We, The Afterthoughts
*warning: this story contains detail of self-harm
Millions of them. Millions of distant scintillating dots, which will still be there when we die, when our children die, when their children die, when our great-grandchildren die…
Alfred’s musings were almost always uttered in impulsive, sensual whispers, as though his thoughts oozed out of his mouth, the same way Jeremy imagined a lazy volcanic explosion would spew streaming magma. Jeremy glanced sidelong at his friend as they lay stargazing upon the cosmos-purplish grass of the park’s meadow. “He’s started again,” Jeremy thought, only breathing out an inaudible sigh and exasperatedly turning his attention to the minor holes in the firmament above.
Alfred’s eyes were glazed over, as though he was suspended between reality and a provocative, swirling, vivid world of his own creation. How he so regularly was capable of diluting his own consciousness into his characteristic inarticulate mumblings was a mystery to Jeremy. “He’s not dumb, though,” Jeremy reflected, beginning to feel his eyelids soften and droop. A yawn reached up and out of Jeremy’s throat. The time, the time… Jeremy took a look at his watch and found it was 9:30.
“Yo, Alfred,” Jeremy said sleepily. “We have to go, man. It’s 9:30.”
Alfred immediately sat erect, his eyes pointedly gazing at Jeremy. “Really? 9:30 already?”
“Yes, man.”
Alfred rubbed his hand across the top of his head languidly, and he seemed to say, “But it felt like it was just 8:00 five minutes ago…”
The two of them nonetheless dusted themselves off, sauntered to the parking lot, and entered a 2019 Chevrolet Impala. Jeremy always held his breath as he entered his dad’s car, as though the stench would cause him to stagger backward. Sweat, eggs, and the gutter — the car seemed to encapsulate the odors of all of them, and the humidity resulted in an even more revolting experience. Alfred, however, settled in calmly. “Wish I had those nostrils,” Jeremy thought somberly as he turned on the engine.
They rode along countless roads, each aware of the others’ presence and occasional glances, though this was felt more keenly by Jeremy. All words he could conjure seemed wrong to say. Alfred had simply contented himself with the blurred landscape beyond the window, engrossed in the tangled beauty of it all. Within the car, there was an invisible curtain from which was exuded a strange chill, it appeared. To reach out with their hands, or to simply speak into the silence some banter or joke was subtly frightening.
At last, Jeremy’s knuckles growing sickly white and Alfred’s eyes dry, they reached the latter’s house. It was 9:56. The caliginous dark of night had washed over the entire sky.
“So, Jeremy,” Alfred started, turning to look down at his hands. “I’d like to have you stay over for a bit. We could watch a movie or something.”
Jeremy suppressed the impulse to say “Huh?” in astonished disbelief.
Alfred was the type of person who opted to read at a library rather go to a party with friends; to play chess against himself; to journal rather than have a prolonged conversation. Despite the relationship between him and Jeremy, Alfred enjoyed solitude. That was his default. Spend some time with friends (but really typically only one friend), and then have the rest of the day to himself.
“Hope… nothing’s wrong?” Jeremy asked, appraising his friend anew.
“No, nothing is wrong, nothing is,” Alfred hastily remarked. “I was just thinking, you know, that it would be good of us to talk to each other, you know?”
“I mean, I guess.”
Jeremy turned off the car. Alfred quickly opened his door and got out, almost feverishly. “Is he okay?” Jeremy thought once more. Alfred had his eccentricities, sure, but this behavior of his was oddly peculiar. Jeremy locked the car, and following the increasingly impatient Alfred, entered the house.
It was eerily depressing.
The walls were all uniformly white. A dining table here, of modest proportions, and the living room there, occupied solely by a brown leather couch — “And you can’t even recline!” Jeremy exclaimed inwardly as he took a seat. There were no pictures, nothing distinctly vibrant, no color. Where there was supposed to be a flower there was a mirror. On the fridge there were only pictures of a distant childhood, evidently so from the salient layer of dust forming on top of them. There was a TV, at least, stationed on the wall opposite the couch.
Alfred leaned forward, hands clasping each other, elbows on his knees. Jeremy quickly noticed he could not see his friend’s face.
“I will be back, ok? Here is the remote.” Alfred handed Jeremy a remote and rushed upstairs to the second floor of his house. Jeremy noticed the bathroom light turn on and then heard the door close.
