The Sad Life Of William V. Bradley
(character gets evicted)
William V. Bradley stood outside of his humble single story house in Wayne, New Jersey. He had only been living there for a short time. A year ago he had moved to the States from England, intent on becoming a reporter for a newspaper. He had no degree, and worked as a janitor for the office the local paper used while he took classes at a community college to get his degree in journalism.
He sat down on the concrete steps leading to his porch and read the notice in his hand. He had a roommate who had ran off the week prior, taking with him four months worth of William’s hard earned rent money and left the paper Will held on the counter with a note.
“Sorry bro,” the note had said. Underneath it laid the somber notice of eviction. Will sat and stared at the paper for hours, not quite reading it, playing with the cuffs of his thrift store flannel shirt. The majority of the money he had made went towards rent and bills, all of which were in his name. The meager sum left paid for a few groceries and his tuition. He had to quit smoking in order to manage his budget. Careful sacrifices made in order to fulfill a dream that he might now never reach.
The note said he had to come up with thirty two hundred dollars in the next week. As of the following friday, he would be without a place to live. There was no way he could come up with the funds to pay that in a week, but he would have to try.
The crickets had already begun their sad twilight chorus when Will got up off of the step and returned inside. He had work to do. There had to be some sort of lifeline he could exploit, some untapped reservoir of money he could borrow. He didn’t have enough credit to take out a loan. With his family and friends hundreds of miles across the ocean he had no one to cosign. He stood near the phone wondering who he could call. With a sigh he turned away and got ready for bed.
(aliens attack)
Will tried to force himself into a happy place; he did not want to fall asleep worried and scared to dream about his problems. He imagined his childhood house in Mount Pleasant, and soon he began to drift off into a state of content. Will’s eyes fluttered a few times, and his breathing became regular. He screamed, loudly. A blinding light filled his room. He sat up in his bed, frightened, unable to see anything. Never before had he experienced a light this bright. It was almost sharp, biting through the skin of his eyelids. He got out of bed to find something, anything. As he reached forward blindly he heard an unsettling noise, a deafening screech. The sound grew in intensity, forcing him to cover his ears with his hands, flattened against the side of his head. He tried, in vain to keep the sound out. It was like a mosquitos whine, or the sound of a television being on, only painfully stronger. It was almost electric. He started to feel a wet warmth spread across his palms, and he knew that his ears were beginning to bleed. Suddenly the noise stopped. The light dimmed, and he began to be able to see the outlines of people, standing around him.
He was on the floor of his bedroom, silently weeping, blood was still flowing from his ears. He could not hear them at first, every noise had been dampened by the electric sound. He was scared. As his eyes adjusted he could see that the figures were not human. He was going crazy. He must be. These could not be aliens, he thought. They raised their thin arms and began closing in on him, their circle shrinking until they were inches from touching him. As Will felt knobby fingers gripping his body, he screamed.
Still screaming, he jolted upright. He was in his bed. There was no light, no noise. He knew that it had been a dream, a frightening one, but just a dream. He had night terrors as a child, nightmares so frightening that he would wake suddenly, screaming and covered in a cold sweat. They always came when he was stressed, or overwhelmed. Will tried to force himself back to sleep, but couldn’t. He kept his eyes open for the rest of the night. They darted back and forth, following every imagined movement and shadow.
When the sun started shining through his curtains, Will flinched. It reminded him to much of the bright light and the mysterious figures. Without thinking, he checked his hands and sighed with relief. There was no blood. No sign of the terror of the night before. Checking in the mirror by his dresser, he found no blood on his face either. Nothing.
He knew it had just been a dream, but something inside of him needed to check. Cause you’re a goddamn puss, he told himself. He went down to his kitchen and poured himself a bowl of cereal. He turned on the television and watched the news while he ate.
(takes advice that turns out to be bad)
He couldn’t stop thinking about the dream. And his past due rent. His truant roommate. He was feeling so overwhelmed. He had no control over anything anymore.
