Into the After
*content warning: addiction
It was on Twitter. A question that poured like honey from soft shade.
Can somebody please just tell me what is going to happen?
Soon everyone was asking the same question to anyone who would listen. The question echoed and rounded the planet, asking, asking, asking: How does it end?
So much asking, and no telling. You want to say, Yes. Ya see that ridge over there? No, no, not there. There. Yep, that one. It ends just beyond that.
But that’s not right, and you know it, because you don’t really know how all this will end, either. No one does. At least not the this that the honey voice on Twitter is asking about.
Not the case with your friend Rod here, alone and slumped in a sagging recliner at his hunting shack along this broad winter river. He raises a bottle, takes another long pull and, actually, yeah, now that the initial shock of the sight of him like this has worn off, you do know how this guy’s this will end because you’ve seen it before: He’s drinking himself to death. Almost there, too. Too late to say anything.
Remember that one muskie? he’s been saying.
Ott Lake, you say. You fold your arms and nod. Yep.
Sixty-incher, easy. Jesus, he says. Friggin monster.
His eyes loll. You nod. He lifts the bottle again. Some rotgut bourbon. Curdles you from across the room.
You stare at him again, devastated. But not surprised.
And that semester in Caracas? Rod says. When I had to explain to those guys how piss can freeze? Christ, he says, and tips the bottle.
Your hands are wet and clenched. At this point, stopping him will kill him, too. The rising sun presses red through a small window off to the right.
How does it end? Rod asks, like now that it’s morning, it’s something new. He turns his head to vomit into a Taco Bell bag.
You walk the bag outside. Place it on a stack of frozen vomit blocks.
How does it end? you say to yourself. It ends in this chair, you want to tell him. Right here. Where they’re gonna find you.
Where did it all go? he says. His head wobbles.
Your eyes burn. Bottles, you want to say. As you emptied them, you filled them. Filled them first with all the tomorrow, then all the then, and now all the now.
This is important! he groans. Please, does anyone know how this fucking ends?
You want to say, Nothing is ever over, and nothing ever ends. The planet spins on, always.
I am not hungry, he says, as though you were wondering.
He rolls his head to one side and groans and vomits. Burger King bag.
The dog lowers its snout onto its paws and sighs.
You add the bag to the blocks outside. It ends after a ledge, you want to say. A ledge you can’t fall up from. A divide. A divide where there are no fingers, no toes. Just dead sockets for lonely nails and lost lashes, raw quicks and bare eyes.
He is tearful and quiet. A hand fumbles around in his crotch for the remote.
Wasn’t always like this, he says. He throws his head back and drinks. Remember State? he says to the ceiling. No one fuckin ran the ball on me.
Yes, you say. I remember.
I am cold, he says.
You find a blanket and lay it on your friend, tuck it up around his neck.
He shakes his head. You poke at the fireplace. The logs slip and thud.
And Erik?
Yep, you say. Erik.
But you don’t say: Your brother Erik ended in the same place as you, just somewhere else.
Wabeno, you finally say, because you really don’t know. Only heard he went to some dot of a town in the north of Wisconsin. Went to Wabeno, you say.
His bare lids blink.
Mel? he says.
You nod. His years-gone wife, Melanie. You don’t say: Your wife is married to someone else somewhere else now. Left when you wouldn’t quit. Sweet kids grown and gone and who the hell knows. Kids!
California, you tell him. She and the girls. Moved to Cali years ago.
He vomits hard and loud. Target bag. His throat catches, his eyes close, the bourbon drops.
You press the blanket into him and pick up the bottle. The dog sniffs at the Taco Bell on the table, but leaves it.
Outside, the cold should cut into you more fiercely than it does. Brilliant swans flash bleeding red against the rising sun along the ridge opposite. They descend to open water like burning clouds falling to river ice. Beautiful. You look back at the puke stack, place his last bag on the very top.
Noon marches steadily across the planet, through concurrent folding and unfolding time zones. Back inside, the walls, the floors, the chairs, the dog, and the logs are silent.
An echo of the remains of his voice, or that honey voice on Twitter.
Can somebody please just tell me what is going to happen?
You respond, in your soothing way: The coyotes, and the crows, will be fine.
Steve Fox is the winner of the Rick Bass Montana Prize for Fiction, The Great Midwest Writing Contest, the Jade Ring Award, and the Midwestern Gothic Summer Flash Contest. His fiction has appeared in New Ohio Review, Orca, a Literary Journal, Midwest Review, Whitefish Review, and others. He holds an MA in Spanish from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has lived and worked in four continents. His debut short story collection, Sometimes Creek, was published by Cornerstone Press in January of this year. Steve now resides in his home state of Wisconsin with his wife, Stephanie, three boys, and one dog. Find him at stevefoxwrites.com.