“Well,” Jeremy thought, squirming in his seat. “At least there’s a TV.” He pressed the power button on the remote, and he fell into the lolling world of television, the digital world broadcasted straight to our eyes, in which we drown…
Jeremy blinked. Blinked again. “Where am I… oh, yeah, Alfred’s house… Alfred is — wait, where the heck is Alfred?” He glanced about his surroundings, but Alfred was nowhere to be seen. Jeremy immediately took a look at his watch, and to his bewildered surprise, it was 10:59. How long had he just been sitting there, sleeping? Where was Alfred? Then Jeremy remembered the bathroom.
A welling sense of dread overcame him. Jeremy tip-toed as he crept to the staircase. “Should I go up there?” Jeremy thought. “What if he is just taking a shower or something? There’s no need for me to check anything out. Can’t invade on someone’s privacy, right?” he rationalized, with the aplomb satisfaction of blindly accepted, faulty logic. Deep within him, though, there was an inexplicably ominous desire to check on Alfred. Something about Alfred’s entire countenance ever since they had approached his house was… wrong, his behavior more so.
For what felt like minutes, Jeremy stood indecisive. An audible clank sounded in his ears. Finally having enough of a reason to actually climb up the stairs, Jeremy sprinted up the steps. He knocked on the bathroom door.
No reply. Jeremy heard the sound of water running. “The sink’s on?” he wondered.
He knocked again and again, and the disquietude of the whole situation once again almost forced Jeremy to leave the house altogether and call Alfred later, maybe the following day. Jeremy felt he was encroaching upon private territory, like he was opening a sacred vault.
Yet still, he persisted. The terrible thrill of mystery, of approaching the very border of something new, was too intoxicating for Jeremy to resist.
“Alfred, Alfred!” Jeremy shouted as he knocked with more force. Still, no reply.
“The light is still on; he has to be in here,” Jeremy reflected. Hand on the door handle, Jeremy muttered, “I’m coming in.”
The door opened.
Jeremy’s disbelief at what he saw forced his mind reeling through various irrational possibilities. The several small pools of red liquid had to have been ketchup, or tomato sauce — anything but blood. Alfred was seated against the bathtub adjacent to the far wall, staring at Jeremy in horror.
And then Jeremy noticed the knife quivering in the hand of his friend. The scars along his forearms. “He never liked short-sleeved shirts,” Jeremy noted softly in his mind.
His mouth opened and closed, but no words could be produced. His voice had vanished at the sight of blood — Alfred’s blood, all the more unbelievable. Did he not have life figured out? What were all of those wounds doing there?
“Wh… Why?” Jeremy stammered, hoping that he did not appear as sick and weak as he felt.
Alfred blankly beheld the figure of his friend in the doorway for a few seconds. Then, his eyes welled up with tears.
“I meant to tell you, I wanted to say it,” uttered Alfred rapidly. “I just didn’t know how — I just didn’t know if I could say it to you. It’s not right for me to be sad, I can’t afford to — oh God, just what am I doing?” Alfred sobbed. Tears rolled down his cheeks and onto his dark blue button-down shirt. “Just damn, man, I look at myself in the mirror and realize I hate everything and I have no explanations as to why,” Alfred continued. His words were steadily whirling into unintelligible streams of oral information.
Through it all, Jeremy felt a heavy dampness warm his eyes. “So, this whole time, these were the demons he was confronting… and I never knew,” Jeremy whispered to himself. “It’s not my fault, right? I could not have known, I could not have.”
Yet the memories marauded him. How he never really bothered to understand Alfred, but had really just projected his own norm-centric explanations onto his behavior. Jeremy, for minutes, could not move. He earnestly desired to walk away, drive his car far, far away from this horrific house and the psychological nuance of his friend. He wanted to understand it all, yet at the same time wished he knew nothing about any of it. Jeremy, in the end, settled for unmoving silence.
Once Alfred had contented himself with what he had said, he grew quiet. He would occasionally glance up at Jeremy, anxiety distorting his features. Alfred was visibly smaller, as though he was a bag and someone had pounded the air out of it. Here was the man Jeremy had come to at least somewhat respect, completely unraveled and despairing. It evoked Jeremy’s disgust; however, there was more to it than that.
Was that feeling more so directed toward himself or to his friend?
Jeremy did not know, did not want to know. He simply stood, unwavering yet incredibly perturbed, watching Alfred further fold into himself, into what Jeremy imagined a child must look like in the womb. He did not even instinctively check his watch. He just stood, his mind scrambling for words, but none came.
This is just the first part of this narrative! If you enjoyed it, I would love to hear your thoughts on it in the comments. And, if you don’t mind, could you give the story a clap? It helps a lot. Thanks!
