Chuck buttoned the end of his sleeve. He then unbuttoned it. And then buttoned it again. And then unbuttoned it again. And then buttoned it. And then unbuttoned it. And then, one last time, he buttoned the end of his sleeve and then buttoned it again. His eyes were red from the hangover and his hair was messy. His hands shaking, he tried to flatten it out, but it didn’t work. He reached for the collar of his shirt and straightened it. He then flattened his hair again. And then he fixed his collar again. Flatten, collar, flatten, collar, flatten, collar. Button, unbutton, collar, flatten, collar, button, flatten, unbutton, flatten, collar, collar, flatten, button, etc, etc… He then slapped himself in the face. That worked fifty percent of the time. The other fifty, he’d get a drop of blood onto his cheek, so he’d freak out and scrub his face until it was red. With a sigh, Chuck backed away from the mirror. That helped to. He sat on the bed of his hotel room and looked at the ground.
A speck of dirt caught his eye. Chuck’s heart began racing, his throat dried up, and his hands started shaking. The slow rise of the shape into his eye twitched around until it became formless, a blob of colour, not even making sense to humanity. A feeling of tiny feet pressed all over Chuck’s arms, through his sleeves, and the smallest needles pierced the skin of his leg. A dark breeze blew across his back as the millions of feet crawled up his neck, under his chin, behind his ear. Bug antennas delicately trod his skin. Motionless and paralyzed, a fuzzed skin brushed beneath his socks. His eyes grew wide, as he felt something sharp graze his nose and his face. Suddenly, the legs of the millions of bugs started crawling from the bed onto Chuck. He screamed, stood up, and ran over to the corner of the room, dropping down onto the carpeted floor and writhing as if he were being exorcized. Tears streamed down from his eyes as he grabbed onto the fabric of his shirt. Being on the carpet, more millipedes crawled all over him, his back, his arms, and Chuck started dry-heaving. After he was finished, he tried his best to stop moving and stared at the ceiling, both of his eyes twitching. He breathed in and out loudly and slowly. It was shaky and nervous, but he just kept breathing to ease his mind.
“It’s not real, Chuck, Goddammit, it’s not real!” he whisper-yelled to himself.
Out of nowhere, a solid liquid emerged into his throat, and Chuck turned over onto his side and opened his mouth, the white-orange liquid vomit escaping his mouth and spreading across the floor. He coughed. Chuck then realized that he needed help. With his fingertips, he pressed against the carpet and dragged himself across the ground, trying to approach the phone. He kept going further, gaining more strength as he went along, using his knee to advance himself. He finally reached the phone and grabbed the cord, the whole machine falling onto his head. He quickly dialed the first number that he remembered. And that was Joan’s number. He quickly typed it in and waited for her to pick up. After a while, it went to voicemail and Chuck’s tears accumulated more. He dialed the next number that he remembered and it was Frankie’s number. He didn’t want to call Frankie. He was an old friend, and they hadn’t been on good terms since high school. But that was the only number he remembered, and he needed help more than anything. Despite the dread and hatred that he felt for Frankie, he didn’t want to have to die in a bug-hotel, no matter how much it was in his head. After dialing the number, he waited and waited, and as the bugs started to drown Chuck, he heard a simple word uttered that assured him of his entire future and safety, his life, and an ease to his torture.
“Hello?” said Frankie on the phone.
Chuck breathed out in relief and started groaning out of pain.
“Frankie…” he said weakly.
“Chuck? What do you want?”
Chuck made a noise as if he was coming up from the water for air.
“I…” he bit the inside of his cheek. “Help…Help me…”
Frankie stayed quiet on the other line of the phone.
“Chuck? What’s going on?”
“6…12…Uh…Hurry, plea…se,” said Chuck with his last spark of energy.
“Chuck! 612?! Is that your hotel room?! Chuck! Chuck!”
But it was too late. Chuck had already passed out.
Chuck woke up to the image of Frankie, a worried expression on his face, shaking Chuck awake by the shoulders. He shook him again and again, until Chuck’s eyes adjusted to the light. He looked up at the ceiling and then back at the ground. The bugs seemed to be gone. But he could still sense the presence, so they must have been crawling somewhere else. Maybe on the bed… on the walls…
“Chuck?! Can you hear me?!” yelled Frankie, shaking Chuck.
“I…”
He was about to answer, when suddenly, he felt the bugs from the floor walk their little legs onto his, his this and his lower back. He screamed and then jumped closer to Frankie, throwing a frantic look around the room and then dropping his head into his own lap, stroking his own neck.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God…”
Panicked and horrified, Frankie shook Chuck again, but he remained in the same position.
