Best Fiend

A short story

Note: A revised version of this story, along with many previously unpublished pieces, has recently been released in my new book, Broken: Twenty Pieces.

It was midnight and I’d just finished work. I was depressed and desperate for some company. But there was no one. So I figured I’d try my luck at a random bar. I didn’t hope for much, considering it was Tuesday after all and I didn’t like 99% of people, but what the hell.

It was rainy and somber outside when I stepped out of the office. I lit a Marlboro Red and began walking towards Old Town, considering which bar I should visit. I soon decided on a Scottish bar called Highlander, which was one of my favorites at the time; it had kilts and claymores on its walls as well as an enormous selection of whiskey. But tonight I didn’t care about bitter brown liquids. Tonight I craved human contact — and not just the superficial kind I’d get at work. And, should my plan fail, there was always my trusty old back-up friend to fall back on; the friend that was always there for me even as everyone else abandoned me. That’s right. Alcohol.

There were very few people on the rain-slicked streets and when I arrived at the bar it was almost empty. Aside from me and the bartender, there was only one other guy there; he was sitting at the counter, not far from me. I ordered a beer and started the conversation. “So what brings you out on this bleak Tuesday night?” I asked.

“The usual,” he said. “Life’s shit. I mean, why else would I be drinking here alone on a Tuesday night?”

“Indeed,” I said, taking a big sip of beer. “It’s indeed shit. And it doesn’t get any better either. It only gets worse.”

Misery loves company, as they say. His name was Joey. After we had a couple of cigarettes together, he suggested taking our conversation to a private table, which we did. Shooting the shit, we soon found certain similarities between us. For instance, we’d both been dumped recently and hadn’t gotten over it. We were both pessimists or nihilists, depending on your definition of the two (most people tend to use the terms interchangeably, even though a pessimist isn’t necessarily a nihilist and vice versa), though I considered myself both. We also both loved alcohol and didn’t give a fuck.

Anyhow, somehow we got to discussing suicide. The question was, what’s the best way of doing it? “With a gun to the side of the head,” I said, my hand imitating a gun blowing my brain’s out.

“Nah,” he said. “The best way to kill yourself . . . is with nitrogen.”

“Nitrogen?”

“Yes. First you lose consciousness and then you fall into a coma and die.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s completely painless if done right.”

“I’m pretty sure blowing your brains out is also rather painless.”

“But not totally. Also, it leaves a mess.”

“True. But even if you do feel any pain you only feel it for less than a second. So I’d say it’s worth it. Also, I don’t really care about the mess. As far as I’m concerned, when I die the world dies with me. So fuck it.”

“What if your relatives find your body?”

“Fuck them as well.”

“Nah,” he said. The bartender brought us the whiskey we had ordered a few minutes ago. “I wouldn’t want to do that to them. With nitrogen, there is no external damage and nobody has to clean up bits of your brain.”

“True, but I don’t like to embellish death. Death’s ugly. As is life. And I don’t give a shit if somebody has to clean up my corpse cause I never wanted to be alive in the first place. So fuck ’em.”

“Yeah, I hear you. Still, I wouldn’t want my relatives to see me like that.”

“When you die, you stop caring about what other people think of you.” I gulped down my whiskey. “And since everything is fucking meaningless, it doesn’t matter how you die as long as you remain dead.”

“Well, I can’t argue with that,” he said with a sly smile. “In fact, I have a rare genetic condition which mean I’ll probably die within the next ten years.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Is that related to your face?” His face had some strange red spots on it.

“That’s another genetic thing. Related to the first one.”

“I see. You’re very lucky, aren’t you?”

“Tell me about it. But you know what? The fact that I’m probably gonna die in my thirties doesn’t depress me.”

“It doesn’t?”

“Nah. It just makes me not give a fuck. It makes me want to enjoy life as much as I can before I die.”

“I’ve heard that happening before with people in your condition.”

“My doctor tells me to cut down on the drinking and smoking and whatnot. But I don’t care. Those are the things I live for.”

