Author's Note: People of the world, we ask you not to be fooled by imitations. This is the original StonerSkankyCraigfic and we are proud of that. We don't appreciate people ripping off our ideas and making them suck times ten. (You know who you are.) Thank you for your time. Enjoy.
My eyes widened. The room was dark gray. The clock on my bedside table said 1:36. The sun was faintly shining through the small shade-less window. My mind felt like dead weight. I yawned and laid my head back down contemplatively. The only days I seem to wake up early anymore are days that I don't need to wake up early on. My life was sort of predictably ironic like that. Which I think means it's no longer ironic. But I don't really give enough of a fuck to find out.
I was cold, I suddenly realized. This was the end of April, and I was cold. Someone had turned the fan on, I noticed first, and directed it so it was hitting my back full-on. And on high, no less. The sheets I'd remembered were covering me were nowhere on me. I reached behind my back and pulled them back over me. This was all her doing. I had no doubts. Already she was jabbing little holes in my comfortable hell.
I rolled over onto my back, spread out across my twin-sized bed, with the mattress I couldn't afford to replace and the stained sheets I never felt like washing. While I half-expected her to be lying next to me when I awoke, I half-prayed last night was a sick nightmare, a product of my sheer boredom and too much pot in general. I reached beneath my back after feeling something there, and pulled out a lacy, frilly, baby-pink bra. I groaned and let my head fall on the pillow again. Apparently... this was reality.
"SWEETIE, GET UP!!" Manny yelled from across the apartment. "CRAAAIG!"
Always. Her voice was inescapable. In my dreams and my nightmares, and when I woke up, it rang in my ears until my ears bled and I'd torn out my hair in madness. Actually, this is what I wished would happen. Instead, I just got pissed off, piled up all my anger and with each night's banging came each night's forgiveness. It was a beautiful and demented formula, but it worked for me. That's all I really cared about.
I sat myself up and my eyelid began twitching. I picked up the shirt lying next to the bed and threw it over my head. Birds were chirping outside my window, and I desperately wished they would shut up. I think Manny was calling for me again, but I stopped caring, as was custom with most things in my life.
I dragged myself, out of my bed and through my doorway, barely in the room when I heard low moaning noises. For a split second, I was convinced Sully had bought another one of those cliche-ridden porns where everyone makes animalistic moaning sounds, as watching porn and doing coke were his two favorite at-home activities no matter what time of day, but I saw otherwise. On the couch was Sully, but with his hand up the shirt of some girl, groping at her huge chest while their mouths engulfed each other. Having seen worse before, I continued on my trek to the kitchen, but Sully's voice stopped me.
"Your slut's making breakfast," he said blankly, having not bothered to remove his hand from underneath the girl's shirt before addressing me. I nodded tiredly and suppressed a yawn, continuing towards the kitchen. I almost wish I cared that he'd just called her my slut. Almost. "Tell her the Lucky Charms are mine!"
When I entered the kitchen, Manny was standing there in front of the stove, and something smelled like sour milk. She turned around and noticed me and suddenly brightened up.
"Craig, sweetie! I'm so glad you're up," she said, bouncing over to me. She hugged me with a spatula still in hand. "I'm making you some French toast." I decided to let her have her moment and not mention that I hate French toast.
"Um, great, thanks." I sat down and checked out the actual time from the microwave clock. 9:09. It's way too early to have to put up with Manny. All I really wanted was a bowl of cereal. Why couldn't she just make me a bowl of cereal. Why did she have to take the hard road out. Why do things have to be so difficult. God, it's too early.
"I was hoping we could... talk." Too early to talk. Too early to think. Go away. Don't want you here. She sighed, and took the seat next to me. "Craig." She tried to get me to make eye contact. I stared at the peeling wallpaper instead. "I'm... so grateful that... you're letting me stay here. And I want you to know that, if you ever need a favor or anything, you can always ask me, because if it weren't for you..." She smiled sheepishly. "I could be stuck with no place to go right now." It was too early for subtlety. I asked with my eyes were the point was, once I finally brought my attention to her. "I just have one more favor to ask of you, then I swear, anything you want." My attention almost went back to the wallpaper, but she interrupted the flow. "Craig, prom is coming up in a couple weeks..." It took me a second or two--it was early, after all--but I piece it all together pretty quickly that Manny was trying to sucker me into going to prom with her. My response was even quicker.
"Manny, no."
"Craig, at least hear me out," she pleaded. "This is my last chance to go to a prom--ever!" Was that supposed to be a good reason, I almost asked. "All of my friends are going, and they all have dates." What friends, I almost asked. "I don't want to be the only single one there, and I can't just... not go." Why not, I almost asked.
"No."
