[fiction] Damaged Goods

Part 1:   Snow

"I see her face all the time," said Jason.  "I can't forget it."  The pensive look on his face was priceless.  He looked like the quintessential pro-army, politically correct soldier sitting there on the bar stool:   broad shoulders slumped but only a little, large forearms on the bar, and a crew cut.  He was every right-wing parents' wet dream.

"So, like, even on the toilet?"  The question was serious, and it game from a man, perhaps we should say man-boy, who looked quite the opposite.  He loomed on the bar stool like a vulture, his muscled yet wiry body twisted as if it was designed by God to be impossible to straighten.  His skin was racially ambiguous: dark, but not very dark.  Possibly just permanently tanned.  Atop his head rested a silly hat in the shape of a white monkey, and it had two pompoms hanging down next to the man-boy's cheeks.  But if you knew him, it was the eyes that gave it away.

"No, of course n--huh.  That's weird."  Jason thought for a moment.  "No, never.  I wonder why."

"So, and this is just an option here, but option 1:  remain on a toilet for the rest of your life.  Unless I've jinxed it though.  The next time you're dropping a live one you'll probably think of her again.

Jason face-palmed.  "You are not helping."

"I'm probably the last person you should talk to about this."

"You're the only person I can talk to.  All of my friends are shitheads, military assholes like me, or just naive dumbfucks.  You're the only one who's morally ambiguous."

"So you ...ah."  Snow leaned in and touches Jason's shoulder.  "It's not your fault," he said, voice thick with melodrama.

Jason shoved him.  For a second something hostile flashed in his eyes.  Then he stared at the bar again.  "Is there anything that will make me forget her?"

"Oh you mean like, substance wise?"

"Yes."

"Of course."

"What, uh...what would you recommend."

Snow waved to the bartender.  "Jameson, for this guy.  Lots of ice; he's a giant pussy."

Jason looked as his new drink.  "I don't mean alcohol."

"Bottoms up!" Snow said, and reached over to click his fruity drink against Jason's glass.

Jason took a careful sip.

"Seriously...there are a lot of substances you might use to forget what you did, and alcohol is just as effective as they are."

"You mean, they aren't effective at all," said Jason.

"Well yeah if you want to be a downer about everything."

"Snow I only shot a single person while I was over there.  That person was an unarmed woman."

"That is bad," stated Snow with the enthusiasm of a fifth grader answering a question in class.

"I could have helped more people simply by not enlisting."

"Well, that's not necessarily true.  Obviously there would have been a different guy in your unit, and he might have shot two women."

Jason glared at him.

"I'm fucking serious dude," said Snow.  "The world isn't full of angels.  Sometimes you can help people simply by doing less harm than the other guy."

"I guess..."  Jason looked around the room.  "There are some cute girls in the corner."  His voice betrayed the awkwardness of the change in subject.

Snow looked.  "Ooooohhh yeah Daddy could hit that."

"Which one?"

"Huh?"

"Which one could 'Daddy' hit?" asked Jason.

"Oh, well I mean if I had to pick just one...the blonde one."

"They're both blonde."

"The blonder one."

Jason squinted at the girls, trying to figure out what Snow meant.  By this time the girls had realized they were being stared at.  One of them smiled back.

"You want to take one home?  I'll be your wingman," said Jason.

"Meh," Snow whined.  "Not tonight.   I mean I'd love to, but my place is a mess, the jacuzzi is broken, my hands are still fucked up from the Harley incident, I have no wine whatsoever, no candles...no oil...no whipped cream."

Jason stared blankly.

"And all of my vibrators are in Florida," said Snow.

Jason choked on his whiskey.  "Holy shit dude," he coughed, "I meant take her home, as in just make out on the couch a little."

Snow blinked.  "Oh people still do that?"

"Ok, just..."  Jason waved his hand around his head a little.  "Back to my thing."

"Yes, back to your murdering spree."

"I only killed one person."

"So not much of a spree then."

"Of course not!  Do you think you're being helpful right now?" asked Jason.

Snow shrugged.  He looked up at the ceiling, eyes darting back and forth, as if he was choosing between two options.

"Here's another way to look at it.  You know who Jenny McCarthy is?"

"The red scare?"

"Oh fuck no, wrong witch hunt.  No dude Jenny here has caused the deaths of thousands of people.  She didn't kill them herself, but she found paper in England or somewhere that claimed vaccines caused autism. The guy who wrote the paper lost his license for fabricating the data, and every study since then has failed to show a link, but..."

"Accusations are page A;  rebuttals are page B."

"Exactly.  This bitch spawned the modern, american anti-vaccination movement.  We lost herd immunity to diseases that have been gone for 100 years.  Children died.  Babies died."

"Jesus," said Jason.

"So you think about all of the little babies who came into a doctors office with their entire life ahead of them--babies too young to be vaccinated yet--and they get whooping cough from Johnny over their who could have been vaccinated but has a bunch of dumb fucks for parents.  And multiply that by a hundred, or a thousand."

"Yeah but she didn't shoot those kids," said Jason.

"Who gives a fuck?  They're still dead.  Have you ever watched a baby die on a respirator?"  Asked Snow.

Jason looked a Snow, searching his face.  Snow's ambivalence was legendary, like some kind of twisted super power.  Misdirection, half-sarcasm and full out lies were his bread and butter.  But the words 'baby die on a respirator' had come out of his mouth with an earnestness Jason had never heard before.

"No," said Jason.

"It's not much better than watching a bitch bleed out," said Snow.  The callous words sounded fake.

"Come on Snow.  Give me something.  I can't block this out.  I don't want to go crazy, be one of those guys-"

"You will block it out, and it will mean you're crazy.  Still might be better than this.  Or not.  I can tell you, if you want to get over it, you gotta ride it out, and it will be awful.  Or, you can bury it so deep you will never remember."

"Does that work?"

"Worked for me.  I have no memories of 2005 or 2006.  None."

"At all?  Where were you?"

"I don't know."

"Where were you planning to be, I mean you remember where you were in 2004, right?"

"I don't like to think about it."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want to know.  Becoming a nutcase in order to block out a memory doesn't do much good if you go back and try to remember what happened."

"Was is something you did?"

Snow Monkey shrugged.

"What if someone--someone from 2005--comes after you."

"We're all from 2005.  Except for--"

"You know what I mean."

"I'm more dangerous than I look."

"Snow, no offense, but I could take y-aaaaah!"  Jason's bar stool slid out from underneath him, and he hit the floor hard.  Snow's right foot inconspicuously came to rest on the rungs of his own stool.

Snow got up and dropped a fifty on the bar for what could have been no more than $20 of drinks.  He stood over Jason and said, "I'll leave you to your demons.  Oh, and you know we're not friends, right?  I mean I can definitely do favored acquaintance, but friend is too much."  He might have looked intimidating if not for the swaying pom-poms of his hat.

"Go to hell, Snow," said Jason.

Snow smiled, winked, and left.