The Dead Scout's Handbook of Afterlife Survival

Chapter Five: The Firestorm

When Toby's youth began, Cayden's youth hit its apex. From then on, perhaps due to life or hormonal circumstance, the gears of time lost a few teeth, and the days slid by unnoticed. Cayden's mother went to rehab twice for what he learned was a chemical imbalance most certainly not restricted to her brain. A shadow cast over the apartment whenever she stayed long enough to make any impact at all.

Sarah tried to help Cayden's mother, though brutal honesty was the only thing she could offer. With his own futile struggle, Cayden assisted with Toby since child rearing turned out to be a herculean endeavor on its own. He sympathized with Toby and understood the void that needed filling all too well; the thought of losing his own father hurt enough but he couldn't imagine having never had one at all.

By sixteen, Cayden's imaginary badge collection lay packed in an imaginary box in an imaginary basement. At a younger age, wonders and achievements rose so measurably before him. Now, Cayden didn't bother commemorating his 180th Badge of Folding Sheets, or his 130th Badge of Diaper Changing, or his 290th Badge of Finishing His God Damned Homework. Sisyphus might as well have been sentenced to life as an American teenager, but the Gods of Old could only be so cruel.

At seventeen, Cayden found himself passing classes with lazily gliding colors. High school reached its final hour, and with it came the end of his scraggly hair. Years passed since the combed and well-parted haircut that Cayden wore to Scouts meetings. And with no hope of college, as well as the encroaching phenomenon of "professionalism," those days were coming around again. The soil of his cheeks became fertile with testosterone, sprouting an unkempt beard to match. So just for that senior year, he became the portrait of 'carefree,' a portrayal belying the ardor of caring for both a parent and her child.

At eighteen Cayden graduated, climbed the year's top first-person shooter, and watched his mother nearly kill his half-brother. Her actions bore no malice, yet watching it didn't make that any more apparent. Standing over an ironing board next to the bathtub, with Toby playing in the water below, she fainted and dragged both ironing board and iron into the tub. The cord coiled around her ankle and pulled the plug as it all toppled in. Toby escaped with a fractured skull and a beating heart.

Cayden decided to chase a steady job and take Toby with him, his mother signing the necessary papers without hesitance. As it so happened, a classmate offered a position in Gary, Indiana where Cayden and Sarah could escape to. Toby accompanied them, though Cayden's mother found them just as the bottle, the pipe, or the needle found her. Rehab claimed her once more while Cayden worked his back sore and his feet raw spending hours in cars and tight shoes. He didn't take a day off for his first year.

At nineteen, Cayden saved up enough to have the greatest moment of his existence. Sarah and Cayden exchanged vows on the top of a grassy hill in Indiana, with Charlie and Rebecca on speaker phone, tying a knot of their own. Financial limitations crushed dreams of a lavish honeymoon, but they had plenty for a babysitter, a weeks' worth of chicken wings, and three dozen horror movie rentals. Charlie and Rebecca joined them on video chat for the movies and certainly not for anything else.

Later that year, thanks to a bonus and promotion, they saved ample cash for travel. In the winter of Cayden's 19th year, his best friend Charlie invited them out to Wyoming for a prospective job position. With an awkward cab ride, a terrifying flight, and a looming specter, Cayden could be sure the universe had done all it could without outright killing him. Oh, how right he was.