Somewhere in the world, someone was waking up, feeling well rested, with no aches in any of their major organs, ready to start the day. This person was not Bert. Bert had enjoyed himself far too much last night, and he knew that by the laws of the universe, today he must be punished. Party Bert had shirked some of his responsibilities, leaving most of the cleaning for Post-Party Bert. Party Bert and Post-Party Bert had a love-hate relationship; Party Bert loved Post-Party Bert, Post-Party Bert hated Party Bert. The first thing Bert noticed as he woke up was that he was not in his bed. It appeared that Bert had fallen asleep on top of the dining room table. He took the scenic route back to his bed, but the scenes were very grim; mostly empty bottles and confetti that no longer resembled the rainbow waterfall it was advertised as. Like Cinderella’s carriage after midnight the confetti had revealed its true form; multicoloured chicken pox infecting his house. He suspected he might never see the end of it. The second thing he noticed was a pair of legs hanging out of the bathroom. It was not beyond his current mental capacity to presume this person’s identity, as he spotted the Italian made loafers bespeckled with what he desperately hoped was not vomit. “Hello Owen,” Bert sighed. Owen’s gentle snoring assured Bert that this was a problem he could deal with later. He reached the stairs. This was not an obstacle to be treated lightly. He took in a deep breath and began his trek. By the third step his knees began to wobble and figured it was in his best interest to change course. With his bed out of reach he gave up all hope of resuming sleep and began his morning routine.
Bert stumbled into his kitchen, swaying slightly, looking for something to eat. His stomach raised some objections about the necessity of food at this point in time. His brain disagreed; breakfast is the most important meal of the day. This went back and forth for a couple of minutes before his stomach eventually won out, by threatening to make Bert puke. This was an empty threat as there was nothing left in Bert’s stomach to throw up. His stomach did allow some concessions, permitting Bert to drink some much-needed water.
“Clive is a bad influence,” Bert said to himself, weakly trying to shift some of the responsibility for his bad decisions.
He moved onto the second item of his agenda: making himself a cup of coffee.
He reached under the sink and pulled out his favourite pugmug. He had called it a pugmug because it was a mug shaped like a pug. Bert chuckled to himself, in the same chuckle he made every time he used this mug, as if he had just thought of something clever, which he definitely had not. This did not go unpunished, as the chuckle reverberated in his stomach, who reiterated their threat to be sick with some menacing gurgles. Bert quietened up. He slowly sipped his coffee surveying his house making a mental list of jobs to do. Across the kitchen in the living space his father’s portrait had fallen off the wall and was now lying face down on the floor. He walked over to it and flipped it over. He could have packed it away now the party was done but lifted it back onto the wall instead. It was nice to have his warming presence in the house.
The third item on his morning agenda was to brush his teeth. He made his way to the bathroom, running his tongue across his furry teeth, keen for his mouth to feel fresh again. He was struck with disappointment when he remembered that between him and his toothbrush, an unconscious Owen lay with cheek resting on the toilet bowl.
“Owen, are you awake?” asked Bert, nudging the closest of Owen’s two legs. This was met with a drawn-out groan. Bert’s eyes assessed Owen’s situation and drifted upwards to the toilet bowl it appeared Owen had been trying to retch in. Bert tracked the splatter of sick sprayed almost everywhere except the toilet bowl. There was confetti sprinkled throughout, causing Bert to wonder if it had originated on the bathroom floor or if Owen had smuggled it in internally. Owen’s declaration that Europe had ‘raised his alcohol tolerance’ seemed to be about as true as the rest of his story. Even as Owen had been explaining how “the drinks are much stronger over there” and “makes all the stuff here taste like water” Bert had reservations, but he kept a slight hope that 6 months overseas would have at least improved his aim. Bert sighed as he tried to salvage anything from the entire third of the bathroom now covered with vomit.
As much as Bert didn’t want to deal with the pile of Owen lying on his bathroom floor, he owed it to those who had helped him when he’d been in this predicament, to pass on the favour. He had passed this favour on to Owen a few times now, but Owen also looked a bit pathetic lying in his own insides, and against his better judgement Bert felt a bit sorry for him. This didn’t totally eclipse his indignation however as he voiced several complaints to an unreceptive Owen. He brought Owen some water and persuaded him into having a shower. Bert found some clean Owen sized clothes he hadn’t needed since the last time Owen had come over. After showering, Owen slumped onto the couch and fell into a deep sleep. If you didn’t know Owen you could believe he was dead, but unfortunately Bert knew Owen well and was not fooled. Bert let out a resigned sigh and began work cleaning up. He started by picking up empty bottles scattered around the house with a statistically significant correlation to places Clive had been. He swept up bits of food and debris that had been kind enough to land on the kitchen tiling and brought out a chemical armada to attack that which had been unkind enough to land on his white carpet. At about 1PM, Owen started to show signs of life, so Bert requested a driver from a ride-sharing app before he’d have to deal with any more stories from Europe. Just Bert’s luck the first 2 drivers cancelled on him, and Owen was getting dangerously close to coherent speech. Bert was furiously tapping his phone, trying to get another driver before Owen stirred.
