All it takes to kickstart a day is an arm jostling out from its nest of pillows, but a day is long and full of hours—and unemployment time is a lenient and benevolent mistress. Read, jog, tidy up, make a mess. Tidy again. Teddy. Not even a half-day's work. Maybe the arm is aware of that. We weren't up on my clock, my arm and I. This was busy-Nanski's gong gone off to send her out to greet the people, pulling me along unwillingly. It was a small sacrifice I suppose, to spectate as she left to put food in our fridge, weed in our pipes. I hadn’t told her about the call from Theodore. It’s a rotten thing to do. It’s a reasonable thing to not do. He’s a stench. The type that makes people look sideways when passing, if you’re not fine-tuned to the wondrous machinations of mankind. Mmh. A fine boy for a collector of specimens. My fine boy of olde, before he shut the door on the world. But for others, he’s a creature best avoided. Out of sight and mind. Nan would not approve. A sleeping arm agrees.
The pounding in the vestibule was furious, like a landlord just checked his bank account, missing something. It could’ve been a dream, another sleep paralysis. But once it dawned on me, that I’d dozed off, it became very real. Three rings on the doorbell, two proper thuds, squeaky letterbox opened.
“Maaax I know you’re in there. I saw her leave twenty minutes agoooo.” No mistaking that nasal caterwaul of a voice. Positively Teddy the Kid.
He wasn’t toying when he said it was urgent. Eight sixteen. I barked “Yees!”, got up. Grabbed the first pair of pants I could find, wrestled into them on a wobble through the livingroom. More beatings on the poor old door.
“Maaax!” he roared.
“Yes god dammit I’m up!”
Only the door left. Simple one-two operation. Turn the lock, pop the handle. Buy the ticket, take the ride. Deep breath, a prayer. Done.
“Y’fken nuts or what? Lettin’ me stand out here like an idyat.” He held his arms out as if challenging me, smiled. Same burning eyes as always, spark of something lost twinkling behind them. I feigned a yawn, rocked back and forth on heels and pocketed hands.
“Coffee? Good Lord I need a cuppa’,” I asked.
“So I’m coming in?”
Glanced him up and down. All that vigor, threatening to tear down the walls lest I wake, had dissipated in an instant. Replaced by a look of forlorn perturbation like there was an actual scene on queue where I’d close this here door, no-go y’goy no-show. He stood there, squirming when I didn’t reply right away. It was too much to bear.
“Get in here you odd fakkah,” I said with attempted comfort, leaned out and grabbed the lapels of his black hoodie, and bungeecorded him safely inside.
“Fuck is wrong with—” he blurted mid-flight where I spun him around for an embrace, slamming the door in the same motion. I hugged him good and proper, cupped hands around his shallow ribs and tried to hold on. For a moment, just a teeny blink, he surrendered.
“Hippie bastard,” Teddy scorned, and I let him push me away. He met my drowsy eyes with a conniving smile (he knows that I knows that he loathes physical touch), and in it I saw something homely, a secret only we were privy to, a feeling reflected in him that I didn’t expect to burst up like this in my own insides. And the next blink, like the tranquility of a morning, it was gone. “We alone?” He kicked off his boots, looked around nervously. “Saw her leave, kept my distance. Let you sleep in, all that. We alone?”
“Sure,” I replied, herding him inside. The ominous feeling rose again. Nan's lingering perfume had been consumed by Theodore and the seaweed rot permeating the walls. Can two years of only chatting turn brothers into strangers? Surely it can’t. But he was… different. Haunted.
“Nice place.” His bearing hadn’t evolved an inch. Still flaunting the same rodent prowl, slightly hunched stature moving about in bursts and twitches.
“It’s alright. The landlord is a pure nut, lives up top. Downstairs you got an old artsy couple, real big deal according to themselves. They threw a party last weekend, invited us down and I swear they’d all dropped acid. This old bat kept following me around, patting me on the head, mumbling, said I reminded her of when she met Mick Jagger. But… holier. Could’ve been demented I’suppose.”
