Tom’s face is red and hot. His toes are cold. The blood is receding from his favorite plaything, which is shriveling by the second in his greasy hand. Shame rushes in, replacing the thrill. He slams the laptop shut, unwilling to go through the arduous process of closing his incognito tabs.
Before he has a chance to collapse on his bed, pants around his ankles, a man steps out from the shadows and speaks. “Having fun?”
Tom jumps and turns, scurrying to cover his nakedness. “What the-“
The man puts up his hand. He is wearing a black suit and hat, slim fit, very fashionable. Tom freezes. “I have some recommendations, if you’re open to them.”
“Listen bozo, I don’t know who you are or what the hell you think you’re doing in here, but if you don’t get out by the time my belt’s on, you’re in for a world of hurt.”
The man laughs and again holds up his hands, less commanding this time, more placating. “Peace, pilgrim. I’m not here to scare you, I’m here to help you.”
“Help me?”
“I want to help you find what you’re looking for.”
“Who says I’m looking for anything?”
The man laughs again, a deep laugh of real mirth, not the snide, knowing, semi-ironic laughs Tom is accustomed to hearing and having. “Aren’t you? I see you use your search bar. Is searching a more palatable word?”
Tom’s face gets red again. It’s confirmed. He was watching the whole time. Tom searches for words, eyes darting around the room. “Listen, I don’t know what you think you saw, but it’s really none of your business anyway, and I was just-“
The Man’s smile is Cheshirean. He speaks, placating. “Tom, Tom, Tom. Relax, ok? I’m not here to judge. I’m here to help.”
“Who says I need your help?”
“Well, need is a strong word, none of us really needs anything, do we? But we can all use a hand from time to time, don’t you think?”
“And what exactly is it you’re proposing to give me a hand with?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Whatever I want?”
“Whatever you want.” He enunciates each word, letting them hang in the air.
“And what do I want? Since you’re such an expert.” Tom says petulantly.
The Man clutches his chest, a mock wounded gesture. “Oh, Tom, your words cut me like a knife. I don’t presume to know what you want. Only you can do that. What I can provide for you are tailormade options. That’s all I offer, all I’ve ever offered, options. Options which I think would be appealing to my friends. I like to help my friends. Don’t you?”
Tom is baffled, his jaw literally agape. He thought this kind of stuff only happened in movies. The man isn’t smoking a cigarette though it feels like he should be.
“All you’ve ever offered?”
“Oh, ignore me, I prattle on. I don’t get out much. I’m used to working in the background. Like a good stagehand, if I’m doing my job right you won’t ever know I’m there.”
“Well, ok, I mean, it’s not like I’m interested or whatever, but if I was, how much would your ‘help’ cost?”
“Not a thing, my friend, not a thing. I get mine, by and by. What I’m offering you today is closer to philanthropy. I want to put you in touch with what you want. And isn’t that what this show is all about? Wanting, questing, getting. Having. I can make the questing that much easier. You can go right from want to have. I can take the pain away. Why should we pay the ferryman? Why should we have to wait? Why not have the haystack sifted for you, the needle delivered directly to your door?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to understand. You just need to say yes. Yes to pleasure, yes to fulfillment, yes to finally getting what you want, what you know you deserve. That girl, for instance,” The Man glances at the sleeping laptop, “you liked her, yes? How about more of the same? Or even better? We can always do better.”
Tom, perplexed. It sounds wonderful. But what happened to free lunches? “I don’t know what to say.”
“Just say yes. It’s not a marriage proposal. It’s just a helping hand.”
He sends him away that night, saying he needed to sleep on it, though sleep does not come. Dancing in front of him are all the dazzling possibilities of what the twenty first century might have to offer. He works hard. You have to. Everything is getting so expensive, and there’s always some kid who’ll do twice the work for half the pay. Doesn’t he deserve to relax? Why should relaxing be more work? He’s already optimized every aspect of his life. It’s tightly regimented, prompted by various alarms and reminders on his watch/phone. If he sleeps too long, it prompts him to wake up, to get up. It knows the difference. If he sits too long it prompts him to stand up and stretch. If he doesn’t get his steps in, it reminds him. Proper exercise, as logged by his dreadfully smart watch, lowers his premiums, the only thing making health insurance a financial reality. If he snacks too much or too little it politely chirps, informing him of his improper blood sugar. When he’s still watching TV past his bedtime, also established by the brilliant little device, a notification appears on the TV, which he can either heed by going to bed or ignore by swiping on his wrist.
Morning comes, and then night. Pleasure escapes him. He can’t find the right video on his preferred adult website, spending nearly an hour scrolling first through the home page, then a list of his algorithmically preferred performers. Nothing scratches the itch. He’s left with nothing but his right hand and his imagination. Neither are up to the task. Finally surrendering, he throws on some PJs and moseys to the couch. He always does his business in the bedroom with the door shut and locked, even though he lives alone. His preferred streaming service is equally unappetizing, and he spends the rest of the night scrolling, looking for something to watch. He’s either seen everything too recently, or it’s overhyped, or he knows he should see but isn’t in the mood.
Languishing in abject entertainmentlessness, he reaches out to The Man, texting the number he left the first night.
“No need to call,” he had said, “I know how stressful that can be for you.”
Tom can’t decide if he’s comforting or creepy.
It doesn’t matter.
Three weeks fly by in a haze of bliss, Tom riding high on the pinkest, fluffiest cloud, sustainably sourced, discreetly and conveniently delivered directly into his home.
As he got used to it, he found The Man was right. There was no need for shame. The Man was almost painfully understanding. And he did not judge. Whatever it was Tom liked, there was more of it. And he didn’t even have to ask.
The Man comes unseen, knocks shave and a haircut on the door, and slips a thin manila envelope through the crack. Inside the envelope is a flash drive with exactly what Tom always wanted only never knew it, or didn’t know how to ask for, or didn’t know it was ok to ask for.
“How will you know what worked for me and what didn’t?” Tom asked that second night.
“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it,” The Man said with a sly grin. He went on in a cartoonish Russian accent, “We haf veys of knowing.” He laughed, and spoke in his regular voice again. “But really, if you don’t like it, just don’t look, or don’t keep looking. We’ll happily adjust your profile accordingly. Remember, stick with what works. If you like it, have it. If you don’t, don’t. It’s whatever you want it to be.”
Tom said ok, and the deal was done.
Yes, it’s been just three weeks and Tom is totally wrung out. He feels used up. The way he felt after going four rounds with his girlfriend in college. Like any more enjoyment might just kill him. He does not regret his choice. He’s had little time to reflect. His days are full. Work and the health regimen eat up the daylit hours. By the time he can rest, relax, enjoy himself, there’s no energy left for thinking. He no longer needs to steer his own pleasure cruise, and can dedicate his remaining energies to his guaranteed right, the pursuit of happiness. He’s very happy, very satisfied. And that’s what it’s all about.
Almost happy anyway. Almost satisfied. There’s something the girl said tonight. It’s bugging him. He can’t get it out of his head. Normally he skips past the talking. He likes to get right into the action, scrubbing forward until the girl is on her knees. He’s as uninterested in watching cunniligus as can be, and would happily skip that too. But The Man is good to him. The videos no longer contained the unsavory act. But it’s like a legal requisite or something that you can’t just make a video of people going at it, there has to be at least a whisper of a story. Oh no! I ordered a pizza but forgot I don’t have any money! Eek! A burglar! Guess I should have sex with him/her/them. Oops! My stepdaughter got stuck in the washing machine again. How will she ever learn? Sometimes his mind wanders as he pops the flash drive in, inadvertently subjecting himself to the terrible acting, the abysmal writing, the flimsy plot.
The thumbnail looked promising enough. She was just his type, which is to say unreal. But her talking never ceased, even as she was twisting impossibly on the couch, the floor, the bed, her scene partner exploring variants on a theme. Even when her mouth was otherwise occupied, she kept talking.
Are you happy?
Is this enough?
Can’t we spend some quality time together?
Are you afraid of silence?
When’s the last time you entertained yourself?
These were not questions anyone should be asking him, least of all an adult film actress. It’s like a pig giving a pitch for veganism. Doesn’t he know he’ll be out of a job? She looked directly into the camera as she posed these queries. Tom felt as if she were speaking directly to him. He realized, rationally, that this was probably just a symptom of his excessive loneliness, plus a little good old fashioned movie magic. It’s been years since a beautiful woman has looked him in the eyes and spoken to him voluntarily, that is without money being involved. Hostesses and cashiers ask how his day’s going. He barely bothers responding. He can’t bring himself to care how his day’s going, not when his life is a monochromatic patchwork of grey days followed by fictional fireworks at night, so he can’t imagine anyone else caring much either. Or if they did, his answer would cure their curiosity, he had no doubt, leaving them feeling just as flat and fake as him. He wouldn’t wish that on his worst enemy, let alone the sixteen year old at Starbucks, a whole life full of false hopes and real disappointments ahead of her. Who was he to rob her of the blind hope of youth?
Entertain yourself. A phrase of his mother’s. Tom, you’re going to have to entertain yourself for a little while, she’d say, when running out the door or answering the phone or laying down for a nap. And he did. His child’s mind turned the alley into Yankee Stadium, or the Amazon rainforest, or the icy peaks of the Himalayas, where he would plant flags on virgin earth and sometimes have to escape from the Yeti, a role dutifully played by the super, who was of the “children should be neither seen nor heard” school of thought.
Tom doesn’t want to be thinking about this. He wants to be entertained, dammit. What else is the point? Ever since man first put paint on a wall, or blew on a hollowed out stick, hell ever since they figured out how to grunt meaningfully, that’s all he chased. That and security. But security is only a fancy word for a time and place where one may be entertained. He has security aplenty. Just look around. Constant patrols of battle ready cops toting machine guns on the street, bars on the windows, beeping machine by the door. This last was always recording video and would send first responders of every uniform to his location if his wrist device didn’t come in contact with the wall device after the door was opened. The lights flickered as the lady in the box counted down. He always made it in time. Just as he always made it to work, just as he always made it to dinner, just as he always made it to his entertainment center. The curtains are blackout, the couch memory foam, the audio-visual equipment top of the line.
Why shouldn’t it be enough? Isn’t it all anyone wants? Well, he supposes some people want someone to share it with, but that’s hardly a necessity. Really it’s a lot of work. He couldn’t wrap his head around dating apps. He worried about coming on too strong, being a creep. The result being he never engaged with anyone on them. By the time he tried, back when he still tried, it was inevitably too late, and the other party had since moved on to other parties. No big loss. He was just copying and pasting “non creepy pickup lines” from Bing. He thought those would perhaps be less commonly used than the ones from Google. It made no difference. And besides, he has his movies, and his shows, and all the connections from those. It’s already a lot of people to keep straight, and if he did wind up meeting some woman and falling in love and moving in together he’d have to keep track of all the people in her shows too. Talk about a headache. Plus she might not be as willing as the girls on the flash drives. Or as understanding as The Man who dutifully delivers them day in and day out.
Quality time. What does that even mean? As if his daily dedication to the art form was not enough? He’s seen the data. He’s doing exactly as a red-blooded American man ought to, self-pleasure wise. Who is she to accuse him of lacking in quality? And further, to accuse him of fear? Of what, silence? True, it’s never silent around him, but that isn’t fear-based. It’s optimization-based. The AM food prep time is wasted unless he doubles it up by listening to his podcast or audiobook. Ditto the exercise regimen. It’s not like he’s lifting weights with his ears. Good citizens stay informed. And the way to do that is to pay attention, to know what’s going on, and how is he supposed to know what’s going on if he sits around all day listening to nothing but his own irritating heartbeat? He’s mad enough to spit. He doesn’t, but he’s mad enough to.
Thinking it must be some kind of joke, he reloads the video. This time he doesn’t skip the intro. He watches the whole thing. It turns his stomach towards the end. Usually he finds this conclusion to such activities quite titillating, but he supposes that comes before his own completion, not after. After is a whole different can of worms. He realizes there is no punchline. Or if there is one, he’s too much a part of it to find it very funny.
Without thinking, he fires off a text, vicious and vulgar. In it he accuses The Man of being an unkind and elaborate prankster, and insinuates there may be legal ramifications if this mistake is not rectified. There is no response.
Tom sits on the couch, fuming, while a show he’s seen several dozen times blares in the background.
Another day comes. He relies on his schedule, rising, bathing, eating, working, improving himself. It’s Thursday, so he sits in his car and texts with his therapist for an hour instead of taking his lunch in the park.
After the day comes the night. And in the night comes his entertainment.
He is waiting by the door, in the silence the girl so callously accused him of being unable to stand. He regrets losing out on his daily progress goal for the current audiobook, but he’ll make up for it by listening at double speed tomorrow. He doesn’t want to miss a thing. His ear is bent towards the crack at the bottom of the door, on alert for the sounds of approaching shoes. Though now that he thinks of it, he’s never heard The Man walk, at least he doesn’t think he has. Never matter, he’ll be here soon. Just focus up and wait.
He does his best. His mind is locked in neurotic gnawing, rats chewing the wires. What a waste of time. He promised me better. He promised me joy. He promised me no more stress, no more pain, but here I am, sitting up, waiting for him, wasting my evening. That’s what I’ll tell him, too, you wasted my evening. We’ll see how he likes being erroneously accused! Though of course my accusation won’t be erroneous, not in the slightest. After all, am I not here, right now, actively wasting my evening on account of the man?
The door raps the same pattern it has twenty-two times before. He throws aside the chain, opens the deadbolt, undoes the latch, presses his wrist to the security panel, throws the door wide, yelling “Gotcha!” as he does. Got who, he can’t exactly be sure. The hallway is empty. Between his feet is a thin manila envelope.
Boiling with rage, he fires off a text to The Man. “WTF”. He checks his phone. Nothing. He paces the room three times, checks again. Still nothing. He does three pushups, checks again. Still nothing. He starts to put the phone down, looks again, starts to put it down again, looks again. This time there are three bouncing dots, the universal symbol for “hang on, I’m typing.” The dots disappear, but no message arrives. He stares dumbly at his phone. When the dots reappear, he inhales. He does not breathe out. It just stays in there, the air, getting staler by the second. Finally his patience is rewarded. “Watch. Enjoy. Remember what we talked about.” The message ends with an upside down smiley face. He has no idea what that’s supposed to mean, in this context or any other.
He throws his phone down. That bastard. Just another bait and switch con man, like all the rest. He’s mostly mad at himself, for expecting it to be any other way. How naïve can you get? Stupid bastard.
He sits down and watches the already dry paint dry. After a few minutes of this he starts to feel like a junkie in need of a fix. Itching, fidgeting, unable to get comfortable, he stands up and walks to the envelope. Unthinking, he opens it, takes out the flash drive. His computer is booting up before he realizes what’s happening. The startup ding gets him. It always gets him. Pavlov’s bell is far from his mind. He has the lock, and The Man has delivered the key.
