Saving Sonny

[Jnusch]

You were walking together with Ben, or Benny as he was still called back then. (You see, his real name was Benny but he changed it after the accident. He refused to ever respond to Benny again, he only wished to respond to something completely different. And so Ben was born.) You always came by our house, a two minute walk from yours, picked him up and together you continued towards school. From our house, the one you are sitting in as we flashback, that took you two about ten minutes. A little less maybe, a little more if you had a slow day. I think you still remember your elementary school lay right next to the Junior High and High school. Ever since you and Ben were little boys you walked there together. Everyone in town could picture you walking along the road, telling each other jokes and having so much fun. I can still see myself smile when you made another stupid joke and then laughed as if the world depended on it. Those were the good days.
I'm not sure if you can recall this, but your Junior High lay across the road from elementary school. This was to keep the big kids from pestering the small ones I suppose, a good thing in my opinion. Before you know it, those horrible monsters turn all children into tiny drug couriers. Anyway, during all of primary school you never had to cross that road. Junior High lay on the opposite side though, and accordingly as from your twelfth year of life and on, every morning you crossed it. A busy road, bustling with life. Many monstrous machines speeding up and down, cars, busses, trucks, bicycles, flying motorcycles, and so on. That day, you must've forgotten to pay attention. Or maybe you did but well, a lot of drivers seem not to care about anything but themselves. Not that it matters, whether you've got yourself to thank or an oblivious driver, you were hit.
Only once did Ben talk about it, but I've heard many different recountings of what it looked like. All those versions together pretty much added up to you, seemingly weightless, flying through the air. Several loopings, corkscrewers and a perfect pirouette later, you crashed into the floor. Many said it sounded as if you weighed at least 300 pounds or more, a gigantic gong being sounded. Bones creaking and breaking, flesh ripping and splashing apart, your brains juggled and shaking, not stirred, wildly inside their box. The world froze for a moment. Only when my little Benny made an awful squeaking noise none of the spectators will ever forget they were reanimated. Someone called the alarm number and they came as soon as they possibly could have, almost to late though. As you know, there is no hospital in Ladida Town, so it took them a half hour drive to get to you, then another half hour before genuine, trained professionals could attend you. You nearly died.

They had to perform surgery for a week on end, not pausing once. Surgeons from all across the world had to be flown in to test their skills in the ultimate battle against death and time. Many new and never before tested techniques were used on you, some worked, some failed. Revolutionary and ground-breaking results were achieved, true tragedies occurred. One of the doctors, a 67 year old woman from the illusive country of which I always forget the name but which I know is called Pardijouwackhimuba, died of a heartattack due to dehidration due to a lack of fluids due to getting not even one break during the whole two days she worked on you. When she died she fell face forward into the gaping wound that now is your stomach. In dying she nearly sealed your faith. Luckily they were able to throw here out quickly and continue operation. At the end of the week, after stitching you up completely and tying the knots to the ends or whatever the expression goes, you died.

[Jnusch]

