Take life by the throat

As I lay there, my legs being crushed by the huge trunk, and hearing my steed run off in the distance, I knew I was going to die. And for the second time in my life, I didn’t know whether I cared or not. The pain became too much and darkness came upon me.

For the first two days I just waited there, feeling how I gave up more and more of my resistance. I fell in and out of a restless sleep, dreams of the past haunting me along with the pain from awakening and feeling my crushed bones. I had expected to die from inner bleedings long before the third day came.

But as dawn came on the third day and I admitted to having stayed alive and awake to see yet another day, other thoughts entered my head. I remembered the people who had admired my way of life; how I threw myself at every challenge and how I seemed to enjoy every day with the double vigour of that of my younger friends. I used to tell them that I aimed to live hard and die young. Well, just look at me now. I’m basically just getting what was coming to me. I would have turned six and twenty this year. If my aim was to die young, then why wouldn’t today be a good day to die?

Lying there, I started chuckling to myself. It was a bitter laughter, mocking my whole existence. Somewhere in the distance, magpies took off, cawing away as the lifted. I laughed at how I had thought that life wouldn’t be enjoyed unless I burned all the way through it. I had encouraged my comrades to live like me, to take life by the throat, kiss it hard and then throw it away. I had expected them all to envy me for my insane ways of life. It all felt ridiculous and pointless, as I thought about it.

Then it hit me. There was actually someone I had always envied. The one person who seemed to enjoy life more than I did; Brother Borrel. “Brother Barrel”, we had called him, laughing at his slow ways and his impressive belly. But Brother Borrel had always laughed with us, never taking offence or falling for “base temptations” like anger. Instead he had gone up to his tower and taken another slice of cheese, enjoying the grey weather outside.

He was the calmest person I had ever known. Rather than take life by the throat, he would stroke it calmly and sit down next to it, enjoying every aspect of it, be it past, present or future. Where I would hold a grudge against myself for making mistakes and constantly trying to rectify them, he would just smile at them and try to do better next time. It seemed that life had many things to teach me still. Things I probably wouldn’t have been able to take in, had I not been lying there, under that cursed log.

“Cursed?” I thought to myself, “This log is the most blessed one I’ve ever had the pleasure to be crushed under”.

Once again, I started laughing, but without the bitterness I had felt before. Instead, I felt renewed, lying there in my seemingly unprovoked mirth. I drew in a large breath of the dank, musty morning air, then clenched my fist, filled with new purpose, yet with a calm I hadn’t felt before in my life. I felt my hand burning, and almost thought I heard a crackle from the smoldering determination of my blood. Then I threw myself at the log with all my power and new strength of will. There was a loud crack as the wood gave in, in a blinding flash of light and flame. My whole body was filled with new strength as I got to my shaking feet. Seemed like they weren’t broken, after all. I was free. Free from my own shackles.

Whalpurge

We celebrated that night. Mohammad had gotten us rats. He had even brought out some of old Jareem's sauce to marinade them in. We barbecued them hard on an old one-use grill that Mohammad had modified, letting it be used over and over again. I hadn't had meat in what felt like a decade and as the grease ran down my chin I felt like I melted inside.

We sat there for a while, watching the sunset and the other people around us, downing a few beers and roasting candy and roaches. We then made our way back to the hideout. After another round of beers and a burning round of tequila, we decided to get out and find a Whalpurge fire. There were fires like this burning in parks all over town, in honor of the old springtide rite. We decided to get to the closest and biggest of them, down in Castle Woods. I brought a case of condoms and my cell phone.

On our way to Castle Woods, we dodged several groups of drunk and jolly people. We even saw a parked ambulance, where the crew had given up the hard life for the night and joined in celebration at a nearby pub. They were even wearing their workstuff, neon yellow shining through the front window. I told Mohammad that I felt like making this a night worthy of a short story. I wanted to join in the anonymous celebration, meet people that I'd never see again, make temporary friends and have wild sex. Mohammad laughed and said that the Castle Wood probably was the best place for all of that. He said he knew of a shortcut, so we turned away from the main street and the pretentious safety of the street lights.

The shortcut was through several dark alleys and the few people we met there were probably as afraid of us as we were of them. We went up a long hill and suddenly the buildings made way for an old, broken down gate, welcoming us to Castle Woods. It was side entrance to the park, without street lights lighting up the way, and no one with their wits with them used it during night time. It was with a small shudder I decided to leave my own there for the rest of the night. The trees closed in tightly around us as the uphill climb continued. At some point the ground evened out and we came to a clearing. It was an old lookout spot, from which we could see lights and fires, sending their warmth out in the chilly spring night. The view sent out a feeling of hope, remembrance and renewal. There was a distant banging of drums. We made our way downhill, past moonlit glades and onto an asphalt road.

We were near the heart of the park, I realised suddenly, as streetlights and people once again started to show up around us. The mainstream party animals had already started to make their way from the park, along with the last straggling families. We greeted some of the friendlier-looking ones and wished them a safe trip home. Left were those looking for something special, and there were many of them. A confused and drunk girl approached me and asked if she could pet my dog, pointing at my beer can. As I held it up to the street light she gave me a look of disappointment. I asked if she needed a friend for the night, but she claimed that "without the dog I'd not be more interesting than her boyfriend". I left her with a shrug and we made our way towards the main fire, which looked like little more than a smoldering heap of ashes by now. We stood by it and watched for a while, chatting idly with some youngsters who probably should have left for home several hours ago, had it been any other night. Firemen were starting to put out the remaining ashes of the fire, and we decided to try and find some interesting company. Since it hardly was likely that I or Mohammad would know anyone there, we decided to just stop at some of the more interesting groups and see what would happen. The drums could now be heard all over the park, making us eager to dance, as well.

The first group we stopped by were some Portuguese guitarists and their friends. We stood and watched for a while, enjoying the music. A girl asked me for a light, but I didn't have any. Suddenly, out of the darkness, came a reeling bike with a drunk man on it. He seemed to be a friend of the company and tried conversing with us in a couple of different languages before giving up. I didn't even try to bring up the old Spanish phrases I had learned on my trip to Costa Rica, back in the nineties. We decided to move on towards the drums.

A girl greeted us on the way and tried to get us to give her drugs, which we probably wouldn't have given her, even if we'd had any. We walked along and found two other girls who sat a bit separated from the other groups. They wanted to sing us a song. So we let them. Turned out they were really good. Then they asked us to sing something in return, but Mohammad only knew ancient, anarchadelic child songs. So we sang one of those. When we finally found something we all could sing on, I got caught up in the whole thing and ended up sitting there howling for a good while. After finishing the tenth song, we raised our glasses to the sky and moved along. A couple of policemen came up to us, asking for IDs. Mohammad showed his to one of them and I tried sweet talking the other. It went well. He turned out to be a really nice fellow, talking with a voice that sounded like a baloon stuck in a throat. As I patted his back, with my beer in the other hand, he wished us a pleasant evening.

We were now just next to the drums, which were somewhere in the middle of a large, dancing crowd. We joined in the dancing for a short while, but were distracted by a strange girl playing an only vaguely stranger instrument. It made a weird, hypnotising sound and we stood there for a while watching. I asked what kind of instrument it was, but she claimed that it wasn't an instrument at all, but a bow. I figured she probably just lied because she didn't know. I asked her where the fuck she kept her arrows, but she just gave me a bored look and left.

Next to her stood a normal-looking fellow with blue hair, a pair of poi and some cute friends. He complained over not having brought his other, more fiery, pair. Of Poi. Not friends. We chatted for a while, until his friends decided that they wanted to move on. They were an interesting bunch, so I invited myself and Mohammad to join him and his friends some steps away.

