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ecotone99 · 4 years

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[FN] Good Luck to Rodger

It all started when Rodger died nine years ago, three days before my ninth birthday. He was almost my dad’s brother they were such close friends, even through college and into their lives after they graduated. They were each other’s best man, and did nearly everything together. We could’ve been two generations of best friends, but his wife and child died in labor. His child and I would’ve been born on the same day, September 27th, 1999. After that, he became my godfather and second dad. He moved just down the road from us, so he was always there. He was my only babysitter, and one of my best friends growing up, even though he was my dad’s age. I was six when he was diagnosed with stage three cancer in his brain, lungs, and liver. For twenty-one months, he had extensive chemotherapy three days a week. On my eighth birthday, he called my house in tears. He had just come back from the doctor, and his tumors were gone. After that, he was the happiest and busiest man I had ever met. But even with his new life and full schedule, he always had time for me. But six months later, he collapsed while we were out at the lake. My dad drove him to the hospital to see what was wrong. It turned out he had lied about his cancer. The doctors told him he had just about a year to live, and that’s why he was in tears when he was on the phone. His new and busy life was him fulfilling his bucket list. The doctors said he had days to live, but his stubborn ass lasted three more months. His cancer had spread to his bones, both kidneys, prostate, colon, small and large intestine. My family visited him every week after we moved him to hospice. Now, I didn’t know that it was hospice, and no one ever told me what it really was. I just thought he moved into an apartment with a lot of old people and hospital workers. Rodger’s new apartment was a pretty dismal looking one. It was small, a lot smaller than his house. And there was nothing of his either. His old futon that he loved so much that used to sit in his man cave in front of his gigantic flat screen TV mounted over a beautiful cobblestone fireplace, was replaced by a ratty looking, worn down couch. It wasn’t too comfortable. The springs would almost poke through all layers of fabric between the probably rusted metal and the skin of your ass. Beige paint covered the walls instead of the royal blue I had chosen for his man cave. The tan carpet was torn and frayed around every door in his now tiny living quarters was a massive change from his grey, surprisingly thick and soft shag carpet I loved to roll around on. His main living room didn’t really have a large window, but a small window did shed some natural sunlight onto one corner of the room. The main light source was multiple lamps. One old looking, high hanging chandelier in the middle of the room that looked like a stained glass window, but it was made of plastic. Rodger lifted me up on his back to let me see the texture and examine the lamp. There was a floor lamp on one side of the ratty couch made of what looked like bronze. And a table lamp with a broken shade on a round end table with three feet. His bathroom was an odd room. White tile lined the walls, making what Rodger called “an easy to clean room”. The floor was made of sandy tile about an inch square, and really rough cement stuff keeping them on the floor. Right in front of the door, the normal size window gave a nice country-ish view of a lush green forest. To the left of the door was a linen closet filled with bed sheets and towels. Further into the bathroom, past the closet was the sink was built right into the wall, with a gigantic mirror, almost wall to wall, under a chrome light fixture. Opposite the sink and little cupboards under the sink was the walk in shower/bathtub with a foldable seat and little hand rail. The toilet was located behind the wall for the shower heads and faucet closer to the door. There was another door in the apartment leading to Rodger’s bedroom. His door was always shut, and Rodger never let me go in. I don’t understand why he never did, but I just brushed it off and obeyed my second, non-blood dad. I’m glad I did listen to him, because I knew it made him happy when I did. Little did I know I wouldn’t be seeing his smile in the near future. Physically he didn’t look like he was dying, but he had no energy to do anything. Every time we’d come to his room, he was sitting on the couch watching something on TV. When he’d see me, he’d stand up. Over time- as I think back on it- he stood up slower and slower, like he had no energy to at all. After a greeting and the normal smalltalk with my parents, they would leave for an hour or so and leave me alone with Rodger. All we did when we came to visit was play Wii games. His favorite was Super Smash Bros. Brawl playing as Mewtwo. He’d always beat me, whether it was lives, timed, with or without items, or with CPU. When my parents did come back, we’d play a few races of Mario Kart, which was my favorite. The adults talked about stuff I didn’t pay attention to because I was too engulfed by the game. Some lucky nights, Rodger would let me stay really late, and every night, he would tell me a story. He called it ‘The Existence Story’.