Today’s selection of videos are at first like an apology. Nothing odd, just wall to wall pleasure. After exhausting his onanistic impulses, he peruses the other options on the drive. One folder is full of videos featuring monkeys causing scenes, drunk off patron’s drinks at a tropical bar and the like. Another folder is a series of fifteen minute videos of people slipping and falling. He watches every single one. He works his way through the cavalcade of entertainment until there was only one folder left. It’s way down at the bottom, and titled “Just for you ;)” He’s intrigued. More than intrigued, he’s hypnotized. The entertainment train has left the station. He will not be denied. The Man’s deliveries would be perfect if they had autoplay. He hates having to make decisions.
There is only one video in this folder. He opens it and sees a familiar face. The color drains from his face and his hands grow cold. He doesn’t know whether to run or throw up. Before he can slam the laptop shut, she is speaking to him. Don’t be ridiculous. She’s speaking, he’s watching. That’s all. He can’t look away. She continues asking questions while men perform various acts not with her but to her. She pays them no mind, with only the occasional grimace to indicate they’re even on the same planet.
Is this what we’ve become?
Do you believe in progress?
Will I make you whole?
Do you like what you see?
How much longer can it go on like this?
Will you see the end?
Why are you so scared?
He realizes with dawning horror that the men are not only using her for their apparent (and profuse) pleasure. They are dismantling her world. Each of them upon finishing begins to take apart the set, carrying off chairs and curtains and rugs, still naked, still glistening from their recently completed act. His confusion turns to fear when two of the men actually pick up and take away the wall behind her, leaving her in void. There is nothing but her sweet, uncomfortably familiar face, her voice echoing now as she continues her interrogation.
Tom is apoplectic. He hurls the laptop out the window. It was that or hurl himself out. There was no middle ground. He had to make it stop. He furiously texts The Man, “we need to talk.” He sits, drumming his fingers against the table, waiting for the call.
His phone does not ring. This too he throws, against the wall rather than through it. It makes a terrifying crack, but is apparently unharmed. He’s grateful for his phone protector, the Rage Case, 179.99 plus shipping, but damn is it worth it. The phone continues not ringing.
Despair sets in. How hard has he worked to avoid exactly this? What walls has he constructed, options has he forgone, all in the name of keeping the despair at bay? What else was the point of all the modern conveniences if they couldn’t even do that for him?
A familiar voice makes him jump.
“Are we having a good time?”
His head whips around, and in the corner he sees The Man, dressed in shadow.
“Why, you bastard, how did you-“
The Man raises a hand. Tom’s mouth closes.
“You’ve never been concerned with how before, why start now?” Before Tom can answer, he goes on, “That was rhetorical, of course. Don’t bother responding. I already know how you feel about it. It’s been logged and added to your profile. Now, I understand you’re dissatisfied with the service?”
“I didn’t sign up for this, whatever this is. And that woman, who do you think you are, making her ask me all those questions? Is this some kind of game to you? Am I on a prank show? Crank Pranks?”
“Stop being so dramatic. I haven’t made anyone do anything. I’ve provided you with options, as I have provided others with options. That’s all. The choices you make are yours and yours alone. Don’t you remember our first conversation? If you don’t like what you see, look away. I represent certain interests, interests concerned with curating content that you’ll find irresistible. Not you and others like you. You and you alone. Why don’t you want to work with me? You’ve actually got the easy job here. Just sit back, watch and enjoy. How hard is that? Isn’t it all you’ve ever wanted?”
This time he does pause, as if expecting a response, as if this has become a conversation. Before Tom can answer, The Man starts up again, softly tutting his tongue.
“Really, it’s too bad. I thought you were an ideal candidate.”
Tom stares blankly at the darkness where he knows The Man is standing.
“Oh, look,” The Man says in genuine realization, “I’ve disturbed you. Not my intention at all, my good man, not my intention in the slightest. You were unable to peel your eyes off the girl, so we had her do another tape. Is that so wrong? To give you what you want? Exactly what you want. Not what you want others to think you want. Not what you’d rather want. Nothing more or less than precisely that which draws you in, captivates you, leaves you powerless to be but entertained.”
“If this is a joke, I don’t think it’s very funny.”
“Haven’t you been listening? There’s no joke here. No, I’m afraid it’s all rather serious. If you need more comedy in your life, I recommend looking for something funny. Then we’ll give you more of that. It’s about what you’re looking at, not what you’re looking for. People can’t take their eyes off a trainwreck, so we give it to them. They might want to blame us, but they asked for it. Even when they act like they hate it, how terrible, oh the humanity. Yet their bloodlust is satisfied, if only for a night. They say what they must to sleep easy. I don’t need their justifications. I don’t want them. I’m here to give the people what they want, what they truly want. If you don’t like what you see, you’ve got nobody but yourself to blame.”
“Well, couldn’t you just put something better on the drive tomorrow? I don’t like this anymore.”
“Don’t you remember our first discussion? If you don’t like the bed you’re lying in, you should have made it better.”
“Well then I want to make it better. How about that?”
“Who’s stopping you? Did I sit here and force you to watch anything? Have I strapped you down and peeled your eyelids back? I provide options, Tom, nothing more. You do the rest.” The Man’s voice is deep and tremulous, crackling with all the fires of hell. And he’s large, much larger than Tom would have said. It only takes a moment for his indignation to eclipse his fear.
“So what, I’m just supposed to sit here, not watching anything?”
The Man speaks calmly again, in his slick, friendly tenor. “I’m not your boss, I’m not your sheriff, I’m not your God. I’m a simple man, offering a simple service. What you do with it is up to you.”
Tom slinks down low, disgusted, exhausted, tired of the man and his games, his glib words, his smart retorts to any complaint Tom might levy.
“Fine. Whatever. Just leave me alone.”
“If that’s what you want, you can make it happen. I’m in the business of more. Whatever draws you in, you get more. Understand?”
Tom doesn’t think he does understand. Why would he want something that makes him so miserable? It’s not like he went out and shot the video, or made the girl to ask him all those questions. Is it his fault that he couldn’t look away, that he had nothing else to fill his time? The Man is wrong, he does want to be happy. He does want good things. Doesn’t he?
“I want to cancel my service. Thank you for thinking of me, but I’m all done.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“What does it work like?”
“The envelopes will come. What you do with them is your prerogative.” And with that, The Man is no more. Tom can’t be sure at first, so darkly cloaked was The Man, but yes his feelings tell him truly. He is alone once more.
Tom lays in his bed, trying to pretend he’s sleepy.
Eventually, morning comes, and another day follows.
He is eating dinner when the door is knocked. The familiar pattern, the familiar envelope. It’s all familiar. He closely examines the flash drive, as if he’ll be able to scan its contents with the naked eye.
“Oh, who needs you,” he says, throwing the little plastic device in the empty metal trash can. It sings like a spittoon.
As his body digests, boredom sets in. Netflix is going. It’s not enough to drown everything out. He pulls out his phone and begins scrolling. Give em the ol’ one two, double the screens for double the fun. It still isn’t enough. His knee bounces and his eyes keep darting to the trash can.
What bed has he made, exactly? He is curious. Not giving in, no no, he’s a student, a student of self. Let’s see what these things say about me, he thinks as he plugs in the flash drive and powers up his laptop.
The ding dongs, and his kidneys twitch. Excitement? Or fear? He opens the drive, an act of self discovery. Soon conscious thought is obliterated. He is unable to look away.
True entertainment at last.
© February 2023
Elizabeth sits by the phone, waiting. He said he’d be home. She wishes she could trust him.
It wasn’t always like this, the sleepless nights, rushing to the window every time she hears a siren or sees refracted headlights dance across the living room wall. Once they were young, and everything was beautiful. That was when there was still hope, still a chance at redemption. Fifteen years of marriage to an incorrigible barfly had robbed her of her hope, and with it went her pep for life. What filled the vacuum were tight, anxious wrinkles around the eyes, neurotic cleaning habits, and a distaste for the unknown. She would fold and refold the laundry some nights when she couldn’t sleep. If he went out after work she rarely did, sleep that is. All she could picture was him wrapped around a telephone pole, or getting another DUI. They couldn’t afford a lawyer, and the insurance was already costing them an arm and a leg. Some people could drive a hot rod or Italian sports car for what it cost Greg to drive a 2004 Corolla, already so full of dings and dents it hardly seems worth insuring. The muffler and rear bumper are already held on with duct tape, and one headlight is missing. When these picture shows play in her mind, it’s not like the other vague imaginings of mishaps both minor and major which plague her throughout the day. It’s full technicolor, surround sound, she can even smell the hot rubber, taste the blood rushing into his mouth. She hears her sobs, her children’s sobs, at the funeral. She has their outfits all picked out. When the ax falls, it’ll be better not to have to worry about details.
Greg leaves his office, whistling. The executive assistant by the front door probably things it’s a cheerful “see you all tomorrow” type whistle. He hopes she does at any rate. From the inside, it feels more like a kid whistling in the dark to keep the monsters at bay. He promised Elizabeth he’d be home tonight. As always, he intends to keep his promises from now on. He whistles and walks briskly to the door, hoping the carousers won’t see him as he beats his hasty retreat. He can hear their bawdy laughter emanating from the breakroom. Thank God for birthdays. They’ll all be in there shoveling cake down their throats while I slip right out. No problem. No problem.
He holds his breath, the way he used to when driving past a graveyard, and still does when trying to beat a red light. But the charm fails to protect him. Maybe it never did. Shit, shit. Billyboy, the hardest nut of them all.
“Greg-o! Not slinking out are you?” The gargantuan man’s voice booms out, nearly shaking the foundation. Billyboy must be nearly six foot seven, probably three hundred pounds, maybe more. He hates drinking alone almost as much as he loves drinking, and will insist on being matched, even though his liver is the size of Greg’s torso. But, Greg’s never been one to make an outcast. If it makes the man feel better to have company, who am I to deny him? It must get awful lonely. Not tonight, not tonight. I promised.
“Billyboy,” Greg growls conspiratorially, giving him a friendly handshake, “wouldn’t dream of it. Not me. Slinking? Heavens no. Just gotta be out, um, you know, on my way home. The missus is-“
“Oh, you’re gonna have to call her! Tell her you’ll just be the teensiest bit late then. Well, maybe don’t call, better to ask forgiveness than permission, isn’t that what you always say? C’mon, it’s Harmon’s birthday, I’m buying the first round!”
“I dunno, Billyboy, I really need to be in tonight. If I’m not home by 5:45 I might as well not go home at all.”
“Oh, come on, I’ve met your wife, she’s a very forgiving lady. Never mentioned the stain I left on your carpet, always sends me a card on my birthday…”
Not forgiving. Polite, Greg almost corrects. She didn’t mention the stain to you maybe, but Billy the Stain is what she calls you when it’s just the two of us. Goddammit. It never can be easy, can it?
Stop worrying. You’re over reacting. Something probably came up at work. He said he doesn’t even like drinking with Billyboy, not after last time. Unprompted. You didn’t feed him the lines. Or maybe you did, maybe he mined every conversation and told you exactly what you wanted to hear, and like the dumb asshole you are you believed him. But he sounded so sincere. Billyboy’s nothing but trouble, I always drink too much when I’m with him, plus that time he flipped your skirt up on Memorial Day. Blah blah blah. But he promised. He doesn’t usually promise like that, not saying it like that “I promise.” It’s always “I’ll try” and “we’ll see if I can swing it.” Tonight it was a promise. A promise. He can’t be so far gone. He can’t be. Who am I without him? What will I do? Where will we live? What, every other weekend with the kids? She imagines what his bachelor pad will look like. No place for children. Absolutely not. Maybe if he sobered up he could get them every other weekend. What the hell are you talking about? Deny the children their father? What a fine example of a mother you are. Just exemplary. Yes, mess the kids up for life, leave them drowning in therapy bills, all to punish him? And who do you think they’ll blame when we break the news? Mr. Goodtime Daddy? Or the one who tells them to clean their room, go to bed, turn of the TV, brush your teeth. Maybe I’ll tell them we’re going on vacation or something. Then he can come home and all the lights will be off and nobody will be here. See how he likes it. You’re so stupid, you know that, don’t you? You didn’t leave when it was just the two of you. You knew it would be like this. What makes you think you can leave now? Two kids to take care of, ten year gap on the resume. It’ll be just great. I wonder how the kids will like living in a homeless shelter? At least it will give them something good to write about for their college entrance essays. If they even want to go to college. Not after growing up on the streets they won’t. Ted will become a lush, just like his father, and Becky will be turning tricks to pay for her habits. Knock it off. He’ll be here. He’ll be here.
It's only quarter past. He was slinking out early after all, he could have a drink, just the one, and Billyboy was buying, and then he’d say his goodbyes and be on the way home. Flowers, I should get her flowers. It’ll give me an excuse for being a little late.
Billyboy’s glass is raised high, and he salutes the birthday boy. All cheer along. Glasses clink, oh what sweet music, the clinking glass. And that wonderful cold bitterness passing his lips, whooshing into his mouth. Before it’s even down his throat, he feels better. Like everything’s going to be ok for a change. This is the future right here. Cold turns to hot in his belly, and flows through his veins, bubbling first out and then up to his head, where it dances so delightfully. If scientists could figure out how to harness this, well, goodbye climate crisis. Endless energy. What beautiful bounty. Proof of God’s love for His creations. He feels like he can take on the world. The first sip is finest, but it begs a second. He tries for the magic once again. Yes indeed, it’s still there. My, how marvelous. He likes to leave the foam in his mustache. He purses his lips, lodging the hair in his nose. All he smells is bitter hoppiness. Bitter happiness.
In moments, the glass is empty. Like synchronized swimmers, he and Billyboy tap their empty glasses against the bar. Someone drops a few dollars in the digital jukebox, and Franky Valli’s voice fills the room, clear and bright, building as the music swells. Greg marvels at how some guys can just take the thoughts right out of your head and sing em so clear, so simple. He gazes longingly at the Wild Turkey bottle and the Long Trail tap, singing along. “You’re just too good to be true, can’t take my eyes off of you.” The barmaid never nags. She wracks em as quickly as the boys drain em.
The clock keeps ticking. And ticking. And ticking. Whose idea was that? Tick, tick, tick. Even if she doesn’t look at the clock, she can’t escape it’s interminable scorekeeping, reminding her every single second that she is still waiting, waiting. The table is set. She is in Greg’s favorite dress, that little green number he always calls it. Baby, wear that little green number for me. How long has it been since he’s asked her that? She fed the kids already. They shouldn’t have to wait. They did their best, but they were getting hungry, and though it’s been a while since she was a kid, she can still remember how uncomfortable formal clothes are at that age. Let them play in the yard a little longer. Until the sun goes down. Becky starts crying when I try to put her down, no I want daddy. What a little bitch. Yes, we get it, he's the best, and I’m just the one that picks up after you, feeds you, brings you to school and did I just call my daughter a bitch? I deserve him. No better. We all get what we deserve in this life. And this is clearly what I deserve. The cake sits on the counter, candles unlit. Maybe I should start leaving them to fend for themselves, then they’ll love me like they love him. No, you know that isn’t how it works. Dads get away with that stuff, not moms. Besides, who’ll they throw in jail for neglect? Him? At best he’d get sent to rehab. He’s got an excuse. What’s your excuse?
“Oh, forget it Greg-o! You’re already late, what’s one more?”
