In My Garage

A Short Story by Scott Semegran

It was the day before the end of the world, at least that's what the news media and the ancient Mayans believed. No one really knew what was going to happen at the end but it was going to happen, goddamn it. And no one cared about the details of how it was going to happen. The end was the end. The end. End. It just seemed so final.

A couple of years ago, I made a pact with my two best friends, Nolan and Jacob (I'm using codenames, by the way). We decided that we would spend the last night before the end of the world partying in my garage. We compiled a list of required items for the party: keg of beer, carton of cigarettes, liter of vodka, liter of spiced rum, mixers, ounce of weed, a pipe, a ten pound brisket, our favorite barbeque sauce, etc. And we agreed that if our lives were in a certain state by the time the world was going to end, then the three of us would convene in my garage, no matter what, and drink and smoke and eat ourselves silly.

And as luck would have it (if there was any luck left at all before the world was going to end), our lives were already ruined. So the party was on!

***

Ruined marriages, three. Party with my buddies, yippee!  Of the three of us, Nolan had the longest to travel, 1,307 miles to be exact, all the way from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Austin, Texas. Jacob, on the other hand, lived on the other side of Austin from me, a 30 minute drive on a good day. Nolan's job was to drive his ass, and his kind bud that he patiently grew in his backyard, to my house. Jacob's job was to get the keg and the booze, an easy task for him since his employer was unaware that they charitably contributed the beverages to our party. My job, as it turned out, was to get everything else and have my garage ready. It seemed easy enough to my buddies for me to have this small job but I remembered the days leading up to Y2K. And I knew it was probably going to be more difficult than they made it out to be.

"Just drive to the fucking store. Done. I should be at your house in a couple hours," Nolan told me, his cell phone reception cutting in and out.

"Make sure to get Salt Lick BBQ sauce," Jacob demanded in a text message.

Okie Dokie.

So, back to Y2K, I remembered going to the grocery store on Y2K eve. I could feel the dread as I walked in. Everything from our financial institutions to our crappy personal computers were about to shit on themselves at midnight January 1, 2000, and the idea of that, God forbid, drove us all insane. The check-out lines stretched through the crowded aisles, aisles that were absent of the following essential items: toilet paper, bottled water, beer, wine, Chef Boyardee meals, canned pet food, and condoms. Everything else was in plentiful supply. Did I need any of those "essential items" this time? Not really. Maybe my job wouldn't be so difficult after all, I thought.

I pulled into the grocery store parking lot and struggled to find a spot for my car. The lot was full and the crazies were everywhere, zipping their carts without any care for safety or courtesy, jamming their groceries into their vehicles as quick as they could. It was a goddamn mess. I found a spot under a wimpy oak tree, a spot I used to avoid in better days. If you parked there, then it was guaranteed your car would be covered in 10 pounds of grackle turds by the time you returned. But there were no signs of the filthy birds; probably flew to some far off land in search of safety, a quiet place like Canada. I parked my car and made my way into the store.

Surprisingly, despite the obvious, I was able to get a cart and find the things I needed. Ten pound brisket? Check. Salt Lick BBQ sauce? Check. Mixers for the liquor? Check. Matches? Check. Cases of batteries? Check. Carton of cigarettes? Fuck, those were at the front of the store. So I pushed my cart in that direction, cruising down the beer and wine aisle. Everything was gone except for a single bottle of cheap champagne. Why not, I thought. I placed the bottle in my cart and headed to the front of the store.

The cartons of cigarettes were locked in a case. I asked a clerk to open the case and give me two but she turned her back on me, checking out groceries at a frenzied pace. I parked my cart against the wall and waited, watching the crazies yell at each other. Shortly, another clerk opened the case, pulled out a carton, and left the case unlocked accidentally. I slipped my hand in there and grabbed a carton of Marlboros and a carton of Camels and threw them in my cart. Surveying the crazy check-out lines, I decided to leave instead. The shoplifting sirens went off at the exit but no one cared, like a car alarm blaring unnoticed in a parking garage. It was just more noise in the chaos. I slipped out quickly.

