Dislocated Read online

  Dislocated.

  by Max Andrew Dubinsky

  Dislocated was originally published online as the Dislocated Experience, an episodic graphic novel at DislocatedExperience.com in 2012.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Dislocated.

  Copyright © 2012 Max Andrew Dubinsky

  Cover art by Ariel Fitzgerald Vergez

  Cover design by Matthew Desotell

  All rights reserved. This work has been registered with the Library of Congress. No part of this book or website may be used or reproduced in any form whatsoever - except for brief quotations used in the purpose of review - without written permission from the author.

  For Matthew

  Thank you for trusting me with a great idea.

  Acknowledgements

  Lauren Dubinsky, Josh Lind, Yotam Dor,

  Julianne Gulu, Joe Bunting, Jeff Goins,

  and Ariel Fitzgerald Vergez

  Thank you for putting up with me,

  and for helping make this book possible.

  “Loneliness is the first thing

  God’s eyes named not good.”

  - John Milton, poet

  PART I

  1

  I WONDER IF MARS IS NICE THIS TIME OF YEAR

  The sun breaks through the windows this morning with a blistering intensity I’m not even close to appreciating. I wrap the sheets around my head, squeezing my eyes shut tighter than usual—bracing for some sort of impact like I’m on a plane plummeting from thirty-seven thousand feet. Or simply bracing for the impact of a new day, which sometimes can be just as bad, if not worse.

  I’ve slept with my shoes on again.

  It seems a decibel or two quieter this morning than I’m accustomed.

  Insomniacs travel on an entirely different audio frequency than the rest of the world.

  A dog barks in the distance, chasing cars, chasing tails.

  Or it’s right outside my window.

  My pillows smell of stale cigarette ash and sweat. I press my nose deep into them. A painful reminder of last night shoots through my face. I’m on my feet.

  I clomp across the dusty carpet, dragging my naked body to the bathroom, careful not to trip on my laces. Last week in a moment of pure and utter inspiration, I moved the refrigerator to the bedroom, providing one less reason for me to leave this immediate area. I grab a beer on my way to the toilet, pressing the chilled aluminum to my swollen eyes. I drink, chasing painkillers. Upon inspection of my reflection, I determine the blackness of my eyes is consistent with my undesirable ability to remain awake—and having recently been hit in the face. I can’t recall a thing after that goon rearranged important parts of my insides with his fists. I regard my split and swollen lips with the respect they deserve, and wonder how it’s possible my wounds have already scabbed over. I poke my lip and wince. I think about shaving, and think about letting my beard grow just to spite Valerie. I pick dirt from beneath my fingernails, and contemplate how long I could go without showering, while everyone everywhere else is contemplating marriage and babies and cancer and how to send a man to Mars.

  “Leslie?”

  I tap on the bathroom wall like I’m in the business of cracking safes or hanging pictures.

  Leslie seems to be running a bit late this morning.

  I check my watch. Rub my wrist. What happened to my watch? Valerie bought me one for Christmas.

  I probably smashed it with a hammer.

  I wonder if Mars is nice this time of year.

  “Are you there? Leslie?”

  I knock on the wall, but to no avail. This isn’t like her.

  Leslie runs Buttercup Bakery on Market Street. She inherited the shop from her mother, and along with it, the hours. I’ve been working the C shift at the grocery three nights a week, and we tend to rendezvous in our designated bathrooms around the same time every morning. The other two days I get a reprieve from the C and work the B shift, but I still get up—I’m always up—when Leslie’s due in because since Valerie left, my tryst through these poorly constructed bathroom walls is the closest thing to a real relationship I’ve had in months.

  Leslie worries I might be depressed. She’s convinced herself (not that I mind and not without my help) that I’m some sort of undercover cop—a Private Dick surrounded by cigarette smoke and beautiful dames and big brutes running surveillance on some crooks in our very own apartment building. Her very own apartment building. How exciting for her.

