WARNING: Story contains sensitive subjects. Reader's Discretion advised. See Author's Note for triggers.

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The worst part about still living with your folks at eighteen because you don’t have the means of living on your own being the totally unmotivated bum that you are is that at any moment they can just kick you out. This is especially true for someone like me, who is not only a slacker, but also a magnet for trouble. I almost felt sorry for them for having to put up with me all these years and I like to think that they do because they love me so much. Unfortunately, I think I have stretched that love to the limit this late afternoon. It was an elastic band quivering to snap and snap I think it did. At the very least, my parents certainly did, and on Christmas Eve no less.

So there I was standing on the stoop as the door was slammed in my face after literally being shoved out. I don’t think they were giving me the boot without anything considering all I had were the clothes on my back and my wallet. I didn’t even have my cell phone. I figured they just needed to cool off for a while. So I decided to go get me some smokes from the local 7/11, but just as I stepped out onto the drive it started raining. Lightly, but still dismally wet.

I hadn’t minded this sudden change in weather, but it was something I could have easily done without on that particular day. I shrugged to no one and slipped the hood of my zip sweater over my head.

Another unexpected event occurred not too long after I had bought my cigarettes from the gas station. The tobacco stick had long since gone out from the moist air and just hung limp between my lips. I was too lazy to re-light it or take another out, it seemed fruitless to me at the time. I just liked the feeling of something there. Oral fixation I supposed it was called. I felt I was on a trek to nowhere but my feet had carried me toward the boardwalk in our town.

I lived in a relatively small town but not small enough to where everyone was in your business and knew your name. It was a beach town actually, in Florida along the gulf side. The boardwalk wasn’t so much that than a semi-large dock with railing near our little port. It was more like a little cousin of a boardwalk or pier. It also happened to be pretty empty that day except for a figure right at the end.

I hadn’t really taken notice or interest in this person as I moved further down the wide dock. My mind was jumping from one random thing to another in a lame attempt to keep myself distracted and warn off boredom. My thoughts drifted to that odd hobo just outside the 7/11 when I got about a yard and a half away, maybe less. The homeless man had been rambling about shit that had made no sense, something they do often don’t they? I wondered if he had been a professor or writer before he lost everything. One specific thing he had seemed to be yelling at me rang in my mind again. “It’s the floaty men, dude…they’re here to steal your soul and put it in a little star-shaped glass box…” He had continued to shout ludicrous rubbish as I left.

“Crazy fucker,” I mumbled and laughed to myself.

It was about this time, only several feet away, that I registered the guy standing on the top part of the wood railing right at the corner.

He was dressed all in black like he was going to a funeral and by the look of it maybe his own. He must have been freezing since his shoes, jacket, and scarf were in a pile behind him on the dock. This may be Florida but it can get pretty chilly in the winter and the rain didn’t help. Even I shivered a bit once in a while. So he basically stood up there with just a pair of skinny jeans and a thin long sleeved shirt that whipped around a bit from the wind coming off the ocean. Christ even his semi-short hair was black as night and his skin pale as snow.

It was about that time of just staring at this kid who was looking out at the crashing waves of the Gulf of Mexico, that I realized I might have stumbled across some goth’s suicide attempt. I took a step closer.

I think he may have sensed me, because barely a second later he glanced over his shoulder at me. I had to admire his balance because he didn’t even wobble in the least. He seemed surprised at first as well when his eyes landed on me, I think they were blue but it was hard to tell from where I stood. However, after the initial shock of my presence wore off his brows furrowed and dipped inward. He was definitely glaring at me.

I don’t know why I did it or decided to do it, I still don’t but I smiled at him with a strong sense of motivation (or maybe determination) in my heart that I never felt before.

“Hey buddy, how’s your Christmas going?” I asked.

Obviously not so well because he simply snarled and shouted, “Go away!” before he stared back at the sea.

I approached the railing to his left and leaned against it with my folded arms on the top rail. I watched the waves that crashed against the dock’s supports and whistled loudly, “Whoa, man, looks pretty intense out there.”

From my peripherals I observed as he said nothing and merely clenched his fists then shifted his weight. It was clear he hadn’t bargained anyone disrupting him out here especially someone like me. I bet my casualness unnerved and irritated him. I turned my head fully to get a closer look at his face or rather the side of it. He looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place him. I probably had just seen him around town somewhere most likely at where I worked the local grocery store.

“That salt water is probably pretty cold, dude,” I said when I looked down at it once more. He mumbled something but I hadn’t quite caught it. I didn’t bother to ask him to repeat himself but slipped out of my shoes and stepped onto the next rung in just my socks. I flicked my hardly smoked cigarette out into the waves.

“What are you doing?” He asked alarmed.

“I think the real question here is, what are you doing?” I winked at him.

“None of your damn business!” He snapped.

I tilted my head before I pointed out, “Your eye-liner is running.”

He seemed to instinctively touch his lids and underneath his eyes, a brief panicked concern for his appearance. It made me chuckle which once more got him annoyed.

“What is your problem, can’t you just fuck off?!”

“Nah,” I supplied shaking my head. “Got nothing better to do.”

He groaned and went silent. We remained in this silence with only the nature of noises surrounding us. There was a strange sense of peace to it that I had to admit I kind of liked but this was no time for reverie and contemplation of the universe. It was time for action.