Casting Bones

Chapter 6 - Part 1

Desi didn't remember what he did after pulling away from the park. He must have driven around for a while to cool his head, but he couldn't be sure really. It was a gap in his memory. A blank span of time. If he had no other explanation, he would have chalked it up to a glitch in the matrix.

But he was familiar with the concept of blackouts. Particularly, anger induced. His mother said that his father used to have them, and he'd get extremely violent. He left too early for Desi to know personally if that was true or not.

Desi wondered sometimes if his mother tested his father in the same way Ashley tested him...

What he did remember was looking at the clock on his dashboard and suddenly an hour had gone missing. It was creeping up on two in the morning now. Certainly they hadn't been arguing for that long. When had they left the party? Around midnight?

God he'd really fucked up. Ashley was probably still waiting at the park, assuming he's turn around to pick her up again. It wasn't the first time they'd stormed away from each other in the heat of an argument, after all. And he'd left her there waiting for over an hour because of a one off blackout?

When he circled around and returned to the park, it was still as empty as a graveyard. Desi even got out of the car and called for her, hoping maybe she'd found a set of swings to sit and wait on just out of his vision. When he howled though, all that returned his call was a screech owl, trilling calmly through the shadowy forest outskirting the park.

"Shit." Desi cursed to himself, considering his options. He could drive around for a while and look for her maybe? If she was smart and took a cab or called her parents she'd be home by now though. Her last words replayed in his head, and the worry that something had happened to her itched under his collar, but Desi tried to brush off the concern. Ashley was stubborn and impossibly irritating sometimes, but she wasn't stupid, and she definitely wasn't dependent on him.

He'd wait here, in case she showed up for some reason. Besides, he had nowhere else to go now anyway. He'd been bunking with her for a few weeks now, and certainly wasn't about to go home after the night he'd had. While a bed sounded nice at the moment, it wasn't much more tempting than the reclining chair of his vehicle when he stamped on the addition of his mother to the previous equation.

And besides, he had enough weed in his glovebox to help him forget this night even happened, for a little while at least.

Desi didn't like prerolling his joints; they always ended up dry and rough on the inhale. But nothing quite beat the convenience and disposability. Can't exactly stash a bubbler or pipe in your car as easy as you can a few joints, and while not ideal, a joint can be swallowed whole if necessary, which can't really be said for other forms of intake.

He always had two on hand. Enough to get him satisfyingly fucked up in an emergency situation. Much like this one. The park seemed as good a place as any, with not many houses within sight, and the darkness helping to shroud his activities further. So Desi got back into his car, cracked the window, and dug in his glovebox for his stash.

It was three quarters of the way down his first, after reclining his seat to lean back and give into the pleasant dizziness taking over, that Desi found the forgotten baggage left behind in his back seat.

"Shit." Desi stashed the joint between his lips as he reached, pulling Casper's messenger bag forward with him into the passenger seat. It was heavy. How did a brittle fuck like Casper carry that thing around all day? Desi didn't like snooping, but how else would he know whether or not Casper would need the bag back soon or if it could wait until Monday?

Inside was Casper's copy of their econ-textbook, as well as one for an introduction calculus class that Desi had put off until next semester; he'd never been very good at math. They made up the majority of the bulk, but along with them was a pair of sketchbooks, one seemingly untouched and another well used, a folded case with a zipper that, upon investigation, house rows of markers inside, and a paperback novel that was dog-eared to death, the title making Desi snort and nearly lose his joint with the ridiculous cliche.

"You would own a copy of The Satanic Bible." Desi shook his head with his teasing, flipping through to a folded page and trying to read what had been bookmarked, but it was dark and his vision was swimming so all the words ended up looking like a language he didn't know.

He put the book down and went for Casper's sketchbook next, splitting it open down the center and flipping through pages with one hand. Seriously, he didn't like snooping, and there was a little voice in his head that reminded him that it was a bit of an invasion of privacy, but the pot was numbing his ability to care and making his fingers itchy for something to browse through.

The pages were all filled to the margins, a mismatch of sketches, chicken scratch notes and practice calligraphy in different styles and languages, written between hand drawn guidelines. Some things were completed but most of the pages' content were left half finished, abandoned for something new, a sign of a scattered brain. Casper had folded a few pages from this book as well, where Desi found references that had been printed off and pasted into book. Some pages were hand written notes, tips about how to achieve more realistic angles or better use of lighting and shadows, while others he'd literally printed out a blog post and taped it haphazardly between the pages. Among the many photograph references, there were also alphabets for the different languages. Desi recognize Norse runes — or were they Celtic? Was there a difference? — as well as a few other symbols he didn't know. With the previous literary discovery in mind, it was probably some occult shit.

He preferred nature and animals as subjects, Desi noticed, with only a select few faces scattered among the pages. He tried not to, but found himself wondering if any of the faces were supposed to be him. More common were drawings that were obviously done just to practice different fur techniques and quick anatomy sketches of dogs, cats and different birds as helpful reminders. The sketches became more fleshed out as Desi flipped further through the pages, until they turned into full skeletal recreations, then detailed drawings of skulls and bones. Many of the animals, both the ones intended to be alive, and the skeletal ones, where antlered; Desi remembered him mentioning that he enjoyed drawing them. That would mean that most of the skulls Casper was replicated had to be some sort of deer, but then again, Desi was almost positive some of them weren't. What do rabbit skulls look like? That was a cryptid, right? A horned rabbit?

After browsing a few more pages to satiate his curiosity, Desi returned the books back to Casper's bag after getting his glimpse inside the boy's head, with his particularly weird but endearing art style, eerie hybrid animals, and detailed skeletons. Since he'd been distracted, Desi double checked the bag for anything else of interest, rummaging into the front and side pockets, but found only Casper's wallet, and a strange black stone that looked a bit like a piece of charcoal floating around in the bottom of the bag.

Everything else were things the boy could probably survive without for the weekend, but Desi imagined the wallet was one thing that warranted a timely return. Unfortunately, Desi was already pretty fucked up, and certainly in no state to be driving anymore that night. Nic always said that being high made him a better driver. Then again, Nic wasn't exactly what Desi would consider the shining example of good decisions right now.