[RF] Acceptance shortstories

I looked up into the sky to see the puffs of clouds gently wisping on by around the sun. To my annoyance none of them covered the bright glare the sun had; forcing me to sit in the shade cover that the building I was sitting behind made. Sunny days rarely created happiness in my eyes, but rather just the clouds and the blue sky in the background seemed to always calm me when the sun was blocked by something. On these bright days I generally try to sit where the sun is hidden by a structure or gaze in the opposite direction to avoid a peripheral view of that dominate star in our skies. Sunny days gave me no comfort in any way for reasons beyond my knowledge. In fact it gave me anxiety and on several occasions even severe headaches. Overcast, rain, mist, and even just days that small clouds covered the sun for large portions of time were ideal and calming for me. I sighed and began to pack my glass bowl with some weed I had just bought roughly ten minutes ago. The building I was leaning against was made of a rough surfaced white brick. To most this would be a rather uncomfortable material to sit against, but the repetition of this action and sitting in this spot had become such a routine that the rough brick had actually become comfortable in my eyes. It was a perfect spot to engage in lawfully incorrect actions such as smoking pot. To my left was a large brick wall that extended outward ten to fifteen feet which held the facilities garbage bins. To my right was a series of three walls extending outward about five to ten feet after a fairly large stretch of the building, which blocked view from the other side of the facility’s parking lot to where I was sitting. Directly in front of me where I was gazing outward into the sky was a very steep hill going down about forty feet leading into a creek which had a decent sized wooded area that led into a cornfield after awhile. The land behind the creek was owned by some random farmer who never went there; his ownership of land just happened to end there and because of this no one was ever down there. The spot I sat in filled me with more comfort to smoke at than even sitting in my friend’s home. I felt secluded, the outdoor view flooded my mind with tranquility, and on cloudy days or during the night when the sun goes down I even feel what is closest to being described as happiness. The bowl I had just packed was sitting in my hand as I spaced out for a brief moment, getting lost in the several clouds that floated above me. I snapped out of it with the unfortunate reminder that I was not high, the sobriety in my mind felt as if it were an illness that needed to be cured. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the lighter that I had dubbed my lucky lighter for the time being. I held the bowl up to my lips and struck my lighter. The familiar sound of sizzling and burning matter brought an immediate smile to my face visible even with a bowl on my lips. In my eyes if happiness had a noise to go with it, then that would be it. It was the sound of fire burning the broken up buds inside of a bowl. I inhaled deeply and long making slight snorting noise when my lungs hit their limit on the amount of smoke I could fill them with. After about ten seconds of holding the smoke in I let out a large sigh of relief with an exhale accompanied with a large plume of smoke. I watched the smoke dancing in the air with the gentle breeze that drifted by. By the time the smoke had completely disappeared from sight, a familiar feeling began to overtake my mind. I could feel the sobriety slowly being pushed away and a new more desirable state of mind flooding my senses. Half a smile cracked onto my face and I held the bowl up to continue smoking it. With every hit I took my perception of life shifted in a more positive manner than it was previously. The sun although still an annoyance to me didn’t seem to bother me nearly as much and the anxiety that was trapped in my head disappeared completely. I took my last hit turning everything in the bowl to a white ash and flipped it upside down, slapping the open part into my hand removing all of the ash from inside it. I then reached into my pocket to pull out the baggy of weed I had to pack another bowl and felt a large box instead. It was the pack of cigarettes I had bought a few days ago. The box was caved in and dented up from it being nearly empty, just two cigarettes remained that I had refused to smoke. I refused to smoke it because I didn’t consider myself a cigarette smoker, nor did I consider myself addicted. I bummed them from people very frequently and finally bought a pack to make myself feel better that I didn’t have to bum them from everyone else. Now just two remained and I refused to smoke them both because I had a pact with myself that I would not become a cigarette smoker. To me, smoking an entire pack to myself would put me into the classification of cigarette smoker. I figured that I would let someone have the last one and I’d feel better with myself for avoiding that mental stigma I have with smoking an entire pack to myself. I’d avoid the labeling that I myself created the standards for in the first place. I set the pack of cigarettes down and grabbed the bag of weed in my pocket that was hidden behind the cigarettes. I began to break the buds down into small pieces in my bag to place in my bowl when