Work Text:
“Where were you man? Off stalking The Waitress again?”
. . .
3:30 PM
On a Tuesday
Philadelphia, PA
Charlie let out an exasperated half-sigh, half-grunt as he flopped onto the sofa bed that he and Frank shared in their small apartment.
He wished Dennis wouldn't call it stalking. He hated whenever someone said he had an obsession with The Waitress, even though it was absolutely true. He couldn’t explain it to the gang, even if he wanted to. He barely understood why his brain was fuelled by such a strong chemical reaction when he saw her, but from what he understood this was what people refer to as love.
It was everything about her, the way she talked and the way she smiled. Her beautiful short hair styled in at least a hundred different layers. The way her eyes seemed to whisper directly into his eyes. It had been years since she smiled directly at him, back when she was only wary of him, not afraid. She was his sunshine, the only source of light in his shitty, pathetic life.
He wished there was some way he could express this warm feeling into words, but he’d never exactly had a decent vocabulary. He couldn’t even write a romantic poem or love letter, because he could barely spell any word with four or more letters. He resorted to drawing out his words as stickman hieroglyphics, which no one but himself seemed to be able to understand.
He reached into the cushions of the sofa, feeling around for his glasses. His fingers brushed against what felt like a nickel and a million tiny crumbs, and suddenly a cold sharp blade cut across the inner side of his thumb.
“Go-d dammit! Ow,” He stuttered, pushing aside the cushion to see what nicked him. It was Frank’s razor, why the hell was his razor on Charlie’s side of the couch cushions? Frank needed to keep his shit stored on his own side. Charlie sucked on his cut finger and tossed the razor toward their kitchen table, but it ended up hitting an open bottle instead, spilling god-knows how old beer everywhere.
Using his other hand, he felt around the inside of the cushions again. Once he felt the plastic frames he pulled out his pair of third-dimension glasses that Dee got for him at the movie theatre that one time. He put them on and looked around his apartment, trying to picture another dimension.
Would it actually be any different from whatever dimension he was from? Would there be different people, or would it be a place where another version of himself existed? Like a clone, but with an advanced brain and body? Maybe there could be a Charlie who knew more words, and who could read but wasn’t a lame nerd. A Charlie who didn’t sweat so much when he was nervous, and who could talk to The Waitress without coming off like a total creep.
Maybe the other dimensional Waitress would like him too, and they could even be married. Yeah, then him and the gang would call her the Wife. That has a nice ring to it, “The Wife”. Charlie’s Wife. Maybe the other versions of Dennis and Frank wouldn’t have slept with her either. He shook his head violently at the thought— he didn’t like to remember that it had happened in his dimension.
He reached for the container of glue he kept underneath his end of the sofa, uncapping the bottle and bringing it up to his nose to inhale deeply. The tingly zapping sensation from the fumes put his mind at ease instantly, and he smiled goofily as he felt his high start back up. The more he breathed in, the calmer he felt. Silently he thanked the horses that made this stuff.
Suddenly the default ringtone of his burner phone went off, and he dug his good hand back into the couch pockets to fish it out. It took him a good five rings to finally pull it out and two more to remember which button would answer the call.
“Hellllllllo?”
“You don’t need to draw out the syllables of ‘hello’ Charlie, it doesn’t make you sound any more sophisticated.”
“Oh, hey Dennis” was all Charlie said in response, stretching his still bleeding hand above his head in the process. “What’s going on?”
“Come meet us at Paddy’s, I have a master plan that’ll get us back in the game. Dumbass customers aren’t going to know what hit them.”
“Uh, yeah, okay. Uhhh,” he hesitated, feeling embarrassed about what he wanted to say next but deciding to go through with it anyways. “Hey Dennis— can I ask you something real quick though man?”
“Sure bud, but make it quick. We’re losing precious time here.”
“Okay, um… D’ya think that maybe, I mean, there could be another version of ourselves living in a different dimension maybe? Like exactly the same, except things are slightly different there, and those versions of ourselves are slightly different too?”
“First of all Charlie, that’s not what different dimensions are. You’re thinking of alternate universes, or an alternate reality. And secondly, no I do not think there are other versions of ourselves out there. If there were then scientists or some other nerds would have discovered some sort of evidence by now” he chuckled.
“Oh,” was all Charlie could say, sliding the 3D glasses off his face and tucking them back into his side of the couch.
“Yeah, sorry man. Why do you ask?”
“No reason man, was just wondering… Thinking about clones or, whatever. I’m on my way to Paddy’s now” said Charlie, getting up off the sofa and grabbing his keys from the puddle of beer that now covered the table. The metal key was sticky from the liquid but he liked the smell.
“You really need to stop sniffing glue all the time dude. See you soon” said Dennis, followed by a click and dead air.
Charlie let out a dramatic and exasperated sigh, running his hands furiously through his unkempt hair. His fingers each locked into tufts and pulled hard, ripping some out in the process. He felt trapped, trapped like a rat. He was trapped like a rat in one of his rat traps. He was a rat, and he was about to be bashed. He quickly grabbed the glue again, breathing in the toxins to keep himself grounded. Immediately the trapped feeling went away, but the rat was still there inside of him, begging Charlie not to be bashed. He didn’t know how much more of this feeling he could take.
In a swift motion he grabbed his staple green army jacket and shrugged it on, hurrying out the apartment door and down the hallway.
. . .
The couch cushions that Charlie had just been digging through begin to rustle, and suddenly the upper torso of a sweaty old man emerged from a hidden hole in the seams.
“Godammit,” said Frank to nobody but himself. “He didn’t even get around to choking the chicken this time!”