There was an almost alluring resignation to living life through the motions. I could tell you that the inertia of just being average was just an illusion, an excuse to stay indolent and let myself go with the flow. In a way, you could say I had succumbed to fatalism. Was I negative? You could say that. Living life in the bottom of a rut or as one of my friends used to say, stuck in the pupal stage was dreary.

Clinically, you could call that depression, or the onset of it. How to explain the feeling of being an overachiever for the first one and a half decades of your life, then burning out as soon as you crest your first milestone? They should never have made such a fuss out of such a transient event. Another excuse―.

If I could explain what I was feeling right there and then, or rather what I had been feeling since the second year of high school all the way to the end of business college perhaps a hangover would be an apt description. A hangover made you abhor more movement than was necessary; it made you take the easiest, quickest way to relief, long term implications be damned.

Why so serious? Nobody got out of life alive…right? Right?! No? Okay― if you were the latter kind of person who would, as my other friend used to say, not go quietly into the night, then bravo for determinism. I used to ascribe to that philosophy, I would have congratulated you for sticking with it that far.

I used to think I was living outside the matrix too you know―like my friend Lucas with the sunny smile who has hit the metaphorical genetic lottery. Perhaps he would have been what an incubus would appear to be, a literal devil who can’t help it that his charms keep pulling the fairer side and the other team to him. Like moths to a flame. Lucas is a latin name that literally means light, so karma?

Perhaps I was too harsh to call him a devil. On second thought it fits, even a light-bringer can be a devil. It doesn’t have to be literal, I mean, you know who used to be one of the most beautiful angels before he was struck from grace. Not that I would wish that on my friend Lucas. Despite his devilishly good looks, he is down to earth; never lets it all go to his head. In fact, if only to prove that he, he was still putting up with my yours truly, the grinch himself. Lucas used to rib me about it and even made a sappy diss rap about it.

I couldn’t blame him, he was just trying to bring the cheer as was his wont. However, I never could fathom on what universe Brian rhymed with grinch. Unlike the actual fallen archangel, one thing Lucas wasn’t blessed with was a singing voice―I used to change my tune, which was to say, putting on my smiling mask just so to end the torture. I swear, his singing was so cringe it made a guy green. I bet I could make a better diss track than the guy, see? Today was just not that day though―I had long been inured to it.

“ You’re scowling again,” Lucas said, aping the expression on my features. A singer he was not but he’d have made a better actor. Maybe he should have auditioned for the relaunch of Smallville. He sure had the looks and physique to go with it―most people who met Lucia would think him a stereotypical spoon-feeder. I mean, someone who truly grew into the spoon kind of thing, I think I was silver? Why wasn’t it gold? He grew up on a farm, running after cows in the Swiss alps.

Lucas knew how to ride a horse by the time he was fourteen too. His folks were wealthy in fact, they came into money right about when he was getting into high school. While most of his calluses had long since mellowed out into the texture of someone who lived in the city, his musculature was there to stay. Besides the genetic lottery, good eating on farm grown food did him well. I envied his growth spurt and childhood for bringing him to a hell of a towering looker. He even made the rugby team the 6 foot 2 bastard.

“ Story of my life,” I answered, deadpan. I put away the book I’d been reading― Moby Dick. A classic novel of adventure , high octane if you could excuse its dated English. I used to think It gave the book character. That was the only way I got my kicks, my escape. Even if finishing a good book left me swamped with another bout of melancholy, it was always cathartic to escape to worlds I’d never gone, to see and experience new people and feel the visceral dread of facing things larger than life.

The look of hurt on his features engendered a twinge of guilt in my heart of stone. I could tell it was sapping him too. I could not begrudge him for trying to get me out of the funk okay? It was just that, something about his sunny disposition was antithesis to everything I was. I knew I sucked the light out of life, but he just kept on giving. If I was a blackhole, then he was a K type star like Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus. Was it a coincidence his birth sign was Taurus? I was a cynic when it came to such things as lucky stars.

“ Alright―alright fine. I’ll humor you.” ‘Far be it from me to spoil such gay weather.” I swear, his puppy dog looks won every time. But only because It was more cringey than his voice when singing along to indie pop. And no, I was not a kind of dere―I digress, the weather was truly amazing. I bet he’d been watching the forecast just for it. It was a Danish summer, warm but not too humid despite the drizzle. It was the season of youth and its associated frivolities―it was the reason for the day’s excursion. The three of us were boating on the Baltic Sea.

“ Are you guys ready or what?” the third member of our crowd spoke up. Semantics―I would like to think I was infringing on something sacred. You see, Lucas and Cassandra were something of a couple. Joy―I didn’t ask to be there but Lucas literally dragged me away from my pillow fort. I didn’t kick nor did I scream when I was; there was only so much you could do when the other guy had a linebacker’s worth of muscles. At least I managed to grab a book.

“ We’re good to go captain,” Lucas said, saluting and doling out his trademark wink. The redhead tilted her head and looked askance at me before she rolled her eyes. I would think she would have scrunched her nose at me if she wanted, but her upturned nose always gave the illusion she disapproved of me.

Cassandra had a tendency to look at someone past her nose like some aristocratic madam sneering from behind a fan. She had these full lashes she could bat at you too― Rather than contempt , it was just her resting face. It keeps the peasants away from the prince at least.

“ Yes Milady―” I sighed as I got my respirator mask ready. I switched my prescription glasses for the goggles, clipping them to my forehead while the the elastic straps dig into my nape ―

“ What was that?” Cassandra said a one arched brow.

“ I said I’m ready,” I murmured, trying to infuse as much enthusiasm into it.

“ Sell it to someone who’s buying,” she snapped.

“ Hey hey hey, easy…we’re here to have a good time alright?” Lucas said, interposing himself between us. Sometimes the things that came out of his mouth were too saccharine for my tastes even if they quelled the bubbling package of fury that was about to lash out. However, I would be lying if I did not feel some bit of satisfaction at the sarcastic jabs I threw her way. Cassandra had a nasal Irish accent; I imagined that was how a high nosing noble would have sounded. But, there was another side to her― when she got drunk, she could have a mouth foul enough to sear your ears off. My first acquaintance with her had been in a bar―on the opposite side of the bar of course. I had a polite relationship with alcohol.

By the time we’d made sure to buddy check our diving equipment, much of the glowering burning a hole at the back of my neck had dissipated. While Cassandra would remain onboard to watch over the boat, Lucas and I would dive towards a well known alien hoax in northern Europe. As soon as everything checked out, we hit the water.