“What the fuck do I do?” he said, out loud, to no one in particular. Will remembered a conversation he had had with his brother before he left for the States. His brother was older and had always been a confidant of Wills. He always seemed to know just what to do. His brother had told him on many occasions, this conversation included,that many problems can be solved just by taking a walk and thinking about them.
Will sighed and put his cereal bowl in the sink. He did not have to work today and did not want to wallow about the house. After deciding that a walk would be for the best, Will got dressed and left the house, noticing how beautiful the brisk spring morning was.
Will lived in a suburb. The street he lived on only had houses on one side of the street. The other side was the boundary of a park, full of paved trails, trees, and nature. He chose the pathway nearest to his house and began towards it. He nodded to an elderly couple with a dog. They promptly ignored him.
Will took a deep breath of the air, and almost instantly started to relax. He looked up at the sky and forgot his troubles. With each step he felt lighter and lighter. And then his left foot stepped into something squishy. He looked down to see his white shoe inches deep in a fresh steaming pile of shit. He stood with his mouth agape, watching the wet brown color leaching into the white canvas of his shoes.
He shook his foot, sending particles of shit flying. As he wiped his foot on the grass, he muttered profanities. Nothing was going right. Everything is wrong. Nothing will ever get better. He turned around and started to walk back to his house, giving the shit a wide berth. He laughed a hysteric, shallow laugh, not because anything was particularly funny, but because he was losing it.
Everything is going wrong, he thought. He was right. By some twisted cosmic rule this man, William V. Bradley, was doomed to suffer darker and darker fates with each passing moment. His head was hung low, shoulders drooping. Will had the look of a defeated man. Not a single shred of a happy thought was left in his mind. Only the dark shadows of dread, anger, and hopelessness. Every detail he had enjoyed at the start of his walk had been soured. He noticed the way the vegetation bordering the trail had a dead, sickly yellow color to it. He heard the many squeals of birds in the trees. He could smell car exhaust and the dogshit on his shoe. He regretted taking the walk, and every step brought him closer to regretting his move to America.
His thoughts had moved to a deeper place. The earlier shadows were gone, replaced by a pit of tar black self pity and loathing. He saw the couple with the dog. They had been coming from the trail when he first passed them. He guessed it was their filthy mutt’s shit that had ruined his walk.
“Oy cunt!” he yelled at the elderly woman, “Next time pick up the shit!” The woman’s partner, the elderly man, gave Will the finger as they walked away. Will shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and made his way to his front door. He was embarrassed, and truthfully surprised with himself.
He had called a woman older than his mother a cunt. He didn’t know what had come over him. He looked down at his left shoe as he stood inside the threshold. The dog shit would wash out. He leaned his back against the cold wood of the front door and slid downwards until he was cradling his head between his knees.
He had absolutely no one in America. He hadn’t had time to make any friends besides his roommate, with school and work taking up most of his time. There’s one more thing, he thought, It’s my bleedin day off and I spend it stressed and alone. This is fucking ridiculous.
He ran his fingers through his stringy hair. It wasn’t quite black, but it wasn’t brown. He closed his fists around clumps and pulled hard while yelling through his teeth. He needed a way to vent his frustration.
(Character develops an addiction, or relapses into old one. Does not have to be substance related.)
He fiddled with the hem of his pants, still sitting on the tile of the entryway with his back against the door. Will wiped the moisture from beneath his eyes and walked to the bathroom. He needed to get an aspirin, or something. He wasn’t sure if the headache he had was real or if it was just all in his head. A headache that’s all in me head, he laughed at himself and opened the medicine cabinet.
The cabinet was packed with bottles. Vitamins of every different variety. Herbal supplements galore. His former roommate had a little ongoing bout of hypochondria and had a pill for everything. On the second shelf he found an empty bottle of aspirin. He tossed it on the floor and kept looking. He pulled down the front row of vitamin bottles off of the top shelf to reveal what must have been his roommates secret stash. Why he forgot to take these with him was a mystery.
Will pulled down three of the bottles. Oxycontin, Valium, Percocet, Vicodin. Each bottle was full to the brim. Will glanced back up at the top shelf. There were seven more prescription bottles, like golden idols, each standing proudly waiting to be discovered. Will was positively giddy. Maybe his luck was turning. He had never sold drugs before, but he had sure bought them. He knew he might be able to make half of the money he needed with this discovery. The oxy alone would make...
