5: Fun With Cliff

AUSTIN POV

Today was Monday. Thank God I wasn’t in school anymore. Cliff and I quickly made our way out the back door, as he had spotted a man walking around the neighborhood shoving his beliefs down others throats. If there was anything that I hated more that waiting, it was when people thought that their beliefs topped all the rest, and they went around telling everyone to believe in what they believed in.

Why? What did it do? People had their own beliefs. Maybe theirs are right, maybe their not. It’s their beliefs. It especially bugged me when they said they were “saving” people. People could believe in whatever they wanted. At least, that was my opinion on things. 

We walked across the back yard, and made our way to the next street over, which was Ocean street. This street led you directly to the shore, while all the other streets connected to Shore street, which then connected to Ocean street. Shore street was about three blocks down, and was the main street to Shoreville. We were planning on spending the next couple hours at the beach, and maybe roam around some shops on Shore street. 

Because we were so close to the shore, tourists came here when the didn’t want to stay in a city like Saco, so we had a decent number of shops. Silver was a decent-sized town, but it was inland, and more tourists came to the coast or other tourist attractions, which Silver was completely barren of.

On a large billboard down the street that was shaped like a phone. It had a number on it, and had the words “DHS.” Depression Help from Strangers was the company. It was a familiar company that had started up in Saco. 

You called the number, and you told the operator your problem and the state you were in. They then connected you with other people with similar problems also in the state. You never had to give anyone your name, and you got to talk to someone. That was the beauty of it. You could release your problems on some random stranger, and not have to worry about what they would think of you, because they didn’t know you. All most people really wanted was someone to know what you were going through, and that was exactly what the company gave you. 

In all my years of life, I had realized that it was true; all most people wanted was to be heard. Whenever I had a problem, I just wanted people to know what I was going through, but I never wanted to tell anyone. I definitely didn’t want Cliff to know my problems. Usually when I was depressed he could tell. Cliff being who he was, he would ask me directly what was wrong, and that something was certainly wrong. I’d tell him I was just tired, or I had a headache, or a fever. He usually bought that. If he didn’t, he would always tell me.

I thought about calling them. I could use it now. Right now I wanted death. I didn’t want the earth that was provided. I wanted to be gone. Yet I was waiting for the fear to go away. If I called the number maybe it would help. Maybe I would even enjoy things a little. Maybe.

“Hey, check out that dude over there!”

“Where?”

He pointed me to a person jogging across the street.

“I think that guy really needs a bra!”

“Oh my God! Cliff!”

I burst out laughing. I had to stop walking and kneel over to keep from suffocating.

“What? He does. He’s pretty heavy set.”

“Cliff! That’s a girl!”

“Oh!”

Now both of us were bent over laughing hysterically. She looked over and shook her head, not knowing the joke, and continued her jog. 

“Oh God, Cliff! That’s hilarious!”

There was the break in the mundane route that we usually held. So long I had followed the same routine, and getting out of the house for something as little as a door-to-door preacher had an extraordinary change. 

“Come on, let’s get to the beach!”

“Alright, come on. I’ll beat you!”

“I doubt it! I’m older.”

“Yeah.. but I don’t smoke. Unlike someone...”

“Alright, I accept! One... two... three!”

We sprinted down the street, and made it twice as fast to the beach. It was around noon, and the sun beat down on us, and made us sweat. I let it soak into my body. Some sun would be nice for my vampire-like appearance. 

As we neared the end of the street I did three cartwheels and on the fourth I turned over and started walking on my hands toward the beach. I had done this so often that I could walk a good twenty feet before falling. I walked on them over to the stairs that led down into the actual beach. It was a small hill where it switched from grass to sand, and so they had installed stairs down it. I finished my gymnastic skills off with a handspring down the stairs. I turned around just in time to see Cliff run up, spin around, and do a backflip down them. I laughed and started clapping for him. 

Cliff had been able to do flips for as long as I could remember. He was built, unlike me. I had just enough arm strength to do some acrobatics, but only that. The only reason I had that was because of my practice hand-walking. Cliff had strong legs, he had abs, he had pecs, he had every muscle rock hard and bulged, with veins sticking out so they looked like they would pop. His veins were everywhere. When he was angry or excited, a vein would pop up in his temple. 

