Drown the Devil

References to sexual assault and suicide.

When Arnold was younger, his folks had taken him to see the crypt of John Paul Jones. The haunted tomb was quiet, and vigilantly guarded, with dim lights washing over the stone walls like moonlight on a restless sea.

The war hero died alone, after a life of ceaseless fighting, an ocean away from American shores. For a hundred years, he was lost, buried by an unmarked grave, but unmistakable when he was found. The casket that held his pickled corpse was a cask brimming with high proof alcohol.

“That’s how I’d want to go,” Harold had said. A lot of people mistook Arnold and Harold for twins, since they were the same age and Arnold’s dad was married to Harold’s mom, but they had as much common DNA as the average human shared with a balding bonobo.

“That’s not how he died,” Arnold had mentioned. “You know, on the ship back to America, they were pretty sure the sailors were drinking from the casket. Even death isn’t enough to make some people quit.”

“Not someone else’s death,” Harold had shrugged. “Drown me in whiskey, that’s all I want.”

* * *

Arnold eased the pick-up truck over the athletics field. The cord of his hoodie was clenched between his teeth, knuckles white around the wheel as he squinted over the dark grass, and the square black lake of the outdoor basketball court. He eased the truck alongside one of the tall light towers, which had a three-headed power cable attached at the base. “That pump is gonna be loud.”

“So?” Harold hopped out of the truck and slammed the door shut, the metal slapping into place with a resounding crack! “TUPD won’t roll their little golf carts over here. You start inflating the rig; I’m gonna go find a hose.”

Grunting as he lifted the cumbersome pump out of the truck, Arnold plugged it in and tested it. The rush of air screamed through the still night, and he cut it off quickly, pulse throbbing in his ears as he waited for sirens, shouts, maybe gunfire. The silence persisted, and Arnold let go of the hood cord he’d been holding, so tightly his finger was banded in a caterpillar bruise. It matched the bruise blacking his eye.

By the time Harold got back, holding one end of a steel-enforced hose, Arnold had already flopped open a wide square of circus colors, crinkled and smelling vaguely of wet dog. Spitting out the string in his mouth, Arnold attached a connector to the pump. “You’re gonna hit the limit.”

“It’ll be fine,” Harold insisted. “Come on, Arnie, blow me.”

Arnold turned on the pump, the enraged whirr sucking away his last chances to turn back. It was a slow draw into the heavy material, but Harold turned on the hose anyway, pointed toward the middle of the as yet uninflated pool. “Just couldn’t help yourself, could you?” Arnold muttered.

Harold grinned. “Never could.”

* * *

Before Harold started hanging out at the frat house, he and Arnold had shared a dorm. They had almost opposite schedules; Harold would sleep until noon and then stumble off to class while Arnold got his classes out of the way early, and came back to the dorm with his girlfriend.

Arnold and Kate had been high school sweethearts, and sometimes Harold would let her into the room on his way out, so Arnold would come back to an adorably presented plate of pizza rolls, or a crushing defeat of his N64 high scores. Kate always had some cute quip and a million-dollar smile, and Arnold would fold himself around her on the narrow plastic brick of his bed, imagining how nice it would be for them to live together, maybe with a garden and a dog, or maybe more than that. He walked home quickly, with a spring in his step, in the heart-fluttering hope that Kate would get there before him. Then, she just stopped coming.

Arnold didn’t know why. He tried asking her. And when the police contacted him, he believed he would never know.

* * *

“You just need to get out,” Harold insisted as the pool filled. It was struggling to inflate against the weight of the water, but it slowly expanded to the width of the court, pressing into the chain link on either side. “I mean, you can’t kill yourself along with her.”

Arnold nodded. “Sure. Beer bongs over therapy.”

“Exactly!” Harold said, holding the hose at crotch-height for his own amusement. “You’re a man in your prime, and you’re wasting it, Arnie. You know how many girls would slip over themselves for that sob story? I do; I’ve told it!”

“I am not like you,” Arnold muttered, winding and unwinding the string around his finger. “I do not need that kind of attention.”

“Fuck, I do,” Harold snorted. “Good, bad, whatever, long as everyone’s talking about me. I just want to make a spectacle of myself.”

Kicking off the pump, Arnold said, “That’s enough.”

* * *

Once Kate was gone, the cinderblock square of the dorm room seemed darker, colder, empty. Harold moved himself completely into the frat house, giving Arnold all the room he needed to let filth and garbage pile up around him as he shrank inside the recesses of his armadillo clothes. At Kate’s funeral, her mother took Arnold aside to say quietly that when Kate went, she had taken another little life with her. She thought Arnold would want to know.

Arnold thanked her. He never told her that, as far as he knew, he and Kate were both virgins.

