Stagnation

"Well, this is not so bad," I said as I felt the comfort of my new mattress. I liked it a lot, and it helps a lot that it doesn't make any loud noises when I move around, unlike one of those string bed thingie. I guess mom really knows her shit. Well, she is the one person I know who probably knows a lot about beds since she's... Agh! Whatever, whatever. I should probably just sleep.

Well... I said that, but fuck, I can't sleep a wink! Not AT ALL! I have been thinking about sleeping the entire day, and I was even particularly more sleepy when I went to the church with my mom, which made me so angry at me before we went to buy the mattress and the bed frame. However, now that I have finally gotten the shit I need and the comfort that I longed for, I found myself seeing myself unable to sleep.

"Fuck... This sucks..." I mumbled under my breath with a sigh.

Then, I heard a familiar beep from beside me. I took my phone on my side and realized that I was right, someone sent me a message in Messenger. Well, I'm not really that sleepy now anyway, so what's the worst that could happen? I tapped on the notification that I had just received and realized that it came from my friend, Mike.

"Ayo you still awak man?" He chatted before sending another message, "*awake"

"ya whats up?" I replied back with an indolent yet full-energized gaze.

"You know when youll be available?"

"ya sat and sun"

"Oh just your dayoffs?"

"ya why?"

"I kinda wanna hang out for a while but its cool if youre busy and stuff"

Hmm... He's probably feeling all lonely again. This guy always has a very fickle mind, so I'm not surprised if he's being all sadboy on me all of a sudden. I don't really mind hanging out with him since he's a really chill guy, and I always like being around quiet people. Well, I can't see the reason why I shouldn't entertain his offer.

Thus, with a chuckle, I replied with a lazy and sudden invitation, "wanna hang now? i'm not really sleepy. u down?"

It took him a while to respond, but after a few moments, I finally saw that he was typing before sending a short reply, "Really? I dont mind doing it now sure"

"cool. i know this new bar somewhere in this really hidden area and you can cry there all you want lmaaoo"

We arranged to meet at a 7-11 near the bar that I was talking about. Luckily, Mike is pretty well-versed when it comes to direction, so he already knew how to get there without me telling him about those mundane direction thingies. Besides, if he ever gets lost, he can just use Google Maps. I promptly dressed, feeling a little bit excited but also wanting to get so absolutely fucking drunk that I would end up not hearing whatever Mike wants to say.

After about an hour, we managed to meet each other in front of that 7-11 I had just talked about. We immediately went to the bar with my arms on top of Mike's shoulder. We laughed a lot while we were joking around on our way to the bar, but I could still feel a faint sadness within Mike's eyes. However, since I can see him trying to deflect all of my questions about his well-being clumsily with more jokes, I realized that he didn't really want to talk about it and just wanted my company. I don't really mind; we all have our own battles, and I am aware that most of us want to face those fights by ourselves. Nonetheless, It is common to see people wanting a friend's presence amid such tribulations.

I didn't want to pry any further, so I made it my goal to cheer Mike up a bit if it would mean that our stay in the bar would be worthwhile for both of us. After a while, our conversation went a bit on the melancholic side once we started drinking up. It was really a good idea to have Mike in this new bar. It has a posh atmosphere, the other patrons are quiet, and the ambiance is chill enough for poor fucks like us to enjoy but not too cheap-looking that it would be downright trashy. The walls are black, but the lights are bright enough not to make people too negative. Nonetheless, the drinks are enough to make any secretive man turn into a blubbering mess.

That's true for both of us—Mike and I.

We started talking about our work. Mike told me that his boss is a stupid, fat, lazy fuckface who only wants to use people and take all of the good shit from it, but when he fucks up, he's the only one who has to face such mistake. I understand his point wholeheartedly because I have the same situation at work.

Mike chuckled in an attempt to alleviate the atmosphere away from our shitty mood. "Oh, I'm sure you're doing well at work, man. I mean, it's you! I can still clearly remember how great and popular you are in high school! Everyone just really likes you back then."

"Nah," I said with a pained grunt. "Fuckers around at work hate me. The boss hates me too. I don't get along well with anyone out there."

"Wha—I can't believe it," Mike said with a stutter as he blinked twice in embarrassment.