Too late.
“Hey Bert, can I… talk to you about something… important?” Owen sheepishly proposed from behind the couch, making every effort not to make eye contact.
Bert’s heart sank . He was not a fan of serious conversations. Bert liked serious conversations about who was going to win in the upcoming election, or whether Bitcoin is still worth investing in, or if water is technically wet. He did not like serious conversations about whether Joyce should break up with Shane, or if someone needs to talk to Claire about her drinking, or if Claire should break up with Shane. Owen’s tone made it feel like a category 2 conversation. Bert had already had one serious conversation earlier this week. It seemed unfair to have two in one week. He lamented his reputation which caused many of his friends and family to often rely on Bert for important advice on difficult topics. Even though he mostly obliged when asked, he did not like it any more each time. He didn’t even really feel like he was good at giving advice, or really had much valuable experience to pass on. Many of his friends had tried and failed to come up with a nickname to reflect this quality, but lucky for Bert there were no good alliterations with the letter B. He did frequently propose ‘reliable rob’ but everyone always thought it ‘didn’t really sound right’. He tapped cancel on the third driver just as the little dot turned on. This one seemed like they were actually planning on arriving. ‘If I lose my 5-star rating for this there’ll be hell to pay,’ he grumbled to himself.
“What’s up?” Bert winced as he forced himself once more into the fray.
“Well, since I got back from Europe things haven’t really been going so well for me.” Owen paused, either for dramatic affect or because he didn’t know what to say next. Bert couldn’t tell.
“I just don’t really feel I’m achieving much, and I’m not too proud of the reputation I’m building for myself,” Owen continued. Bert could vaguely sense a sombre tone in Owen’s voice but couldn’t quite be sure of it. Much like a great white shark can sense a single drop of blood in an Olympic sized swimming pool, Bert can tell when someone is upset if they cry enough tears to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool.
“It’s been a decade now since I’ve achieved my purpose, and nothing I’ve done, not Europe, not dancercise, nothing has made me feel alive. I even tried to call the God hotline to see if I could get some answers but was just left on hold for half a week. Nothing's working.”
“I thought you said you found God?” Bert queried, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, failing miserably and then coughing to try and cover it up, but only coming across as more sarcastic.
Owen sat up from the couch, eyebrows raised high enough to tuck behind his fringe and disappear. He opened his mouth to retort, but no words came to him and a glum expression washed over his face.
“You did have a really fun purpose though!” Bert prompted, feeling guilty for Owen’s rekindled sorrow. He also felt a slight sense of validation that he is really not that good at this heart to heart stuff. He paused for a moment to wonder why he felt good that his belief that he was bad at something was validated but decided to file that moral conundrum away for another time. The time he took to set aside this little thought did cause him to miss most of what Owen was saying and he was forced to nod his way through the remainder of it as he tried to catch up. Unfortunately, Bert’s consideration about how he needed to focus better and pay more attention caused him to fall even further behind in what Owen was saying and only managed to snap into attention enough to catch the question.
“So, what do you reckon?”
“I think if I was in your position I would take the time to focus more on myself to determine what was best for me.” Bert winced slightly, hoping his response was generic enough to answer whatever it was he had asked. Owen nodded along approvingly.
“I think you’re right. I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching and I’ve realised there isn’t really much left for me to do. You saw my pitiful display last night. The longer I hang around the more trouble I’m going to cause for everyone else. I think I’ll just send myself to the Afterlife a little bit early.” His voice was starting to break.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“I don’t want my reputation to be more of me throwing up all over my friend’s bathrooms, I want it to be scoring the last point in overtime to win the championship. The longer I persist on Earth, the more that image will fade, and this one grows,” he gestured to the bathroom Bert had been neglecting to clean up.
“Look, Owen, it’s really going to be no trouble for me to clean that up. No one is forgetting your purpose anytime soon. Didn’t the club recently ask for you to give a talk to the new team” Bert suggested, trying his best to cheer Owen up.
