The Bloody Regret

Five years had passed. 

The alarm clock rung with the humming of the birds outside, and Larry still woke up with the unforgettable nightmare he had for five years. 

In the nightmare, an emaciated and short boy stood in the gym feebly with a long scout rope in his hands. Larry clearly know that he was trying to save the boy, but the boy always vanished without a trace when Larry ran across him. 

And then, he woke up and realized that he was panting breathlessly as if he was at the scene in person. 

No one had ever asked about his feelings after the nightmare. He organized two reasons for the phenomenon: first, he was already a senior at college now; second, he knew that he didn’t deserve anyone’s care. 

The photo with two boys smiling together still laid under his bed. Not being moved for almost five years, it had already been covered with thick dust. 

Notes were written down in the notebooks as if the writers were robots for taking notes. As one of the robots set in the classroom, Larry couldn’t move out any place for him just to guess how much time was left until class dismissed. 

The dull ring of the last bell slightly came in. As the bald economics professor strode out of the classroom, everyone began to pack their bags and leave for the wondrous and dazzling night. Walking straightforwardly out of the campus, Larry headed for the bar far away from the college with insanely quick steps to avoid overthinking. 

Ralph, standing at the bar counter rolling the Bloody Mary, habitually let out a yell when seeing the patron walking toward his favorite seat. 

“Hey, Ralph,” said Larry. “Nice to see you.”

“Nice to see you!” Ralph continued rolling the drink and recalled the patron’s unchanging order. “Bloody Mary, right?”

“On the rocks,” Larry put his backpack onto the stool next to him and said. 

Ralph tipped some ice cubes into the drink, put it on Larry’s seat, patted his own overweighted belly and laughed, “Never seen such a customer who’s so young but comes here every day just for a Bloody Mary on the rocks.”

Larry nodded. It was a promise he used to keep, but he remembered that it was him who cruelly broke it first. 

He put the glass cup onto his lips and tipped a bit of the cocktail into his mouth. The spicy feeling didn’t change; it was still the familiar one he usually tried. 

“Hey, young one,” Ralph called out while Larry was about to swallow the drink in his mouth. “To be earnest, I’m quite curious about the reason why you come here and have the Bloody Mary every day. Like… have you kept a promise with any important person in your life?”

Larry panicked in an instant, almost spilling out his drink. He was astonished by the fact that Ralph could clearly detect his mind even if he had never shared anything related to his darkest past. 

A sense of fear and anxiety burned from the depth of his body to the top of his brain. He had the feeling of being stuck in the water without any fresh air——the more vivid feeling was that it was just like being tied with a scout rope at his neck. 

“Do you regret anything? If the answer is ‘yes,’ I can surely give you my method to make up for the error.”

Ralph’s voice swung around his ears at the bar, on his way home, and even in his bedroom. 

Unexpectedly, he was prompted to take out the photo covered with dust. Gently wiping off the thick dust, he finally could see his seventeen-year-old self, and the feeble boy next to him. 

Both of the boys were smiling in the picture. Larry looked at the feeble boy first, and then he looked at the younger him. Out of the blue, he felt the Bloody Mary he just drank ran up from his stomach to his throat. The disgusting feeling he underwent after seeing himself in the photo almost made him vomit. Trying to hide away from the feeling, he threw the photo away toward a random nook and strode to the toilet to vomit. The spicy vomitus had him undergo the painful mood he just experienced once again. 

The next day after class, he didn’t go to the bar. He was afraid that he would be forced to reminisce about all those scandalous stories during his high school days when he met Ralph. 

Being adapted to his usual schedule of going back late, he spent almost the whole evening wandering in the streets surrounded by the noisy cars, the polluted air, and his contaminated mind. Finally, he could head back to his bedroom when it was about 11 in the night, which is his usual time going back. 

That night, he didn’t look for the photo. However, he suffered from insomnia. More into the night, he could even see the scene of a boy hanging himself. He felt like he was in the usual nightmare. 