“That’s what you said three drinks ago. I’m telling you man, I’m in the doghouse.”
“Well, better have a good load on if that’s where you are.” Billyboy hands him another beer and bump, and in case he isn’t sure what to do with it, the large man gives him a demonstration, dropping the smaller glass into the larger and downing them both in a single breath.
“You’re gonna be the death of me,” Greg says, but he’s smiling. He takes his medicine.
They laugh. It’s so good to laugh. She doesn’t laugh like this, not anymore. She used to. Back when she was beautiful, back when he was thin. They laughed a lot together. Maybe there’s only so many laughs two people can share together, and they just used them all up. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t want him to be able to blow off any steam, as if she’s so perfect. Maybe she doesn’t want him to get ahead in life. Doesn’t she understand? A promotion is only half about what happens in the office. There are plenty of guys who can do what he does in the board room. It’s what happens in the bar room that separates the men from the boys. And she likes the house, doesn’t she? Wants the kids to have clean clothes, go to good schools? Well, my dear, how do you think that happens? She wants to have her cake and eat it to. Always has. Tear me down every chance she gets. Fuck it. What’s one more.
He jingles his glass at the barmaid. She brings him another. Lovely lady.
“An’ one fer my buddy,” he slurs, cocking his head at Billyboy, trying to wink. He thinks it looks slick. At best, it looks palsied, at worst, it looks like Jeffery Dahmer’s attempt at a come on.
“I wanna thangew, Billyboy, fer bein susha true frien’.” They cheers and drink their beers.
“Kids! Brush up, time for bed,” she calls out the door. They come running, and get ready with relatively little protest.
As she’s getting tucked into bed, Becky starts to whine, “I want daddy to read me a story! He does good voices!”
Elizabeth doesn’t even say anything. Her face must be doing all the talking for her. Becky shuts up, uncharacteristically, and even apologizes. A quick kiss, I love you, and the light is out. Ted recently decided he’s too old for bedtime kisses, but she peaks into his room and says “I love you.” He says it back, but he won’t meet her eyes. He’s looking out the window, staring at the empty driveway. She could cry. She wishes she didn’t recognize that face. It’s the face from the mirror. Well, Ted, I guess we all have to learn some day.
She walks back to the kitchen and stares at the cake some more. She lights the candles, and hoarsely sings “Happy Birthday” to herself. What the hell, this is America. It’s not like you only turn forty once. She blows out the candles. Is it bad luck not to eat a slice of your own birthday cake? Or is that just something the Carvel admen dreamed up? The room is dark without the flickering candle light. Suddenly this ungovernable rage boils up inside her. She’s mad enough to kill. Maybe she will. She could poison him. He clearly wouldn’t mind, goes out and poisons himself all night every night. She takes the cake and puts it right by the front door. That’ll show him. He’ll get home and stick his foot right in the cake, he’ll be mad, and then he’ll have to look and see what he did. She goes back to the kitchen and throws his plate and ice cold steak against the wall. The china shatters. The mashed potatoes stick to the wall. Everything else falls. The brilliant red anger felt so good, but what it leaves behind is scar tissue, and emptiness. Stupid girl. Now you have to clean that up. It’ll be the same with the cake. Better move it before he gets in. No need to rush, haha. Not like he’s coming home any time soon. Maybe not at all. Have I mailed out his life insurance check? There’s probably an exemption for drunk driving though, like suicide. Any excuse not to pay out, right?
The numbers game calms her, helps her forget what really stings, loving a man so hellbent on destroying himself, and by extension everyone around him.
“Gwon now Greggo, can’t be late, can’t be late, little bunny you, say whar’s yer pocke’wash? Ain’ the lil bunny hava pocka’wash?”
“Srite here, my goodman,” Greg says, reaching into his pocket, as if for a watch, instead retrieving and displaying a middle finger. The big man laughs. Greg laughs. Everybody’s laughing.
The car door slams. The sound always jolts him, gets him ready for the task at hand. Better than a cup of coffee that. How come I slur on my tongue but not in my mind? Can’t be that drunk if my thoughts aren’t slurring yet. Hold on, hold on, Billyboy is yelling something. How do these windows work again? No, that’s the lock. Gotcha, you whore, down you go.
He leans his head out the window, “Whadju say?”
“Lights, man, lights!”
“Oh, shi, goo’won.” Greg flashes a smile he thinks is charming, and peels out of the parking lot.
If they would just get them self drivers good, it’d be alright. Not that I can’t drive, I’m fine, especially if I close just the one eye, but damn it’d be nice to close em both. Little nap. Little nappy. Little nappy for daddy.
The car nearly goes into the ditch. He swerves back onto the road at the last possible second. It was an overcorrection. What was that crunch? Oh, some poor bag is missing her mailbox. Well, not yet, but she will be. This gets him laughing. Like that old joke, I’m already dead, I just don’t know it yet. Creamed her box, he thinks, and laughs some more. God, is he funny. Why does she never laugh at his jokes anymore? When’s the last time he told her a joke? Shut up, shut up, you gotta drive man, drive, drive now, sort your life out later.
She lays in bed, mind racing. Can’t sleep. When she stands, she feels so tired. Even sitting is too much. Gotta lay down. But laying down is no better, that’s when her mind speeds into overdrive. This is it, finally the night he won’t make it. She’s sure of it. How mangled his corpse will be. What will the kids think? Will they get teased at school for having a dead daddy? She hopes kids are kinder now than they were, but she doubts it.
Her heart stops, drops and rolls when the headlights finally belong to her husband. How many times has she heard a car, got up, looked at the driveway and found it empty? It’s now 11:56. He still has four minutes to wish her a happy birthday.
She doesn’t know why she silently scurries to bed. What, don’t want him to catch you looking? Can’t bear the thought of him knowing you care? She pulls the sheets up over her shoulder, presses her face into the pillow. She tries to regulate her breathing. In and out, nice and calm, smooth, soft, even, just like if you were asleep. She hears the scraped attempts at fitting the key into the lock. If he starts banging and wakes the kids up, I’ll give him both barrels, say I thought he was an intruder.
Finally his key hits the lock, and she hears him collapse just inside the door. Damn. The cake could have been perfect. On his face, he’d be the one to clean it. I was worried about his shoes. God damn him.
The footsteps get closer and her chest gets tighter. He suddenly decides to start being sneaky after throwing their door open wide. She hears fabric on fabric as he disrobes. She does not stir. He does not check on her.
In the morning, she pours him a cup of coffee. He reads the paper. The children bicker.
“Well,” he says, “I better be off. Got another big day.”
© April 2023
There is a scent. Make no mistake about that. Not a bad scent, necessarily. Not like rotting meat, or something long since forgotten at the back of the fridge, left so long that identification is futile. A kind of a blue smell, light enough that it is only noticed in its absence. When Timothy takes his head off, it’s like removing tinted glasses. His nose catches the first fresh air and wrinkles, his interior detectives sorting out the change. Oh, yes, that’s right, it was that smell, only I didn’t notice. I forgot it didn’t always smell like that.
It was never his dream, growing up, to someday become the Easter Bunny. He was never particularly attached to the concept, even as a little kid. Growing up Catholic, Easter was a day of obligation, a day of wearing stuffy, uncomfortable clothes and sitting in a stuffy, uncomfortable seat, while a stuffy, uncomfortable man told him how lucky he was. Two days before, his mother had taken him around the Stations of the Cross, explaining all that The Son was made to suffer on his final day, his sacrifice for the people, yes, even for him, that his soul might be cleaned, that he might dine beside The Lord on the day his number was called. Now this is religion, he would have thought were he a little older, this is what gets the people up and praying. He was rapt, hanging on his mother’s every word, eyes glued to the clay depictions of each phase of the crucifixion. He liked that part, the eternal life, the blood and guts, the wicked Romans, the tears of Mary.
But church on Easter? Well, that was just something to get through before the candy. And he had no more love for the alleged bringer of candy than he did for the deliverer of the sermon. It just never seemed relevant to him. He liked the egg hunt just fine, and loved the candy. But the Bunny? Meh.
And now here he sits, in the Bunny suit, holding screaming children for photos they don’t want to take, while impatient parents assure them they do, in fact, want to take them. They tell them how fondly they’ll look back and remember that vague, blue smell, and that oversized head with the unblinking eyes and permanent smile. Not a very strong argument, thinks the child, as he wails and struggles. One couple even brought their dogs. Is that someone’s idea of a joke? Or did they really want to fork over fifty hard earned dollars to get a photo of their dogs running away from a costume bunny? Surely they don’t think the dogs believe in the Easter Bunny. They aren’t even supposed to have chocolate.
It's not all so bad as that. The pay is shit, and the suit is uncomfortable, digging into his shoulders anytime he tries to sit up straight, and after a while he can’t take the taste of his own air anymore, but it does seem to make a lot of people happy. He waves to everyone that passes by. It’s right there in the job description. Plus, almost all of them wave back. He knows, if only for eight hours a couple days a week, what it would feel like to be beloved. He thinks about moving to Hollywood. When he's on his lunch break, he waits “backstage.” Nobody else calls it this. He doesn’t even call it this, not out loud. But in his mind, it’s backstage. In actuality, it’s an empty mall storefront with black tarpaulin stapled up to block the view. But the toilet backstage is pretty messed up. It can handle number one, but if he needs to make a serious movement, he has to go out onto the mall floor. Out of habit he smiles and waves at everyone he passes. None of them return his wave. Some even scowl, or clutch their purses. Most of the parents quicken their pace and grip a protective arm around their children when he waves to the little ones. So back he goes, backstage again, waiting for his time to shine yet again.
On his third day as the Bunny, he discovered dancing. Not that he can properly bust a move in the suit. He can’t hardly see nothing, for one thing, and it’s hotter than a kettle for another. But a little sliding of his feet and some disco thumbs and everyone just goes nuts. People, grown ups, even beautiful women, women who would never give Timothy the time of day, women he would never dream of talking to, let alone dancing with, come over to groove with the Bunny. He is Timothy no longer. He has died and been resurrected, almost. Into the life eternal, the good life, the one he never dared think he deserved, but always silently craved.
And then he takes some more pictures, and sometimes the families are nice, and very often the mothers are hot, and he can stare all he wants because nobody can tell what he’s looking at from behind the mask. It’s a shame the line forms on the left. The left eye is no good. He can make out rough shapes and colors, but that’s about it. The right eye is fine. Looking through the right eye he can hardly tell he’s in the suit. It’s just normal vision, with a little knitting. But all the good bits are still there. A teenager walked by with a sweatshirt, “I Heart Hot Moms.” I should get one of those, Timothy thinks. When he takes the head off, he remembers he would never be bold enough to advertise such a statement. But it doesn’t change the truth. “I do,” he says to himself backstage, “I do heart hot moms.”
He couldn’t hear very well in that thing either. Thankfully, most kids have no ability to modulate their volume, so he could almost always hear the cries of “Easter Bunny!” before some half pint dove in a flying tackle at the back of his knees. But then when they would try to talk to him, it would be all this mumbling, and he couldn’t understand little kids very well even without the head. Either way, it was hard for him to engage in dialogue. He didn’t grow up mute, so he didn’t have much in the way of a non-verbal vocabulary. Anything past waving, blowing kisses, or covering his mouth and bobbing his head side to side to simulate laughter was pretty much out of the question. He’d just nod his head, or shrug his shoulders, or just stare at the kid, and nine times out of ten, it was just fine. It seemed to him that kids are used to getting ignored. They take it pretty well, for the most part.
He never was the quiet sort. But the Bunny does not speak. If he must communicate (and he must) it is to be done with gestures. This is perhaps the secret sauce of his transmutation. Without his constantly running mouth, he really can become someone new, someone people love, someone who might just make it to heaven someday. Sometimes he still gets stuck though, thinking and thinking and rethinking again. But even then, his hand waves, his false face smiles, and people laugh, or point, or hurry away or cry and try to shield themselves behind their mothers. “Rent due next week,” he might think; usually he wonders about his dream job, what it might be, when he’ll get it, what the benefits package will be like. He saves up vacation days in his head, squirreling away a little extra off each check so he can really ball out when he gets to Costa Rica. Are things very expensive there? Probably not. Maybe more on the resort though. I shouldn’t go to a resort, I want to really see the country. Is it safe in Costa Rica? Maybe I should meet a Costa Rican, and they could show me around down there, and tell me where I won’t get ripped off. Gotta remember to google it when I get backstage, if I had a pen I’d write it on my hand, where to meet Costa Ricans. He sees the search results behind his eyelids, “Costa Rica” being the top result. Lot of good that does.
“Ok, tell the Easter Bunny what you want!” This rattles him out of his mind and back into the suit. Tell the Easter Bunny what you want? Who do they think he is, Santa Claus? He doesn’t do this shit. You get what you find. And the kid, a square-headed boy wearing a Minecraft Creeper t-shirt with an off-putting, Gorbachevian birth mark on his forehead, tells him about some Lego set he wants. Are these people completely insane? He wants to grab the little dork and shake him. But it’s not really his fault. With dumbass parents like that ‘oh what do you want from the Easter Bunny,’ he internally mocks them in a whining, high-pitched voice, what hope did the little squirt have? But isn’t it better to pluck the weed when it’s young? It would be going the kid a favor, really. Someone’s gotta let him know that this kind of shit just doesn’t fly if you want to have a good life and make friends and maybe even go on dates. Timothy should know. He doesn’t get to do any of those things. But the Easter Bunny is silent, like the Ghost of Christmas Future. So he listens as the small moron confuses Santa and the Easter Bunny, nodding his big dumb head, looking at the kid’s little dumb head, and waits for this photo shoot to be over.
Timothy wouldn’t get the chance to read the news about it. Not that it was anything new; he had seen it all before. The endless hand-wringing by dead-eyed pundits, the cries of outrage, the sending of thoughts and prayers, the whole “this can’t be allowed to go on” rigamarole before it’s allowed to go on, the incompetent and idiotic proposals from both sides of the aisle. What he would get a chance to hear was the pops. Pop. Pop pop. He wondered, in a vague way, what all the hubbub was about. He turned his head but not his shoulders. The Bunny’s head only moved if his whole body did. So he looked, and saw the darkness inside. It would make his neck stiff to stay like that, so he looked forward again. The photographer was shaking a rattle above the camera, and the kid on his lap was crying. These are gonna be great pictures, he thought, just perfect for the mantle. Then he saw a woman running, running for her life. There it was in front of him, the expression crystalized. Her purse flew out behind her on an implausibly long strap. A sandal still clung desperately to one foot. The other was bare. Pop pop pop. This time he turned his whole body. What he saw made him jump, spilling the crying brat onto the floor. He could hear the mother, or maybe it was the photographer, or maybe both, yelling at him, but he couldn’t hear what they were saying. He saw the bodies, splayed out on the stained floor. Damn this left eye, can’t see what the hell is-
He smelled it more than felt it. The bullet ripped through his chest, singeing the suit. Why didn’t he feel it? He felt the wet, hot blood, but not the bullet. Isn’t that funny? He thought. It wasn’t so funny when the second one hit. That one he felt. Like a red hot bee sting tearing through his leg. He fell down. He must have fell down. How else would he have been on the ground? He didn’t remember falling. It was sticky. How did he never realize how sticky his blood was before? It pumped through him every day for thirty three years. Two small holes. That’s all he could see. One brown and hazy, the other decently clear. Feet ran by. More screams echoed in the emptying halls of America’s church. Was there anybody left to attend his funeral? Who would write something pithy and wise on his tombstone? What a way to die. Why me, he cried, why me. And then peace found him. At least I can die beloved, die as someone people wave back to. Heavy boots clomped up in front of his eyes.