I heard footsteps on the sidewalk behind the building I was leaning against. I quickly set my bowl halfway in my pocket as to not spill the weed I had just placed in it, but ready to push completely into my pocket if the person was someone I needed to do so with, at the cost of a bowl of spilled weed all over my pocket. I then quickly grabbed my pack of cigarettes and pulled one of the two I had remaining out and lit it up to begin smoking. The footsteps became very close sounding and a very tall, thin framed, blonde haired male figure abruptly rounded the corner facing me. To my relief I knew this tall blonde person; it was a friend of mine named Daniel. “Hey man, I didn’t realize it was you. A little warning would be nice, hah you made me light up a cigarette and now I only have one left. Now I gotta give it away.”
A slight laughter resonated with my voice as I saw the look he had on his face. He without a single word sat down beside me and said, “You still don’t want to consider yourself addicted to cigarettes even though you smoke them every day. Ha whatever floats your boat though? But in the meantime you should pull the bowl and weed out you were poorly trying to hide the scent of with that cig and smoke with me. I just got some more bud and need to get high, figured you were back here cause I saw your car as I drove by.”
I grabbed the bowl sticking out of the pocket on the opposite side of Daniel. He leaned over and grabbed the bowl from me and began to finish packing the bowl with the weed he had. Not a single word was said between the time that he packed the bowl up until the first strike of his lighter to take the first hit of it. He closed his eyes and exhaled a large cloud of smoke in front of him. His voice broke the silence as he passed the bowl to me to hit, “Man fuck people, why can’t everyone just smoke weed and all get along. Seriously I wish I could just leave and go live on a huge farm to grow weed. Just live with a few friends, leave all family and everyone else that causes drama in life behind. I want to just live and get high leaving the world behind me.” I smiled hearing this as I took a hit from the bowl. This conversation seemed to be going on with us for many months now and Daniel was very passionate when talking on this subject. I hadn’t known him as long as I did most all my other friends in my little group I always hung out with, but I had become very close to him in that short time and smoked with him nearly every day. He seemed to come from an extremely loving family environment and everyone he talked to loved him. He gave them all the quirkiest but happiest response he could, literally every single time. Yet through this all he still seemed to harbor an emotion he couldn’t shake that he needed to get away from everyone. He connected to a life he wanted through smoking and had become close enough with me to share his thoughts on it. Daniel was the most upbeat person that I had ever met, not to mention awkward, and had many strange but silly quirks to his attitude. I enjoyed hanging out with him and smoking. This was one thing that was different with him though compared to my other friends; he only smoked marijuana. He had tried alcohol before but wasn’t too fond of it, and had never done any pharmaceutical, psychedelic, or hard drugs. Marijuana was his love, and he never ventured outside of its realms and this was completely fine with me, even though I dabbled in nearly every type of drug there was other than the hardest and worst such as crystal meth, crack, and heroin. I passed the bowl we were smoking back to Daniel and continued to listen to his rant, spacing out after nearly every sentence, just thinking about what he was saying. I began to ponder what life would be like leaving all responsibilities behind to live a life that replaced sobriety with the high weed gave me. I began to think that I already live a life with that mind state; I need only to remove myself from society and I have his dream. That dream was not enough for me though; I crave to be around people. The fallacy in that is that I hate people in general, so all in all I crave to be around what I hate. Strange how that works, what I dislike most brings me comfort in a strange way. I abruptly awoke from my inner thoughts to hearing Daniel say, “Fuck it all though man, let’s just get high.”
That statement alone summed up my thoughts on life. The accuracy of the statement on my life made my laughter echo out into the forested area in front of us both. Daniel and I continued to smoke three more bowls in complete silence; both of us completely lost in the thought that the high from the weed provoked within us.
