Obscuring the Ticking of Reality

Things were never going to be the same. These overused words rang through his head in a detached echo. He gazed blankly out at the field, not absorbing the game being played in front of him. All he could think about was Rachel. His girlfriend—or was she his ex-girlfriend now? He held on to the technicality of their breakup not being official.

Judah was slow to react to the ball that was sailing towards him. His hands missed it by nearly two feet as it slammed into the white net behind him. Angry voices rang out at him from the field, making him flinch.

“Get your head out of your ass and pay attention to the game!” said Mark. The team captain jogged towards him, his face etched with annoyance. Judah sighed as he picked up the black and white ball and held it against his side. Mark wasn’t somebody he wanted to piss off, but it was inevitable. He couldn’t bring himself to concentrate on soccer anymore.

“What if this had been a real game?” Mark said. “We would be an easy win for our opponents because our goalie wasn’t even trying to block the ball.”

“I did try to block the ball,” Judah said, defensively.

“Oh, yeah, I guess if you move you think you’re putting efficient effort in. Don’t bullshit me. We all know you’re the best goalie in this team’s history. So whatever it is that’s distracting you, eliminate it.”

Judah shrugged carelessly. “Whatever, I don’t even want to play.” He avoided Mark’s gaze.
The captain was silent for a moment, and then said, “Look, I heard about Rachel, and I’m sorry about that. But just because your girl dumped you doesn’t mean you should get all depressed and throw away everything you’ve worked so hard to get.”

“I’m sorry, Mark. I—I just can’t play.” Judah handed him the ball and walked off the field.

“Are you planning on coming back? You need to stay in shape!” Mark shouted after him. Judah paused to look over his shoulder. He met Mark’s eyes and then continued on his way.

∞
[Three Days Ago]

It’s Halloween, and Rachel is asking me if I want to go to a party with her. Her back is to me and I have my arms wrapped around her. We’re watching Meet Joe Black, a movie I think she picked just so she could look at Brad Pitt.

“Are you going to come with me?” she asks. She’s only asking to be polite, because she knows I don’t do the whole party scene. Being surrounded by a bunch of drunk and sex-driven people disgusts me.

“No, I’m going to stay home and hand out candy to kids. Dean invited himself over to help; says he wants to frighten people as they walk up to the door.” I say, and laugh. I lean forward and rest my chin on her shoulder as my arms tighten around her. “You know, you could always stay home with me. You might have fun.”

Rachel sighs and pulls away from me. I frown as I watch her move over to the chair on the other side of the living room. Her eyes are on the movie again. Great, now she’s angry with me.

We don’t talk for the rest of the movie. It’s about quarter after two in the afternoon when the credits start to roll. I stand up and stretch my arms over my head; Rachel makes her way towards the kitchen. I follow her, trepidation twisting in my stomach.

“Kara wants me to go over to her house to help her get ready,” she says. She’s leaning against the sink, her fingers typing away on her cell phone. She doesn’t spare a glance at me.

“Okay.”

“I’m spending the night at her house and we’re going to the outlets tomorrow, so I won’t be coming over.”

“Oh, I see.”

“She’s on her way here, so you don’t have to bother yourself by taking me home. You can set up your little spook fest or whatever you and Dean have planned.”

“Bother myself? Come on, Rachel. You know me better than that.”

She looks up from her phone, her eyes in slits. “I thought I did, too,” she says.

I tense up slightly, but ignore her comment as I walk over to her and lean down to rest my forehead against hers. She doesn’t react and remains motionless. I move my lips to her ear and whisper, “Don’t be angry. I’m sorry.”

It takes her a few seconds, but eventually she wraps her arms around me and lays her head on my chest. We stay like that until a car honks its horn from the driveway. I walk her to the door and give her a peck on the lips before she heads out.

“I’ll call you tomorrow night,” she says. She doesn’t quite meet my eyes, and it bothers me.
“Alright,” I say. I wave a hand at her as her ride backs up onto the road. Something doesn’t feel right. Things haven’t been great between us for a while, but I have to find a way to make it work, and the only viable option is going to take me out of my comfort zone.

An hour has passed and Dean is languidly sitting on my couch. “Has hell frozen over or something?” he asks after I tell him the situation, and my solution. I glower at him, but he doesn’t seem deterred and barrels on, “You are actually going to a real party—one that has booze instead of Kool-Aid?”

“Look,” I say. “I’m only going because Rachel is going to be there. She’s angry and I have to make it up to her.”

Dean raises his eyebrows and looks at me coolly. “Judah, I don’t know how you can put up with her all the time. Rachel’s needy and demanding. If everything doesn’t play out to make her happy, she turns into a total bitch.”

“Don’t say that,” I chide. “She’s not like that at all.” I eye the bag of gummy worms lying on the coffee table…so tempting.

“You’re so dense. You can’t even see what’s happening right in front of you.” Dean says. He rolls his eyes sadly. He notices that I’m eyeing up the candy and how close my body seems to be gravitating towards it. When I reach a hand out to pick up the gummy worms, he pushes me away from them.