At first none of the attending nurses and doctors thought much of it. You had pulled that trick a couple of times during the operate-o-thon, so it wasn't that much of a big fat cookie monster deal. So they waited. And waited. And waited, but you just went beep. Beep. *BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP*. For maybe 10 minutes you just went beep. Then they all got sick of it and zapped you with such a thing, you know what I mean, that thing they use to electrocute dead people to get their heart going again. So they did that to you and then again and a third time and then you didn't just go all beeeeeeep anymore. You went *beep beep beep etc* and everyone rejoiced and clapped hands and high-fived and hugged and laughed and cried and was overall happy. For a week afterwards they kept you pretty much comatose so that you could recover a little before you would get up and be all alive and kicking again. Then they woke you up and you remembered nothing.
It was so weird, so surreal. You didn't just forget some small details, or vague relatives' names. You forgot everything. You were a fourteen year old baby. We were all so utterly taken aback by that, completely flabbergasted. Luckily you regained most abilities in the course of a couple of days, speech, motion, those things. Your memories though, they didn't come back. Not all of them at least. Mostly unimportant trivialities, dates, names of people you had met ages ago, not the details of your own life. You hardly remembered anything that had to do with Ben, or your mom. Funnily enough, you still knew me. At first you though I was your mother, much to the dislike of your own I must say. Slowly but surely more came back to you though, you remembered many things by the time you were fit to go back to school again, some two months after the accident. By that time you finally recognized Ben, truly recognized him I mean, remembered. Your home situation remained vague I think, at least you never talked about it to me anymore.
But your friendship with Ben... it wasn't the same. Even when you had your recollection of all the time you spent together back, you were always saying how it felt like the friendship was forced onto you. I have always believed that was partly why you were such an easy victim for Sonny. You felt like you had no choice besides being friends with Benny and that didn't feel right, not natural. You told me once that you had the feeling that you had no choice, no saying in this friendship, you had to be friends with my son and like any other teen, you rebelled against that. You pushed the things you thought we wanted you to do away, including Ben. He was heartbroken but he understood. He had hope and he waited. In vain it turned out. He held you responsible, which wasn't very strange but a little misled I think. You couldn't help how you felt, nor could you do anything about your amnesia. It was all just very sad and unfortunate and painful.

Then they made a flashforward motion, to which the same rule applies, it's impossible to explain.

[Jnusch]

"Wow." Adrian paused. He didn't really know what to think of this story. It sounded so incredible, so surreal. "Wow, that's just so... weird. I barely remembered anything of what happened you know. Like, now, I mean, I didn't just have the amnesia, I just completely forgot all about the amnesia too. So surreal." Delores smiled, somewhat rueful it seemed, "It is surreal Adrian. And it wasn't any less surreal to us back then. It wasn't all bad though, there were some good things I guess, depending on what way you look at things." She bit her lip and looked him deeply in the eyes before continueing. "Are you sure you want to hear this Adrian? All of it, I mean." She was more serious now than she had been during their whole conversation. Adrian was sure that what she was about to tell him wasn't pleasant. Since the rest hadn't so much been pleasant either, this was probably awful. He didn't look forward to hearing it. "Yeah, tell me. Everything."

"Well, you heard me, during the flashback, saying something about your mother, right? Wait, I'll quote it.

At first you though I was your mother, much to the dislike of your own, I must say... Your home situation remained vague I think, at least you never talked about it to me anymore.

You remember?" She had been looking out of the window while she was searching for the quote, and secretly Adrian had rolled his eyes. As if he didn't remember what she had just said like, two seconds ago. "Oh, yeah, I guess I remember you saying that..." Such a convincing tone his voice had. "Adrian, cut the crap, I saw you roll your eyes." Adrian started, did that mean... she had eyes in her head! "I could see your reflection in the window. What was I saying again...? Oh yes, of course, your mother.
"You didn't remember her. For a time, I could only wonder why. But then it dawned on me. All the signals, all the little hints, they all fell into place suddenly. It all made sense then. You flattered me, with all the compliments you gave me, or what I took for compliments. Whenever you said you wished I was your mother, I figured you were just exaggerating, you know? And then I realised that all that time, you must have been genuine. You really didn't want to go home. So many times I heard you say that "mommy wouldn't mind", it took me so long to get the message. Your mother was a good woman, she still is. A good mother, though, not so much I think. She didn't really... harm you in any way, not directly, it was more a kind of... negligence. In the end you always went home, so it can't have been too horrible. You just felt cold, as in, no warm love was wrapped around you at home," Warm love? Like... ewh, gross. The more she talked, the easier he found it to understand why Benny's father had left her. Because that's what he did, he didn't die.
"Can you tell me about what happened? With Benny and me, and Sonny. I'm sorry to have to ask you, I just need to know all of it. Like you said, the pieces, they are slowly falling in place. But some are missing and I think you've got quite a few of those." He realised it almost sounded as an accusation, as if he blamed her for not telling him all. It really wasn't like that, be he didn't care about his mom. So what if she sucked when he was a child, it wasn't as if he remembered anyway. Some things were best left unsaid, even though he'd only asked her about it minutes before. Maybe this was too painful. But if it was... would he be up to the rest? Wouldn't that only be worse? He felt he had to think about it. Reminisce, set up a plan of action. Come to terms with what he had learned so far and then figure out if he wanted to proceed. It wasn't as if Sonny wouldn't stick to being dead, so he wasn't in a hurry. Eventually, after over 3 seconds of thinking about going home, he decided to go home. And have a beer! Only then did he notice it was kinda strange Delores hadn't replied. When he focused at her face again, he saw that she was crying. Was it because of what he had said? Most likely. He hated crying women, they were so... womenlike.
"Hey, uhm, Delores? I have to go... this is kinda weird and sometimes painful for me, so I'm going home and have a beer and think things through. OK? I'll just give you some rest for a while, stop nagging you. So... Bye!" He jumped up out of his chair and dashed towards the door, which he opened and then banged loudly. Then he guessed it made more sense to get out first, so that's what he did and then he banged it again. Then he felt banging the door was probably not very appropriate, so he opened it, yelled, "Sorry!" and went home.