The familiar feeble boy was there, with a scout rope in his hands. Larry tried to run toward him. Different from the nightmare itself, this time, the boy didn’t vanish. The boy stepped onto a stool, tied the rope onto a waling on the ceiling of the school storage, and then he hung himself without Larry’s notice. Larry tried to save him, but his whole body was frozen at the place where he stood at. He lost the ability to move or even call the boy’s name to ask him not to hang himself. 

And then, some fragments of what occurred after that slightly came back into his memory. The boy passed away, and Larry began to live with cumbersome regret. Larry regret for not only not saving him on time, but also didn’t protect him from the harm he had suffered before hanging himself. They once promised to go to a distant bar and drink the Bloody Mary together after going to college, but it was broke now. Being overwhelmed with regret, Larry kept considering himself the selfish and the brutal one to break the promise with the boy. In an effort to alleviate the painfulness, he began to show up at the bar alone after school just for a glass of Bloody Mary on the rocks, and it was also the drink that gave him the opportunity to acquaint himself with Ralph, the bartender.

Larry sat up from his bed, and then he stood up with the shimmering moonlight gazing into the room. It was 4 a.m., which was the usual time he woke up with fear on account of the nightmare. Having the memory pieces gathered up together, he finally had the courage to face the deepest and the darkest secret he had kept for years. 

He inhaled deeply and gently moved away the shelves around his bed, looking for the photo he once ran away from. He had no idea where he had thrown the photo toward, so it took him some time to find it.

Finally, he found the photo under the small plastic wardrobe. He bent down his whole body and picked it up, looking at the feeble boy, and then he turned to the back side of the photo and saw two names written on it. 

“Best friends, Larry & Dan”

The feeble boy was Dan, his departed best friend during his high school days. 

Tears of reminiscing about his old friend rolled down his cheeks as he had expected. The tears contained not only the shining memories they had created together but also the regret that he didn’t speak out for Dan when Dan was bullied. 

The reason why Dan was bullied, Larry looked back, was too funny to believe. Those people in his age bullied Dan just because of his divorced family. Larry remembered that they always called Dan names such as “the kid whose mother didn’t want him.” Dan always came to Larry to complain about the bullies, but the only thing Larry did was telling him that everything would pass. 

The bullies then became more and more coarse toward Dan. They put garbage in his cabinet, hid his homework assignments, and even secretly threw his lunch away to the trash bin in front of him. And then, it led to the result that Dan hung himself because he couldn’t bear the pain from the bullies anymore. However, Larry had never stood up against the bullies, while Dan still naively trusted him.

Ralph’s words came back into his mind.

“Do you regret anything? If the answer is ‘yes,’ I can surely give you my method to make up for the error.” 

Yes. Larry thought. He regret that he didn’t protect Dan at the right timing.

Not caring about how late the time was, he got himself dressed in his casual clothes and headed to the bar to meet Ralph. He had to tell Ralph about the story, he thought with full determination. 

The board with opening hours of the bar was taken away. Larry was disappointed at first, but thinking about Ralph lived upstairs from the bar, he was relieved that he might see him even though the bar wasn’t open.

He pushed the door which was the entrance to the bar, realizing that the door wasn’t locked. Walking into the bar, he couldn’t believe his eyes that Ralph was sitting at the bar counter. 

“Welcome back, young man,” Ralph smiled at him.

Larry had his determination ready and plucked up all of his courage to tell Ralph the whole story between Dan and him. Ralph continued to nod constantly, and his smile didn’t fade away.

The moment when Larry finished the story, Ralph rolled a new cup of cocktail. “I got it,” he said. “Now I’m rolling a special cocktail. You can definitely make up for your past mistake after drinking it.”

Larry was fascinated. Ralph added some water, a bit of Vodka, and some pineapple juice into the glass. After the rolling of the cocktail, he put a cherry at the side of the cup. “Remember to eat the cherry first,” said Ralph after serving the drink to Larry.

