Chapter Text
The buzzing of fruit flies was starting to drive him crazy.
Stan stood up, disoriented. He couldn’t sleep anymore, opting to take twenty minute power naps on the couch instead of climbing the stairs and sleeping in his bed. Stan never went upstairs anymore. That was where she was.
Not literally, of course. Just the memories of her. Wendy wasn’t upstairs- she was probably in another man’s house, talking about what a piece of shit Stan was and why she divorced him. He reached up and scratched his chin, feeling his pointy, greasy stubble. How long had it been since he last shaved?
Stan wanted coffee.
He approached the kitchen, wondering what day it was. Tuesday? It had been weeks since he was fired from work, maybe even months. There was no need to keep track of the days anymore. Tuesday didn’t have meaning. Neither did Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday. He found the coffee pot, lifted it, and poured it into a nearby cup, not bothering to check if it were clean or not.
Stan could see the coffee from the side of the glass pot, though. The top of the liquid was covered in a thick sheet of mold, green and blue spores swishing back and forth as the liquid in the pot moved.
Not thirsty anymore, Stan left the kitchen. Something told him that pot of coffee was the last thing Wendy made before leaving him. Had it really been that long? Had the coffee pot been left there for weeks, maybe even months, collecting spores? Stan considered the fact that he could be imagining things, from insomnia. Stephen King wrote a whole book about it. He wasn’t crazy. He just needed sleep.
Deep down, though, he knew he was wrong. He was making excuses for his own lazy, self-destructive behavior. Wendy had made that coffee, and he had left it there for months. Maybe out of negligence, maybe out of pure denial to face the fact that she was gone. Even if he cleaned up his act… she wouldn’t listen to him, and she wouldn’t come back. And why should she? Stan knew he was worthless. His own alcohol addiction had driven her to leave. His own actions. Time and time again, he came home drunk, and even when Wendy scolded him the next day, he swore up and down he would try to do better. He would go to the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, get himself clean, never drink or do drugs again.
Except it doesn’t always work like that.
Was addiction a disease, or was he the true root of the problem, blatantly refusing to better himself?
Stan returned to the couch, plopping down on it and feeling something hard underneath his ass. He scooted over and saw that it was his phone.
Right. That fucking thing. He picked it up and tried to turn it on, only to find that it was dead. Stan wasn’t even sure where his charger was anymore. He set it down on his coffee table, which was covered in beer cans, in tequila bottles, in half-full wine glasses.
She should’ve known this would happen to me when she left.
Stan decided not to expand on that thought. He stood up again and searched for his phone charger, finding one plugged into the wall. He brought his phone over and connected it, staring at the ghost-white Apple logo as it lit up. If anyone had tried talking to him in the past month or so, he wouldn’t have known about it.
Once his phone charged enough for him to use it, he was flooded with notifications. Missed phone calls from his mother, his father, his older sister, Kenny McCormick from high school… and Kyle.
No Wendy. Not even Bebe had sent him a text message to ask how he was doing.
Stan decided that his mother was the most important of the bunch. He opened her text messages.
July 5th, 12:09 PM
Mom: It was nice of you and Wendy to come down here for the 4th!
September 15th, 1:22 PM
Mom: Call Shelly, honey. She’s worried about you. Wendy called this morning and told us everything.
September 28th, 7:59 AM
Mom: Surprised that you haven’t called us. Hope you’re not out drinking all the time. Get on those AA meetings. You’ll find a new girl. You’re still young, only 22!! You have a whole life ahead of you
Blinking, Stan read the date at the top of his phone. October 18th. His birthday was tomorrow.
That didn’t matter.
October 18th, 11:23 PM
Stan: Hi, Mom. I’m okay. Doing better now.
He was lying. Right to his own mother’s face. But he needed to lie in this scenario, he couldn’t just tell her he was doing horrible. She and Randy would come up from Colorado and try to “help” him by giving him a two-hour lecture about how his first mistake in life was going to that party in 10th grade and coming home absolutely hammered.
Stan set his phone back on the coffee table, face-down. Something smelled horrible- no, it didn’t just smell. It reeked . He inhaled once, then twice. It wasn’t the alcohol, it was like… rotting meat. Maybe, before Wendy left, she cooked something and left it in the kitchen. That would explain the fruit flies and gnats.
Speaking of fruit flies… he needed to get rid of those.
He looked back at the kitchen, before turning and facing the other parts of his house, which were equally disheveled. Where the hell was he supposed to start with all of this mess? It would take him weeks to clean this up.
