Richie’s Vacation

Richie was sitting in his mail truck, eating a spicy chicken sandwich, when he got a text from his mom that said his old best friend from middle school was dead. Ritchie hadn’t been friends with Emmitt since the summer after eighth grade, and the two hadn’t seen each other since the day of their high school graduation over seven years ago. 

That night, after Ritchie finished his route, he skipped dinner, threw his aching body onto his bed, and blasted album after album of experimental black metal.

By midnight, Ritchie was still wide awake. Thoughts about death and the transience of his own existence churned endlessly in his head. For the first time in his life, Richie understood that he too could die at any moment. With this thought in mind, he decided he was done wasting his life doing miserable shit that he hates, like working six days a week for the post office. So he stuffed some clothes into his gym bag, grabbed his phone and charger off the dresser, and walked out the door.

At the ATM near his apartment, Richie withdrew five hundred dollars from his account. Since all he ever did each week was work, he had a good chunk of savings squirreled away for a rainy day.

For the next forty minutes, Richie drove north with no destination in mind. He gripped the steering wheel tightly as the road cut through rolling fields of grass and low lying swampland. Gnarled oaks and ancient elms flicked past in the darkness. At some point during the drive, a feral cat slinked across the street, stopped in the opposite lane, and stared at Richie with glowing green eyes.

Just before one a.m., Ritchie rented a room at a hotel off Route 23 called The Quartzite Inn. Stepping into room fourteen, Richie slumped down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. It hung low and was painted the same color as vanilla bean ice cream. Its dimpled texture resembled buttered popcorn. With his swirling thoughts finally quieted by the thrill of his spontaneous trip, he realized he had not eaten anything since his lunch break at Wendy’s almost fourteen hours ago. So he locked his room and walked across the street to the 24-hour diner he’d spotted while parking his car.

A neon red Open sign glowed in the window of the diner as Richie walked through the front door and sat down at the counter. Aside from an elderly woman slumped behind a cash register near the door, a hard brown blob of dried maple syrup was Richie’s only company in the entire place.

At the end of the counter sat a bell and a white scrap of paper. Ring for Service. Moments after Richie rang the bell, a cook with a scarred face walked out of the kitchen and asked Ritchie for his order.

“Do you have a menu I can look at?” Richie said, trying to not stare at the cook’s craggy face, which resembled freshly cooled volcanic rock.

The cook gave Richie a half-melted smile and shook his head. At this distance Richie could see that the cook’s left eye was fake, and that the scars on his face spread down his neck and extended all the way to the backs of his hands.

“We got diner food, man,” the cook said, with a friendly upward flick of his chin. “Anything you want, you got it. It’s not like I got any other shit to do right now, you know?”

“Yeah,” Richie said. He drew a deep breath and smelled grilled sausage, melted butter, and fresh bacon. Then he looked down at the counter in front of him and saw the dried blob of maple syrup. “Can you do chocolate chip pancakes with sausage and bacon?”

The cook flashed his lopsided smile and nodded.

“Oh yeah. Coming right up,” the cook said. He smiled at Richie one more time and then disappeared into the kitchen.

Once Richie had finished with his food, the cook came back out of the kitchen.

“So how was it, man?”

Richie smiled at the cook as the post-meal warmth washed over him.

“I think that might have been the best meal I’ve ever had in my entire life.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” the cook said, grinning. “You need anything else?”

“No, I think I’m all set, thanks.”

“Alright, I’ll get your bill, and then you can pay Janice over there on your way out. You have a good one, man.”

The cook picked up Richie’s dirty plates and started walking away.

“Actually, can I ask you a question?” Richie said to the cook’s back.

The cook turned around and pointed at the scars on his face.

“They’re from an accident a couple of years ago. I got burned.”

“I’m sorry,” Richie said. “I’m sure people ask you about it all the time.”

“No, you’re good. It was pretty goddamn awful at the time, but I don’t mind talking about it now. It’s a crazy story if you want to hear it.”

Richie looked at the old woman sitting behind the cash register.

“Is that okay? You’re not going to get in trouble or anything will you?”

The cook burst into laughter and shook his head. He had the wet, wheezing laughter of a heavy smoker, just like all of Richie’s coworkers at the post office.

“Don’t worry about her. She’s not the boss. The boss loves me. I’m her all-time favorite employee.”

“Okay.”

The cook put down Richie’s plates and sat at the counter.

“Alright. So basically, for the first twenty years of my life, I was a member of this cult called the Light of the Second Storm. Me and my little brother were born into it, but that was only because of our parents. When our parents first met in the early nineties, they were both hardcore drug addicts. You know, shooting heroin, living on the street, panhandling, stealing, all that shit. They were trash. Then at some point they met this asshole named Father Elijah who said he knew how to save them from death or hell or whatever. According to him, he had discovered a way to transfer little pieces of Jesus’ soul into other people’s bodies, and whenever he did that, Jesus’ power was supposed to heal them up in an instant. So he tried this with my parents. I don’t know what the trial was like at the time because I wasn’t there, but in the story my parents told me and my brother, he did something amazing and they got clean like that. No methadone or withdrawals or anything. Just clean. Like a miracle from heaven.