“Hey, what the hell is going on?!”
Chuck started crying into his knees.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God, they’re everywhere, oh God…”
“What’s everywhere?!”
Chuck didn’t answer and started dry-heaving into his lap.
“Get me somewhere clean, Frankie! It needs to be clean!”
Frankie observed Chuck with terrified eyes and then looked around the room. He didn’t know that it was ‘unclean’ to begin with. It looked perfectly clean. He frantically reached for Chuck’s shoulder.
“Uh…okay, uh… How about the bed, is that clean?”
Chuck shook his head quickly and dry-heaved again.
“No, no, it’s not clean! I have to go somewhere clean!”
Watching Chuck completely unfold in front of his eyes had an effect on Frankie. Chuck was always in control. In every situation, Chuck was always sure of himself, and he never asked a question, never asked for help, never admitted to being in trouble… And now, there he was, shaking like a damn leaf, rocking back and forth, his head buried deep into his lap. Frankie watched with a certain curiosity. He had never seen Chuck like that before. He was vulnerable, he was weak, he was scared. That wasn’t the Chuck that he knew, and it added a whole new layer to him. He snapped out of his trance, and realized that it wasn’t just another shade, it meant that something was seriously wrong. He stood up and reached for the phone, then leaned his hand downward, since it was on the ground.
“Screw this, I’m calling the police.”
Chuck finally let go of his hair and then looked up at Frankie with panic in his face.
“No!” he yelled quickly. “No, please! Do not call them! They’ll just send me to the hospital, and it’s so dirty there…God, it’s bad… Please don’t send me!”
While he spoke, Chuck grabbed onto Frankie’s forearms. The latter came to the conclusion that he didn’t like the sight of his old friend groveling either. It wasn’t normal, it wasn’t natural, and he didn’t like it one bit. It raised a deep discomfort in the deepest end of his soul, and he decided that he didn’t want to see it, not at all, and he was going to do his best not to. There was something horribly off. It wasn’t that Chuck was an extremely put-together guy, but he was never this…messed up. His hair was all over the place, his eyes were sunken and dark red… His eyebags went all the way down to his cheek bones, and his breathing was heavy and bothered. He was like a dying Victorian child, as if Polio was still a thing. Troubled at the sight of his old friend, Frankie decided to give into whatever was asked.
“Okay, okay, fine! Where do you want to go, then?”
Chuck let go of Frankie and sat back down on the ground, holding his arms as if he were cold.
“Um… I don’t know…” he was still shaking, and avoiding eye contact.
“What the hell is happening to you?”
“Frankie?”
“Yeah?”
“In the bathroom, above…the…sink,” his sentence wobbled, “there’s a b…ottle…of pills…”
“Okay, got it,” Frankie got up and started walking, but Chuck stopped him.
“It’s…yellow with a…blue sticker.”
Frankie resumed the path and headed straight for the bathroom. He emerged with the bottle of pills and sat back down on the floor next to Chuck, handing it to him. Chuck accepted it and took a couple in his shaky hand, forcing it down his throat while closing his eyes. He then kept his eyes closed and started breathing in and out. He opened his mouth for a bit, and Frankie was worried that he might be asleep. But he wasn’t, since he opened one eye and twitched his entire face.
“Bring me to that chair over there,” he pointed to a desk near a window. “Please.”
Frankie grabbed Chuck underneath his armpits, brought him to his feet and slung one of Chuck’s arms around his shoulder, carrying him like a wounded man in World War Two. He then slowly approached the chair in front of the desk, but just as he was about to put Chuck down, there was movement from Chuck, as if he were trying to stop Frankie.
“Wait, wait!”
Frankie furrowed his eyebrows.
“What?”
“Clean the chair…please. There’s the bottle of cleaner, and a roll of paper towels. Just right there on the desk. Clean the whole thing, please.”
“Um…okay…”
Frankie reached for the paper towels and detached a few, spraying the chair in the process. He wiped it down until it was clean, while Chuck leaned against his side, ready to fall down if Frankie moved an inch. He dropped his old friend onto the chair and the latter looked a lot more relieved. Chuck leaned his head back, put the backside of his hand against his forehead and sighed. Frankie was curious. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but he knew it was strange and very foreign. It was the same feeling as when a really close friend loses a family member, and you’re not really sure what to say—should you just say nothing, and risk looking insensitive? Or should you say something and trigger a wave of negative emotion?—. Frankie decided to ask Chuck what was going on, but he wanted to wait a little, so it wasn’t too fresh when he asked the question. Chuck now had his eyes open and he was intensely staring at the wall ahead, his eyebrows furrowed and his eyes squinted. He looked very concentrated. It looked to Frankie like Chuck seemed okay enough to talk to now. So he took a chance.
