SWARTHOS

Los Angeles, that sprawling neon snake pit, coils tighter around my soul today, squeezing out what little light I’d scraped together. Depression, that foul black tarp, has been flapping over me for weeks, heavy with the stench of regret and cheap whiskey. I’ve been dodging its full weight with a fistful of pills and a flicker of something I’m too cynical to call hope—more like a stubborn refusal to let this city chew me up and spit me out. But today, oh man, today it landed a sucker punch that’d make a prizefighter wince.

I was doing alright, or at least passing for it, shuffling to the mailbox in my frayed bathrobe, expecting nothing but bills and junk. Just another ritual in this concrete purgatory. I pop open the box, and there it is, staring up at me like a ghost with a switchblade: his name, that vile smear of a human being, printed on an envelope addressed to my house. My stomach lurches, the air turns to tar. This isn’t just mail—it’s a time machine, yanking me back to the darkest corners of my past.

This nameless hyena, this grinning parasite, spent fifteen years trying to carve my wife out of my life like a butcher hacking at a slab of meat. And he succeeded, for a while. They gallivanted across this fractured country, racking up memories in penthouses and casinos while I sat in this crumbling bungalow, licking my wounds. I confronted him once, looked into those cold, weasel eyes and asked him to back off. He laughed, a sharp, jagged sound, and said, “People do what they want, pal.” My wife was worse. When I begged her to stop, she drove a ballpoint pen into my neck, called me boring, and left me staggering out the door, blood soaking my torn shirt, pride in tatters.

But I’m a fighter, or maybe just too broke to run. No family, no friends, just this warped, solitary war I’ve been waging against oblivion. So I stayed, dug in, and waited. My strategy? Outlast the bastard. And I did, by some miracle or curse. Their affair fizzled out, leaving me with the ashes of a life I barely recognize. But that envelope today, that cursed piece of paper, was a class action lawsuit notice from the MGM in Vegas, addressed to him because they’d used my address years ago during their high-rolling escapades. A clerical gut-shot, a reminder of their betrayal delivered by the U.S. Postal Service.

It’s a twisted mercy that I’m too numb to sink deeper into the abyss. The wound still stings, raw and vicious, but it’s like I’m floating above it, watching my own pain through a haze of antidepressants and defiance. Los Angeles keeps swinging, but I’m still standing, barely. Tomorrow’s another roll of the dice in this lunatic carnival. Let’s see what fresh madness it drags in.