Long before even dinosaurs alive, there were only two of anything; Eternal and Mortality. Since Mortality knew one day her aura would be extinguished, she created another so Eternal would not be lonely. She called her creation a ‘child’, who they called ‘Son’, and together they were happy. They gave themselves roles to educate Son in all the things they knew, and they gave themselves titles along with their names; Father Eternal and Mother Mortality. But Son sought the companionship of someone aside from Eternal and Mortality. His parents knew of his unhappiness, and made him companions, one in the image of each of them. Son named his new companion shaped by his father ‘Lucifer’, and the companion created by his mother, ‘Evangeline’. After the three were very fast friends, Father Eternal and Mother Mortality created more and more companions, not just for Son but for the two of his companions as well. After a while, Son and Evangeline fell in love. Eternal wanted their relationship to be special, so he bonded their auras as one. Soon after their union, Mother Mortality’s time with her family had come to an end. Father Eternal named her end as ‘dying’. Son took his mother’s end very hard, and left his family, taking with Lucifer and many other companions. Father Eternal renamed his banished child ‘Death’, and his love, the woman he left behind, ‘Life’. As time went on, Life missed her love greatly, so she gave him gifts. Hundreds of thousands of gifts; living beings, creatures of her own devising. Together, they created a realm for her gifts that both could could see and visit. And all their actions went unknown to Father Eternal. But when he did find out, he was furious, and cursed the gifts with Mortality’s curse of ‘dying’. And when her beings did die, they wanted to join Eternal in his realm of what they called ‘Heaven’. He knew they would stain his realm, so as a compromise between his child and his love, they created a new realm for the souls of her beings to stay in after they die, leaving ‘Earth’ forever. I never knew about everything in that story he told me. But I always thought there was a big reason behind why he told it to me.

The last day I saw him, we didn’t play Wii, and he didn’t tell me the story. Usually, when we came to visit, he was waiting on the couch for us. But that day was different, he was in his room. Because of that fact alone, I should’ve known something was wrong, but my young, eight year old mind didn’t make a connection. I rushed in, and skidded on my heels when I saw him. He was laying in his bed connected to a heart monitor with about five IVs all over his arms, chest, and neck, and an oxygen tube going into his nose. At that age, I always thought those tubes that went into your nostrils went all super far into your nose, not just chilling there at the edge. But I had never seen one outside of someone’s nose, so I had no idea.. His face was ghoulish, all sunken and as pale as the sheets. The dark bags around his eyes gave me the creeps. He looked way worse than he did not eight days before. He asked the three of us, my mom, dad, and me, to see him privately one by one. First mom, then dad, then me. Mom took about ten minutes alone with Rodger. When she came out, I could tell she had been crying, but she put in a tough face and sat down next to dad. She said something to dad, and he went into Rodger’s room. He took closer to a half hour alone with his lifelong best friend. I didn’t understand what was going on, I was too young to. I just played Mario Kart while mom and dad went in to see Rodger. Finally, when dad came out, he was a little more composed than mom, but his face was clouded, like he had a million thoughts running through mind. “Hey, buddy,” he said through a sniff. “Rodg wants to see you now.” “Gimme a minute,” I said as I turned my attention back to Mario Kart. “I’m about to win Rainbow Road.” “He wants to tell you something really important,” mom said. “He’ll understand,” I kept my attention on the screen in front of me. “I’ll tell him,” dad opened the door to Rodger’s room and told him. He went in and came out really quick. He grabbed the remote and started turning up the volume. “He wants to hear you win.” He said through a laugh. “Why can’t he come out of his room?” I asked. “He’s really sleepy,” mom said through a sniffle. “And he can’t get out of bed.” “Oh okay,” I shrugged and kept steering my cart around the rail-less track. When the music played for me to finish 1st, I heard a loud whistle come from Rodger’s room. I saved the data and ran into his room. When I got closer, I slowed down and approached his bed very gingerly. “Heard you win!” He said weakly. At that, I perked up, grinning and smiling like a psycho. “Gimme some skin, my man!” He slowly and shakily raised his hand. Me being the idiot I was at that age, I slapped his hand as hard as I could, just like I always did. His hand fell out of the air and hit the bed with a depressing thump. “Wow, you’re really getting strong,” he smiled. Then he started coughing. It was a weak and sad cough, but his entire body shook like he was holding a live power line every time his diaphragm expelled the air from his lungs. