Brave Pills (Originally Posted To The Midnight Paper subreddit.)

This is a warning. You see, something happened with my friend a few days ago. I don’t want to get into too much personal shit of his. To make a long story short, he and his wife are divorced. He’s been depressed because he’s supposed to see his kids on the weekend but with quarantine, he hasn’t been able to other than over the phone or through Skype.

Anyway, we happen to live close by. He asked me if I wanted to come over. I could tell he was feeling down, namely due to the slurred way he was talking. Both of us have been pretty good about washing our hands and stuff so I figured it would be okay to visit him. Now, I don’t want to give the false impression that Carl is an alcoholic.

However, when he gets in a down mood, he can hit the bottle pretty damn hard. I rang his doorbell. The smell of whiskey hit me when he opened the door. Carl was standing in gym shorts and a plain white shirt with stains I did not desire to know the origins of. He gave me a drunken smile.

“Devon,” he laughed. “Come on in. Sorry about the smell.”

“It’s alright,” I said, trying to keep my nose from wrinkling at the smell but not being too successful.

Carl’s tone suddenly became less cheery.

“No, it’s my fault. I wasn’t able to see them again.”

“Didn’t you call them?”

“Yeah, I did. It’s not the same, though.”

I’m going, to be honest. I’m not what you would call the counseling type. At most, if somebody airs their grievances to me, I’ll listen. I’ll offer to the best of my ability something that may cheer them up and will give some words of advice. However, if they’re looking for some profound words of wisdom, I’m just not the person they’ll get it from. Still, I did my best to lift Carl’s spirits.

“I know. It sucks that they can’t come over with everything going on. Why don’t we do some things to get your mind off this for a little while?”

“That sounds good right about now. I actually made some brownies I want you to try.”

He said brownies in a way that let me know he meant they had weed in them. Carl has dealt with anxiety issues throughout his life and it helps…