When Josef left after the meal was finished, Charlie went into the kitchen and set his bowl into the sink. “Only one bowl… he didn’t have anything?” Charlie asked the dimly lit kitchen as if the empty room would answer. The plastic bag lay on the little ‘island’ in the kitchen and it clearly had a few more things in it. He took a look, rustling the bag, and found a small bag of banana chips and trail mix.
Charlie snorted, “Left me a snack, did you? What a guy.” He muttered and went back to fall into bed.
The next few days came and went like that, with Charlie slapping the alarm and checking his phone. Every other day, it seemed, there were fewer and fewer missed calls, then fewer and fewer new unread texts. Voicemail filled up some time before and he never cleared it out. But the truth was obvious.
‘I’m fading from their lives. They’re giving up on me. Charlie thought with neither a tear shed nor a curse uttered.
Each evening, Josef came by with a little something to eat, and ate nothing himself while the two traded stories of their time growing up.
On and on, Josef let him talk. Sometimes Charlie hung his head. Sometimes Charlie raised it to look outside and up at the stars that he’d watched since they’d been kids.
“Josef… say you did something… bad. Accidental, but bad, I don’t know… maybe you put on the Infinity Gauntlet, had a good idea, and snapped your fingers… but it has a delayed effect, and everybody in the city is going to die. Do you tell them?” Charlie asked, and Josef gave it a moment’s thought.
“That’s a… very… oddly specific example there, Charlie.” Josef thought it over, running his hands through his thick head of hair, “I guess… I wouldn’t. I mean if there’s no getting away from it, what’s the point? If I can’t just snap my fingers again and undo it, well what would happen? Say they’ve got a few hours, there’s no time to do much and a lot of people would just kill themselves. Say it was more, a few days, weeks, or months… stuff still needs to happen, you know? I mean the city still needs power, mail still needs to be delivered, people still have a life… ‘life’ get me? If they’ve got that right around the corner they’ll probably just give up right then. Take away tomorrow, and to some people they’re dead that same day.”
“Yeah, but… wouldn’t some people like the chance to live life to the fullest, maybe make amends for anything they did wrong?” Charlie asked, and then asked himself, ‘Why am I even asking… if I want to tell them, if I want to tell ‘him’ I can.’
“Nah,” Josef said with a smirk, “Most big life plans take you away from wherever you are, if they don’t, you’re already living em, or you might as well not have em because you’re not working at it anyway. What’s the point? Any sorries to be said should be said when you know you’ve got em to say. What’s the point of waiting until you’re all going to die except to avoid feeling bad about it. That’s just compiling one bad on top of another.”
Charlie thought that over. “You’re right. I’m… I’m sorry, Josef, really. About dragging you out here every day, about keeping you up this late when you’ve got to work… about,” Charlie swallowed the lump in his throat, ‘about killing you, I’m sorry I’ve killed you and you don’t know it. I’m sorry I’m such a goddamn coward, sorry I made a big goddamn mistake,’ he thought, but said instead, “I’m just, I’m sorry.”
Josef stood up “You really want to apologize, do me a favor. Take a shower. Brush your teeth, and maybe at ‘least’ clean up the space around where my chair is. Do that for me, and we’ll call it even.”
“Sure but,” Charlie reached for his wallet, “what do I owe you for today’s delivery, and the last… whatever it’s been since you started coming by?”
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“I didn’t bring my phone or the app to charge you, just throw out the garbage bags that you’ve been shitting in, leave a window open, and again, we’ll call it even.” Josef promised and held out his hand.
Charlie grabbed it in a firm shake, he almost winced, Josef’s grip was powerful, but clearly restrained, the handshake fell away, and Charlie added, “I’ll get on it tomorrow, I’m worn out right now.”
“Sure thing, and if you need help…” Josef didn’t finish the sentence, he didn’t need to.
He ducked under the doorframe and shut it behind him, leaving Charlie alone but for the dim light of the lamp a few feet away.
