[Drew Katsikas]

John Harrison was a working man. He, as many others he knew, was quite enthralled by the ticking of the clock’s hands. However, his infatuation was much greater than that of his cohorts, and they were somewhat disturbed by the depth of his obsession. He watched the hands tick across the face with great care, knowing that with just a bit more concentration he would accomplish something immense. All this required was that he discover what the goal of his peculiar practice actually was. Although a great amount of time was reserved for this clock staring, John always worried that he was caught in a ritual of great futility. His concern was quite logical, as work that day, just as all days, let out at 8:30.
Wonderful ideas swept through the young man’s mind as heard the whistle blow. It was an obnoxious screech, though it meant him no harm, he knew. It was only there to cut through and destroy the workdays, and give birth to his precious Sunday. John carefully planned what he would do with this seemingly endless freedom. He would be sure to meet all of his chums at the local pub that night. They would shoot pool, drink freely, and discuss non-existent relationships, bragging about the beauty of their short-term partners, and highly exaggerating the length of their encounters. These lies were essential if one wished to appear manly before his peers.
Lightness took to his chest as he brushed all the soot off his miserable work clothes, which were supposed to be left behind at the mining factory. Still, John managed to take these dirty clothes home with him. He never gave this practice consideration, but it had been a ritual to him since as far as he could remember. He would sneak them home, and be sure to stash them somewhere in his trailer where they wouldn’t be seen until Monday morning. However, John would always ruin this attempt of concealment, and bring them out, admiring them through glazed, world-weary eyes.
However, now was a time for carousal at Pat’s Place, the Irish Pub in town. The distance to the pub was within a short distance, much to the satisfaction of the workers, and to the bartender and owner, who had accumulated a small fortune due to these hard-working men’s insatiable thirst for hard drink. All they needed to do was walk a few hundred feet, and with a couple of bucks, they’d be stinking drunk in no time.
As he walked home, John waited for it. The rain always came on Saturday afternoons walking to the pub. He’d get wet. That was certainly one of the more disappointing aspects of the foul weather. However, the boot-marks he left on the dirt road were graciously wiped away by this rain. Predictably, it came, and it poured with all the tenacity he had seen in the other days. However, his boot-marks remained. Suddenly a sickening feeling came over him, as he saw that the others walked just as he did, but the downpour blotted out their prints.
“David, how is it that my footprints remain, but yours do not?” John inquired. “Is it that I am walking with too much force? But no, I press down gently as always, to allow the rain to take its course. It could not be the rain! It falls as it always has, even more perhaps!”
David gave John a perplexed glare that only threw him into more sorrow. It was as if John had had merely mouthed the words, with no audible utterance. There was nothing he could do. He simply entered the bar, hoping to forget all his troubles in the seedy establishment. John walked through the doors, and took rest in his favorite stool, but he knew it would be hard and unaccustomed today. He ordered a Samuel Adams beer and scanned around the bar.
His friends laughed heartily. John could tell by their movements. He heard them also, but he perceived no joy in their cackling. They simply threw their mouths open, in what should have appeared to be joy. However, John’s disconnection to this happiness distorted their merriment into an act of demonic celebration. Terrified, John laid his head on the counter and attempted to shield himself from the satanic festivities that took place around him. Closing his eyes, he soon drifted into a deep sedative-like sleep.
He awoke with what seemed hours later, with not one dream to his memory. The sleep had done him well, extinguishing his fear of those who once appeared malevolent in their rapture. Along with this courage, he also felt divinely compelled to challenge their nonsensical and frivolous enjoyment. The beer still sat in front of him. He picked up the bottle and read its slogan in a loud, robust voice.
“Samuel Adams, brewer and patriot!” He exclaimed. “Need there be a separation, gentleman?”
Mumbling came from all around the bar, accusing him of severe drunkenness.
“For I ask all of you, what brewer is not a patriot? These men mix the magical elixir that keeps us working, which consequentially runs our country! We strive for this nectar of the peasants!”
The mumbling of the crowd turned quickly to confused anger. Shouts came from all directions of the bar, ordering him to stop speaking.
“Why I ask all of you? Why? We work in order to obtain this beverage. This drink which puts us into sedation. Quite cheaper is the escape of sleep! Free! And just as mind numbing as our ale! For what is drunkenness but a costly sleep? And what is sleep but a finite death? ”
As he attempted to speak again, the patrons of the pub seized him. They carried him, and he complied to their force, but spoke once again in their arms.
“You know its true! You bring me out because you wish not to hear!”
They tossed him onto the ground, and began kicking and punching him cooperatively as he lay writhing in the rain and mud.
“Even better gentlemen, the eternal sedation, free and guaranteed long-lasting... it is death I proclaim! Death is the permanent sleep, the costless and eternal drunkenness!”
As he spoke these grave words, he was being beaten into a bloody pulp. Suddenly, his chest rose, and he appeared to be preparing for a soul draining declaration of final and ultimate truth.
“Forgive them nada! They know not what they do!”
After his last words, the men left him for dead, quite casually. They returned to work on Monday, speaking of the strange incident they had taken part in. They felt quite remorseful, and were terrified by the faceless power that possessed them to destroy their good friend. When they returned to the area where they had so brutally beat him, he was no longer there. David volunteered to search for him, and later in the day he came back empty-handed in his guilt-triggered endeavor. The men decided to look in his trailer, although it seemed unlikely that John would be able to return in such a battered condition.
Opening the door to his trailer, everything was as it normally was. His bed was well made. The sink was free of dishes, which all stood on the drying rack. The television was off, and the TV Guide sat on the coffee table. They opened the bathroom door.
Blood painted all the walls, in marks of handprints and other splatters. John Harrison sat dead on his toilet, fully clothed in a position that seemed to be rest. Though toothless, he was grinning. His work clothes lay tightly gripped between his hands.