We walked down the sand, and looked around. The beach was completely bare. Today would be a good day. Sometimes we came down for the water. Most of the time we came down because trails led up from the rocks into the woods. Down below the rocks and up north a couple miles there were caves, but they were only reachable by going through the woods. So, we headed to the rocks. 

They were large, almost human sized rocks. Large human. Jogging-lady-human-sized rocks. We leapt across them until the faded into a cliff. Up above was the trees, and we climbed up to them. 

“God, it’s hot out!” Cliff called. He took off his shirt. His muscles glistened in sweat already. I stared down my shirt at my own pale body. I looked back at his. He had abs, and he had pecs. I had a stomach. I had a chest. I was ashamed of my body. So, I kept my shirt on, and let the heat pound down on it’s black back. 

We walked along the trail, and Cliff stared off blankly into the trees, inspecting the view. We walked close to the cliff, and had a nice view of the ocean, with the sun reflecting off of the waves. 

“Hey, you know that girl Samantha?”

“Yeah. Samantha Gross? From Colorado?”

“Yeah! That’s her.”

“The one who moved here after all those attacks by that ‘Pig?’”

“Yeah, the one who’s cousin killed a bunch of people or something?”

“Yeah. What about her?”

“She’s pretty cute.”

“Yeah she is.”

“She texted me this morning.”

“Did she?”

“Yeah. She’s really cute, actually. I think I’m going to get with her. I bet I could. Easily.”

“Yeah.”

Cliff was one of those people who didn’t give a f**k about others feelings. He just slept with people and that was it. Usually they ended up hating him, and telling all their friends not to sleep with him. All their friends usually ended up sleeping with him. Sure, I didn’t ever believe in love, but those girls did, and I always thought it was wrong how he treated them. 

“Hey, is something wrong? You don’t seem alright.”

Yes. Something’s wrong. I’m stuck in the mundane cycle of life, and I’m waiting to end it.

“No. It’s all good. I’m just tired today.”

“Not a lot of sleep last night?”

“No.”

“Yeah, we ended up staying up pretty late.”

“Yeah. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten up so early.”

“Yeah. Oh well, we’ll have fun today.”

“Yeah. We will.”

We would. We always did when we went on adventures like this. They were a break in the cycle, and anything that broke the cycle was amazing and exciting.

“Hey, wanna hear a joke? That’ll put you in a better mood!”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“Let’s see... Oh! Ok. A blonde lady is driving and is pulled over by a blonde police officer for speeding. ‘Can I see your drivers licence?’ says the police officer. ‘What does it look like?’ says the driver. ‘It’s that square thingy with your face on it, I think!’”

I gave a little forced laugh. It came out awkwardly and Cliff looked at me funny. Then, he continued.

“She looked around in her purse for a bit and pulled out a compact mirror and handed it to the officer. The officer says, ‘If I’d known you were a police officer, then I wouldn’t have pulled you over, ma’am!’”

Cliff laughed at this, so it was easy for me to give a fake laugh unrecognized. A larger lady walked past us on the trail breathing heavily.

“Hey, Austin, look!”

I turned around to see the back of her. Fat hung out of her sports bra grotesquely in two different parts, so that they looked like two sagging balls pinned to her. What Cliff was about to say was just cruel. I hated it.

“B***h, put that away! Asses don’t belong on a back!”

He laughed again, so I laughed along. Cliff wasn’t a bad person, he was just trying to get me in a good mood. That’s why Cliff was my friend. He cared about me. I wanted to see me happy, and if I wasn’t, then he would do anything to make me happy. But was that strong enough to keep me from killing myself? I wasn’t sure. Until it happened, I was waiting.

“Oh, Cliff, haha, I love you!”

“Haha, yeah. Oh! We’re almost to where the cliff ends!”

That meant we could go down on the rocks and follow them back south a little under the cliff. We would be up against the cliff wall until we came to a little secluded beach. On that beach there were caves that formed when the water used to be high long ago. Though, because of global warming, it was rising again, and last year the beach had been almost all submerged in an inch of water. 