“Hi, Mr. Easter Bunny,” a voice said, “are you going to bring me lots of eggs this year?”
© April 2024
Alex Gorman left work on a Monday. He went out to the parking lot and, where he distinctly remembered leaving a 1998 Mazda Miata found instead a small pile of broken glass, jagged green gems glinting in the early evening light. He asked the office park’s security guard, a sleepy older gentleman who looked like he earned his veteranhood when Victoria still reigned, for the security tapes.
“Tapes?” The white haired chap asked. “What tapes?”
Alex pointed at the various security cameras, and said something like those ones, the tapes from those ones. The security guard drew an exhausted breath and explained as patiently as he could that security cameras don’t really use tapes anymore, haven’t for a number of years. It was just sub-optimal tech for the job, see? They recorded onto server-based hard drive space now, the cryptkeeper went on, explaining the difference between HDD and SSD, how to set up a RAID and so on. Alex was too polite to interrupt, so he took his remedial IT lesson. When the lecture was finally over, Alex said something like “right, I don’t mean literal tapes, I just meant the footage.”
“You know footage is also an outdated term, from back in the film days when minutes were measured by the foot. See, when you would have however many feet of film, that was your foot-age, see?” The ancient man held his arms wide to illustrate the point, in case Alex didn’t know what feet were.
“Yeah, yeah I get the jist, but really I just need to see who broke into my car.”
The old man wore a blue shirt that had a picture of a badge screenprinted on it. He said, “Well I don’t know how you expect to do that.”
“From the digital video ‘footage,’” (he even did little airquotes around footage so the codger wouldn’t change the subject again), “from those cameras looking out at the parking lot.”
“Oh, those cameras,” the old fart said, as if some final, vital, elusive piece of information had just been revealed, perhaps the location of the Holy Grail. “Well, I wish you woulda led with that. We could have saved a lot of time, not that I mind too much, being hourly and all,” he chuckled. When he noticed Alex’s failure to laugh along, violating a fundamental tenet of conversing among workers, his face fell. Without mirth, he said, “No, those are just dummies.”
“Dummies?”
“Yeah, dummies.”
“As in?”
“As in not real cameras, just plastic housing that looks like cameras. It’s a pretty effective deterrent.”
“I’ll be sure to tell that to the guys who stole my car.”
“Or ladies. It’s the twenty first century after all, I’m told women can do anything men can, even grand larceny.”
He still had to make payments on the car, of course, lest he wreck his credit rating, a hard fought 640, so he couldn’t afford a new one. But the doc said exercise was good for him, and he could use some help in the waistline department. Too many TV dinners had turned his once lithe and athletic body into a swollen storehouse for calories which might be needed later on, if all the grocery stores should close, or he suddenly decided to start running or something. This was the nice way of saying he had gotten fat. His knees creaked when he walked, and he was developing a limp.
But he didn’t like to complain. His loving wife lovingly prepared those meals, slaving over a hot microwave. She poked the holes in the cellophane lids, and watched, hypnotized, as the carousel spun round and round. Not Alex, he refused to be in the room when that cancerbox was whirring. No amount of sense could shake him from the belief that having a microwave was akin to having a wild grizzly bear chained up in the kitchen. Like most Americans, he had an uneasy alliance with his own means of survival.
The mail hadn’t been collected for about a week. That was always the purview of his loving wife. He would rise first, and make them coffee, scooping the brown grounds from a vacuum sealed bag into an automatic coffee maker that was not Mr. Coffee brand though he insisted on calling it Mr. Coffee nonetheless. And you said chivalry was dead. After they had sipped their first cups, staring silently at the newscaster stuck behind the television screen, he would shower and she would get the mail, leaving the relevant pieces addressed to him on the breakfast bar before ducking out for work.
She had written him a letter. Written it to him, stamped it, addressed it, and put it in the box at the end of the driveway with the little red flag sticking up. He heard somewhere, though he had no way of knowing if it was true, that the red flag used to mean incoming mail, that the mailperson (though back in those days he was the mailman) would always check for outgoing mail. Oh, those halcyon days he was born too late to taste. He was cheated, really.
She didn’t leave him the day she wrote the letter. She didn’t leave him the day she mailed the letter. She waited, kissing him and telling him she loved him, even making love together a couple times, waiting for the snail mail to return. Then one day, she was gone. He got out of the shower, walked downstairs, towel around his waist, though the only cohabitant was his dear wife, who had seen that which the towel concealed more times than either of them cared to count, softly dripping water on the floor around him. He saw the pile of mail, small as it often was, but on top was an envelope addressed by hand, not by machine. Curiouser and curiouser. Its return address matched the destination address, which was this very address, where he lived and breathed. As he lived and breathed. His hands trembled, though he didn’t know why. His wife was always gone when he got out of the shower. This was not out of the ordinary.
What was out of the ordinary, once in a lifetime in fact, was the content of the letter. He had been broken up with before, of course. You couldn’t be the type of guy Alex Gorman was without getting broken up with at least once or twice. But this was a first. Not only because they were married, coowners of the house he stood in (but wouldn’t very much longer), wedded not just in the eyes of God but also the eyes of the government and the banks, but because he had no idea it was coming. There was no mounting rage between them, or smoldering silences, or suspicion of either party being involved with someone else. It had all been just business as usual.
The body of the letter did very little to relieve his confusion. It said, in highly indirect language, circular almost, that it was all just so business as usual, and farbeit from her to interrupt the usual, for he was such a master of it, he was, the usual, masterful really, and when God gives you a gift you use it, so use it Alex, with your mastery of the usual. Be regular please, for the rest of us. You must, my love, you must. She didn’t call him my love. That was for when they were still married. Which he supposed maybe they still were, from a certain perspective. Not his perspective, but a certain one. The legal-financial one, for instance. He didn’t finish the letter. Maybe the divorce papers were on the back. But he always imagined the paperwork dissolving a love contract would be a little bit fuller, more robust, requiring a heftier package. On TV it was delivered in those long manila envelopes that seal with the red string and two red buttons, not trifolded into a regular old letter envelope. He would have read the rest of it, probably. How else would a regular type guy respond? Only the letter was no more, so he couldn’t have even if he wanted to. It burned up, like his birth certificate and family photo album. His mother’s ashes were in the house. They burned too. He found no urn.
He just finished walking home when the blaze just finished burning. Neighbors were gathered on their lawns watching, praying grateful prayers that the fire stayed over there, that the rest of the bad juju would too. None of them spoke to him. It was as if he wasn’t there at all. He wasn’t their neighbor anymore. They softly refused his eye contact, just watching the steaming smolder where once there had allegedly been fire. He saw all the hallmarks of fire, black wood, house gone, fire engines coiling their hoses, but he didn’t catch the fire himself. It was all hearsay and circumstantial. Nobody could prove a thing.
If there was one thing he was looking forward to in the wake of the inferno, it was no longer needing to deal with the microwave. But, as was typical for poor Alex Gorman, the steel box of death survived the blaze. As he picked through the stinking, wet wreckage, he found it, even the plug still intact, if a little worse for wear. That was all he found, other than ashes and tatters. Other than nothing. He hoisted the godawful machine and carried it out with him. If anything else survived, other than the concrete foundation and the overstuffed mailbox, he failed to see it. All was not lost, not yet anyway. Since the mailbox was still there, he’d at least be able to get his checks, the ones from work, where they paid him to do things, and when he did those things they paid him. Sometimes he wouldn’t have to do things but would get paid anyway. They called it vacation. Then one day, he didn’t have to do things but would stop getting paid. This they used to call getting fired, but since the employers didn’t want to pay unemployment, they now called it getting laid off.
So there he was, laid off, and with no more use for the mailbox he stopped going to the plot once known as home. He was in the park, one arm resting casually on the microwave, which (like his butt) was resting casually on the bench. He watched the old familiar sights, the woman from down the block, tall and blonde, getting walked by her dog, a German Shepard pup that only a few months ago would have fit in a shopping bag, but now was large enough to eat most other dogs in the park. He heard the long term campers in the woods yelling about something or other; he never listened too close when they yelled, scared that if he let himself become involved in their lives, even in this small way, that their lots would be cast together, either them on his couch or him in their tent. Even his scrupulous ignorance of the homeless had not saved him. His house was still nothing more than a pile of cinders, a cautionary tale, a stern reminder to everyone who hasn’t mailed out their insurance check yet.
He breathed in heavily through his nose, the hairs sucking in and blowing out, keeping time. He would have loved to trim them, but his electric nose hair trimmer, along with his 4K OLED HDR TV and automatic garage door operator, were windswept flakes of carbon by now, dripping wet from the hose of a firetruck too late to save anything but the neighbors’.
Not knowing what else to do, he went to the bank, in an attempt to explain his situation, about the car being gone and the house being gone and the checks being gone and the only stuff left being him and the box his checks used to go into and the box his food used to come out of. He stood in line with the microwave, now unable to part with this final vestige of what used to be his life. One by one, the line dwindled as patrons approached tellers and had their needs addressed. Not resolved, but addressed. Alex could overhear the guy in front of him, arguing with the teller. From what Alex could glean, the guy had opened an account the week before, and they put the wrong name on the card. Now he wanted to get the right name on the card, but they kept telling him that without photo ID matching his card, he was basically the same as an old time cartoon burglar to them, with the striped shirt and racoon mask. They wouldn’t be able to rectify the situation without the proper documents, but he wouldn’t be able to get the proper documents until the situation was rectified. The nauseating circle was explained over and over, with the teller not understanding the man one bit, and the man (having not been understood) getting angrier and less understandable by the minute. The only people actually working in the place were the security guards, who invariably had to lead the apoplectic customers out of the building when they found themselves unable to maintain the decorum expected in polite society.
Alex banked here because it was the only financial institution where he could keep his money. Every day it seemed he got an ad for a new credit card or bank account, but whenever he applied for them, they told him he wasn’t real. According to Experian there was nobody with that name or social security number at that address, the same thing the state told him when he tried to register to vote. Funny, they never seemed to have trouble finding him at tax time. The error message would say that he should go in to his nearest branch at his earliest convenience, and let a human rectify the situation. When he tried, the human would hack away at their keyboard, asking him all the same information he entered online, for his convenience, only to say, “I’m sorry sir, it seems as though there’s some kind of error, though I can’t legally disclose whether it’s on our end or yours.”
He frequently failed capcha anti-bot tests, too. That’s how he finally lost his computer, the night before the fire: on the wrong end of a hammer. A man can only be told so many times that he’s a robot (by a robot) before he will feel the uncontrollable urge to prove his humanity. Unfortunately for him (but fortunately for the tellers) there were more legal and ethical hang ups around taking a hammer to a person who accuses you of nonexistence than a robot.
In spite of the many times he’d been burned before, here he was, back again, at the bank, with all he had left in the world, clinging to the microwave, flotsam adrift in the North Atlantic. He thought of those black and white pictures of guys in suits waiting in bread lines. Why did the monochrome make it seem like artifacts from another world? Something bygone that could never happen again like flappers or breadlines or nazis. Black and white was supposed to be back then. There was supposed to be progress. This was supposed to be the future.
He was already climbing the walls by the time he was next when they called “Next!” He knew this was a mistake. Never make a business decision drunk and never go to the bank nervous, that was like day one of his MBA. He started off friendly enough with they heyhowareyas, though the lady on the other side of the desk gave him this squinty look through her glasses, this who do you think you are, asking me how I am look. It was the same look she would give to a chatty seat mate on a red eye flight, a door to door salesman, or a kid on the subway raising funds for the mother of the unknown soldier. He told her about the house and the wife and the car and the job. When he got to the last detail, she pushed a little red button under the desk, the same one she would hit if he pulled a gun. Security was there, and their billy clubs hurt as they walloped him, sending him crashing to the floor, shattering the glass on the front of the microwave, making it exactly as dangerous as he always feared it was. They yelled “stop resisting” between their wallops. Around him the bank did business as usual. The lady cried “Next!” and a man stepped over Alex to withdraw some cash. He didn’t have the right forms, and was promptly shown to the door.
When the guards had had their fun, they frogmarched him outside and threw him down on the sidewalk. Then they stood there with their hands out, casually coughing the “it’s time for me to get my tip now” cough of bellhops and jackboots. Alex, not wanting to be rude, rummaged his pockets and gave them what he had. They were just trying to make a living after all. They didn’t run the game. That was the CEOs and stuff.
He limped through the town with not so much as a bag of frozen peas for his swollen eye. Every car had a branded window sticker, Uber or Lyft or DoorDash, some with all three. He wondered if there were any personal vehicles left in America.
He went to a pawn shop and tried to hawk the microwave. He was hungry, and had given his final dollars to the security guards. He used to say the microwave made food, but that was only true if there was something in the freezer. But there was no freezer, and there was no food. As far as he was concerned, the microwave was inert. The salesman, a one eyed fellow with a jeweler’s glass around his neck and an aluminum leg, looked at the microwave and asked if he had a license for it. Alex replied that he didn’t know he needed a license for a microwave.
“Well, normally you don’t, but with the glass all busted out, that thing’s Class IV Destructive Ordinance. I gotta see your license. Sorry bub, I don’t make the rules.”
Alex explained again about the car and the job and the wife and the house and the bank and how this was the only thing he had left and he really didn’t even like it, but something was better than nothing, surely, and he just needed a bite to eat and maybe a place to go. The salesman didn’t even have to call the cops. The security cameras, these ones real, recorded the whole interaction and uploaded them to a cloud-based subscription service that automatically reported all felonies to the relevant authorities. The salesman was warning Alex of this fact when the cruiser arrived. The system was a requirement of his insurance provider, he added apologetically. Nothing to be done about it. His hands were tied. Having not a dime to tip the officers with, Alex headed out the back, still clutching the last vestige of what used to be his life.
By the time he is out of breath, he figures he’s far enough. Granted it only takes him three blocks to get out of breath, but the officers are probably out of breath after two. He thinks of yard sales. “If the pawn shop’s bust, I can always just skip the middleman,” he says to nobody. He loops around to his former residence, hoping that maybe the lawn will still be functional. What he finds is nothing. Not an empty lot, not a burned up husk of a house, just nothing. It goes from sidewalk to mailbox to this inexplicable nothing to the neighbor’s fence. He stares, wet eyed. People walking by turn their heads in morbid curiosity at the nearly crying man, looking at nothing.
“There used to be something here,” he tries to tell them. “I used to live here.” They hurry their steps and avert their eyes, looking through him, not at him. Not the way one human looks at another. The way they look at a victim. Quickly, prophylactically, as if they’re afraid whatever ails the victim might be contagious. The way nobody calls the cops when a girl yells “rape.”
