Charlie was back at his apartment again before he really noticed the passage of time, but he concluded it must have been a fair bit at least. He based this off of the accident scene he was slowly approaching before he reached his home. A tow truck was already on site, the debris was cut away, police were directing traffic and taking statements from witnesses.

The little girl was gone, nearby on a white gurney were three people, another sat on the curb, slumped forward with his hands cuffed behind his back.

The passenger side door had been cut open by the Jaws of Life. It hadn’t done any good except for body retrieval. ‘Unfortunate.’ Charlie thought with dispassion, distant more in mind than he was in body before he ascended the stairs of his building again.

He turned the knob on his door and then kicked the door near the base, hard enough that it flew in, carrying a whoosh of air that Charlie felt the force of. It might have smacked and damaged the wall, but the carpet of rubbish was thick enough that it stopped the momentum and the door rebounded.

Charlie didn’t put up a hand to stop it, without even thinking about it, he knew that there was insufficient momentum to allow the door to come close enough to hit him.

He stepped past, turned around, kicked the door again, ‘thus adding energy to the closed system’ as he put it, and slamming it shut with a thunderous clap before returning to his bed.

He removed the liquor from the bag, balled up the paper, threw it somewhere into some pile without looking, and then peeled off the wrap around the black cap.

The crinkled noise was silenced from the practiced peeling and he tossed it somewhere amidst the rubbish, flopped himself down on the mattress, letting it squeak and bounce him a few times before removing the cap.

“Fuck everything. Fuck me. Fuck this world. Maybe the universe is better off if we’re all fucking dead. Maybe I should be credited instead of blamed.” Charlie griped, tossed the cap away at random and brought the smooth clear glass to his lips. He then tilted his head back and let the smooth familiar liquid flow over his tongue and down his throat to burn in his gut.

‘When was the last time I drank like this?’ Charlie asked himself on his sixth gulp.

The burn was like an old friend that had been away from home and came back unexpectedly. The cool smoothness of the unyielding glass bottle in his grip, the silky softness of the flowing fiery stuff with its subtle undertones and the nuances of flavor that only a true bourbon connoisseur could properly appreciate. It was a favorite brand for a reason.

He set the bottle down on the small table that held his laptop, the etched roses were still colored with the liquid behind it. “Ahhhh!” Charlie sighed and wiped his lips while the warmth ran through his body. “I’ll drink past the roses soon enough…” He said, looking at the clear glass etching.

He smacked his lips and grabbed the bottle again, for several moments the gulping was the only noise in the apartment other than the whirring of his computer’s hard drive.

When he slapped the bottle down again, he didn’t let go. “How the fuck did this happen? How the fuck was it me?!” The sirens kicked up outside. ‘I wonder if they took the little girl?’

It was a passing thought of pity before his own burning anger flared up again, and every time it flared, every time it burned, every time it yelled at him like an angry parent… Charlie drank again, until the bottle slipped from his fingers with only one brown drop remaining to testify to the contents.

The sturdy glass didn’t shatter, it hit the corner and wobbled a few times before coming to a quiet stop.

Charlie however, heard none of it. He fell back, the world spun around him. It was like being on the roundabout as a child again. “Faster… faster… faster…” Charlie muttered his fumbling hand grabbed the headboard of the bed. “Come on dad… faster…” He mumbled, and then finally he passed out completely.

He woke up with someone pounding on his back, the heavy thudding blows came hard, the noise of the blows were like the pounding of a steady wardrum, but not as loud or as bad as the pounding in his head.

Then it hit. The dreaded ‘gulp’ noise that came with briefly puffed out chipmunk cheeks. The one sign that foretold vomiting and warned anyone in front to get the hell out of the way.

“Bleuegh!” It wasn’t a word, it wasn’t spoken to the person pounding on his back, it was a violent expulsion of remaining liquor and bits of undigested and partially digested brown slop.

Drool and spittle dripped down Charlie’s lips as he leaned forward staring down at the now vomit stained shoes of himself and whoever was with him at the moment.

His unkempt beard caught some of the chunks and some of the spittle, and Charlie let out little ‘pew’ noises of half spitting, half just ‘blowing’ to get rid of the spittle.

“Gwah…” He mumbled and looked down at the vomit covered shoes of both himself and the person in front of him. “Sorry… really.” Charlie mumbled.

