Beneath the Cushions

Crane ironed out the wrinkled collar of his button-up and sighed.

“I wish I could pay someone to do my laundry,” he said to his roommate, Dewey, as he stretched and rubbed the back of his neck.

Dewey’s beagle, Javi, rolled a tennis ball into Crane’s foot. The tall, slender engineering student, bent over and tossed the ball down the hallway of the creaky three-bedroom apartment. The dog exploded after it, his overgrown claws slipping along the rickety hardwood floor as he gave chase into the cramped bathroom.

“You can,” Dewey said from the couch without looking away from the television. “They’re called laundry services.”
“I should pay Walt to do it. He could use the money.” Crane inhaled sharply and dropped the iron. “Ow! Dammit! I burn myself every time!”

He picked the iron up off the floor and tossed the ball for Javi again. He held up the canary-blue dress shirt and grimaced at the sizable crease along the back of it. Dewey laughed at him.

“He’s got one more day to come up with rent and I don’t think he’s got it,” Crane said as he looked closely at his hand and sipped from his coffee mug. “That carpet cleaning job doesn’t seem to be working out.”

Dewey stared at daytime television and said nothing. Crane went on.

“He said they put him on probation for breaking a taillight on the work van, even docked his pay.”

“ I know, he told me too.” Dewey said and flipped from one talk-show to another. “There’s not a whole lot anybody can do about it. It sucks, but rent is rent”

“I’m glad you think so too,” said Crane hanging up his poorly ironed shirt. “I know he’s your best friend, but we’ll have to let Hector move in if he can’t do it.”

Dewey sighed, “I know it, man.”

Javi rolled the ball onto the couch where Dewey was laying and it rested on his forehead. “Gross, Javi!” he tossed the ball down the hallway, and the beagle tripped on the chord to the iron in his pursuit of it.

“Dammit!” Crane said as it fell from his hands again.

“My bad, man. That one was my fault.”

“You’re not the ninja you think you are,” Crane said through his red face.

“Look who’s talking burn-myself-every-five-minutes-when-I-iron guy.”

“Alright, alright,” Crane said.

Dewey sat up and opened the drawer to the coffee table that sat between the couch and television. He shuffled the objects around inside the drawer.

“Is this your weed?” he asked holding up a plastic bag.

Crane’s brow furrowed and he shook his head. “Where’d it come from?”

“I found it this morning in the couch cushions. Maybe it’s Walt’s.”

“No way. Walt can barely afford to feed himself right now,” Crane said. “Hector was here recently. Think it was his?”

“No, because he’s been asking me if I can find him some.” Dewey said, examining the buds. “It’s pretty sticky too. Not too seedy. There’s over an eighth here.”

Crane put his iron down and sat next to Dewey. “Let’s smoke some then.”

Dewey began crumbling the herb onto a small tin tray. Javi the beagle, rolled the ball onto Dewey’s lap.

“Javi! Stop it!” He put the ball into the dog’s mouth, who reluctantly took it and laid down. Dewey exhaled a monster bong rip and stared at the smoke as it filtered out of the dirty screen in the window. A few seconds later, he erupted with a fit of violent coughing and the veins in his forehead bulged in his purple face. Crane followed suit, allowing great plumes of smoke to drift from his mouth and bounced on the couch cushions in a coughing spasm.

The front door opened, letting in rays of sunshine, a gust of fresh air and their third roommate, Walt. He was squat young man who naturally lumbered along as he walked, but on this day his gait looked damaged as he struggled into the smoky living room. A trickle of blood that started at his eyebrow had dried to his face. His lip was busted and his mesh baseball hat was torn.

“Jesus Christ, dude!” Dewey struggled to say through his chokes and coughs. “What the hell happened to you?” He stood up and looked at Walt closer.

Walt wobbled a little when Dewey put his hand on his shoulder. “My van got towed,” Walt said without looking at Dewey’s face. He’d been crying.