I found my car where I left it, without a single bird turd on it. Crazy, I thought, that the employees would still be working on the day before the end of the world. They should all get raises.

***

I've read a lot about the theories of how the world might actually end. And since the Mayans were pretty vague about what would happen when their calendar expired in 2012, it was up to the rest of us Earthlings to scare the pants off each other. Some of the theories of apocalyptic disaster are as follows: 1) a super volcano erupts and shrouds the Earth in darkness from its massive plume of ash and smoke 2) giant solar flares are belched from the sun and fry the Earth 3) it just happens to be that time for a global disaster like the one that erased the dinosaurs 4) insert your bizarre interpretation from watching too many B movies. It all seemed so overwhelming and kind of creepy.

Now, did I believe that the world would end on Dec 21, 2012? Probably not. Do I believe the world would end SOME DAY? Sure. Anything was possible. But I had my own theory about how the world would end. I didn't think the world would go through some torturously long, drawn-out, slow demise that involved the ground cracking and buildings tumbling and car chases and women screaming and cats fighting dogs and the President hiding out in an underground compound and so on and so forth. I believed that it would be more like a snap of the finger - POOF! - the end. Just like that. Done. Like the moment when a star turns into a supernova, instantly exploding into elemental dust, I believed that was how the world would end. Lights out. A finger snap.

- POOF! -

***

When I arrived at my house, Jacob was already there unloading his pickup truck. He wheeled the keg to the back of the driveway then waved at me. I parked my car and unloaded too.

"I got a fantastic deal on this keg!" Jacob said, screwing the beer tap on.

"You mean, like, free?"

"Yeah! Ha ha! Got any pint glasses?"

"Yep. On the work bench."

I opened the garage door. A smile slid across Jacob's face. The day before, I cleared out my garage, throwing away lawn equipment, car tools, anything and everything related to chores or house work. In their place, I pulled out a couch and a recliner and a rug and a coffee table and a large ice chest from inside the house. I also had a MP3 player and some really nice speakers. I setup the garage like it was my living room, arranging all my creature-comfort things into a livable space. The work bench was not really a work bench anymore. It was more like a bar now. And the shelving that once held cans of paint and solvent and bug spray were empty too; space that could now be used for snacks and stuff.

"You can set the liquor on the new bar too," I said.

We finished unloading our things and quickly made ourselves at home. Plopping on the couch, we lit cigarettes and drank our beer.

"When is Nolan gonna be here?" Jacob asked.

"Any minute now."

"We have a pretty nice view of the skyline in here."

"Remarkable."

As we scanned the skyline, an enormous flock of birds, ducks and geese, rose to the clouds, flapping their wings frantically.

"Look at those fuckers," Jacob said, chuckling. "Where do they think they're going?"

"Canada."

The both of us laughed, distracted enough not to notice that we had company.

"What's going on, fuckers?" It was Nolan, our traveling compadre. Jacob and I got up and gave him hugs, patting him on the back, returning big smiles to his smiling face. "Nice pad," he said, looking around the garage.

"Thanks man. Took me a while to clear it out and make it comfortable."

"Oh, THIS will do. It will do nicely."

"Where's your car?" Jacob asked, looking out the garage for a Saturn coupe.

"Oh, it's in the lake." He grabbed a pint glass and poured himself a beer. Jacob and I looked at each other, baffled. "When I pulled into your neighborhood, I figured I wouldn't need it anymore. So I drove it into the duck pond."

"No shit?" Jacob asked.

"No shit. Go look."

We three poked our heads out of the garage and, sure enough, we could see the back of his car sticking out of the water. It was a sight to see. Any other day, the neighborhood association would be calling me right now. They would be writing me a citation. It was a covenant violation yesterday; but it was nothing today. Nolan put his arms around us.

"Who is ready to get their ass kicked in dominoes?"

***

We didn't waste any time. Time was of the essence, as they used to say. Nolan placed a foot-long glass bong on the coffee table and pulled a ziplock bag of weed from his pocket. The weed was a bright, fluorescent green with little flecks of orange and white dust powered around it. It looked magical.

