Hobo Joe

      The worst part about living in a college town is that it's fucking impossible to find an honest to god dive bar on a Saturday night. If it's not a club, it's some local music hotspot full of hipster trash. In lieu of this fact, Tom and I do our night drinking safely on the roof of his apartment building.
     To be clear, this isn't one of those flat, big city, fire-escape-having roofs you see on TV. It's a sloped, shingled, get-down-from-there roof sat atop a three-story apartment. Little things like that never once bothered Tom though, so there we sat, liquor bottles in hand. I think the kids these days would say I was "turnt."
     "That bitch Julie," Tom announced, "Is such a bitch."
     Tom hit the nail on the head with that one.
     "Tommy honey, table three's steak is too dry. I need you to fix it," I had a pretty good Julie impression. It helped Tom vent.
     "Fuck you, Julie! You moron!" he replied, "Well done wasn't cooked enough for them and you made me char the fucker! Do you think I like incinerating someone's thirty dollar meal?"
     He threw an empty beer bottle at the neighboring building and it shattered satisfyingly. Tom drank vodka exclusively, but collected beer bottles specifically for our after work ritual. It was a nice touch. We get together a couple nights a week, get stupid drunk on a roof and pretend to be people we hate so we can scream at each other. And break bottles. Try it sometime.
     "Feel any better?" I slurred.
     "Like a million pesos buddy," Tom exhaled blissfully alongside a cloud of cigarette smoke, "What about you, man? You're not going to go home tonight and--" He mimed hanging himself. The entire process, from trying the knot to twitching body. It was uncomfortable. "--are you?"
     "Probably not," was the most honest answer I could come up with.
     "Why'd you do it, anyway?" was his next question.
     All I could do was shrug and take a swig of bourbon.
     Five minutes of silence later, Tom asked if I needed a ride home. I opted to walk. It was only a few blocks.

     Hobo Joe is what the children in my neighborhood call the homeless gentleman who wanders around the area most nights. I don't think that's fair because I feel like "hobo" refers to a specific breed of wandering drifter that this individual is not. Regardless, the name stuck.
     Despite being a bit on the batshit crazy end of the homeless guy spectrum, I looked forward to running into him on my late night stumble home. It made it fun, at least, and depending on how lucid he was on a given night you'd get a couple of stories out of it.
     My favorite Hobo Joe story involved Tom purchasing a gallon of cooking wine for some sort of sauce he was making. We walked past his alley on the way back to Tom's place and he saw what we had. He assumed, due to our bulk purchase of shitty booze, that we had become homeless too. Tom, being the gentle soul he is, insisted that we play along. We spent an entire day just following this guy around, passing around a jug of what may as well be vinegar, pretending to be homeless. Maybe you had to be there. It was fun.
     Those are the kind of memories that flash through your mind while the rest of your brain is trying to process the sight of the friendly neighborhood hobo laying lifeless on the pavement of the alley he called home. His face was a mess of deep vertical cuts and gouges and his empty eye sockets stared up at me, locked in a staring contest with my soul.
     After a few moments the rest of my thoughts hit the inside of my forehead like a semi. I emptied a stomach full of whiskey into the storm drain. What a waste.
     I pulled out my cell phone and shakily dialed 911. A nasally female voice picked up the line.
     "911. What's your emergency?"
     "He's dead!" Holy shit was I drunk.
     "Sir, calm down. What is your location?"
     I took a few deep breaths. The stench took this opportunity to fist my nostrils and I threw up again.
     "I think I'm between Poplar and Kingston. In an alley. A homeless man is dead."
     I had never in my life heard a 911 operator laugh. And I've called in some funny shit in my day. One time Tom tied a bottle rocket to his eyebrow ring with predictable results. Not even a chuckle. Here I am now, reporting a body, and I get Fran Goddamn Drescher.
     "If you're going to kill homeless people, fine. Just don't brag to me about it while I'm stuck here at work, you big tease!"
     "I didn't kill him!" was the only response my mouth would make.
     "Mmhmm," Fran moaned sensually, "Was it a nigger? I love it when the life leaves their beady yellow eyes, don't you, Alex?"
     My brain promptly hit the "off" button on my limbs and I collapsed, my skull meeting concrete with a sickening crack. I laid there, unable to move, as Hobo Joe's eyeless visage turned to meet my gaze.
     A tar-black centipede, pincers glistening in the streetlights' glow, wriggled its way out of his mouth, slowly skittering its way toward me. No hind end appeared -- Hobo Joe was unraveling like an old sweater before my eyes and the creature was his loose thread.
     As I felt the pinch of the first of a billion legs dragging themselves across my cheeks I let out a scream that was immediately muffled by a mouthful of hobo-centipede. The feeling of those legs pulling the thing down my throat made me retch, and the only thing I could hear over my own ringing ears were the guttural moans of the 911 operator apparently reaching climax, emanating from the shattered cell phone on the ground beside me.

     I woke up in a cold sweat in my bed. My heart was racing, my head was pounding. My phone wasn't plugged in and I had no idea where it was. I didn't feel like there was a giant centipede inside of me but Hobo Joe didn't exactly seem to notice in the past.
     "Morning, buddy! Your grandmother and I are making breakfast. Hope you're hungry!"
     I screamed.