"Sweetie, it's one night," she said, laughing softly. "I won't even make you get that dressed up, and all you have to pay for is the ticket." I stared intently at the wallpaper. It was a hell of a lot more interesting than anything going on right now. I smelled smoke. The low moans from the couch could now be heard in the kitchen. "Craig," she whined. "Please."
"Manny, your French toast is burning." Her head immediately perked up and she smelled the smoke too, and she jumped up and turned the heat back down to 0 as quickly as possible. She tried using the spatula, still in her hand, to scrape off the bread that most of the smoke was coming from. She looked at me with puppy dog eyes, like she had planned to burn my breakfast to win this argument. Like, 'aww, poor Manny, she's effing CLUELESS. Guess I have to take her to prom now.'
"I-I'll make you something else. Do you want pancakes, or... or waffles, or an omelette, or..."
"Manny." She brought her attention back to me and stared. "I am not going to your stupid prom, and nothing you could ever say could ever convince me to go." She stared at me for a few more seconds, before she put her head down and bit her lip. Aw, fuck. And now she's crying. If I had felt some semblance of guilt, I might actually have done something about it, but I was too used to this whining to care. I was still weak, though. A few more sniffles to break the silence and I'd give in. I was not yet completely heartless, but my "sympathy" for Manny was more like pity, for staying with me and putting so much effort into making this work, when clearly there was no real relationship to work with in the first place. I'd known her for years, and I still had yet to find out what was going on in her mind, what sick dementia made her believe everything she did. Therein lay one similarity I'd found between us, a distaste for reality. Only, she coated everything in sugar, and I dealt with it like the bitch that it was.
"Craig," she whined in that cringe-worthy pity-begging voice. She let out an unsteady sigh and hesitated. "I thought about it, and... and I could go alone." She stared forlornly down at the kitchen floor. "But, if you were there... with me..." She looked back up at me with her teary eyes and a small smile played on her lips. "It would be... really special. For me. You know?" She wiped her tears with her hand and looked at me expectantly. I stared blankly, with wide eyes. Was I supposed to know? I could always try, but trying to get into the mindset of a desperate fuck like Manny was a pointless endeavor. As was trying to deny Manny her right to have a date at prom. Prom was at least a couple weeks away, and the nagging would be unbearable. It wasn't until I was thinking things like "how bad could it be" that I realized I had to step up for once. Manny could manipulate me into doing a lot of things, but wasting valuable slurpie money was not one of them. I shook my head at her.
"No," I said simply, firmly, with the brilliant kind of defiance that could start a revolution, and I knew she would either explode in pent-up rage or cry me a river, and I sat steadfast and unwavering, awaiting preparedly for either. She sucked in a breath and bit her lower lip, and the bitterness went straight to her eyes, and with an ounce of fear in my stomach, in my mind I watched her storm out, never to return again, and I saw myself later rummaging through Sully's porn tape stash and pitifully reacquainting myself with my own right hand. I was nearing regret and withdrawal of my bold refusal when a word came from her mouth.
"Fine." My eyes widened and I had to stop myself from saying, 'Really?' because it made no sense. The only thing I could think of was that this was some advanced reverse psychology, and then I remembered this was Manny we were talking about. So it had to be the truth. She turned her back to me and went busying herself around the kitchen, looking like she was making the second breakfast. I grabbed an untoasted Pop-Tart off the counter when she wasn't looking and headed back into the living room.
Still confused by her response, I flopped down in the chair and flipped on the TV, ignoring the hushed conversation Sully and the chick appeared to be having. I vaguely heard a small pouting noise.
"No worries, my sex kitten," he said. I flipped to the cartoons and Sully snapped his fingers at me. This was the internationally-recognized sign for 'get lost, you're ruining my chances to get some' that lost its rude value to me ages ago, but still bothered me at inconvenient times. "Craig?" he said as if he believed I truly hadn't heard him. I imagined he was looking at me expectantly but my eyes were intently focused on Tom and Jerry. Oh, that Tomcat.
"Ohmigawwwd," the girl drawled out, and that made me turn my head faster than Sully's incessant snapping ever could. I stared blankly while her mouth gaped open. "I know you!" I blinked. "You work at the Kum n Go, riiight?" I blinked again. I was actually hoping for once that Sully would be annoying, and would butt in and whisk her away to his bedroom that saw so little of him these days. Believe it or not, I really didn't want to lose the few IQ points I'd left myself after I flushed my high school education down the drain with pot and too much time spent around Manny. And in all honest-to-god truth, I didn't feel like talking to anyone today.
"Yeah. That's me." My head swiveled back to look at the TV. The words had a caustic and bitter tone about them, but I knew well enough she wouldn't notice.
