Catamaran

A story that I am writing — as I get around to writing more of this story I’ll post continuing/new chapters.

Catamaran — A post apocalyptic skate story.

Chapter One: Another Day in Paradise

He stared up at the sky from the bottom of the bowl ignoring the pain in his wrist as he cursed his failing abilities and wished he had never started skating some thirty years ago. It seemed that his best trick as of late was doing kneeslides. At least he still wore kneepads, mostly out of habit. Skater fashion had changed over the past five years to a combination Hessian/Street skater chic, but, he didn’t really care; pain might be a badge of honor for some, but not him. Fuck that. He was old and didn’t give a shit.

“Fucking hell!” Christian cursed, as he climbed out of the bowl to the sight of his friend Eric smirking at him. “I aint got shit these days.” “We might as well go drink.” Eric spat on the ground, kicked his board up into his hands and muttered, “a-yup, we sure should — you know Christian, every now and again you have a decent idea.”

So, they gathered their stuff and skated on towards their usual hang-out — the Lawrence Street Lounge for some cheep beers and whiskey shots all to the strains of bad live local punk rock music. “That bitch still owes me a ton of cash” Christian was saying as they skated down 20th Street oblivious to the lower downtown cheesy bar/restaurant goers hogging the sidewalks. Of course Eric knew what “bitch” Christian was referring to as he had gone out with her before Christian had spent a few turbulent years within her clutches. “She owes me something like $7000…I feel like such a sucker.” Christian lamented, “Shit, we could buy a few good shots of whiskey if she would even attempt to pay a bit of what she owes.” “Fuck it” he declared as they entered the Pub.

The pub was the same as it ever was — dark, full of drunks, punks, single-track bike hipsters and ne’er-do-wells. The owners of the bar were notorious cheapskates who seldom put any of the profit back into the building, the carpet was threadbare, the room drafty, the walls dingy and the toilet was a foul stench-filled germ land where only the bravest would tread, yet the pub was home. Christian and Eric sat at the bar and ordered whiskey shots and cheap American beers.

They drank Jim Beam whiskey, PBRs and shots of “Red Headed Sluts” while the sun set and life got weirder. People came into the bar, people left the bar and they got steadily drunker as the evening wore on. “Hey Eric” Christian said, “did you catch the news today?” Eric groaned that he rarely if ever watched the news. He was a jaded little fuck that way. “Anyway, ya cunt, President Kill is getting all freaky saber rattling again.” opined Christian, “The Russians and the Chinese are fed up…I think the shit is going to hit the fan. I think President Kill is going to finally take that corporate bullshit that she ran on and do something stupid.” Their country, in a fever of depression economics and irrational religious fear had just that year elected a very dim broad from Washington state to the presidency. It wasn’t boding well for their aging democracy. Things were bad on the home-front as well as throughout the rest of the world.

Eric scrunched up his face and threw a lime at the bartender. “I want a fucking big fat shot of Makers Mark and Vodka” he screamed. “Make me a fucking Vodka and Whisky!” The bartender, Yoshi, shrugged and said, “I don’t have any Makers up here, go down stairs to the fucking walk in cooler and get the God-damned Makers yourself.” Eric shrugged again and looked at Christian, “hey, I gots some blow, lets go down there, get the whiskey and snort a bit.” Christian kind of didn’t want any, but then again he did. He had to work the next day, but what the hell? The people at the code shop could suffer through a few hours without him. “Alright, let’s go” slurred Christian. Yoshi shook his head in disgust as the duo mounted the stairs and stumbled down into the abyss.

Down in the basement of the bar was an ancient walk in freezer that was probably built at the height of the cold-war in the 1950s. Super bulky, and very sturdy, it served as both a storage area and cooler for the lonely little dive bar. Eric and Christian walked inside to retrieve the Makers and do a bump.

“Damn, it is fucking cold in here”, Christian said as the door slammed shut behind them. “I think that we should grab that whiskey and get upstairs.” Eric was busy chopping up some lines on a shelf when they heard a rumbling emanating from all around them. “Dang, what the heck is that?” Eric said as the cooler rumbled with a tremendous bang, bottles falling to the floor and cracking open like so many skulls at the last years Democratic convention. A huge shelf of cut-rate liquor tumbled onto Christian and Eric rendering them both unconscious. The last thing Eric remembered thinking was that he still owed Luigi for the always crappy blow that was scattered all over the floor about their fallen bodies. Lights out.

As the world above dismantled in so many nuclear explosions across the globe prompted by the Tea-Party insane president’s fucked up policies, the tiny walk in freezer’s cold-war generator kicked on and ran under the rubble below the now vaporized cliental of the shattered building that once was the pub. On hummed the generator that fueled the cooler that became super-cooled from thermonuclear fallout.