by Julius Olofsson
Back then, I went to parties, all on repeat: some ciders, some smokes, stuff like that and soon enough, there was always someone, some fucker who couldn’t just let shit dissolve on its own in the bowl and instead came up and was like:
“Is that bear with you?”
And it was. It was my Bear. Almost every goddamn social gathering or party or wedding or whatever it could be. Sooner or later, it came around, and no matter what I had done, what I had been drinking or smoking, it popped by, making everything excruciating in every human way you could measure.
So I usually shrugged, tried to play nonchalantly suave, and stated, without any form of responsibility: “yeah, so?”
And for maybe an hour, the Bear and I never saw each other. It could be dancing or hanging out with someone at the party. But eventually, we found ourselves wrapped up, our lives intertwined, magnet-like.
“I think you need to take care of your bear.”
And then, that was it. So many fucking times, I’d find the Bear, drunk out of his mind, trying to suffocate himself with guac—his claws all green and greasy.
So we washed up, and he began sobbing and claiming that I was all he got, as I retorted that he belonged in a forest or something, that we were humans, and that the Bear was not and that maybe he should head home.
But he never did. Instead, he drank more—transforming into a pendulum swinging between utmost joy, rocking the karaoke station, all hyped on his own belief that he, for sure, knew and could keep up with the lyrics to “I wish” by Skee-Lo.
Then, he swung towards the darker end, where a catatonic state planted the Bear in the dirt with the weeds and was more or less unreachable. Not even I could chat him up or save him from everlasting regrets that he never managed to sort out and explain in a way that made them intelligible.
Instead, he cried and screamed screams that made Earth tremble.
He left when I left.
And then, at the next party, he came again. Jolly at first, but quickly, a furball of sorrow for some unknown reason—I was just there for the ride.
At one party, after the Bear had tried to start some kind of spontaneous, drunken Fight Club club, this guy came by and gave me some pills and told me to take them, or maybe not even take them; I should just have them in my pocket so that I could fidget a bit—feel the pills’ presences.
I took one, and 30 minutes later, the Bear’s fur grew gray. He was about to reach the stage of tears, but instead, he initiated a perpetual stare into nothingness.
At night, he slept on the floor next to my bed. I woke up now and then to make sure he kept breathing.
In the morning, I took one more pill and was invited to another party on Saturday.
The Bear showed up but with sluggish movements and a stooped mind.
I had no clue what had happened. I didn’t take any more pills that night; instead, I thumbed the blister pack, feeling the sharp edge of it press against my index finger, and it was like that slim bit of pain transferred to the Bear, who howled and groaned, causing the other guests to turn to me with annoyance.
I took pills for three weeks straight. The Bear began to lose his hair, and his eyes were bulging, all red and robbed of whatever had dwelled within.
Finally, as the Bear slumped in a chair at a birthday party…he died.
A year later, I hadn’t taken any more pills, but then, at this bachelor party, I could see the Bear in the corner of my eye as the other guys were chanting along with some song I had never heard before. I merely pressed my finger against that edge of the blister pack, as I had done before, and as I blinked, the Bear was no more.
I never saw him again. I just kept taking pills.
Born in Sweden, Julius works as a narrative designer in video games. He writes anything from flash fiction and books to games and screenplays and makes his own sausages in his spare time. He’s been longlisted in The Bath Short Story Award, The Bath Flash Fiction Award and The Aurora Prize for Writing. His stories have been published in JAKE, Trash to Treasure Lit and Roi Fainéant Press. He’s found on Twitter: @PaperBlurt.