"That is sooo cool!" And while the word was "cool," in my mind I saw it--K-E-W-L. I suppressed the urge to vomit. "I toootally go there all the time! It is like, my favorite convenience store ever. I mean, usually, when I go there, there's like, this blonde girl who is way friendly and I just get gas and whatever, but I sooo remember you!" She gasped a little. "I remember now! I bought... a diet cherry Pepsi! And umm... some Winterfresh... and umm." She paused, then gasped even louder. "Combos! Pizza Combos! Omigawwd, I sooo love Combos!" You had to hand it to Sully. The way I see it, if I were single and some hung-over morning I found myself being barraged by this sort of idiocy, I'd find the quickest and most efficient way to ditch her and make sure I never saw her again. Sully, on the other hand, dealt with it. And for what? All for sex. "Whoever came up with Combos was sooo smart." And somehow, a second later, I was feeling the unfamiliar feeling of guilt. It was somewhat of a wasted emotion on me, and I never felt it willingly. It always just snuck up on me and caught me offguard, and then it dragged me down. And now I was guilty for having turned Manny down, and I blame Sully fully and completely. Sully put up with this chick for sex, and I couldn't even put up with Manny and one stupid prom? It was one night, one single night of pretending to be normal to appease her.
"I'll... I'll be right back," I said, with no intentions of returning. I picked myself up and walked quickly back to the kitchen. "Fine, I'll go!" I yelled, the volume louder than necessary. I said it like the past fifteen minutes were completely staged by Manny to snap me in half and feel the guilt she'd half-assedly tried to get out of me earlier. She turned around from sticking a couple slices of bread in the toaster and looked bewildered, like this topic was over with, gone, and yesterday's news already. "I'll... go to the prom," I spit out the words before my brain could process it and wave the red fucking flag that would tell me this was a bad idea. She looked hesitant, then suddenly broke out into the huge smile that signified more pain and suffering for me. Because Manny's happiness equaled my misery. The more sacrifices I made, the happier she became, and the happier she became, the more I felt like shit. And the more I felt like shit, it seemed, the more she wanted from me.
She bounced over to me and hugged me, and I didn't bother to hug back. She didn't really seem to notice or care. She placed a kiss on my cheek and hurriedly went back to being Suzy Homemaker with a whole new fervor. Now that I was a good boyfriend again, I REALLY deserved that breakfast. That breakfast that I didn't even want to eat because it was too early for real food and because Manny can't cook for shit.
Thus began another wasted day in my life. But this day was different, you see, because it was a Saturday. And for some reason, because of whatever nutty psychological trick society had drilled into me, it didn't feel bad at all to waste a Saturday. It almost felt required.
I choked down the burnt toast and bacon Manny had so lovingly prepared for me, and while she was washing dishes, quickly scraped the remains of it into the trash and pretended to be finished. I smoked a joint and watched Unsolved Mysteries while tuning out the sucking noises of Sully and Fuckface Girl until at last they disappeared into the depths of Sully's bedroom. I nodded off for an hour or so and dreamed of Robert Plant and mutant French toast, until Manny wandered in complaining about how it was going to rain. She popped popcorn and stuck Requiem for a Dream into the VCR. She curled up next to me on the couch and we watched a strung out Jared Leto in the dimly-lit living room that only grew darker as the rain clouds outside grew heavier.
The movie had not yet ended when five o'clock rolled around. Manny had fallen asleep, and I had to carefully slide out from under her so I could throw on some clothes and make it to work close-to-on-time. As I drove to work, slightly pissed off that my Zeppelin CD kept skipping, the gray clouds above grumbled angrily and I could tell the storm would cause me to be in for a slow night at the store. Great. As if work wasn't dull enough already.
I relieved Carlos, a neurotic smoker whose eyes looked ready to bulge right out of his head. He scowled angrily at me, the snot-nosed kid who'd made him all of five minutes late on his meticulous cigarette schedule, and muttered something in Spanish under his breath as he left his station. I was unfazed, of course, as people hating me is so beyond old news. I slid on my apron, the loathed mark of slavery, and settled into position at the check-out counter. I exhaled with disdain and prepared myself for the next shitty six hours that awaited me.
Though thunder and lightning crashed like a bad catfight outside, and rain pounded against the huge glass windows of the Kum N Go, I could still hear the tick of the clock above all things. The twitch of the second hand rang in my ears, and as I lowered my chin to the sticky plastic counter, I realized I'd never been so fucking bored in my entire life. And of course, all the while I was thinking about my car, and how my window never quite rolls all the way up, and how my seat was going to be fucking soaked by the time I got off work. And on top of that there was the thought of Manny, who was going to like, BE THERE when I got home, and consequently BE THERE the next morning when I woke up, and most likely BE THERE for all FUCKING eternity because God hates me.
But then the bell on the front door rang, and suddenly it was easy to forgive God for everything.