He knocks on doors, asking to use their lawn, which he calls their yard, for a little yard sale so he could maybe get a bite to eat. Some doors slam. Most never open to begin with. He makes his pleas regardless.
When he gets to the house at the end of the block, he finds it unoccupied, already with a sign in the yard. The sign reads FOR SALE. Perfect, he thinks, there’s already a yard for sale here, I can just slip mine in without any bother. He writes a price under the letters FOR SALE and hangs the sign on the microwave, obscuring the broken glass. Nobody walks by. Or if they do, they can’t afford it. The sun goes down.
Before it comes up again, he reduces the price. He flips the sign around and writes FREE on the blank side. When the child of morning, rosy fingered dawn appears, he’s a carnival barker, hawking the microwave at the lowest price imaginable. Traffic goes on. Nobody casts a look in his direction. His stomach hurts. His eyes catch no mirror, no window to another’s soul. He gives up. Who needs a stupid microwave anyway. Not to mention the damn thing is busted. Everything he once had, everything he once was, is no more, save the part he never wanted to begin with. Taking the sign from the defunct device, he hangs it around his own neck, and begins to walk.
FREE it says. He’s finally FREE.
© April 2023
Thomas sits at his desk, typing. The room is dark, except for the cold blue glow of his monitor. Were he watching this scene from outside himself, he would see only his face and hands, the rest of him engulfed in the abyss. Regrettably, he is anywhere but outside himself. You might not regret it, but he certainly does.
His task, should he choose to accept it, was to water a virtual tree. That was all. Simple, really. The reward for watering this tree, diligently, digitally, day in and day out, would be a real live tree of some variety planted in Africa. They didn’t tell him where in Africa. Just, you know, over there. There is a long list of many mindless tasks he must complete to earn the simulated water he throws on the virtual tree. He does all he can to grow the pixels, hoping that someone else will grow an actual tree. This is how the economy functions. Ours is to do or die, not to reason why.
This is not his job. This is done during his recreational hours. He is not paid for this, though what he is paid for is uncomfortably similar in form and function.
He clacks away, not happily, but not sadly either, at least not anymore. He’d been having these problems, see? Problems like feeling empty or sad or angry, and he didn’t like those feelings. It was hard for him to not have those feelings. He tried, but living in his cube and working in his cube and sleeping in his cube day in and day out and hardly going outside wore him down. When he did venture out, he needed his respirator, and his breath tasted bad the second time around even after he brushed his teeth and used his dentist prescribed mouthwash. It’s only $50 more a bottle than the store brand but well worth the money for the added security blanket which accompanies a doctor’s recommendation. Dentists are doctors, right?
Maybe he didn’t like being in his cube all the time, but he had his reasons. He was nothing if not reasonable. The convenience was one, saving on a metro card was another, but most of all he and his coworkers were scared, scared of gunmen either known or unknown showing up to the office, senselessly obliterating lives, scared of wildly mutating contagions recklessly spreading from person to person, and not just biological contagions but also the sociological and political contagions which had caused so much upheaval lately. It was widely regarded as unsafe to engage in water cooler banter, for Thomas and his fellows knew not who silently carried the latest bird flu or fascist bug. The air would carry their vile viri from mouth to mouth or brain to brain, spreading like an STI at an orgy, happily bouncing from one rube to the next. Thomas hated the idea that his own immune system could be turned against him, turned against his coworkers and neighbors. But even more he hated the idea that his mind could be turned against them.
Thomas was raised in a time when they taught kids that everyone is good and nice and friendly until they’re abused or confused or high or deviant. If that was true then the nazis marching on the capitol and the lone nuts shooting up art galleries and high schools were surely good little beans, only doing what they were told and taught was right. They weren’t at fault. Society was, or their parents were, or whoever it was that radicalized them or rejected them or called them ugly or stupid or mean. If it could happen to them, it could happen to him. The group consensus was that it’s safer to keep everyone at a distance. Better to be alone in a sea of citizens than bundled together, targets downrange at the shooting gallery.
Even if he managed to somehow keep himself clean, he couldn’t expect everyone else to be so scrupulous, so lucky, so insulated. Being in a crowded place was basically asking to get gunned down. He watched the news, he stayed informed, he did all the things he was supposed to do. He sent thoughts and prayers to the families of those afflicted, and donations to the politicians who promised to stop such tragedies from occurring. After all, the game is rigged. Just imagine all the bad people, the ones who disagreed with him, the people who wanted kids to keep getting gunned down in history class, and you know they’re donating, and their candidates are winning. So he did what he could and sliced off much more than a tithe of his check to the National Committee of his choosing.
With all this weight on his shoulders, he couldn’t help but slump, which was giving him back pain. He scheduled virtual sessions with the chiropractor. Even that didn’t help. Every day he got a lunch break, 45 minutes in the middle of the day that he had to clock out for. Even if he didn’t take lunch they’d deduct his pay anyway, citing something about rising healthcare premiums for the underfed. Needing to take time but not wanting to waste any, he liked to use the 45 minutes listening to podcasts, usually about the state of the world. Sometimes, if he really needed to unwind, he’d listen to true crime, covering serial rapists and mass shootings, a welcome respite from the politics. One day, as he was hearing all about what Ted Bundy liked to do with the decapitated heads of coeds, an ad came in for remote therapy.
It started with gunshots, screaming mothers, the sounds of the suicidal, lines like “I can’t take it anymore,” or “soon there won’t be anymore pain,” followed by the sound of someone falling, like fabric flapping in the breeze, the way it sounds to follow a redneck flying a flag off their truck with the windows down, then a splash, or a splatter, or the sound of broken bones. There were audio clips of abusive homes, fathers beating children, children in turn becoming bullies. Then a friendly-yet-firm female voice came in, informing Thomas that he should “do [his] duty, before it’s too late.” His duty would cost him a mere $5,000, billed monthly, but wait, order now and you’ll get double the sessions for the same low, low price. That’s right, text with a genuine therapistbot two times a week for two years if you lock in your contract now.
He was skeptical at first. It was only proper. But it gnawed at him, the ad. He lay awake that night wondering if he had done all he could to optimize his life, to help the people around him. Plus column minus column was his equivalent of counting sheep. In the plus column was what the president called a brave and commendable decision, to stay home, to order his groceries remotely, to keep all outdoor time to the bare minimum. He signed up on the city Facebook page for his bimonthly park pass, which while not strictly mandatory was a sign of good citizenry. He displayed his pass when he went for a walk in the park, showing he cared about his fellows and would not selfishly overcrowd the park. But there was the minus column. He had no romantic partner(s) to speak of. He owned neither house nor car. On top of that, he had failed to properly stimulate the economy. When his rent was paid and his groceries were bought and his utilities were covered and donations made to worthy causes, both national and international, he had forty three dollars and sixty eight cents remaining. But still, the thought gnawed at him that he should be doing more.
Forty-three dollars wouldn’t cover therapy. The sixty eight cents were basically gone already. By law, all cents leftover in a transaction or bank account went to the Police Officers’ Defense Fund. He knew people were hellbent on suing police officers now, and it really wasn’t fair to expect them to get a lawyer for themselves, not when they incurred the alleged liability out there on the streets, defending the populace from itself. That had been the same bill which defunded the public defender’s office. He supported his representatives who supported the measure, because they told him it was for the best. He supposed they had a good point. Who would he rather pay to defend, some criminal, or the guys trying to stop the criminals?
He opened up his banking app and saw that his credit score was still in the high seven hundreds. Thank goodness. He checked it every morning. You never know when someone might steal your credit card info or social security number and go around writing bad checks in your name. That score meant he could probably secure a loan, especially under the new Mental Health and National Security bill, which pooled together the funding of those two sectors, a waste cutting measure they said, for all those nasty mental hospitals full of fat, selfish doctors and fatter, more selfish patients. Now the military could utilize those funds to keep everyone safe, and the consumer, or voter or whatever, could take out the inverse of what at one time would have been called a war bond, but now was called a Mental Health and Safety Loan, taking a portion of the National Security/Mental Health budget for the year at an APR of only 29%. The military decided they would gladly pay Raytheon tomorrow for a Hellcat today, and at that interest rate, Raytheon happily assented. If everyone owed everyone else, society would have to stay together, therefore the consumer should incur as much debt and spending as possible, for the health of the whole economy. Thomas read that in the news, and knew it must be true because it came from the good news outlet, which was the only one he trusted. He only looked at the bad news outlet when he was in the mood to be angry, or to have a reason for his preexisting anger.
So he signed up. To assuage his guilt. To help him sleep at night. He signed up for four years of remote therapy. Get this, it was even better than the deal they had advertised during his podcast! The “Real Live Therapist” (copyright CleanMind Corp. Not actually real, or live, or a therapist. Calling it any one of those three individually would have been criminally false advertising) listened to Thomas. When he typed, the Real Live Therapist waited before responding, and what thoughtful responses they were! He was maybe falling in love, he realized after a few sessions, and in the name of keeping everything ethical, he came clean and asked for a different Real Live Therapist. The replacement had an image of a balding man with glasses and a pipe, rather than the attractive female avatar of his first Real Live Therapist. It was in his third session with the new Real Live Therapist that he was given a prescription for something called Mooderal. Thomas listened and nodded his head and thanked the Real Live Therapist for so graciously pointing out everything that was wrong with him, and providing him a solution that required no real effort on his part, only money. Of course Thomas had health insurance, it’s just that his health insurance only covered accidents that happened within the western territories on Wednesday-Sunday, and intentional inflictments of injury by non-self, non-governmental forces in the eastern territories Monday and Tuesday. Therapy was considered neither, unless the therapist punched him in the nose on a Monday, or if he lived in the western territories he supposed dropping the phone on his face would have counted, but only if he were on the sidewalk. Any injury incurred in the home was considered self-inflicted. The punchline here being he was on his own for the meds. But they were well worth the price. His Real Live Therapist said that if he stopped coming to the sessions and stopped taking the pills, he would experience the most horrible kinds of withdrawals, would almost certainly go out and perform socially unacceptable acts in public, perhaps even become an Al-Qaeda or a Proud Boy or maybe something even worse.
Thomas didn’t want that, so he did as he was told.
The pills seemed to help. That’s why he’s still taking them, because it’s the right thing to do, and because they help. Now he doesn’t feel angry when he hears about corrupt billionaires defrauding the public, and he doesn’t feel sad when his old high school gets shot up, which seems to be a bi-monthly activity at this point. He doesn’t feel empty when nobody holds him at night. He never has to feel anything if he doesn’t want to. He just has to keep taking the pills.
And he does. And he waters his virtual tree, watching it grow and bloom and become something that might someday mean something, if they ever do get around to planting a real tree. He would doubt this, but the pills have blocked such negative kinds of thinking. Instead he neutrally presses buttons, and performs tasks, crunches numbers and purchases consumer goods through affiliate links. He does all the right things, everything he’s told, and does it to the best of his ability.
He tries. He really does.
© January 2024
The cruel clock continues ticking. One second follows the next. William is trapped, unable to move, unable to sit still. And still time continues to pass. There is no end in sight.
He imagines all the ways it could end, as he has many times before. Today’s prime obsession is that a truck transporting a Siberian tiger from one zoo to another will crash outside his apartment, and the beast will be unleashed, somehow find its way into his building and eat him right there on the couch. There is no zoo nearby that he’s aware of, but that does little to dampen his imagination. How sweet the relief, he thinks. Plus it would be nice to do a good deed on his way out. And what’s better than giving someone a full belly and a warm bed?
How does a tiger in a cage think of us? The masses who gather and gawk, he wonders. Does he see us as his captors? Or are we merely background noise, another irritation, insult heaped upon injury?
William doesn’t think he’d recognize his captors as such if he saw them. They’d just be background noise. But the difference between him and them, the difference between a middle person and a really big person is the really big people are already segregated out. They don’t need to look at their prisoners. William would like to puff his chest out and feel pride that at least he’s not one of these fat cats, but his apartment is nowhere near the prison where they made his license plate, or the child-stuffed factory where they made his clothes. He still averts his eyes passing the homeless on the street. But I’m not the one percent, he tries to remind himself, I’m not the problem here. They are.
He went to the third world once, now referred to as the global south, a phrase which he finds just as belittling and so never bothers to use. Down there he was the one percent. What he made in an hour, they made in a week, and he didn’t make much more than minimum wage. He supposes that means he’s still the one percent, but what does he have to show for it? For sixty hours of work a week, he survives. And with his survival he does nothing but lament his life.
The tiger scenario would be infinitely more gratifying than, say, wandering up to the attic with a rope and a chair. He doesn’t really like the idea of asphyxiation in general, it’s always seemed like a stressful way to go. And if he could handle any more stress, he wouldn’t be looking for the door. Plus there are so many ways it could go wrong. What if the rope brakes? What if he snapped his neck but didn’t get to die and just had to go on living as a vegetable, which was essentially the same predicament he's in now except then he wouldn’t have the ability to opt out. Now he has the ability at least, if not the nerve. First of all, he’s never been that close to a tiger before, and he’s always had a fondness for them, ever since discovering Calvin and Hobbes in his youth. And me oh my what a story it would be! Did you hear what happened to William? Oh, you must be kidding, a tiger? Here? Why, we’re not even in Siberia! Yes, always leave em laughing, give the people something to talk about. That would cheer the old man up anyway. He always extolled the virtues of an interesting death, if an interesting life was out of the question.
One of his preferred ways to go, William’s father that is, was death by icicle. He thought it would be funny for everyone who heard the news. What happened to Walter? Oh he was walking out of his house and a giant icicle fell from his eave and pierced his brain, have you ever heard of such a thing? In England, there’s a legal medical examiner’s classification called “Death by Misadventure.” Officially defined as an accidental death coming from actions taken voluntarily. Being forced to walk the plank by pirates, while an interesting death, doesn’t quite fit the bill. They made you walk off the plank. He supposes that if you were to join the pirates willingly to begin with (though most sailors were pressed into service before fleeing to the relative comfort of piracy, so who could really say where one’s autonomy began in this situation) then maybe it would make the grade. Stede Bonnet, there’s one. A willing pirate, not just jumping from bad to worse. But he was hanged anyway, and it just felt wrong to classify state-sponsored murder as “death by misadventure.” What was the misadventure? Being a member of the body politic? That’s not much of a choice, in William’s opinion.
William has always craved a death by misadventure, even before he wanted to die. Not that he can remember a time before he wanted to die. His only hope is that his memories start around the same time the morbid fascination-bordering-on-obsession began, and that those first eight or so years of life were happy, even if they’re now buried behind an impenetrable black curtain.
His mother used to swear he had a happy childhood, getting mad when he didn’t quite remember it that way. What he remembered was death and divorce and abuse and this silent craving for an end to it all, a lasting peace. He sees no peace in his life. Worse, he sees no peace anywhere, except maybe in some far mountain monastery. But isn’t withdrawing from life the same as sacrificing it? What he saw, continues to see despite his best efforts, is a bunch of scared, crazy apes hurting each other to help themselves, stacking trauma on trauma. The blind leading the blind seems a useless expression to him. It’s like walking into a room and announcing there was air in there.
