ICE ROAD -- Chapter 5: The :o

THE NEXT MORNING:
Samuli came home and shut the door behind him after entering. ”Veera!”, he called out. The voice was left to echo, jumping around in the walls of an empty apartment. He was unsatisfied with the response, worried, and started to wander around. The first peek he took was at the bedroom. Nothing. Coming back, he saw a note on the door of the fridge, which he had previously walked past without noticing. This cannot-- isn’t happening. He stopped to take a breath.
— ”OK…” He said to himself, as he kept his eyes on the roof, baseless hopes rotating around a bulk of certainty in the center of his mind. ”What I think is happening, isn’t happening to me right now. There’s an explanation for this. Everything. The note I’m seeing on the fridge, the fact it’s logically speaking probably bad, and that I’m having a horrible feel about this. Yup. Veera’s coming back to me. She either has a bad situation going on or-- OKAY. Let’s just look.”
He started approaching the fridge.
— I’m just gonna laugh about thinking this would be possible, tomorrow.
He took the note, but didn’t turn to read it yet, but looked away. After a second, he forced himself to lay eyes on it.

”This just was the best way to do this, to me.
Should’ve told me, at least once after the 4th date (yea I
counted) where the fuck you were going every time and
when you were gonna come back. At some point I just got
enough. Don’t try calling me, I don’t wanna go through
changing the number.”

He kicked the fridge-door and turned away.
Aw fuck! — he yelled, comprising after contact with the door, that it hurt. He went down on his knees, held his foot, mumbled to himself quickly and semi-coherently while grinning his teeth in pain.
— ”Pretty interesting…” He said, after finally collecting himself again. ”For the same reason – negligence – I hurt both, my foot and my heart. I guess there’s an irony--”
In the quickest moment of his life, he started crying hysterically, and got on the verge of throwing up over the kitchen-floor, in the middle of his sentence. He ran to the boy’s room, like a fire was lit up under his ass.
He leaned forward above of the toilet, ready.
— This isn’t worth it, this isn’t worth it, this isn’t worth it.
The mantra was repeated; first at a fast and hurried pace, then slowing down. A little while passed and he started catching a little bit more air between repeats.
— Okay, right now… I’m going to the living room, I’m putt--
In the middle of his conscience giving him orders, he shut his eyes and the canals started pushing out tears. One dropped to the toilet, broke the surface tension in the clear water, and made waves as Samuli took his distorted vision away from it and squeezed his eyes close. It will just all go away if I--
• What the hell am I doing?
— This didn’t just happen. And I’m not feeling like this, and… Fuck it, there’s no point in suppressing. I’m going the fuck to watch TV. Fuck this day. And most likely the few months that’ll follow.

MINUTES LATER:
Samuli was sitting/laying down on the couch, his ass hanging off the edge of it, and his neck pressed to the back. The fingers of his right hand felt around the neck of a liquor bottle. Very slowly, he turned his head to the right, feeling in his spinal cord the meaninglessness, meaninglessness of it all. Why’d I have to remind myself that I’m alive again? He quit moving, as his attention was drawn in by the transition between scenes in the TV. The screen went dark, then bright up again, and showed the image of a Tony Soprano, laying down on the bed, in his bathrobe.
A lot of things were going on in Samuli’s head but he was drawn in, for a second or two, to looking out of the living room window, at the rainy clouds over his backyard.
”In Alaska they wear these little light-hats in the winter so they don’t get depressed” — he heard Tony’s wife, Carmela speak. He watched as she walked away from the bedroom Tony was still in, still laying there, depressed.
— Oh lord, what a stupid bitch. Maybe it’s a LITTLE… whatever, doesn’t matter.
He terminated the drunken soliloquy and looked to the screen with a numbness. Nothing worth thinking about. He looked, as Tony got very slowly out of bed, to the window just opened by his wife. Music started playing; Tiny Tears by Tindersticks. The sight of a woman, standing in the middle of a green lawn, hanging clothes on a clothesline, grabbed his eyes. The woman was under a marquee.
He took better position, listening to the song that started on a sad note.

[THOUGHT-BUBBLE]

He stood up, looking at Tony, looking at himself in the mirror, falling deeper and deeper in his own eyes. Samuli’s undivided attention was in the screen. He lived it. He watched, as Tony took the same sluggish steps as before, to his shower stall, sat down and just stayed there, just, staring at nothing.
”Tiny tears, Make up an ocean, Tiny tears, Make up the sea
Let them pour out, pour out all over”
He didn’t think anything special of those lyrics, he’s heard more saddening ones, but fell apart, sobbing hysterically, put his sleeve in front of his mouth, swallowing the last bits of his pride, the last thing that felt human about him, for the night. His right hand reached to the bottle next to him. With his head leaning back, and the bottom of the bottle aiming at the roof, he chugged the shit down. His eyes didn’t feel like they worked, but he could still keep on swallowing the liquor. They just saw, not really looking at anything. Another dark transition on the TV caught his attention, and he put the bottle on the table.
Following some instinct that felt like his destiny talking to him, he headed to the kitchen with a slight wobble in his walk.
Feeling like the executioner of a long-plotted revenge with a tragic story behind it, he took the note off the refrigerator, turned it around and started to write on it:
This is what you fucking get for meaning well.
You and your problems can get slapped by a donkey dick,
and that goes for the rest of the world too. Fuck y’all.
I am officially surrendering responsibility for what I’ll do
next.
≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈
Nothin’ matters
No one cares
≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈
He returned to the couch, not for the TV, but the bottle. Before sitting down, he pressed pause, then stood up and drank.