Legs. My line of vision was filled completely with nothing but dripping wet stems of flesh that disappeared into the secretive cavern of a short acid-green skirt. Her heavy black combat boots squeaked as they sauntered across the faded linoleum. Icy beads of water rolled down her unzipped, transparent plastic raincoat, through which I could see a faded purple Black Sabbath t-shirt and her bra, or obvious lack thereof. Her curves moved slow and smooth as she walked towards the counter.
And suddenly the most unbelievable thing happened, and she wasn't wearing any clothes at all. She was dripping and naked and wrapped around me. She giggled as she screamed my name and wrapped her fingers through my hair. I slammed her into the chip aisle as I nailed her, knocking the over-priced Cheeze Kaboozles to the ground in an avalanche. I held her close and chewed on her neck, her tits pressed so hard against me it hurt. She licked my ear and talked dirty in German and begged me never to stop. We were a rock ballad of sweat and sex and rain, and after the mind-blowing sex, we ran out to my sleek black BMW and drove until we reached Mexico, and spent the rest of our lives stoned on a beach in Acapulco.
Except, no, that's all bull shit and in reality I was still Craig the loser, standing there half-stoned, half-erect, and one hundred percent hopeless. And, worst of all, the girl standing in front of the counter was still fully-dressed.
"Um, excuse me?" she asked with a polite smile, leaning against the greasy countertop..
I brought myself out of my daze and found myself staring right at a pair of big brown questioning eyes. Dark eyes, but a warm smile. Soft skin framed by crinkled auburn tresses. I was no match for her. "Yeah," I said. "Hey."
She raised her eyebrow at me, and I really wanted to show her that this greasy, red-eyed, dirty, pot-scented dumb fuck was not who I was all the time. I mean, there were those moments when I smelled all right and my hair looked good. But I lacked the brain capacity to do anything more than simply keeping myself from drooling. I coughed loudly.
She slid a wet strand of dark crimson hair out of her face and pursed her lips as she thought of what to say. "Your pay phone's like, really fucked up. And... I've kind of got an emergency here."
I nodded my head somewhat stupidly. That's nice, I thought. Wanna bang?
"So... would it be all right if I used your phone?" She tapped her pink-painted fingernails lightly on the counter, and I might have been imagining it, but I could have sworn she was drumming Black Dog.
I grinned idiotically but it quickly receded as I tried to hide my bad tooth. I reached behind me and shoved aside the empty Slurpie containers and other miscellaneous crap that cluttered my work station as I fumbled for the phone that was supposedly for business-only use. I picked up a plastic Slurpie lid and tried to scrape off some of the gooey pink bubble gum my dumbfuck co-worker Shena had gotten all over the receiver. I wiped it off on my flanel shirt quickly and passed it to Legs like it was the Olympic fucking torch.
She accepted my gift with a playfully sarcastic glance. She leaned closer to the counter as she reached over to dial the number, and she smelled so heavily of rain and pancakes. The curves of her ripe neck dipping out into her broad shoulders begged me to place a kiss there in that cozy corner of skin, and taste all the places she had been.
Then she turned around, the coiled gray telephone cord wrapping around her, and left me staring only at the clasps of her beaded necklaces.
"Dinah?" she chirped charmingly to the voice on the other end of the phone. "Hey babe. Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm stuck at the Kum N Go on Union Street." Apparently the person on the other end said something very funny, because Legs tossed her head back in a gentle, tantalizing laugh the echoed through the lonely white walls of Kum N Go. "Okay, so, do you think you can pick me up? Excellent. Haha, okay. Tell Sascha to keep his pants on. Love you guys. Later."
She turned back around to face me, handing me the receiver which I placed back into the cradle and carelessly returned to its proper place on the shelf o' shit.
"Muchos gracias, uh, Crarg," she said as she reached out and grabbed the red plastic name tag on my apron. "I owe you one." She gave me a slight wave and turned around to leave, wrapping the corners of her rain coat around her.
"It's um, it's Craig, actually," I managed to say. She looked over her shoulder, still walking away, and giggled soundlessly with a nod of comprehension. "Yeah. Um. Typo. You know."
But her attention was already more than finished with the likes of me. I shoved my hands in my pockets as she sauntered away, her perfect ass swinging from side to side and her black shoes squeaking the same way they'd entered. Her footsteps led her further and further away from me until she was out the door with another ring of the bell, on her way to meet Sascha and Dinah for some fantastic Saturday evening full of the things that beautiful people do. Jazz music and cappucinos with chocolate sprinkles and really expensive weed and discussions of philosophy and every guy in the club hitting on her were probably waiting for her outside those glass doors.
All I had waiting for me was my depraved roommate, my reality-challenged teenage girlfriend, and a hatchback with a soggy driver's seat.