David Russell Hall

Craig called me up one night, at about three in the morning, to tell me that he had taken some strange pills and was probably going to die. He was remarkably cheerful about it. I thought he was drunk.

‘Where did you get the pills?’ I asked him.

‘Some guy’s cupboard,’ he told me. ‘I had two! I mean, I don’t know what those things were. They could be for anything.’

‘What did they look like?’ I asked him.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Like pieces of chalk. For all I know you’re supposed to clean the toilet with them.’

‘Well, who did you get them from?’

‘Nobody, we just found them.’

‘You just found some toilet cleaning pills, so you thought you’d pop a couple?’

‘Yeah, man, pretty much. Oh, God, Sandy’s passed out. I think he’s stopped breathing….’ He paused. ‘No. wait. He’s okay.’ I could hear Sandy giggling in the background at this point.

‘Where did you find them?’

‘The pills? In some cupboard in the bathroom. I’m feeling pretty sleepy now, man.’

‘Which bathroom? Whose cupboard? Craig?’

‘Sandy took a light. You know, one of those UV ones?’

‘What about the pills? Did he take them, too?’

‘Yeah, well, he took half of one. He’s a pussy. He was going to take both halves but he chickened out on me.’

‘Whose idea was it to take them in the first place?’

That was a stupid question. Sandy and Craig didn’t have ideas, they just escalated each other into madness. When they lived together in fourth year, they stole a garden, right down to the last gnome.

‘Well, I’m going to bed now. Night, Quinn.’

‘Are you okay, Craig?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I’m probably going to die.’

‘Right. Sleep well.’

‘Chuh. Okay, well, look, goodbye.’

‘Right.’

Of course, I threw on some clothes and prepared to dash around there right away.

‘Frank,’ I shouted. ‘Frank!’

Frank showed up in his boxer shorts.

‘Did you break my fucking record?’

‘Frank,’ I said, ‘it’s Craig. He’s taken some crazy pills.’

‘Another mystery solved,’ Frank said.

‘Seriously, I think he’s poisoned himself.’

‘How many did he take?’ Frank said.

‘Two,’ I said. ‘He found them in some cupboard at a party.’

‘Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about it.’

‘They could be fucking anything, he says.’

‘Two of anything won’t kill you,’ Frank said. He turned to leave.

‘Aren’t you fucking coming?’ I asked.

‘My work here is done.’

‘You can’t be so fucking sure,’ I said, churning with frustration.

‘No,’ Frank said. He shrugged.

‘He’s a mate,’ I said. ‘He’s a mate.’

‘And one of the many advantages of a medical background is not needing to give a shit when your mates go rooting through the medicine cabinet.’

‘I’m fucking going anyway,’ I said.

‘I know.’

‘Seriously, Frank. What do I fucking do?’

‘Chill out,’ he said. ‘Maybe take one of those pills.’

I ran across the Fife Park car park in a dirty T-shirt, with no socks on under my trainers.

The block door was ajar, so I pelted right up to Craig’s landing. I literally stumbled on Sandy, as I got there. He lay, curled in a foetal position, cradling a metre long strip light.

‘Are you okay Sandy?’ I asked. He was shivering. His forehead was beaded with sweat.

‘New level!’ he said. ‘New level.’

Craig’s door was open, and he was on his bed, staring up at the ceiling.

‘Craig,’ I said.

I stood in the doorway, not wanting to enter without an invitation, despite myself.

‘Hey Quinn,’ Craig said. ‘What’s up?’

‘You called,’ I said.

‘Mm.’

‘You took some pills.’

‘And a blacklight.’

‘How are you feeling?’ 

‘He just unplugged it and put it on the windowsill,’ Craig said.

‘The light?’

‘Yeah. We were at a party.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know, do I? Oh, God, it was yahed-up to the max.’

‘You got the pills at the party?’

It was detective work. Craig was evidently fucked out of his face, and Sandy was dribbling on the carpet.

‘Everyone was watching him like he’d gone crazy. But he just walked out of the room calm as a breeze. Then when we got outside he grabbed it from the other side, and ran like hell.’

‘The pills, though.’

‘Yeah, we stole those too. From the bathroom cupboard!’

‘Okay. That makes sense. Can I see the pills? Are there any left?’

‘Sandy’s got them.’

He did. He was clutching about five or six of them in one sweaty palm.

They looked like horse pills. There was no way that they were intended for human consumption, and you’d have to have been a fool to think so. I laughed despite myself.

‘Well, you’re in unfamiliar territory here,’ I said.

They were oval shaped, and had little green speckles in them. They did seem to be made of chalk.

It’s possible you were meant to dissolve them in something. It’s also possible that you were meant to clean toilets with them. They didn’t smell of anything. I half expected them to smell like herbal extract, or bath salts. If they had been scented lavender, then everything would have fallen into place. My mind was running over what I should do. I couldn’t think of a thing that made sense.

I took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to do anything. Not this time.

I wasn’t going to run around being the one who was worried all the time. Fucking Craig wasn’t even worried, and he had two toilet pills in his gut. Frank wasn’t worried. Sandy wasn’t... Well, Sandy was licking a stolen blacklight, I wasn’t about to take his views into account. The only person who was worried was me. I don’t even know why Craig called me. Maybe he just figured someone should be worried, and he thought of me first.

I wasn’t going to be that guy. No fucking way was I going to be the person everyone thought of as the worrier. And, I guess it was just coincidence, but I was finding it increasingly harder to be worried as new information emerged.

Maybe a bit of Frank was rubbing off on me after all, but it just seemed so unlikely that anything bad would happen. You can’t swallow a comedy sized pill and die, I thought. That just doesn’t make sense. That would be like choking to death on a clown nose.

‘I think that you’re probably going to die,’ I said to Craig. The words felt light on my tongue.

It was a curious mix of possible and improbable. It was funny. Craig thought so, too.

‘So I’m going home,’ I said. ‘Nothing to do, here.’

‘Well, night mate,’ he replied.

‘You going to shut the door?’ I asked.

‘No, no. I think I might just leave it.’

‘Right.’

‘New level,’ Sandy added.

‘Well, then. I think I’m going back to bed.’

‘Right.’

‘Bye,’ I said.

The next day, shopping for peaches and toothpaste in Tesco, I caught sight of a shelf full of bubble bath. I don’t know why I was drawn to it. There weren’t any baths in FifePark. I couldn’t get it out of my head. It was on special, I guess. Later on in the day, I turned up on the DRH landing with a bottle of bubble bath and a towel.

Craig was fine. Sandy was stressing about something, which was as fine as he was going to get in essay season. I went and had a nice long soak. We never figured out what the pills were, but I suppose it doesn’t matter.