William did what he was told, though. He was a mostly good boy, except when he was drinking. This habit he developed to cast aside the thoughts of death’s loving embrace. It worked. When he was on a load, he could speak and move and even try to participate. Then came the hangovers, and the hair of the dog, and it all got a bit out of hand. He had to put the bottle down. It was not the saddest day of his life, though he always expected it would be.
Staying sober was kind of its own high, for a little while anyway. It was challenging, and new, and gave him something to bump up against. But after a while, when his brain chemistry sorted itself out and he had been clean for a few years, the shine wore off, as it tends to do. Now it was not some new and exciting struggle. It was just life, the old and exhausting struggle. He thought of prolonging his life the same way he thought about sobriety. If he tried to picture it all at once he would feel like he was drowning. A whole long life full of days not drinking, full of days not ending his own life? It was insurmountable. How could I get up every day for the next fifty years? How can I have 18,000 more dinners? How can I brush my teeth for 72,000 more minutes? No, they had taught him what to do. Just take it one day at a time, and when that was still too overwhelming, take it one hour at a time, or one breath at a time. He could stay sober for one breath. He could stay alive for one hour. But a decade? A year even? It just seems that in the end it’s a losing bet, and the end couldn’t come soon enough.
There’s quite a kerfuffle on the street. He does not get up. He does not turn around. Not for lack of interest. The sound continues, scraping, screeching, the terrifying tone of steel bending and groaning and breaking, people hollering, cars revving. It must be quite a scene out there. If only I could look without turning my neck. Getting up on his knees was theoretically an option. He wouldn’t even have to get off the couch. Just turn around. C’mon Will, you can do it. Here we go buddy. Triumph of the Will.
He stays put.
That’s when he heard the roar. Not exactly a roar. Not the one you hear before an MGM film anyway, but a large feline sound nonetheless. There’s scratching at the front door. All your dreams come true, buddy, all you have to do is open the door and let them in. Isn’t this what you asked for? Isn’t this what you wanted?
Now he does not need to re-adjust his position to spy the scene. With a slight turn of the head, the most exertion since getting out of bed, he sees, yes indeed, a Siberian Tiger scratching at his door, waiting to come in the way his tomcat sometimes does.
Just do it, just get up, open the door. Sometimes dreams really do come true. It’s like you said, you don’t have to do anything. Death by Misadventure. You’ve earned it.
He does not move. His excitement should be mounting, but instead of crème brulé he tastes hot ashes. What a bother it seems, to go open the door. Get all the way up off the couch, and bid the beast welcome? Couldn’t he have just hopped in the window or something?
It really is astounding how unfair life is to William. He never gets his way.
© March 2024
Just watch as the jaguar, silent and noble, stalks its prey. See each toe pad secure itself noiselessly against the earth. Even its breath is neigh on undetectable. The iguana is dead. It never faced its executioner, never heard her song. See the jaguar, rending meat from bone, not proud, not ashamed, filling its empty belly.
Just watch as the spider, delicate and deadly, weaves its web. See the spinnerets send forth the silver filaments, this one sticky, this one dry. Only She knows where each is laid, only She has memorized the steps, only She knows the territory. Only She can tell life from death in this place of suspended animation. See her as she waits, maybe this time for you.
Just watch as the mother, swollen with hormones and fear, holds her child. See her fill this sacred empty vessel. See her fill it with her fears, her inadequacies, her ceaseless need for more, more love, more validation, more security. See her turn it away from itself. See them praise a new light together. A Light not found inside. A light they pay for. See this child grow, and become someone you hate.
Just watch as the airplane, loud and befouling, takes to the runway. Hear the shrieks of the unborn in its mighty jets. Watch as the monkeys on board grip tight to their seats. See them as they defy Newton, insult the birds, challenge the Gods. Watch them take flight, without whimsy, without faith. Watch them wait in fear to take the tiny tin tube towards Toulouse. See them make the world small, themselves smaller.
Just watch as the television, bright and charming, parades lives before your eyes. See the beautiful happy people. Invest in them, as they would in you, because they just get you, for real, in a way nobody else seems to. Maybe watch the reality stars behave so badly you don’t have to grow. See them, with their false faces and real diamonds. Despair at their wealth, opulence and misery. Know that if you had what they had, if you were them, you would certainly be better. Better than them. Better than this. Watch the next episode.
Just watch as Life, heartbreaking, terrifying, undeniable, passes you by. See the drama, played out again and again. Avoid participation, embarrassment, risk. See the girl you loved marry rich, divorce poor and die alone. Watch the man of your dreams ride off into the sunset alone, how we all come, how we all go. Fight for nothing, lest you discover you fought for the wrong side. Just watch.
Just watch.
© December 2022
They sat together in the park, one on each side of the bench, the same way they had nearly every afternoon for the better part of thirty years. Dave was taller than Fred, who wore a grey suit without a tie. The taller man was not nearly so formal.
Since retirement, Fred had developed this overwhelming fear that he would be confused for homeless. Dave didn’t mind so much.
“C’mon, what’s the worst that happens? Some lady crosses the street in front of you, or some guy offers you half his sandwich?”
“I’m telling you it’s not dignified. It’s wrong, wrong I say. I am not and have never been homeless. This close to the finish line, I don’t want to upset the apple cart.” His nearly British affectation dripped with pomposity, a carefully crafted voice emanating from a carefully coifed man.
“You know, I got these shoes from someone.”
“Yes, Dave, thank you for the insight. Everyone got their shoes from someone.”
“Probably not cobblers.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“Their kids are always barefoot anyway, so if they got their shoes from themselves it would be pretty selfish, don’t you think? Imagine, walking around, no shoes, everyone in school making fun, maybe you even get ringworm or some other horrible itis, all while daddy-o is cruising the block in custom made high tops. I think even cobblers get their shoes from someone.”
“Well if they do they’re downright wasteful.”
They loved to bicker. It was in fact their main hobby, sitting, and watching and bickering. Not that they would have said as much on a survey about hobbies. Aren’t we always the last to know.
“Did you see that lady with the baby?”
“The one in the carriage?”
“It was a stroller.”
“It most certainly was not.”
“Maybe we’re talking about different ladies then.”
“How do you figure that?”
“I saw a stroller, and nary a carriage has passed before mine eyes this whole afternoon.”
“In that case, let’s get you to the doctor, for you’re as blind as you are stupid. It may be too late for your stupidity, but we could at least get you some glasses, that way you could see how dumb you are.”
“Well if I’m stupid you’re a cucumber. I’m a gosh darn genius compared to you.”
“How do you figure?”
“Do you remember my old girlfriend? Becky-“
“Oh, Becky Whatshername. What was her name again?”
“Becky-“
“Becky Wassermin?”
“Becky-“
“Becky Warsquindaelion?”
“Becky-“
“Becky Warmneckless, I’m sure of it.”
“You’re asking for a smack.”
“Who is?”
“You are!”
“You’re the one!”
“No, you!”
“Tell me her name already, damn you!”
“I’ve been trying!”
“Since when? I’m throwing out a lot of options here and you’re giving me squat!”
“That’s because you keep interrupting!”
“Who does?”
“You do, you dolt!”
“Stuttering freak!”
“Bastard!”
“Jerk!”
They both huffed in anger, crossed their arms, looked straight ahead. Had there been a third party present, had anyone been able to put up with the two of them, they would have been all but forced to point out how identical these gestures were, choreographed even, which would be the last mistake that poor, made up bastard would ever make in their presence, so round and full would have been their fury. A rat scurried by, walking along the paved path, the one built for people. He stopped, presumably it was a he, for neither of them could detect nipples, and stood on his back legs, looking at them. Studying? No, no, that was anthropomorphization, a nasty habit, a sign of a limited mind. But gosh if he wasn’t really giving them the up-down. He let out a little chirp and then was back on his way, trundling along on all fours.
“That was no chipmunk.”
“Hmphm.”
“You know what is a chipmunk?”
“Hmphm.”
“Lay’s with a shaved head, living in a cloister.”
“Hah. Hah! Haha!”
“Chipmunk, huh?”
“Hah, chip monk. That’s not too bad.”
“The wit comes from my superior breeding and education.”
“Education, bah! You wouldn’t know a good book if it snuck up and bit you on the ass.”
“Well, how could I know it if it’s snuck up on me?”
“My refined literary pallet allows me to detect fine words even when my eyes can’t see them.”
“Oh does it now?”
Dave, to test the theory, put his hand over his mouth, and began quietly reciting Shakespeare. So quiet nobody could hear it, not even Dave. But he was reciting it, and the words were fine.
“King Lear.”
“Bastard! There’s no way you could know that!”
“I’m telling you, I’ve got a sixth sense about these things.”
“Malarky.”
“That and you only know one Shakespeare play well enough to quote.”
The accusation was true enough to silence him for the time being.
They sat, silently waiting for something else to disagree about. Instead, Dave got hungry.
“You want a pretzel?”
“Is food all you ever think about?”
“Fine, starve then, you unkind old man! I was going to walk my own self down to the cart, and reach into my own pocket to produce my own money and purchase a pretzel, and didn’t want to be rude!”
“A likely story, you mooch.”
“Insult added to injury! I simply did not want to be chowing down on a delectable pastry in front of my good friend without offering to get him a little something along the way!”
“A pretzel isn’t a pastry.”
“Says who?”
“Says me, and everyone else, they all agree with me.”
“How do you know?”
“I already asked them. They didn’t even want to hear the question, because they know how much smarter I am than you. But I asked anyway, and every single one of them laughed and said of course not.”
“I doubt it.”
“Doubt all you want, Doubting Thomas. But a pretzel is no pastry.”
“Why not?”
“Well, because pastries are fluffy and sweet and things.”
“Oh, ok, Doctor Professor Oxford, aren’t you just a walking dictionary? Fluffy and sweet and things? Hardly a scientific analysis” Dave enunciates the ‘and’s, fluttering his voice, mocking Fred’s foppishness.
“If you weren’t a lame old man, I’d kick your ass!”
“Who you calling lame? I get by better on three legs,” he waved his cane, more of a shillelagh really, in the air to emphasize his point, “than you do on two. And don’t think I forgot about that walker you were using not two months ago! That had you six legged! Downright insectoid.”
“I was recovering from knee surgery! That’s totally different!”
“Don’t try and convince me! You should have tried to convince that lady!”
“Which lady?”
“The one that rolled up her newspaper to swat you with!”
Dave burst into fitful gales of laughter. Fred did not. He crossed his arms and pouted. When Dave finished his little outburst, both of them slowly melted like wax into their original posture, seated, slumped, silent.
Dave rummaged through his many pockets, coming up empty all around.
“Well, loan us five then.”
“What? Why?”
“So I can go buy us pretzels! Are you deaf now too, in addition to dumb?”
“You’re the one who wants a pretzel! And now you’re asking me to buy it!”
“You really are a horrible listener. I’m not taking Lydia’s side or anything, but isn’t that why she divorced you?”
“She divorced me so she could stuff herself full of men in Mexico! That strumpet.”
“I don’t think that’s what the papers said. The divorce papers I mean. I don’t recall it making the social pages. You do remember who represented you, don’t you?”
“Yes, your gossipy cousin who ran around and told you all the dirt. Breaking lawyer-client confidentiality I might add! I should have gotten him disbarred.”
“Who would have represented you then?”
“Why, I could have done it myself! I’m stranger to neither law nor library.”
“Well, I think she would’ve cleaned you out if that had been the case.”
“She did clean me out.”
“Yeah, Cousin Eddy was always too nice for his own good. Plus I think between you me and the bench he and Lydia might’ve had some kind of extra-curricular compensation going on.”
“Oh?”
“Mhm.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Well, the way they would look at each other, for one thing. Have you ever noticed that? That little look that people who have been inside each other can give? It’s like a little club, and you have to make it to join the club, but it’s all sectioned off so you’re only in the part of the club with the people you made it with. I would’ve thought you’d known too, given how many times you made it. With her I mean, not just in general.”
“Most of the times I made it were with her.”
“I hear she was a brilliant lay.”
“Oh, she was. You wouldn’t believe the things…well, it’s not proper to talk about. Not for a gentleman such as myself anyway.”
“That’s alright. I already heard all about the things she can do from Eddy.”
“Fucker.”
“Well that’s hardly gentlemanly language, but yes, that’s more or less the shape of it. Are you going to give me five or not?”
“Fine, fine, take it, just take it.”
“You’re acting awfully ungrateful you know,” Dave said, slipping the five from Fred’s palm into his pocket. “Maybe I won’t buy you one after all, if that’s how you’re going to be.”
“You buy? I just gave you money!”
“Yeah, and I’m going to go buy them, I didn’t say I was paying for them.”
“Yes you did!”
“When?”
“Before!”
“Well…”
“Well?”
“Well that was before. It’s not before anymore, is it? I’m not gonna ask you again. Do you want one or not?”
“I don’t want one.”
“Oh no?”
“Not hungry.”
“Thinking about Lydia?”
“Hmphm.”
“You really should let her go. It was a long time ago.”
“I never loved anyone like that before.”
“Yeah, Eddy told me about how she could-“
“No, you oaf, not like that. I mean, also like that, I guess. But I’m talking about something more than gymnastics here. I’m talking about my heart here, not that I expect the lifelong bachelor to know anything about matters of the heart.”
“I’m not a lifelong bachelor.”
“You’ve never been married.”
“Well, no but, you make it sound as if I’ve been utterly alone all these long years.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Well, I’ve got you, haven’t I?”
“Hmphm.”
“I want to go get the pretzels. Are you gonna be ok? I don’t like leaving you when you’re like this. I worry.”
“I told you I don’t want a stinking pretzel.”
“Well I wasn’t going to buy a stinking one.”
"You’re impossible.”
“I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”
Dave got up, strolled down the hill to the food cart, where he had slow words with the vendor, and took an aching eternity to pick out just the right pretzels with just the right amount of salt on them. The doctor said there was a goldilocks zone. After his kidney stones, Dave cut salt out altogether, which led to a fall, which led to an educational hospital visit. Most of the words were over his head, but the punchline was some salt was necessary for the electric circuits in the brain to fire, not too much, but not none either. Dave slowly scanned the array of pastries, pointing, let me see this one, no no, that’s not right, can I take a peek at that one? The vendor was the very picture of patience. Maybe he had an old man in his life. Finally, at long last, he made his choice, taking the pretzels, handing over the five and ignoring the tip jar.
He had the fingers of his left hand laced through the holes, only touching the wax paper, not the food itself. He knew how particular Fred was about that kind of stuff. His right hand was on his shillelagh. Moving up the hill, while more strenuous on his lungs, actually felt better on his knees than going down.
He returned to an empty bench and his mouth hung agape. In his shock and dismay, he collapsed, dropping the prized pretzels, which indeed did not stink. He began to cry. Horrible old man tears, the kind that make you believe it really might be the end of the world.
“Oh! Oh! Cruel fate! That you would take him from me so! How will I fritter and waste my twilight years, now that I am finally and utterly alone!”
His sobs rang out through the park, yea even up to heaven. The world never knew such deep and enduring sorrow.
Then he heard the bushes behind him rustle, and Fred came out, zipping his fly and sitting on the bench as if nothing happened. He was speaking as he did so.
