A Hangman Charmed

Chapter 3

The mirror resting across Trent's knees held his attention like a hippo walking through his bedroom. On it sat two bags of weed, a bag of dirty mushrooms, and an eyedrop bottle filled with what was heralded as acid.

Lex had gone to see Crazy Pete after leaving Charlie's Diner, and the mirror held the spoils of his trip. Normally the dealer didn't give Lex so much at one time.

Lex's friendship with the druglord had supplied Trent with the means to forget his life, but he wondered why Crazy Pete was willing to give Lex so much. It wasn't in him to look a gift horse in the mouth, though.

“Burn one?” Lex asked cryptically when Trent finished his scrutiny of the bags.

Trent listened to the three people sitting in his living room. Even a whisper could be heard through the wafer-thin walls. Trent stared blandly at his friend. The answer was obvious: neither of them wanted to go out and share their weed with the others.

“Damn right.” Trent picked up the other two bags and the priceless bottle of acid and shuffled to the dresser against his wall.

Most of the dresser was actually just a hole in a square box of wood.

The only drawer remaining had a crappy lock and was tilted to one side where it mourned the loss of the support from the drawer below. It wasn't the most impregnable of safes, but it worked for Trent's room. No one would believe it held anything of value, so what was the point of expending the effort to break it out of the dresser?

Trent unlocked the drawer with only a little trouble from the misaligned tumblers and deposited his goods into the empty vault. He turned and looked at his friend after locking it behind him.

“How mad you think Erin is?” He asked for the third time.

“For real, man?! We gotta go over this again?” Lex sighed as he licked the paper closed on a joint. “Why do you do this s**t if all you're gonna do is worry about how she's gonna react?” Lex held out his hand. Trent handed him a lighter without being asked.

“I'm serious,” Trent continued, “She's always naggin' me about how I need to do something with my life and all that crap. I hate gettin' nagged, and this is gonna be nagging on an epic level.”

Lex took a hit and handed the joint over without a word. Lex agreed with Erin about how his friend acted more times than not, but to tell Trent such a thing wouldn't be wise. In Trent's eyes, Erin was more an enemy than an ally, and if Lex openly sided with her as often as he agreed with her, Trent would look at him the same way.

“Look man, maybe she's just tryin' to look out for ya. You know how women are, they're always gonna think they know what's best. No matter what. Your only choices are to do as she wants or quit giving a s**t what she thinks.”

Trent hit the joint and kept quiet. He really didn't want to talk to Lex if he wasn't going to agree with him. Lex always tried to be nice and reasonable, rather than choose one side or the other. Trent was right about Erin nagging him incessantly, though.

Lex may have known a lot about women, they did whatever he wanted, but Erin was something else entirely. She wasn't the type to just sigh at a glance from Lex's pretty brown eyes, or dream about him riding up on a white horse or some other stupid dream women had. Chances were, Erin would just find something to nag at the playboy about, and then nag him about not reacting right.

Neither of them had any more to say after the joint was gone. The time had come to join the rest of their friends. Left to their own devices there was no telling what kind of trouble the idiots would get in to. Trent led the way out to the living room, knowing Lex was right behind him.

Erin was thankfully not waiting to pounce just outside the door, and they entered the room to a lazy chorus of 'Heeeey' from their friends. Bobby, Penny, and California all sat around the broken TV they used as a coffee table. They were all intoxicated in some way or another, but California the worst by far, judging by the way he nearly fell off the blue crate he was sitting on when he swung around to welcome his two friends. At least twenty joints were rolled up in a happy little pyramid on top of the TV and the three stoners each had one burning in their hand. Trent felt a twinge of regret that he had smoked his own stash while there was an abundance of weed to be had with a short walk through the door.

Trent strolled around and hopped over the back of his couch to land in a spot between Bobby and Penny. Bobby nearly jumped out of his seat as the ancient sofa groaned under the weight of three people.

“What the hell's up?” Trent winked at his half-standing friend and grabbed a joint for himself.

“D'you manage to get anything from Bailey's?” Lex sauntered up and looked at Bobby with a raised eyebrow.

“You know I did,” Bobby said thickly as he exhaled an impressive stream of smoke toward the ceiling. He reached over the edge of the couch to bring forward a paper bag. Penny stared across Trent as Bobby leaned back, trusting the couch to hold.

“Why the hell didn't you break that out while Cali was rollin' this s**t up?” She waved toward the stack of joints on the table. Bobby opened his mouth to say something, but California yelled before Bobby could utter a word and glared at Penny.

“I told you not to call me that, A*****e!” California leaned forward and slugged the big girl's arm, but overbalanced across the short distance and windmilled his arms to keep his seat.

Penny laughed, “Don't mean ya gotta hit me. I thought I'd been bit by a mosquito or something. Ya know that West Nile s**t's still around.” She made a face at him.

California couldn't come up with anything to say before the others laughed at his expense. Trent grabbed the bag and started going through it until he found a large bottle of vodka. No one was going to show that they had any kind of drugs or alcohol until absolutely necessary. After claiming his vodka he set the bag next to the TV for everyone to look through. Lex snatched the first bottle he felt before anyone could move. Penny turned on Trent beside her rather than going for the bag, and he mentally rolled his eyes. Actually rolling his eyes at the big girl was a good way to get punched in the face.

“I dunno that you should be doin' any of this stuff. You ain't got a job like the rest of us. What're you puttin' in?” She said it without a smile, serious as a day without drugs.

“My house.” Trent stared at her insolently and took as big a hit off his joint as he could.

“Don't use that old cop out.” Penny rolled her eyes. She wasn't all that worried about him punching her in the face apparently.