"When I grew this shit in my backyard, the plant grew over seven feet tall. After I cut it down, I hung it in my shed to dry out. I named the plant Heidi cause I was hiding it from my wife."

He plucked a nugget from the bag and packed it in the bowl of the bong. He lit it, filling the chamber with smoke, and sucked the smoke down with one full breath. He exhaled a massive plume of smoke in the garage, filling it with a lazy, delicious fog. We each took turns taking hits from the bong.

"I never thought this day would come," Jacob said. "Weird to know that it will all be over tomorrow. There was so much I wanted to do with my life." He, too, exhaled another huge plume.

"Oh really? Like what?" Nolan asked. "A hooker in Vegas?"

We erupted in uncontrollable laughter for what seemed like five minutes, like an eternity of hilarity.

"Seriously, though. I had dreams, man. Photographing the pyramids. Watching the kids graduate from college..."

"Doinking the neighbor's wife!" Nolan blurted out. Jacob clinched his fist and slugged him in the arm, hard. Nolan gripped his arm, trying to contain his laughter and not doing a very good job of it. He had the giggles.

"You ruined the mood, asshole."

I noticed we were out of beers so, as the good host, I filled our pint glasses. It was comforting to know that my friends kept their promises. At a time like this, they could have been anywhere. The urge to huddle with family in times of crisis or eminent disaster was more obvious than sitting in a garage drinking beer and smoking weed with your buddies. But they chose to come here. It was a telling sign of our friendship and the utter mess our lives had become. Bro's over ho's, we used to say.

"Speaking of doinking, any MILFs around here, Steve?" Nolan asked.

"Nah, not really. As far as I can tell, most everybody is gone or hunkered down in their houses. I haven't seen a car or a person around in days. Except..." I pointed to a house about six doors down. "Over there. She was pretty cute. Kinda nice."

Her house was the only house with a light on. The other homes seemed dead and abandoned. As we looked at it, a faint shadow danced behind the dark shade of the window screen.

"Looks like someone is in there. We should go check it out," Jacob said.

"Meh."

"Oh, apocalypse sex!" Nolan blurted out, smoke draining from his nostrils. He raised his arms, both hands in heavy metal devil horns, and began banging his head like he was at an Iron Maiden concert. "That would rock!"

The three of us laughed like jackasses. And drank and smoked some more.

***

When I was a kid, I was a Star Wars fanatic. Like most kids my age in the 1970s, I was hooked the minute the theme music started to play and the introduction began to scroll up the screen, yellow and massive and heavy with foreshadowing. The Star Wars mythology became my religion.

One of the scenes in Episode IV: A New Hope that had a profound effect on me was the one where the Death Star destroyed Princess Leia's home world of Alderaan. It was the Empire's first attempt to get Princess Leia to betray the Rebel Forces. Obviously, it didn't do shit to deter the Rebels. But it was a powerful moment, nonetheless. As the Death Star's energy core was triggered into action by a series of levers, pushed and pulled by evil minions with ridiculously oblong helmets, the giant evil satellite blasted out a series of laser beams that combined into one, large mega beam. Alderaan was zapped into oblivion in an instant. Lights out. A finger snap.

- POOF! -

What troubled my adolescent mind the most was how much Alderaan looked like Earth. From space, Alderaan was mostly covered in ocean water with green land forms and white clouds swirling around its atmosphere. With the exception of the shapes of the land, it looked exactly like Earth. And even though I knew Alderaan was not Earth, mostly because it was inhabited by humanoids in new wave uniforms and the insectoid species Killiks (nasty fuckers), the visual spectacle of the Earth-like planet blasted to smithereens was heartbreaking. As I scarfed down popcorn, Junior Mints, and Dr. Pepper, I felt a lump swell in my throat as I watched. It was gone so fast, I thought. Did anybody on Alderaan know it was coming? Was there any warning? Or were the inhabitants going about their normal routine and then, ka-BOOM!? Lights out. Sayonara. After much adolescent rationalizing, I believed they were doing what they would have normally been doing before the planet blew up: eating, shitting, working, talking, and stuff.

