Spinach Dip and Depression

Hello, reader. For reasons you will not understand, I cannot give you my name, so feel free to refer to me as Artichoke Dip, after the cheesy, creamy goodness I am indulging in as I share this story with you.

Now you may be asking, “Well, Mr. Dip, why are you sharing a story with me in the first place?”
I can’t share the answer to that, either.

Yet, anyway.

Now before you continue to bombard my handsome face with questions, let me start by saying that this story has no happy ending, no happy beginning, and very few happy parts in between. If you have any sort of hope that this story will cheer you up or make you laugh in any way, just go ahead and throw it out the window, or go ahead and stop reading here. By continuing, I am no longer liable for any emotional damage caused by the content of the story. Okay? Good.

The first two people you will meet in this depressing tale are Samuel Bell and Rory Rivera, recently engaged and new houseowners. Samuel’s parents have passed mysteriously and they left their $2.4 million estate in his care.

To keep Samuel company while he began to recover from the news as well as to fill the mountaintop cabin with a bit more cheer, his fiance, Rory, sold his apartment and moved in with him. To celebrate living together officially, they have gone out for Sushi and are now returning to their home in Rory’s Subaru, singing Twenty One Pilots as loudly as possible. Let’s go to Samuel.

~

”I’m bleeding, bleeding, so please on my knees repeatedly asking why it’s got to be like this, is this living free?”

“Sammy! You’re shaking the car!”

The Toccoa, Georgia, air was alight with the dying embers of the distant sun as it slipped silently below the Appalachian Mountains, casting its final golden beams across the town. Rory shielded his eyes with his left hand as he made the left turn into their gravel driveway and then switched hands to hold his fiance’s.

Samuel blushed faintly at the contact and, using his nose to turn off the radio, turned skeptically and faced Rory. “You know, I’ve been thinking…”

“Woah, thinking? Hallelujah, it’s a miracle!”

“Roo…”

“Go on, go on. You probably think more than I do, and it’s my job to think.”

Samuel rolled his eyes dramatically and braced himself against the glovebox as Rory eased the Subaru over a pothole, sending loose items in the backseat flying up and over the headrest and into the trunk. “You’re a psychologist, not a philosopher. Anyway, I know we’ve talked about it before, but would you adopt a kid with me? I mean if you don’t want to-”

Rory sighed softly and cast a loving glance at Samuel, squeezing his hand reassuringly. “I want to. You’d be an amazing dad, I can tell you that much.”

Samuel smiled with relief and a single, solitary tear rolled softly down his cheek like lyrics from a rapper’s mouth and, slowing as it followed his sharp jawline, dripped decisively onto the black leather seat. “You would be too.”

They drove for another few minutes like this, remaining quiet but silently expressing their love, making their way slowly up the steep, winding driveway.

Suddenly, though, things began to get bad.

“Do you smell smoke?” Samuel questioned, rolling down his window and sticking his head out of the opening like a dog. “You turned the ovens off, right? Weren’t you making Brie?”

Rory’s brow furrowed and he eased on the gas pedal a little, rounding the final bend just as the last of the light was fading. “I didn’t use the ovens today-”

“Rory!!” Samuel shrieked suddenly, throwing his door open and dashing out into the night. Only… There was still light. Rory swept his vision across the grassy bald where the house stood, trying to pinpoint the light, before realizing it was coming from everywhere.

Everything was on fire.

~

Samuel clambered out of the driver’s seat of his BMW, a steady stream of tears soaking his face like a bath sponge. Kicking underneath the back bumper angrily to activate the lift gate, the stream became a flood, and by the time the trunk had finished opening he was on the ground in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn, unable to stop himself from crying. The house had been declared a total loss by the time the firefighters had arrived, and everything they owned that was inside had burned along with it. Everything he had to remember his parents by, along with all of the stuff he and his fiance had collected in hopes to be married and start a family, and even his Volvo, which had been parked in the garage.

Now all they had was each other.

Not quite knowing what to do, Rory rushed over to Samuel like a whirlwind and, hoisting him up by his shoulders, bent him backwards and kissed him, running his hand through Samuel’s hair. “It’s alright. It’ll be alright.”

“No it won’t be!” He exclaimed with sudden fury, pushing him back and stepping backwards into the side of the car, full of unexplainable rage. “This is all your fault! If you hadn’t moved in then none of this would’ve happened and we wouldn’t be set back by almost everything we own, and I wouldn’t have lost my parents’ house, and… And…”

“Sammy, stop. I’m sorry that this happened, but my moving in effects nothing. And it was your house, not your parents’. They’re dead, Samuel Edward Bell, and you’re gonna have to live with that and stop blaming everyone else for it. Now, grab you things and let’s head up to our room before people start thinking we’re selling drugs.”

“Why, you little-” Samuel raised his fists to retaliate, but Rory effortlessly grabbed them out of the air.

“You know I’m right, and I’m not putting up with your stubborn ass tonight. You’ve had enough stressors today and it’s time for you to take a shower- please take a shower- and go to bed.”