  The most interesting things about me aren’t even true.

  If Ricky wasn’t so desperate for the help, he’d keep me on graveyard five nights a week. The only customers perusing the aisles are overweight single mothers demonstrating poor parenting skills, and the local high school riff-raff high from copious amounts of cannabis looking for a midnight snack. And if Ricky and I hadn’t gone to school together, he wouldn’t have done me the favor of bringing me on at all. Something about hiring ex-criminals.

  “At least I amounted to something. Everyone else in this town is permanently stoned, drunk, or managing a grocery store.”

  “Fine.” Ricky handed my application back to me. “Ex-cons then. We don’t hire them.”

  This was a ridiculous accusation. The closest I’ve ever come to being a convict was the weekend I spent in an overnight cell in New Orleans. And if the three hot meals a day, the Internet access, the pornography selection, and the hour of recreation time I received each day was any bit of foreshadowing on prison life, I was prepared to plead guilty. However, be it a higher power, guardian angels, predestination, or a perfect demonstration of the incompetence of our judicial system, my case never went to trial. I was free to go.

  With my ear to the wall, I listen for the sounds of hairdryers and faucets. I imagine Leslie wearing only her underwear whenever she tells me about her day—black lace trim or pink bows depending on my mood. Sometimes I see her wiping off makeup or sitting on the toilet, but I think she’s got a shy bladder. I wonder if she even wears makeup to work since she works alone.

  Buttercup Bakery makes a dynamite chocolate croissant. Leslie’s mother really got it right.

  We pass each other in the hall every now and again when she’s got a day off. It turns out I’m a terrible conversationalist without the comfort of a plaster wall in my face.

  I’m nervous for the rest of the day. Life has progressed without incident—uneventful and right on time—since Valerie deemed my return to this pathetic excuse for a town entirely inappropriate; a hindrance upon her mental healing. Unfortunately, I’d just signed the lease, and Ma had already filled my fridge with baked goods and cans of root beer, which is (her words, not mine): “…just like drinking real hooch.” I can only assume my entire day is now thrown off since Leslie’s gone AWOL.

  I think about calling Valerie, hanging up when she says hello.

  My clothes are in a pile next to the bathtub. I step out of my boots, and step on my jeans, feeling for a cell phone in the pockets.

  I brush my teeth in my best attempt at being human again.

  I consider going back to bed and pretending today never happened.

  When my phone turns on, it informs me of three new messages. The date on the phone reads Wednesday. This must be a glitch or a network error. I could have sworn it was still Sunday last time I went to sleep.

  I rinse my mouth, spitting blood and two teeth into the sink.

  Last night after work, some prick knocked me around over at The Salty Grog in a less than classic case of mistaken identity. (I was content to lie low and drink in the corner until every last g
irl in the place looked like Valerie, and I might stand going home with one of them.) All I heard was, “There you are, you son-of-a-bitch…” from behind before my face met a pair of overly accusatory fists.

  After all the confusion and misplaced rage, the testosterone-fueled rhinoceros actually bought me a drink, put his arm around my shoulders, and offered me a ride home. I’d never seen the guy before, which is unusual for a town like this. Not that I’m anybody who knows everybody, but it’s hard not to make yourself known around here. He was looking for some guy named Adam, and Adam and I apparently carry ourselves in very similar fashions.

  “From behind,” the rhinoceros kept saying, “you and Adam…” then he’d wave his hand around in a frustrated gesture like one does when they’re at the zoo on a hot summer’s day visiting the monkey cages. Swatting flies he’d say, “I could have sworn…”

  My back was to him when he found me. Eddy, the bartender, was telling me about the horses up at the McKaden’s farm. “Dead. Every last one of ‘em.” The McKaden’s live twenty-some odd minutes outside of town, on the edge of the woods that trickle down and cross the border from Pennsylvania. Dorothy McKaden inherited the farm from her father, and they’ve been breeding horses for as long as I can remember.

