The Dirty South (Chapter 3)

Still Thursday

Carl talked the whole trip to Sharky’s Pizza. It was so odd as he was saying some of the most heartfelt things that I in no way deserved.

“True friends are hard to come by,” was one thing he said. “Especially ones that you consider to be your brother, like you and me.”

I mean, what the hell was I supposed to say to shit like that? Were we brothers cause I didn’t stop the first cop I saw to tell him I just witnessed some real Mussolini shit five minutes ago?

“Yeah, man,” was all I could think to repeat back to him. It was odd. I felt sore, not ‘you’re going to die. Soon. Get to a hospital. Why are you getting pizza?’ These questions popped up in my head at the time, but I just pushed them down as if they were any piece of advice my mother ever gave me.

“I love pizza,” he continued. “Do you love pizza, brother?”

“Yeah, it’s great,” I didn’t call him brother back. Not cause I was worried about us becoming too close too soon. Sounded like we were casual fuck buddies.

“I’ll eat any kind! Any time! What’s your favorite?”

“Pepperoni, I guess,” I started looking around to see how many people were staring at us. Not a one. Were we being ignored? I mean, this guy was CLEARLY homeless. Did I look that bad? Wait, my face was yellowed with bruises and I had dried blood that had poured from my mouth. Why weren’t these people pointing at me? Offering help?

When we ordered the large pepperoni pizza at Sharky’s, even the cashier never gave me a second glance. There was this triangular table in the corner closest to the restaurant entrance that I always wanted to sit in but was too embarrassed to eat alone. Always afraid of people judging me. Wake up, Eugene! Grow some fucking balls! Fucking coward. Now I get pussy all the time.

That’s a lie.

There it was. Shit. As soon as I sat down, the memory of me losing all control of my ass after the fight came flooding back.

“I gotta go to the bathroom,” I said as I stood up from the coolest table on earth. I never noticed it had hundreds of names carved into it.

“Yeah, I saw you shit your pants back there,” Carl smiled. “I just thought it was your thing.”

What the fuck is wrong with you, Carl? No one thinks it’s anyone’s ‘thing.’ Retard.

I threw my underwear in the garbage that everyone seems to miss throwing their paper towels into regularly. I wiped off the shit that was glued to my ass. The old me would have apologized for saying all the grody details. Fuck that guy. He was a bitch.

It felt weird not having underwear. I was very aware of the penis to zipper ratio. And dried shit to ass cheek ratio, too. Mostly dry.

I wiped most of it off.

I really did.

Fuck, did I wash my hands?

I wiped most of it off, but I may or may not have washed my hands.

“I was under the 17 North overpass near King,” Carl confessed as I sat down. Then just sat there, waiting for my turn.

I had no idea it was my turn for share time.

After I nodded a thank you to the beginning of a story I couldn’t give two shits about, he asked, “Where did you die?”

Wait, what?

I looked at him like a dumbass, “Huh? Die?”

“Yeah,” he grinned- exposing teeth that I wish I had never seen. Some were black. Like, black crayon, black. He was giddy with anticipation.

“I’m not dead,” I felt a sharp pain in my mouth that went away as fast as it came.

“No shit,” he laughed. I can admit that I’m not now, nor ever have been a very entertaining host. But Carl loved every damn thing I said. “You’re not dead NOW. But how did you die?”

I stared, thinking more about my pain.

“I was under the 17 North overpass near King Street,” he reminded me. “I was huffing some weird stuff. It was usually silver spray paint that I huffed. But this time it was some horse shit with silver spray paint on it!” he smiled as if he just said he enjoyed cookies and milk.

“That’s really fucking disgusting,” I pointed out. Was I lisping? Did I have a lisp? I was missing teeth- one of my big front teeth, so yeah I had a lisp.

“Well, yeah, I know cause it killed me.”

So if he didn’t die, then it would have been perfectly fine huffing horse shit with silver spray paint. Got it.

“Wait, what are you talking about?”

He looked at me as if I was the moron with black teeth.

“Shit,” he said after a long pause. “You don’t know. Mother fucker, you died. You were dead. And Jesus or St. Peter or fuck if I know- the Devil!” he threw his hands up with that last one. “Brought you back. What is today?”

In that moment, I thought he was the craziest man I ever met. He’s the bravest man I’ve ever known and I’d take a bullet for him if he were still here.

“Saturday?” I was unsure now.

“Oh, shit!” he had a revelation. “No, it’s Thursday!”

Impossible. It was Sunday at the latest. I got fired on Friday, drank until I passed out, then woke up Saturday. Sunday was a stretch, but Thursday?

“Nope. Bullshit,” I had a taste of owning balls for a second there. I would later apologize to him while he huffed paint sans horse shit.

“Thursday, September 18th, Bo,” he pulled a newspaper from thin air cause I never saw the thing before that moment.

I read the date: Post and Courier morning edition, Thursday, September 18th, 1998.

Did I not mention this was in 1998 before? Sorry. It was 1998.

I wanted to call bullshit again, but I had seen some crazy shit today.

