Truman

Truman got in.

"How was the bachelor party?" I asked. "Good weekend?" He went to his room, shut the door, nothing unusual. "How many hookers did you have to bury?"

When I went to work the next morning he was still in bed, door shut, still in bed when I got home. Under the weather, I thought.

Tuesday morning I woke up and pulled the covers over my head. The smell was back, some funky thing from the damp and dingy basement. It had been there before. But it was different this time.

I pulled back the shower curtain to see him there, fully-clothed in a tub of bloody water, fingers frozen dead around a razor. I called the police. I called Hector.

"What happened this weekend?!" Nothing unusual, Hector said. Except that Truman never showed.

I'm mad at him for a lot of reasons. Mad because we stopped talking. Mad because I never knew what was wrong. Mad because I have to move. Mad because he knew I'd find him.

They want me to say something at his funeral because I'm his oldest friend. Don't know that I could tell them anything they don't already know.