Maybe I'm Lonely

Foster Floyd woke up with a hangover at two o’clock in the afternoon to a knock at the door. The door belonged to the RV. The RV belonged to Foster Floyd. Foster Floyd didn’t belong to anybody.

Foster, as he liked to be called, in the off-chance anyone was calling him by a preferred name, had fallen asleep with a bottle of reasonably priced gin in his hand on the sofa in the RV’s entryway the night before. He had thought about making a go at reaching the bedroom just a short hallway over, but thought better of it. Foster picked up the first shirt he found off the floor and pulled it over his head as he made his way to the door of the RV. The shirt was a novelty throwback tee, festooned with a vintage ad for “Captain Karate-Man Cereal” which loudly declared “ Flavor In Every Bite!” in big, bold letters. Foster had tried the cereal in his youth. He remembered hating it.

Foster opened the door to a blast of disorienting light that forced him to slam his eyelids shut, after his eyes adjusted he realized the light was coming from the sun. “What a bastard” he thought. When his eyes finally adjusted he realized the knock had come from the police officer standing in front of him. The officer was standing at the top of the steps to the RV door, with Foster standing about a foot higher looking down at the officer. “Can I help you, officer?” “Where are your pants son?” the officer asked. Foster hadn’t realized he was only wearing boxers. “There’s no crime against not wearing pants within my own domicile officer.” Foster couldn’t tell for sure, because the officer was wearing sunglasses, but he figured the officer rolled his eyes at this before saying “You can’t park here, you gotta move this thing or we’ll move it for you down to the impound lot.”

“One second” Foster closed the door slightly and the officer heard him shuffling around inside the RV. In less than a minute Foster returned to the doorway holding his cellphone. “Which county is this?” Foster asked. “Kid, I’m telling you-” “No, no it’s fine, hold on, I’m sorry I’m just hung over but if I remember correctly this particular county where I have parked my vehicle” Foster gestured his arms for emphasis “entitles me to be parked in this particular spot for a total of 24 hours before any sort of fines or infractions can occur” “Look, son-” “Officer...” Foster held up his phone “This is footage of me parking here 23 hours and 46 minutes ago, so unless you want me to file a formal complaint with the county and we can bring in people to verify this video was in fact taken less than 24 hours ago when I parked in this exact area, which I’m sure would cause you and I no end of inconvenience, I suggest you go on your merry way” The officer punched Foster in the face.

“Move the goddamn RV you little punk.” the officer said as he started to walk away. Holding his bleeding nose Foster stuttered “Sure thing officer. Say, what state is this again?” “Texas! Now get back in that Winnebago of yours and get the fuck out!” Foster watched the cop drive away into the distance, then he looked up to his right at the camera he had installed in the side of the RV which had recorded his assault and smiled at it. “Texas...” he muttered. “I always hated this fucking place.” In seconds the RV had started up and was heading down the road. Foster hoped to reach the state border before he ran out of gas.

The RV pulled into a rest stop four hours later, Foster didn’t know where he was, he hadn’t bothered to keep track of those kind of things for some time now. There was a McDonalds in the rest stop next to a large area for semi trucks to park, as well as a gas station and a souvenir shop. Foster hopped out of the drivers seat and into the sitting room of the RV and pulled out a beat up old laptop. Foster got online with the wifi from the McDonalds and got to work.

Foster started by transferring and compressing the footage from the security camera into a usable format. He checked the footage to make sure the cop hitting him was featured, then edited the video down to the parts he wanted to use. While waiting for the file to be ready Foster checked his business email which had 2 new unread emails in the inbox. One was a client thanking him for his help in identifying who had been stealing money out of the cash register of their business. Foster didn’t like details in his work unless he needed them. From what Foster could tell from the security footage he had told the client to send him, the business was a taco shop staffed by teenagers. The footage had been tampered with by the thief to cover up the theft, but Foster didn’t need to see the person actually reaching into the register, he had told the client just the footage would be enough. The client thought Foster was full of shit when he emailed them back almost immediately telling them who the culprit was. Most client’s only contacted Foster when they were at the end of their rope and looking for any kind of solution to their problems, in this case they would usually Google someone who could help them, and Foster had gamed the search criteria algorithms so his website would be the first result. For extra measure, Foster also had ads on Craigslist and Reddit. The ad said this: “Have problem you can’t solve? Police no help? Logical problem or mystery in need of solution? If you can describe problem through email or text msg, or can offer video or photographic evidence, I can solve it! Only pay after problem solved, no money down guarantee! Paypal only. Contact info in link.”.

The client sent the email after following Foster’s advice that they keep an eye on the young cashier Foster had accused of being the thief. Sure enough the client had caught the thief, just like Foster said they would. Foster emailed the client back with his PayPal information, the agreed upon price and nothing else. The other email in the inbox was just marked with a heart emoji as a subject line. It was from Elizabeth.