"Well, that's the reality of adulthood, Mike. The popular losers in high school get to be useless losers at work while the dull losers in the class get to be the lifeless losers who have all the promotions and the praises from the fat old people up at the top. But, at the end of the day, we're all still losers." I said as I downed an entire glass of gin. "It's all about knowing how to kiss someone's ass. Popular kids in high school like myself never learned how to kiss people's ass because we're used to feeling other people's lips on our buttocks just to get some clout going. Bosses don't like it when an underling gets all defiant like me, especially because I'm frank about how much I fucking hate useless people. Once I see my boss getting all stupid at work, I'd tell him straight up, and everyone else around me would glare at me for being honest because that gets them one more step towards promotion."

"That's... I guess that's true..." Mike said with a sigh as he tried to pat my back. I really appreciated that gesture; thus, I returned his kindness with a warm smile.

"I don't want to live that life. I was used to being the guy who gets all the good-shit in life. That's why I never get all the actual good-shit in the workforce. If you don't know how to kiss ass at a young age, you'll never be able to rise up when you're younger." I chuckled as I leaned my head back. "No one likes an asshole, but no one likes real people more, especially if you're in the corporate world. You need to lie because that's the best way to get connections, associates, and promotions. But I don't like that. My dad raised me to be better than that." I chuckled before uttering a sigh. "I guess the reason why I am living in such a stupid and boring life now is precisely because my father gave me the right lessons in life."

Mike then called the bartender to give us more of the same drinks that we had before replying to what I had just said, "I'm not sure, Mike. I, too, am one of those people you call "dull losers in the class," but I am getting the same bullshit that you do."

"Well, do you kiss your boss' ass?" I replied, smugly, with a playful grin.

Mike chuckled. "Of course, I do! I'm sad right now because I already tasted so many assholes in my mouth, but I'm still below the corporate ladder."

"Well, that's probably because you're easy to control," I said as I took a sip of the drink before me. "I'm also in the shit pile at work because of the total opposite, though. Those capitalists would rather have you at the bottom because they have more use for you down there, but if you're like me who they could never control, then you could bet your ass that they would never allow me to rise up into the upper-echelons. A stubborn man like me and a timid man like you has no place in the machine."

"Well, now you're just being edgy." Mike joked with a tug of his elbow, hitting my arm.

"Well, can't help it, man! I'm a Linkin Park fan!" I loudly proclaimed with a fit of laughter. I then sighed and went back to my melancholic state. "Have you ever been afraid of something, Mike, like, not just the normal kind of fear. I'm talking about really, really fucking scared!"

"Hmm? I'm not quite sure, you mean phobias?"

"Yeah, I guess you can say that, phobias, yeah." I took another sip of my drink as I laid my head on my knuckles. "You see, I think I have one of those phobias when it comes to stags."

"That's a really odd thing to be afraid of, man."

"I know, I know it is, but it gets really more complicated than that." I chuckled as I finally felt the alcohol hitting my head. "You see, one of those stags killed my father when I was a kid."

"Shit, I..." I saw Mike's face turn ashen, and I raised my head in front of his face to prevent him from apologizing.

"It's okay, dude. I've already had my fair share of tears from it, and I'm already over it now. That was a long time ago." I took another sip of my drink, and Mike followed suit. "But the damn stags still haunts my dreams even up until now."

Mike remained silent as he turned the entirety of his focus on my face. I looked down at my reflection on the din as I smiled with saddened eyes.

"Care to hear a story, Mike? It's not that long." I said as I looked at Mike's pleading eyes.

"I'm all ears, man."

I took a deep breath and exhaled it all with a chuckle. "I was ten at that time, I think? I went hunting my dad, and it was a relatively safe place, according to my dad, and yeah, I totally believed him. We went there with some rifles, and we just wanted to go around and hunt some rabbits and shit when we saw this fawn eating grass below an oak big, big tree. My father pointed at it, and he asked me to shoot the damn thing, and I did. Oh, I did, hard. I shot the baby deer twice, and I felt great! My dad felt the same, and he cheered me up for it, and we laughed a bit, and we walked towards the dead baby deer, and he told me that he was proud of me for what I had done. It was all good, and it was a day filled with laughter until I saw that pale and fearful look on my father's face. You see, he saw the fawn's father beside me, and I'm not sure about it now, but I'm fairly certain that the father deer was very, very mad at what we had done to his baby. My father, knowing how much of an ever-loving hero he is, pushed me away forcefully before the raging stag could ram my weak little body with his speeding antler. I managed to live because of what my father did. Unfortunately, that act of heroism didn't stop the stag from running towards the killers of his baby. And the thing that should have happened to me, well, it happened to my dad instead. The stag rammed its horns into my dad's dying body and continued to run forward until it hit another big tree, trapping my dad in between a log and an angry stag."

