Blood on the Golden Shores

By Brock H. Brown


Gregory’s eyes drifted over to the telephone booth pushed against the wall of the college. Languidly, he considered it. But it stared back at him. It flung its blue and black AT&T death upon his glare. Nervously he looked away from the phone, feigning un-interest.
              “The thing about messages is that I never get them,” Gregory told himself. “I’d love some messages, there’s no question about it, but I never get any. That’s just how it works. And that’s how today will work.”
              Gregory hoped to hell or high water that today would work like that. But when he approached the phone booth and picked up the receiver, it didn’t.
              A monotone, emotionless voice alerted Gregory to new messages on his machine. Dr. Sanders’ gruff, yet overly considerate voice resounded to existence.
              “Greg,” he said, as if apologizing before the sentence had been uttered, “the test came back.” Then a deadening silence as Dr. Sanders pauses, as if delaying the news would somehow make it easier. “It’s positive.” Gregory’s lips puckered and his brow furrowed in an effort to hold back tears. Although a recorded voice, Sanders seemed to take this reaction into consideration. “You need to know Greg that there are ways to work this out. Things can be done. It isn’t hopeless; never think that it’s hopeless. I want you to come into my office on Monday and we can go over some ideas, consider some possibilities.”
              “Consider this,” Greg thought as he slammed the receiver down.
              Then he stood there, running his hands through his hair again and again. Greg also whispered to himself, “Oh, God no, God, Lord, no,” as if a mantra could solve all. He pulled his hands back from his hair and noticed a strand stuck between two of his fingers. “You’re contaminated,” he thought to the strand. “Or are you?” Greg considered it for a moment, wondering if his hair, toenails, snot, teeth, eyebrows or even skin were contaminated. With a sigh Greg dragged his diseased body across the parking lot.
              Inside the car Greg gripped the steering wheel and his mind flooded with another torrent of questions about his newfound curse. “Is this steering wheel now contaminated?” he wondered. “The car, no matter who owns it, will always be stamped with the impression of death.” Greg soured and turned the key. As the car glided down the blacken asphalt the skies above burst forth with perspiration. The droplets, which had gestated in the pregnant fogs, pelted down and sprinkled against Greg’s contaminated window.
              “This is Greg’s rain” he told himself, “It’ll mark the event.”
              But as he continued driving along, thoughts, suspicions and commitments filtered through his brain. It was then that he knew something else would mark the occasion. In the flickering of his mind’s eye he saw weeks before the call, before the doctor’s appointment even, when he shook Jeff’s hand and they laughed, both dreaming of scandal, and struck upon the agreement. A trip. Down to the coast.

              “You know,” Jeff said, “You fill up the car with drinks and candy and we drive down the highway, stop at a shoddy motel and hit the town with some local friends. Sex with local friends sometimes.”
              Back then Greg had laughed in between the sips of his tonic. Now, he shuddered. Jeff didn’t know that very soon thereafter the sores appeared in Greg’s mouth. A few days later Greg began to feel like he couldn’t get enough sleep. But Greg couldn’t tell Jeff now, could he? No. Maybe he could bear a trip. Throw some crap into a bag and buy what he lacked when he got to the coast. That was what he would do.
              The trip lost appeal when his car rolled up to his building and he saw not just Jeff, but Larry, his despicable face bearing through the lobby window.
              “Damn it.”
              His mind’s eye flickered again and she was before him. Beautiful her. Green eyes with swirled pockmarks of black; her hair flowed. It was imperfect, as was she, and all the more brilliant because of it.
              But they never really talked. Only here and there, and never at a great length. She did all her talking with Larry. The jerk with a mouth full of crooked teeth, that was him, right there in his lobby, the third member to this party for the coast. He was the one she whispered to. She sent Greg into self-decadence and drugs and ultimately doctor’s calls. And Larry was here to attest to it. Greg rolled his tongue in cheek and stepped out of the car.
              In the lobby, as Greg approached Jeff and Larry, Jeff turned around and greeted Greg with a warm explosion of welcome.
              “Hey there Greg, what’s new? You don’t mind if Lar here comes along do you?”
              Greg turned to Larry as the other nonchalantly shook his hand.
              “How you doin’ there Greg?” Larry asked with all the sincerity in the world. But Greg hated that handshake all the same.
              “I’m fine, great. Yeah he can come.” Greg forces his glance on Larry. “Of course you can come. Heck, I know we’re going to have the best time of our lives. One heck of a trip, that’s what this is going to be.”
              Jeff looked at Greg worriedly.
              “Is everything all right Greggers?”
              Inside Greg’s mind a million curses set off and exploded into more sap to drain into fake enthusiasm.
              “Of course it is!” Greg answered.
              “Do you need to pack?” Jeff asked.
              “Just a few things” Greg said, stepping towards the lobby elevator.
              “Then get it! And hurry!” Jeff laughed after Greg.
              The doors began to close, and Greg’s face fell. Startled, Larry slithered in-between the crevice. “I’ll come up with you,” he explained, “I need to use the bathroom”.