“Yeah, I hear you. Though you’re definitely not doing yourself any favors there.”

“True. But if I’m gonna die young anyway, I might as well go out with a bang.”

“Sure. Hey, if I owned a gun, I’d have already shot my brains out a long time ago.”

“Damn, man . . . that’s bleak.” He took something out of his pocket. “How about a Xanax?”

“Sure.”

He popped one in his mouth and gave me one. I popped it in. And then we continued drinking until the place closed.

We went out the very next day. As we were sitting outside at a bar called The Place, drinking barley wine and smoking cigarettes, Joey began talking about a story idea he had about an immortal guy floating through space for an eternity and seeing the destruction of everything. I told him it was a good idea but the thing about ideas is that they aren’t worth much unless you actually make them into reality. And that idea, I thought, would be a bitch to write.

Basically, the further something is from your experience and knowledge, the harder it is for you to write it — hence the old writer’s adage of “write what you know.” Yet most people who are interested in writing tend to start out by imagining grand scenarios about immortals and whatnot for which they are in no place to actually write about. I speak from personal experience. And it is only when they tone down these grand scenarios considerably and write about things that they do know about that they actually start having any chance of making it as a writer. And by making it as a writer I don’t mean getting paid to write. Getting paid to write is a very quaint notion. I mean just being able to finish the damn thing you began writing. Which very few wannabe writers ever do.

At The Place that night we also met a rapper who called himself Diesel Dan — what a goofy fucking name, I thought. We talked about music — if you consider rap music, that is — as I was listening to some pretty obscure rappers at the time (I later replaced rap with death metal, mind you) and he appeared to know a few of them. So the three of us drank and smoked and talked about rap and so on and then Joey brought out the Xanax and we all popped one in our mouths. Then we got hungry and decided to go to a pizza joint that was open all night.

At the pizza joint, I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but there was a strange guy there — possibly a local celebrity — who got into an argument with us, or, well, mainly with Diesel Dan, who was probably trying to show off what a tough guy he was. It got pretty heated, though it didn’t quite come to blows between them. Which was a shame as I had secretly hoped it would.

We were also supposed to go to a bar where Diesel Dan got “disrespected” a few days ago; he said it might even come to blows there. But thankfully we ended up not doing that . . . as that would have been pretty fucking retarded. What is it with rappers and their pointless little “beefs”? Goddamn children. My beef is with existence itself. Anyway, instead we ate some more Xanax and then went home.

When I woke up the next day I felt numb as fuck on account of all the Xanax. It was a strange feeling. As though somebody could put a gun to my face and I wouldn’t care. On second thought, I probably didn’t even need any Xanax for that.

I had promised to listen to some of Diesel Dan’s music the night before and so I searched for him on Spotify when I arrived at work. I listened to a whole album and then sent him a message saying that I liked his music. He asked me which album I had listened to. I told him the name of the album. He said that wasn’t his album. By the way he said it, it seemed that wasn’t the first time this had happened to him. He then gave me a link to the correct album. “Oops,” I said and told him I’d listen to it shortly.

I think I listened to about one or two songs before giving up. And I never got back to him on what I thought of them because the songs fucking sucked. The guy was completely talentless.

The next time me and Joey met was near Red Emperor, a bar that we both frequented. He was already drunk when I saw him. He handed me a plastic cup of Cuba Libre as I was standing on the street smoking a cigarette. He told me that he had done speed earlier in the day and had tried to get me some as well but couldn’t and said that he was sad because of that. Oh well, it’s the thought that counts, I thought.

It was karaoke night at Red Emperor and after me and Joey had drank for a while he signed us up for it. When our turn came, we sang Du Hast by Rammstein. Actually, I had to share the mike, as some drunk guy suddenly forced himself in there. Still, I did the best Till Lindemann impression I could and we pretty much rocked the shit out of the place. In fact, the whole bar was singing along. However, sometime during the song Joey suddenly disappeared. I finished the song but I wasn’t nearly done drinking yet. So I decided to find some new company. I soon found a bearded guy and his girlfriend sitting at the counter who didn’t mind me intruding. I don’t exactly remember what we talked about, but we soon decided to head to a rock bar.