When he got there, he opened a can of beer and sat on the couch. For a long time. Whilst having a lot of beer. Then it was evening and he watched a movie. It was called Newcastle, an Australian movie about surfdudies and one was gay with another guy, but not really. So actually there were two gay guys, but they didn't do anything besides surfing and being gay-but-not-really and nearly killing each other in a surfaccident. He didn't remember that much of it anymore next morning, because he had a couple of beers during the movie to. It was a very vague evening. Then he went to bed.

[Jnusch]

The next morning Adrian felt quite exquisitely horrible. Like an elephant had sat on is head for most of the night. On the other hand, the dull aching in his head blocked out any thoughts he could have possibly had on his life, which was good. Only he of course did not realize this, because he couldn't think about it. Because his head hurt so badly. So really he just hated beer. Only momentarily though, because then the doorbell rang. It wasn't ringing so much, more like an awful screeching, fit for the scariest most monstrous monsters in some lame horror movie. Then the bell screeched again and he went to open the door, because somewhere deep down inside he realized that opening the door was pretty much the generic thing to do when the bell rang. Or screeched.
'Hi,' said the postwoman, after which she smiled at him in a way that made her intentions all to obvious. 'You've got mail...' She stuck out her hand in which she was holding a couple of letters and one larger package. With a shrug he took them from her, why on earth didn't she just put them in the mail box. Then when she pulled her hand back, she accidentally ripped of his shirt and then when she was trying to give him back his shirt she sort of tripped over a bit of sand that was lying there and she nearly fell. Luckily, Adrian managed to catch her, though she still half fell into him. The postwoman seemed not to be distressed to much by the dreadful accident, she was still smiling quite happily. Then she pushed him in, causing him to drop his mail and closed the door. Adrian being the poor fellow he just can't help being, had no idea what was happening to him and since the headache was still raging through his head he just decided to go with the flow and maybe get laid. A little bit.
He's not completely ignorant you know. Sometimes he does get things. Like now, with the postwoman and her not-so-innocent smile. Yeah. Didn't see THAT one coming did you! And don't pretend you did, big fat pony-faced liar. Pinocchio would be ashamed at how bad a liar you are. Ha. Only if you are listening to Jack Peñate as we speak, will I believe you were actually sincere and smart enough to understand that sometimes Adrian is quite capable of making an attempt to fit into the world into which he was  born, just like you and me. So. Just wanted to make that clear, you know, for Adrian's sake. He sure wouldn't like it if he found out all of you non-Peñate listeners thought he was stupid and clueless and a brainless idiotic maggot. 'Cause he is NOT. There you've got it. In your sorry face.

