AUTHOR'S NOTE
Is this really how I used to do it? Gosh. It's been so long
How have you been? I suppose I should offer you something. Tea? I could make tea. No milk though. It went bad a long time ago. Never mind the tea. I mean who'd want it without milk? Done anything interesting lately? I haven't. Been taking music lessons on the side. Still not too good at it.
I'm sorry, we should get started
Joyful Tree Friends
Lumpy was a man. People knew that. They knew he was a bit dim and that he worked down at the construction site. A few people knew that he was strong; they'd seen him lift things most people couldn't. His bartender knew a few more things about him, things Lumpy would open up with when he took a drink, but even he didn't know everything about Lumpy.
Lumpy hated. That was the thing nobody knew, but he did. He hated most everything. He hated waking up early in the morning. He hated the early morning drive to work and he hated work itself. He hated his boss. He hated his co workers. He hated the feeling in the pit of his stomach he got every night when he gripped a cold beer at the edge of the bar and he hated the way the bartender looked at him. He wasn't really sure why he felt that way, but he did. He just couldn't call the feelings he felt anything but hate. But he didn't know why.
He thought about how unfulfilled he was. About how he never did anything. He never really felt control in his life. He was just shunted from place to place. He didn't know how he handled it.
It was thick skin, really, that kept people from knowing just how he felt. A thick skin's an odd thing. Most people have them so that things, things like the world or your boss's insults or the empty side of your bed, can't get to you. But some people had a thick skin because they didn't want things getting out of them and into the world. Lumpy didn't want people to know how much he hated. He didn't want people to see the miserable bile that hid just below the top of his throat.
So he wrapped himself up in his thick skin. He got quiet. He did his job and kept his head low and dimmed his lights with cheap liquors and always made sure he was up in the morning to do it all again.
He did a good job of it. Though, to be honest, it wasn't all his doing. The little pills helped. He knew he shouldn't, but they made it easier. He took them. He felt like he didn't hate when they were inside of him. He hated himself for taking them. He hated himself when he tried to stop. He was happy when he took them. He was in that cycle. He stayed there for ten years.
…
Five years after those ten years, Lumpy still hated most everything. Things were different now, but worse and so he still hated most things. His boss was dead. That was nice. In fact, if there was any small mercy in Lumpy's life, it was that there was much less to hate. He had a small life in a small house on the outskirts. He had two friends he knew from work. He didn't really like them, but he didn't really have space to complain. They spent their days sitting around in their hut. They grew potatoes out back and they fermented them into liquor. They drank. They slept. They talked and they didn't feel much. They fought with other guys. They survived.
Lumpy's strength helped them survive. He was stronger than anyone. It helped with the hard labor and it helped with the bartering. It helped keep people away. The only person it didn't help was Lumpy himself. He wasn't that strong. That's why he needed the pills. He took them when it got too much to handle. Things were too much to handle often, but he always had more pills. He didn't know what he'd do without them.
Lumpy needed the pills to feel happy. It was almost like he just lived to take them. He thought about what it meant. He never thought more clearly than when he was thinking about Joy. He'd spend hours looking at the little blue pill in his hand before inevitably swallowing it. It was during one of these perverse meditations that everything changed.
He heard crying.
