October 2, 2013

Jerome:

"Hey, Ma. What's cookin'?" Mitch's mom looks up from her tablet and gives me an exhausted smile before she goes back to scrolling through Facebook. She looks like she hasn't slept in a week and her hair's pulled back in a messy ponytail where the dark, undyed roots are showing. Must be a real treat babysitting Bitchy Mitch when he's tripped out on pain killers.

"He's downstairs on the couch. He'll probably be rooming down there for a while."

" 'Course. It's got everything he needs: a couch, a computer, and a fridge." She forces a smiles and nods and I head down the hall to the stairs to whatever horror show awaits me below. She deserves a break.

Mitch is sprawled out on the grody ass dusty couch next to the cardboard Dos Equis guy with a pile of tangled up blankets tossed down on the floor. I flick the set of lights on by the stairs so I won't disturb his beauty sleep and head down the stairs, scanning the basement for a little orange bottle. Of course she wouldn't keep 'em down here. It's like she doesn't trust me. I just wanted a peek to see what kinda candy he got. I sneak over to his PC setup and jab in his password and start trolling through his crap on YouTube but I don't get too far before the sound of the keyboard awakens the beast. I swear, this guy was a fucking vampire bat in a previous life. You can't open a fridge or touch a computer without drawing his immediate attention.

"Whadder you doin'?" he slurs as he goes to cover his eyes with his forearm and just makes himself cringe. You'd think the idiot'd know he just had surgery yesterday and wouldn't hurt himself, but nope. How can someone be so smart and so stupid at the same time?

"Checkin' you out. You know I can't go forty-eight hours without you, Biggums. Speaking of drugs..." He groans and looks down at his feet like he wants to get up but just sighs and lays there. Good. I didn't come here to fight with him today.

"What time is it?" I spin around and check the timestamp in the bottom right hand corner of his PC, stealthily closing the window I'd just opened. He doesn't need to know I saw that in his browsing history.

"Quarter to four. How long've you been asleep?"

"Since yesterday, I think. I remember getting in and out of the car, but I have no clue how I got down here."

"Mighty fine pills you got there, Mitch. Mind if I tap into 'em?"

"Like you need another excuse to see the pink elephants on parade." He just looks at me and I look at him and he leans over to grab a mini bottle of white Gatorade from the scratched up coffee table. I get up and hand it to him and go check in the Enchanted Fridge to see what it's got to offer. I grab him another tasteless Colgate-or-Raid and each of us a bag of Cheetos and settle back down in his spinny chair. Can we just take a second to appreciate how fucking cutesy adorable that is? It's not every day you see a drowsy zoned out Mitch with blue energy drink dribbled on his shirt and no gel in his hair. He's lucky I don't believe in pre-emptive blackmail like Nooch does. The fangirls might lose the rest of their minds if they saw this.

"So how'd it go?" He nods and tosses the empty bottle in the general direction of the trash can but misses by like a foot and a half. I don't think he even notices. Whatever he's on, I want a couple.

"Great. Just great, Jerome. I walked in yesterday with a couple milk jugs, and I walked out with a half a dozen straws." He grins like a madman and slowly sits up, then he pulls his t-shirt off over his head to reveal layers and layers of gauze and medical tape, all stained with spots of crispy black blood. The worst part, though, is the mini sewer system of clear tubes sprouting out of the sides of his chest and curling around to the front where they're taped in place on his stomach. He looks like Doctor Octopus with little sloshy bags of blood attached to each bendy plastic arm.

"Slurpalicious, man. That's fucking disgusting."

"Yeah, tell that to my poor mom. I need to do something to pay her back for putting up with this shit and chauffeuring me everywhere for two weeks." He stiffly gets to his feet and walks over to the pool table to dig through the pile of clean clothes stacked there. Mama bird really did think of everything. Maybe she's planning to trap him down here and use him as slave labor. With the money he's pulling in on YouTube these days, I wouldn't be too surprised.