“The thing is… I did the talk. None of these kids know who I am. It was obvious none of them cared. I’m going to fade into irrelevance and I don’t think I need to stick around to see that happen.” Owen steeled himself, slamming shut his tear ducts, but this only caused the water welling up in his eyes to be ejected out, striping his cheek.
“Well, to me it sounds like you’ve already made up your mind. You’ve achieved your purpose, so there’s a chair up there with your name on it. It’s normal to want to skip ahead to the good part. A cousin of mine did the same last year and no one blinked an eye. But having said that, you’ve literally got an eternity to enjoy your eternity. There’s no rush to go on ahead, just relax, take it easy and don’t worry so much about your image. You’ve achieved your purpose, so there’s really nothing at stake if you want to go ahead and have a wild time. Just have a wild time somewhere other than my bathroom next time.”
“I think you’re right,” Owen declared, breaking into a smile, and standing up. Bert scolded himself for giving some genuinely good advice.
“That’s a relief, I think I’ve got enough to clean up here as is.” They both laughed. Owen made his way to the door but paused awkwardly. He shifted his feet around to face Bert to make it seem like he wasn’t planning on leaving without offering to clean up at all. Bert felt that was a bit rude. He did genuinely have a lot of mess to clean up thanks to Owen, so it was a bit rich of Owen to expect him to just deal with that, not that Bert would’ve accepted his help, but the least Owen could do was offer it. As punishment for this transgression Bert let Owen call up his own driver or taxi. This was just about the most outwardly hostile Bert could be, short of sighing just enough to be audible.
They regretted ending the conversation so definitively so early. They were stuck standing around waiting for the driver with nothing to say to each other. They both pulled out their phones and studied the ‘no new messages’ notification while making some off-hand remarks about the latest superhero movie until the driver arrived, relieving them.
Bert resumed his clean-up efforts once he had waved off Owen. He had saved the bathroom till last. For some reason it didn’t feel right to clean up someone’s innards while they were in audible range. He attacked the now disgustingly crispy chunks with a ferocity proportional to his revulsion. If he closed his eyes he could pretend he was just shining the shoes of God itself, but he could not close his nose. As much as he tried to fade into his fantasy, reality kept relentlessly interrupting like a heart attack might interrupt a pleasant family dinner. Bert considered lighting the whole room on fire but figured the fire would spread and burn down his whole house. This was not enough to immediately dismiss the idea, but it did eventually prove fatal to the thought. It took Bert significantly more time to clean up the mess than it took Owen to create it, but eventually he was able to make the bathroom look like no one had thrown up in it in at least the past week. Bert was not satisfied with this result, but also was wise enough to admit defeat before this battle destroyed him. The epic struggle between good and evil had compromised the toilet brush sitting beside the bowl, several of his best tea-towels and most of the afternoon. The collateral damage toll had been high. The toilet brush would need replacing, and a chemical squadron the likes of which had never been seen would need to be assembled. Bert picked up his coat and keys to head to the shops.
As he grabbed his coat he considered the possibility of bumping into the bubbly cashier that had served him last week. When this thought hit him, he was two steps out of his front door. He took two steps back and swapped out his coat for a trendier coat, with slightly more stripes. Bert quickly checked his reflection, slightly disappointed in the droopy face that stared back at him. His complexion resembled a dot to dot where the child doing it had missed the point of the game and had added more dots instead of connecting the ones already there. Bert resigned to the fact this wasn’t about to improve and continued out the door. Besides, the stripes really did complement the dots well. People had told Bert that these dots would clear up as he got older, but these same people had told him so would his hair. Bert was okay with this, because at least they were consistently wrong.
He hopped in his ergonomic, vomit green sedan and drove to the shops.
Bert skimmed over the registers as he strolled through the sliding doors with his head and shoulders held up, puffed out in a way that would infuriate any silverback gorillas in the supermarket. Luckily for Bert there were no silverbacks here, but unluckily neither was the cashier. ‘That’s okay, I still need to do the week's shopping tomorrow, so I might see her then’ he pondered to himself. Bert drooped his shoulders into what a chiropractor would describe as the exact opposite of good posture. Bert’s spine clicked unenthusiastically as it returned to its familiar contortions.
Bert found the cleaning aisle and scanned through the shelves picking out the cleaning bottles that had the appropriate number of skulls and radioactive symbols. He found the toilet brush on one of the higher shelves and reached out to grab it, but as he did so one of the shopkeepers pushing a trolley full of flattened empty cardboard boxes bumped into him with some of the boxes sliding out. Bert reached down to pick some of them up, feeling slightly responsible, as he always did whenever anything happened. He picked up the pieces and handed them to the shopkeeper who thanked him with just enough gratitude to match the small effort Bert had exerted and Bert nodded approvingly back at her.
