Day 118 - Mud Story

Mud Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

There was a tattered and crumpled picture on the ground in the mud. A group of friends drank margaritas at a themed restaurant. They looked like a happy bunch. Maybe it was an after work get-together, or maybe they were friends celebrating a birthday. The picture didn’t really give any indication of what the event was or why they all looked so happy. But someone had lost it or left it behind, because there it remained, smiling faces and all, mud stained and falling apart.

Mark, on the other hand, was miserable and hardly noticed the picture at all when he stepped on it. The picture was buried in the mud. Mark’s foot was buried in the mud. When his foot sloshed into the mud, it soaked his shoes and socks through and through and the grime got in-between his toes. It had been raining all day and most of the night and seemingly every part of Mark was wet in one way or another by that point. The mud soaking in and through and around was just insult to injury.

Walking home in the wet muck of a cool and rainy autumn evening was not an enjoyable process. Mark’s cellphone battery had lost its charge hours earlier. It was a ridiculous thing to happen. He knew that. His battery was getting old and was holding its charge for less and less time after each recharge. For weeks now he had meant to replace his current battery, but he had never gotten around to it. It never seemed quite important enough to make himself stop in somewhere and buy one or go online and order one. A regretfully lazy decision.

Mark had been at the beach. Two days earlier he and several friends had driven up the coast to go and spend the weekend at a rental property in Seaside Springs. There would be bonfires and cookouts and possibly camping on the beach. It was one of the last weekends before the weather got too cold to do such activities. Mark usually liked the change in seasons. He usually liked to wear a sweatshirt on the beach. He liked the cool breeze that came in off the ocean. He loved sitting and watching the setting sun and colors dance in the horizon where the sky met the water.

 Mark and friends had spent the day Saturday on the beach. They had come prepared – coolers full of food and beer, bonfire supplies, snacks, games... name it and they probably had it. They were there to have a good time for a long time. Somewhere during an afternoon game of sand ultimate Frisbee they had met a group of girls. This seemed alright and the girls hung around as the sun started going down.

Mark had not driven to the beach that day. That was his first mistake. Drinking too much and following a girl named Lucy to a house party in town had been his second and third mistakes. The cellphone not being charged was just pure negligence at that point.

The rain had begun late Saturday night, or it might have been early Sunday by that point in the night. Mark didn’t pay attention. He wasn’t in the right mental state to be planning ahead at that moment.

It was still raining when Mark awoke around noon on Sunday. The party was over but the remnants were scattered everywhere. Lucy was gone without a word or acknowledgment of the events of the night before. Mark had no idea where he was, when he was or how to get where he needed getting to. His phone was dead and he knew no one at this house or in this town. He had a vague semblance of an idea as to the direction he had come from. Hung-over, lost and disoriented and very very hungry for breakfast food, he began his lonely water soaked trek. He had wanted a memorable weekend with his friends, and in a less than expected way he had gotten just that. He only hoped his friends would still be at the rental house by the time he got back. Otherwise he really had no idea how he was going to get home.