***

After three or four more bong hits, and three or four more pints of beer, it made complete sense that we should investigate the movement in the two-story house down the street. I grabbed a flashlight while Nolan filled our pint glasses with beer. We exited our garage domicile and made our way across the barren street. If this truly was the last night on Earth, then my neighbors had made certain that it seemed that way by exiting our quiet street as quickly and thoroughly as possible. There wasn't one goddamn car in sight, with the exception of our cars in front of my house. But the potential for something to be going on in my neighbor's house was more than our intoxicated minds could take. We just had to see what was going on. There was really nothing else to do.

At the house, we tugged on the front door but it was locked. Nolan silently motioned that he could knock the door down. But if there really was someone inside, then that would not be very neighborly, would it? So I waved for my buddies to follow me around back. We stepped through the creaky gate and quietly looked for an open door. There was no sign of their annoying dogs, the bastards. And bingo! The back door was unlocked. Jacob slowly pushed the door open and peaked inside.

"Anybody in there?" I asked, quietly.

"Wow, they have a nice pad."

"But do you see anybody in there?"

"They must have shopped at Pottery Barn. They have some nice shit."

Nolan snickered. We shoved Jacob aside, spilling some of his beer on his shirt, and quietly tip-toed in. The downstairs living area was pretty dark. But from the top of the stairwell, we could see some flickering light. So we gravitated in that direction.

"You fuckers got my shirt wet," Jacob lamented, trying to brush the liquid from the front of his shirt. We ignored him and cautiously went up the stairs. "It's the only shirt I brought with me." I turned and, with my finger to my lips, demanded that he be quiet. But that's a lot to ask of someone who was drunk and high. Really high. We all giggled.

At the top of the stairs, we noticed that the light was coming from one of the bedrooms. And we could hear something coming from in there, like a grumble or a moan. At the door, we looked at each other to see who would go first. My two buddies pointed at me, so I slowly peaked around the doorway. Inside the master bedroom, I surveyed the candlelit room. There were piles of clothes on the floor and dozens of lit candles on the dressers. The only sign of life was a foot poking out from under the comforter on the bed.

I waved for my buddies to look too. I pointed to the foot, looking at them, trying to contain our giggles. And as we stood there, giggling like drunkenly high fools, the foot moved. It startled us. Then whoever it was turned under the covers, exposing her body from the waist down. She was naked. Her ass and her bare legs glimmered in the candlelight. We stood there, hypnotized, for a few minutes. But the creepiness of what we were doing sobered us up pretty quick. We looked at each other (as if to say "what the fuck are we doing?") and we left the room as quickly as we came in.

"I'm hungry. Do you think they have anything in the fridge?" Nolan asked. We were trucking down the stairs pretty quick.

"We should just go back to my garage."

But Nolan didn't listen. In the kitchen, he opened their refrigerator to see what kind of food they had to munch on.

"Not much in here," he said, disappointed. "Lame."

Before he could say another word, we heard a loud rumbling from upstairs, a few thuds and the sound of feet scurrying. We ran out the back door of that fucking house as fast as we could.

***

Jacob was a pretty good cook, no doubt about it. But even the best of cooks was only as good as the ingredients he had to work with. And Jacob didn't have much to work with at this point. I had purchased a lot of alcohol and tobacco products but not much in the way of snacks. There was a smidgeon of brisket and BBQ sauce left from what we had devoured earlier in the evening. And there was a frozen pizza in the freezer. Jacob, a confident cook under the influence of marijuana, thought he could make those ingredients work.

"I love brisket," he said. "And I love pizza. What do you think will happen if I combine the two together?"

Uh oh.

Nolan and I sat on the driveway, peering at the stars, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, enjoying the evening, while Jacob was inside the house cooking up his masterpiece. If this really was the night before the end of the world, then the night sky surely wasn't giving any signs of it.

"What do you think your family is doing right now?" I asked him.

"I don't know."

"Do you think they are thinking of you?"

"Probably. Probably thinking I'm an asshole for coming down here."

"Oopsie."