That’s when it started to hit me: It wasn’t that I didn’t pay the water and power late- it had been 13 fucking days I was in that tub. I didn’t drink myself to death. I drowned. Then shit and pissed and who fucking knows what and then rooted around soaking up all that filth for 13 damn days. My throat was dry because it wasn’t breathing or producing saliva. It was now. But for almost two full weeks, it hadn’t.

Other things started popping in my head like a Kaiser Soze reveal. No one knew I was even missing. No one. No notes on my door. No “friends” from work. I was literally a nobody. If I wasn’t depressed enough then, that did it.

I would have cried, but for what? No one else did. Did my mom even notice? My internet girlfriend?

Carl was talking about something stupid that he smoked to get high when I interrupted him with, “I drowned.”

He stopped and looked at me with deep concern in his eyes. Jesus, the drama with this guy.

“I drowned in the tub,” I stared off into space.

He clapped a hand on my back that really stung all my other wounds, “That’s kind of cool, too.”

I couldn’t let this one go and turned to him and said, “Wait, that’s kind of cool, too? You mean, OD’ing on HORSE SHIT was DEFINITELY cool in your book? Let’s get that out of the way. Drowning while drunk isn’t as cool?”

“Sorry,” he raised his eyebrows.

“Horse shit, man,” I reminded Hillbilly Jim.

“It’ll fuck you up, Bo,” he nodded.

I’m sparing no details, folks.

After we ate the greatest fucking pizza on earth, we left Sharky’s. We started heading back where we had come from, but this time taking my normal route. I didn’t even think to avoid being near the bodies of those things. I was still thinking about how I had died.

“So, we’re not zombies?” I asked the man who smelled slightly better than me only by default.

“Nope,” he shook his head over dramatically. “I ain’t seen any a’ them.”

“Then what were those guys from earlier?”

“Them?” he asked hopefully rhetorically. “Yeah they was some ghouls.”

“Ghouls,” I repeated.

After about 2 minutes, I finally spoke again.

“What are ghouls?” I felt like a kid.

“Ghouls is the soldiers of vampires,” he breathed over dramatically.

“Vampires?” I repeated.

“Yeah,” he began. “They drink peoples blood.”

“Yeah, I know what a vampire is.”

He threw his hands up, “Well, I wasn’t sure since you didn’t know what a ghoul was.”

“They’re the soldiers of vampires,” I said aloud.

“I think.”

“You think,” I repeated.

“Yeah, they got something to do with vampires and I think that’s it,” he explained.

This was a lot to take in but I took it like he was explaining the rules to Connect Four.

“But I ain’t never seen a vampire,” he confessed. After a few more beats, he continued, “So, since you’re new to this shit, I bet you don’t even know what your power is.”

“Power?” man, I sounded stupid.

“Yeah, each one of us that died and came back-”

I nodded in understanding.

“-has a power. But not like some Superman who has em all,” I’m glad he noticed. “We only get one.”

I nodded. Again, I wanted to call this man insane and throw spoiled meat at him, but I saw some ghouls and then they beat the shit out of me. Why believe he was lying? He wasn’t, by the way.

“We gotta figure yours out,” he continued.

He waited for me to ask like an asshole. “What’s YOUR power?” I may have asked like an asshole, too. I am an asshole, yes, but I wasn’t then. I was a bitch.

“I can beat the shit out of ‘em,” he smiled.

Before you say anything, I already did, “That’s not a superpower.”

“Shit,” he smoldered like there was a film crew trying to win an Oscar. “I got like super strength- but only with them. The monster guys, ya know?”

“Really?” this sounded cool, but dumb at the same time. “So you can’t pick up a car?”

“I wish,” he chuckled, paused on the sidewalk with his hands on his hips- literally posing I swear to god. “No, but I can tear one of them fuckers in half like it was nothing.”

Eventually, we reached the area that I was all too familiar with. This was my walk home after all. Nothing much had changed physically. I expected maybe the leaves to have faded even though it hadn’t even been 2 full weeks that I was out.

By the way, death- the big sleep- I never really experienced. There was no out of body experience. Didn’t see my weird uncle Ray or my weird aunt Kimberly or my weird cousin Joe waiting for me. No light at the end of the tunnel. You know.

As we walked along and I didn’t see the kids riding their bikes, I saw my first ghost.

He was a Native American man. South Carolina had quite a few tribes back before Columbus took a shit on the indigenous people here. Did you know he died still believing he had landed in India? Seriously. Arrogant dumbass. So back to this ghost- he was all blue. Everything had this blurry blue glow about him. He had eyes but where the whites should be was a dark blue and where his pupils would be black they were almost white. He was creepy.

He was wearing some pants made from the hide of something white people probably made extinct. His hair was long and unkempt. He was bare chested and looked a hell of a lot better than me. I expected a bow or a tomahawk like in the movies, but he had a club about the length of my arm.

Before Carl could warn me in some over dramatic fashion, I spoke up, “I see him.”

“Yeah, that’s Injun Joe,” he informed me.

