The Lion’s Mail Order Menage

Chapter 5

He was going to die, he just knew it.  It just wasn’t possible for a man to feel this way and live.  He wasn’t sure what exactly had wounded him, what sort of illness had overtaken him, but he knew it had to be fatal.  There was no way he could feel this way and not be afflicted with a thing like that.  At the very least, it felt like something had crawled inside of his mouth and died, which in turn gave him the urge to roll over and vomit all over the place. 

The problem with that was that, although he hadn’t opened his eyes yet, he was pretty sure he was sleeping on his floor, or on his rug to be more precise, and if he threw up all over it he would have to clean it and with the way he was feeling, that just didn’t seem like an option.  He groaned. Putting his hands up to his temples, he pressed down gingerly, hoping that the pressure would somehow quiet the screaming headache running gleefully through his head.

It didn’t work.  He was too far gone for that.  Even his skin felt like it was infected, like it had its own separate yet equally fatal disease.  This was going to be a long, long day, the worst kind he had experienced in quite some time; maybe the worst ever.

“Hey there, brother, you awake yet?”

Perfect.  As if things weren’t bad enough, he wasn’t alone.  He had Tyler to contend with and that was more energy than he was prepared to handle when he felt like he had the plague.  Best friend or not, Caleb didn’t even answer him, just groaned and rolled over on his side.  He peeked one eye open and saw that he had been right. 

He was asleep on his floor, only the thick rug between him and the cold concrete beneath.  His whole body screamed in protest to his movement, a clear sign that his sleeping arrangements were something he was going to pay for with multiple aches and pains, but on the up side the concrete was blissfully cold and managed to calm his hot, angry skin ever so slightly. 

From somewhere above him he could hear Tyler laughing and he knew he was laughing at him.  Caleb also knew that this whole thing must surely be Tyler’s fault, he just needed to figure out why.  It was one of those times when he needed to piece together the events of the previous evening but that was something he had very little experience with.

True, he was part of a mobster organization that definitely enjoyed its drinking, but he himself had never been much for excessive drinking.  Because of that, he had witnessed a lot more hangovers than he had experienced and he didn’t have much of an arsenal built up to deal with the havoc they caused in his body. 

“Oh sh*t, you’re awake, alright.  And from the looks of it you aren’t too happy to be.”

“Stop yelling.”

“Oh ho ho, stop yelling, huh?  You really are bad off.  This isn’t what we call yelling, Caleb.  This is just good old fashioned talking.”

“Well, it sounds like yelling to me.”

“I bet it does.  Last night was kind of a lot for you, wasn’t it?  I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drink that much.  Maybe that one time, you remember that?  We were, what, seventeen?  Eighteen?  Geno got us good and obliterated and took us down to that wh*rehouse he runs, decided it was time to make men out of us.

“You were scared sh*tless and you wouldn’t let go of that little bottle of whiskey for anything, held onto it like your whole life depended on it.  Took it with you into her room, if I recall correctly, and then spent that whole night and the rest of the day puking your guts right up.  Remember that?”

“I do, and thank you so much for bringing it back up.  Makes the way I feel today even better.”

“Aw, come on, I’m just ribbing you.  Every man has days like this, it’s part of living.  Ain’t nothing wrong with it, aside from the sickly feeling.  You just gotta tough it out.  How about I fix you a drink?  Little hair of the dog to get you back on your way to right?”

Even the thought of drinking again made his stomach heave and he struggled to sit up, not wanting to choke on his own vomit if he couldn’t manage to keep it down.  There was no way he was going to be able to drink with Tyler again today, no matter how bad he was feeling or how badly he wanted him to do it. 

Caleb couldn’t keep up with Tyler when it came to that kind of thing, he didn’t have the same kind of practice.  Caleb was just an amateur, dabbling in the wild behavior every now and then.  Tyler did it like it was his job, always flirting with his own destruction like it was a long lost lover he couldn’t quite let go of. 

Tyler laughed again at the stricken look on his friend’s face and Caleb grimaced, wishing he could smack him in the face but that would require more movement than he felt capable of making.  Besides, he was starting to get the strangest feeling that they had done something last night that they shouldn’t have. 

Everything was beyond blurry and he didn’t know what it was that they had done, but he had a feeling it was bad.  He finally opened his eyes and watched as Tyler ambled casually over to the couch, flopping down with a drink in his hand and a smirk on his face.  He threw a damp cloth in Caleb’s direction which hit him directly in the face. 

Normally, Caleb wouldn’t have appreciated it, but at the moment it seemed like it was actually doing him some good.  He used it to dampen his inflamed face and then rested his head back on the shelving unit behind him, laying the cloth across his eyes gratefully.  It was a small amount of relief but it was still relief, and at this point he was willing to take what he could get.

“Tyler, I gotta say man, you’ll be lucky if I ever let you through the front door of this place again.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse.  I don’t know how you do this every night.  Jesus, man, I don’t know how you’re drinking right now.  I would be laid out in a gutter if I did things the way you do.”

“Well, we’re different kinds of men, I guess.  That’s all.  I’m glad you don’t do things the way I do.  One of us has to have a halfway decent head on our shoulders, right?  I would say history had proved that isn’t going to be me.”

“There’s something we can both agree on.  Can you hand me some aspirin, maybe a glass of water, too?”

“Sure thing, brother.”