“Becky Whasservein, that was her name.”
He saw his friend and companion, wet eyed, looking at him as though he had risen from the dead. He was overcome with pity and horror and compassion, realizing how fragile this life was, how much he would be missed, how special this man was, how special their bond. It was all there, written on Dave’s pitiful, tear-stained face. What a beautiful life it had been, and what a beautiful man he was blessed enough to spend it with. He was tongue-tied, trying to think of how to express the painfully expansive love he felt for the man.
Then he saw the pretzels on the ground, dropped in the process of mourning a still breathing man. He saw five dollars wasted.
“Oh, you dumb bastard. Can’t you hold on to anything?”
© January 2024
Aug. 3rd
On the advice of my therapist, I have decided to start journaling. She said it would be helpful for me to put my thoughts on a digital representation of paper. I’m not like, ancient or a hipster, so I don’t exactly write much? And I’m writing this like it’s for someone else but it’s for me, dummy, or if you’re reading this I guess I’d better say it’s for you! You wrote this! Way to go. Much better at following advice than used to be. Improvement. It’s just as important to focus on the positives as the negatives, maybe even more important. Just knowing where I do’t want to be is only half the battle. Was my New Year’s Resolution to start. In my defense I had bought the journal/diary/notebook back in January. Almost opened it in March. Now here we are. Way to go you procrastinating fuck!
Aug. 4th
Dr. Stateler says I should write a letter to myself about all the things I like about myself. Won’t take long, she said. Quick exercise. Here we go: The fact that you can spend as much time horizontal as you do without getting bedsores borders on medical anomoly. Congradulations. You also can’t spell for shit. But I guess that’s not something I like. Let me try again. Your utter inability to spell a simpel word shows you must have been very popular in elementary school. Or at least chatty. I like the way you used to be fit, and am very impressed with your penchant for adapting to your circumstances, without complaint or even any apparent need to improve your situation. The amount of butter you eat is endearing. You do a funny parrot imitation. It was nice when you would draw.
Aug. 5th
Talking to myself would be crazy. Writing to myself is how to be uncrazy. Doctors are funny.
Aug. 6th
Thought about going for a walk today. Saw people doing it and everything. Those people aren’t me, and unfortunately I am.
Sept. 8th
Didn’t kill a fly today.
Sept. 13th
For some perspective on last week, I could have very easily killed the fly, and he had been irritating me all day. And the day before.
Sept. 18th
Small world gets Smaller all the time.
Sept. 22nd
Been thinking about UFOs lately. Seems like nobody is talking about them since the government said they were real.
Oct. 2nd
Went to visit mom today. It was my turn.
Oct. 9th
Therapist asked me to bring in my journal to the session today. I said that wasn’t fair. She said it was just to help not to judge and only if I was willing. Of course I was, fuck I pay enough. Or somebody does, I don’t know insurance people? Taxpayers? Just because I don’t fork over dough every week doesn’t make something free. Can’t be not willing and in therapy and hate life all at once. Too much for the taxpayer. Thought she’d be mad at all the skipped days. Thought wrong. Was mad about all the not skipped days when I wrote “nothing of substance.” So today, substance. Dad died. It was a long time coming, but he died and is now dead. Sis is freaked. Not like he wasn’t old. She’s been good with Mom since then. Keeping her company and not doing whatever this other thing is. I was worried about the money. Not worried now, lawyer and accountant good dudes. Plus Sis watching out. Don’t think Dad being in the whole end of life stage of life is why I was so sad. Then it would be gone like he is. Not gone. Not sad sad, empty sad. Not was, am. Don’t see why I have to tell you that. You already know. Already live it. Unless there was a miracle. Ha ha.
Oct. 16th
Correction: Dr. Stateler not mad; disappointed. Am I using the semicolon right? Google later, too tired now.
Oct. 17th
Almost Halloween. Used to be my favorite holiday. Still say that it is, when anyone asks, not that they do, but if it comes up or when it comes up (rare) I’d still say “oh Halloween, Halloween is the best I love that day what a fine holiday it is, are you aware of the Celtic origins” and so on, maybe even with exuberance. But for it to really be my favorite day I’d have to do something, right? Haven’t properly dressed in years. The leaves die and I think about the taste of wine mixed with the fall air on a chilly night in high school making time with my sweetheart in park and just enjoying being young and being free and being in love and being on my way to drunk but not quite there yet and I burn, jealous of person who lived it, angry at the one who let that life disappear. I’m not unrealistic. I know things change, flowers sprout-blossom-wilt-die etc etc. I just thought maybe I’d change into someone more fun. Not more fun than I was. More fun that I am, I mean. So now I console myself, as all stay off my lawners before me, by knowing that I too was once hip and skinny and fun at parties and people wanted me places, not out of concern for my health, just because they wanted me there. Worried about mom with all the kids ringing the doorbell. She doesn’t like meeting new people as much as she used to. Still likes kids though. But the masks and everything. I worry. Not enough to go over there, but enough to check with Sis after she does.
Oct. 26th
Read Flowers for Algernon. What a bummer.
Nov. 2nd
Still no work. Played all the apps until they felt like the same cruel joke. Got good at crosswords. Have done many puzzles. Do not enjoy puzzles. Why taunt myself with a pointless problem with a dumb solution I hate waiting. Too many cameras in my apt/in general.
Nov. 7th
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Nov. 12th
Another therapy check in. Did I do my homework? Had to admit to copypasta on my job bummer day. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but copy and paste makes even being psycho boring. I keep reading articles about the Great Resignation and the labor shortage and everything and still not one offer. WTF is wrong with me? And who are these beautiful people quitting there high paying job to go live with the faery folk in some nordic fucking lodge with Zuckerberg and Mackenzie Bezos or whatever? I didn’t even know the 1% was that big. Doc Statie said my journal is getting better. Glad one of us is.
Nov. 14th
I’m definitely going to be in trouble when she reads “Doc Statie.” That’s one serious broad. My old man always said, if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. But he never tried it out for himself, and I don’t plan on it either. Ah. A joke. Maybe things can get better.
Nov. 19th
Whatever happened to the circus? Did animal rights activists get to it? And where do kids run away to now?
Nov. 24th
Went round to Sis’s for dinner (Sis’? Or is that just plural? Good thing Mrs. Dremmer is probably dead. If she ever found and read this abismally spelled and grammerized shit…). Actually enjoyed dickhead husband for the first time in like ever. Love those kids. Getting so big. Wish I could tell them the things that really matter, about life and all. Probably don’t know right things anyway. Could def tell them some of the wrong. Maybe I will. Before they leave for college, definitely a heart to heart sure. But things go wrong and I don’t want to be wrong around them or make them wrong. Showing them the wrong way doesn’t help. Just want to help. I think Sis is getting mad that I never go to see Mom, to Help over there. Not never. Just not as much. Maybe not as much as I should. Definitely not as much as her. But Sis is overboard. Not like Mom is some invalid or had a stroke or no knees. Just old and lonely. Join the club. I guess I’m not old. Not compared to her anyway. I didn’t help cook but did some of the dishes, except for the ones that had to soak. Those I left to soak in the sink. It was most of them. After dinner Bella practiced trumpet and Ricky showed us his dead beetle collection while me Sis and DHH tried to watch something on TV. He fell asleep and Sis put all three of them to bed. The only willing victim is the only one bigger than her. I always assume everyone is mad at me. Maybe Sis is just tired.
Dec. 11th
I looked at the sun through a leaf the other day. I’ve been trying to be better at getting out of the house. You’d think I was on American Ninja Warrior: Fuckup House Edition. The sink is totally useless. I keep meaning to call a plumber but I don’t know. Seems like a lot of hassle. ENOUGH! This isn’t one of those. I went outside today! I walked to get milk even though I haven’t had a glass of milk since I was like 8 or something but I needed a reason to go so I got one and went and there was this one leaf, well I mean there were like a jillion leafs but there was this one that was huge! It was like a foot or eighteen inches across (no foolin!) and had points and colors and was green on one side and red on the other and yellow in the middle and I looked at the sun through all the colors and there were veins and dots and it was so beautiful. I’d like to do that more often god it felt good to be out there and feel the air in my lungs and it was air I hadn’t breathed a million times before I don’t care HEPA or not you can only eat your own excriment so many times THIS IS ALIVE! I’m gonna start a book club.
Dec. 16th
They killed every mink in Norway. Not recently or anything, it was last year or something. I don’t know what made me think of it. Probably that woman in the fur coat I imagined seeing this evening. No book club yet. If you’re actually reading this later for some reason, add “google how to start book club” to to-morrow’s to-do to-day list.
Dec. 29th
Therapy is DUMB and for STUPID LOSERS.
Jan. 5th
Decided to stop watching the news. Like it’s some kind of brave political decision. Just don’t like all the people yelling over each other. Never really learn much anyway. The Good Doctor Shrinkydink said it’s a good idea, managing stressors and blah blah blah. Mom told me I need to get my shit together. Not in so many words. Or such crass ones. Still a classy broad. Sis didn’t like my reaction to that one. Guess it’s fair to assume she agrees with mom. The fun never stops.
Jan. 9th
Interview today. 3pm.
Jan. 11th
Interview did not go well.
Feb 29th
Surprise surprise surprise. The sun may shine again. No luck on the job front, that is well and truly fucked. Maybe I should play in traffic and get disability or something. But guess who is the latest and greatest? It’s me. Female attention achieved. Nothing to crazy. But a date (I think its a date?) Next week! Cannot wait to talk to Dr. Stateler this week. What a nice change of pace. Finally something to right home about, har har. I should sell t shirts: Therapy: Something to Look Forward To. Wonder if Dr. S. is into merch? Find tactful way to bring up.
March 4th
Today I held my pee for a few hours longer than I should have because I thought my new roomates would I don’t know judge me or something? I just really didn’t want to have to see any of them and they weren’t in the hall or at least I didn’t hear anyone, well sometimes did here and there but I mean not the whole day/evening/night/morning that this took place on and then I had been in bed too long and I can’t leave now because it’s like way too late to be just getting up and clearly I’d be just getting up so I just didn’t instead and now maybe have a UTI like fuck.
March 11th
They aren’t even that new of roommates, I just haven’t bothered to get to know them I suppose. My fault as usual. I mean they’re the worst. Well I mean they aren’t like satanists or crackheads or republicans or anything but ugh he spells his name Tristyn with a “Y” and it doesn’t even go where you think it would. And don’t even get me started on that fucking laugh. I thought getting rid of my blackout curtains might help with the mood but now I just look at the smug fucking sun with it’s fucking asshole shining all goddamn day. The trees do look pretty though. It looks warm, but probably isn’t.
March 15th
It is definitely a UTI. I mean I don’t think, like It isn’t like I’ve had one before but what the hell else could it be? I haven’t had a doctor look at it yet but leaving the house three times a week sounds like too much, like I go to therapy and the grocery and now and then to Mom’s or Sis’s or Sis’ or Si’s or whatever and plus I’m looking for a job so just cut me some fucking slack already huh? I’m sorry I’m not trying to be like that it just really hurts when I pee and I haven’t even gotten laid so it’s not like I can even be like nice and get some penicillin I just have to be like fuck and get some penicillin. I’ll get around to it.
March 17th
New garbage cans. Party party. I’m sure the landlord will try to charge us, just as the town charged him, for some shit none of us wanted.
March 26th
Found an old box of lurve letters in the misc. box (they’re all misc. boxes). The ones from Joan particularly painful. Read them all over the course of the day. They were spread out around me on the bed the floor the desk blooming around me filling my head with flowers and sour smells and longing for things I’m glad are over. I may as well have papered the town with them or warmed them up and filled the bath with them and slit my wrists with them too. They’re now all back in the box in the box. Like in their own love letter box (both discrete and discreet) and in the misc. box. One of the misc. boxes anyawy. And that’s in the stack. So that’s that. Great way to spend a day. Need another blanket.
April 2nd
I did get around to the penicillin. After I got around to the not getting the penicillin and hoping it goes away, which it didn’t for a couple weeks. Google said wait a week tops so I did and then I did again and just when I was about to successfully follow directions a third time (that would have been a check on my desired improvement sheets, Doc, so go easy?) it got so bad that I collapsed in Mom’s bathroom, which wouldn’t’ve been a problem but she made a big thing all about how I fainted. I didn’t faint I just didn’t want to stay up off the floor given the amount of pain I was in. But that woman, my god I thought my urethra was painful. This was worse. Worse than the emergency room, waiting, trying to find the money for these fucking pills without fucking health care because I have no fucking job. Worse than just dying probably. That seems easier than having a converfuckingsation with my own mother.
April 9th
Doctor Stateler and I have agreed that I may be in need of an attitude adjustment. I thought that’s what the pills were for, ha ha. Or what the therapy was for. Didn’t know it was actually for Dr. S’s (S’???) second home, ha ha. Maybe if I put ha ha in at the end of all my sentences The Right Good Doctor will assume my mood has lifted and I’ve regained my cheery, charming charitable character, rather than assume that I “don’t take my healing very seriouisly,” ha ha. Or maybe I’ll sound “bitter and incapable of taking criticism.” OK Fine we both know you didn’t say that but you easily could have that was a real bummer of a session. Not even supposed to be writing ‘for the doc.’ It’s all about me. Hooray.
April 11th
Got outside today.
April 28th
Been getting outside. Doesn’t feel great. Worried about the people. Like the roommate/peeing/eating situation but with the added bonus of worrying about who exactly I might run into and what kind of awful degrading questions they’ll ask. “How are you?” or “What are you up to these days?” Ugh. Three times in the past two weeks I have left the house with no agenda but to get out. If this is what progress feels like, you can keep it.
May 1st
Bad days come. That’s natural. That’s part of healing. That’s easy for you to say.
May 6th
Bad days come.
May 19th
Been making a to-do list. An honest to god, pen to paper to do list, with little boxes to check everything off in too. Don’t always get to check everything off. But I do get to check at least one thing off, first item of the day every day “make to-do to-day list to-day” it says, with a briefly empty box before it.
May 22nd
Longer to do lists all the time. Got rid of the storage unit full of junk that I’ve been paying for for how long? Too long anyway. Bought a broom. I haven’t used it yet, but I’ve got it all the way out of the packaging.
May 31st
I felt ok today.
June 3rd
I think this might really be what it looks like. Not hiding from mirrors, not sitting in bed watching TV all morning, eating things that didn’t come out of a box or with a mascot. And the best is, I’m not even doing any of it because Doctor Stateler said so. I actually just feel like doing things. I don’t think miracle would be too strong a word.
June 4th
I feel light. Lighter I should say. But it’s not, I mean it isn’t even about being light, it’s just the absence of the omnipresent feeling of all the heaviness in the world. I don’t think it’s gone, but it isn’t compressing my chest or pulling me back into bed every time I try to get up or any of that. I can make eye contact with strangers and smile. Thinking about adopting a cat. I hear macaws are smart, maybe I’ll get one of those.
June 6th
Daily writing blah blah blah too much going on no time.
June 7th
Isn’t that something?? Yesterday I was too busy to write. And not too busy counting all the popcorn peaks on the ceiling or binging Vanderpump Rules. Too busy like, doing stuff and being out and things.