At the rock bar, a friend of theirs joined and we sat down at a booth. Soon, another guy who was drinking in the bar also joined us and then an older woman as well who was extremely drunk. I could tell she was extremely drunk by the way she suddenly just fell over whilst we were having a cigarette together — she wasn’t even moving, she just fucking collapsed on the asphalt in front of me and then got back up. I wasn’t sure whether it was supposed to be comical or sad.

Anyway, I was getting a bit gloomy since it seemed that everybody was having a really good time except for me, and since I was a bit drunk as well — though not nearly as drunk as everybody else it seemed — I began talking to this random guy who was sitting at our table about how everything actually sucked — which was a common topic for me — how everything was, in the end, crooked, illusory, and unfair. I ended the rant by saying that nothing was ultimately worth the bother since when we died we would become what we were before our births. Which is nothing. As though we had never existed at all.

He said he applauded my courage, but he, as well as one other person who happened to be listening, clearly weren’t interested in hearing that kind of junk. In fact, the bearded guy soon ordered champagne for everybody. I don’t know what he was celebrating exactly. Perhaps just being alive. He was pretty fucking out of it.

The waiter soon came to our table with the glasses of champagne. I was surprised a rock bar had champagne glasses. But when everybody lifted the glasses up for a toast they did it with such drunken gusto that all the glasses shattered into pieces, champagne and shards of glass raining down on the table. It was like a drunken Last Supper, I thought, observing the chaos. And I was Judas.

Joey apologized a couple of days later for having suddenly disappeared on me. He said he had woken up naked at his girlfriend’s place the next morning with a guitar and a bottle of wine next to him. He blamed the combination of speed and alcohol. Anyway, he promised to drink with me until the morning this time. We considered ourselves pretty much best friends at this point. And thus we did some serious drinking that day at Red Emperor — of course, I bought all the drinks — until Joey suddenly suggested that we go to some teenager’s apartment. I was hesitant at first, but eventually agreed. So I ordered a taxi — a Tesla, no less — and we went to the teenager’s place. But there wasn’t much booze there, aside from some vodka, which I intermittently sipped. Still, for lack of anything better to do, I stayed for a while, talking with a young guy who seemed kinda bright. Then I suddenly noticed Joey making out with some guy who looked liked a transvestite.

I didn’t really like those people. I didn’t get them. It seemed that they didn’t get me either. I probably seemed arrogant to them. But then they seemed naive to me. Strangely, I felt too old. In fact, I felt like I was with a bunch of teenagers. Which I was. And I had always hated teenagers. Especially during the time I had been one. Anyway, I soon left. Well, soon was at about six in the morning, but what the hell.

When Joey and I met the next time in Highlander he told me I looked like Lucifer, which was one of the nicest compliments I’ve heard. He had a few friends with him, a boyfriend and girlfriend, who he used to live together with in Scotland. They were cool. He said they liked to fart a lot and laugh about it when he was living together with them. Anyway, we drank some beer and then we drank some whiskey and then we drank some absinthe. The absinthe was fucking horrifying as usual, but I guess that was a part of its “charm”. As we were downing the shots of absinthe, some of it spilled on the table. And Joey, deranged as he was, suddenly had the bright idea of lighting it on fire, which he did. Until the bartender came to our table and “kindly” asked us to leave.

Outside on the street, Joey gave me a beer glass he had stolen from the bar. I thanked him and put it in my pocket. Then he said he had to leave and wanted to bum a cigarette from me. I took out my pack. “On second thought,” he said, “could I maybe have the whole pack?”

“Sure thing,” I said, giving him the whole pack. He hugged me and went away. I didn’t want to give him the whole pack, but I did, all the while thinking about what a fucking parasite he was beginning to turn into. Jobless as he was, that’s how he was probably used to getting things. For free.