Then suddenly Bert started to feel something. It was a deep throb confined to his toes, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. The sensation started to ripple through Bert’s body as though his toes had fantastic news that needed to get to his brain. As the news spread a warmth filled him up. Not the warmth like a fire, but the warmth of a hug. It was as if Bert was a human-shaped teacup that was filling up with maple syrup. It was pleasant. Bert’s fingers stretched out to their limits, dropping the toilet brush on the ground. His spine unfolded like a flick rolls down a skipping rope. His body was tensing but in a relaxed manner like he was stretching after a long satisfying sleep. As Bert’s body revelled in this feeling his mind grappled with what this could mean. Either he had stepped on a syringe filled with dopamine or he had achieved his purpose. His father’s words were bouncing around his skull “you’ll know it when it comes.” An almost numbing sense of dismay stained his thought. Was my purpose to pick up that piece of cardboard? Was that it? The pleasant feelings were hurtling towards his brain with the force and bliss of a freight train carrying nothing but xanax. A profound sense of insincerity gripped his mind, bracing for the impact.
For a moment his mind went blank. Then it burst with joy at its most absolute. The closest feeling Bert could relate it to was the childish delight of finding the chocolate bunny on an Easter egg hunt. The joy did not replace the horror within his brain but simply moved around it, suffocating him. It was a hollow joy, like he was being smothered to death with a smiley faced balloon.
Bert was completely stretched out now, with his face directed upwards, and his arms pointed outwards like an isosceles triangle. As the feeling skirted around the disturbed core of his mind, it burst through his knotted expression and radiated out into the roof in an intensely yellow light, framing his face like the centre of a sunflower. Several bystanders, including the shopkeeper turned to see what was causing the light and began to break in an awkwardly disjointed clap. It was customary to applaud a purpose, but it was unclear to them what the purpose was.
The light began to fade, and Bert’s stricken brain was released from its ambrosial prison. His body relaxed into the comparative soreness of ordinary sensations. In an effort to make sense of what had just happened Bert’s brain was scrambling through the 5 stages of grief but in its haste, accidentally went through them in the wrong order.
Acceptance: This was my purpose, I have completed my purpose. My life goal has been realised.
Anger: No, this is not what I wanted. I didn’t do anything, This feeling is fucked, this is bullshit, I’ve been waiting for greatness, not literally garbage.
Bargaining: I will give anything for this not to be happening.
Depression: I’ve wasted my whole life dreaming of a purpose and it’s picking up someone’s trash. Have I wasted my life? Was this the best I was capable of?
Denial: Okay this isn’t my purpose, this can’t be my purpose. Something’s wrong here, someone somewhere has made a very important mistake.
He settled on denial as he turned to face the shopkeeper.
“What was on the cardboard!!?” He roared at the shop keeper. This had to be the most important cardboard in the world.
“Who are you!? What were you doing with it!?”
The shopkeeper stuttered some meaningless words together, while stumbling back in fright. She knocked the trolley over, spilling all the cardboard onto the floor.
Bert dived into the cardboard rummaging desperately for the specific pieces she had dropped. This wiry 50-something lady must have been a spy carrying nuclear launch codes. No that’s ridiculous. She’s a secret alien ambassador and that cardboard was her breathing apparatus. No that’s worse. That cardboard is contaminated with a deadly virus and she’s carrying it to an incinerator where it can’t hurt anyone. This must make sense. This can’t be it. There has to be something here. He found the specific carboard pieces and tried holding them together in different arrangements hoping for something to click. Everyone in the store was now staring at Bert. Those that had been close had backed away to the safety of the crowd. His frantic rearrangements were devolving into sporadic cardboard waves into the air.
After several minutes the pieces fell out of his hands and his hands gravitated onto his head, fingers locking and a distressed expression scrunching up his face. The hyperactive energy he had been exhibiting was being eclipsed by depressed exhaustion as he was collapsing on the floor. Two of the bigger cashiers were walking towards Bert. One looked disgusted by the scene unfolding in front of her, the other winced with sympathy for the pathetic display. They grabbed Bert softly by the shoulders and lifted him up out of the pool of recyclables. Bert was brought outside the store. Some words were said to him by the shopkeeper followed by some points in the opposite direction. His mind was too far gone to consider this, so his body took over. His feet carried him to his car without any help from his brain, locked irreconcilably away from all responsibility as his eyes stared blankly at the pavement in front of him. The stares of other shoppers barely registering. He slumped into his car and defeatedly banged his head against the steering wheel, leaving it there. His identity, monopolised for so long by the anticipation of greatness, now felt empty.