His garage door is wide open, like the mouth to the cave of a hibernating bear. Just like the bear in question, he’s slumped over his desk, drool leaking from his lips. I sigh and gingerly kick away whatever random bits of sci-fi looking doo dads he’s got scattered across his drive way as I make my approach, six pack in hand.
“Hey buddy,” I ask, gently shaking his shoulder. One moment, he’s sound asleep; the next, he’s leapt off his chair and is stumbling around, gibberish dribbling from his lips in equal measure with his drool. I don’t even bother trying to calm him down; I just plant myself in the same vomit and grease stained chair he was just sitting in and wait it out.
Along the way of his probably still-drunk rampage, he manages to form a handful of coherent words: warp drive, Hollywood stars, systemic racism, the cosmos. I can’t make any sense of it all and so I just watch as he supermarket sweeps crap off his shelves and starts putting tools to parts against a giant piece of machinery in the back that looks vaguely like a beater car made love with the hadron collider. His ramblings grow quieter as he tinkers with it, barely whispering to himself.
I check my phone to see if Stephanie ever replied to my text; she’s left me on read. Whatever, I don’t care. I immediately switch to Tinder and burn through my likes for the day, furiously fingering the screen until it moans.
Wait, phones don’t moan.
I turn around and catch him wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his once-white lab coat. He spikes a glass vial to the ground, poses with both hands on the air, and just screams; I can’t tell if out of glee or anger. Or maybe he’s finally lost it, I can’t tell anymore. Once he’s worn himself out, he finally notices me and shakes my shoulders. I shove him away, holding back a snarl as I force a smile.
“I did it! Oh god it’s finally done!”
“That’s good man, I’m glad for you,” I say, holding out the case of beer and barely keeping my smile on. “I knew you’d do it, I got you this too celebrate.”
He plucks a bottle from the case and chugs it, then a second one, then he shatters the top of the third and downs it in one go. Pretty sure there was glass in the but who am I to deny him his simple pleasures. After the fourth beer, he’s stumbling around again, returning to his rants, but he’s at least a little more sensible now.
“Hey man, glad you managed to get it working. Oh, I’m good, thanks for asking. Still no luck yet, you know how it goes. Though, I am almost out of that uh, original ‘cologne’ you gave me, I was uh, wondering if you had any more?”
He doesn’t reply; instead, he digs through a drawer and tosses me a vial filled with a glowing pink fluid. The smile creeps along my lips before I know it; I glance up at him, but he’s already turned to busying himself with his tools and parts, throwing away another vial himself. I pocket mine and turn around.
“It was awesome catching up man. Again, so glad you managed the project, but uh, I actually got work in a bit. I’ll catch you on the flip side-”
I try to walk out of the garage, but he grabs my shoulders and turns me around, wiping more drool from his lips in the process.
“Wait, burrp, wait, help me with this.”
I squeeze air through my teeth. “I’d love to man, but I really gotta-”
He doesn’t give me an opportunity to keep talking; he drags me over to the machine in the back against my shouts and curses, stronger than I imagined him being. Seriously, where does a frail drunk like him get his strength from?
“Don’t be a little bitch ass burrrp I know you, you cuck, don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing. I humor you because it’s funny watching your life spiral out of control, desperately chasing tail like a dog with short term memory loss the whole time, but now you owe me.”
He stares in my eyes as he says it. They were blue eyes, and there was a clarity there I never realized he had. Oh fuck. I feel beads of sweat on my forehead but I don’t dare wipe it off.
“Hey, come on now, we’re friends right?” I ask, trying to keep it cool and miserably failing in the heat. Why is it so hot in here all of a sudden?
“Yeah whatever,” he says, burping as he drags a giant metal tube out from the back of the garage. “There’s another one on the other side; they gotta burp they gotta go in at the exact same time.”
I follow his instructions, finding the tube and pulling it towards the machine.
“So, what is this thing?” I ask. The heat must be getting to me because I genuinely don’t give a shit. I just want to go home.
“So glad you asked,” he replied sarcastically. “It’s an-” he says some random gibberish and launches into an explanation of what it is; I don’t bother listening until he starts counting down.
I shove the plug into the machine when he shouts “now!” There’s a loud bang just as the engine rumbles to life, and then there’s a blue glow from between the cracks in the pipes and parts. The whole thing shakes and shivers like it’s going to fall apart any second; I gingerly step away as he whoops and shouts, chugging the last two beers. He runs around to the side and yanks a lever.
The air starts humming. My hair raises on end and at the last moment I leap out of the way. The last moment goes on for a while, but the whole while every fiber in my being is yelling at me to run away as fast as I can.
“Oh yeah, here we fucking go-” he yells, but his last word echoes and fades away as a pulsing vibrato blasts out from in front. When I next open my eyes, the machine is still there, but in front of it, a massive gash dug into the foundation of the garage and stretched forward, demolishing a straight line through the houses outside and onwards towards the sun. Car alarms ring out, babies cry, people scream; one woman walking her dog was split clean in half.
“What the fuck…” I whisper.
“Oookay. That wasn’t supposed to happen,” he says after a while, scratching his head as a giant hole digs its way into the sun.
Ngl I have no idea how else to end this so I’m just leaving it as is.