Teddy had stopped listening. He was inspecting the few paintings Nan had bothered to hang, the couch and coffee table that wasn’t ours, the floorboards, the cracks separating them. I pushed him past the bedroom mess of unknown implicating objects, into the kitchen. Closed the door, lowered blinds, lit incense to joust away the ocean’s plague, pulled out a chair for him, and got to work on a jug.
“How long were you in for?” I asked as I rinsed the (worst) filth from the pot.
“Two months,” he said after a silence.
“Two? And it’s all over now. You’re cured?”
He took a seat in a different chair than the one I offered, scratching a millimeter trim. Then he wormed the other hand into his jeans, faced me with a feigned reassurance stretched ear to ear.
“That’s what they say! Good as new.”
“Yeah? That bad huh.” Texts he’d sent me from inside flashed through my head. The madness described, implied. When he wrote to me two months prior, saying he was standing on the edge of a dark pit, that he was afraid the earth would rip asunder and swallow him, I didn’t think he’d heed my command and actually do it, call up emergency services. Didn’t think they’d convince him to willingly check into a closed psychiatric ward, label him suicidal. They’d send a technician at best, give him a sleeping pill for honorable service, pat on the head. How wrong I’d been. “Well you gave me a scare when you stopped writing, almost paid a visit to your mom’s to hear the bad news.”
“Almost?” he scoffed, like there was an inside joke only he understood. “That bitch didn’t call once over the whole stint. Sweet little mummy.”
“Mmh. Harsh—I guess.”
He was about to say something when I interrupted.
“I’ve never had the pleasure of serving up a full looney before. You gotta tell me about it, and no snippets. I want the full jist.”
“Come on…”
“Meeeh! Humor me.”
Leaning on his elbows, face in palms, he chuckled awkwardly. After a long pause, long enough for me to prep the coffeemaker and the first drops to spark through the tubes, he sighed.
“It was shit Max,” he began, talking solemnly to his feet. “A drag. You got all these degenerates and psychotics that don’t give a fuck about anything, yeah? It’s the first stop for all the relapse psychos and nutters before administration can figure out where to put them. Like, how’re you gonna get better when Marney’s yellin’ all night about how she’s gonna do it this time, she gonna hit the mainline. The other half are poppers on charter, stackin’ Benzo, stashin’ and tradin’ meds to get fucked in the head proper every three days, sneaking around waiting to knick yours if you go off on a nod. You just want someone to talk to, yeah? And nobody listens. Everyone’s tuned in on their own shit. Like I just wanted to breathe. Not much else to it. But nobody listened.”
“Yeah? Nice to be out again ei? Milk?”
He looked up to shake his head, then back on the floor again.
“Nah. People go in and out, shipped off to other facilities. You make nice, shoot the shit and next day they’re gone. Staff looks at you like you’re toxic. Like you’re a cancer-kiddo. There’s no humanity. You get all these meds to drown out the insanity but the air in there makes you worse, like you’re huffing down their crazy. I didn’t want to kill myself. I don’t think I did. Just… had to get out of my room. But then they wouldn’t let me leave. Said I was unstable, faking progress to get a hall pass. Day in and out you’re behind bars, all doped out to cope with being in a locked confinement with these fucking mongrels.”
He paused. I regretted asking. The room had taken an uncomfortable turn. It was pretty obvious that he didn't wanna say any of this shit, and I was listening to words I didn’t wanna hear.
“Well that’s fucked,” I said in an uppity tone while rummaging through cabinets. “A pill for every ailment they say, but I doubt anyone’ll ever find out what’s going on in your shifty little noggin’. Can’t blame em’, the mountain of manhours alone…”
“I didn’t wanna kill myself.”
“... and the budget cuts, oh lawdy. You’d need to start up a whole research field, university wings, professors. Who’d lead them with Pavlov ten feet under? I say…”
“Fuck off I’m serious! I never wanted to die.”