Despite what he’d said to Josef a moment ago, Charlie’s mood was in fact, rankled. He began to scowl. ‘A good man like that shouldn’t die like this… How the hell does this happen?!’
Charlie went and opened up each of the windows, then poked his head out of the one close to his bed, as luck would have it, the dumpster outside was open and empty. It wasn’t much, but he picked up what he promised. Three bags went out the window and crashed in the quiet darkness, thudding into the wide green dumpster that was only slightly illuminated by the streetlight nearby.
It wasn’t much. But there was a small space from his bed to the chair where Josef sat a little while ago, and then he went into the kitchen, took two bags in each hand, and hauled them to the same window. He dropped them outside one by one, and then returned to get four more. Charlie made seven trips back and forth before everything that might have contained human waste was removed.
Every time he tossed a bag outside however… he only got madder. Every time Charlie thought about the impending end for the man who sat with him in this stink, filth and trash, who took pity on a friend he thought was dying… resentment grew toward others who had a hand in the world’s destruction.
His scowl got deeper, his pulse raced faster. When he finally finished and the last white bag landed with a brittle crash that could only have been bottles of who knew what, all Charlie wanted was to let loose ‘something’.
He took off his shoes, but looking at the bed, just as he touched the tracksuit zipper, he changed his mind. Then a flash of anger, white hot and painful hit his mind all at once and he brought his bare foot up to stomp the floor the way he’d stomped the fried chicken bucket the day before… and howled as pain lanced through the sole of his foot.
“Goddamnit!” Charlie yowled and hopped up and down, his other foot thudding and thumping on the floor until he fell backwards cursing up a storm. “Motherfucker… that hurt!” He hissed and brought his foot up. He set it on one knee, which ached a little as his weight and recent inactivity was leading him to get fat, and looked down at the place the dim lamplight illuminated for him.
A blue shard stuck out a little. “Another one?!” He cursed, and with a trembling hand, he took hold of it. “One.” He hissed. “Two.” He spoke through clenched teeth. “Three!” He growled with his muscles and body heaving, and yanked the glass out. A stream of expletives followed as the glass came free, and with it out, he then hobbled to the kitchen with the bloody tipped piece still in his left hand.
“Sonofabitch… sonofabitch… sonofabitch that hurt!” He hissed, he didn’t touch the floor with the bottom of his foot, instead thudding the heel along step by step until he reached the kitchen, dropped the fragment of blue, and now bloodstained glass, onto the counter and looked around for something to clean his foot with.
Under the sink, he got lucky, a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a few cotton balls. “Why did I put these here in the first place… for that matter, why do I even have cotton balls? When have I ever in my life said to myself, ‘Charlie, don’t forget to buy cotton balls at the store…’ ugh, whatever… at least I’ve got something.” He griped at nothing and cracked the cap on the rubbing alcohol, slapped a cotton ball over the opaque gray bottle and tipped it upside down.
He then set the bottle down, held his hand up, braced himself with every muscle tense, and slammed the cotton ball down over the little stab wound.
Fiery pain shot through from the bottom of his foot all the way up to his brain. “Gahhh…” He hissed and clenched his jaw. “This is worse than stepping on a damn… whatever they call those plastic toy blocks…”
When Charlie’s wound was cleared, he went back to his bed, the basket Josef had intended to take had been left behind… several times now. In it there was still a set of paper towels, or as Charlie had come to think of them, ‘big toilet paper’.
And now… bandages. He tore off the plastic and threw it into the shadowy depths of his dimly lit hovel, then the perforated lines were shredded and he quickly folded the paper towel strip over a few times to make a long, ropelike strip and tied it around his foot. He then shoved a few cotton balls underneath to soak up the blood, before finally lying down.
“This sucks.” he muttered resentfully, folding his hands over his chest as he stretched out after turning off the light. He stared into the darkness, wondering what to do, and was still wondering when he finally fell into a painless, fearless, dreamless sleep.