“Meh, they’ll wash clean.” Josef said with a good natured shrug that Charlie couldn’t see, but definitely felt when it changed the pace of the hand slapping his back.

“Drinking again, yeah?” Josef asked, looking down at the bottle.

“No. I finished the bottle.” Charlie replied with a bitter smile.

Josef gave a very mild, “Heh… good one…”

“So was the bottle.” Charlie said, resting his forearms on his knees and still looking down.

“You always did have good taste. But you shouldn’t drink so much, you’re not twenty-three anymore.” Josef replied in an even voice that, had it been a different tone, might have sparked an angry outburst.

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Instead Charlie only felt the burning in his gut. Anger at everything. Anger at nothing, anger at what was coming, anger at himself. Anger that death was a thing at all.

Anger at the universe he used to love.

It was night outside, he realized when he looked at the window out of the corner of his eye, “You didn’t have to come by this late.” Charlie said to break the silence.

“What time do you think it is?” Josef asked and Charlie answered immediately.

“It’s eleven at night, the clock is right there.” Charlie raised a hand and pointed to the end table close by.

“Right… Well, I just finished work, it took some time to work out those numbers.” Josef muttered. “Anyway, I brought some food, you need to eat something. And you can’t keep living in this filth or this will kill you before any disease does.”

“I know. God damn it, Josef! I know. I know, alright? I just… I don’t care. What’s the point?! I’m dead, what I… lost, what I did… it didn’t have to go the way it did and now it has and there’s no undoing it!” Charlie brought his hands up and slammed his head down into his palms, the stinging tears and frustration tore at him without any hint of mercy for the soul of the man.

“What am I supposed to do?! Just… keep on?! This sucks. I hate it… I’m not just going to get over this… that isn’t how this works. So what if it kills me to live in filth?!” Charlie shouted, and the massive hand of the gentle giant drew away.

“You can’t punish yourself forever… whatever happened, happened, man. Do you think you’re going to make anything any better doing,” Josef stopped, then bent over and picked up the bottle of Four Roses where it lay on its side, then brought the lip of the bottle to his mouth and tilted it toward himself, pantomiming drinking, “this?”

“Do you think that’s going to help?” Josef asked and tossed the bottle away from them both with the last drop dripping down into an old brown pizza box.

“No.” Charlie grumbled. “But I don’t feel any guilt when I’m passed out. I don’t feel sad when I’m dreaming. I don’t feel anything. And that’s something.”

Josef’s shoulders slumped a bit, “I guess not, I guess that’s true. But… that’s not getting any better.”

“Josef… if I… if I did something to hurt you, like if I accidentally poisoned you and you knew you were going to die… What would you want to happen to me? What should happen to me?” Charlie asked and craned his neck to look up at the gentle azure eyes that briefly blinked in confusion.

“I’d probably be kinda pissed off, I guess.” Josef said with a laugh, “But if I was screwed, if I was going to die and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it, I’d ask you to tell me a joke or something. Who wants to die miserable, afraid, and angry. You’re my oldest friend, and you’d be there… Okay, yeah. Its your fault, but not many people get to say goodbye to their best friends when they die. And not many people know they’ve got a chance to die laughing. I guess if you poisoned me, it was in the food. So I’d probably praise your cooking too.”

“I cook pretty well, so I expect so.” Charlie gave a weak smile up at Josef.

“So… yeah. I’d thank you for the good meal, good times, and ask for a joke on my way out so I can die laughing the way I wanted. I might not get old, but hey, nobody knows when they’re going to die, and I’ve had a good run.” Josef replied and looked out the window, “I saw that accident out there, you know.” He jerked his thumb toward the window.

“Oh, you did? What happened.” Charlie asked.

“The lady came into my shop, she’s not a regular like you were, abandoner,” Josef winked at Charlie with a playful smile to show he was teasing, prompting a “hmpf” noise before Josef went on, “but she came in a lot. She bought a few of our specialty items, some of the candies we make on site, including one for her kid. She said she had some big party coming up. Something important. I just happened to glance out the window of the shop in time to see her yank her kid back. I called emergency services of course. But you know… don’t you?”

“Yeah, if you saw it, you did the math before she hit the ground, didn’t you?” Charlie asked.

Josef nodded, “Everything going her way, then she was gone. The girl stayed in my shop for a little while before her father came and picked her up. It’s a shame, she didn’t get to say goodbye or anything, neither of them did.”