"You hafta go back in two weeks?" He shakes out a bright blue shirt that looks suspiciously like one of mine and slowly slides it on with a grimace before he folds his dirty junk food collage and makes a new pile, hissing in pain as he walks past the corner. Then he makes a beeline back to the couch to finish his stale ass cheese puffs. I fold the top of my bag down and slide them across the table where he can reach 'em – I'm not that fucking hungry.

"I have to go back every three days for two weeks. Mom took one look at the stitches and said neither of us were even going to try to clean it, and I have to leave the blood drains in for ten days. I was hoping they wouldn't have to use them because I didn't have the long incisions, but you know how fucking lucky I am. They get caught on everything. I feel like a Magikarp, getting hooked every five seconds."

"So you hafta have another surgery, or...?"

"For these?" He points to one of the little tubes through his shirt and shakes his head with a sadistic smile on his face. "Nah, dood. I just go back and they pull them out. The doctor just gives them a good yankaroonie and sluuuurrrrppp... It slides right out. They don't even put you under before they do it, so a lot of people pass out."

"Well, if that's not the most horrifying thing I've heard this week, I don't know what is. Maybe we should record it and post it on YouTube." He makes a face and shoves a handful of cheesy crumb powder in his mouth.

"Yeah, and I can do the commentary and try to explain why I have two kilometers of thread trying to hold my nipples on. It looks like I just got done filming Saw XXV." He smirks at the disturbed look on my face and pretends to pull the hem of his shirt up to flash me and I hafta look away. This isn't fucking Halloween. "Tomorrow you'll have to come over and give them a good old whiff, see if I've got a fresh batch of gangrene brewing. You might have to donate one of yours if one of them falls off."

"Fuck you. And that's not what my big ass nose is for, Mitch. Pay Connor to do it." He laughs and chugs down the rest of his dishwater-flavored Gatorade and my phone buzzes in my pocket. I already know who it is so I don't bother pulling it out to check it. I'm sick of this shit already. These two think I'm Hedwig the motherfucking owl and expect me to carry messages back and forth between them constantly because they're too goddamn stubborn to talk to each other.

"Ya know, Adam's pissed we didn't go." Both of his eyebrows immediately shoot up and I catch a flash of something in his eyes, like he's warning me to drop it.

"Fuck Adam, dood. I'm supposed to be his business partner, not his fucking slave. I had my surgery scheduled since April, and I wasn't about to get pushed back down to the bottom of the list to fly across the country to suck his dick. He needs to realize that everyone else has lives, too, not just him."

"He doesn't know that, Mitch." His eyes lock onto mine and I can't hold back the eye roll. He's finally rubbing off on me after all these years. "And I'm not gonna be the one to tell him. Just tell him you had a stomach ulcer or some shit like that and had to go to the hospital. You're so high-stress it's probably true." He glares at me and I pointedly look at the neatly folded empty Cheetos bag, the tidy stack of clothes on the pool table, and the spotless desk behind me. He just keeps glaring.

"I don't need to tell him anything. I was just out there three weeks ago. He should've thought to do it then."

"Goddammit, dude. You can't just say you bailed on him! Last time I checked, we didn't start Minecraft to make a shit ton of enemies! I get you don't wanna tell him the real reason you didn't go, but you've gotta come up with something better than a big, fat, juicy, salty 'no.' He's still all pissy about how you reacted to him asking you ou-"

"Don't fucking go there. We've been through this enough fucking times already, Jerome." He rubs his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, and when he looks up at me again, that's when it sinks in. He looks so fucking tired and miserable and unhappy right now. Guess I can't really blame him, after the shitty month we've had. Between flying on craptastic planes all over North America and fighting with Adam and switching over our recording equipment and dealing with Rob's complete fucking meltdown and now his surgery, it's no wonder he's at the end of his rope.

"You have a plan, don't you?" He locks eyes with me and the look on his face tells me everything I need to know. "Okay. Whatever you need from me... I've got your back."

"I love you, dood."

"Love ya, too, Biggums."