“Come on, just one little bag,” I plead.

“No. I won’t have you eating all the candy so that we run out and some kid decides to get revenge by toilet-papering the house.”

“Oh, please. People only do that in the movies.”

“Wrong, Einstein. Stop molesting the candy with your eyes and go get some real food to eat if you’re hungry.”

I chew on the inside of my lower lip as I try to dispel the intense sugar craving I am feeling. I briefly wonder if this is how a nicotine addict would feel. “But I want gummy worms, you douche,” I say.

“Yeah, gummy worms that we’re supposed to be handing out as treats later tonight.”
“Ah, yes, but I’m going to that Halloween party.”

Dean snatches up the candy off the table and hides it behind him. “You are really going through with that, aren’t you,” he says, suddenly serious.

“Well, yeah. I mean, I don’t want a hostile girlfriend.”

Dean jumps up and struts out of the room. “Hurry up and get your butt upstairs,” he calls behind him.

“What are you doing?” I have followed Dean to my room, where he is now scavenging my floor. I cross my arms and lean against my door frame, watching him with faint amusement.

“Where’s your costume?” he asks, ignoring my question. He is on his knees and he’s now looking up at me expectantly.

I push the hair out of my eyes. I don’t think I like where he’s going with this. “I don’t have one.”

“You were planning on handing out candy without wearing a costume?” He asks.
I glance away from his disbelieving face and purse my lips.

“Have I ever told you how lame you are?” he asks, flicking a black sock out from under my bed.

“Fuck off. I didn’t see the need to have one.”

“You’re going to a party, remember? You’re going to need one now.”

Dean grimaces at my sweaty soccer jersey and stands up. He rummages around in the backpack he brought up with him and pulls out what looks like a black colored pencil. He laughs as he watches me realize that what he has in his hand isn’t really a colored pencil—it’s eyeliner.

“Do I want to know why you carry that around with you?” I ask. Dean is coming towards me and I don’t like the evil glint in his eyes. In an action too fast for me to react to, he grabs my arm and hauls me towards the bathroom, where he forces me to sit on the toilet seat. I watch in horror as his hand with the eye pencil comes toward me.

“Whoa, wait a second!” I say. I lean back, out of his reach. “Get that thing away from me.”
Dean smirks and shakes his head. “It’s only for your Halloween look. Just relax and trust me a little.”

I look at the eyeliner warily, as if it’s going to jump out of his hand and start stabbing me. Hey, it could happen. I don’t understand how girls continually put themselves at peril just to look good, but I guess girls are a little crazy.

I’m not sure how he talked me into it, or how he even knew what he was doing in the first place, but I let him put that crap all around my eyes. When he asked to do my hair I stared at him like he had grown a second head. Where has this side of him been hiding all this time?

“Hell no, you’re not touching my hair,” I tell him. I scoot away from him. “Dude, you’re freaking me out.”

He glares at me, placing the eyeliner pencil on the sink. “You either trust me or you don’t,” he says. “You can’t have it both ways, so which one will you choose?”

I think of Rachel and all the sacrifices I’m already making. Why not just add to the pile? I take a deep breath. “Fine,” I say. “If this were a normal day with normal circumstances, I would have punched you by now.”

“Yeah, I know you would.” Dean rubs the back of his neck, a nervous habit of his, and then sets to work. By the time it’s time for me to leave, Dean has put me into snug, straight jeans that have to belong to a girl, and a fitted black tee shirt that has a skeletal version of my chest printed on the front of it. I don’t bother asking him where he got the clothes from, or why he had them.

“I look emo,” I say, in a monotone. I swipe unconsciously at my hair, which Dean has combed forward into my face.

“That’s kind of the point,” he says.

“And how is this supposed to be a costume, again? I don’t feel like myself.”

“You’re not supposed to feel like yourself.”

I glance down at my attire. I don’t have a good feeling about this. “You so owe me a gummy worm,” I tell him and escape down the stairs. I rip open a bag of gummy worms on my way out and pop a few of them into my mouth so that they hang over my lips. I am going to need a sugar boost to get me through the night.

∞

The party is a usual cliché—loud music, lots of people making out in random corners of the house (which is being completely trashed, by the way). I never could understand how anyone could think this is any manner of fun. There is a bowl full of punch on a table beside the open front door I walk through, and upon further investigation (i.e., after nonchalantly sniffing it) I am unsurprised to find it spiked with liquor.

I decide to walk around and search for Rachel and let her know that I am here. I eye the group of girls that has been staring at me from the moment I walked through the door. They can’t be older than thirteen or fourteen and I’m not really sure what they’re doing here, but it feels like they are following me as I move from one room to the next.

I think I see Rachel walking into the kitchen, but before I can walk over to see if it’s her, one of the younger girls grabs my shoulder and turns me to look at her. She’s rail thin, and I’m not sure what she’s supposed to be dressed up as until she smiles at me and I see the plastic vampire fangs. Her eyes are wide and nervous, even though she’s trying to look confident.