“Come on, sit down,” Dewey said. “Crane scoot over.”

“Why do I have to move?” Crane whined.

“Just do it, man!” Dewey shouted.

“Yeah, man!” Walt yelled, “Scoot over!”

“Holy shit,” Crane said, now noticing the blood on his face. He scooted over more than was necessary.

“So what happened, Walt?” Dewey asked, removing Walt’s hat and looking at his wound.

“I told you, man, my van got towed.” His words came quickly. His eyes darted around the room.

“So then, who kicked your ass?”

“He didn’t kick my ass! I hit him a couple of times too!”

“Hit who?” asked Crane.

“The tow-truck driver. It’s not funny dammit!”

“Sorry,” Dewey straightened up. “It just caught me off guard. Why did he fight you?”

“Cause, man,” Walt waved his hand, “I got in his truck. Stop laughing, you assholes! This shit isn’t funny! He pulled a piece on me, ok?”

The other two became serious again.

“What!?” Dewey asked, much more concerned with the news of a gun.

“Yeah, he dragged me out of the truck, reached in his glove compartment, pulled out a gun, pistol whipped me in MY EYE and kicked me a few times when I was already on the ground, that fucker!”

“Where’d all this happen?” Crane asked.

“Right there in the liquor store parking lot. I was only in there for like two minutes. I can’t believe that motherfucker actually pistol whipped me!” Walt stood up and shouted into the air.

“How’s his head?” Crane asked.

“It doesn’t look too bad. It’s not still bleeding anyway. You wanna go to the hospital, Walt?”

“No. I wanna go get that piece of shit.”

Crane stood up and put on one of his ironed shirts. “That sucks, Walt,” he said buttoning up the top button and reaching for a necktie. “But I gotta go to work.”
Dewey grabbed the bong and offered it to Walt, “Wanna rip it?”

“I just need a cigarette,” Walt said sounding defeated. He had gone to the liquor store to buy a new pack. After scraping himself off from the ground, he forgot about the cigarettes and limped home.

“Can’t help you there, buddy. Crane you got any cigarettes?” Dewey asked.

“Um, no, actually. I’ve just been bumming from other people,” he snatched his keys from the hook by the front door and showed two fingers to the roommates.

“Alright, Crane. See you later tonight,” Dewey said.

“Hope your day gets better, Walt,” Crane said as he exited.

Walt raised his hand up without looking.

Dewey handed Walt back his torn hat and grabbed Javi’s leash from a bucket near the front door. The dog rushed over to the front door with a tennis ball in his mouth and his tail wagging at a frantic pace.

“We’re going to the park. You can come too if you’re up to it,” Dewey said putting on his sunglasses and attaching the leash to Javi’s collar.

“I gotta sit here and settle down,” said Walt.

“Ok, we’ll be back then.”

Walt felt his swollen face with his scraped hands and winced when he touched his split eyebrow. He rested his head between his knees and thought back to the burly tow-truck driver pulling him from the cab and socking him in the jaw. He remembered staggering backward and regaining his awareness in time to see the bearded man bring the gun handle down on his eye. His hands reached out to break the fall and they grinded into the rough pavement. He could still feel the hiking-boots smash into his back and ribs. His adrenaline had subsided enough to allow the pain to set in and he felt so tired.

Through his knees, he saw the golden filter of a Marlboro Red peeking out from under the couch. He picked it up and lit it. It was the best thing he’d ever tasted. It felt like the way the Earth feels during a nice forest-fire brought on by a lightning storm: refreshed in a self-deteriorating kind of way.

Walt leaned back and smoked. He decided to put his pain and anger aside to allow another terrifying reality to fall heavily upon his weakened shoulders: he had lost his work van to that monster! A different flavor of panic flooded his brain.

His manager at Stanley Steemer picked up on the first ring. “Why aren’t you at work, Walt? We needed you an hour ago.”

