Devil’s Lake

That night, Joe tripped over the dishwasher box and almost broke his neck sneaking out to his car to get the last five pills from the bottle that said refills: 0. He had planned to wait and eat the pills in the morning to help him get through telling his wife what had happened: that he had been fired from his job as a "Pharmacology I" instructor a half hour after being fired from his job as head pharmacist at the Lake Ella CVS because his asshole boss at the drugstore called his asshole dean at Tallahassee Community College. But the pills called to him from his couch-sleep, called to him, and so after swallowing the last five he figured he would ever eat unless he did something really bad, he found himself standing next to the garbage and recycling bins, choking in the stench of broccoli quiche, left three days in the trash, and he began cutting up the cardboard box with the orange box cutter he got from his trunk and had also stolen from CVS. It didn’t retract all the way, but the blade was sharp.

There was no moon and when he had cut the box halfway down, the blade slipped and sliced him long and deep in the leg above the knee, right through his favorite pajamas—they were striped and, he thought, made him look thin. Mo-ther-fucker, he said. Then, Stitches. The blood warmed his kneecap and calf and began to soak his loafers. Since his pants were ruined, he took them off and pitched them into the trashcan. And I loved those pajamas,, he said, naked from the waist down, continuing to cut up the box. He knew that three quarts of spilled blood meant you were in trouble: I’m nowhere near trouble.

He used to joke with his first AA sponsor way back when he got sober the first time about how he always suspected that when he died, it would be from shock because he lacked character. Seeing himself bleed would be more than enough to cause him to go into shock, and he would die from that rather than any actual wound. But here he was bleeding more than he ever had before, feeling, well, sprightly. But then he groaned loud and long thinking of having to go to detox again and those fucking NA meetings with their shitty coffee and palm oil powdered creamer.

Then he had an idea. He put the box on the grass, sat in it and scooted himself to the edge of a short, steep hill. At the precipice, he opened his eyes a little wider, made one more scoot, and threw his hands in the air and wheeeeee, let himself go. It was more fun than he’d had in a long time. So he did it again and again. Each time, it was a little harder for him to get out of the box at the bottom and climb back up that hill, and each time the box went a little slower because the blood had begun to wick through the cardboard but that was okay, there was no moon out. He wasn’t missing a thing.