitchen window.
“Your going to have to quit going to Bern’s now. If the marlin didn’t do it, I’m sure you knocked his memory back into order with the new numbers you’ve ranked up on your bar tab.” James mentioned neutrally, the chair beneath him creaking slightly as he shifted a more comfortable position.
Chris tried not to laugh for the sake of speing colorful bits of cereal all over the table, but his shoulders shook with enough mirth to attract his friends attention. He wiped the sleeve of his suit over a grinning mouth and found even more entertaintment in the unpleased look his friend was giving him from across the table.
“What’s so funny?” James relunctantly asked, sitting the cup on the table and letting his arms fold on it as well.
Chris grinned around a bit more, hooking his arm behind the back of the chair and sliding down into the seat with a waggle of his eyebrows, perhaps over playing his fortune but feeling like a king at the moment. He raised his chin up and laughed out before answering in a near sing song voice,“I don’t own Bern squat.”
James blinked his eyes into a glare. “What? Screw this friendship if you think for a second that I’m gonnna pay for-“
“Relax, relax,” Chris’ placating voice interrupted when James pinned him with a murdering glare. The smile had yet to melt from his lips and it seems his giddiness had only increased with his friends outburst. “Someone else paid for the whole thing. All of last nights drinks and,” Chris leaned forward with abrupt speed to snap his fingers in front of James startled face. He cocked his head and widened his grin. “Cleared the tab. Just. Like. That.”
Very few things that came out of his friends mouth made sense, but this perhaps took the cake.
“And who was benevolent stranger?” James questioned with rightful suspicion. He half guessed a drunken answer akin to the Cat in the Hat or William Shatner.
“I,” Chris inhaled and his chest heaved upwards with pride. “Have no idea.”
“I see…” James lied. He eyed his friend a little warily from across the table when that foolish grin didn’t immediately disappear. If this was a joke it was a very bad one. “So a person you never met, waltzed up to you in the bar,” James recounted carefully, continuing when his friend’s head began to eagerly bob in confirmation. He warmed his fingers on the bottom of his coffee mug. “And…offered to pay for all the drinks you would consume that night, as well as clear your bar tab, just  for…?” He shook his head as his sentence trail, waiting for Chris to fill in the blanks to his tale.
Chris was only more then happy to fill in the rest, nearly bursting with his answer.“Just for being good company!”
“I see…” James mused, closing his eyes. “And at what point did the unicorn fall out of the sky and poop out a rainbow?”
“I’m not a liar!”
“I didn’t say you were lying,” Came a terse reply which James rolled his eyes. “Simply hallucinating.” He murmured into his coffee when he raised it to his lips again.
“I’m not a hallucinator!” Chris retorted just as defensively, pounding the flat of his fists on the table. The cereal bowl jumped, the spoon clinked against the glass, and a lone frootloop wobbly rolled to James’ side of the table.
“Right.” James answered briskly, agreeing just to douse his friends anger and continue the morning without any bloodshed. He tranquilly sipped the rest of his coffee while Chris threw his hands up and hauled himself to his feet.
“I can’t believe you! Your really don’t believe me?!” He stabbed a finger against his chest and leaned over his friend.
“No, frankly, I do not.”
“James! He offered me a job. He paid for my tab, paid for my drinks, and offered me a real job!”
“Some drunkard with no experience in any area besides scamming money and getting hammered?”
James’ eyes burned like coal against his own, the arrogant confidence lazily strewn over his words making Chris feel hot with anger. He thinned his lips in a frown.
“You know what? I don’t have to have this conversation with you,” Chris answered haughtily. He began the search for some proof, digging into his pockets, angrily sliding his hands into the slits on his formal pants then under the flaps of his jacket pockets, and finally sticking each hand into the private vuelvet pockets lining the inside of his jacket like some modern napoleon. With each tug out of the pockets his anger disruptive his search, making his moves hasty and clumsy, pulling out nothing but tufts of gray lint and dirty coins. They clattered loudly on the kitchen table as he dropped them there, beginning the search of his back pockets when James finally pushed back his chair and stood up.
“Look, Chris…” He sighed, glancing at his watch.
“Wait! I know I got it somewhere!”
“I have work. The band is meeting up for early rehearsal and I-“
“I know I have it! He gave me a card, I swear!” Despite himself, Chris was sounding rather desperate. The inside of his pockets hung out of his pants like small ghosts all the lint he’d gathered floating to the ground from his fingertips. He patted himself down  without releasing hands had settled over the back of his shoulders. James had rounded the table and was now gently, but not so gently, escorting a distracted Chris as he rerummaged through the same pockets as before.
“It’s this little white card with the place and stuff. I swear, he gave it too me.” Chris was murmuring to himself, being unmistakedlbly wheeled out of his friends house.
“Right. Well, just give me a call when you find that now.” James answered in a forced, cheery voice before Chris’s shoes slid back on to the welcome mat. He turned quickly, hand raised.
“But James, I swear I-!”
The door slammed in his face.