              When they finally hit the road, the drive was smooth, Greg was behind the wheel and the rain-splattered sky had melted into night.
              The conversation was dense, but Greg enjoyed it. They talked of beaches, and gulls, crabs and sand.
              “I wonder what the sand will be like down there?” Jeff questioned.
              “Bonnie says its gray, and coarse” Larry replied, “like granulate or coal.”
              “Lead from a pencil” Jeff added.
              “On Coronado the sand’s golden” Greg stated.
              “We’re not on Coronado” Larry battered.
              “Golden?” Jeff asked.
              “There’s little bits of gold right there in the sand” Greg affirmed, “It sparkles like the sun. Like…like the glitter Jeff’s sister used to wear to cheer practice.”
              “You’ve actually been there?” Larry said in a threatening tone.
              “No” Greg replied.
              “Then how the hell do you know so much about it?”
              “Well, I read an article on it in Town and Country.” Greg replied, “But I would like to go there one day. Before I die. I mean, if I were to die I’d go there before I got sick, and vomit blood on the golden shores.”
              “That’s sick” Larry accused.
              “No it isn’t” Greg replied.
              “It’s sick and I’m going to tell Bonnie you’re a sick person.”
              “Hey Lar,” Greg piqued up, “You drink too much.”
              “What?” Larry asked.
              “You’re a drunk. You’re always drinking, getting surly and upsetting Bonnie. In fact, Bonnie hates it when you drink. And you’re always drinking, so it’s ironic she likes you at all.”
              At the end of Greg’s tirade Larry didn’t yell, he didn’t even get upset. But he laughed. Quietly at first, but then with piercing cruelty. Greg’s eyes squinted and his brow furrowed at the malicious giggle, as if in pain, or fear. Larry noted Greg’s reaction.
              “You must really have a thing for Bonnie, Greg, and it must drive you nuts that she’s with me.”
              Greg swerved the car then, dragging his diseased form as well as Jeff and Larry into the on-coming traffic lane. Ahead of the darkened freeway, headlights blossomed into view.
              “You want to die Lar?” Greg quietly asked through the sound of his own engine revving.
              In the backseat Jeff was sickened with madness. “Turn the car back Greg! What are you doing?”
              “Just screwing around” Greg replied as he pressed his foot harder against the accelerator.
              “Hey Greg” Larry piqued up.
              Greg looked over to Larry who was pointing up at Greg’s forehead.
              “You’re bleeding.”
              Greg’s hand drifted up to his forehead to feel the moistening spot chafing against his skin. A sore. As if in a trance Greg turned the car back into its previous lane. “I need to go to the bathroom…at the next stop.”