…. The next day I woke up around noon dazed from the sobriety that plagued my body. I immediately opened the drawer next to me grabbing two bags and stuffing them into the pockets of the jeans I haphazardly put on from the floor. I meandered down the hallway of my house desperate to leave and smoke my morning bowl. My mother was out back watering her garden so I couldn’t smoke it at my place. She was against the use of any substance other than alcohol, if of age to use. So I kept my use of nearly everything a secret from her as to keep our relationship between each other civil and normal. I opened the refrigerator door in my kitchen to grab a bottle of water, which I then chugged half of standing in the kitchen. I grabbed my car keys and walked out front to get in my car. The sun was shining, bringing my mood down a notch for the day, but the scattered clouds in the sky gave me hope of the day getting better later on. I started my car and quickly took off down the road in the direction of my favorite smoking spot behind a movie theater by the woods. I pulled up into the familiar parking lot I’ve seen nearly every day before and began to feel at ease with myself. I parked my car about ten spaces away from the back of the building as to not draw immediate attention that someone is behind the theater. I sighed as I sat in my car an extra moment to let the song I was listening to finish, as if the lyrics were narrating my life. The music I listened to, I held very dear and close to me; they sang an anthem to my life in a way only me the listener could truly understand. The music was nearly a high itself when taken in with the emotion I put behind it. A metaphorical tear of happiness and understanding was shed with the beat and word of each song I chose. The song ended and I exited my car walking nonchalantly but quickly to the back of the building. I walked over past the three extending walls to sit where I normally always sat with the hidden view into the wooded area straight ahead. I sat down leaning against the rough wall and pulled out two plastic bags from my pocket. I held one of the plastic bags up and watched the clouds drift across the contents of the bag. I sighed as I opened the bag, holding my breath as to not miss a single moment of the tranquility I was experiencing just seconds before swallowing three codeine pills. I stared blankly at the two remaining pills in the bag just before rolling the bag up to put back into my pocket.
The flow of time seemed non-existent to me anymore. Five minutes or an hour, it didn’t matter how much time passed. I didn’t care or even notice it at this point in my life. To me, the future was a myth, the past never happened, and I was left with the present moment. I could never see the significance of my life at the present moment with a sound sober mind, so before I knew it I was packing my bowl with weed from the second bag I pulled out. I was desperately trying to jump start the effects of the pills I just swallowed. I hoped that both the pills and the weed would amplify each other’s high to relieve me of sobriety. As I sat on the concrete with my eyes closed I sensed a presence near me. I opened my eyes to see Daniel standing next to me with his awkward smile. “I know that look on your face Christian; you’re waiting for something to kick in. What’d you take today, more painkillers?” I smiled at him being able to identify this just by the look on my face. I passed him the bowl that I began smoking just moments earlier for him to take a hit of himself. “I got the strong ones today, 60mg codeine pills. I’m just waiting for them to fully start to kick in.” A look I hadn’t yet seen him make before took over his face. It was as if he wanted to ask me a question, but was feeling weird about coming out and asking it. I knew what he wanted to ask and spared him the anxiety of asking it himself. “Do you want one? I have two extra right now.” He nervously bit his thumb nail before responding to me. “Ughh, well yea I want to try one. I heard it makes you get way higher when you smoke. I just want to try one though.” Without even a second thought I had the bag out of my pocket and both pills in my hand. I handed him both out of the bag. “Here you can have both. Just take one now and save the other one for later if this one is too strong for you.” A half smile appeared across my face as I saw Daniel swallow the pill I gave him. I felt an emotion that could only be described as modesty and superiority mixed into one feeling. I felt superior for giving him his first step into this realm of drugs while knowing I would always be able to exceed most limits that my body had when using it. As if I were special for being able to ingest and handle such large doses and interact with society and life around me with ease. Yet modesty because I would never throw it in anyone’s face, or brag about it unless we are on the topic. I felt a strange sense of pride knowing what I could do but not caring if anyone else knew. Even in my competitive nature I would challenge people in an unspoken game of how fucked up I can get, but never announce the winner or loser. It was for the fun and my own personal sense of pride and superiority with being in an altered mind state. Daniel and I sat down and continued to smoke several more bowls, but very few words were spoken this morning between the two of us. Not that this mattered, getting high and becoming lost in your own thoughts was a fairly normal thing. Daniels eyes looked distant and more glazed over than normal. My only thoughts were that he must be feeling the codeine being to kick in, mixed with what we smoked. He stood up and brushed some ash from the bowls we smoked off his pants.
“I gotta go man; I’m meeting up with some people in a little bit. I need to grab some food too, I’m starving and that pill is giving me a stomach ache.” I laughed slightly realizing I should have told him to grab some food before that kicked in, but shrugged it off quickly as he started to walk away. I packed up a small bowl for me to smoke by myself after he left and yelled to him before he left.