I placed the mugs on the table, sat down opposite him and slammed a palm down for theatrical emphasis. “Obviously! I mean you’re a doer. Not to be confused with someone who does a lot. But you'll die from sensory starvation if you go cooping up at your mom's again, get back on the scroll-n-fap routine.”
Teddy nodded, fiddled with his hands and wistfully stared out the window. It was hard to imagine it, despite being propped up right in front of me. Theodore shattered—a fragment of the madlad sparking up bedlam wherever he went, back before it all turned sour. Images of me in my shy teen beauty flashed by, chasing hallucinations through the pine forests and suburb idylls of Pisstown, Teddy close behind, taking notes on the potency and proficiency of anything we got our hands on; cough syrup, sleeping pills plucked out of maternal medicine cabinets at houses of supposed friends, industrial glue, mushrooms fresh off the ground in misty sheep pens outside of town come autumn, acid on sugar cubes at an Ikea parking lot in MCity, dodgy flower seeds off the web. But our findings back then stretched far beyond metrics and datasheets—we found ourselves in those feverish summer nights, shivering frostbitten nightmares of winter. We found each other and a kinship of bickering levity, of love through teasing and wrestling and growling at everyone around us. We’d turned our backs on all of them. Didn’t need em’. Except for a curious few who held some ineffable value. Nothing could touch us, we were indestructible and conceitedly aware of it. Picked fights with anybody – and always escaped unscathed. Always came out on top by some rogue benefactor or miracle, like old Ned the Needle, or Steven, the local Nazi warlord who’d materialize out of thin air just as the bashing of I and Theo was set to begin. These absolute shites would recognize our faces, connect the dots to some dealing or transitory ciggie, assess the mess we were in, and all of a sudden blades were drawn, brass threaded over knuckles. Teenage boys quivered, grown men bolted and in the midst of it all we stood, laughing, rioting, darting through youth. Nobody would go near us, they thought we were connected all the way through to Bandidos and Hells Angels. Then one day it stopped. Teddy locked the door, stopped leaving his room. He was my best friend back then, like the only one who saw it all. Who saw me and didn’t fuss about, said what he wanted to say and pissed in every direction he deemed dry. My mom tried to forbid me from seeing him when the rumors of our escapades reached her, and for him, for the first time in my life, I'd stood up to her, told her what a cunt she was and that I'd knock her out if she didn't vacate the doorway because he meant everything to me. He was my world back then. Somehow I slipped through the cracks in the walls we'd built around ourselves, but he got stuck in there. When the fuckery subsided I looked around to see what the world had on offer. But he just… slipped into its shadows.
We were well beyond awkward in our silence, both staring out at the sprouting maple tree or a bird or fuck knows what, when he slapped a zippy full of white powder next to the mug. It only took a second I reckon for the zippy to pull on my heartstrings, palms warming up, building towards perspiration, and the oh so familiar tingle, creeping its contorted face over a ridge internal.
“You know what day it is right?” he began. “It’s the day our Lord and Savior rose from the grave, two thousandish ago. Now what good’re we, in the capacity of devout Christians, if we do not revel in his blood and celebrate his name ei?”
“Pretty sure he didn’t turn wine into powdah on Easter Eve. Whaddya have there? It’s like nine in the bloody morning.”
“Lord!” he proclaimed in a raspy soapbox voice and looked up at the ceiling. “Martha said to Jeeesass, ‘If you been here my brother wouldn’a died!’. Upon which Jeeesass replied, ‘bitch don’t be ignant n’ deliver unto me the ashes of Lazarus and he shall riseth.’”
Teddy rose from his chair, arms soaring like he was Christ crucified, picking up momentum and spinning round the room.
“Take me Lord and cleanse me in her womb! I’m a hapless sinner—and so is he!”