The next time me and Joey met it was at Red Emperor again. He told me he had been drinking there a few days ago — I wondered why he hadn’t invited me — and had fallen down a flight of stairs. He even showed me his wounds, which were fucking grotesque, daring me to stick my finger into one of them. Which I did for some reason. Eugh.

After having a few drinks at Red Emperor, he suggested meeting with his girlfriend, who was working at a hostel in Old Town, and to smoke some weed with them. I agreed. There were a bunch of young Turks in the hostel. And by that I don’t mean members of the political reform movement from the early 20th century. I mean young Turkish people.

We chatted with them a bit until Joey’s girlfriend rolled us a couple of fat blunts. We then went outside the hostel and smoked them on the street. It was good weed. It hit hard. When we finished, we went back inside to the hostel lobby, talking about random shit and sipping on some beer. Suddenly, a stand full of postcards fell over without anyone touching it. “Poltergeist,” I said. “This building is a hundred years old, after all.”

Eventually, we got hungry, so me and Joey went to a nearby kebab place, as his girlfriend had to man the desk at the hostel lobby. I spent my last twenty euros buying the three of us an extra large kebab. We then went back to the hostel, ate the damn things, and then I ordered myself a taxi. As I was broke, I paid for it with my company’s account.

During the taxi ride home, the weed hit me more strongly than it had ever before. As I was looking outside the window of the taxi into the blackness of the night, I felt like I was floating through space. I was on the very edge of getting sick, but thankfully didn’t. It was one of the few times in my life that weed had had such a strong effect on me.

I went out with Joey a few more times, but since I got so fucking wasted during them I barely remember anything. Which is probably a good thing.

However, I do remember the last time me and him went out. We were in Highlander again. His new girlfriend had just left him; she had gone to Russia and never came back. I wasn’t surprised, as Joey’s behavior had been escalating recently: he was getting drunk every day now and was constantly doing wild shit. Also, he still had no job. In other words, the guy was an unstable alcoholic bum, leeching off of others. What she or her precursor had ever seen in him in the first place I did not know.

Anyway, that night in Highlander, he kept blaming his girlfriend for dumping him, which was ridiculous. The night that I had met her it was obvious that she was a nice person, whereas he wasn’t. Good for her, I thought, whilst Joey was going off on another tangent about her, calling her a slut and whatnot.

I already had a bitter taste in my mouth that night, which only got more exacerbated when we started talking about guns. I had mentioned to Joey that I’d love to go to a shooting range sometime. He told me that if he were to go to a shooting range the temptation to shoot people would be too much for him because, as he said, he just wanted to see what would happen. I could tell from his voice that he was being serious. Crazy as I was, that was a bit too much, even for me. And so, after that night, I began avoiding him. Of course, Joey kept inviting me out over and over again. And I kept declining him over and over again.

Yet I did meet him once more by accident during a New Year’s Eve party at Red Emperor which I was spending with my soon-to-be girlfriend. He was drunk as usual and wanted me to be his wingman for the night, since, as he said, he was desperate for some pussy after his ex had left him. But there were a few problems with his request. First, I wasn’t interested in his company. Second, I found the whole concept of being a wingman utterly ridiculous and I sure as hell didn’t want to help infect him on somebody. And third, I was already with somebody that night; had Joey not been such an egotistical prick, he would have realized that the person I was with was infinitely more important to me than he could ever be. So I kept blowing off his request until he finally buzzed off. And I went on to have one of the best nights of my life.

Incidentally, the time I had known Joey more or less coincided with me dating this Russian girl who also turned out to be crazy; in fact, Joey had even warned me one night when he had met her that she’s crazy. Well, it takes one to know one. Much like Joey, she had a habit of making me pay for all her drinks. And in the end, these two parasites emptied me the fuck out, both financially and mentally. And so they both had to go. And so they did. Good riddance.

Although I’ve yet to give up on love, I have very nearly given up on friendship at this point. In fact, my feelings regarding friendship can be summed up by the following quote: Fortunate are those who have drunk from its chalice without having their souls offended or poisoned. If one such person exists, I urge them to send me their photograph. I’m sure to look upon the face of an idiot.