“Alright dude, hit me up later tonight, I have nothing planned. I’m probably going to be smoking all day.” I heard Daniels car start up and back out of the parking lot. As he drove away I sparked the lighter and started smoking the bowl I just packed. …. Later that night when the sun had gone down, the sky was very clear and the stars shone bright for being near a highly lit city. I looked down at my phone and saw that I had missed a text from Louis stating he was parked by my car. I slowly got up, smiling from the extremely noticeable effects that the codeine had on me. Euphoria was pulsing through my body, but only to a point where I was content with the results, but would need to find something more to get me further into an altered state than this. I pushed my bowl and bag of weed into my pocket and slowly walked to where my car was parked on the other side of the building. I saw a bright blue Mustang parked next to my small black car. Extremely soothing and familiar music echoed from inside the Mustang and a shadowed figure sat alone in the front seat. I walked up to it and opened the passenger door. “What’s up asshole?” 

A bright smile reflected from the shadowed figure, accompanied by a small shiny lip ring. “Hey man, hop in I just picked up some FIRE shit. It’s called something like Grand Daddy Purp. Let’s head out to bird road and smoke this shit up.” Bird road was named as such not because of the name of the road; in fact that wasn’t its name at all. We named this road this because of the unusual number of birds that inhabited the fields and area around it the first time we drove down it. It was a country road that extended in a straight line for many miles and had nearly no traffic. It was one of our favorite roads to drive down and smoke, because of its seclusion and it’s easy to navigate with no turning required. Giving code names to the roads we drove down to smoke had a sense of vanity it that I couldn’t resist doing. It made me think that we’re too cool for everyone else to know where we smoke, like a secret meeting place in the form of a road. Also the general population hearing us say bird road instead of the actual name was beneficial simply because no one could rat us out to the police by location. As we were driving to bird road, I looked over at Derrick who was passing me the bag weed he just showed me. The aroma coming from the bag was skunky with a fruity tint to it. The weed itself was covered in purple with flakes of white and green. It was glorious to just witness, and now it was on my lap with an empty bowl sitting next to it, as if it were begging to be filled with such a pristine product. I saw Derrick open his case of CD’s and pull out one with very familiar writing on it. He pushed the CD into his CD player in the car. A brief clicking sound came from player trying to read the CD. Then as if it were this whole situation was fated to happen, the first song started to play over the speakers just as he turned left onto bird road. I looked down on my lap to see that the bowl I had been packing was now completely full and ready to smoke. I rolled the bag of weed back up and stuck it in my pocket, my fingers sticking to the plastic from the residue of the weed I had just broken up for the bowl.
The soothing sound of a Red Hot Chili Pepper song gently filled the car. Only the striking of a lighter could be heard beyond this.