“Chuckie?” he started softly, reverting to familiarity by using the old nickname.
He looked up at Frankie.
“What the hell was that?”
Chuck looked around the hotel room. Frankie followed, trying to see if maybe Chuck was looking at something. But all he saw was a plain old hotel room with white beds, burgundy carpeted floors, big windows that revealed a cityscape… Frankie had seen that kind of place before. He looked back at Chuck and waited for an answer as the latter just stayed terribly quiet.
“Well…?” asked Frankie impatiently.
Chuck sighed and looked up.
“A bit less than fifteen years ago... I developed…a problem.”
Frankie raised his eyebrows on instinct. He was naturally skeptical of Chuck.
“I…can’t be around dirty objects. Stuff with dirt, crumbs, crust, anything, really. I get all crazy like that… My doctor calls it panic attacks. So I get them every time I sit in something dirty, or step in something dirty… I also have to turn off and on the lights a hundred times and adjust my collar like it was ever crooked to begin with. Bottom line, I’m crazy. I always knew that I was going to be at some point, and you, you probably knew it too.”
Frankie didn’t answer. That was until he realized something.
“You weren’t always like this… Not when we were kids. And your talking’s better.”
Chuck shook his head to agree with Frankie.
“It’s a long story… It’s just all based on an event that happened to me a while back. And I have pills too. They don’t help me with the situation,” that was obvious, since Chuck was still shaking, “but they make me talk pretty, is all.”
“And you weren’t like this at the funeral… Or at the bar.”
Chuck blinked a few times, looked at the ground, winced, and then looked up again at Frankie.
“You’re right. I wasn’t. When I… When I drink, it sort of…helps me. That’s why I do it all the time. It eases my panic, makes my brain quiet down, and most importantly, I stop seeing those damned bugs everywhere. It just makes me…better.”
Frankie didn’t know what Chuck meant by bugs, but his main thought was what he said before that.
“Hold on… You were drunk during Paul’s funeral?”
Chuck slowly nodded his head in shame.
“I didn’t want to ruin the whole thing with my…me.”
Frankie scoffed and leaned back onto the table behind him.
“I don’t know that that wouldn’t have been better. You sort of did ruin it in the end, you know. You called Paul a-”
“I know what I did. I remember everything. I'm that kind of drunk,” said Chuck, haunted.
“Oh.”
There was another silence. Frankie’s feet started to get tired.
“Hey, uh… You don’t mind if I sit down on the desk, do you?”
Chuc shook his head. Frankie sat down on the desk as Chuck stared out the window.
“How did it happen?”
Reluctant, Chuck ran his palms over his thighs and breathed in a few times. This was something that he hadn’t told anyone besides his doctor. And Frankie wasn’t the most trusting soul. But somehow, seeing how quick he was to help him, how fast he was to come over, how quickly he complied to Chuck’s requests—Chuck knew that if the roles were reversed, he would have never cleaned a chair for Frankie or asked if he could sit down on a desk—. When they were kids, it didn’t matter if one got hurt. They would laugh at each other, because it was funny. But when one of them would get seriously hurt, they wouldn’t laugh. But they wouldn’t be caring either. There would be a caring manner to their actions and words, but they would never pick each other up, pat each other, or say comforting words of ‘it’ll be alright’. They weren’t like that. And his parents weren’t good people, so they weren’t good to Chuck, even though he was their son. Chuck was alone. So when Frankie would show that small bit of care, or caring manner, that he would, it made Chuck feel like he wasn’t so alone. Like he wasn’t a bad person. And although Frankie wasn’t often sincere, he was more sincere than his parents ever were. He liked Frankie more than he liked his parents. He never had a friend like him ever again, after they seperated. But Chuck was grateful to have been his friend anyways. Frankie had set the standard for every future friend that he was to acquire. And he didn’t acquire many. Although, once they had their fight, he lost all respect for Frankie, and all of a sudden, he couldn’t have meant more than an armless pilot. But Chuck started to feel like that might be changing. Frankie’s will to do everything that he did for Chuck just made him realize that maybe they weren’t destined to despise each other. Maybe there was still a spark of care that lingered between them. Was that spark big enough to make him admit the thing that he took a blood oath (not a real one, one in his mind) never to speak of? Maybe so. Maybe this could be a turning point. Maybe this would be the day the Charlie-Miller-Versus-Frankie-O’Donnell-Mutual-Distaste would end. The thought was intriguing. But he wouldn’t be unless he spoke up immediately, so he looked up at Frankie with tear-filled eyes and tried to choke down his nervousness, which was his most prominent feeling, and spoke softly.
