Brian Keene: Tequila's Sunrise

So I tried to fit in. Nobody wants to be hated. It’s human nature—wanting to be liked by your peers. Soon enough, I found a way. I let them in on my little secret. Within a week, I was the most popular kid in school. I had more friends than I knew what to do with. Everybody wanted to be friends with the golden boy. But here’s the thing. They didn’t want to be friends with me because of who I was. They wanted to be friends with me because of who I was. There’s a big difference between those two things.

So I had friends. Girlfriends, too.

I remember the first girl I ever loved. She was beautiful. There’s nothing as powerful or pure or unstable as first love. I thought about her constantly. Stared at her in class. Dreamed of her at night. And when she returned my interest, my body felt like a coiled spring. It was the happiest day of my life. But she didn’t love me for who I was. Like everyone else, she loved me for who I was.

So have all the rest. Both ex-wives and the string of long-term girlfriends between them. My happiest relationships are one night stands. The only women I’m truly comfortable with are the ones I only know for a few brief hours. I never tell them who I am or what I can do. And before you ask, yes, I always wear a condom and no, I can’t have children. There are no little golden boys in my future. I don’t shoot blanks. I shoot bullets.

I’ve no shortage of job opportunities. Banks, financial groups, precious metals dealers, jewelers, even several governments. Of course, I don’t need to work. I can live off my talent for the rest of my life. So can everyone else around me. But that doesn’t stop the employment offers from coming. And they’re so insincere and patronizing. So very fucking patronizing. They want to invest in my future. Just like my parents and my friends and my wives, they only want what’s best for me. Or so they claim.

But I know what they really want.

And I can’t take it anymore.

I’m spent. My gold is tarnished. It’s lost its gleam. Its shine. I can see it, and I wonder if others are noticing, too.

Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to put this gun to my head and blow my brains out all over the room, leaving a golden spray pattern on the wall. The medical examiner will pick skull fragments and gold nuggets out of the plaster. The mortician can line his pockets before embalming me. You can sell my remains on eBay, and invest in them, and fight over what’s left.

I want to fade away, but gold never fades. This is my gift. This is my legacy. This is my curse.

I have only one thing to leave behind.

You can spend me when I’m gone.

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This story first appeared in A Little Silver Book of Streetwise Stories. The first and last sentences came to me one day, and I liked them so much that I wrote a story to tie them together. A friend of mine, fellow writer Kelli Owen, read this prior to publication and said it was a metaphor for my current place in the genre. But Kelli is quite possibly mentally ill, and says that about all of my work. Plus, I’m fairly certain she was drunk when she read it. Take from “Golden Boy” what you will, but I just think it’s a quirky and kind of fun fable. Not a metaphor, and (hopefully) not a prediction of the future.

BRIAN KEENE is the author of over twenty-five books, including Darkness on the Edge of Town, Urban Gothic, Castaways , Kill Whitey , Dark Hollow , Dead Sea, Ghoul and The Rising . He also writes comic books such as The Last Zombie, Doom Patrol and Dead of Night: Devil Slayer . His work has been translated into German, Spanish, Polish, Italian, French and Taiwanese. Several of his novels and stories have been optioned for film, one of which, The Ties That Bind , premiered on DVD in 2009 as a critically-acclaimed independent short. Keene’s work has been praised in such diverse places as The New York Times , The History Channel, The Howard Stern Show, CNN.com, Publisher’s Weekly, Fangoria Magazine , and Rue Morgue Magazine . Keene lives in Central Pennsylvania. You can communicate with him online at www.briankeene.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pages/Brian-Keene/189077221397

or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BrianKeene