Foster closed the email and checked the progress of the footage, which had finished. He looked up the officer’s badge number which he could just make out in the footage and looked up the email of the sheriffs office he was from. Foster wrote an email with the video file attached which said this “Do I need to call my lawyer? Or can we settle this some other way? Cheers! Foster Floyd esq.” along with his Paypal information. In truth, Foster had no lawyer, he always represented himself in court in the off chance it came to this, he had successfully argued his case about 12 times at this point as his own representation in several cases throughout the US, the earliest being when he was 16 and a judge in Alabama had thought it a good idea to try him as an adult.

Foster stared at the screen for a little while, then deleted the email, posted the footage on YouTube and turned off the computer. “Sometimes justice beats blackmail” Foster thought out loud to nobody in particular. He hated having film of himself out there on the internet,. Much of his life was built around a carefully constructed film of anonymity, but you could barely see him in the video, so he decided it wasn’t that big of a deal. Foster then drank half a bottle of vodka and passed out on his couch.

…

Foster awoke, like he often did, to a pounding in the front of his head at around 4 in the morning, the dull glow of the rest area’s gas station neon scorched his eyes much like the sun had the previous morning. Foster sat slumped in his couch for a short while, considering whether or not to go back to sleep. “Fuck it” Foster mumbled as he opened up his laptop on the small TV tray he used as a desk, and double clicking on the email sent to him by Elizabeth.

...

Foster had met Elizabeth Harcourt while drinking his way through Spring break in Miami one year, he couldn’t remember if he was 20 or 21 when this occurred, he was fresh out of the military at the time. She had told him her friends called her Liz, Foster called her Lizzy. By now Foster hated Lizzy almost as much as he loved her. Theirs had been a whirl wind romance that like so many had ended in a storm of screams and tears. Foster blamed himself, the truth was somewhere in between. In the end both had decided the other was bad for them, and that the only possible resolution was for her to leave. Foster looked over the email now, trying not to get too worked up as the old tinge of emotions wormed its way up out of his guts.

“I’m in Texas, can you meet me? I need your help.” was all it said. Foster replied with a short, “Where and what time” no punctuation marks, hit send and fell backwards into sleep.

…

Foster awoke with a headache and a bad case of nausea, which he nursed by smoking a joint he’d been hanging onto since the last time he was in California, the stale taste of months old THC entered his lungs as he started up the laptop. Foster had been smoking pot since he was 14, a clumsy form of self medication that now brought him about as much peace as anything else, as the joint burned Foster pulled out a bag of pill bottles from behind the couch and started sifting through them. Gradually setting out about 6 or 7 pills on the tray in front of him. He downed the pills with a swig of leftover Vodka, these were a cocktail of antidepressants, anti psychotics and a mood stabilizer or three thrown in for good measure. The VA paid for everything, but Foster had long since abandoned his therapy sessions and now relied almost solely on the pills for his mental health. He knew the substance abuse likely didn’t help anything, but he liked feeling numb to the world. This was the closest thing approaching peace Foster Floyd could find, and he wished to soak up as much of it as he could before it was time to check his inbox again.

Foster eventually opened the laptop and his email to find a reply from Elizabeth, inside were an address and a time for that days date. Foster pulled up his GPS to check the location, a small Diner about 60 miles away, in some small podunk area of Texas called Cremshaw County. Foster checked the time and shut the laptop. Started up the RV and took off down the road towards Cremshaw. If he beat traffic he would just make it to the meeting place in about an hour and a half.

…

The RV pulled up to the diner about 2 hours later. For reasons he couldn’t explain, he had thought about his father during the drive. His thoughts now turned to the task at hand. Foster could make Elizabeth out through the window, she was sitting in a corner booth in direct view of the outside window. Foster entered the diner and was greeted with a “how many” from the exhausted waitress, Foster paused and took a look around him before leaving her with a “I’m meeting someone” and making a beeline past her to Elizabeth’s corner booth.

“Lizzy.” Was all Foster could say as he slumped into the booth, she was as beautiful as the day she had broken his heart. There was a pause that lasted longer than was comfortable for Foster, before she said “You look good Foster.”

“Funny, that’s not how I feel.”

“Do you want to be an asshole or do you want to hear why I emailed you?”

“Shoot.”

She didn’t use specifics, she kept talking as if she was uneasy. Like she was always just about to look over her shoulder for fear somebody was watching her. She told him she was running from people, but that she couldn’t say more until later. It was then Foster started to console her, and they spent the next hour reminiscing and conversing “like they used to” thought Foster.