“Here man.”
My voice was scratchy with a slight squeak at the end from my lungs being full of smoke. “Fuck yea man, that shit smells sooo good.” Derrick pushed his knee up to the steering wheel to guide it on a straight course down the road as he grabbed the bowl and lighter to take a hit. I reached to grab the bowl from his hand as he filled the dashboard of his car with smoke drifting quickly across it and out the small crack of his window being down slightly.
“Whoa… This shit is awesome, I can already feel it hitting me.”
A powerful feeling of euphoria began to rise from my legs up towards my head.
“This codeine is gonna kick my ass after smoking this.”
I smiled as my legs began to feel lighter and lighter and euphoria began to rise up into my body. I looked down at the bowl and raised it up to my lips to continue smoking. Derrick reached over to his CD player to turn the music up that we were beginning to get lost in. Song after song, we sat driving down bird road smoking more bowls without stopping. The sun had nearly disappeared in the sky revealing a few stars and a bright moon. No words were spoken between us during this time, but the bonding moment we felt was strong. It was how our friendship was. We didn’t need to validate how close of friends we were. The comfort of being around each other was equal to that of a family member. The CD player continued on playing angry Eminem songs, followed by tranquil Incubus songs. The clash of genres in music was a chaos I enjoyed on this CD; to me it was the perfect CD to get lost in thought with. It drove my elevated mind state up and down on an emotional rollercoaster. My pocket vibrated from being sent a text by someone. I took a quick hit of the bowl and handed it off to Derrick so I could see who just texted me. I opened my phone to see a missed text and call both from number I didn’t know. I rarely ever returned missed calls when smoking, so instead opened the text to respond to that instead. The text read, “Hey man it’s Daniel, I lost my phone, this is a friends I’m using. I’m at a party and took that second codeine. I feel so amazing right now, is it ok if I drink with how much I took?” I laughed to myself, thinking how I couldn’t remember the last time I drank without having some sort of pill in my system. I knew that I could handle more than most and never really thought about how others react with this endeavor. In my mellowed out and high state I gave him a quick response as to continue smoking with Derrick. I sent him, “It’s up to you man, it’ll make you get drunk really fast. If you do just take it slow to see how messed up it makes you. Be careful if you plan on driving.” That response felt right, and I was not attached to the situation he was in. I was far too into what I was doing at the moment. The world outside of Derrick’s car might as well have not existed to me. …. The bag of weed Derrick first showed me was now nearly half the size that it originally was when we first got to bird road. We had been driving for about an hour now and started to head back to the parking lot where Derrick met me and my car was. I looked over at Derrick who was now intensely singing along with the song playing, his eyes puffy and red. I looked up into the mirror above me to see that my eyes were even worse than his and began to laugh. I laughed because I was so happy, I laughed because the euphoria pulsing through me felt so good, I laughed because of how high we both looked, and lastly I laughed just because at that moment my life felt like it was going to be ok.
“Hey, there are some cops up there, looks like someone is pulled over.” Derrick pulled his car into the far right lane and slowed down as he approached the flashing lights. As we got closer I saw an ambulance’s flashing lights alongside the police and heard more sirens in the distance heading our direction. I looked up over Derrick’s steering wheel to see what was going on. “Naw man, I think it’s an accident, there’s an ambulance and I can kinda see a car beside all of them in the grass.” My heart began to sink as we got closer. There was a silver small car mangled around a large tree off the side of the road. The front end of the car was smashed in up to the shattered windshield. There was still someone inside the vehicle, trapped by the doors being dented and buckled upward to make it impossible to open without pulling the doors straight off the car. The person was not moving, his blonde hair flashing with the lights of the police. As we passed the crash scene, time seemed to slow down. Moments passed by me like a flip book in a frame by frame manner. We were parallel to the crash site and I caught sight of the clothing the person in the car was wearing just before a fire truck arriving at the scene blocked my view. Derrick looked up at me after looking at the destroyed vehicle.

“Wow man that was a messed up crash, that car had to hit the tree pretty hard to do that. I doubt that guy is walking out of that one alive. That sucks man, that’s messed up for sure. Poor dude.” I began to shake as the lights shown in the rear view mirror got further away. Derrick was talking, but I couldn’t hear anything he said. I looked over at him and my arm began to get wet. I wiped the water from my arm and felt another drop hit my hand. It was my tears; tears fell from my eyes uncontrollably, but I still couldn’t hear anything, or feel the tears going down my face. The moment felt unreal, like a dream transforming itself into a nightmare. All I could see was Derricks face looking concerned as he tried to say something to me. Everything behind him was blurs to me. I heard a buzzing noise in my ears and a slight tone from the song playing in the car began to echo in my head. All at once, the feeling of tears, all noise, and my sight returned to me and I heard Derrick say,

“Dude what’s going on, are you ok? Talk to me man!” A lump in my throat formed as I wiped the tears pouring down my face. I cleared my throat and blankly looked at him. A shutter resonated in my voice as I finally said something to him.