Thankfully, he had weeks. He was all alone now, nobody he needed to impress or show off for. Not unless his parents made a surprise visit at his house. Stan didn’t think they would- they probably assumed he was dead by now. Ignoring their texts for over a month and a half.
Stan stepped into the kitchen, walking around and sniffing, trying to place the smell. Strangely enough, the smell disappeared now that he was out of the living room.
He stepped back into the living room, lifted couch cushions, looked underneath the coffee table, and still couldn’t figure out what the smell was. Stan was starting to get irritated now. He decided to go up the stairs, not even caring if that was where most of his memories with Wendy were. If he was going to get his life together (even he knew that it wasn’t likely- he was living in extreme squalor and filth, and would probably never get the motivation to clean it up,) he needed to find out what that stupid smell was.
At the top of the stairs, he inhaled, and nearly vomited. The smell was much stronger now, and something was telling him there was a dead body. The stench reminded him of middle school, coming home and inhaling the scent of pot roast that his mother had cooked in a crock pot all day.
Pot roast. But with a hint of urine… he knew people shat and pissed themselves when they died, so it wasn’t a huge surprise to him. Something had definitely died up here, and Stan prayed that it wasn’t a person.
His heartbeat sped up. Was it Wendy? Had Wendy killed herself up in here, and Stan had been too drunk off of his ass for a solid month that he had failed to notice?
Stan crept through the hallway, the stench invading his nostrils. He gagged once, but sucked it up. Maybe it was a homeless man that he decided to shelter one night and just… kicked the bucket.
He looked in the bathroom and turned on the light. Somehow, the electricity still worked, which he was grateful for. What he was not grateful for, though, was the stench of stale urine hitting his face. His eyes adjusted to the light and saw heaps of feces lining the bathroom floor- there was even some in the bathtub.
Okay, so the homeless man missed the bowl a couple times. Stan slammed the bathroom door shut and made his way to the bedroom he and Wendy had spent so many nights in, having sex, watching shitty reality TV shows, arguing…
He pushed open the door and found the source of the smell.
It was Sparky, lying on his bed in the middle of the room.
Stan stepped forward and let out a sob, starting to hyperventilate. He killed Sparky. He fucking killed Sparky, his best friend since 3rd grade.
Falling onto the carpet, he grasped the sides of his shirt and shook violently with sobs and hitched breaths. Sparky was innocent, he didn’t do anything to deserve it. He should’ve let him out to go pee, he should’ve fed him, he shouldn’t have been drunk for an entire month. It was his fault.
-
Stan genuinely didn’t think he deserved to live anymore.
He gave himself a moment to cry and hate himself before gathering his feelings and standing back up. He didn’t deserve to live, but there was one person who did, and that was Sparky. Sparky was dead, but he did deserve a proper burial if he couldn’t live the life he deserved.
Flies buzzed around Sparky’s decaying corpse. Stan could see maggots wriggling amongst his flesh, which was the final straw for him. He turned around, bent over, and puked on the shag carpet.
Running back downstairs, he grabbed a trash bag and a pair of gloves, deciding that even if he did need a shower, he didn’t want to touch his rotting dead dog with his bare hands. Stan went back upstairs and did his best to get Sparky’s rotting carcass into the trash bag without puking all over him. Once Sparky was in the bag, he tied it up and went back downstairs. He would deal with the puke later.
Stan stepped outside for the first time in a solid month. The sun had already gone down, which made it a little hard for him to fumble around in the shed while trying to find a shovel, but he managed to do it anyway. He dropped the trash bag next to his back porch and started digging Sparky’s grave, right next to an old oak tree. It took a while, but once he was finished, he went back for the trash bag and dropped it into the hole, covering it back up with dirt. That took care of one problem… but there were so many more in that stupid fucking house. If it were Stan’s choice, he would never go back in there again.
It wasn’t up to him, though.
He went back upstairs, cleaning up his own vomit, Sparky’s piss and feces, and finally dumping out the moldy coffee from the coffee pot he tried to drink out of earlier. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. Stan decided that the coffee pot couldn’t be saved- even if he washed it out and cleaned it with bleach, he would be reminded of the blue spores that used to remain every time he went to pour himself a cup.
He threw it in the kitchen trash can. Stan tied the trash bag up, opened the back door, and left it there, hoping it would help with the flies and gnats.
Stan took his gloves off and threw them on the floor, before laying down on the couch and falling asleep.