An hour rolled by, and Samuli found himself in the hallway, grabbing cabin doors for support while wobbling his way to the front door. Without warning, he stopped. Everything stopped, as a matter of fact. He turned around, to look at that fridge again. The shallowly supported determination in his eyes was shattered by a moment – one of reminiscence. Shocked with sudden realization about what happened earlier today, a new wave of those hopeless tears fell down his face. He blinked and opened his eyes wide.
— She’s not here. I’ll never, and if I will, not as--
He fell down on his knees mid-sentence and threw up on the floor. His head was a mess and in search of a satisfying or a at least a reasonable doubt, he laid a tangled stare at the filthy carpet.
— Now this, is enough.
• I don’t know what it’s gonna be, but not this.
After saying that, he got on his two feet like someone who had just been beaten down, and been injected with adrenaline… just to fuck with them, I guess. He then walked out the front door, reached in his pocket, got the car-keys and walked up to his car. While on the way, he saw a tree being harassed by a rough wind.
”Tiiinyyy teeeaars” rang in Samuli’s head as he got to the car and opened the door. The melody, the melody was the thing that stayed there repeating itself the longest; longer than all the fitting words of self-blame and regret. He lost balance while lost in thought. Recollecting the posture, he regurgitated half a mouthful on the window of his car.
— ”You know what?” He blurted out words, determined still. ”I’m gonna let that stay there this time.”
Another car approached him fast, so fast you couldn’t not pay attention. It looked like it was getting away from something or someone, how the hell would I know? He started thinking about his car, and momentarily forgot about how much he felt like throwin’ up. A honk of a horn was heard from the approaching car. Without any idea about what any of this should mean, Samuli walked to the open driveway from behind his car, in front of the one approaching. He raised his hands up and just waited.
Seconds later, there was a holler by a voice that felt familiar:
— Samuli!
He opened up his eyes to see who it was – Tapani.
— ”Why didn’t I recogn--” He started mumbling.
— ”What?” Asked Tapani, who couldn’t hear it from the car.
— ”Tapani…” Samuli started speaking up, still in a previously unexplored emotional space. ”How did you know to pick me up from here?”
— The fuck you mean? You live here. And why are you hammered? It’s noon, dude.
— Yeah, I am. Because… ’cause…
— What’s happened here?
— Veera fucking left me--
Mid-sentence, Samuli fell down on his knees. Tapani was dumbstruck. What’d I just hear?
— ”Hoolyy fuck…” He responded, while stepping out. ”What he fuck, how do I… I would’ve never thought of something like this happening.”
— ”Me neither!” Samuli yelled amidst crying. ”I’m sorry. The girl… She was… I mean, she really really was the… I don’t know.”
— I know how much you adored her. Tell me; don’t be shy.
— She’s the only thing I still remember from… when life was good. She’s the only thing I can look at, and not be reminded of where I am right now, but where I was during the best years of my life. And now it’s all gone.
Tapani was flabbergasted by the thoughtfulness. Samuli staggered around a little bit, attempting to get back up. Tapani tried the reaction that was coming out of him, back in – he felt obliged to be the stable one in this situation. But Samuli saw the swallowing of the tear. He started smiling again, in a way that couldn’t be described as anything but pure. But then he got embarrassed; who the fuck smiles now? Jesus, I’m off the deep end.
Tapani looked up to the skies, sniffled, and told Samuli:
— Listen… I’ll say this because I know what it’s like to be alone, feel alone. Come sleep on my couch or something, if you need to.
— Thanks, Tapani. Thanks for the thought. I don’t think I need to, but I really appreciate that someone understands that… this is something serious I’m feeling and going through!
The way he pronounced the last part of that sentence alone, broke Samuli apart again. He tumbled down on the asphalt, started to cry like no tomorrow.
— ”I’m really sorry” Samuli said after regaining consciousness from yet another breakdown. ”What the fuck am I sobbing here--”
— Samuli.
— What?
— Men cry too.
— She was my ONLY memory! I was with her since we were the pretty kids in high school, and SHE LEFT ME!
— I know, but… let’s get in the car.
— ”Oh for real? Where’s it gonna take us?” Samuli asked with relieved laughter, bouncing off an uncleaned insignificant corner of his sad state.
— To Miska’s. You won’t fucking believe what he’s come up with this time.
— ”I know this is the first and last time I’ll ever say this”, Samuli said, picking himself up, ”but I can’t wait to see what he’s come up with this time.”
— Yeah, people like him are funny to listen to, with their lies and their bullshit, while the headwind is blowing.
— ”Let’s be going then” Samuli said, sliding to the backseat of Tapani’s sedan.
Silence filled the space inside the car. For a half a minute after leaving, the guys were both quiet, Samuli kept losing and regathering his posture, and Tapani was looking at the road. In the midst of the calm, Samuli spoke up:
— I fooled you, Tapani.
— ”What?” Tapani responded.
— She wasn’t the only memory I had of good times. There’s also you.
— Me? What do you mean me?
— ”We’ve been friends for Jesus only knows how long” Samuli begun explicating. ”And there’s never been disagreements, really, and we always got the job done. How’d we even meet? I don’t remember at all.”
Tapani didn’t answer; he knew where Samuli was going. He picked up how every syllable coming out of the young man’s mouth, one sounding more blurry than the previous.