Stopping mid-spin, he pointed at me with mad eyes and a countenance I hadn't seen in a living soul since we were seventeen. The knot in my stomach pulsed with a mix of pity and fear. Like I was being sucked into a nebulous vortex, the toll of admittance too fine-printed to fathom. I’ve never told him how much he’d meant to me, seven years ago when he entered my life on a lukewarm summer evening, when we were but specks on the canvas of glory. I’ve never told him that finding him there, on a bench behind Al-Jaffah Good and Service, was like finding god. I owe him everything, every last shred of my person. He showed me the light out of my shyness, how to turn fear into power. And of this fact, he is wholly oblivious.
“What’s in the bag man! Jesus fucking Christ! Speed?”
“Guess again.” He started doing a little dance, swinging bony hips and snapping fingers. Nauseated, I picked up the bag, unzipped and dipped.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“What the fuck is that,” I said, trying not to grimace. “Some proper RC vibe.”
“Nope. Ketamine brother. High time to ascend!” He spun around, opened a cupboard and then another. “Where are the plates? How can you live without plates.”
“You do you man. I’ll watch. The plates are in the bottom drawer.”
Roles reversed. Me the voyeur, the note-taker; he the red-eyed lab rat braving a new frontier. I was all for it, the madness. My mouth said no but tendrils of spirit reached out, fondling the bag, toying with its contents like a kid in a sandbox. My synapses had already been leased out to Nan and MCity, earmarked for spending once the sun had sunk through the horizon line. But the sight of him was gut-wrenching. Like I’d sucked the air out of the room with my decline, sending Teddy into a free-fall, limbs tensing up, cracking the shell he’d manufactured for this here moment. Someone had to man the rudder before we struck shallows.
“I got shit to do today Theodore. Gotta go into MCity. Big rave and Nan will murder me if I cancel.”
It was true. Saying it out loud was like peering through a keyhole, catching a glimpse of the monstrous creature that was her wrath. Teddy didn’t reply, didn’t move—a statue with arms hanging like a bridge between the fixtures and his shoulders. He was I. I was him. Bottom approaching fast. A bottom neither of us were willing to face, there and then. Save it for later, sins are made for repenting. Weakness made for atonement.
“Fuck you,” I snarled after what must’ve been a micro-eternity. “You win! Fine! Yes. We’ll do ketamine.” More silence. His face turned away from me, unresponsive, unmoving, annoying me. I’d sacrificed the peace of paradise, banished my own dignity. Maybe he didn’t hear me? “Go on then! Get to work. I gotta catch a train in like seven hours.”
Five seconds to act, ten, then I barged up from my seat, chair crashing into the floor, to grab a plate, prep the lines in a fit of rage. I pushed him aside, opened the drawer but stopped. Tears streamed down his mottled cheeks as he looked up at me. All hollow, like his soul had slipped out through the chapped, parted lips.
“I need this Max,” he said without trembling. “Need to do this with you.”
I sighed, walked back to the table, picked up the chair, dusted it off, sat down and gestured to the plates. “I can see that Teddy. Let’s take a breather. We all need our somethings, yes?” Deep breath. “So! What’re we up against? Come here.” I tried to offer him a hug but he just shook his head for nay. He took a plate, positioned himself beside the table and turned the bag upside down, finger flicking out its contents.
“Need a razor.” A surgeon's peremptory orders.
“MasterCard is all I have. Bedside table, and in the drawer you’ll find two straws.”
On vermin legs he made quick work of the distance to the door, blasting a pillar of light straight at me as he opened it and disappeared into the room. The knot had entered hyperdrive, churning reactor chamber alerting me to the mortal perils ahead. I knew it was a shit enterprise, that ketamine was a horse tranquilizer best suited for the troubles of equinity, unsuited properly for mankind’s divinity. It was already being whispered about in certain circles on the rave scene, praised and denounced in a roughly 50/50 split. He popped back in, looked as seared by the light as I felt, and got to work.
“You’re not going Kool Aid on me now?” I asked as deft hands started molding the madness into digestible shapes. “You didn’t have a moment in there? Realized you’re Manson’s third reincarnation or some shit?”