“Carl, the van got towed.” Walt’s voice was shaky.

There was a long silence on the other end, and then, finally:

“What was the towing company?”

“I didn’t notice, seeing as how the driver hit me in the face with his gun and all.”
Another long silence.

“Don’t come back to work, Walt,” and he hung up.

Walt’s breath became quicker and he stood up and looked around. Nothing in the apartment was worth anything substantial. He walked over to the old floor-model television from the 80's and, due to its size and general trashiness, gave up on any ideas of hocking it a pawn shop. He imagined his landlord, his boss and the tow-truck driver all laughing at him as he rummages around for a dry place under a bridge somewhere. He thought about running away and going South. The idea of sleeping outside during the winters scared him.

He began muttering to himself about how he couldn’t let that happen and looking inside every drawer and cabinet in the house. He began looking under furniture and in closets for anything that had monetary value. He threw the couch cushions around the room and knocked over the bong, causing the water to spill into his shoe and wet his sock. In a fit of rage he picked up a side of the couch and turned it over, injuring his bruised back and ribs in the process and causing lamps and end tables to crash around the room. Breathing heavily and sweating, he slumped along the wall and down to the ground. He began to sob into his hands.

The sound of sirens off in the distance caused Walt to look up and dry his eyes with his shirt. He surveyed the damage the living room suffered in his desperate tirade and noticed something strange about the couch. There, under the cushions that had been strewn about at random, rested a shiny black nine-millimeter pistol.

He ogled it for a solid minute before he dared reaching for it. After a long time of considering who’s it was and why it was stuck in the couch, he picked it up; it was heavier than he’d expected. He shot the floorboards and panicked. It was loaded Ideas larger than Walt was able to cope with collided like two oil tankers traversing the shallow seas of his mind. On one ship was sudden power, controlling the fate of anyone he chooses, and on the other, was payback for the pain he currently could not ignore. The result was a spill of the kind of chemicals that has both doomed and furthered mankind: the chemicals that demand force through violence.

He heard the front gate rattle close and tucked the gun into the back of his pants. Dewey burst through the door, red-faced and out of breath. He took notice of the ransacked room as he huffed and puffed.

“What...the hell happened...in here?” he managed to ask between breaths.

“I couldn’t find my keys,” Walt said. “Did you run back here?”

“Javi ran away at the park. I can’t find him. I was talking to a girl who was there with her dog, and he just split. We gotta find him. I’m gonna go this way and look around all those factories down the street. You head toward the liquor store and the strip. Come back in an hour if you haven’t found him and we’ll think of something else. Damn I wish one of us had a car right now. Hurry up, we gotta find him.”

Dewey fled the house and bolted down the street yelling the dog’s name. Walt watched him go and reached for his torn ball cap. That monster had torn it when Walt hit the pavement. That monster. He’d ruined his hat, ruined his life. In that brief and violent moment of no more than 90 seconds with him, hope was crushed when that gun handle struck Walt’s face. He’d been attacked by the seething underbelly of reality that humans do their best to ignore: a force so purely evil and devastating and one that lives only within God’s perfected creatures and can strike at any time and without warning. Walt didn’t believe in ghosts or magic or even God, but he believed in that ruinous underbelly. Now that it had grabbed him so forcefully and shook him to his core, he couldn’t look away from it and he fed on its hatred. He traced with his finger the gun’s contours and pulled it out again. He now belonged to that world, to that unwanted slice of reality. He squeezed the handle as tight as his trembling fingers allowed and he grinded his teeth. He felt a blue flame of hostility ignite around him. His breathing sped up and his jaw muscles tensed. He tucked the gun back into his pants, balled up his fists and stomped out of the house.

