Member-only story
Black Coffee on Halloween
Fiction
Gil was a kid I knew in high school. My friends and I used to call him Creepy Boy because he had a big blockhead, sharp, crooked teeth, and grizzly hair on his cheeks. It had been over ten years since I last saw Gil when I ran into his brother on Halloween at the Knotty Pines Diner.
Pat Brock was his name, and he recognized me first. We shook hands and sat at the counter, each with a warm mug of black coffee in our hands, a perfect antidote for an autumn chill.
“I haven’t seen you forever,” Gil said.
“That’s because I left Knotty Pines after college. I’m visiting my mother.”
“On Halloween?”
“Yeah, she’s frightened of the kids knocking on her door, so she wants me to hand out the candy. How’s your brother doing?”
His awkwardness in answering the question caught me off guard.
“You haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Gil’s gone. He killed himself five years ago.”
A splash of high school memories flooded my brain as I sat next to Pat Brock, having a coffee. I couldn’t get the image of Gil out of my head — his yellowing pointed teeth, his messy hair, and his bulging eyes. I remembered him as a troubled kid who got picked on at school for eating…
