Another Thursday

Lawson sat in the shadows in the back of the billiard hall, as he did at the very same time, every Thursday night. The snapping crack of pool balls harmonized with the laughter and clinking of glassware echoing throughout the large room. Men and women all around him socialized jovially and talked about their weeks at work, their favorite beer flavors, and whatever bullshit they used to kill the sadness inside of themselves. Lawson used to be like them. Finish out a long week at the factory with a weekend full of debauchery he pretended made him happy. Until finally, one day he realized, happiness was a lie. No one human in the world was allowed but small pieces of it, handed down in mystic fragments. Only meant to be deciphered once a lesson is learned and the moment has passed by, cherished as the memory of a time squandered and lost.

Reflecting on the week he tried to pull some positivity from the work he had accomplished. Lawson was an operations manager at a metal factory, which boiled down to babysitting grown-ups while they used heavy machinery and doing paperwork – the paperwork taking up more time than the supervising. Once again, as with most every week (there had been one incident), the only positive takeaway he could locate was that nobody under his supervision died. Lawson sighed deeply. Staring mutely into the slowly diminishing suds of his warming beer. He searched for any other crumb of positivity and tried to decide if this would be the weekend he finally would kill himself.

The idea first occurred to him when he realized his truth concerning the state of happiness. Originally, it had just been an entertaining thought experiment. Would anybody even notice? Who would come to my funeral? Would Sal end up being my replacement on the floor? Lawson felt these were normal questions to think about concerning one’s own mortality. Over the next few years, the thought evolved from an idea, into a plan. It seemed to happen without his even realizing it. In a blink, he owned a large bottle of pills that he had read about online. It would be mostly painless. Another blink and he had a day, Thursday, after work, at the beginning of the weekend – just to make sure the death had time to take before anyone started wondering about him. That was two hundred thirty-seven Thursday’s ago.

A large belt of laughter broke his suicidal concentration. Lawson turned and saw part of his crew slapping their knees and clinking their glasses by a table across the room. They, like himself, were here every Thursday at the end of the week. A tight-knit group of friends with their pack leader being the charismatic, Jeremy. He was a tall, well-built man with a quick and friendly wit that drew people to him. Lawson stared at him and jealous hatred boiled in his belly. Jeremy was the man Lawson wanted to be, if there was anyone who appeared to have a grasp on happiness it was the laughing man across the room.

Lawson would regularly put himself into Jeremy’s shoes. Pretending to look at the world through his eyes. With the beautiful, model wife, and the newest best cars each year, going on vacations to exotic countries whenever he had at least five days of PTO accumulated. It made Lawson physically ill to his stomach. Not because he thought Jeremy was undeserving of the things he had accomplished in his life, but because Lawson could not understand the difference between the two men. They had lived almost identical lives, both were attractive, hard-working men, yet, Lawson sat in the dark corner of the bar, while Jeremy basked in the light. Even in his own time of debauchery and faux happiness, he had never felt what Jeremy appeared to be on his worst day.

Turning his attention back to his beer, a new thought entered his mind. Considering they had, in fact, not grown up so differently, perhaps there just was not enough light for the two men to share, there may truly only be enough for one. Lawson thought frantically, anxiety filling him slowly as he allowed a devilish thought to begin forming in his mind. Instead of going home, clumsily fiddling the cap of his pill bottle open and going to sleep one last time, instead of wallowing in the dark corner of the bar wishing and wanting to understand how much happiness Jeremy truly controlled – he could take it. Kill Jeremy this evening as he wandered out of the bar. It would not be a heavy task at all, the man regularly went home after a night in the bar so drunk he could barely remember how he made it to bed. Perhaps tonight, on this Thursday, Lawson would just help him... not make it.

A dark feeling filled his belly and for a moment he felt powerful. Slamming his beer he signaled the cocktail waitress for another beer with a shot this time. She returned quickly, Lawson thanked her and tilted back the shot, letting the warm liquid join the powerful hatred in his stomach. Taking a sip of his beer he thought about whether he should just brutally murder the man and escape quickly – after all, nobody seemed to notice him anyway so perhaps his visible invisibility would provide all the cover he needed – or maybe set up a sort of slip and fall scenario.

As his mind raced, another round of laughter brought his focus back to the factory workers across the room. Immediately, as quickly as it had come on, the homicidal tendencies were gone. The sadness crashed into his body like a tidal wave washing him away as he stared into the crowd of smiling faces. No, he would not kill Jeremy, at least not tonight. Lawson pulled some cash out of his wallet and left it under the freshly poured beer. He stood up, put on his jacket, and took one last look at Jeremy. The man caught his eye and raised his glass to him with a smile. Lawson smiled back and waved, thinking that if he did not kill himself tonight, perhaps he would kill Jeremy next Thursday, at the beginning of the weekend.