seventh circle i

From across the crowded room, everything looks like the ocean. Bodies contort in chaos. Sweat and salt in the air. This random college bar, not far from campus, is packed to the brim with the worst that college brings out in people. Everyone is hunched over medieval-looking, wooden tables or flapping their limbs in some sort of dance, resembling, more and more, a featherless duck.

Pitchers are passed back from the bar towards the outskirts of the room. Rain can be seen through the large pane of glass in the window, splattering against it. Everclear’s “Father of Mine” comes belting from the jukebox and the drunks, they all recite the words in a throng of voices.

            I’m at a table with Andy and he’s sloshed, rambling on about God knows what, now.  We’ve each got a pitcher of this bottom-shelf beer. I’m drinking straight from mine and Andy keeps missing his cup, each time he attempts to pour. I’ve been chain-smoking for the last five minutes, inhaling furiously before stubbing cigarettes out on the table’s sticky surface and flicking into my friend’s pitcher of beer.

            “There’s a drug that makes people eat other people,” Andy says to me like he’s reporting for the evening news.

            “Right,” I reply, letting the orbs in my head take in the surroundings. “Cannibalism. Got it.”

            “No,” he tells me, gravity in his throat. “If there is someone you envy or someone has something you want, you eat them and in essence, you become them.”

            Surprised at Andy’s essence, I see Kathy, three tables down, with Jack and he’s whispering something in her ear. She laughs but doesn’t look at him. Her eyes wander disinterested. I think she can feel my stare. Kathy looks up, then away.

            “Are you listening?” Andy asks.  He still hasn’t noticed the cigarette butts in his beer. He’s drinking with greed. His Adam’s apple rises and falls with every swallow. It reminds me of a sick-man’s heartbeat.

            “Do you hear yourself sometimes?” 

            “It’s science,” he grumbles.

The beer doesn’t quite agree with him.

“Read about a girl who envied this cheerleader and she took this drug and ate her. Well, not all of her,” he pauses, chugging the rest of his cup. “They found the cheerleaders body half eaten, missing, like, one side of her body.”

            “If you say so, man.”