I downed the gin in my glass and called the bartender again for another round. I then saw Mike's saddened eyes at me, which made me feel at ease for some reason, but I still found it insulting somehow. Silence enveloped our surroundings as I heaved a deep sigh.

"But, my father is still alive at that time." I heaved another sigh, drank the entire glass of gin in one gulp, and asked the bartender again to fill it up. "You see, my father told me one last instruction before he died. He said, 'shoot it, boy!' he kept repeating it even though there's literally a fistful of blood spewing out of his mouth. He said, 'shoot it, boy, shoot it!' I aimed my rifle at the stag's body while my dad, bless his soul, grabbed the animal's antlers, so it wouldn't be able to target me next. He kept saying, 'shoot it, boy, aim at the head! Shoot this damn thing's head!" I then paused with a sigh.

"What did you do?" Mike said, feeling the silence between us with his gentle, timid voice.

"I shot the damn thing, of course. It took three shots in the head before it stopped moving, but I still shot that damn thing dead! That didn't do much for my father, though, because the stag's antlers had already penetrated through the tree; my father couldn't escape the stag's hold anymore. Getting out of it would probably only rip his body to pieces. He then looked at me with his dying eyes with this huge grin on his face before he said, 'I'm proud of you, son, always!' He was really energetic for a dying man, really, but it didn't change the fact that there's this large horn sticking all over his body, giving him so many holes to the point that the blood underneath his feet formed a thick puddle of a red flood."

Mike then placed his hand on my shoulder, which almost made me cry, but I only looked away from him, so he wouldn't see the tears building up in my eyes. However, as I continued to speak, I realized that my shaking voice couldn't contain my tearful eyes.

"Shit happened after that. My mom cried hard, but I'm fairly certain that she's somehow relieved about the entire thing because she knows that her marriage with my father is already going south. But, I mean, come on, my mom is not heartless; she might want to end her relationship with my father soon if not later, but she didn't want it to end like that! My mother never blamed me for what happened, and she never once said anything bad about my father, but... Haa... The death really hit both of us; it hit my mother harder. Quite literally, actually. Two years after my father's death, my mother remarried a timid and gentle-looking guy who had it all going on. Shortly after their marriage, the guy started hitting my mom and me out of fucking nowhere. When the guy hit me, it was the last straw for her and immediately filed for divorce. That guy is history now, but it didn't mean that he was the last. My mother would often jump from one relationship after another. The guy she would have a relationship with would always, always look like a gentle and passive sort of people, but once my mother and I approached them, they would suddenly show their horns and lunge at us hard till we break. But, we never broke, Mike; my mother and I never fell because of those sons of bitches! See, those men are like stags with human bodies. They look like they're the kindest people on earth at one glance from a distance, but once you start approaching them, you'll realize that they can actually kill you faster than any lion."

"Is auntie doing well now?" Mike said as she gently rubbed my shoulders some more.

"Yeah, she's doing alright. She's still having some new boyfriends every now and then, but agh... That's her life, as long as she doesn't get hurt, I'm not against it." I then looked at Mike with the brightest of all smiles. "However, sometimes, when I look at the mirror, I'm starting to feel like my head is also transforming into the head of a stag."

"What do you mean?"

"Nah, it's nothing. Maybe it's just me getting fed up with how fucking monotonous my life had become." I then nodded at Mike with a relieved look, as if I had just dumped an eternity of baggage out of my already cracking heart. "And I'm sure whatever your problem is right now, it would just be another story you can tell while drinking like this."

Mike then slowly took his hands away from my shoulders as he looked up at the ceiling with his glass in both of his hands. "Thanks for telling me that story, man. I really appreciated it." He said before sipping his drink.

I chuckled as I felt my head getting hot, and my vision getting all fuzzy. "You're my friend, man. I trust you enough for that."

"Hey, man, since you told me all about that, I guess it's only fair to tell a bit of my story too," Mike said as a bitter smile started to form on his grim face.

"You don't have to force it if you're not ready," I said, this time, I'm the one who's comforting him with my hands on his shoulders.

"Nah, it's okay," Mike said as he played with the liquid inside of his drink. "I think someone's out there to kill me."