“I guess what I’m saying, I don’t have a perfect answer, I honestly don’t know how I’d react, but I know how I’d want to react. I don’t want to die, but if I’ve got to, I want it to be while laughing and with the people I like most. I don’t have a wife, no kids, that’s not going to happen while my dad is still living with me, and that’s okay. So… a good meal, a full stomach, a warm house, a last joke… and no old age to bother me, every problem over… that’s how I want it to be. The only downside is that it would be earlier than I want it to be. That make any sense, Charlie?”

“Yeah… yeah it does.” Charlie squeezed his eyes shut tight again, and Josef took the moment to go to the kitchen and hold up a white plastic bag from his shop.

“I brought you this, and enough for me. I guess it’s a little late to start cleaning up now… unfortunately.” Josef crinkled his pudgy wide nose, “But at least let’s get some food in you that doesn’t come out of a can.” Josef said and turned on the sink. “Where are your bowls?” He asked and opened the cabinet beside the refrigerator and found it bare.

“Ah, dishwasher… but I wouldn’t open that if I were you.” Charlie replied while looking through the wide entry that led into the kitchen. Though the dishwasher and sink were out of view from where he sat, he knew Josef well enough to be certain that the man probably wouldn’t listen.

A moment later Charlie was proven right. “Yeagh!” Josef’s voice of shock and the sound of the dishwasher slamming closed carried clear into the other room.

“I told you not to do that.” Charlie called out.

“No you didn’t!” Josef shouted back good naturedly.

“I definitely did!” Charlie shouted back.

“Nope!” Josef started shouting in return while the sink ran on, “I heard you loud and clear. You said, and I quote, ‘I wouldn’t open that if I were you.’ however, I am not you and you are not me. So if you were me and I were you, I’d use your body to open the dishwasher. You can’t stop me no matter who you are!”

“Alright, Ace Ventura… Jesus, always with the movie references.” Charlie shouted back. In spite of himself, he had to smile a little. A little.

“Okay, I’ve handled worse, much worse.” Josef said from the kitchen, “just stay there.”

Charlie didn’t say anything, he reached down to the floor and picked up his phone, off the charger for as long as it was, the damn thing was quite dead, so he fumbled around for the little white cable and plugged it in.

He then turned on the computer when the little lightning symbol came on the screen to show that the phone was charging. The computer was on power save mode, so it came up almost immediately.

He immediately hit google and started searching for various terms.

“The world is doomed”

“We are all fucked”

“End of the World?”

“Countdown to doomsday”

And so on. ‘Other than some edgelord teenagers, incel groups, and the usual apocalyptic religious stuff, nothing. So nobody knows.’ Charlie thought and closed the laptop after a few minutes searching.

Just as the little latch clicked into the closed position, Josef emerged from the kitchen holding a bowl.

“Seriously, you washed one of those?” Charlie looked at the bowl in askance, as if Josef was quite insane to have touched it.

“No, you can eat the filth.” Josef rolled his eyes, “Of course I washed it, you remember how to wash dishes, don’t you? We worked in the same kitchen, it can’t have been that long.”

“Yeah, it has kinda been that long but… fine. Thank you.” Charlie said and took the bowl, the contents were simple, just a salad of fresh greens, bacon bits, croutons, and some garlic vinaigrette dressing, along with black and green olives. Hardly a meal except that it was piled high.

A fork stuck out from the bowl and Charlie picked it up, it was plastic.

“You had some unopened plasticware lying around… everywhere, kind of.” Josef acknowledged, “I’ll wash a dish but… c’mon, really?”

Charlie flushed in the face, “Fair enough, I’d be a dick to even expect that you do this much, really, thanks man.”

“You don’t have to thank me, if the positions were reversed, what would you do?” Josef asked.

At that question, Charlie was quiet, pensive, ‘I don’t even know what I’d want, let alone what I’d do.’ He thought, and ate in silence with Josef standing by as the salad slowly vanished from the bowl to fill an empty stomach. The only sound was the tines of the fork against the glass bowl and the tearing of the points through the lettuce leaves. They crunched between his teeth and the flavor ‘popped’ on his tongue before he swallowed each steady bite.

When it was finally nearly finished, Charlie wasn’t sure if it was the company, the food, or something else but, ‘At least this time,’ he realized, ‘the meal doesn’t taste like ashes.’