That's All, Folks

By Carlos Castillo

It only took one puff of the cigarette to realize that it wasn’t for me.

Jake noticed my face scrunch up and chuckled. I tossed it onto the floor and stomped on it until sparks stopped flying out with each impact.

“Goddamnit,” I groaned through gritted teeth, spitting out flecks of wet paper and what was presumably tobacco stuck to my tongue. “It tastes fuckin’ awful.”

“You’re not supposed to eat it,” Jake said, fumbling with the lighter, trying to figure out how to turn it off. “You just breathe in.” He pinched his fingers, brought his hand to his mouth, and took a deep breath in, taking care to keep a good distance from tongue to invisible cigarette. When he was done, a big smile spread across his face, showing pride in his teaching prowess. “Don’t go licking it or whatever you did there.”

“But I didn’t!” A burst of gray, foul-smelling smoke jumped out of my chest and into my throat. Sputtering out a rapid-fire series of shallow coughs, I shoved it into the open air and shooed it away with my hands. “God, it smells bad too,” I groaned when the air around my face returned to being mostly oxygen. “You wanna try?”

Jake leaned back. “Hell no. You ever been to Vegas?” I shook my head. “Smells just like that. Everywhere. It’s awful.” Jake pulled his shirt over his nose and ducked away from the cloud as it floated towards the ceiling. “I told you it’d suck.”

“Yeah, but it looked cool, right?”

“It didn’t.”

“Fuck you.”

As I turned my head away, pretending to be depressed, my eyes caught a glimpse of the window and got stuck on it. The sun was in the middle of retreating behind the horizon. A red-orange glow washed across the sky. The colors didn’t quite blend together, instead staining the air in distinct splodges like paint splattered onto a canvas. A small handful of clouds hung up there to remind everybody below that it was still technically the stormy season, but for the most part, it was nice and clear. The tails of passing helicopters and planes shone bright like the stars that light pollution obscured. Some of the brighter stars were able to make a cameo appearance, tucked away in the background, dim right to the edge of invisibility. It would have been a prettier view if I didn’t know it was eleven in the morning right now.

“So, um, did you manage to find any beer?” I tried and failed to keep my voice steady.

Jake shook his head, his smile falling off in the process. “No. By the time I got to 7/11 I saw someone stealing the last, like, eight packs, and I didn’t have any time to look anywhere else.”

“Shit.” My eyes darted around the apartment as I searched for something to drink. I stole a set of champagne glasses just for this moment, and I wasn’t about to let them go to waste. Finally they settled on the overturned pizza box I had tucked two Mountain Dew cans inside for safekeeping. “Well, we’ve got something, at least.” I climbed out of my chair and fished them out from their hiding spot.

Silence suffocated the room as I poured out these room temperature and slightly decarbonated cans into their cups. My mouth flapped open to say something, held itself there waiting for my brain to formulate a sentence, and then closed when it became clear nothing was coming. The muted fizz of the soda did nothing to fill the emptiness.

At least some amount of air was cycled through each shallow inhale and exhale. Any more than that and I started feeling nauseous. My eyes flicked back and forth from the window and back to my shaking hands. Each time my body grew stiffer.

“There’s worse places to die, y’know?” My voice cracked midway through the sentence and didn’t come back to normal afterwards. Jake didn’t seem to notice. He was completely unresponsive, focused on a point just to the left of and three hundred feet behind my head. “Things could be a lot worse.” Still no response. Jake’s eyes glazed over in a way that could have been an intense zone out or the first sign of tears. I hoped it was the former. “They’re saying it’s supposed to end real quickly. No time to feel --”

“Let’s just, not,” Jake abruptly cut in. Before he finished speaking, he jumped to his feet, walked over to our only view of the outside world, and shut it behind the blinds. He plopped himself back onto his seat. “Let it take us by surprise.” His eyes dropped to the floor. “We’re already fucked, so why bother worrying?”

I breathed in deep and tried to calm myself down a little bit. It was only the end of the world. “Okay. Yeah. Yeah.” He was right. It was obvious that he was right. The whole goal of this was to have a last bit of fun before it all stopped, and this was not currently any fun. Just relax, just relax. Make those last moments as nice as they can be.

As I went through some half-remembered breathing exercises, my mind returned to the real world, and my hands in particular. They were sopping wet. I had been a bit aggressive in my pouring. The counter sat under a concerningly bright lime green puddle. The glass had been overflowing for quite some time. I used the only napkin laying around to wipe off my hands, and swept the rest into the sink. “I’m sorry,” I muttered under my breath, over and over again. I wasn't sure who I was apologizing to. I emptied the top inch or so of drink off of the top to make sure I could carry them without soda dripping all over the floor, and brought them back over to where we were sitting. “I’m sorry.” The words flung themselves out of my mouth without any input from me.

“It’s alright. I just,” his voice cracked, “I just don't wanna, think, about it.”

I sighed, turning my head towards the fridge. “Wish we could’ve gotten drunk at least once, though.” I stared at the floor and tried my hardest not to think. It was an impossible feat. We were gonna play pool for three straight hours and get progressively worse and worse at it with each passing drink. Or maybe we were gonna grab something to go and make fun of a shitty movie. I didn't really know what we were going to do, honestly. I never put too much thought into these plans. They were more than a year off. And they were never going to happen. Water welled up at the corner of my eyes. I faked a yawn to have an excuse to wipe it off. We had maybe five more minutes until it all started. Five more minutes before we found out what the end would be like.

“Nah, I've had beer, it tasted like piss. You’re not missing out.” Jake chuckled, broken in the middle by slight sobs.

I tilted my head and opened my mouth in mock shock, which made it a lot harder for him to read my face. I was starting to worry that it was betraying my attempt at keeping it together. “When’d you do that? Why wasn’t I invited?”

“Twelve years ago, and because I hadn’t fuckin’ met you yet.”

“Twelve?!” Now the shock was a lot more real, and it helped bump everything else to the background. “You were eight!” I paused and did some more precise mental math. “No, you were seven! The hell were your parents up to?”

“They wanted me to hate it, and I did.”

“What would they have done if you liked it?”

“Suicide, probably.”

Shock turned out to be an emotion easier to shove to the side than dread, and so it instantly gave way to laughter. I surprised myself at how loud I was. It was a large amount of stress jumping out in one go. A few tears escaped and sprinted down my face. I couldn’t tell if it was joy or sadness which pried them out.

I passed Jake his drink and sat myself back down. “Well, let’s hope this tastes better.”

He raised the champagne glass at the most extreme angle he could manage without spilling everything onto the floor. “Cheers?”

“Cheers to what?”

He paused. “You’re supposed to say something when you say cheers? I thought it was just, like, a thing people said.”

“Yeah, it’s supposed to be a celebration of something specific. I think. I might be wrong.” I shifted around in my seat. “Never, uh, done this before.”

Jake’s gaze rose to the ceiling and held there for a few moments, before coming back down to prepare for a shrug. “To us, I guess. Nothing else to really celebrate right now.”

I cracked a smile. “Cheers, to us.”

Clink