Complicated McKade

It had been one of those nights wherein McKade had attempted to probe the universe with his mind.

It ended up more that he had a song stuck in his head – some 90s hip-hop nonsense – instead of getting in to some kind of zen trance. "Well, fuck this shit," McKade hissed to Bobby, over the phone. "Clearly, I'm not the meditating sort."

"Why the fuck are you trying to meditate, anyway, you goofy shit?" Bobby asked, choking on a laugh. "You're white trash, coming from a shitty little whitewashed trailer – what place do you have, in meditating? Y'think you're Buddha, all of a sudden?"

McKade scowled, unseen. "Fuck off, you buttnut."

"Ho-ho! Mr. Enlightenment!" Bobby chortled.

McKade dropped the phone in to its cradle. He stared at it, bitter and annoyed. Thinking disjointedly, he snatched up the phone, and bashed it against the cradle a few times. Not wanting to break the silly fucking thing, he put it down gently, like an apology. Still scowling to himself, he flicked on his lamp. Hunched over his bed, like a sort of modern-day The Thinker parody, he fritzed a little in his head. Things in his mind were frozen in a kind of angry buzz.


"What's all this enlightenment nonsense about, Mickey?" was the unasked question.

What, indeed? He brooded, glancing over at his alarm clock. The digital numbers informed him that it was 4 AM. Bobby would be asleep by 6. Good riddance. He didn't count on Bobby calling back later; Bobb-o wasn't really the mollifying sort. McKade blew a raspberry at his wall posters, all images glorifying obscure concerts by bands all disbanded ages ago. He had nabbed them out of Donnie's room, when the doof died. Ma had complained a bit, saying stuff like, "It's disrespectful to keep that crap, Mickey."

Let everyone mourn how they will, Ma.

Maybe he figured that finding a spiritual side would ease some of the monotony of the scuff-rough life of a broke-ass nobody. He didn't distinctly know. McKade figured that any reason to find God was a good one. Apparently, God was being avoidant. Was it God he was looking for? Or Donnie? Or some sort of answer? He hated the whole 'destiny' hoohah. Hated more the idea of an entity wheeling him around, like some kind of Ken doll. Oh-ho! Today, Mickey will get his ass handed to him by some bikers, ho-ho-ho! That shall be much fun.

With Donnie dead, and Da elsewhere, McKade was left to his own wits for answers. Not that his chums wouldn't have advice.. it just wouldn't be "good" advice. "Get laid, you sorry fuck," would be most of the clout their ideas conjured. "Get a girl, get going, and shut the fuck up."

Hard to want a girl in a time of personal turmoil.

McKade was in a tight spot, that late-blooming teenage ki-yi about, "Who am I?", "Do I want to exist?", "Why do I exist – is there a meaning, or is it accidental?" All this mixed in with hints of suicidal thinking, and the odd notion about sticking around for Ma. His teen years were 5 years past, but that didn't stop the tide of questions and quests for revelations. With no friends to turn to, on the subject, he sat: he sat in his crooked little room, hunched over, waiting to feel tired, so that he could get on with the next day. The slanted roof hovered over his head, always threatening to leak, and mold. Always there, waiting to bop him on the noggin. It was there for him, at least.

Laying back down, he turned his sights to his piss-poor door. Slightly ajar, because it wouldn't close, McKade's door didn't protect him from his Ma's nightly drunken rambles. He didn't care about either fact – her being drunk, and talkative in the wee hours of the morning. She had her roots, she had her crutches. She had her little job in the kitchen, down Downie street. She would sleep until 3 PM; McKade would get up around the same time, to wander over to the construction sites. He would hammer at a wall, shoot the shit with Bobby, and the boys.

He wouldn't talk anymore about trying to find out what the universe wanted of him. He didn't care anymore.