Breaking and Entering

From the moment Ethan’s flight landed at Logan International Airport, it was clear that, had he found himself before a Suffolk County judge, he wouldn’t have been able to give an account of his actions or, more importantly, his intentions.  In that same sloshed fugue state, he made his way down the South Shore to Carver, to the house where he would find Ian.

. . .

Ethan pulls from his coat the bottle of alcohol he’d purchased fifteen minutes before at the store, and from his back pocket produces a non-slip rubber jar opener.  Around him snow silently falls;  the flakes instantly melting against his warm, liquored face.  Any tracks he’d left are already covered.  In every direction, the ground is indistinguishable.  He cannot turn back now.

“A good day,” he says, joining the twist-off bottle cap to the rubber jar opener.  There is a slight hiss.  “To IPA.”

He draws the opening of the bottle to his mouth and begins to slug down the booze in one prolonged, Looney Tunes-esque gulp.  There follows a gurgling belch.  This action is utterly alien to Ethan, as he prefers small, feminine sips to thoroughly enjoy a beverage; however, at this moment, there is no merriment in his heart, only the calculated arithmetic of premeditated murder.

“A good day,” he says, as he blinks out a pair of salty tears.  The alcohol burns like a sore throat and settles in his stomach like a hot meal.  It calms his nerves.  “A real good day.”

He drops the jar opener and cap into the snow, where they disappear soundlessly, but he keeps the bottle tightly clenched in one hand by the neck, slapping it into his palm a few times.  His stupor is returning; the sweet feeling of total inebriation receives him in its protective warmth as it has countless times before, but not without judgment and never unconditionally.  There is always a cost.

…

Ethan enters through the front door of a home he was not invited into and climbs a quarter-turn flight of stairs into a short hallway.  Upstairs, it is hot, and everything is orange.  The decorations are incomprehensible, and the air smells like dusty cat litter.  All of these facts anger Ethan, though he does not know why they do, or even that they do.

“A good day to IPA,” Ethan says in a breathy grunt.  He gives the bottle another slap.  Thump.  One corner of his mouth hitches into a smirk.

He steps toward the door and grabs the old thumb-latch door handle, but the confounded contraption gets the best of him.  He, like Ian, is one of those new-age guys who becomes undone easily by more masculine tasks.  Like Ian, Ethan has encountered only doorknobs before reaching New England.  This whole thing pulls him out of his fugue state and punctures his cool-guy aura.

Ethan slips into thought, “If I knocked hard enough, Ian would probably answer the door. I’d just have to kill him like that, but that wouldn’t be as dramatic. I’m betting on him being seated. And if he were standing, that would totally ruin the optimal viewing angle of my undercut. And, uh, besides…” he begins to blush at this part, “that would mean I’d have to look into his eyes…” And there, he turns beet red, so much so that he becomes lightheaded and falls forward, crashing open the dreaded thumb latch and finding himself stumbling inside of Lisa’s room, his third-best friend on Discord.

Under any other circumstances, being inside Baboonface’s room would be grounds for celebration. Still, Ethan is unable to appreciate the gravity of this event at present, as the room he’s stumbled into is where he finds the closet, the one with two large sliding doors, staring back at him.  Ian’s closet.