Now don't laugh at me or Adrian, because he thought the postwoman wanted to get laid, with him. She didn't, okay? She didn't, she wanted to play Monopoly. Yeah, that sucked. Especially when he only found out after taking of his super sexy thong. Thank goodness the postwoman was very understanding and still more than willing to play a game with him after things were cleared up. Both Adrian and I agree that she was a lovely gahl and if only she were real. Too bad, boohoo, she's not, cry baby cry. We're old enough to know better so let's move on. As said, after that not so laid back moment of confusion, they played a game of Monopoly. Needless to say, Adrian kicked Postwoman's ass – Postwoman was actually her name too – which made him very happy. Then he went on to be even happier when he noticed his headache was gone, so he said goodbye to Postwoman to start making plans about the future, completely forgetting about the letters that were lying scattered outside his front door...

[Jnusch]

Now, because I am very much aware of the fact that you, dear readers, really want to know what is in those letters, I will enlighten you. Postwoman had handed Adrian 5 letters, along with the Big Letter. The BL is most important, so I will save that for you until Adrian actually gets to reading it. This is likely to piss you off, because you just read about me going to enlighten you. However, as you might remember, I did not specify of which of the letters I was going to tell you the contents. Thus, thou hast not in any way the right to be pissed off. Thou art stupid and thy being reeks of ninkenpoopism, for which you must and shall henceforth until further notice be punished. Thy punishment shal consist of the following; thou shalt not, until aforementioned further notice, be let in upon the most secretive message the Big Letter containst. Ha. Ha. Ha. Haha. So, that's that.
Two of the letters contained bills. One came from the storage company, where Adrian rented a space, which he used to store his fathers belongings in. Now you might be curious about the reason why it was not in fact his mother paying these bills. The reason is quite interesting, so I will tell you. Since his mother had met her new husband, she had started throwing things out. Most notably, his dad's things, treasures, items that his father had cherished and taken care of with the utmost precision and caution. And she just threw them out. Of the window, for God's sake! From the moment he first noticed this despicable behaviour, he did everything within his might to stop her. When that failed, for she did not listen to reason, he did everything within his might to sabotage her. When that turned out to be useless too – furniture and accessories he had glued to the floor where ruthlessly thrown out, with the floor still attached – he did everything within his might to kill her. When he realized he did not want to murder his own mother, he did everything within his might to save whatever he could. That was what he was still doing now. Every so often, his mother would go out in the dark of night, ever so sneaky and silently, even though he lived in a completely different neighborhood, to throw a Dad-thing that she had found inside the house while cleaning up out, or a picture that she had failed to tear out of the photoalbums. Slowly but surely, she was ridding herself of her late husband, Adrian Garp Tutu senior, also known as Adsdad. In his place came pictures of her new husband, items belonging to her new husband. This hurt Adrian to no end. His mother was replacing his father by a new man. Adrian liked his new dad, he was a fine man, enjoyed playing catch with him in the garden whenever Adrian was over and he was always ready to help him if need be. But no matter what, Nhoj Nonnel, also known as Adsnewdad, would never be more than that. His new dad.
His new "never-ever-going-to-be-able-to-replace-my-old-REAL-dad-,-even-though-he-'s-quite-cool-dad", (if you do not know the meaning of this word, let me warn you in advance, the internet will turn out to be of no use, so don't bother)*