The sky had clouded up and it began to lightly drizzle. Walt thought that the rain would steam away after striking his red-hot conscious. He could picture himself, walking in the rain with streams of smoke emanating from his head and shoulders. He could use a smoke. Even buying a pack from the liquor store had proved too difficult on that day. He remembered telling the clerk, “Box of Marlboro Reds,” and then the clerk saying, “isn’t that your van being towed?” He never did get those cigarettes, and it irked him further.

“Javi,” Walt called out, staring at his feet as he walked. “C’mon, Javi, you little shithead.”

Maybe he’d buy a pack when he got to the liquor store, he thought.

“If I’m going to the liquor store, I’m gonna rob it,” he told himself under his breath. Then he stopped walking. Why not the liquor store? Places like that get robbed all the time and all that seems to happen is that they slap on the wall, a fuzzy security-camera image of a guy with a mask, and, in black marker, a hand-written message asking patrons if they’ve seen this man. He wondered if he could go through with it.

As he stormed down one of the few residential streets in the industrial neighborhood, he saw, between two parked cars, a tail wagging.

“Javi?” The tail went still. “That you?”

Walt approached the protruding tail when he looked up, prompted from the squealing tires of a tow-truck that came tearing around the corner. A parked car blocked his view, but as the truck passed, Walt could hear the sickening thud and the shrill yelp of a dog dying. The tow-truck raged on undeterred and Walt noticed blood had splattered on his carpet-cleaning van that was hinged to the back of it. The dog’s body had rolled under the car and out of sight, leaving only a gruesome trail of stuff that was designed to stay on the inside of a dog.

He walked over to the car, but couldn’t look underneath it. Sharp pangs of sympathy and repulsion were replaced with that familiar burning rage inside of Walt. He imagined that his conscience was once a wet clay that could be molded to allow morality to rest comfortably within it. He remembered his dead mother insist in him to let his conscious be his guide. But now the hot anger that welled inside the urn deep in his chest had dried that clay and cracks were beginning to form on its surface. Soon, it would crumble and pile around his feet and all that would remain is the reckless and consuming fury of a man without a conscience.

Blocks away, he could still hear the noisy rumble of the tow-truck’s engine and the squealing of its tires. The rain came down a bit harder now and Walt quickened his pace.

Walt went over how the scene should look in his head. He would use one of his black t-shirt sleeves as a mask; he decided removing both sleeves would be less conspicuous. If there were customers in the store, he would make them get on the ground. If the clerk pulled a gun on him, he would shoot him. Somewhere in his mind, a voice was raised about shooting the clerk, but Walt brushed it off and sneered. He focused his rage into one single beam of fire and stomped along down an alley.

Walt’s adrenaline was causing his entire torso to quiver as he came to the back of the liquor store. He ripped the sleeves off of his shirt, and put one of them on his head. He stuffed the other one in his pocket and pulled out his gun. He moved slowly around the store to the front, when something in the parking lot made him stop. Parked there, in the spot farthest from the door, was a tow-truck with Walt’s carpet-cleaning van hooked on the back. Walt blinked with his mouth agape; the fire died down a bit.

The truck’s engine was running and the driver door was opened. The cab was empty. Walt climbed up onto the ripped leather seats and pulled down the lever that would release his van. A loud whirring sound came from the gears as the hook began to descend. Resting inside of the middle console was a pack of Basic cigarettes, a hand gun and a large, rubber-banded wad of cash. Walt took the cash and cigs but left the gun; he had his own now. The van reached the ground, the rain increased and the burly, flanneled tow-truck driver bursted from the liquor store. He ran toward his truck yelling profanities. While still sitting in the driver seat, Walt removed the gun from his pants, pointed it at the bearded man through the opened passenger-side window and pulled the trigger. A click, not a bang, sounded, and both men froze momentarily. Realizing he was perfectly unharmed, the driver resumed his chase toward the truck. Walt dropped his own gun, reached into the glove compartment, grabbed the tow-truck driver’s gun and shot him in the face with it, just as he opened the passenger door. The man’s body fell onto the parking lot and Walt stared out of the opened passenger window for many stunned moments. The rain beat against the windshield and the wipers moaned as they rocked back and forth.