We headed down the rocks until we were close to the shore. I was having more fun than usual, but I could still feel depression looming over me. It made me feel remote from everything else. When I was stuck in the cycle, I was a flightless bird. Now, I felt more capable of flying, but I knew I still couldn’t. The depression still grounded me like a broken wing. 

We started making our way back south, and soon we had the high cliff wall to our right. It was just a little ways down the shore. The ocean sprayed up on us, and after a minute I was drenched in water. My hair fell in front of my eyes and stuck there. I couldn’t push it to the side with a quick flip of my neck, so I had to manually brush it away. Cliff was lucky he didn’t have much hair. Plus, he looked good without it. 

“Ugh! I’m soaked!”

“Dude, just take your shirt off.”

“Naw, I’m good.”

“Whatever, man.”

I stopped for a second, and looked down at my plain body. Finally, I made up my mind and pulled it off. I did my best to try and flex my stomach. If I kept it like that it didn’t look half bad. Yet, it was still oddly shaped. It looked anorexic-thin until my lower stomach, which had fat. I felt like a pear, but a skinny one. I attempted to stick my chest out, and hide the awkward shape.

“What are you doing?” Cliff asked, laughing.

“Oh! Nothing.” I replied, blushing. 

I quickly deflated and made my way over to the beach. All of it was under water by at least an inch now, so the water was even higher. We took our shoes off and laid them and our shirts on the rocks, and strode over to the first cave in our shorts. 

The water poured into a lower portion of the cave door, and ran down into the basin of the cave. The basin went about five feet lower than the shore did. Mainly because the ocean had hollowed it out long ago, but also because it was doing the same thing last year, so we came down with a pickax and dug it down a couple more feet. Now, there was a nice pool there.

The day went on, and I survived. For today, I had broke the cycle. The sun was setting by the time we made our way back up the rocks. 

“So, how would you rate Samantha?”

“Rate her?”

“One through twenty.”

“What happened to one through ten?”

“One through twenty’s more accurate. No, one through one hundred.”

“Uh... I haven’t seen her in a while.”

“Yeah, me either.”

“I thought you saw her.”

“No, I texted her. Or, she texted me. Actually, I’ve never met her before.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. If I’ve never met her before she’s an easier target.”

“Easier?”

“You know what Nicole said about me.”

“Oh yeah. Yeah, I guess I wouldn’t want that to happen to me.”

“I know! I’m not even small! Am I?”

“Cliff-”

“Oh, come one, you’ve seen it. I live with you! I am so not small! Am I?”

This was a downside to Cliff’s personality.

“This is awkward.”

“Awkward? No. Awkward? I don’t know awkward, and you should know that.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“Am I small?”

“N-no.”

I hated admitting it, as awkward as it was. Cliff was bigger than I was. That was a downside to the friendship. Especially living in a room next to his. Sometimes I’d have to sleep farther away, like somewhere on the couch so I couldn’t hear him and her. Whoever she was that night.

“Was that so hard?”

“That’s what she said.”

Though it was an uncomfortable moment, I decided to lighten the mood for my own sake of being discovered. There was nothing worse than having your depression discovered by Cliff Johnson.

Cliff laughed at my remark, and punched me in the shoulder.

“So, Samantha?”

Unintentionally, I had elevated my mood a little by the comment. Cliff was superior to me, and being accepted by him, wether it was him comforting me in depression or just laughing at one of my jokes, always made me feel good about myself. I smiled a little thinking it to myself. 

“Samantha. Yeah. She’s pretty. And she’s pretty funny.”

He didn’t care if she was funny. She would be gone by the next day.

“Easy?”

“Hell no.”

“Oh. I can get her.”

“I’m sure you can. Just warn me this time.”

He started laughing hysterically.

“W-what?”

“It’s not the most pleasant thing to wake up to.”

We both laughed. For a change, I didn’t have to wait. It was a nice change.  I knew it wouldn’t last long. I felt like I had bipolar disorder. Maybe I did. Maybe I had hypochondria. Maybe not. Maybe I was just stuck in the cycle for too long. It felt nice to be out of it, but I knew things would all fall back into orbit. They always did. Silently, I waited for them to do so, and I began to wait for two things. We were all just waiting. Silently waiting.