Tides

Lunar Tics

Photo by Tony Detroit on Unsplash

As I walked through the door I could see he was sat in the comfy chair. My chair. His boots up on the coffee table and a hand rolled cigarette in his hand, flicking ash onto the floor of my cabin. I gave him that look. He just laughed. “You only clean up here every couple of months and everyday in between you are dragging worlds of dirt into the place on the bottom of your boots. What difference is a bit of ash going to make?” He had a point, but still!

“At least I take my boots off at the door.”’I said. He took a final drag on the cigarette and tossed the butt into the wood pile by the stove, where it shimmered briefly and then died. He grinned, that joker in batman like grin. Disturbing, always. “So how’s my zen mystic cabin dweller then. Still living the dream?”

I ignored his taunt. The moon was waxing full and her lunatic tides had a habit of carrying towards me that which I did not wish to welcome into my world. And here he was again. I had known him all of my adult life, and some of my youthful days too. He was brash, confident, good looking, in a roguish sort of way and had that dangerous twinkle in his eyes. Always had been that way.

I dumped my pack and began to empty items from my shopping trip into their respective containers, all of them mouse proof. He always let himself in, insisted that this place was as much his as mine. “We’re brothers man!” he would say. Granted we shared a mother and a father but there was no brotherly love at my side of the table.

I disliked him. Immensely, and he knew it, liked it even. Pointing to my bag with a slight incline of the head, he spoke. “I hope you bought plenty of red meat. I can’t stand to eat any of that veggie crap you like. And beers too!”

“You’re not staying and you know I’ve been dry 7 years now,” I said.

“Yeah, I know…but the beers would be for me.”

“I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Bullshit. You always know when I am coming.”

He was right. I did. Always. Like bad weather, I could smell it days in advance. I pulled out two beers, opened one and handed it to him. He took a long swig. He looked at the other one and then at me. I shook my head and went back to unpacking the sack.

“You know what your problem is?”

I put down the bag and looked at him squarely, waiting, as he offered me the wisdom he knew I did not want to hear.

“Me!”

He was always right. Always had been since I could remember. Just like Ma. She had a way of forcing me to accept that I was in the wrong, even when I knew I was right. She would move close in, dribbling spittle, eyeball to eyeball, get me to admit that I was lying, even when I wasn’t. She said she could see a white line on my forehead when I lied. God sees it too, she would whisper, like a Devil. I ended up believing fully from those days onwards, that every single thing that went wrong was my fault. Every. Single. Thing.

He was looking at me now, lost here in my own memories. He opened the other beer and handed it too me, along with the tobacco pouch and papers. I sat on the sofa, took a swig and began to roll a cigarette. He spoke. He always spoke.

“Stop being so fucking nice to everyone. Just stop it. They mostly don’t give a fuck about you, so why should you give a fuck about them? I am here to help you. One beer, one cigarette won’t kill you. Let your hair down man.”

It wasn’t the one, I was worried about. It was the one after.

“You need to stand up for yourself. Set some fucking boundaries. Stop with the goody two shoes bullshit. People are walking all over you for fun. This cabin in the woods got my shit together is a total fraud. You’re just hiding!”

We had three days of this. Never left the cabin. Ate meat, drank beers, smoked rollies. Him sitting in my fucking chair the whole time telling me all the things that were wrong with me. Every mother’s son.

I leaned back on the sofa, let out a long slow breath, looked up at the curve of the cabin ceiling, shaped as an upside down hull and wondered. Maybe I was drowning? I took a long drag on my cigarette, inhaled its deep forbidden pleasure and then slowly, lowered my head and looked over to the comfy chair, my fucking chair.

It was empty.

Outside the waning moon had risen, her tidal pull diminishing by the day and me, only me left here in the wake of it all again.

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