"Remember When" Kind of Story by Platon Lobach

 I was looking at all those pale faces wet from the late October rain.

I don't know why I pondered there. I was always good at giving speeches. On Christmas dinner, graduation parties, weddings, and family gatherings. It was my job, after all. I never deliberated before giving a speech. But at that moment I did. 

I wasn't anxious or something. I just remembered something. It was something about him. No wonder, everybody here was thinking about him. I guess. It was his funeral after all. People cry at the funerals. Nobody cried. There were not many people, though. Just close friends. Maybe friends is too strong a word. Close acquaintances would be more precise. He didn't have friends after all. He couldn't have had friends. It was hard knowing him. He hated everybody, hated this world. Perhaps it was the world that hated him.

I remember how I came to his house a few weeks before he passed. All that litter in his flat. Empty beer cans, leftovers from Chinese food, dirty clothes, boxes of something. All over the floor. Some kind of paint is stained on the walls. Or maybe that was just crashed eggs and spilled coffee and alcohol. There could be both. I remember that stench and cockroaches crawling around those piles of garbage. 

He was lying somewhere around all of that. Like a monarch on his deathbed. But monarchs look noble on their deathbed. He wasn't noble even at his best. I wonder why he even let me in. He would rather not see me, and didn't want to see anybody. 

- Get the hell out, ya jerk.

He yelled instead of greeting. He was always yelling. He yelled at Jess when she found out that he was cheating on her. It was her fault, he said. He yelled at cashiers, baristas, old people, their dogs. And children. Children especially. He hated them. Especially his children. I remember the day Jess came to my place with little Joey. They were all covered in bruises. That evening he spent their last money on H. Goddamn junkie. And she still came to his funeral. She couldn't do otherwise.

- Get out of my goddamn house, prick. Are you deaf or what?

I got out. I just wanted to return his guitar to him. I knew that he wanted to play something those days. I felt the same, because we were just the right age for nostalgia. I just wanted to talk, to say something to him. Maybe he wanted too. Maybe that dreamy seventeen year old brat was still somewhere there. Inside this filthy, sicko, druggie fiend. That eloquent, poetical prodigy, who daydreamed all day and night, on rehearsals, poetry salons, and parties. I knew that he still was somewhere. 

He died quickly and predictably. Owen Denis. O. D. Those were his initials. They were written on his Death certificate. Next were the same two letters. The cause of death.

I looked at all those black suits and dresses and umbrellas. The raindrops falling down from them. Dropping on the wet cemetery grass. I flinch. That's why I deliberated. The rain, the grey skies, the wet grass, muddy pavement. It was the same day as that one thirty years ago. 

- Look out, asshole. 

That was the first thing he said to me. When I first saw him, he was approaching me with the baseball bat. The next thing he did, he crashed the skull of that gorilla-like punk that was drawing on me with a '45. 

- You damn fool, I said look out; I could have killed ya. Damn prick.

- It wouldn't be worse than what that whitehead was intending to do with me. You saved me, man. 

He really saved me. He also saved Jess, when she was broke and ran away from her abusive parents. He also saved Andrew from his addiction to alcohol and underground fistfights. He saved all of us. We owed him a lot. And still we couldn't save him. He died. He died a long time ago. That's why nobody cried today. We all buried him long long time ago. I didn't deliberate. I just didn't have anything to say.