Fighting My Demons

by Marcelo Medone

“You need to eat something. Even if you don't want to,” my son said to me, firmly.

I sat down on the bed. Philip brought me a bowl of hot soup and made me take a spoonful. It was a thick chicken broth, rather tasteless. I managed to swallow three or four spoonful’s.

“I brought you a steak and mashed potatoes,” he added, showing me the plate he had set on the desk.

“Thank you. I'll eat it later. Sorry about the mess,” I said, trying to cover the syringes and needles with the sheets.

“If you keep doping, you're going to end up like Grandpa,” he said, with his adolescent directness.

My father, Philip Corrigan Senior, had been a prominent district attorney for many years, until his heroin addiction became apparent, and he had to leave public office amid increasingly frequent and hard-to-hide scandals. After gaining public recognition, his personal life took his entire career and threw him into the abyss.

When I was the age my son is now, he had told me: “You have to pick your battles well; don't waste your energy fighting the impossible.” He gave me this sage advice, but he spent his whole life fighting imaginary giants that plunged him into the lowest of human condition.

I don't want to end up like him, but I have genetics against me and inherited bad family habits. A bad combination. I have my fate marked, as clear as my first and last name.

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce”, as Karl Marx once said. This was what had happened in our family. My father's life had been a tragedy, which had sunk him first. Then, my mother, who could not stand it and committed suicide, and me, his only son. Foreseeably, I turned his legacy into a pathetic comedy.

With a total lack of imagination, when my only son was born, I also named him Philip, perhaps to see if the third time was the charm. In my case, I did not reach the academic or professional stature of my father, being a complete failure, becoming, due to the ups and downs of my life, a criminal, that is, the type of person my father dedicated himself to fighting professionally.

I became a bank teller, until I ended up in jail for stupidly trying to steal money from the place where I worked, thinking I was smarter than I really am. In prison, I ended up graduating as a petty criminal.

From the list of crimes and offenses in the Criminal Code, I think I have achieved too many, probably more than most of the prisoners in jails all over the country. Fortunately, I have not been caught again, even though I have made every possible mistake. Against all odds, in prison they said I looked like a respectable and intelligent man. They nicknamed me “Smart Phil”.

The one who does look like a fool is my son, Philip Corrigan III, who inherited my faults and added stupidity, cowardice and weakness. Though, deep down, I know he is a good boy.

“It would be good for you to eat something,” my son insisted, snapping me out of my reverie.

I looked at the plate with the steak and mashed potatoes and told myself that they could wait.

“Okay,” I said, “I'll try a bite later. Right now, I need some privacy.”

Philip looked at me with a reproachful expression.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” I said, just to clear the air.

My son left me alone and I tried to pull myself together. I went to the bathroom and took a long piss, feeling relieved to do so. Then I washed my face and looked in the mirror; I had a stubble and dark circles under my eyes that made me look dead. “You're going to have to pick your battles better,” I said to myself.

I stepped into the shower and felt the warm water soften my stiff muscles from lying in bed for so many hours. I massaged my hair with the shampoo and let the suds work their way down my body. I had a powerful erection and masturbated standing under the shower until my legs cramped, and I had to kneel to ejaculate into the drain grate.

I got out of the shower, dried off and dressed in light sports clothes. I was hungrier than a wolf.

I put some background music on my stereo. As I listened to Moanin' by Charles Mingus, I devoured the food Philip had left for me. I love jazz. It had always seemed to me that Blues and Roots was Mingus' best album, with the ensemble of his masterful bass and saxophones.

Being totally happy, I decided not to fight my demons this time. With the dexterity of habit, I injected myself with a good dose of heroin. I felt I was heir to the addiction tradition of Mingus, Charlie Parker and so many other jazz musicians, even though I was a miserable loser with no art to contribute to Humanity.

I felt my room take on a minuteness of detail, how the world expanded wherever I laid my eyes. I felt my heartbeat steadier and slower, as if every beat mattered. Time stretched until every second lasted a blissful eternity. A surge of pleasure invaded every corner of my brain, giving me a million reasons to stay alive in such a miserable world.

I was at the height of my private ecstasy when the door to my room opened and a figure who looked too much like me walked in.

“He-hello, Philip, I see you ha-haven't learned a-anything” he said, stammering. My father stammered when under pressure, something we have all inherited to a greater or lesser degree. Being stoned saved me this annoying inconvenience.

It was hard to recognize him. He looked more like his younger self than I remembered him. Now I looked older than my own father.

“What are you doing here? Leave me alone!” I spoke.

“I ca-came to say go-goodbye.”

“A lifetime together has made us inseparable.”

“We are of the same flesh and blood, but we are separated by a generation and a world. In the end, we each choose our own path,” he said, no longer stammering.

“Impossible to avoid my fate,” I replied. “The evidence is there for all to see. The only difference is that I don't intend to die alone in a puddle of vomit and urine like you.”

“Don't think you're so special and invulnerable,” he replied, as he cupped his face in his hands and began to tear at his skin with his fingernails, which had grown into claws.

As Blues and Roots continued to play, I watched my father's face transform into a jumble of bones and bleeding flesh, with a pair of bulging eyeballs glaring mercilessly at me, while his lips muttered an unintelligible curse.

I felt an icy fear washing over me. My breathing almost stopped, and I felt unbearable nausea. I looked down, trying to avoid the horrifying sight.

“Don't shun me, you coward,” he said, with fatherly authority.

I looked up and tried to hold it steady. His eyes rolled slowly in their sockets, as if they were gloating at the spectacle they were putting on. Then they stopped and focused mercilessly on me. My father had become an implacable tyrant.

“You're a loser, you always were. But the succession line of losers ends with you,” he said, as he pulled the skin back over his skeleton and I could see his familiar face correctly.

Then my son turned and slammed the door.

Marcelo Medone (1961, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions nominee fiction writer, poet, essayist, journalist, playwright and screenwriter. He received numerous awards and was published in multiple languages in more than 50 countries around the world, including the US. He currently lives in Montevideo, Uruguay.