Trent opened his mouth with what would have been a vicious retort when the door burst open and Erin rushed in. He quickly shut his mouth, took a swig from his vodka, and looked away as he continued to drink. Liquid courage, he thought. A good desensitizer, too.

“Damn!” Erin said, “How much did I miss? What's wrong with y'all, gettin' started without me?” Her eyes fell on everyone in the room with a warm glow. When she looked at her delinquent boyfriend the warm glow vanished like it never existed.

The room grew colder as the silence stretched. His friends made it clear by their closed mouths that they weren't going to interfere with his being sacrificed to his crazy girlfriend. The stare down wasn't going to end until he acknowledged it. He looked up and tried for a small smile. Erin huffed violently in response.

“I gotta change.” She stalked in to his room without a backward glance. Trent sighed loudly when the door slammed behind her. He looked around and found everyone staring back. Bobby and California in commiseration, Penny and Lex in consternation.

“What?” He asked.

“You know you're supposed to go in there now, right?” Penny spoke up. The snide comment wouldn't have been so bad if he couldn't see Lex nodding in agreement out of the corner of his eye.

“Crap,” Trent moaned. He knew they were right, but he hated getting scolded like he was a little kid. Bobby and California nearly made it worse by looking at him like he was about to take the heat for something they had done. The way Erin treated him was humiliating.

He stood up resentfully, and snatched a few joints off the TV. Trent smugly looked at Penny as he shoved them in his pocket. She only leaned back and grinned. It was always a bad thing when a man had to enter his own bedroom as if he was headed for the gallows, and he couldn't even get a parting shot at the fat girl to make himself feel better.

Trent eased his way in to the room, and slowly pulled the door closed behind him.

Erin sat on his bed, a cigarette releasing smoke that coiled above her head in sinuous lines. She hadn't changed, knowing that Penny would say something to send Trent after her, although her chunky friend had done it faster than she had thought possible. Penny could always be counted on to talk bad to her boyfriend, and Erin exploited it at every opportunity.

Trent shut the door behind him and looked at Erin with his head hung like a schoolboy caught sneaking a peek in the girls locker room. His hand dropped limply off the doorknob, and Erin stifled a grin at the way his eyes lingered on his only method of escape.

“So, honey,” she made her voice as sweet as iced tea. “Got anything ya think you should tell me?”

Trent nearly groaned aloud. He wanted nothing more than to run out of the room; things never went well when she started by acting nice. And it was an act. Nothing more than a pretty smile to hide the fangs that would come out.

“Well...You know I got fired.” He stopped when she raised a hand and lowered her shaking head. She wouldn't even give him a chance to dig his own grave this time. Another bad sign.

“You got 'fired'?” The tone of her voice said he was wrong. He had dug his grave with just six words. Her voice literally dripped with scorn, “No, you didn't get fired, Trent. You blew up on your boss and told him he could shove your job up his a*s. Sounds more like you decided to be a f****n' MORON when you woke up this AFTERNOON!” She took a long drag off her cigarette to collect her thoughts. She always tried to keep from screeching, even if it never worked. “Yes, afternoon. Even though you were supposed to be at work by eleven. Mr. 'Too Damn Good to Have a Job' decided to show up to work an hour and a half late, and then decided to blame it on his boss. Even though I called you four times!” She looked at him like he hadn't taken a shower in weeks. “What the hell's wrong with you? I mean hell, we got you that job as a favor! Where the hell do you get off thinkin' you're too damn good to work where the rest of us work?” That was his cue to try and make a case for himself, even if he didn't have a chance of doing so.

“Well...Ya know...” His mind searched frantically for answers, but the only thing it found was regret for not coming up with some kind of excuse before stepping in to the lion's den. “I thought about...I thought I outta try to get some writing done. Uh, the stuff I've been workin' on.” Erin was more interested in his getting published than he was, so it might get her to back off.

He tried to gauge how well his excuse had gotten through, but she gave him nothing.

“Really...” She stared at him as he struggled to keep his face innocent, and thought he pulled it off. “Okay, I'll go for that. Not that you really thought out that you'd work on your book before you quit. But, if you're really going to write I won't say it's such a bad thing.” She stubbed out her cigarette. He wasn't sure what she would say next, but Trent was committed to his story. If he didn't sell it, he could hang up any hope that the argument was over. He knelt down so he was face to face with her sitting on the bed and smiled.

“Look, baby. If I can finish one of these book and do somethin' with it, I won't have to sit around and depend on people like Charlie to gimme a job.” He kept the smile plastered on his face. “Plus, if I manage to hit it big, you can come and visit me in my big a*s mansion.”

Erin slapped his shoulder and laughed happily. The dark thought that she probably just wanted a mansion turned his fake smile genuine.

“Visit, my a*s. I'll be runnin' that damn mansion 'cuz you'll be too busy tryin' to find Lex and Bobby so you can get stoned.” She stood, and pulled him up to stand with her. “Now, I said I was comin' in here to change. So, either stay and help me get outta these clothes, or go play with them.” She nodded toward the living room.

Trent wasn't a fool, no matter what everyone thought. He looked at the door to make sure the push lock was depressed.

“I think I'll stay and play with you instead.” He whispered in her ear as he leaned close.

Erin's only answer was to giggle and wrap her arms around his waist. Death by Erin had been avoided once again.

Reviews

[Xavier Lee]

"Death by Erin had been avoided once again." I'm laughing.
This was a wonderful chapter, but unfortunately that's the extent of my opinion. To be frank I'm simply reeling at just how good it was. I'm trying to think of something beyond that, but I'm drawing a blank. About the only thing I can think to tell you is that 'into' is one word, not two as you have it written.
Excellent work, and I can't wait to read more.