She takes a deep breath and then blurts, “I want to have your babies.” Her friends giggle like mad, making her cheeks flame.

“I’m sorry, what?” I ask. I stare at her dumbly, my mind trying to piece together the words she had spoken so that they make sense.

She pulls her shoulders back and, having drawn some confidence out of thin air, levels me with her steely gaze. “I want you to make babies with me.”

Oh, frigging hell. Is she serious? I try not to feel disturbed and inch away from her. Her face shows no signs that she’s messing with me—in fact, the intense way she’s staring at me makes me feel like she’s trying to rip my clothes off with her eyes. She’s short and scrawny, but that doesn’t stop images of her attacking me from entering my mind. I shudder instinctively.

A guy walks in front of me, efficiently putting up a barrier. “Get lost, honey,” he tells her. He reaches back and wraps an arm around my shoulders, leaning down to nuzzle his face into the side of my neck. I glance at his face from the corner of my eye, my body frozen. His lips are stretched into a small smile and he looks up at me and winks.

To think, I could be safe at home scaring little kids.

The girl looks irritated. She’s even more intimidating when she’s glaring. “Aaron, don’t tell me what to do,” she says. Oh, fun; the insane people know each other.

“Sorry little babe, but this soccer player is mine. Go find another one to get pregnant with.”
“Excuse me,” I interject, “but I’m not an object, and I have a girlfriend.”

The blond boy retracts his face from my neck and lets me go only to grab my hand and pull me toward the stairs. He blows a kiss to the girl and doesn’t seem to notice that I’m trying to wrench my hand out of his.

“Let go of me,” I say, glaring.

“No.” He brings his face level with mine, one of his eyebrows cocked as if daring me to challenge him. “I’ve got something to show you, soccer boy, yeah?”

For a guy who is tall and scrawny, he has one hell of a grip. It’s starting to piss me off. I don’t even know who this guy is, but all I want to do is find Rachel and get the hell out of here. “What the hell do you want?” I ask.

He stops in the hallway at the top of the stairs and blinks at me. “I was only helping you out. There’s no need to be rude, yeah.”

“Right, well, if you don’t mind, I have someone I need to find and I don’t want to be here all night.” I manage to pull my wrist free from his hand and turn on my heel to go back down the stairs.

“I wouldn’t go back down there if I were you,” he calls after me.

“Leave me alone.”

“Fine, but when you get raped by a group of girls, don’t say I didn’t warn you, yeah.”

I paused to glower at him. “Oh, you mean the girl that you seem to know? Okay, sure, but no else is thinking about raping me. That’s just fucking retarded.”

“Oh, you poor naïve fool,” he says. He shakes his head sadly and moves his eyes over my body. “You don’t normally look like that, yeah?”

I stare at him. Am I missing something?

“You see,” he explains, “The girls you encountered earlier drool over sexy dark boys that you’ve dressed up as.” Did he seriously just call me a sexy dark boy? “I blame the increasing hormonal fascination with emo and scene guys on Alex Evans.”

“Who is fucking Alex Evans?”

He rolls his eyes. “Never mind that, all you need to worry about is getting mobbed.”

“Yeah, right, because I’m so damn hot,” I say.

“You know, you really shouldn’t say that so sarcastically.” He looks at me seriously, as if he’s trying to get a message through my dense skull.

“You’re not making me feel better, you know.” I cross my arms over my chest and lean against the railing.

He smirks at me. “Who said I was trying to make you feel better?” he asks. “I’m merely using you for my own entertainment, yeah.”

“I thought you wanted to show me something?”

“I do, but I’m not so sure that you’re going to like it.” His expression turns dark at his words and he ditches the cocky demeanor.

I’m getting really fed up with this guy now and all his evasiveness. I stare at him and he stares right back at me. I’m trying to see whatever it is he’s hiding—and he’s obviously hiding something—and he’s trying to…hell, I don’t even know, but my body feels like it’s getting swallowed up by his oceanic eyes.

“Look,” I say, and sigh. “Stop beating around the bush. I don’t know you, I’ve been nearly attacked by a preteen, and I really wish I would just find my girlfriend so I can get the hell out of here. So if you wouldn’t mind, stop wasting my time.”

He’s about to say something, but then I hear it. A faint giggle coming from the stairs, and then I hear the footsteps. He hears it too, but I don’t think anything of the couple that’s probably climbing their way up the stairs behind me. I start to cast my eyes casually over the railing to see who’s there, a perfectly human-spurred reaction of curiosity.

I don’t get the chance to look at the couple coming up the stairs. I don’t even get the chance to think before I feel hands on my face, forcing me to look in the opposite direction. I stare into this stranger’s navy blue eyes for a moment before he leans down and fuses his lips with mine. And the only thing I can think as my eyes instinctively close is how weird it feels to have another guy sucking on my lower lip.