At some point Foster invited her to come with him, he could tell she didn’t feel safe, with a promise of a motel room with water and a warm bed. She liked the sound of that. Foster got drunk at some point, so he didn’t remember her handing him her journal, didn’t remember the urgency in which she did it, he filed it away somewhere before blacking out.

…

Foster dreamed about Afghanistan, dreamed about the IED and Geoff’s legs lying next to him while his guts wriggled out of his lower half.

...

Foster woke from the dream with a start. He appeared to have fallen asleep in the bath tub of a motel room. He hoisted himself out of the tub, he had been sleeping fully clothed. “So I passed out.” in truth Foster had woken up in stranger places. It was at about that moment he smelled the blood. It was not a smell Foster became aware of often, if you could smell the sickly, dry mercury and iron scent, it usually meant there was a pool of blood nearby. A part of him knew what was waiting for him outside the bathroom. It didn’t stop his heart from crumbling when he saw Elizabeth sprawled out on the bed with her throat slit. A straight razor sat next to her on the bed. Foster knew she was dead without having to check. What more immediately alarmed him through the haze of hangover and adrenaline swirling through his head, was the sirens he could hear approaching. It took him a moment to realize what all this meant before he hastily pocketed the straight razor, sure that it had already been covered with his prints by whoever was trying to frame him for the death of someone he cared about, a tinge of anger burrowed its way into his stomach before he burst out of the motel and dashed to the RV, which he was thankfully able to find fairly easily, “they must not have thought to check the RV...” he thought as he hopped in the driver seat and drove off. He could see the blue and red lights in the rearview mirror as he sped off into the night. He wouldn’t break down completely until the next rest area an hour away.

The pill bottles made a “clack clack” sound as Foster threw them one by one into the small plastic waste bin in his RV’s main living space. Foster was 10 minutes into a manic episode, tears in his eyes. Sobbing uncontrollably. It had been some time since his last episode. He was at a point in the episode that he was fed up with his pills, fed up on life and the world. After tossing the still full pill bottles in an act of defiance he went to the cupboard and pulled out the false back board and took out the cigar box that housed his father’s old revolver. It was kept loaded. Foster picked up the gun and slid the barrel into his mouth. “Goodbye” he thought. The look on Lizzy’s face, the life drained out of her fresh in his mind, he closed his eyes and started to squeeze before something flashed in the front of his brain. “The journal stupid!” Foster opened his eyes and took the gun out of his mouth. He set it down as he turned to his files and found a small leather bound notebook. He picked up the notebook and walked to the waste bin, and started pulling his pills out. Something stopped him from pulling out the last bottle, an anti-psychotic he took to treat his paranoid delusions and hallucinations he was prone to in his darker moments.

“You know you drink too much. That’s why I’m dead. You weren’t there to protect me Foster.” Lizzy said behind Fosters back. He turned to look at her, knowing she wasn’t really there. “ghosts now?” “Only the ones you want haunting you” “I can live with that.” the hallucination walked to Foster and wrapped her arms around him. “It’s okay. Read my journal...Read my journal...Read my journal” she was gone again after that. But Foster knew she’d be back to torment him later, but he wanted it, wanted the reminder of his failure and guilt, even more so after he started reading the journal.

…

Foster closed his eyes and found himself somewhere else, it was his favorite memory. He and Lizzy were seated at the top of a hill. Foster’s father had known a man who had lived in a retirement community nestled in the Northern California Bay Area hills. They’d been visiting some old friends of Foster’s while on a bender that had found them in the area, so Foster knew exactly where to go. The retirement community had a series of roads and houses that wove their way up into the hills, and at a certain point you could pull off to an overlook that allowed you to see all the way to San Francisco, it was the best view in the whole area. They sat smoking a joint Foster had smuggled in with him, he’d been able to talk the guard at the front gate into letting them in fairly easily, one thing Foster’s father had taught him, “Everyone can be bribed, its just a matter of knowing what with.”

They sat overlooking the city below them as the sun slowly faded beneath the horizon, but there was a moment when the sun hit Lizzy’s face just right, and her smile, an expression that made his heart sink just from recalling it. “This is how it should always be.” she said softly. She looked...at peace he had thought, and that made him feel peace, even if just for a brief moment, and he had decided right then he would always love her for that. For helping him see the beauty in the world even just for a second, instead of how ugly he knew it really was deep down. He remembered her this way now, and he felt the tinge of anger again. Foster opened his eyes again. Fists clenched. He started making preparations immediately.

...

A half hour later the RV started up, Foster thought he could see Elizabeth in the passenger seat as the vehicle drove off, back towards Cremshaw County, back towards the people who had killed her. Because Foster had read the journal, had absorbed the information in it, and he knew that by the time all was said and done, he was going to need to kill a whole lot of people.