Larry nodded, ate the cherry, and then gulped the whole glass of cocktail. 

Ralph smiled, feeling proud of his perfect work. 

The cherry could send Larry back to his high school days, while the cocktail could give him more courage to do the things he didn’t do due to his formerly cowards personality.

The moment when Larry opened his eyes, he was in the cafeteria of the high school he stayed. 

“Wait for me here,” said Dan. “I’ll be in the restroom for a while.” 

Larry nodded. He had the memory that it was the day when the bullies threw Dan’s lunch away. He remembered that Dan forgot his lunch box in his locker, and a mean girl would open it and threw his lunch away in the girls’ restroom.

He rushed back to Dan’s locker and opened it. There were Dan’s schoolbag, some books, his lunch box, and a lot of garbage. 

Larry took out the lunch box, hid it in his jacket, and cleaned up Dan’s locker as fast as he could. After claiming that his locker was clean, he rushed to the place where Dan called Larry to wait for him. 

“Where have you been?” Dan cried with worry when he saw him coming back.

“You’ve forgot your lunch box,” said Larry. “I also cleaned your locker; next time I’m gonna beat those bastards up if I see them messing up with you again.”

Being overwhelmed with overflowing excitement, Dan patted Larry’s shoulder with so much happiness they both had never imagined. 

“Let’s go. We should get some seats now.”

The next morning, the assignment the math teacher asked them to finish should be handed out, and it was the most important one that Dan’s got hidden and forced him to get a detention after school. 

Larry, as usual, walked to school alone and was about to meet up with Dan, who always arrived at school earlier than him. 

After putting his schoolbag into his locker, Larry saw a tall guy opening Dan’s locker. That guy was quite familiar, thought Larry. He should be the one hiding Dan’s assignment!

Larry went straight into the tall guy’s eyes, took a deep breath and said, “What’s the matter messing up with my friend’s locker?”

“None of your business,” said the guy, and then he began to insult Larry. “I remember you haven’t acted as a superhero like this, right, kiddo?”

“I’m not acting as a superhero,” said Larry. Suddenly, he found out he virtually had nothing to say——

The photo he took with Dan flashed into his mind. “Best friends, Larry & Dan…” He thought of everything a “best friend” should do. Maybe stating that he was Dan’s best friend?

“I’m Dan’s best friend, and it’s also none of your business that I want to care about him and help him out when he’s in trouble. Hence, leave this place or I’m gonna sue you.”

Larry panted after saying such a long sentence. The guy found the act boring and left Dan’s locker. That day, Dan smoothly handed out his assignments and didn’t get any detention.

Finding his plan going on with a smooth pace, Larry began to continue his acts of speaking out for Dan. There were also times that he faced difficulties communicating with the bullies, but he still managed to have some methods to protect Dan, and there were more students agreeing with the fact that they shouldn’t be so brutal to Dan just because he was a part of a single family. 

Finally, it was the day which once caused Larry’s nightmare. He decided to ask Dan to go to school with him. 

The moment he met Dan, he realized that Dan had gained much more happiness and confidence than he thought. 

Larry finally could confidently say that the plan of time-traveling with Ralph to save Dan was a total success. In the end, he could have a clear conscience. Eventually, they could graduate together and have two glasses of Bloody Mary after class during college.

He had to thank Ralph, he thought. Luckily, he still remembered where Ralph’s bar was at. 

The first day of their college days, Larry took Dan to Ralph’s bar. Ralph, same as the one before the time-travel occurred, still talked with the boys as if they were his old friends. Dan ordered two glasses of Bloody Mary, and Larry stated that his should be on the rocks. 

The moment when Ralph served the drink to him, Larry went to his ears and whispered, “Thank you, Ralph, for helping me save my best friend.”

Ralph laughed. “You have no need to thank me,” he whispered, “It’s you who plucked up the courage first.”

Dan, despite being unclear about what went on, still laughed with Ralph’s laughter. Having a naive friend was such a fortunate, thought Larry.