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “You don’t look so good.” I looked at his face, but my eyes couldn’t meet his. His sunken eyes gave me the chills. I stared at the bridge of his nose between his eyes at the small horizontal ridge he said came from a football dad threw that hit the bridge piece of his glasses when the two of them were still in high school. Ever since I met him, I had never seen him with glasses, but he swore he used to wear them. And he never swore- until a few months ago… when he said he didn’t have cancer anymore… “Yeah, yeah,” he wheezed. “I’m just feeling a little under the weather, that’s all.” He gave me a smile and a wink just like he always did to get a smile out of me. But this time, no smile came. “Will you be better next week?” I kept staring at the bridge of his nose. “I finally unlocked Baby Daisy!” He laughed, but it sounded more like a cough, but not his body racking cough. “Heh heh. Kid, the next time you come over, we’re unlocking Daisy and I’ll kick your ass again in Brawl.” I looked down at my shoes. He used language I wasn’t allowed to say, and he knew it. My parents didn’t like him to say all those things around me, but he did it when it was just the two of us. He coughed twice more, and both times I winced at the sight. They looked like they hurt him so much. I crawled on the bed and gave him the best hug I could. “Whoa hey, careful about all my tubes,” He said, gently moving me to one side rather than right on top of him. I couldn’t tell if he was really trying to push me and was too weak, or just wanted me to get the idea I needed to move. “I wish I could make your cancer go away and you could feel all better. And we could go back to the lake, and we could build that gigantic sand castle we were going to,” I said as I rested my head on his bony shoulder. “Yeah… yeah me too, kid…” Rodger patted and rubbed my back. I could feel a tube or two on my back. It was creepy, like he was a puppet or something and the tubes were his loose strings. “You know, before you were born, did you know I had a girl just like Drake has Cindy?” He always called my parents by their first names. Except when he was being sarcastic or trying to let them allow something we could do. “What was her name?” I asked, rolling over and sitting on my feet. “Her name was Taylor,” He gazed up at the ceiling. “And she was the most beautiful woman I had ever met.” “Have I met her?” “Oh, Adrien… I really wish you could’ve…” “Why can’t I?” This time, it was him who sniffled. “She, ah- she died, Adrien. She died when you were born.” I got a little scared when he said that. “Did she die because I was born?” “No, no,” He laughed his cough laugh. “She didn’t die because you were born. She died because she was giving birth to our child.” “Did he make Taylor die?” I asked. He stayed quiet for a long time. In my mind, it felt like hours, but really it was probably only a minute or so. He just lay there, blinking away tears, his chest rising and falling quickly with shallow breaths. “I don’t know if he did or not,” his voice broke as he said it. “I’ve asked myself that question every day. Many times a day. But I can never know the real answer.” “I’m sorry, Rodger,” I said, petting his hand that didn’t have any IVs in it. “It’s cool, man,” he sniffed. “It’s alright.” He strained to sit up and move back on the bed so his back rested against the backboard. “Hey, I have something for you.” He flicked my hands away with a jerk of his hand and reached behind his pillow. “I got this a really long time ago. Around the time that you were born. I was going to wait for your eighteenth birthday, but I’m just too excited.” He pulled out a turtle pendant on a metal bead chain I had never seen before. It looked crudely made, not very symmetrical in the design. It was no larger than my thumb, and the hole for the chain went right through its neck. “What is it?” I asked as I took it. I rolled it around in my hand, studying its every detail. “It’s a necklace,” Rodger said with his cough laugh. “Was it Taylor’s?” “Nah. Just something I acquired from- someone