Walt got out of the truck and looked around. The only activity he noticed was the traffic lights changing from red to green. No other cars around, no people. Just the traffic lights, the rain and him. He looked down and could see the driver’s boots under the truck, and he sprinted away.

He stood at the front door of his apartment before going in. The burning anger had dissipated and was replaced by fear and regret. His body continued to tremble and he couldn’t catch his breath. He heard Dewey inside laughing.

He opened the door and watched Dewey toss the tennis ball down the hallway. Javi sped after it, his overgrown claws unable to get good traction on the hardwood floor. Dewey looked up at Walt, beaming.

“He ran off into the woods. I found him about ten minutes ago. I’m so relieved.”
“But he got hit by the tow-truck. I saw it!”

Dewey raised his eyebrow.

“Javi? Nah, he’s fine. He was just in the woods is all.”
“I saw it happen! The truck hit the dog!” Walt shouted as he dripped rain onto the living room floor.

“Easy, man. I don’t know who got hit but it isn’t this guy. Thank God,” Dewey petted Javi’s head and let him lick his face. “You alright, Walt? You seem pretty weird.”

Walt sat down and tried to force his hands from shaking in order to remove a cigarette from the pack. Dewey noticed the struggle and did it for him.

“Jesus, man. What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked lighting Walt’s cigarette.
Walt inhaled deeply and watched the tip of the tobacco blaze away into ash. He sat silent for a few seconds and then began to sob.

“I shot him, Dewey. In the face! In the FACE!,” he stood and began pacing.
“Wait, what? Shot? Shot who?”

“That fucking tow-truck driver! In the face! Oh, God!” he wailed.

Dewey let the information wash over him. He stood and walked over to Walt.

“Are you serious, Walt?” he spoke softly.

Walt’s grimaced, crying face looked up at his roommate and nodded.

“Oh, Jesus!” said Dewey, “Oh, Jesus! We’re going to jail, we’re going to jail!” He looked around the apartment. “You gotta get outta here, Walt. You gotta go.”
“Go where, Dewey? Shit! If there was someplace to go...”

“Ok....Ok...uh...we’ll buy you a bus ticket!” Dewey snapped his fingers as he shouted.

Walt wiped his face. “Ok. Where to?” he said meekly.

“Shit, I dunno. Anywhere, Christ!”

The rain had returned to a light drizzle and evening had begun to darken the city sky. The front gate rattled closed outside.

“Who is that!?” asked Walt.

“Get in the basement. Get in the basement, Walt! C’mon! We’ll deal with all this shit in a minute. C’mon!” Dewey opened the basement door and led Walt by the arm. Walt hesitated.

“GET IN THE BASEMENT!!!”

Dewey shoved Walt through the door and slammed it closed. Walt sat down on the top step and listened, not bothering with the light. A few moments later the front door opened and closed.

“Man, there are a shit-ton of cops out tonight,” Walt could hear Crane tell Dewey as his keys jangled when he hung them on the hook by the front door. “Somebody must have got shot or something.”

“Yeah, I dunno,” Dewey replied feigning indifference. Walt could hear the channels on the television changing. “It looks like Walt found someplace to go, if he, uh, can’t pay rent tomorrow.”

“Oh yeah? Where to?” Crane opened the refrigerator, causing the beer bottles inside to clank. He popped one open.

“He was kind of vague, but it seemed like he might be going away for a while.”

Walt could hear the tennis ball bounce through the hallway and Javi chase after it.

“Well,” said Crane, “I hope it works out for him. That guy could use a new life. I’ll let Hector know he’s got the green light to move in. Hey, check it out, a scratch-off in the couch cushions. Is this yours? Think it’s Walt’s? Hmm. Well,” Crane laughed, “maybe this’ll be my lucky day after all.”