During the winter of 2019, I suffered from an intense bout of depression. This is on the whole nothing new for me, but the severity of this particular low season remains to this day the bleakest point in my entire life. I did nothing but work and drink. Long night shifts, from eight in the evening til eight in the morning, chased with cheap rot gut vodka. The kind that you could find for under ten dollars in a plastic bottle with cheap graphics of Russian towers adorning the front. I can say for certain though, that neither an overworked mind, nor an oversaturated liver caused me to dream up this particular evening. I can still recall the exact details with stark, harrowing clarity.
At the time, I was living alone in a studio apartment in the pacific northwest. I had previously shared this apartment with my girlfriend Andrea. She knew about my tendency towards excess with drinking before we lived together, and had always disapproved when I would get too drunk. I made promises to clean up my act when we lived together. But I didn’t. If anything, it just escalated. We were short-staffed at my job, and I wasn’t handling all of the extra responsibilities well. I told myself I was working hard to rise up in the company and pay for a house for us. That this was just the price I had to pay now for domestic bliss later. We held out for about four months, but I had nested deeply into a hole where all I did was work, drink and fill my time with errands and walks in an attempt to stave off the growing discomfort in my mind. Truth be told, I think she was suspicious of me to some degree. That I was cheating or doing drugs or something. I had nothing to hide, but my erratic alcoholic behavior and tendency towards secrecy during times of poor mental health kept me at a distance from everyone, especially those I loved most.
So Andrea had enough one day, and after a particularily unpleasant exchange of words, I came home from a Wednesday night shift to find my apartment empty. Once full of her colorful art and furniture, it had been reduced to a functional, bare box that became a physical reflection of the sick den of seclusion that I had found myself mentally and spiritually confined to.
After this, I began to escalate my alcoholism in earnest. I would regularly drink a liter a night, at a pace that would put a more casual drinker in the hospital. At the time I latched onto this with some sort of twisted pride. I was a goddamn viking. If I had opened up my home and life to my family, their hearts would have broken at the sight. As it was however, they were 3000 miles away on the other side of the country. As long as I made regular update posts on facebook and called every now and then, they didn’t question it too much, not even when Andrea left seemingly out of the blue.
I worked six out of seven nights a week, picking up hours where I could get them in an effort to keep myself occupied. I would have consecutive shifts unending, but I needed at least one night a week for my real binge. I would load up at the liquor store in the morning after work, drink myself into a stupor all day until I passed out and wake up in the evening. If it was early enough, I would head to the liquor store again, or the grocery store if that were closed. If it was too late in the evening for the sale of alcoholic beverages, I would still get restless and go down to one of the nearby gas stations. There were 3 within walking distance that were open 24/7. A smoke in the cool night air, a sandwich and some chips, and of course a few swigs from my flask were enough to breathe new life into my pounding head and trembling limbs.
So basically, I was a fucking wreck. I was burning through days, weeks, months and I didn’t have a single plan, care or goal. I guess I was just trying in my own fucked up way, to survive.
One thursday night off, I woke up later than usual. I had hit it pretty hard that morning, and I was paying the toll with a parched throat and a heaving stomache. Downing the glass of water by my bedside, I looked through the stack of library rented DVD’s on my night-stand. I figured I would go for a walk, have a smoke, get some pedialyte and a sandwich from the gas station and come home and watch Demolition Man. Reaching under my bed, I pulled out my vodka, took a large swallow and topped off my flask. I got up from the bed with an aching groan, grabbed my keys, phone and wallet and went out into the night.
With a podcast playing through my headphones, a cigarette between my fingers, and the taste of one hundred proof vodka washing back the bile in my throat, I felt a certain sense of…not quite peace. I don’t believe I had the ability to feel content during that period of my life. But my mind and my body began to approach a place of neutrality. A state of blankness. It was the closest I was going to get to zen. I didn’t have to think about the mistakes I’d made, the regrets I had with Andrea, the poor life choices and stagnant pool of depression I willingly immersed myself in.
My mind was off.
My guard was down.
My senses were dull.
Even still, I noticed the man falling in step behind me. He turned onto the sidewalk from the doorway of an apartment. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but looking back, it should have been stranger to me that he didn’t come out from the building. He just hopped briskly onto the sidewalk, from the shadowy front stoop of the apartment he had been loitering outside. At one in the morning.
Trying to pay the stranger no mind I just kept on with my own steady pace and walked ahead of him. I turned around the corner. So did he. I walked to the end of the street and cut across to the other side. So did he. I decided, to hell with all this, I was just going to pull out my phone, pretend I was changing my music, and let him pass me. So I stopped and waited for him to go on. A few steps more and he caught up with me.
He stopped too.
His stride had been quick and bouncy moments before, but the second his shoe was exactly parallel to mine, he stopped dead in his tracks. I turned to face him and saw that he was wearing jeans, and a black jacket over a gray hoodie, with the hood pulled up. He was standing right beside me, not moving. His head was pointed down at the ground a few feet ahead of him. At this point I was more than a little bit uncomfortable, so taking out my headphones I asked him “hey, can I help you? everyting all good?”