“Once that happened, they were hooked. They were all in. Now fast forward twenty years. I’m nineteen, and my little brother Paul is eighteen. By then Father Elijah had developed his soul-swapping shit into a whole bunch of tests that took years to complete. He called them the trial of the second soul. And for the kids like me and Paul who had been born into all this, the final test of the trial was supposed to take place just before your twentieth birthday. So on the night before my twentieth birthday, Father Elijah took me, my little brother Paul, and my parents out into the fields on the edge of his farm down in Topine. Now my birthday is in January, so it’s fucking freezing out there. We’re all tromping through the snow and the mud and it’s awful. So finally we get out to this big open field with a little cluster of trees in it. In the middle of these trees there’s a small clearing, and in the middle of the clearing there’s a square plastic table. I swear to God. It was like one of those tables you buy at Home Depot for sixty bucks. So we see this table standing there. On top of the table is a roll of gauze, a metal jug of water with a lid on it, and a Tupperware container filled with those long matches you use to light old fireplaces.

“So like I said, that night was supposed to be my final test in the trial of the second soul. For that test I was supposed to stand still and watch in silence as the person I loved most in my life offered up their body to Jesus. This was done by lighting one of their fingers on fire. According to Father Elijah, if the soul of the person on trial was spotless like it was supposed to be, then the flames would quickly die out and the host of the fire wouldn’t feel any pain. But if the soul of the person on trial was blackened with filth, then the flames would engulf the host’s body and burn away the evil of the pigs and whores and unbelievers. And since I was the one on trial, Father Elijah lit Paul’s finger on fire, because he was the person I loved most in my life.

“So we started the trial. I stood on one side of the table and Paul stood on the other. Then Father Elijah wrapped Paul’s pinky in gauze and picked up one of the long matches and lit it with his lighter. When he touched the flame to the end of Paul’s pinky, a big ball of smoke blew up in our faces and both of Paul’s hands caught on fire. I still don’t know why that happened, but either way, the fire ran up Paul’s arms and got into his robe, the stupid goddamn robe we had to wear for the trial, and the whole thing just went up in flames. It was unreal. Paul stayed quiet for a few seconds, maybe two or three, and then he started screaming. But since we were all so brainwashed by Father Elijah’s bullshit, no one did anything. We all just looked at Father Elijah. About two seconds later, that chickenshit turned around and ran as fast as he could back to the farmhouse. So I grabbed the jug of water off the table and threw it on Paul. But it turned out that it wasn’t water in the jug, it was actually lighter fluid. And since my nose was all stuffed up from the cold, I couldn’t smell the lighter fluid when I picked up the jug. So the second I threw that shit on him, a giant fireball exploded in my face and engulfed me too. By then our parents finally woke up and tried to help us out. My dad tackled me and Paul to the ground and rolled us in the snow while my mom ran back to the farmhouse and called 911. But because of the remote location Father Elijah had taken us to, the EMT’s couldn’t get to us in time, and Paul died out there a few minutes after I turned twenty years old.”

“Oh my God,” Richie said. “That’s so crazy. I’m so sorry that happened.”

“Thanks,” the cook said. “Yeah, Paul was my boy. He was so funny. That kid could make me laugh about anything.”

“He sounds like a great guy,” Richie said. “But how can you be so—I mean you seem to be so happy in general. If something like that had happened to me, I don’t think I’d be able to get out of bed ever again.”

“It ain’t easy, man,” the cook said, shaking his head. “But then again, I was never too big on any of that self-pity shit anyway. I got too much I wanna do with my life, you know? And on top of that, I’m not too sad about it because Paul’s still here with me right now. Without the skin they harvested from his lower body, I wouldn’t have made it either. So each time I start to get sad, I try to think of what he would say if he was looking at me right now. Knowing him, I’m pretty sure he’d be cracking some joke about the doctors sewing his ball sack onto my face in order to save my life. And then he gets me all over again.”

Richie and the cook laughed.

“Yeah,” Richie said. But his laughter and good cheer quickly dissolved away when he imagined how painful and terrifying Paul’s final minutes must have been.

“Anyway,” the cook said, clearing his throat. He grabbed Richie’s plates once again and stood up. “You need anything else tonight, man?”

“No, that’s enough,” Richie said, slumping over the counter. He mopped his sweaty forehead with a wad of napkins and mashed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.

“Alright, I’ll be back with your check in a minute, and then you can pay Janice on your way out.”

“Thanks,” Richie said.

After paying his bill, Richie returned to his hotel room and slept for twelve hours. When he finally woke up, the clock beside the bed read 2:16 p.m. Instead of checking his phone for notifications, he lay in bed and stared at the dimpled ceiling. Then he turned onto his side and watched a glowing square of gold sunlight inch across the blue carpet. Nothing happened for a long time. He thought about turning on the TV or searching for porn or Googling one of his ex-girlfriends from college, but he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep again. It didn’t work. He was wide awake. He was bored. There was nothing more he wanted to do.