* If you, against my advise, proceeded to type that word into google or any other search engine currently available to you, you are my hero for however long it takes you to finish reading this sentence. If you didn't, well that's too bad, your loss. You see, maybe you THINK it is a mistake to do that, and you know what, it is. However, that is besides the point. The POINT. is, that, as the late Albert Einstein, who was indeed a very smart guy, said "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." He was right. If you never do anything other than what you've done a trilliongazillion times before, you get so bored that you die. And if that happens, NO ONE is to blame but YOU. Try and face that without crying. Trust me, you'll cry. That's when you die. You cry SO hard, harder than you've ever done, that your body can't handle it anymore. It's literally and figuratively speaking a flooding of your system. Your system will fail. And the shitty bit is, by the time your system manages to make the words "SYSTEM FAILURE" flash bright red in front of your eyes, it's too late. You've failed and you die. Yeah. So. Bet you're thinking right now whether I'd notice if you typed in that word into google right now. And if it would make a difference if you did. Well, I wouldn't, seriously, NINKENPOOP. It's not as if I'm inside your computer (or book, seeing that this story is so brilliant it might very well one day be published), so obviously in no way am I going to find out if you do, unless you tell me of course. Go ahead, do it for all I care. It won't work anyway. Ha. Too friggin' bad. It's too late. You only get ONE shot, a thing that Eminem did not fail to see all those years ago when he was only a poor little cry baby rapper. See where it got him!
And, that's all I have to say about that.

[Jnusch]

Attention: Before reading the following paragraphs, please read the footnote. Thank you.

Ehm, right. What was I saying? The letters. Yeah, so, one was a bill. That was a shame. Another one was a bill, this one for the rent of his house, so that’s boring and also a shame. The third was the original copy of the Declaration of Independence, which Adrian had no use for, so he threw that in the old paper-basket. The fourth looked quite scary, no sender and everything, very Responsible and Important, but just turned out to be a new credit card that he had requested. Just for fun, with Sonny. The moment he thought of Sonny, everything just came back to him. Oh, no, wait, it didn’t, because I’m telling you this, he hasn’t read the letters yet. Anyway, that is what would happen when he read the letter, he would suddenly realize he had to do something, like finding Ben so he could Save Sonny. Doesn’t matter that’s what would happen though, because he’ll realize he has to do all that before reading the letters. So, well, on to the fifth and final letter (with a non-Capital l). The fifth letter was not really a letter, it was actually an advertisement stuffed in an envelope. The ad was for the new Wonderbra, designed by Dita von Teese. But Adrian didn’t need that either, so he threw that in the old paper-basket too.
Actually, that’s what he would have done, had he seen the letters. He still hadn’t though, and all except for the Declaration of Independence where swept away by the wind. This would result in a fine for not paying his bills on time, which was annoying of course but also his own fault, and he understood this, so he did not try to get out of paying the fines. No, it wasn’t until someone rang the doorbell that he finally saw the letters, (only two now, the Big one and the DoI). That someone was just a random kid trying to collect money for some Good Fund by selling stamps. Too bad for the kid though, Adrian bought nothing from him, first of because he thought the kid looked at him funnily, second because he never sent letters anyway. The first reason sucked to be absolutely honest, because Adrian opened the door wearing nothing but his super sexy thong. From that day until the day he died, the poor boy was traumatized and had very much trouble feeling comfortable around men wearing solely thongs. Unfortunately, the poor boy dropped out of school not very long after the encounter with Adrian – he developed an addiction to drugs, as they were the only thing that kept him from thinking about young men in thongs – the boy then went on to become a prostitute, not being right for any other job. His name was Lesli and he was very tragic.

As we all probably figured Adrian would, as soon as he saw the DoI, he threw it into the old paper-basket in the hallway. After all the effort this had taken, he found himself in need of a fresh cold beer, so he took two out of the fridge and placed himself on the couch. He opened one and then picked up the Big Letter that was still lying there untouched. It wasn’t very heavy, though a lesser man might have expected it to be, merely judging by it’s looks. Come to think of it, maybe a lesser man would have labeled it quite heavy, keeping in mind that lesser men are usually quite pathetic and lack a certain strength needed to handle Big Letters. Who knows what anyone but us and Adrian might have thought of the letter. Who knows what WE would have thought of it? You, that is. Obviously, I am very much aware of what I would have thought of the letter, me being the person that brought it into being. To me, picking up the letter would have been as easy as looking bad in a photograph, it would have taken no effort at all. Now it is quite possible that you, the one reading this story, knows me and are thus aware of approximately how strong I am. As a consequence, it is also quite possible that you can approximately predict how you would have felt upon picking up the letter. So I guess we can conclude that the aforementioned WE, is simply the group of people that do not know me. Poor buggers.