  “Some high school prank,” somebody’s grandfather sitting next to me said. “Devil worshipping miscreants…” he trailed off, drowning his words in his beer as I tried to comprehend the manpower and skill set it would take to properly execute a horse with nothing short of a sawed-off shotgun. I recalled two old ladies carrying bags full of apples and adult diapers at the grocery store, talking about dead horses on their way out while I pushed a train of shopping carts back in. I thought it was an odd topic to be discussing, but didn’t think much of it as I’m not exactly known for my stimulating banter.

  “A filthy mess,” Eddy said. “Detectives involved and everything.” I swallowed my beer, and Eddy refilled it without asking. “Not only horses,” he was rambling by then, leaning across the bar on his forearms. Eddy loves a good conspiracy. A plane can’t fly overhead without him telling you about chemtrails, population control, and brainwashing. Pennies jumped from the pocket of his collared shirt, scattering in all directions. He didn’t seem to notice. Every time he finds a penny, Eddy picks it up regardless of luck. “But birds too.” I pocketed some of the stray coins instead of giving them back. “Birds?” I asked.

  “Birds that won’t fly,” Eddy said.

  “What’s this have to do with dead horses, Eddy?”

  “No, no. You don’t get me.” Eddy had gotten close enough at this point, even with the bar between us, that I couldn’t blame anyone for assuming we were star-crossed lovers about to go home together. “Strange things are happening to the animals out here,” he whispered. “I’m talking about birds that won’t fly. Like something in the sky is keeping them on the ground.”

  “Sasquatch.” the old-timer mumbled and hiccupped.

  I told him there was no such thing. “There are no monsters in our closets, just skeletons.” I nursed my third round, eyes on the door through the mirror behind the bar. Just in case. There are only three bars in this town, and if you stick with the same one seven nights a week, odds are on your side that you’ll eventually find the person you’re looking for—or trying to avoid.

  At some point I glanced away from the mirror just long enough to miss the rhino’s stealth approach from behind, and it wasn’t until he finished macerating my face that he realized he’d been knocking in the teeth of some guy who wasn’t, in fact, Adam at all.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Eddy interrupted, my face unpleasantly situated between the wooden bar top and my new friend’s wooden hands. “There must be some sort of mistake here. Will didn’t do anything to deserve that, did you, Will?”

  Eddy, always thinking the best of me. I’m sure I did something, somewhere, to someone at least once—most likely twice—to deserve such a pounding.

  “Will?” someone asked to make sure they heard another’s words correctly. I was too busy making sure the spilled beer on the counter wasn’t going to waste. So I just said, “Huh?”

  “You know this guy?” the rhino asked Eddy, and my skull was set free.

  “Of course I do. That’s Sue and Ned Scott’s son.” Eddy said this like it was a common fact everyone should know. Two plus two is four. Grass is green. Water is wet. I’m Sue and Ned Scott’s son.

  A round on the rhino, and he straightened my jacket, patted my face. “No harm done then, yeah?”

  “Yeah. No. Yeah. I think a little harm was done.” My teeth felt like a mouthful of Skittles.

  Unfortunately, none of this changes the fact that my pearly whites are now falling out of my head at an alarmingly rapid rate for my age.

  Looking at my gap-toothed smile, I think about what Adam might have done to deserve such a thing.

  I call Dr. Wilmington. I pulled a favor for him a few years back—right before I left town the first time Valerie and I split up. He found himself mixed up in a relationship with an eight-toed stripper in Vegas named Mandy who had an anomalous infatuation for needles, and a big shot semi-pro golfer named Shark. The whole situation birthed around a mistake Dr. Wilmington made back in college, and all he needed was a guy who knew his way around the Internet for a few hours to make it go away. I didn’t ask too many questions, just for free dental care for life. I’ve got bad teeth. Not crooked like a bowl of broken glass, just rotten. Genetics. Ma’s had dentures since she was eighteen, losing every molar and incisor before high school graduation. In her Senior Prom photo she’s got a gap in her smile, and her date still married her.