“That was Daniel’s car wrecked, that was Daniel lying in the front seat across the dashboard. I think Daniel is dead.” …. The next week went by and I hardly noticed. Days, hours, minutes, they meant nothing to me, and not because of how viewed life this time. This time it meant nothing because of the empty guilty feeling in my gut. It sucked life away from me, taking the all the moments away all that week and left me with nothing. Time faded into this dark feeling and I felt I was wandering lost all week; seeking a destination that no longer exists.
I looked down and saw that I was sitting on a wooden pew dressed in nice clothing. I was almost afraid to look up and forward to see the location I suppressed myself from coming to. A sharp pain in my gut made me look up to realize why that sharp pain was there. I was in a church with a lot of people. We were all looking towards the front, getting up row by row to stand in a line. My row all stood up and I followed them blindly feeling yet another tear going down my cheek. It must have been quite a while before I got to the front judging by the amount of people I was behind, but before I could even get my bearings on what I was there for I was standing at the front of the line in front of a closed casket. In front of the casket was a large picture of Daniel. There were flowers everywhere and his family standing around it talking to people thanking them for coming with tears in their sorrow filled eyes. I looked down at the casket and saw a tear fall from my face to the floor. I put my hand on the casket and lowered my head. With a trembling voice I whispered,

“I’m so sorry Dan, I’m sorry man. I hope you find your happiness where ever you are.”

I then back away from the casket and went to shake hands with his mother and father. They spoke to me and I spoke back, but I couldn’t recall anything we said. I had to leave; I had to surround myself in comfort. I only knew one comfort in life, the comfort me and Daniel shared between a bowl. I walked outside of the church to see Derrick’s car parked with him inside. I walked up to his car and opened the door to step in. I sat in the car and closed the door. As the door closed, the sound had awoken me to the situation. A rush of terrible knowledge flooded my head. He had been at a party drinking with some friends and started binge drinking some vodka. He became irrationally drunk very quickly, much quicker than he should have, his friends claimed. He began puking and shouting at everyone. After a heated argument with the friend whose apartment it was, he grabbed his keys and stated that he had to leave. Everyone tried to stop him but he got in his car and drove off. When driving he passed out and his foot pressed on the accelerator causing him to speed off the road into a tree. He died at the crash site. Autopsy showed that he had a large amount of codeine in his system along with marijuana. His friends all claim they had no knowledge that he had taken any pills or where he got them from. The mixture of the pills and alcohol caused him to black out at the apartment and pass out behind the wheel of a car.
I looked at Derrick,

“It’s my fault man, he texted me about this and I told him it was fine. I could had stopped this all. I gave him the pills, I opened him to this world, and I had a chance to stop it. This is my fault.”

Unable to form any words Derrick just looked at me with a sad look on his face. He then closed his eyes and opened them slowly saying,

“You didn’t mean for this to happen man. You’re a good person, and Daniel knew this too. You didn’t know this was going to go down like that. Don’t put all the blame on yourself.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the cigarette box I always carried around with the last cigarette in it. I pulled the cigarette out and dropped the box out the window. Twirling it around in my fingers I then whispered just loud enough for Derrick to hear me.

“I used to think I was different man. I used to think I was unique compared to everyone else, and that I could handle more than the average person. I thought I was a better person than most and more caring and empathetic. I used to just think I was better than most in general. Hell, I’m no different than any other bastard on this planet. I’m weak, susceptible, and stupid just like everyone else.” I put the cigarette up to my lips and lit it. Smoke floated up my face revealing a strange smile as I thought about how a good moment with me and Daniel started last week.

“Hey Derrick, I’m completely addicted to cigarettes.”

Submitted November 19, 2015 at 09:57AM by Sir_Chew http://ift.tt/1kGdiAC shortstories