“Fine…” Samuel hung his head in shame, embarrassed at what he’d said to his partner. “I’m sorry, babe.”

The two walked in silence into the hotel parlor, dutifully paid for a room, and boarded the elevator to reach the third floor. Samuel, an interior designer and dedicated hater of hotel decorating, spent the whole ride pointing out things that Rory would never have picked up on, but, once shown, annoyed him almost as much as his fiance’s complaining.

Their room, number C-8, was just as worse for Samuel. After unpacking and going over the TV listings, and after countless complaints spewing from Samuel’s mouth, Rory announced exasperatedly that he was going down to the pool and that if he wanted to redecorate to his standards, he could.

Finally alone, Samuel fell back onto the bed and cried. He knew it was an accident, but it still hurt. That stupid house was the only thing he had left to truly connect to his parents. While he may have been the favourite of the Bell twins, neither of them liked the fact that he was gay, or that he refused to work for them at the Bell Law Firm. He hated being a lawyer, hated lawyers, hated every aspect of the legal system, and yet it seemed that was all he was born to do. He hated his parents for pressing that mindset on him, but…

It was just too much.

More to work out his emotions than to satisfy his eye for detail, Samuel redecorated the hotel room from top to bottom, even improvising with some of his and Rory’s luggage to replace the more hideously tourist-y comforts of the room with some touches of his own. If this is where they would be stuck for a while, then so be it. He wasn’t going to have his eyes bleed from lack of taste.

Samuel’s gay flag swimsuit lay neatly folded in his duffel bag, and, slipping into it quickly, wiped the lingering tears from his eyes and dashed to the pool, his and Rory’s song worming its way into his head and clinging to his memories like a burr. It was Rory’s favourite song, Say Hey by Michael Franti, and while its upbeat tone seemed extremely anticlimactic in that moment, it seemed almost to act as a calming agent, and by the time Samuel was in the elevator, he was singing quietly along.

”My momma told me don't lose you, 'cause the best luck I had was you… and I know one thing, that I love you.”

~

It is ironic that Samuel and Rory’s song mentions luck, for many reasons. Luck is a relative term, depending on whose perspective you’re viewing the situation from. For example, I feel pretty lucky that I have this Spinach Artichoke dip to eat, and I consider it good luck that I haven’t choked on it. However, you may want some of this creamy goodness now, but have bad luck because you can’t get it. Then you’d probably be wishing for bad luck to befall me, in which case I would choke on my dip and die.

In this specific context, Samuel is referring to Rory as “his best luck” while he is singing this song. Clearly this is not true, as the two have just lost everything they own. And while it is completely possible that Samuel could be referring to how lucky he feels to have Rory by his side, I am sorry to say that neither of them are going to turn out very lucky at all.

I beg you to stop reading now, before things go downhill.

Still reading? Here, have some Spinach Artichoke dip. You’re gonna need it to comfort you.

~

Rory sat awkwardly in a poolside chair opposite the entrance, skimming anxiously through a Dean Koontz novel and eyeing the other hotel guests warily.

Something was up, and he knew it.

Mansions didn’t just catch fire in the middle of the afternoon for no reason, and even in they did, the accuracy of where the fire occurred and the scope of damage it had was appalling.

That fire was no natural occurrence.

The noisy Ding! of the elevator caught Rory’s attention, and a sigh of relief escaped him as Samuel stepped into the room, humming a familiar tune and wearing the gay pride shorts Rory had bought him. His bright green eyes sparkled with unconditional love and his freckles seemed to dance across his pale face. The world seemed to stop whenever Rory was in Samuel’s presence, and it was no different now. Samuel never failed to fill the room and take his breath away. He made his way slowly across the room and plopped down dramatically into the chair next to him.

“Babe, I’m sorry-”

“Sammy, don’t.” Rory turned to face Samuel and took off his glasses, setting them on the ground with a sigh. “I can’t begin to feel how you must right now, but we have each other. And there’s bigger things we need to worry about.”

Samuel froze, eyes suddenly glazed over in fear. It felt as if the whole hotel was crashing down on top of him. Or maybe it felt more like Rory’s weight upon his back whenever they had sex. Either way, it knocked the breath out of him. “What’re you talking about? What the hell could be more than that?”

~

Words cannot begin to describe this next scene in their lives from their own point of view. It is too terrible for even the brightest in the field of brain studies to comprehend completely, and if things turned out against Rory and Samuel I would not be here to retell this tale for you, nor would you be here to listen.

There was a shootout in the pool room that night, with 2 reported casualties. A large group of vacationers from Tennessee reportedly had several guns in their vehicle and, upon seeing a gay couple at the pool, proceeded to sneak the guns into the building and open fire.

And no, Rory and Samuel did not die.

The first shot hit Rory in the hand and before one could hit Samuel he was up in a flash, darting like The Flash across the room and ripping a gun out of one of the people’s hands, proceeding to open fire on the whole group.

The guy who shot Rory and a middle-aged woman were dead on the scene.

Samuel, of course, was charged with their death.