“As soon as I turned eighteen,” he started in a dark manner, as if he were telling a scary story during a camping trip, “my…parents sent me into the army.”
A little shocked, Frankie looked up and tried to imagine a buzz-cut Chuck Miller, wearing green army print, standing up straight and saluting. It was pretty hard to do. Chuck always had a knack for disrespecting authority, and that was all the army was about. Chuck noticed Frankie’s confusion.
“They were waiting for that forever. I remember once I knocked over a glass of milk, and they told me that the day I turn eighteen…the moment… Anyway, so they didn’t go back on their word. That was the only damn promise they kept. So, they enlisted me. That was my only birthday present that year. Fun, right?” Chuck laughed, trying his best to ease the situation, but Frankie was very serious and anyway, Chuck was sweating buckets and his skin was light grey. “Well, you know, I went. And, uh, guess what? Well, the year I turned eighteen was 1955. Coincidentally, that was also the year that Vietnam started. I wasn’t allowed to go, because they weren’t sending anyone yet. Then when I was twenty-six, I got sent for real. I was going for twelve months. See, I asked to be sent for a year. Boys who did twelve or thirteen months wouldn’t have to come back, and if they went for less time, they would have to go back to Vietnam after. I knew that if I went home after Vietnam, I’d never want to go back, so I asked my superior if I could just go for a year. That way I wouldn’t have to go back. I was there for a full year. 365 days…not one went by where someone didn’t shoot at somebody, for one reason or another. Shot after shot, but I knew that already, they told me that.
That wasn’t my issue. My unit was sent to this place near, like, a jungle. It was pretty much frontlines. Anyway, I was in that tent with my whole squad. And you know, Frankie…” Chuck paused and looked up, resting his chin on his fist. “It’s not like it is in the movies. Either it’s all brave and heroic and everyone’s always saying let’s do this… Or they’re all saying society is garbage, making satire jokes about the army and the food there…occasionally making a serious comment about the kids who get sent and die for nothing… And they always have this massive group of friends where everyone just loves each other, and it’s just like a little family, and despite the hardships, the best friends you’ll ever make will be in the army… You know, even the movies that think they know war, they’re wrong,” he looked back up at Frankie. “The army really isn’t like that. Well, first of all, you don’t feel like a hero. Even if you kill six-hundred Victor-Charlies and save a million little kids… You just felt bad about yourself. ‘Cause another guy’s got it worse. Another guy’s always got it worse, so you better now enjoy yourself, ‘cause a guy out there isn’t. And you can’t make a comment. If you make a comment, you get a damn court marshal. And they don’t miss a thing, you know. They see everything. Even if you’re just talking to someone, they still know what you said, and they can send you to jail, or wherever they want to. So you can’t say anything bad about the army. Also, the whole big band of friends thing, is the most bullcrap out of all of them. You don’t make any friends during a war… What are you going to talk about? You can’t talk about how much the army sucks, you can’t talk about how much you wish you were home, because the soldiers hate it when you do that… You just have to stand beside each other. The squad leader hates it when you talk, so you have to stay quiet too. I’ve seen a bunch’a freakin’ faces in Vietnam, I can’t even begin to give you one name.