He lost himself for a moment. Visions of grandeur raced through his head. He could see himself, check in hand, paying for his back due rent. He smiled and then frowned. He had no idea who he could sell these to. Like falling stars, his great plans fizzled out far above his reach. He set the orange plastic containers down and leaned against the bathroom sink. He looked at the empty aspirin bottle and remembered his headache. He slammed a hand down on the porcelain edge of the sink and immediately regretted it. Pain shot up his forearm.
Will yelped in pain. After a few seconds, the pain passed and he laughed at himself. I sound like a prissy little minge, he stared into the mirror above the sink and noticed the way that he was gripping his right hand, as if it was to weak to hold its own weight. Look like one too. He sighed and stared hungrily at the prescription bottles. He had a feeling in the back of his throat, almost an itch. It was an old desire.
He just wanted something to take the edge of of his frustration. He wanted to get munted and mullered off of something, anything. He knew that he shouldn’t take anything. Not because he was against people taking illegal drugs, but rather because he couldn’t trust himself with them. Percocet is good for headaches, he shook his head slightly as he realized what he was thinking. He didn’t know it just yet, but he had already made up his mind. The perfect justification.
I was looking for a painkiller, he was trying to convince himself that he wasn’t doing anything wrong. He had the bottle of percocet in one hand and the oxycontin in the other. And there is no aspirin left. He looked at the warnings printed on the label. Nothing to bad. He worked at the child proof cap of the bottle of oxy. He had done them a few times in secondary school. The top had finally given up its fight, and the bottle surrendered the small white treasure into his hand. It’s only this once.
Not bothering with a glass of water, Will tipped his hand over his open mouth. Eighty total milligrams of the wonderful opiate fell onto his tongue. Will grimaced as he chewed the four pills, savoring the horrid flavor. Goodnight headache.
Twenty minutes later, Will stumbled into his house with a carton of cigarettes in his hand. He had figured it would take longer for the pills to kick in. The last three blocks of his short roundtrip were covered by inconsistent footsteps and stumbles. More than once he had tripped. If not for the pills, he might have noticed the bleeding scrapes on his palms and knees. If not for the pills, he would not have the bleeding scrapes on his palms and knees.
Will collapsed onto the first piece of furniture he reached, a coffee table. He didn’t mind the hard fiber board on his back, but in spite of his comfort he swung his arms back and forth across the surface, knocking magazines and an unlit candle to the floor. His hands struggled to open the cardboard carton. His fingers were not following his directions; they moved chaotically, like insects. He felt himself get a paper cut. He didn’t care. After swinging the box repeatedly against the table, he managed to free a pack of smokes from the seemingly bulletproof package. Hello pretty lady. he sloppily kissed the pack of Camel cigarettes, lets get you undressed.
His hands met their match against the cellophane, his fingers to numb and his muscle control was not even there. After ten minutes Will succeeded. He was laying on top of his coffee table, comfortably numb with a lit cigarette in his hand. He knew, in some distant part of his brain that was still functioning, that he would regret smoking inside his house. He didn’t care. He could barely move. He didn’t care. Will rolled to his side and threw up over the side of the table. He didn’t care when he saw his stomach contents seep into the floor. Will took another drag off of his lovely lady and rolled onto his back to stare at the ceiling. He would have liked it if there was music playing. But that didn’t matter.
Will’s eyelids drooped. They slowly open. His eyelid drooped again and doesn’t open again. He makes an effort to open his eyes again, but can’t. Will laughed and flicked his cigarette across the room, but he didn’t fully realize that he had done it. He tried four times to smoke the cigarette no longer in his hand. His eyes still closed, he somehow coordinates his movements skillfully enough to pull one more from his pack. Before he could light it, Will passed out. The back of his head smacked against the table beneath him. He was to far gone to feel it.
This is wonderful my dear. My only criticism is you say "to" instead of "too" a few times. :)I am eager to read the next portion of your story.
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