Don't we all look forward to turning 21? For me this was supposed to be the milestone that meant I didn't have to sneak into bars anymore and I could buy my own beer at any store not just at the little Korean owned place behind the Social Services building that always bagged it up before ringing it up. Actually I still patronized his store but not as frequently. The night of my birthday I didn't plan an elaborate party. I only wanted to go to a club and dance the night away and drink some beers. My roommates were going out to see Star Wars for the who knows how many times and left before I did. I didn't want to get to the club too early so so I cracked open a beer and was listening to some tunes when Alfred arrived.
(For this story I have changed the names to protect ......... well to protect me.)
Alfred had recently been our other roommate but we had kicked him out because he never paid the rent. He and I always got along pretty well and were close friends. I had always been closer to Alfred than Steve had. Tonight he was touting some Yukon Jack whiskey. "Come on in." I told him. This was a cold wet September night in Utah that already had the hint of frost in the air and it wasn't even 9pm yet. Alfred was soaked to the gills and needed to come inside to dry off and the bottle of Jack looked very inviting too. So we sat around on the couch and drank the whiskey for about an hour telling jokes and stories of old times. I was getting pretty buzzed and still wanted to go to the club so I called a cab. Alfred then showed me a rather large knife in the liner of his jacket. I said, "What you going to do with the sword?" And laughed a bit when he replied, "I'm going to prove to Steve that I'm a man." Steve was one of my roommates. Steve and Misty were at the movie and I really didn't know when they would be back. So I brushed this comment aside as Alfred always carried a knife for protection anyway. I was sure the that was just the whiskey talking. Before my cab arrived Alfred fell asleep and I decided to leave him in the apartment. After all he had been our roommate just a month before. I trusted him. So I left and true to my desires danced the night away. It was close to 3am when the cab was dropping me off at the apartment when my neighbor ran out and said, "Don't go in there." "Why?" I asked. He looked at me very solemnly and said, "Alfred is dead. He and Steve had a fight. There is blood every where inside all the way to the basement." I was shocked and horrified. I had to see this for myself. I went in and nothing can prepare you for what I saw. The blood in some places was still pooled and wet in others it was dry. On the walls, the floors, the cabinets and stairs. All the way to my room the trail of death led. I was so shocked I was no longer buzzing from the alcohol but now stoned from the horror I was seeing and feeling. The police had already been there and gone. My neighbor a card from them. I was supposed to call. You never feel the real horror of death in the movies. This was reality, this was my home and these were my friends. I felt like I was being buried in a gravel pit unable to breathe the clean frosty air. I wanted to die right then rather than live with the building guilt growing like a tumor inside of me. I knew Alfred wanted to confront Steve but I didn't think nothing of it. I couldn't have kicked him out in the cold right? I didn't know then that Misty had been sleeping with both of them. I just thought it was the Yukon Jack talking shit. It was in a way. Courage from a bottle will enable even the most sensitive person to do things they never would do otherwise. No longer would my 21st birthday be remembered as a joyous fun night it was supposed to have been. It is now a grey memory of the past. A memory of two fiends struggling for the love from the same woman. Memory of the night that forever changed my life.
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