  I walk over to the window. I stare into a liquid blue sky I swear to God I could dive into from here. I ring the office three times before I get anyone, and all I get is an answering machine. It’s Monday morning. Maybe it’s a holiday I don’t know about. Or Dr. Wilmington is on vacation. I tongue the hole in my gums, tasting copper blood, wondering if this classifies as an emergency—the answering machine politely informing me to contact the nearest ER if this is, indeed, such a thing.

  I hang up.

  I don’t notice the silence or the stillness outside.

  But I do notice the birds.

  2

  NOTHING MUCH EVER HAPPENS AROUND HERE

  Nothing much ever happens around here. Terry Holmes scratched his way to five thousand dollars on a two-dollar lottery ticket three weeks ago, and bought rounds for everyone at Blue Rockne’s Tavern to celebrate. Every now and again someone gets divorced, dies in their sleep, falls down a well, has an affair. Mrs. Davidson had triplets last summer when she thought she was only having twins.

  Of course, the Canfield Fair comes every September for five days, but if you’re not in high school or nine-hundred-years-old, you don’t really notice. There’s the hot rods that gather on Market Street near the fifties root beer shop the first weekend of every August. Alex Jones married an eighteen-year-old girl last year. You couldn’t walk into a hair salon or buy a single slice of deli meat without hearing about that slut Suzy.

  And there was that accident on Hopkins Road. Two teenage girls slammed a stolen Honda into a pick up truck carrying twenty-six caged-up chickens in the bed. There were feathers and blood and tiny bits of beak everywhere. The newspaper listed all twenty-six names of every single recently deceased chicken involved. I’m pretty sure both the girls are dead now – from alcohol poisoning years later.

  Other than that, things stay pretty quiet around here. The occasional tornado comes tearing through every now and again, and someone loses a house, a dog, or a small child. The Ladderback’s nine-month-old son, Phineas, spent two days in a tree after their trailer was lifted thirteen feet off the ground and ripped in half. That was big news for a while. Newspapers said they found him with a smile on his face. I wasn’t there.

  Stranger things have happened, I guess.

  Not here, though.

  Definitely not here.

  Dr. Wil
mington is out of the office. Leslie isn’t home. I’ve got one hundred birds vacationing on my front lawn. And there’s a burning sensation between my toes. Something’s not right. Could be Athlete’s Foot. I don’t like it one bit.

  I look for some ointment in the medicine cabinet, but it turns out I’m no physician. All I’ve got in there is a half-smoked soft pack of cigarettes and a single, unopened condom from the nineties. I kept it in a back-pocket wallet for when my queen, the now vanquished Valerie, the Andromeda of my galaxy, decided she was finally ready to commit herself fully to me. Valerie flexed and practiced her Christian values to the best of her ability, until the afternoon her father came home from work and announced he was leaving, moving to Cleveland to be with the object of his desire, Paul. Valerie proceeded to spend the following twenty-four hours having sex with me every hour until my skin turned red, and we developed rashes from all the friction. I should have done the right thing and asked her how she was feeling, told her she should see someone, talk to someone she trusts, but it’s hard to do the right thing when you’re nineteen and naked. She was my first and I believed she would be my last, so I told myself it was okay I’d left my wallet at home that afternoon.

  Before you start jumping to conclusions about me, I’m no more of a sex-addicted maniac than any other warm-blooded American male who can’t let go. I simply keep the condom in question as a reminder of the way things would be today if I’d never forgotten my wallet. I lose everything I touch. I’ve had to replace my driver’s license four different times since I turned sixteen, and I’ve had my identity stolen twice on account of a misplaced wallet—but I stole it right back, with interest. Ma says it’s the creative side of my brain. “You’re an artist. Your brother, Russell, keeps a meticulous journal and calendar he can’t live without, but I don’t even think you know how many days are in February.”