you don’t know, right before she died,” He gripped my wrist and gently wrapped my fingers around the wooden turtle. “I’ve kept it safe for nine years. I want you to keep it safe for nine times ninety years.” I looked at him with a rather confused look, trying to do the math in my head, but my eight-year-old brain couldn’t multiply that high yet without a pad of paper and a pencil. “Can you do that for me? Look me in the eyes- and promise me you’ll keep it safe, no matter what happens. Can you promise me that, Adrien?” I knew he was being serious when he told me to look him in the eyes. He only said that when things were super important to be mature and very serious. “I promise, Rodger. I’ll keep it safe for nine times ninety years for you.” He patted my cheek. “Good man.” He sighed, a deep and painful sounding sigh. “I always thought of you as my son.” I didn’t know how to react to that. “Yeah, I know.” “I love you, Adrien. I’ve loved you since the day I met you.” “And I love you, Rodger.” “Gimme one last hug before you go, huh?” He slowly stretched out his arms. I gave him one of the best hugs I could trying not to crush his tubes like he asked me. As we hugged, I heard him softly crying. As I got up, I told him, “Don’t cry. I’ll see you again next week at my birthday party!” “Yeah- it is your birthday next week, isn’t it?!” Rodger said with what sounded like forced enthusiasm. “If I don’t see you on your birthday, happy ninth birthday!” “Thanks, Rodger! See you next week!” I waved behind me as I left his room. “Hey, Adrien,” Rodger called out. “Could you please close the door on your way out? I want to take a nap.” I shut the door behind me and held onto the handle for a second or so. I thought I heard Rodger say, “Have you come to take me to Taylor?” but I didn’t pay attention to it and went over to the couch where mom and dad were sitting. Dad had his head in mom’s lap, and there was a wet spot on her jeans by his eyes. I thought about showing them the turtle necklace Rodger gave to me, but I heard a voice in my head say, “Don’t show them. Just put it in your pocket for now. You can show them after you get home. Tell them you’re hungry.” It wasn’t my voice, and I had never heard the voice before, but I knew I could trust it. “I’m hungry,” I obeyed the voice in my head. “Can we go get McDonald’s?” “Not yet, sweetie,” Mom said, wiping at her red and puffy eyes. “Let’s- let’s go home before we go out anywhere, okay?” I shrugged. I was getting McDonald’s, so I was satisfied.

Rodger Inkren’s funeral was two days after my birthday. Out of respect for him, I even wore the tie he got me even though I hated ties. I wore the necklace he gave me under my shirt too. After his funeral, the necklace sat on my dresser, collecting dust until I was fifteen. I decided to wear it for the first time after Rodger’s funeral on my birthday. When my parents asked me where I got the turtle, I told them a friend gave it to me, and when my friends asked I told them a story about a crazy cashier in Florida. I don’t really know why I lied about it, maybe because of what happened the night after his funeral. I had one of the weirdest dreams I’ve ever had. It started out completely black, nothing at all. No light, no sound, nothing. Then, there was a brilliant flash of light, and all my senses went berserk. My eyes only saw white, my nose was suddenly filled with my favorite scents all at once; Rodger’s aftershave, blue raspberry, wintermint, the ocean salts, and so many others that got mixed together all at one blew into my nose. I heard nature, like crickets, crashing waves, and gusting wind shaking leaves. But also a guitar and piano playing the same melody, and a drum set playing along with a mellow beat. I pressed my hands to my ears, and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to give my brain a chance to process everything. I slowly pulled my hands away from my ears, and the sounds were the same, but much quieter, nearly a perfect pitch. I opened my eyes, and saw the most amazing sight I had ever seen. A beautiful reef, turquoise water surrounded by and endless ring of deep blue. A small island was in the middle of the reef, covered in a beautiful white sand. Suddenly, I was falling towards the island, but it didn’t feel like I was falling. I finally stopped, maybe ten or twenty meters above the ground. I looked down towards the island, and out of the sand grew a little sapling. It spun and grew into a gigantic tree. As it grew, I grew farther and farther away from it, so the whole tree was in the exact center of my sight line. It blossomed into flowers I had never seen before. Beautiful, rainbow