SWIM Book 1 (Complete three-hundred pages)

Day 36.2 Sunday, December 24, 2017

Sometimes I wish I was physically stronger. For when I found the door locked to the cellar and imagined Craig to be imprisoned behind it in the cold, damp environment of the alcohol collections, I immediately tried to pull the handle with the force of a wooly mammoth's trunk. To no avail I immediately grew enraged and banged on the door, shouting Craig's name—but no response came to me from behind that door. I then ran upstairs in a fright up to the second floor, the third floor, the fourth and then up to the door leading out to the roof, noticed it was still locked to keep me out of the late Hanukah party, and started firing my fists and screaming to get the guys' attention over their blaring instruments.

The music playing soon stopped and so did the dancing feet pounding above the ceiling of the fourth floor living room. I stopped my banging and heard footsteps cross the ceiling around to the locked door, after which time I heard a click and the door opened with George behind it. His face was sweaty and his cheeks and eyes pink and weary. "What do you want?" George said, stubbornly with the intentions to shoo me off.

"Why is the door to the cellar locked downstairs!" I said, putting my foot down. My fists were clenched, I demanded to know if George, Brett, Travis and Jack had all conspired to lock Craig away downstairs in the cellar.

George merely shook his head at me and said, "If the door to the cellar is locked downstairs, then Craig obviously locked himself inside the cellar to keep himself in or to keep us out. There is no lock on the outside of the cellar, right? So, the door's locked state is of his doing, not ours."

I blinked at him several times with bewilderment. I was confused. "But why would Craig want to lock himself in the cellar?"

George smiled in his drunken stupor and leaned in to whisper something behind his hand—he looked over his shoulder to make sure Jack couldn't hear him tell me: "Zara, you didn't hear it from me, but if I were to make a guess, I'd say Craig locked himself in the cellar to keep Jack and the rest of us away from drinking anymore of the alcohol inside the cellar. . ." His voice trailed off as he lost balance and nearly tripped over his own two feet in the doorway.

Even more confused about why Craig would want to keep the other boys from consuming anymore alcohol, I asked the drunken and delirious George, "But why would Craig want to do that?"

And George lifted a sly arrogant smolder at me and whispered humorously, "Maybe it's because we beat him up so badly for having sex with you behind Jack's back, and because we got so drunk for the sake of the holidays and for the sake of joyously trying to kill ourselves that Jack tried to kill Craig with the chainsaw."

I couldn't believe what George was telling me and I shouted, "You all did what?! Jack tried to do what to Craig?! You're all animals! How could you do this! We're all going to die if you keep this up! I'm glad Craig stopped you from getting anymore alcohol! You're insane!"

George broke out into laughter and said, "You should be happy, because if it wasn't for Craig, Jack and the rest of us would have drunken even more, Brett and Jack would have probably gotten into a final brawl, George would be chain sawed up, and it would have only been a matter of time before Jack had finally gotten to getting to you. And who knows how bad that would have gotten." George burst into ridiculous laughter and suddenly slammed the door shut and locked it before I could step my foot forward to stop the door from closing.

I then stood behind the door in a fearful trans, realizing that Craig needed to stay in the cellar to keep the boys out, to keep the house sane before anything like murder could happen. I then realized he might die in there without any food. I would have to get food from the kitchen every day to feed him or else he would starve. The problem is, the boys would try to stop me if they found out I was taking out two meals a day from the kitchen.

I suddenly realized things were just getting worse. And I wished my life were more like a comedic sitcom like Modern Family, The Office and That 70's Show—rather than a sixty-minute Netflix drama like Lost, in which the ending turned out bad for everybody. Nonetheless, I was beginning to get the feeling that my life was about to turn out like that Jack Nicholson movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, in which the first half is all fun and games, before the second half, when everybody gets hurt. . .