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Dennis throws himself on top of his bed and thinks back on his days of being “free” from the gang. Dennis pushes his head against his alcohol stained pillow and swears.
The memory of the classy, fit, and (possibly) successful man that wrote his car off as a mere “starter car”, causes Dennis to curse even louder into his pillow. Dennis can feel the memory get heavier in his head, the words spoken are more painful, his image of his past-self more sickly than he remembers, and the stranger, more handsome than he allowed himself to remember before. Dennis emits a small murmur as the memory plummets from brain and into his God hole, where all of his weird(er) feelings seem to go these days. Dennis begins to feel out of place with the rest of the world again, so he decides to lay on his back while he goes through it this time. The corners of the room spin, the bed seems to widen then elongate, and Dennis watches him spiral.
“He looks noxious, his eyes misty, and palms sweaty.” Dennis muses, he can’t really understand what’s wrong with this man he looks good, but he’s crying.
Dennis almost feels moved to do something, but he can’t move, but it’s okay.
He’s merely watching a mortal struggle, and he’s not Dennis.
He’s not frail or entrapped by skin, but he does feel sickly, wet, and groggy. He starts to feel sound and gets wrapped around it. The room vanishes from his site and he hears a thud.
Then he feels it in his face and his eyes reopen.
“It’s midnight…” Dennis says, with a slightly marbled tone. He figures that he must have slept through the day (or maybe the afternoon?) and groggily gets up from the bile on his floor, questioning it’s origin.
“...mAC… didyew… did you… mac?” Dennis can barely tell if he’s moving his jaw or if he’s just imagining he is. He decides not to continue whatever he’s actually doing and just gets back into his bed.
Mac can clean up his mess later. Dennis decides that he’ll just sleep a little longer before he wakes Mac up.
Or at least he tries to, but his head keeps switching between making a small humming noise and a buzzing racket. In retaliation, Dennis covers his ears, when that fails, he claws at his scalp until the sweat and blood on his hands makes him weary.
Dennis decides to just stay awake until he gets a boost of energy from his last rest, or at least enough energy to grab a sandwich or something. As Dennis lays on his bed, he feels something in his God hole, something has entered it. It’s gotten so much easier to recognize the feeling of it. He can describe it so well that he can actually tell the difference between his usual bouts of emptiness and his God hole. He knows it’s the usual bouts when everything seems useless and pointless. He knows it’s his God hole’s reckoning when a painful memory goes through it, the memory causes a racket, making all the other memories before it, awake and loud, this makes all of the memories try and climb out, all at once. All of the words said to him in the memories become louder than him, but he doesn’t feel startled, he feels silenced, like he’s nothing more but an obstacle in front of a train of thoughts. Dennis will then feel like his heart is ready to burst harder than usual, his eyes get teary, or his hands get volatile and sweaty, sometimes all at once.
“ARE YOU OKAY, SIR? YOU LOOK SICK?”
“DUDE, YOU LOOK LIKE A TWIG, MAN!”
“DENNIS, SUCK MY DICK.”
“DENNIS, YOU’RE NOT MODEL MATERIAL.”
“YOU LOOK A LITTLE FAT IN THE FACE, SWEETY, DON’T EAT SO MUCH.”
Dennis can only try to maintain his image nowadays, before he could keep up appearances with ease, as long as he had a couple beers to make things less noisy, but nowadays, he feels like the more drunk his body gets, the more sober his mind gets. Dennis knows he’s cracking and he’s slowly learning why each day, so he drinks harder, ups his monthly crack usage, cries harder, and hits harder. He starts spending more on classy clothes ( and the occasional knock-offs), spends more on thin mint cookies than he does on any other food, excluding Guigino’s (he indulges in the cuisine for Mac then, and regurgitates for himself later). He reacts to everything harder than he did before, gives in to his God hole, in hopes that whatever he’s learning will fall into the deepest pit, where it can never bother him again. He lets his God hole flatten him out, until he feels as light as a single crack rock.
Dennis lets this new way of life become his daily system, he finds it easier to live this way. It’s easy for him to put the D.E.N.N.I.S. system down for a little while, the ladies have been coming to Paddy’s a lot less than usual lately anyway, if it weren’t for that, it would be a lot harder to drop.
Right now, Dennis wishes he could go back in time and do something different.
“Drugs… should’ve… more...” Dennis thinks about the possible benefits to more drug use.
He would always know what his body needed, he would be in control of when things got out of control, because he would choose when things got out of control. He would be in control of how he was perceived as well!
Smoke weed, look (and feel!) relaxed.
Do Heroine, look like an animal, feel like a Golden God.
Do (more) crack...well… more crack?
“Yeah… more crack…”
Yeah, Dennis should’ve just done more drugs instead, maybe then he wouldn’t embarrass himself so much, and so often. Maybe he wouldn’t act weird in public whenever he felt light and then heavy, happy and then starved, angry and then something else (happy?).
Dennis then begins to wonder. “When did I get so weird?”
Dennis purses his lips and shut his eyes as hard as he can and tries to remember when he stopped being golden, when people outside the gang started to (openly, like right in front of his fucking face) mock him (was it after the game show? after plan B? after graduation? ...before?).
(Always.)
Dennis screams inside, then outside, trying to shake the world back in place and stop the ever-growing train of thoughts from running him over.
“Dennis!?!!” Mac shouts.
Dennis jumps from his bed and acts on instinct.
He locks the door shut, effectively stopping Mac from coming in, but not from trying to bash his way in.
Dennis goes over to his bed, and grabs a few beers from under his bed.
“Dennis!? Dude?!” Mac shouts, which is followed by more thuds from his attempts to bash into the room.
And he grabs some thin mint cookies from his bottom drawer.
“Dennis?!!” *THUD* *THUD*
And indulges.
*THUD* *THUD* *THUD* *THUD* *THUD*
And goes to sleep.
*THUD* *THUD* *THUD* *THUD* *THUD* *THUD* *THUD* *THUD*
Nothing is learned today, but like always,-
“Dennis?!!” *THUD* *THUD* *THUD* “Dennis?!!” “Dennis?!!”
Something from today settles deep inside him.
*THUD* “...Dennis?”
But nothing was learned today.