colored flowers, similar to waterlilies. And I smelled a scent I had never smelled before and can’t even begin to describe, but I loved it, and always wanted to smell it. Slowly the petals fell away, littering the island in a beautiful blanket of now salmon colored pedals. Suddenly, a section of the tree grew brown and shriveled, all the leaves falling off and giving the salmon blanket a blemish of brown. The once beautifully blue sky turned dark, and a thunderstorm raged all around me. It calmed ever so slowly, to a cloudy sky. The tree bloomed again, giving the island the blanket of petals, all except for the patch with no leaves. Some pedals did fall on the sand underneath, but there was a clear break in the blanket. I heard a crack, and all the beautiful sounds I heard came to a sudden halt. The branches that had no leaves fell to the sand. I heard what seemed like a thousand voices screaming in agony as they fell in slow motion. The screams weren’t loud, but I could tell there were a lot of singular voices all screaming at once. When the branches hit the sand, it shook the entire island. The tree cracked down the middle, splitting the entire island forming a chasm. Down the center of my sight line, a purple border stretched where the chasm split the tree. On my right side, the tree continued to cycle through blossoming the sky staying a perfect blue and the sand as white as ever, But the tree on my left withered away and stayed a skeleton tree, growing darker along with the surrounding sand and water. Suddenly, I was flying up over the tree again, that purple border still splitting my vision in two. My right eye seeing the lighter side, my left eye seeing the darker. I stopped directly over the split tree. Towards the top of my vision, around the island, the purple border split at the island beach, creating a third section. This one was a muddy green, against the turquoise and black waters. A volcano came out of the water, creating an island. It grew and grew, then more and more islands came to life. They formed the familiar shape of Hawaii. Planes and boats came into view, passing through and around the purple border between the waters. At the bottom of my vision, I saw the purple border split again at the island beach. Between the new border, grey water appeared. Nothing else came to life in that section. Just an opaque ocean of plaster gray. As I stared, I fell towards the turquoise water. I closed my eyes and braced myself for the cold plunge into the water. Just before I hit the surface, I stopped. I opened my eyes and saw I was about three feet off the surface of the sea, about ten meters away from the beach. A large turtle the size of a pizza stone crawled up off the beach and towards the tree. From the other side of the tree, the dark side, a figure stepped out. A closer look told me it was a man, a tall and moderately built man. He wore a very fancy looking three-piece suit. It was the color of charcoal, with matching black wingtip shoes and socks. The most unusual part about his was that he had a tail. A scaly looking tail, not a lizard’s, but a scaly one. It swung back and forth as he walked, all curled up looking like a really stare, unglazed cinnamon roll. He walked over to the turtle and picked it up with a smirk. The ease and swiftness of the motion told me this man was unnaturally strong for his size. The turtle ducked into its shell, and the man ran back onto the dark side of the island and back around the tree. Then, my head was violently pulled under the water’s surface and slower but steadily dragged me deeper by ankle. It was freezing cold, I couldn’t see anything, and it got up my nose and in my mouth. I tried to swim up to the surface, but something was forcing me farther and farther down. I looked down and saw a bony hand gripping around my bare ankle. I gargled a scream and kicked at the hand, but my efforts to get it off seemed to do me more damage than the hand. I looked up towards the surface of the water growing further and further away, knowing I’d never be able to make it back up. I closed my eyes, and let the darkness of the water engulf me. Just as I did, the pressure of the water was gone, but I didn’t dare open my eyes. I heard multiple voices out of different conversations I didn’t recognize. First, a man’s voice, “The Master of Time has been stolen.” Then a woman’s, “No one must know, especially Father” Third, the man who told me not to show my parents the necklace Rodger gave me, “Take it, brother. Keep it safe.” And finally, a third man’s voice, “Whoever has taken him shall pay greatly for their transgressions to our family.”