He continued to stare at the ground, not acknowledging me in the slightest. I noticed he was trembling slightly.
“Uhhhh…all right man, have a good night” I said awkwardly, turning and beginning to walk away but not quite wanting to take my eyes off him. I took a few more steps backward and was moving to put my headphones back in and turn around.
He mumbled something.
“What was that? I couldn’t hear you man.”
“…check me out” I could just barely hear him mutter
“What?” I replied again, tense and ready to make a move if this guy decided he was going to rob me or something. I wasn’t exactly the strongest guy around, hell I had never even been in a real fight since middle school, but this guy also didn’t look to be much more than one hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet. I felt like I could take him.
His head snapped up to face mine. His eyes were wide, his mouth contorted into a huge manic grin. And when I say huge, I mean his mouth was huge. It looked completely out of proportion to the rest of his face.
“CHECK ME OUT!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “LOOK AT ME GO!”
With that his jaw began to open wide and he put his entire hand inside. With a sickening wet crunch sound, he bit down. Clean through his hand. Frozen in terror, I watched as he spit the bloody, severed extremity into the street. Blood dripped from the end of his mangled arm onto the sidewalk.
“LOOK, LOOK” he screamed with manic delight, “LOOK AT ME!”
He began running towards me and my flight or fight response managed to knock me out of my surreal daze and I sprinted away from him as fast as I could. I didn’t pay any attention to the directions I was running in, I just ran, turning corner after corner. Feet pounding concrete, arms pumping as hard as they could. I heard frantic footsteps behind me, along with wild laughter. I turned another corner…
And collided with a garbage can.
I went sprawling with the can into the street. My face and hands hit the asphalt hard. I immediately tasted blood welling up inside my mouth. I began pushing up off the ground, when a hand grabbed me by the arm and violently yanked me up with shocking force. I was lifted a foot off the ground and spun a little in the air, landing me right on my ass.
The man’s grinning face was mere inches away from mine.
I screamed and scampered backwards. Tears began to stream down the man’s face, making a grotesque sight with his enlarged, bloody grin. He wasn’t laughing, he was sobbing. “Fella…” he whispered. “Why won’t you just look at me?” he asked in a begging, pleading voice. “Let me show you, please…”
He stuck his remaining hand in his jaw. But this time, instead of biting down, he yanked at the bottom of his jaw as a popping, snapping sound echoed in the street. Working his hand with great effort, tears and blood marring his hideous strained face, he pulled and yanked his jaw loose until it hung about a foot lower than the rest of his head. It was limp and swaying, but still attatched. His skin had seemingly stretched with his jaw to create an enormous, dangling mouth. He had a look of sheer agony on his face, but he was still trying to work his distended mouth into a grin. Then, he sat down in the street.
Jumping to my feet, I watched with horror as he began to grab his ankles, one at a time and insert his feet into his gaping maw. He crunched and chomped as blood flowed freely from his mouth into the street. He continued down the rest of his legs, using his hand to feed them along. He was still shouting and talking to me as I began to sprint away, but his words were difficult to make out in the gutteral mess of slobbering, grunting and cracking. Even so, I’m sure of what he was saying. When I think of his pleading gaze and unrestrained shaking, I am certain it could have been only one thing.
“LOOK. AT. ME”
………..
I ran in a frenzy. I began to recognize some of my surroundings, but my head wasn’t clear enough for navigation. I kept running until I saw the light of a 24/7 diner. Bursting through the door, the startled staff eyed me nervously as I hurried into the bathroom. I couldn’t blame them. My face was bloody and bruised where it had slammed into the street. I had a little bit on my jacket and hands as well. I washed up in the sink and then went to the corner booth. Still wary of me, the waitress took my order of coffee with a side of bacon. I took liberal sips from my flask, trying to be discreet. I don’t think anyone cared enough to say anything. I sat in that booth, staring out the window, occasionally ordering a top off for my coffee or a biscuit, until it began to get light out. Around five in the morning, the streets were beginning to bustle with activity. I got up, left a sizeable tip for the waitresses trouble and began to walk home. I took a long, winding route far away from the neighborhoods where my encounter with the man took place. I kept my ear to the ground for information regarding an assault in the street, but I heard nothing. I had definitely expected a severed hand on the sidewalk to make the news.
I called out of work for the evening. And then again the next day. I told them I was sick, but I think they thought I was on a binge. And they weren’t wrong. As far as I was concerned, I had discovered one more reason to drink myself stupid…
I arrived home from the liquor store, 3 bottles in tow, and already falling down drunk. I threw my keys and wallet in the general direction of the counter and cracked open another bottle. The vodka burned my throat going down. Bottle in hand, I walked through my apartment into my bathroom and looked in the mirror.
I froze.
On the bathroom counter was a severed hand, finger pointed at me. On the mirror, written in what looked like blood, I read three words.
LOOK. AT. ME.