FIVE MINUTES LATER:
The car stopped in an intersection, Tapani looked at Samuli, who had been quiet for a while. As foreboded, he was asleep.
Tapani drove past the intersection, turned around on some parking lot on the side of the road, and headed back to the direction they came from.

THE NEXT MORNING:
The sun was shining in through the window, unequivocally laying out it’s light in the center of Samuli’s eye, as he laid in his bed with a sheet covering everything below the eyes. He squinted the eyes open as the ray with the biggest magnitude stinged.
— I’m still alive?
He got up, then all the way up, realized that he was still fully dressed, and tried to have communication between the brains and the legs. They caught on to him trying to stand on them too quickly, and responded by failing under him. As Samuli fell, he tried to land leaning on the wall in front of him. It was a success, and he leaned forward in a 45-degree angle, face against the wall. He inhaled, then exhaled.
As he was walking, memories, images from last night started to creep up, as overlays on top of the biggest picture, the only set-in-stone memory of last night; the note. The feelings, the drunken decisions and the sober decisions surrounding it, all started coming back. It felt like the whole world was seeing him naked.
Trying not to look at anything, he quickly walked to the living room table, got his Sopranos-boxset, put Disc 4 in, walked back to the couch and plummeted on it. The same episode started playing. Tony was laying in bed, even the angle of the camera was all fucked up. Oh, no, wait, it’s just sideways. The foreign – polish, if I recall – maid came through the door, to the room, and reminded Tony of his responsibilities, with Tony responding, ”get out”. After the maid left, however, Tony climbed slowly and reluctantly outta the bed, looked out the window, to the skies and at some point, his eyes were back, locked in that show, in a back-home-again fashion. The camera followed as Tony walked to his neighbors yard, where he had met this woman before. The marquee was standing there, vacant, and inside of it was just a white chair that pointed toward the viewer. Not the camera, the viewer. So weird to nitpick little things like this, but this show, something about it just makes me look at the details, because the details are so in your face. I wouldn’t be lying, not in the least, by saying this is the best show I’ve ever laid eyes on. Hollup, he said to himself, as he witnessed another vivid transition again. Tony was at a small stand, out in the city. The owner of the stand put a bottle of orange juice up on the counter, and went to the back to get a magazine.
”Some wind, huh?”, He told Tony while coming back, to which Tony vaguely answered, ”yeah”.
Tony took both the items and paid, then took a long sip of the juice, turned around and walked across the street to his car. He got the taste out of his mouth that he was trying to get out, but the wind wouldn’t stop. Holy shit. Something clicked. No, wait a minute, it’s actually unbelievably deep. Didn’t Tapani say something yesterday, about headwind-- HOLY SHIT ARE THOSE HITTERS. Two black shooters walked up to Tony, one of them firing the first shot quicker than anyone could react, shattering the bottom of the glass bottle in Tony’s hand. Tony jumped in the car, in slow-motion, and with a slow-motion bullet following him. Just as he got in there, another bullet shattered the window next to him. Shocked, Samuli put it on pause at the most unlikely time; right in the middle of shit poppin’ off.
— ”That happened to me”, he slowly told himself, while staring not at the screen, but past it. ”That happened to me yesterday. I was getting in the car, like Tony, feeling out of my mind, like Tony, I was facing death, like… This isn’t fucking happening. No.”
Samuli started walking to the kitchen, still stunned, but with happiness emerging. Hangover was long gone… or at least forgotten.
— I get it now.
He took the note, saw an empty spot in the lower right corner of it, and started writing on it:

The more and more I reminisce
The more and more I realize there’s no point in
reminiscing.
Idk, it’s just… we all have to be down sometimes, so we can
remind ourselves of how high we would’ve needed to be,
to let hitting the ground feel like such a disaster.
Oh, the heights we can accomplish.
Peace, world.