I guess that’s not the point, though. So, one day, we were going out to fight, and we did, and I don’t even remember if we won or lost, we just faught. That’s what it felt like, anyway. You know. Never felt like we did nothing important. We could have been. They never told us. He never admitted it, but I had a feeling that my squad leader didn’t know it either. We just did what we were supposed to. Well…I did. That day, we were out…doing things, and… This one Viet just freaking…takes my dog tags. Like he just takes them. And I’m wondering what that was about, but I let it slide, cause what the hell do I care if he takes my dog tags anyway? Right? Well, I let it slide, and we went back to our tent, and…I told my squad leader what the guy did, that he took my dog tags. And he asked me if I got them back, and I said no, because I never got them back. So then, he starts, like, yelling real loud… And I didn’t really get what he was saying, but over a while, I realized that he could find us. He could find our tent with the dog tags, and I didn’t know, and I let him take them. So we waited on alert, and we did, until something flew into our tent, and this is what happened, I… I ran out of the tent. I left. And I heard a thing go off, and it was too quiet to be a bomb or a grenade, so I just waited outside. Then I heard my name being called…it was all…droopy, if that makes any sense. They sounded like broken trombones. I came back in, and there was gas settling on the floor, so I had my shirt over my nose. They were all… shaking. I didn’t know why, but they were shaking. It was like they were all having seizures or something. And they looked like they were trying to tell me something, but all that came out was spit and drool instead of words. Some were on the ground, some were in their beds… It’s ‘cause they were dying. They weren’t even screaming, you know, they were just moanin’ and crawlin’ on the floor,” Chuck was looking down with a slightly furrowed brow, his eyes were wide and twitching. “They… I didn’t really know what they were doing until later… Their noses started bleeding and they’re eyes were crying blood… Then they started crapping themselves. They were throwing up all over their clothes and everything… I didn’t want to look at it anymore, I couldn’t stand it. So I ran out of the tent like a damn coward. I didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t a doctor for miles and miles, and I didn’t want to sit there and have the same thing happen to me. Because the gas was rising too. So I left, and hid in the jungle thing for about a week. When I came back, I went into the tent and found it empty. I assumed that some guys came and took their bodies away. I was real tired. I hadn’t really slept for that week, so when I came back to the tent, I decided to sleep in my bed. I laid down and…there was some dirt. We were pretty used to sleeping in dirt, because our clothes were dirty and all. But then I smelt something really awful when I shut my eyes. I kind of smelled the dirt, and turns out, it wasn’t dirt. It was a hot pile of crap. Rotten too, because it was old. And then I felt something against my leg. So I looked down and…and one of the guys was still there. He was decomposing, so a lot of his body was…missing, and there were maggots all over him and the bed, and my hair was full of feces… You know. So then I fainted. I woke up in a prison. Apparently, I had been arrested for going awol. It really wasn’t intentional. I didn’t want to go awol. But they didn’t know that. When I started panicking and screaming because the sheets in the cell were ‘dirty’… Then I knew something was wrong. And it continued to be wrong throughout the rest of my life.
Because no matter how much I didn’t want to admit it, that day and how I reacted changed the course of my following life. A single action. Running away. And I can ask myself why the hell did I do that, but it doesn’t matter. Because the worst part was that I had to go home after. I had to tell the people who said ‘see you when you get back’ that I did nothing useful during my time in Vietnam, and I was supposed to say that with a straight freaking face. I was lucky; I survived the year and came back home in one piece. But I knew that I wouldn’t be greeted as some freaking Great American Hero. Yeah, I wasn’t sure anyone would be happy to see me when I got back from Vietnam. Because who wants to say ‘hi, I love you, I missed you’ to a coward. They only want to say it to people who did good. And not only did I run that day, but now I have a damn awol charge to my name, and guess what? My parents don’t want to see some dirtbag bloke like me ever come home. But wait, Frankie, it gets better! Not only did I come home with a freaking section eight, a cowardly self but also, I forgot the most important part, I was now a slow-down! Do you know how that feels? Look, I know you don’t, and it’s okay, because you shouldn’t have to… But damn it, Frankie, it hurts. It really hurts. It really, really hurts,” Chuck’s eyes filled with tears again, but he wouldn’t cry, “it hurts so bad. It feels like it’ll never get worse, and it won’t, because it hurts.”
After a long pause, Chuck kind of laughed a little.
“That’s it.”
Frankie had his eyes wide open and his mouth agape. Chuck had never had anything more to say than insult or something dumb. It was like Chuck had a whole new layer added to him. Frankie didn’t feel any pity. That wasn’t something he felt at that moment. With an unknown will, he moved closer to where Chuck was, and surprising the both of them, he pulled Chuck into a hug. Frankie wasn’t sure if that was wise. After all, his whole thing was about germs and dirt, and Frankie didn’t really remember the last time he showered. But shockingly, Chuck hugged him back and rested his hand on Frankie’s back. He leaned his head onto the latter’s shoulder, his eyes filling with tears once again, but thanks to the rule in the friend group that had never quit him, Chuck didn’t cry. He never cried in front of Frankie, and he wouldn’t start today. Frankie squeezed his friend tighter. He smelled of cheap alcohol and hand sanitizer. But it didn’t matter. Suddenly, he felt Chuck go limp in his arms. He separated from the hug and Chuck was unconscious. Panicking, Frankie placed two fingers on his neck, and felt a pulse, so he calmed down a bit. He picked him up, slung him over his shoulder and left the room, heading for the hospital, right after calling a strange number that he found written on a post-it near the telephone. 17Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqmXgQHpxhN
