All The Way Down

"Get off the goddamned roof."

Jonathan's pleas were unheeded, at least not in the way he meant. He looked up and watched as Brett teetered on the roof's edge in a drunken stupor, no doubt upset over the latest calamity in his overdramatized life. He was wearing a plush purple elephant costume.

"Hey! You drunk fool!" said Jonathan.

That seemed to get his attention.

Brett blinked and gazed down stupidly. He took a seat, feet dangling in the air.

"What."

It was a question with none of the inflection. Jonathan was glad he finally got even a word out of him. He had been shouting at him for five minutes.

"Oh nothing. I was just driving home and I pulled up to the garage and you know what I saw?"

"I dunno--"

"That's rhetorical. Shut up. I saw you wandering on the roof in that ridiculous getup like a lost carnival attraction. What are you doing up there? And will you take off that stupid head?"

Brett twisted the head off and placed it beside him, all eight pounds of it, including the trunk.

"I got fired." Utter despair filled his voice.

"That job sucked anyway."

He shrugged his elephant shoulder pads.

"Why don't you come down?" asked Jonathan.

"Why?"

"Because with my luck, you wouldn't die from a three story fall, and end up breaking a leg. Then I'll have to listen to you piss and moan for weeks while you're laid up in the house. That's why."

"Oh, fine," said a newly resigned Brett.

But as he got up, he tripped over his big elephant toes and tumbled off the roof in a purple blur.