This was A-grade dope. I’d only dipped my fingertip, and I could already feel an insect jitter under my skin that definitely wasn't there before.
“Nobody likes a pansy,” he replied, zoned in on the task. He cut the lump again and again until it was fine and smooth, split it in half, and worked the white mounds with the card like a budget Michaelangelo until two lines began to take shape. They were thick as pencils, longer than your average coke line. Very troublesome.
When he was done he gave me a straw and said “Guests first!”. I took the card and shaved off a third from one of the lines, looking parentally at him, like I’d caught him doing the naughty, and up it went.
“One down,” he said as I stood up, leaning my head back, rubbing the nose bridge. It came on quick, real quick. A searing fire concentrated to my forehead, spreading like a tsunami in all directions, engulfing every nerve and fiber, swallowing me whole. I slumped down to the floor, tried to focus my energy, taking it all in.
“Shit Theo. That is a b-b-bit – ah shit! – heavy.”
“We’re just getting started.”
Somewhere in the distance a suction-machine switched on and I could feel it, how another entity stepped through the portal into the hostile wastelands of my kitchen.
“Shit shit shit,” he chanted, stomping his feet, letting a warcry rip through the air.
“What’ve we done Teddy?”
“Whaddya mean? I told you… Fuck me shit! I told you! It’s time to face the light and atone for sins undone – to embrace the Lord and rise from this mortal mess and sit by his side in the presence of angels. Sweet little angels.”
“Pfft yeah ok sure Teddy whatever Teddy. We did too much! I can’t feel my fucking hands.”
They were right there, right in front of me and then they weren’t. Someone, or something, had moved them. I could hear my heart pounding and when I scanned the room it felt like my head would come off. Vision misaligned, some invisible hand dragging the image too slow. Couldn’t keep up with me. I was falling apart.
“Music Teddy… I’m smelting. It’s a virus. Shitting fuck it’s too much.”
I crawled to the door, opened it and shrieked in terror as the sun pierced right into me full force luminating every fiendish inclination in hiding, projecting them to full scale. I turned back to assess the damage but Teddy was unharmed, peering out of the blinds.
“Get away from the window!” I barked. “Some basterd might see you!”
I buckled up, kept moving to the computer resting on the bed, entered the password, then again, and again and again until some malign entity took over. My hands were working on years of conditioning, like they’d laid dormant, waiting for this moment to prove their worth in the face of catastrophe. Screens hopped and shifted, appearing never to be seen again. By some miracle the thud of a bass drum echoed through the apartment like a life vest thrown from beyond, synchronizing with my own internal rhythm. A distorted voice repeated This is not electronic, Punjabi music, and I pulled the cover down, wrapped it around myself, crawled under the bed through dustmites the size of rats, out the other side coughing into a corner below the window. It felt safe, covered off from all external angles. Nobody could see me, and just then Teddy entered the room. I’d forgotten he was here.
“We need to leave,” he said with a mix of fright and authority.
“Are they coming?”
“What?”
“Nevermind. Just—”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“This isn’t wholesome Teddy, this is the devil’s dope.” I set to arranging, measuring, sorting myself and the cover so that only my face poked out of the duvet kebab.
“You need to let go,” he replied calm as a lizard.
“Let go of what exactly?”
“We should go for a walk. It’ll clear you out. What in the fuck kinda music is this?”
I wasn’t entirely sure myself. A distorted voice kept repeating the same phrase over and over to a furious snare, base trying to drown the whole piece. It was pointless. Somewhere in the cacophony Punjabi music echoed in circles. Teddy looked cool and collected, smiling.
“It’s not music,” I said, an exemplary host. “It’s my heart rate. You should lie down, you don’t look too well.”
He jumped on the bed and I realized that I wasn’t seeing out of my eyes.
“Oh God Theodore. I’m in the ceiling!”
Laughing he said, “It’s normal. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not worried Teddy, do I look worried?”
“Maybe a little.”
“What do you want Teddy?”
“What?”
“We made a mistake, like trying to cure pneumonia with paint thinner. But we’ll run with it. We’ll sort it out.”
“I’m seeing three of you talking, and I can’t understand what the fuck either one is saying.” He squinted at me, triple cross-eyed, shaking his head as if to reboot.
“What do you need?” I said, emphasizing every word, and then I lost patience. “That’s what I’m asking. Standard fucking question. And before you answer it I want you to think real good because this shit ain’t sane. This dope ain’t normal. I’m not in my body right now and I don’t know who is, and let's not even get into the paranoia. None of this is kosher. You, Teddy, are a human being and in this regard you have needs and wants, urges and drives. If these are not satisfied you are lacking. So what I’m asking is this: What do you need?”
He was smiling all creepy like he does when he’s switched on a vibe, when you break through the fourth wall and peep in where you ain’t supposed to but I’m ready. I’m fucking ready this time.
“You wanna be reborn?” I continued. “Huh? Wanna start over again?”
He stalled. The base was doing a number on me – despite my vantage point it was near impossible to meddle forth a peace treaty between my mouth and head. The longer he stalled the further away I drifted, so I yelled “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT?!”
Jumping half a foot, crying out “Holy Mary I was in another place,” he looked around himself. “This. I want this.” He bit his lip, cheeks quivering real subtle.
“You wanna be a ketty dope boy? You can’t get on the switch on/switch off machine trail and expect to enjoy it… It’ll catch you in the head; ah shit. What the hell am I talking about? Are you crying?”
“I just… I just wanna love somebody.”
“No shit. Turn that fucking music off I can’t stand it.”
“I want what you have Max. A girl, a normal life, and friends…”
It was hard to make out, but I was quite certain that tears were speeding down his eyes but the god-awful music – Phat booty on the usual DJ Assault monotone beat – put the scene in a discord. I did what any reasonable being would and wormed my way over to the computer, smashed my hand on the keyboard. Instantaneous liberty.
“Ah man. Can you hear that Teddy? It’s your thoughts.”
“Why are you doing this?” he replied, rolling over on his stomach. I shed the cover like a snake discarding skin, jumped up onto the bed, wobbled over to him and straddled. I could feel a surge passing through him. An urge to wrestle him erupted, some hardcoded need to subjugate him like I’d done a million times in his room of olde, when he tried to throw me out for want of privacy and I’d refused to leave. But this time was different. No resistance. And then I remembered the other things.
“This is medicine. I won’t rape you,” I said soothingly as I put my palms on his back, drawing circles and shapes until I got lost in his shirt. He just took it, took it like a good boy. “When I met you I was nothing Teddy, and you were the universe. You did your thing, didn’t take shit and didn’t give two fucks about anybody. The world didn’t want to look at you, but you forced their eyes to see your weird face, terrorized them wherever you went. Do you remember that time you made me cry cus’ you called me all sorts of names, and you were about to go home but I didn’t want you to leave? And I said that you’d hurt my feelings and that I’d be dead if you left me there. You know it?”
He nodded into the bed.
“And you asked me: Why do you even fucking care what I think?”
He nodded again.
“And I said the cringiest shit I’ve said in my whole life.”
“Yeah,” he sobbed. “That was pathetic.”
“But you didn’t make fun of me for it.”
“Don’t stop rubbing. It’s nice.”
“And we done so much shit together, and now you’re fucked in the head and you’ve run out of gas and you’re a social god damn autist and I’m not.”
An energy had built up in some backroom out of sight, rising, coursing in waves through my arms into his body. I could feel his inner being screaming for help, clawing at the walls of its rotting cell. As my eyes went shut-shut its image pixelated – a pitiful creature, strung along on a noose of false promises, ephemeral truths that it’d one day see the light, truths that Teddy was too weak to embody. The fractious demonkid that had been my master, and then my equal. Fallen from divinity into the pits of his own soul. I had descended into his soul in order to erect what a bad hand had toppled. I was God. I had ascended.
