I took a sip of my beer.
‘So! What do you do?’ I said, deciding to open-up a conversation with the reincarnation of my dead schoolmate.
He began to answer, and as he did so, a hot agony began to slowly accumulate within my gut. I noticed that it was nearly impossible to register anything he was saying without leaving a little deposit of irritation in my belly. Why was it so difficult to sit there and listen to him? It was as if he had never learned how to make himself seem endearing in new company, revealing certain aspects of his common, flawed human nature in the right way to elicit genuine emotion and interest in his listeners.
Further complicating this mystery was the fact that rather than evacuate this conversation or try to move it onto other pastures, I idealistically believed that he was not really a dull person – because no one is really dull, right? – and so I kept interrogating him. I thought that I just hadn’t yet hit upon the right vein of precious minerals, and once I did, an iridescent ore would spill forth from his mouth and we would all be rich.
My efforts to mine him were in vain. He drawled on and on, and I kept asking him more and more questions and the whole situation was crescendoing me into a state of fever. Eventually, I decided to flee and, while sitting on a toilet seat in a dirty one-metre-by-two-metre bathroom, I attempted to contact someone (anyone) who knew of a party, or just anything else happening anywhere. I messaged three people and none of them responded. I called my best friend. He told me he was busy at work and didn’t know anywhere we could go. ‘I guess I could just go home and slit my wrists, bleed out in a bathtub,’ I pondered to myself as I wiped my wet hands on the back of my jeans and prepared to re-join the others.
I returned from the jetliner-sized bathroom. The others mentioned that they were ‘getting tired’, and so our fastidious friend, as well as the one who was ‘definitely not on drugs’, decided to leave. This left three of us: she, I, and my previous interrogatee. A sudden thought struck me.
‘What do you say we get out of here, and go to another great place I know of?’ I asked. I knew this other place would almost certainly be full of ‘terribly, terribly fascinating and interesting people’ with youthful, red-cheeked visages in the image of Narcissus. This would provide a nice counterpoint to our current locale, which was full of what looked like puffy-faced English backpackers whom I imagined probably didn’t spend much time observing their reflection in arbitrary pools of water.
They both nodded. As we left, I took a long look at her, carefully documenting each blonde curl which streamed down either side of her grand, green eyes. I noticed for the first time how the creamy texture of her skin intelligently offset the clear pink of her lips, and all of this was strangely soothing to me. Then it hit me that the radiant beauty which shone forth from her sacred features would one day fade to nothing and we were all going to die.
‘Guys, I think I’m going to head off now,’ he said suddenly. We were stopped at a traffic-light intersection.
‘Oh, uh, OK. Well it was nice meeting you, bye,’ I said, distractedly.
As he disappeared across the street, I found myself being caressed by sweet strokes of relief. Now we were alone.
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Hello