Zoe stole one of their batons and ran away screaming, “I’m Paul Blart, mall cop.”
She’s a horrible drunk. I would have found the stark dichotomy of her drunk self versus her sober self a hilarious thing, if not for the shenanigans she kept putting me and Lissie in against our wills. I was drunk too! I didn’t have my mental faculties available to deal with her. So, instead of doing the rational thing, I ran after her, laughing like a hyena. So did Lissie.
It was nice, dare I say therapeutic, to have some stupid and careless and harmless fun. There was too much Zero Dark Thirty shit going on in my life. Every now and then, you just need to steal some poor rent-a-cop’s baton and run away with it.
Instead of telling Vic this, though, I brought the attention back to what he was watching. “I want to hear you say it,” I said.
Vic frowned. “You’re changing the subject, Lenny.”
I picked up and waved the Blu-ray case. “I just never pictured a big army commando guy—”
“First of all, I’m not an army commando guy,” Vic said.
I was undeterred. I started again. “I just never pictured a big army commando guy owning Frozen. The deluxe edition too!” I said, bursting into a fit of drunken giggles. I couldn’t remember the last time I was this drunk. I had been surprisingly straitlaced (for me) in college, so high school was probably the last time. That’s when I was still figuring out my limits and experimenting with how far I could go before I passed out and never woke up.
I was going to feel like shit in the morning.
“Are you Elsa or Anna?” I asked Vic, laughing. Frozen was an awesome movie, and I didn’t fault Vic for loving it. In fact, it made me love him more. Drunk me just found it hilarious that big, bad, gun-toting Vic watched Disney movies in his downtime.
“Alright, come on drunk-o. Let’s get you to bed.” Vic snatched the movie case from my hands.
As Vic walked my drunken ass up the stairs, I heard him whisper quietly in indignation: “There’s a sing-a-long in the deluxe edition.”
I had no comment to that, but it made me smile. I hoped someday I would get to witness Vic singing along to Frozen. I’m sure he sounded great.
It’s red. That’s all I can say right now. It’s red. And I’m about to vomit. I rolled over on to something cold and hard. My vision was blurry and I had a stabbing thought that my contacts weren’t in. I tried thinking again, but stopped. Too painful.
Where was I? It was red and smelled horrible and I was naked. None of these things factored into a good situation.
I groaned in pain as a wave of nausea threatened to drown me.
This is it. This is the apocalypse. I knew it. I knew it was coming. It was going to be much worse than the television shows had said.
My vision started to adjust to the blurry, red light and I made out a toilet. I was in a bathroom. Oh, I was in Vic’s bathroom.
I got slowly to my feet and made my way to the door. “Vic?” I said cautiously. Oh God, I’m going to vomit. I stopped walking and placed my hand against the wall to steady myself and my rolling stomach. When the waves of nausea crashed and stilled, I called Vic’s name again.
No answer.
I walked slowly out of the bathroom and toward our bedroom. “Vic?” I called into the darkness.
No answer again.
I stepped into the dark bedroom carefully; every step made my brain ricochet in my skull and my gut do jumping jacks. “Vic?” I asked again. I made my way to the bed, feeling around for Vic.
No Vic.
No sheets.
I felt the mattress itself and . . . was it wet? I yanked my hand back.
What was going on? Is that blood? Seriously, was there some kind of apocalyptic event and was I the sole survivor?
“Vic!” I shouted into the house, not caring about the pain it caused in my skull. “Vic, where the hell are you?” I yelled louder.
“Down here!”
I followed the voice in a fugue state. Without my contacts, everything was blurry and, on top of that, I felt swirly and sick. Eventually, I made my way down the stairs to see Vic sitting up on the couch, looking grumpy and sleepy.