Harold had insisted on prying Arnold out of the shadows, probably at his mother’s behest. Dragging him by a fistful of hoodie, Harold pressed his step-brother into one of the expansive parties that had allowed the extraverted pseudo-twin to sneak into a frat house well after rush. Arnold hardly knew anyone, and curled up inside his hood with only the occasional excursion to the solo cup in his hand, while Harold became increasingly frustrated at his thwarted attempts to have fun. “Swear to Christ, dude,” Harold scoffed into his fifth can. “You need to get laid.”

Arnold retreated further into his cloth asylum. “I am not like you.”

“Oh, excuse me,” Harold sneered, smacking his drink so hard against the table that the foam inside leapt for freedom. “Didn’t realize you were Mr. Perfect. Look at this fucking gentleman. Oh, wait: your girlfriend’s dead.”

The mute hoodie stared at the ground. Harold snorted, crushing the can in his fist. “I mean, to your credit, she did put up a fight.”

The cup dropped out of Arnold’s hand. He lifted his trembling fingers, razed and rug-burned from constantly clutching cords, and pushed back the hood.

Nobody saw who threw the first punch, but it was very clear which step-twin threw the most punches.

The morning after the party, Harold left Arnold a frantic voicemail. “Hey! Look, I don’t know what I said, I don’t remember anything about last night, but my brothers all say I fucked you up pretty bad. Did I…I’m just a dick sometimes, you know that. I’ll get you a new hoodie. Look, whatever it was, just call me, okay? Don’t tell Mom.”

Arnold didn’t hear the call from the shower, the first one he’d taken in days. Putting some of Kate’s make-up over his shiner, Arnold went back to class for the first time since the funeral. He was positively jovial when he called Harold back, saying the night out had done him good, and he didn’t remember anything that was said, either.

“Okay, great,” Harold breathed. “I mean, we were both so wasted. It was probably just kid shit.”

Smiling, Arnold agreed, “That’s exactly what it was.”

There was no reason for Arnold to tell Harold’s mom. He liked his step-mom, she was a nice lady. But then, Kate’s mom was a nice lady, too. And that just wouldn’t bring her baby back.

* * *

Harold went to put the hose away, rolling it over his elbow, and Arnold pulled the gate down on the truck. He pulled four clear plastic circles from the bed, and laid them out on the grass. There was a different attachment for the air pump, and Arnold got it set up as Harold came back. “Is that them?” Harold thrilled.

“Well,” Arnold said. “I don’t know if they’re still intact. They’re not as high quality as the zorbs, that’s why they’re a sixth the price. I don’t know if they were meant to be folded like that, the heat could have warped the plastic—”

“You are such a girl!” Harold groaned. “They’re big balls, what could possibly go wrong?”

Arnold stood up, fingers tangled in his cord. “I think we should test them. Once they’re pressurized, we can see if there’s leaks.”

Harold threw up his hands. “Leaks! The pool’s what, four feet deep?”

“These things can be dangerous,” Arnold said, twisting the cord between pinched digits. “Somebody has to let you in, and then you can’t get out. It’s an airtight seal, and even in a pool like this, someone could run out of oxygen.”

Smoothing his hair back from his face, Harold shrugged and grinned. “Alright, I am dying to test one of these things.”

Next to the basketball court, now dominated by a multi-colored pool, Arnold unzipped the plastic sphere and held it up. “You just climb in, and I’ll inflate it from the pump. Then I’ll zip up the seal, and for forty minutes, you can walk on water.”

“Sweet.” Harold stepped inside, draping himself in the clear plastic shroud, and giving a double thumbs-up. “Next, we’ll do the water to wine thing.”

Arnold zipped the closure down until the connecting tube was the only path of air from the bubble to the pump. Chewing on his comfort cord, Arnold switched the input to rapid deflation, and turned on the machine.

The thick plastic slapped against Harold’s skin, coating his teeth and tongue as all the air was sucked out of his clear cage, laminating him as his eyes rolled up, and he thudded to the ground. Arnold turned off the suction, walked over to the cling-wrapped step-twin, and gave him a kick. “Whoops.”

As the sun rose over the athletics field, a pair of muddy tire tracks painted an arrow toward the inflatable pool, squeezing multicolored diamonds through the chain link fence. Morning light flashed across the gently lapping water, casting bright reflections on the solemn vigil of the backboards. A golden circle glided across the bottom of the pool, a shadow beneath a clear plastic sphere, a floating globe filled to capacity with high-proof alcohol, and Harold.

Half-hidden by bent blinds, Arnold watched the tiny figure in its amber orb drift lazily across the water from the window of his cold, dark box. Little golf carts full of TUPD uniforms were circling the pond, defending their single malt marble from the gathering flock of cameras with teenagers attached. “Well, Harry, isn’t that what you wanted?”

Arnold pushed back his hood, took the ratty, unraveled end of the string around his neck, and cut the cord.