"Yeah, oopsie. What do you think your family is doing right now?"

"Laughing, I hope. Thinking pleasant thoughts," I said.

"You know, that's NOT what they are thinking."

"I said, I HOPE."

"Well, let's make a toast." We raised our pint glasses. "To good friends. To good times."

"Good friends! Good times!"

We toasted, clinking our pint glasses together, tapping them on the ground, and then taking a swig.

"I'm glad you guys came over," I said, choking up a little. "I can't think of anyone else I'd rather be hanging out with right now."

"Me too, buddy."

Jacob soon came trotting out of the house, proud of his new concoction. He placed it on the ground, slinging napkins in our laps.

"Voila! Brisket pizza!" he declared.

"Dude," Nolan said, pausing for a moment. "That will not go down well."

We all laughed.

"I combined my two favorite things. How can it not be good?"

"You're high!" I said. "Crackers with ketchup would be good right now." We laughed some more. "Jacob, do you think your family is thinking about you right now?"

"Ha! Hell no! The selfish bastards!"

We couldn't stop laughing. It was just too funny. Too funny. Jacob took a bite of the pizza and wheezed. He placed his hand over his mouth. His face turned red, bright enough to illuminate the dark driveway. Nolan and I saw the look on his face and bellowed deep laughs, straight from our guts. He looked like he was going to barf. And he did, right in front of us on the driveway. It was disgusting.

***

We woke up the next morning hung over. Really hung over. Kicked in the balls, smacked in the face, sick to our stomachs, hung over. We had the kind of bender worthy of the last night on Earth. We tried our best to kill that keg, kill all the booze, smoke all the dope and the cigarettes, finish ourselves off the best we could. It was our coping mechanism. We were dealing with things the only way we knew how. We were compadres.

I could hear myself groan as I rolled over. Jacob and Nolan were both on their backs, their arms crossed over their chests like mummies, pickled and aching from the night before. I wiped the crust from my eyes and sat up. It was a beautiful morning. The birds had returned and were flying in flocks over my house, some landing in the trees in my front yard and chirping their morning songs. It was fucking beautiful, man.

I shoved both my buddies and they soon rolled over, too. They sat up, like me, and looked around. I think they were as surprised as I was.

"What the fuck?" Nolan asked, rubbing his face.

"Are we in heaven?" Jacob asked.

"Sure seems like it," I said. "What a beautiful morning."

"Is there any beer left in the keg?" Nolan asked.

He got up and grabbed our glasses. He took them in the garage and quickly returned with beers. He unwrapped a pack of cigarettes and handed us each a smoke.

"Looks like this is the last pack. I may have to run to the store for more."

"Looks like it," I said. "We'll probably need to buy some food too. I wasn't planning on making breakfast."

"It's just like Y2K. What a crock of shit," Jacob said, taking a drag from his smoke, sipping some beer. "All this bullshit for nothing."

We all chuckled a labored, hungover chuckle. It seemed too good to be true. All the worrying, all the predictions, all the hubbub, all for nothing. It seemed the weather forecast would have been more appropriate for that day, not the Mayan prophecy. How could we have been so stupid? Goddamn human nature.

"Hey Jacob," Nolan said, sipping his beer. "Go get the hose and wash your puke off the driveway."

"Fuck you!"

"The sight of it is making me sick."

"Hose it yourself. I'm busy here."

"I'm busy too."

We all regained our composure, shaking the hangovers off, sitting up, letting the sunshine hit our faces. It was a brand new day. And brand new days required brand new plans. More beer? More cigarettes? What to do? It was a time to celebrate. The world was not going to end. In fact, it was more than that. A millennia of foreshadowing and foreboding was neutralized in an instant. We felt rejuvenated, like marathon runners ready for a new race, like an army platoon ready for a new battle, like babies screaming to life. A new beginning. A new hope. We were the Jedi. We were best friends.

"What do you fuckers want to do today?" I asked.

"Drink some more. Duh," Nolan replied. It was perfect.

"I have a bottle of cheap champagne. Should I open it?"

Then...

- POOF! -