After leaving my camera equipment in one of my better friends apartments for a week or two. I went to go get it. I had not seen Jack since the night we got so stoned we ordered dominos, twice. We each ordered the same thing and at the same time. Hell of a story. Hell of a night. As I approached the door and knocked something didn’t seem right. I just had this feeling in my gut. The kind that turns your stomach over itself like watching a real battle scene, not one from a movie. I knocked three different times before I tried to just walk in. The door was unlocked.
The apartment smelled like a Chinese gutter. It was dark as the blinds were closed on every window, and all lights were off. Even in the dark dungeon this was, I was scared from what I saw. Boxes upon boxes of takeout stacked along all sides of the room. Some piled high enough to lean over. Some overfilled the trash can with the pizza boxes. As the kitchen was as dirty as it had ever been, not all else was. The sofa and the coffee table were free of food scraps. Free but still not clean. The sofa while covered in cum stains was easily the cleanest. The coffee tables had the remnants of more eight balls than a billiard hall. I made my way over to the blinds. I peeled them open to shine a light on the satanic dark side that the apartment had stooped too. Hati himself would be proud. Opening windows didn’t make the smell any better. It seemed to fumigate dead scents from the floor. I could see my camera bag across the room sitting on the barstools. I couldn’t just grab it and go no matter how bad I wanted to leave. This wasn’t like Jack. He wasn’t the kid to do any of this. He wasn’t the kid to leave his apartment like this, let alone scatter spliff remnants around the kitchen island. While overstepping the bottles, cans, and clothes on the floor I had acquired a lighter. Followed of course with the roach of something Mary and Nicky left behind. I sparked up what was left. I would need it for whatever was about to come next, that I knew.
I made my way down the hall. I peeked into the first room just to make sure nothing was there. It wasn’t his bedroom but with the way things were going, you couldn’t tell. As I slowly made my way back down to the end of the hall I prepared for the worst. Half emotional and half curious I was pushed to see what had driven him this far. As I opened his door the eerie squeak it made with every inch it opened added more to make all of the hairs on my neck stand up, and not just some, ALL. I shakily muttered
“Hello, Jack… Jack, Hello”.
One step after another finally on the soft carpet. As my quiet footsteps continued my eyes gathered what they could. One piece of furniture after another was out of place. The green sheets torn half off the bed. Cups of half drunken water and whiskey on every available position they could be. This made movie scenes from frat movies look tame. This was ones man’s quest to destroy everything clean in his life. As I ashed the dying end into a glass of what looked like chew spit, I moved towards the bed. I should start taking pictures to document my findings so other believe me. I reached forward and pulled back what remained of the bedspread that was still on. A pile of pillows underneath but no Jack. This is where the worry really began to sink in. I had checked this apartment out front to back. Still no friend. Still no Jack. I was panicking on the inside as every bad thought that had run through my head had just grown in the possibility it was true. Either way, nothing had happened until I found a body. I yelled. I’m not sure the first sound out of my mouth made sense but after that my broken crackling voice made out the phrase
“JACK!!! What the hell, JACK.”.
I wasn’t yet crying but I was close. I was in a frenzy running to every door flinging it open again to see if I had missed something. I went all the way to the porch to see if he had fallen or jumped off. I ran back into the second bedroom. The bathroom it was attached to, all of the laundry room his room, the boiler room and then his bathroom again! It was there at the last door I opened that I noticed it.
I was frozen in the doorway of the bathroom. Behind the curtain pulled back to one side there was a silver nickel revolver laying with the barrel peeking out. I wanted to move forward to see what was in the bottom of the tub but I couldn't. I stood on my tip toes to see if I could get a better look. I couldn’t. Breath in, breath out, breath in, breath out, I was telling myself as I managed to slowly creep forward to see. Step after step, these were the longest and most anticipated steps of my life. Moving inches a minute. I saw the cold pale face of Jack angled away from me in the tub. His face was covered with a streak of dried and browned blood. His hand that lay on his chest had soaked his shirt. I stared at the revolver on the back of the tub hammer back and next to a bloodied steak knife. I looked back at his shirt and hand and hoped that was where the blood came from. I checked his pulse. I could feel the whimper of his heart struggling to get blood across and to the brain.
He didn’t awake with my previous words, but I gave him shake after shake to see if I could get him up. Thirty long sour seconds slowly turned into a minute before I finally heard a groggy moan from my friend. I was overcome with happiness. I was ecstatic. My friend wasn’t dead. I finally started to gather my surroundings. Not only was there more whiskey and water cups that weathered that room, there was a message written in blood on the mirror. It wasn't easy to read. Right as I had read it I reached for my camera. This was proof I could get Jack help. This alone was enough to strike a motherly worry into anyone's soul. He was never like this. How could two weeks turn him into this person? He barely smoked or drank before and now he was well past the acceptable drugs of alcohol and weed. I lined up the shot. A puke stained sink with a half straw and credit card next to it. They were dusted with white powder like a light early snow. Two lighters and some sort of pipe made it into the picture. It was made out of a light bulb, unlike anything my stoner ass had ever seen. As I turned down the exposure, focused in on the writing, Jack’s hand came down on top of my lens. He slapped my camera down as he read the words from the mirror. I was scared before, but this was the most shaken I had ever been. He weakly got the words out like a needle skipping off a scratched vinyl.
“I’m not fucking done yet.”