“You’ll see the glory of old my Lord, but a just Father demands a sacrifice. Flush the rest of the bag. All of it. Not a grain of torment can remain. And then you’re going to purify your soul in a bath of holy water. Scrub all the nasty filth off your insides, cleanse the rot and flush out the quagmire that is your eternal soul. We need a Teddy fresh, something to build, to mold. You unlocked the gates that led us here, to this precious moment in our alternate timeline. Now listen to your Lord, heed the call or forever tumble into debauchery and ultimately, death. Don’t even dare to avert off the path Teddy-boyo. I’ll see you hung!”
I rolled off him and almost fell on my arse, saved by agility and an invisible hand placing me upright. He sat up, eyes red and swollen, revealing a wet stain where his face had been.
“I need a smoke,” he said with all the destitution he could muster. It made me wanna smack him.
“Hell fucking no! The neighbors Teddeh, they’re gonna flog us if we go outside – done for. Eternal damnation.”
“No man…”
“GET YOUR ASS IN THE SHOWER!”
And there, the shell cracked, yolk pouring out, wailing louder and rising still, like an animal crying out primordial horror. There were two of him, sitting side by side, embracing, faces covered by the black hoodie.
“One step two step routine,” I said with the patience of a saint, unsure if he could hear me over the ooing and booing. “Into the kitchen, get the plate and the bag – all of it – and one step two step to the bathroom. It has to be by your own will, yes? No good it does in mine, no respite. Here, I’ll hold your hand now. Purr-purr, here we go.”
I got up and skipped around the bed, guessed which image was real, took its hands in mine and began pulling. He resisted, so I pulled a little harder until he fell over and I dragged him onto the floor.
“Teddy! Snap out of it!”
On pure instinct he curled into full fetus, hiding his face as the sound pitched up, reaching unbearable heights, ripping through me like a blade. I had to make it stop, had to penetrate his flesh and rip his soul out into a new dawn. I barked but received no response. The ravine floor in glistening obsidian was approaching fast, soon the time to act would be lost forever. So I rolled him onto his back, pulled his hands away to see a contorted monster and gave him a good slap right on the cheek. The smack split the air in half, and through that ripple I was able to lift him up on a slipstream, place him neatly on his own two feet.
“There you go.”
I got a good look at him, torment etched into the blurred faces like permanence but anything’ll wash off with soul bleach. His eyes hollow, seeing nothing. The time was now, the chasm closing its maw to devour the sun. I pushed him in front of me, like Moses into the desert.
“Kitchen. Good boy, and now through here. Good. Shed those threadies now. You’re meeting our Lord and Savior, Teddy. Show Him his image, show Him what a mess he done did.”
As the powder went sailing into murky waters, it dissolved, its contained insanity passed on to some other misfortuned bastard. I turned the showerhead on a random setting, blasted the pressure to full and helped him undress, throwing garments left and right. In the midst of all the commotion my own two feet refused to obey, sent me crashing to the floor. Teddy swayed from side to side, almost keeled with me. It made my labor much easier, clawing his pants off and undies in one swoop, flaccid cock shriveled up into defensive formation, hurling profanities through its choke collar. With the last cloth unsheathed, I brusquely pulled him down into my lap, hopped my bony asscheeks like stilts over the tiles and into the tropics. The water, perfectly warm, absorbed into my pores, turning me to liquid. I had dissolved, melding with Teddy and the sewers, soaked clothes weighing me down and I performed the last rite. Before releasing him proper, I placed a hand under his neck, two under his knees and started rocking back and forth, humming on some nursery rhyme whose lyrics escaped me. The convulsions revved up, sure as bits, as he covered his face in my shirt and howled. The physical birth is a static affair, it has been mapped and plotted, but the birth of your soul cannot be predicted or facilitated by external means of preparation. Teddy had been the midwife of my soul, had delivered me into the light that was now his darkness, and so I held him closer, and wept of joy.