Boring. Boring. Boring. I can just feel the attention drifting away from the story here. Mine sure is, and if mine is, than why on earth would you guys still care, right? Let’s go for some action. Only I don’t really know what. Usually, I’m not that big a fan of action stories or movies or anything like that. Adrian is, being the beer drinking lad he is, but he isn’t writing this story. He couldn’t, all that drinking beer definitely got to his brain. You see, drinking beer all the time is bad! Drinking any sort of alcohol all the time is bad for that matter. It messes with your brains, makes them go all fuzzy. People get really ill because they drink to much. Korsakov’s and the likes. Honestly sucks. But by the time you get to that stage, it’s too late. Very slowly, that is what is happening to Adrian. Let me tell you about his untimely death, maybe that will spice things up a little.

[Jnusch]

At the tender age of 52, Adrian dies of a heart attack. Only hours after a wedding, he is getting it on with a dear friend of his – not Sonny – when a sudden pain in his chest forces him to retreat. Someone calls the alarm number, but due to unexpected tranquility on the highway, the ambulance has an accident when going a hundred miles per hour. Both the driver and his fellow ambulance brother die. The former chokes on a chicken sandwich, the latter is propelled through the windshield when the vehicle hits a road sign, which in turn happens because the driver is slumped dead across the steer without paying mind to the road. The second ambulance that is sent gives priority to their brothers, even though both are dead upon its arrival. Adrian would have been saved had the ambulance come straight for him, but alas, it didn't. His death came very suddenly.

[Jnusch]

Fortunately, at this moment, Adrian is still alive. And he is about to open the big letter, at long last. I can only begin to imagine the agony I must have put you through, making you wait and wait for this big moment. I do feel terribly sorry, not just for you, the reader, but alas, for myself as well. It was, quite simply, a case of writer's block I was not to keen on breaking out of and so I let myself dwell and pity. But see, the moment has arrived.

Adrian sat there, not thinking of the weight of the letter at all – such things hardly ever bothered him, which might not come as a surprise seeing how he crushed his best friend and apparent lover with no more than a belly brush – and opened it with less ceremony than could be expected. In a movie, this would have been solved by having him open it in slow motion, or by repeating the moment over and over, or by subsequently filming it from different angles, either drawing out the moment or making more of it special. For instance, they could show the surprise on his face, as he read the first few words his eyes fell on, zooming in on the widening of the eyes or the ever so slight dropping of the jaw. Who knows?
Surprising, this letter was indeed. It took him some time but then Adrian discerned it must have come either from Sonny, which it did not, or from his mother, which it did not, or from Benny, which it did, though Adrian only found out when he read the bidding of farewell, under which someone with a firm grip on his pen, so as to steady his trembling hand, had written his name, which happened to be Ben Kidneybean.
To make a long story short, let me just copy the contents of this letter for you. Before I do that, however, let me explain how Adrian knew it was one of those three persons who must have written him the letter. It was the addressee. The addressee, namely, was Adrian Giles (French pronunciation) Fauntleroy and there were only three souls in the world who knew that name. Or rather, two, since Sonny was dead and if he counted the deceased he should include his father, who obviously had also known prior to his death and possibly after, like Sonny, if he retained his ability to know after losing his grasp of living. He concluded it was most likely neither of them had written the letter since, although they might still know, they were not capable of writing. That left his mother and Benny and his mother never wrote him letters as she was aware of the difficulty he had with them, leaving only Benny.
Now, the letter: