Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Cold water slammed down on top of me. Gasping for breath, I bolted upright. Glass clattered loudly on the hard ground, irritating the throbbing in my head. Was someone drilling? I clamped my hands to my ears, and tried to breathe through the rising nausea.
“If yuh cho-up ton mi floors, mon, mi wi mek yuh nyam it.”
I forced one eye open. Blaring light, like someone was holding a flashlight directly in front of my face, pierced my brain. Slamming my eye closed again, I gagged.
“Bumboclaat! Wah di raas wrang wid yuh?”
My fog-filled brain had absolutely no hope of translating that. My stomach heaved, and there was another string of accented cursing. Something was shoved under my face just in time to catch my puke. Bile and acid filled my nose as my guts violently convulsed.
Though I was pretty sure I was called a, “Kakaclaat.”
When nothing but air came up, the bucket of sick was taken away.
I laid back down as gently as I could on the cold, hard floor.
I had no idea where I was or why I felt like someone was trying to make an ice sculpture out of my brain, but I knew I deserved the pain.
Even hungover, grief and guilt tore at my insides.
I wanted to die. I deserved to die.
Another wave of cold water slapped down on top of me. I gasped, choking as the water clogged the back of my throat.
“Wah di raas yah deh ere?”
Through a single squinted eye, I managed to look up at Hops’ pissed-off face. “Speak English,” I begged. My mouth tasted like ass. “And quieter.”
“Tis fa di mon who spik tin Hawaiian-Pidgin?”
My stomach heaved again, but there was nothing left to come up.
I blindly reached for something, anything, to rinse my mouth out with.
I felt only empty glass bottles at first, until finally my fingers landed on something heavier.
I grabbed it before it rolled away. Not knowing or caring what it was, I took a swig of liquid fire before spitting it out on the ground.
“Blurtnawt! Yah batty head! Wah mek yuh duh dat? Pussyclaat! Guh suck yuh madda!”
Ignoring words I had no hope of understanding in my current state, I brought the bottle back to my lips and chugged down the fire. I hoped it burned me from the inside out.
Barefoot, I stumbled down the road. After Hops threatened to get boiling water rather than cold, I managed to get to my feet and work my way out into the blazing sunlight. As sweet as dying would be right then, I knew I deserved the pain more. Death was too good for the likes of me.
My head felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
I only wore my shorts, yet it felt like I was wearing a snowsuit in the tropics.
I didn’t know what time it was or where I was walking to.
I kept thinking about starting a bar fight.
That sounded like a good way to get myself fucked up. But I couldn’t find a fucking bar!
Maybe it was this way. I made a right turn down a road. Or maybe it was a left. Either way, I kept walking.
I was aware enough to know I’d started from Shakaloha, the club’s brewery.
I must have broken in at some point last night and gotten into the stash.
Hops had built the company from the ground up when he’d moved to Hawai‘i from Jamucka.
Jamicka. Jam…something. But then the club bought it from him and now he managed it.
The way he put it, he was still doing the exact same job.
Just without the risk of owning a small business.
Where the fuck was he from? I should know this. Where the fuck was I?
I stopped, looking around. I was fucking hungry. My liquid diet of boilermakers, and now just pure whiskey was not exactly nutritious. Why did the sky look so dark? And where did the sun go?
My bladder pinched. At least I wasn’t so black-out drunk that I unknowingly pissed myself.
I put the high neck of the glass whiskey bottle between my teeth and dropped my shorts to the ground.
Tipping my head back, I kept one hand on my dick and the other on the bottle as I began to piss.
Recycling at its finest. I really should be a spokesperson for an advertisement company. Out with the old and in with the new!
Oh, that’s a good saying. Damn, I was smart. Since I didn’t have a pen and paper to write that down with, I started to write it into the dirt with my piss.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Still pissing—apparently I really had to go—I turned towards the voice. My vision blurred, but I could make out her face. I’d probably know it anywhere. She’d starred in my dreams for the better part of a decade.
I popped the bottle off my lips. “The fuck am I doing? The fuck are you doing?” I pointed at her. Or tried to. Why were there three of her? One was more than enough.
“I’m not the one flashing his ass to the neighbors while taking a piss on my front lawn,” Kalea spat at me.
“You mean my front lawn. I bought, I get to piss on it.” I glanced down and realized that I was apparently done peeing. “Oh. Well, I still bought it.”
I bent to pick up my shorts off my ankles, but the world started to spin. And spin. And kept spinning. Why was the darkness blinking at me? Was there supposed to be a palm tree floating over there?
“Lesū Kristo!” I didn’t need help translating that cursing. “Pick up your fucking phone, Aloiki!”
I laughed. “Why do people keep forgetting how much Aloiki hates phones? It’s like none of you know him at all.”
“Just…stop talking. I can’t even understand you. And pull up your fucking pants!”
I looked down at my pants. Whoa! Was I floating too? My feet were up in the air, not down on the ground. I lifted my legs more to try to reach my shorts, but ended up just doing awkward crunches and failing. “I have incredible abs,” I reminded Kalea. She should know that. It was important.
“Motherfucker!” Kalea stomped over to me. Was she making the earth shake? I felt like I was on one of those vibrating beds.
I blinked up at her very irate face and informed her, “I lost my virginity in one of those.”
Kalea scratched her head. Did she have ukus? She muttered something about dating mai tais. Ew, gross.
“Whiskey’s better,” I told her, lifting my hand to show her. Wait, where was my bottle? “Have you seen my whiskey?”
“I told you to stop talking!” she snapped, kneeling down next to me. “I can’t even understand you, you’re slurring so badly.”
“Your face is slurring badly,” I shot back at her. Definitely a good comeback. I tried to pat myself on the back for that one, but ended up slapping myself in the forehead instead.
“Just stop,” Kalea begged, raising her hands like she was getting arrested. I loved handcuffs. They were so much fun. “Can you at least lift your ass off the ground so I can pull your shorts up?”
Lift my ass? Of course I would lift my ass up. What did she take me for? A toddler? After much huffing and puffing—all on her end, I was sure—Kalea managed to get the band of my shorts up around my hips again.
“Okay, let’s get you up.”
“I can walk!” I snapped. I did not need her help for anything! “You ruined my life!”
I was halfway sitting up when suddenly what I’d been resting my back on moved away. I fell backwards onto the hard, jagged surface I had been lying on. “Ow,” I whined.
“I ruined your life? You ruined mine, you fucking asshole!” Kalea shouted, moving away from me. “Stay out here! Get hit by a car! See if I care!”
“Kalea!” I called after her. I managed to turn myself so I could see at least one of her. “Don’t go please…”
She stopped, turning around slowly.
I pointed towards my feet. “Can you get me my whiskey bottle first?”
Kalea let out a shriek of fury that rattled my brain as well as the ground I laid on before stomping away.
Sunlight pounded down on me like a resilient pahu, a tribal drum. I glanced around, not entirely sure what was happening. I smelled grass and an earthy, mineral tone, but also something nasty and acidic. Oh, that last one was probably me.
Vague, undefined memories from the day before assaulted my head as I rolled to my feet. My whiskey bottle was nowhere in sight, but a McDonald’s brown paper bag was suspiciously placed by my hip. Did I buy that?
Reaching for it, it felt warm. Not from the overhead sun warm, but fresh from the greasy depths warm. Cracking it open, I got an immediate and intense whiff of a Spam and Portuguese sausage breakfast platter. There was also a large fry in the bag.
Something yellow caught my eye, and away from the road in the grass was a large yellow coffee cup with a black lid.
It took some doing, but eventually I got myself seated upright in the grass with my back to the house.
I ate slowly, not wanting to risk it coming back up, as I stared out at the neighborhood.
I’d chosen this area and house for the community.
Not knowing where my work might take me, I never wanted Kalea to feel lonely or trapped inside a secluded house all day.
I loved Aloiki’s farm. It was basically the only home I’d known growing up, despite having two houses, two holidays, and two families between my divorced parents.
Aloiki’s parents were stable, and they welcomed me like a second son.
The only thing about the farm that had bothered me over the years was how secluded it was.
I supposed now that we were with the Royal Bastards, that was a good thing.
But I’d never wanted to live like that. Aloiki might not want neighbors or the “noises of people” around, but I did.
I hated being an only child. I wanted a family.
A wife, kids… Hell, even a dog or two. I’d taken my entire lifesavings at twenty-three and bought this house with the confidence and arrogance that this would be my home.
That this would be my neighborhood, and while I might not be the typical businessman, I would be a good provider for my growing family.