I screamed as I woke up, nearly falling off my bed. As my eyes adjusted to the lack of light in my room, I could’ve sworn I saw Rodger standing in the corner of my room. I scurried away from him towards the corner of the room my bed is in. Once I hit the wall, I froze, not knowing what would happen next. He stood in the corner, not moving a muscle, but after a while of heavy breathing on my end, he put a finger to his lips and made a shushing gesture with his lips. He moved his finger from his lips and pointed to his chest, right about at his sternum. Right where his turtle necklace hung on my chest. I saw him mouth the words, “Keep it safe,” then he disappeared with a smile, and I fell asleep again with a similar smile plastered on my face, knowing I was the last person to see him, feeling satisfied with something that I couldn’t quite put my hands on. After that night, every month on the 27th, I would always get that same dream. And every time, when I would wake up in the middle of the night, screaming and sticky from sweat, I’d look to see if I’d see Rodger had appeared again. I never did see him again. But on the night of September 27th, 2017, something different happened. I had the dream again and everything was the same, except when the people started talking. “The Master of Time has been stolen.” “No one must know.” “Take it, brother. Keep it safe.” When it was time for the fourth man to say his line, he said something different. “The boy has it.” At this change to something so frequent, it shocked me awake. Again, I was sticky with sweat, but I wasn’t screaming. Everything was quiet. Too quiet. Even for the late hour. I sat in bed for what felt like hours, but in reality probably was a minute. Then, a gentle double knock came from my closed bedroom door. There was a bright light coming between the doorframe. Another pair of knocks. “Adrien?” the woman from my dream asked from the other side of the door. “Adrien? Can I come in?” I was just about to answer her when the voice of the third man from my dream came from my closet door with a knock. “Adrien, let me in. C’mon Adrien.” I looked over at my closet door right next to the door leading to the hallway. The edge of the doorframe seemed to be darker than the surrounding red and grey walls, like my closet was sucking in all surrounding light. I stood up and got out of bed, not know what to do. “Please, Adrien?” the woman asked again. “Everything is alright. Please just open the door for me.” “Don’t let the fancy lights of Life distract you, Adrien,” the man in my closet said. “That’ll get you nowhere. Listen to me, listen to-” The crystal tink of something striking a glass pierced my eardrums. It sounded so loud and shocked me so bad, I jumped and spun around to see what made the noise. A metal, grape Fanta lid from a soda bottle sat on top of my keyboard, next to the glass of water I had taken up to my room. It had been a surprisingly warm September, and my room would always get too hot, so I had opened my window above my desk to help cool off my room. I look outside and see Jackson, my best friend, jumping around and waving his arms in my driveway just out of reach of the motion sensitive lights. I looked back at my two doors, and both were dark. The door to my hallway is dark and the door to my closet looked lighter than before. Through my confusion, I turned back to my window and poked my head out, just to get nailed in the forehead by a small pebble. “Sorry!” Jackson hisses up to me. “Yo, midnight adventure with Audrey and Becky?” I stuck my head back inside and looked around. It was 1:37 in the morning. I stuck my head back outside. “Where are they?” “Down the street. C’mon! It’s gonna be cold soon! We gotta get the last of the warm ones in for the year!” “Give me five!” I yelled in a whisper down to Jackson. He gave me two thumbs up and started running down the road to meet back with Becky and Audrey. I put on decent clothes for the adventure and open the door to my room. But before I leave my room, I froze and stared at the hallways side of my door. On my door was a message written in glowing letters. They were left with someone’s finger because I could see the fingerprints where the writer stopped and pulled away. ‘Return to us the Turtle. -L.’

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