Story Time

He's a little something I've been working on.

The monitor lit the darkened room, keyboard tapping away as the person behind it laughed.
"Man, that was crazy," Jake typed to his friend.
He clicked another link his friend sent him, and started reading. A train came past his window, drowning out the music pouring from his tinny speakers.
"God damn it! We hear you, we know there's a train, just shut up!" he yelled out his window, slamming it shut in the process.
"Jake, what was that?" his mother called in asking.
"Just shut the window Mom."
"Well, I'm going to the store, you need anything?"
"No Mom, I'm fine."
His mother walked down the hallway and out the door. Jake watched as she pulled away, then ran back over to his computer.
"Okay, she's gone, go ahead and send it."
A naked woman filled his screen, instantly capturing his attention.
"So, pretty hot, huh?" his friend asked.
"Yeah man, total babe."
"Well hey, I got shit to do tomorrow, so I'll talk to you later," his friend sent.
"Okay man, cya later," Jake typed back.
He pushed himself away from the computer desk and stood up. It was getting late, but it didn't matter. Summer was in full swing, and his responsibilities were few to none. He walked out of his room and down the hall to the living room. The blue walls had grown all to familiar to him, being home this much tended to do that. He stepped out onto his porch, the humid summer air meeting his face. The sky was dark, the sun all but hiding itself from view. It felt late, the time change never seemed right. He looked down the street, his house staring back at him, nothing but the colors and yards changed, all the way to end of the block. Someone was having a party down the street, the music and smells moving down to Jake's house. He didn't know whose party it was, but he wouldn't have gone anyway. Everyone his age seemed like a brute, someone who just didn't him.
"Fuck," he thought to himself, "I sound more like a teenager every day."
Jake hated this more than anything. The precarious balance of emotion versus maturity always troubled him. He wanted to show his true colors, but whenever he saw someone else doing this, he brushed it off and degraded them, seeing it as a sign of succumbing to some societal mold. He turned and walked back inside, no use upsetting himself over things he couldn't control. He walked into the kitchen and rooted through the fridge, looking for something to drink. He stopped, and closed the fridge.
"I could get drunk, right now," he said out loud to himself. "There's nothing stopping, no moral obligation, no legal repercussions, nothing. But still I don't do it. Why? Why do I not do these things?"
These small-town moral dilemmas seemed all too common to Jake. He certainly wasn't a philosopher, but for someone his age he pondered things much too often.
"You know what, to hell with it, I can drink this, and then maybe I can finally relax a little bit," he said, still talking to himself, whilst reaching for the liquor cabinet. He pulled out a handle of scotch and a tumbler, and set it on the table. He pulled two ice cubes out of the freezer and dropped them in the glass, the clinking louder than he had hoped. Still nervous that someone would come home, he poured the scotch into the glass and quickly put it away. He grabbed his glass and made his way back to his room.
"Well, if I'm gonna do it, better just get it down," he said out loud, moving the glass to his lips. He poured the contents down his throat, nearly spitting it up at the intensity of the alcohol. He swallowed it all down and moved over to his chair. He sat for a few minutes, waiting for the liquor to take effect, but didn't feel too much.
"Maybe this is what it's supposed to be like, numbness and solidarity," he thought to himself. He layed down on his bed and stared at the ceiling, contemplating this decision, and others he had made. He always seemed to come back to pass ideas he had, and pinpointed exactly where they went wrong. He knew he couldn't fix them, but he still tried to learn from them, or that was his excuse for it. Really, he knew he was just remembering his failures, trying not to get too optimistic, always bringing himself down just enough to look out for himself, but not so much to be a downer on everyone else. As he thought, the alcohol made him more and more drowsy, until he slipped into sleep.