              When they got back into the car Jeff drove. Larry sat up in the passenger seat and Greg lied sprawled out in the back. Outside the window, the sky drifted by, cloudless and black. The bleak, unsettling nothingness of the nightscape unhinged Greg, drove him to tears. And although tears glistened in his eyes, those watery orbs narrowed to slits when he looked up to Larry in the passenger’s seat. He was a bastard. And bastards always win, while losers die with sores erupting on their foreheads. Greg somberly thought about this as the car drifted on and his body drifted into sleep.

              When Greg opened his eyes again the void landscape of the night was gone and the majestic inner woodwork of a cathedral was before him. With a gaping look across the room Greg took in gothic pillars, whitewashed walls, carved sainthood and color-glass holiness. And he felt veneration. Then a quiet touch drifted across his shoulder and she was beside him.
              She walked into full view before him and smiled. It was then that Greg knew. She was getting married. He begged her not to, he held her hand, tried to speak and looked into her eyes with all of the honest desire in the world to plead with her.
              And then the sea rushed in. Leaking, creaking, the sudsy waters expanded the wooden sentinel doors like a balloon; they burst them like a sore. The waters cascaded down through the pillars and up along the walls. It rushed in between him and her, and before he knew it, she was floating away. As she was floating upstream Greg was left all alone on the waters of the cathedral. And what’s worse, it was then that he woke up.

              The empty, barren landscape of the desert was no more when Greg woke up. Instead, a thick, wispy fog rolled by the windows. Greg tipped his head up and glanced outside the window. Between the fogs, lights and buildings peaked out, ghostly beacons that welcomed Greg from his slumber.
              Up in the driver’s seat Larry was behind the wheel. Jeff turned around in the passenger’s seat and nodded to Greg.
              “We’re here.”
              Greg stretched his arms out and leaned forward. “So what’s the plan?”
              Jeff turned around, “Well, we’re going to check-in to our hotel, and then we’ll meet up with some girls. I met them down here last summer. They’re nice, you’ll like them.”

              They had cats. And the cats were everywhere.
              Greg sat scrunched against the corner of an overstuffed, overly comfortable sofa. The pillows, rather then cushioning him, seemed to engulf Greg and pull him down into an ever-deepening sinkhole. To his right Larry and Jeff sat, but neither one of them seemed bothered by the couch or the swarm of felines. Across from them the three girls sat. They were striking, and obviously aware of it. But their exotic beauty and sensuality was overcompensated by their boorish and bombastic personalities. They were simply chatty girls. Well, two of them at least. Natalie and Francesca sat across from Jeff and Larry, and their mouths ran forward, spewing words that merely danced in circles.
              But next to them sat a third girl, highlighted by an air of silence – Julia. Her eyes were like bubbles engraved in the dark ovals of her mascara and her hair, thick and flowing, were like a sea of black waves. But it was the hush that caught Greg. It was the unmistakable sound of nothing that was heard when everything and everyone around a person seemed to be making a special connection leaving you isolated in a void of self remorse. But it was also something more, something knowing and un-innocent. And Greg wanted to know all about it, and about her.

              His conscious effort to find out more about Julia began as Greg and his friends walked along the sidewalk with Julia and her friends. Greg hurried up to the head of the group to trot alongside her.
              “So, Julia,” he began, “tell me a little bit about yourself.”
              She didn’t even turn to face him. “Like what?”
              “What do you mean like what?” Greg asked.
              “Well, whatever you want to know” she said.
              “Well, whatever you want to tell me” Greg stated with a grin.
              Julia smiled and leaned in close to Greg. Close enough to whisper into his ear. Then she said, “I don’t talk much”. And with that she stalked ahead of Greg leaving him all the more wondering, all the more needy of her.