So we did. He introduced the group; Yaleen, Ghash, Frinda, Bombast, George W Bush and Smirk. He himself was called Stripe. We sat down next to George W Bush and Smirk. Smirk was called Smirk because he always did, and George W Bush complained over not being able to start a facebook account, because the facebook crew believed him to be an impostor. Smirk handed us beer and Bombast gave us a taste of something stronger. We sat there for a long while, chatting, getting to know each other and enjoying the night air. Later, George W Bush's girlfriend Minstk joined in as well. I then took notice of George W Bush's amazing bow tie. It was an incredible piece of work, ordered from a distinguished manufacturer who only delivered to those with enough positive karma, and George W Bush obviously was one of those. Smirk had found a strange little black flask with a skull and crossbones on it. We drank from its mysterious content, which tasted strongly of peppermint and liquer, then he decided to make a gift of it and handed it to me. As I held it up toward the street light later I noticed that it was entirely made of crystal, with small, genuine diamonds in it. I wonder if he knew.

As the clock turned past midnight, we and our new-found friends decided to hit the road and find a pub. I admitted, a bit ashamed, that I only had my mobile and a pack of condoms, but Smirk seemed eager to bring us with him and offered to pay for our drinks. We were very happy about this and so we got up and away. We found a bag of more beer, and some enchanted Bastard Baguettes. With those we started a small brawl, which ended with me throwing a broken baguette in the back of Yaleen's head, which she somehow mistook for an invitation and started to become interested in what other pieces of bread I might be offering that night. I considered her for a while, but decided that I'd let the next couple of drinks decide what would happen. Lost in the city, me and Mohammad just tagged along the little party. We learned that Stripe and Frinda were engaged and were to be married during the summer. We congratulated them.

Suddenly we entered a familiar neighbourhood and it turned out that the pub that we were headed for was one just next to the place of one of my classmates; Linga. I tried calling her, but with no reply. We entered the place, and in a couple of minutes were engaged in some heavy drinking involving strange, coloured liquids of unquestionable potency. Mohammad, who had been on top until now, decided to take some steps back and get a drink of water. After a while, when that wasn't enough, he threw in the towel for the evening and started to head home. The rest of the crowd grew stranger and stranger by the minute. They revealed amazing, intricate tattooes, the like I had never seen before and somehow this lead to us biting each other in our arms. Hard. Freaking hard. Bits of my skin came off, but I didn't start to bleed. I started to worry about where this unhindered exchange of body fluids might lead. But that was just the start of it. My mind started to grow real foggy by the time we left the pub and I had no idea where we were going.

Frinda, Stripe's fiancée, started chatting with me. She tried, for a good while, to convince me that I was gay. It didn't go very well. Then she started to try and convince me that she would totally dominate me in a bedside situation. I wasn't convinced. So she decided that she wanted to take me home to their place. I asked if her to-be husband would be all right with that, but she claimed that they had a so-called open relationship and that this was the usual way to go. So the two of us separated ourselves from the rest of the group and started to walk towards a trolly station. Somehow walking turned into foreplay and somehow she was up against a wall. Good thing I brought those condoms. I took her, there, in the middle of a street. It was glorious. The world around us - the lights, the cobble stones and the drunken party animals - it all disappeared as I entered her. I am not sure of how long it lasted, but by the time we were finished, the scents of morning were already upon us. We stood there for a while, just breathing in the fresh air. Then, after a short moment of confusion, we decided it'd be best if we just parted ways.

I started to head home, exhilarated from the night's many twists and turns. I felt like just telling someone about it and heard some noise from a window a bit off of the ground. I climbed up and peeked in. There were some people in a neighbouring room, but no one else. I looked around and found a jar of jalapeños and an enormous bag of chili nuts. Since I had forgotten about my trophy of that night; the crystal flask, I felt I needed something more. I grabbed the chili nuts and ran. I started calling friends to tell about the night's accomplishments, but none would pick up. Since I stayed at Mohammad's place, I tried calling him, but even he wouldn't answer. I started to get a bit worried and tried several more times, but then his phone seemed to have been turned off. This, of course, made me even more worried. What if someone had stolen his cell and knocked him out? As drunk as he was he'd have been easy bait. I awkwardly made my way to his place. Once outside, I had to climb the mountain on the back of his house to get a view of his bedroom. No one there. I climbed a tree and made my way towards the window, when at last Mohammad came into view, practically falling out of his bathroom. I drew a long breath of relaxation and tapped the window, for him to let me in. He was sick. I was tired. I told him about the street lay and the nuts and somewhere through the story fell asleep on my floor mattress. It was indeed a night of celebration.