“That’s racist as hell,” I replied.

“No, that’s his name,” Carl corrected me, neither of us breaking our gaze at the ghost.

“Did you ask him his name?” I should have given up fully knowing the answer already.

“I don’t speak Injun,” he talked down to me with that answer. I was annoyed, but too much of a pussy to call him out on it. Then it hit me, “Wait! The day that I died- was THAT who you were fighting?”

Carl was smiling and nodding for at least twenty seconds before I looked toward him since I assumed he was ignoring my question.

That’s when it got weird. The ghost- I refuse to ever call him “Injun Joe”- looked at me and started charging as fast as his ghost legs could carry him. If I had processed any of the pizza to shit my pants with, I would have. Something I didn’t expect? I could hear him. He was using the most intimidating howl that I have ever heard- even to this day. It wasn’t some ghostly hiss, but some howl from what I assume was his tribe’s warrior caste. Kind of like a, “Yip yip yahoo!” but actually sounding terrifying. I’m sure it was created for intimidation and it was working like crazy on me. Carl was unfazed.

The apparition ignored my hick companion and went for the pussy who was curling up into the fetal position on the broken sidewalk. But Carl wasn’t lying about his power. He punched that poor man so hard he flew back thirty feet and crashed onto the hood of a car. The car didn’t even register that anyone had touched it mind you.

“Hoo hoo!” Carl shouted with joy. “Did you see that shit?! Mother fucker went flying cross the damn street!”

I looked up and it was kind of weird. This ghost seemed to be almost acting as if he was out of breath and in pain. But he’s a ghost.

“How is he hurt?” I asked while dusting some gravel from my dried blood covered elbows.

“Didn’t you see?” he asked with a big black toothed grin. “I knocked the shit out of him! I told you I pack a whallop!”

“No, I mean he’s a ghost. Can’t he just fly away or- you know- not need to breathe?” I was so confused by the whole thing. Still am, kind of.

“Oh,” he scratched his pock-marked chin. “Man, I ain’t never thought about that,” he shrugged. “Fuck it. I don’t know.”

The warrior slid off the hood of the car and landed on the pavement with a soft thud. He stumbled to get up onto his feet and started charging again. It was a sad jog really.

“Oh, you want some more?” Carl said as he threw a right cross into the ghost’s jaw, launching him twenty feet onto someone’s lawn.

I felt my anus pucker. Calm down, boy. That’s enough pants shitting for the day.

The ghost began crawling toward me again! He was clearly out of any energy reserves and was moving at a snail’s pace. Carl walked over to him and I felt pity for this blue man trying to murder me.

“You wanna see someone get curb-stomped?” Carl grinned, grabbing a handful of hair from my would be assailant.

“No, I wouldn’t,” I was clearly disturbed to even hear someone suggest that. “Just leave him alone. Fuck, can’t you see he’s just a crazy thousand year old ghost?”

Carl let go of the hair and put a dirty boot into the defeated warrior’s back to hold him in place, “Look at ‘em. I never saw any ghost act like this before.”

“Act like what?” asked the person who for some reason was unfamiliar with the rules of ghost Native Americans.

“Oh, he don’t like you,” Carl was right. The ghost was ignoring the foot holding him down and was clawing for me and staring at me with a desperation no matter where I turned.

“Clearly,” I replied.

“No, I mean, a lot of times, Injun Joe will just stand there and not give two shits when I sees him,” he told me. “I ain’t never seen him this worked up. What’d you do to him?”

“Me?!” I was way too loud. “I didn’t do shit! Until today I didn’t know he existed!”

Carl scratched his chin and said one of the only things that poor man has said that has ever made sense, “Reminds me of them Mexicans from earlier. They didn’t like you neither. Oh shit!” he started dancing around. “I got it! I know your power!”

Please don’t.

“YOUR power is that they all wanna kick your fucking ass!” he laughed so loud he started coughing. He even slapped his knee like a cartoon idiot.

I actually smiled in response as I wanted to laugh with him, “What?” I covered my eyes from the sun as I looked at him.

“That’s it, ain't it?!” he put out his hand for a high five.

Why it made so much sense to me then, I have no idea. But he was right. They were attracted to me. We needed to test this further, yes, but I knew. I reluctantly high-fived his empty palm. He hugged me as if we were brothers. He stunk. So bad. He had the mandatory centimeter layer of sweat South Carolina required all over his skin. But it was old sweat mixed with new. Stung the nostrils. I didn’t care. This was my new fucked up life. I embraced it faster than anyone would have thought.

Carl was my friend.

I couldn’t remember when I had had one before. Maybe that’s why I wore this new life like a glove. He had saved my life- twice.

“Let’s go home to my house,” I invited him, knowing full well he had nowhere to go.

“Great cause I need a shower,” he put an arm over my shoulders.

“There’s no water,” I corrected him.

“That’s fine, too,” he didn’t miss a beat. “Hey, you mind if I grab some spray paint?”

I already knew what it was for. Fuck it. “Yeah, go ahead.”