              Inside the restaurant Greg decided to sit across from Julia.
              “You need to tell me something else about yourself” he said.
              “Something else?” she asked.
              Greg nodded, “Yeah, another thing.”
              Julia leaned across the table, “Why don’t you tell me something about yourself? I hardly know a thing about your life.”
              Greg sat there for a good long time. He sat there without saying anything. He didn’t even look at her as he sat there with his brow furrowed. And then his eyes watered up.
              “What you need to know about my life” Greg said softly without looking up “is that it’s going to end soon”.
              Then a splotch of red dripped down from his forehead and landed on his napkin. Greg’s lip quivered. “And I have to go to the bathroom because of it.”

              Greg was absolutely sick of himself. On his way to the bathroom he was unsure, in the hallway disappointed, but by the time he had reached the toilet he utterly and completely loathed himself. Sitting there in the stall, Greg recounted all of the things that had gone wrong for him today, and feared all that would tomorrow. And of course, he considered blaming it all on his newfound ailment. “But the thing is,” Greg realized, “This is not that different from a normal day in my life. I’m a downward spiral. I’ve never lost anything, but I’ve never won anything either.”
              And that blandness of self, that void that went unnoticed by everyone else, save for the person it inhabited, was the real disease.
              The bathroom door swung open briefly and the sounds of people laughing, connecting with one another, and bonding, struck Greg as the very thing he lacked.
              “Some lack iron, others an immune system,” Greg thought as he exited the stall and faced his sore-littered head in the mirror, “But I suffer from a lack of personality.”
              Tonight that would change. Tonight Greg wanted to be one of life’s winners, badly. He wanted the scope, emotion and satisfying finality of a motion picture ending to materialize in his life now that he was so close to the end of it. And he wanted Julia.
              “Forget Bonnie. I’ll take Julia. She’s in the here and now.”
              Amidst the self-encouraging speeches and rhetoric Greg regurgitated to himself, he came to a very singular conclusion: “Since Julia’s sitting right across from me, and the other girls are sitting across from Larry and Jeff, then I must be meant to be with her.”
              It was cemented in Greg’s mind. He would embrace her; he would become a winner tonight. He would face his fears, buy a house on the golden shores and these bloody manifestations of his cowardice would vacate his forehead. Because life was what you make it, and it takes the person walking the path to choose it.
              Julia looked out of the corner of her eye and saw Greg approaching the table; approaching her. He was all cleaned up, and he had the look of absolute determination upon his face. Julia knew then that this was his life moment, and the look in his eyes already spoke of victory. He grabbed her and kissed her. It was the kiss to end all. It was competent and had a true reverence behind it. It was the kiss of a happy ending.
              Julia didn’t want it. Forcefully, she pushed Greg off and ran her napkin disgustedly across her mouth. “What the hell are you doing?” she asked. The others at the table erupted in equally vehement accusations.
              Jeff shook his head. Larry repeatedly shouted out “you’re a sick person Greg, and Bonnie always knew it.”
              Julia’s friends shouted out a string of curses. Julia herself merely turned back to her dinner. Greg’s reaction was equally as strong, but unlike everyone else’s, completely apologetic. He faced Julia and Jeff and Larry, and what seemed to be the entire world, with fear and disgrace. And then he ran.
              Past the bar, out the restaurant, beyond the accusers and out onto the street. Greg ran. Then, from the flurry of lights and horns and people the bicycle emerged. It ran across Greg, pushed him down; the gears sluiced through his flesh and when the concrete rushed up to meet him it pulverized his nose.
              And his cowardice, his red, thick disease splashed out onto the streets, like blood on the golden shores for the rest of the world to inhale. People ran up to him immediately.
“No, get away, I’m fine” Greg warned. He held his hands up, bloody as they were, and tried to keep the onlookers away. But they still approached.
              “I’m fine!” Greg screamed.
              But he realized he wasn’t fine. Now was his chance to bleed out the disease that had already cost him so dearly. Here at the end of a writer’s paper and ink, on concrete and street, was Greg’s “happy ending”. He wrapped his hand around the laceration on his arm and squeezed.

- posted by Brock @ 2:26 PM