June 8th
Really the whole girlfriend thing is overrated. Have you seen all these implements for self-pleasure we have these days? The internet really is a wild blessing. Don’t even have to deal with the perv at the porno shop. Thanks Bezos.
June 9th
Maybe I’m shooting too high. It’s like my uncle always said, if at first you don’t succeed, lower your expectations. A job is a good thing, even if it isn’t what I think my dream job aught to be or whatever. I want to work, or at least be different. Do different. It starts with me.
June 12th
Well. Good news bad news. Good news: This is finally a private journal. Bad news: the jig is up. Didn’t take Doc long to figure out I was padding the numbers. She said it was a violation, lying like that. Because it was lying to myself. The book was supposed to be for me. But how could it be with her reading that shit all the time? Every week? No maybe not but all the time she’s saying what’s in the book how did you feel how did it go blah blah whatever it’s enough to drive anyone nuts! How can I write to myself with her over my goddamned shoulder all the time?? At least we’re alone now.
June 13th
Very alone.
June 16th
What do I mean if she doesn’t read me?
July 8th
Am I still real?
July 20th
Can anybody see me? Other than me? Does that count?
Aug. 6th
Final entry. I’d love to be able to say it’s been fun.
© December 2022
The light breaks in most painfully on Steven’s sensitive eyes. His optic nerve is not used to the stimulation yet. His mouth opens wide, and a wail flies out.
The tall woman who smells nice comes running, and scoops him up, gently shaking him. That feels nice. She has always been around, of this Steven is sure. Will always be around. It’s good to know there are some constants in this life.
On the whole, Steven feels a little overwhelmed. There’s so much to catch up on here. He doesn’t know where here is, not really. Not too long ago he was floating in the warmth that lives inside the tall woman, and before that he was free. Now he has this body, these flappy limbs that don’t respond to his desires the way he’d like them to, this body with all manner of needs and pains he doesn’t not understand, has not yet learned to anticipate. He tries to get a handle on the operation of it. He makes a fist, holding fast to the tall woman’s hair, and then he flexes his biceps and triceps, alternately, as fast and hard as he can.
She’s babbling again. The tall ones sure do like to babble, but seem wholly less interested in what Steven has to say, though as far as he’s concerned, they’re all just making noises. He vibrates his tongue against his lips rapidly, blowing what he’ll someday come to know as a raspberry, though he won’t ever understand why. He does not pay much mind to her babbling, though it seems directed at him. What does captivate him are her eyes. He can’t look away. Swimming into infinity behind those little mirrors, he gazes deep into her soul, and knows her. He may not be able to see her whole past, present and future like it’s a movie, but he can see all of her, how she carries whatever it is she’s done, what weighs heavy on her soul, where the light lives. He has not yet learned about shame, and feels no need to look away when he starts to see deeply.
Her sins dance before him, her fears and insecurities, how scared she is, scared of him, scared for him. She used to think she was young and beautiful and life could be whatever she made it. Now she’s surrounded on all sides by shadows, penned in by unknown assailants. Those trundling four wheel monsters that stop outside the house are surely full of robbers or something called a pedophile, he does not know what that word means but she’s more scared of them than anything else. Except maybe fire. She sees fire as an all consuming, ever lingering threat. He can see it in her eyes, the firelight, dancing and twirling up the stairs, licking the roof through the windows, tearing down everything she’s built.
Steven doesn’t worry so much about these things. He doesn’t want to anyway. He has a deep, unshakable feeling that everything’s going to be just fine. He’ll learn in time.
The months pass and he begins to recognize the babbles as having meaning attached. Meaningful babbles are words. There are some words that the tall man, who smells rugged, but still familiar, really likes to say that the tall woman, who he is discovering he’s supposed to call mama, does not like him saying at all. A bad example, that’s what she says the tall man is. A bad example. Whatever that means. Steven wonders if he’ll be a bad example when he grows up too, given that he’s smelling more like the musky, rugged one every day, and less like his delicate-odored mama. He tries not to worry about it, but the more he learns, the more it seems that people worry quite a lot about things that haven’t happened (most of which never will) or things that have already happened (which they’re quite powerless to change). It feels dangerous to be different. People don’t like different. Steven is doing his best to get with the program, learning to worry, to fear the unknown, to be the same.
One day, his mama is not there. She is gone, somewhere else, probably lost forever. She makes it seem like such a scary world out there. He’s only been out a few times, and doesn’t like the thing she puts on his face. He can’t breathe through it very well, so he mostly cries. She doesn’t like it when he cries. Disappointing his mama only makes him cry more. He wails about his lost mama until he’s out of breath, and then, bored of his flailing misery, he crawls around looking for dada. Dada’s swinging something Stephen would later discover to be a hammer, and what dada’s doing is nailing in nails. Well, that’s what he means to be doing anyway. What he’s actually doing is thinking about something else, and hitting his thumb with the hammer. Then he says those words he likes. A lot. Steven claps and giggles at the show. dada can be so funny with his red face and wild hair. Stephen wants to join in the party. He feels the word ready to leap off his tongue. But maybe better to wait until mama is home to speak. They can get so mad at each other when he does things one of them sees but not the other one. The first time he crawled on just his hind legs, upright, like the big people do, dada got yelled at because he didn’t take a video and mama was in the other room on the phone with her sister. Steven doesn't know what a video is, but his dada didn’t take it and his mama wished he would.
Steven sits, and waits, patiently. When mama gets home, he half walks, half crawls over to her, hugs her leg, opens his mouth.
“Fuck!” he says, “fuck, fuck, fuck!”
© December 2022
“Double Bubble Toil and Trouble.”
“Can you get on with it already?”
“Stacey, stop interrupting. This is important.”
The witches bicker over their brew. The night is cold. The moon is full.
“So you keep saying. But honestly, don’t you think it’s all a little on the nose? Like these stupid hats. Are we trying to get burned at the stake?”
“Fine. Don’t wear the hat. See if I care.”
“Last time I tried and you said I couldn’t join in the ritual without my costume on.”
“I certainly didn’t call it a costume.”
“That’s what it is, though, isn’t it?”
The third witch, Amy, does her best to ignore the fights. She prepares the herbs and stirs the pot, insuring it doesn’t boil over. Every moon it’s like this, the mommy/daddy fights. She feels like she did as a little girl. She was first fearful that her parents would get a divorce, then fearful they wouldn’t. She knew regardless she’d bear the blame. They didn’t need to say it. She knew it was all her fault. They were just a couple kids having fun until she came along. The proof was in the pudding, and the pudding was in the pictures. There was her mother, laughing a great big laugh, one that almost burst out of the frame, leaning against her father, sitting on a motorcycle wearing his leather jacket and earsplitting grin.
Meredith continues berating the younger one. Some lecture about the importance of consistency. Again. They had all heard it who knows how many times. Amy could only hope that Meredith was as tired of saying it as they were of hearing it.
“…and you expect the spirits to, what? Come here and do our bidding? Is that it? Your attitude is not one that would incline any to be helpful, let alone the discorporated. We were handed down these rites in a specific way, they same way women have been doing them in these sacred hills for generations! But you think you know better?”
“I’m just saying, maybe it was the style of the times? I don’t think they’ll be offended if we wear something comfortable and contemporary. You mean to tell me they can ride across dimensions, travel from the other side into our world, but they draw the line at fashion? What do I want to have to do with a ghost who’s that rigid?”
“And now you insult the spirits!”
“I thought death was supposed to bring about some kind of change, maybe some wisdom, some perspective. Now, if you said we had to do it naked-“
“Naked, oh! Don’t start with this one again. You may be eager to show it off to the whole world, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us want to flaunt it so cheaply!”
“I think you’re just jealous my tits wouldn’t be knocking my knees!”
Amy thinks not for the first time of frying pans and fires. When she joined the witches, this is before Meredith was the elder and presumed queen of the universe, she thought she was getting free from her parents, their draconian rule, no dates until she was twenty-one, in by eleven, floor length dresses and so on. She thought she was getting free from the fights and derision, from being told who she was and what she was to do, which of course was mostly to marry well and let her husband worry about the rest. Had she known she was signing up for more of the same, she would have joined the local Junior League or the Sierra Club or some kind of Save the Wetlands group. Not that it was all bad, being a witch. She actually doesn’t mind the outfits. Black suits her.
“I mean it. If you’re not going to take this seriously we’re going to have to reconsider your membership in this Sisterhood!”
“Oh, again with the fascist bullshit! Lockstep ladies, or else, is that it? All Hail Queen Meredith, Chief Bitch of This Life and the Next.”
“Why you impudent little…“
Amy adds the frog legs, watches the brew turn from a deep black to a glowing purple. It’s almost pink in the bulging surface of the bubbles, where the soup is thin, but only for the briefest of moments before popping and returning to the darkly glowing goop. She could have gone to college, she supposes, but it seemed like such a waste of time and money. Her parents didn’t have much to spare, not for her anyway. It was all gone. Her father would have said it was “invested” in flat screen tvs and hummels, defunct startups and a time share. She crunched the numbers. Even state school would have her in debt for at least four years, and that’s if she layed her whole check into the outstretched palms of the grubbing lenders. If she wanted to get drunk and live in a rathole apartment and get raped she could do that for free, thank you very much. But she loved to read. And the witchy bookstore in town, it turned out, was owned by an actual witch, an honest to Goddess witch, one who did ceremonies and everything. She read Amy’s tea leaves once. It was not a paid service, she just walked up and asked if she could, this after Amy had been reading in the shop for a couple hours a day several times a week. There isn’t much to do in the suburbs.
The old lady flipped Amy’s cup, held forth the leaves in her hand, eyes alight.
“Do you see?” She asked. Amy looked but didn’t see, other than lumps of brown and green leaves, a pool of stained water, and an old lady’s wrinkled hands, complete with long, crooked fingers. The old lady told Amy a life beyond her wildest dreams was at her fingertips, that she was exactly as special as she had always dreamt in the hidden chambers of her heart, longings so secret she never shared them, not even with the family dog. It was true. She had always thought (or at least hoped) there was something about her, something different from the others, some specialness innate to her, something she could manifest if only she was shown the way. But to speak it would have been a sin of pride, and so she only kindled the flame in privacy, usually very late at night or very early in the morning, when her thoughts never felt quite her own.
“Ok, ok, I’ll wear the stupid hat, but tonight’s the last time. And next time I get to be naked!”
“If you wear the ceremonial robe, then yes, you can be naked under it. But only on summer moons! I won’t be responsible for hypothermia.”
“I thought witches were supposed to be groovy, you know? Always naked and dancing around fires and hugging wolves and things!”
“I wish you would go hug a wolf, you know that?”
“Maybe I will! And maybe he’ll be my familiar, and he’ll eat you up.”
“What, and leave Amy will be in charge?”
Both women bust out laughing. Amy is too caught up in the magical recipe her hands are working and the magical memory her mind is unfolding to hear their derision. All she feels is the mild relief of yet another crisis averted as her two compatriots take off their boxing gloves.
The older woman who ran the bookshop, Tabitha, took Amy under her wing, let her rent the attic room cheap, and gave her an auspicious reading list, everything from the Malius Malificarum to the Necronomicon. “You have to know both sides,” Tabitha always told her, “You learn what they’re going to use against you, how they’re going to find you. You learn the dark so you can stay safe from it, battle it, keep it in check. Those who bury the dark condemn themselves to be buried by it. They call us evil, but it is only we who hold evil at the gate.” Amy took her studies seriously, and dedicated her life to that sweet old bird, working at the shop, growing her powers, and before long, the moon was full and Tabitha said she was ready to fully join the Sisterhood. Oh, joyous day of days that was.
But now it’s twenty years later. Soon after that first ceremony, Tabitha relinquished her robe and shuffled off the mortal coil. In the intervening years, it had all come to feel like just another job. Work that had to be done. Personalities that had to be managed. She lulled herself to sleep most nights by insisting that it was for the good of all mankind, the work they did. They kept the bad man from the door in no uncertain terms. For what, that nasty voice would ask. If they want it, let them have it. She couldn’t see much good in the world anymore. What was it they were protecting? The people who poison the rivers? The wealthy, who speak magnanimously but stalk the streets clutching their wallets tight when passing by those in need, languishing with outstretched hands? Those who speak unkind words to and of others? Those who selfishly numb themselves, rather than stand up for what’s right? What could the three of them do against the rising tide of ills in a diseased world?
Now that the busy work is done, Meredith bumps Amy out of the way and begins the incantation.
“Oh, Goddess, Mother of All that is Good, hear your daughters as we call to you from under the full moon. We ask your help, and protection. Send us your child, that we may raise her to save all creation in your name! We have made the offerings, and now add the final ingredient, the blood of the loyal.”
At this they all slice their palms with ceremonial daggers, dripping the precious water of life into the bubbling cauldron.
Nothing happens.
That’s not entirely accurate. Their hearts pump, the wind blows, the crickets sing.
But nothing magic happens.
That’s not entirely accurate. Nothing more magical than existence itself.
They wait with baited breath. The bubbling continues, though the stirring has stopped. If tonight is the night, they want it to boil over now, for of fire and water, of earth and air shall the child of night be born.
They wait.
Amy recalls the last thing her father said to her when she was moving out. “You’ll see, my daughter. You’ll see the way the world is, and maybe then you’ll think more kindly of us. I hope I’m wrong. I hope it’s different for you.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t enough,” she whispers into the pot.
Lightning strikes the old oak nearby, lighting it ablaze. Meredith lets out a terrible howl of fear and pain, as if the lightning had struck her. They half-cover their eyes with their arms, trying to see the flame, though the light is painfully bright. A woman steps out of the fire, a woman made of moonlight. She is unclothed. When she speaks, the witches fall to their knees.
“Really? This is how you guys are spending a Saturday night?”
Stunned silence is the reply. The moonlight figure clears her throat and repeats herself, a little more loudly and clearly, the way some people try to talk to foreigners who do not share their mother tongue.
“I said, ‘really? This is how you guys are spending a Saturday night?’”
Meredith is the first to speak, clutching her robe in one hand and her hat in the other, as if they might blow away. “Is it you, Goddess? Are you truly visiting us? Have we displeased you?”
“Displeased? How would you displease me? And who would care if you did?”
Now Stacey pipes up, brash as ever, “We serve you, Mother Moon, we perform your rites to the letter, that you may be pleased with us, that good works may be done.”
“Well that’s stupid,” the moonlight replies. “You think I need you to wear those stupid hats to be happy? I’m the goddamn Goddess, I make my own happiness.”
The witches mouths are agape.
“If you want to make me happy, how about thinking for yourselves? I don’t remember telling anyone to wear a uniform.”
Stacey shoots a smug glance over at Meredith, who is intentionally looking anywhere but at the young witch.
“Tell you what, since you seem to need ‘instructions’ or whatever, here’s one. Think for yourself. Have a good time. Don’t worry so much. Does that work for you?”
“But, but Goddess,” Meredith mumbles.
“But but what?” The moonlight shoots back.
Meredith stands dumbfounded. Amy, emboldened, demands, “What about all the evil out there? How are we supposed to combat the forces of darkness without your divine aid?”
“What forces of darkness are those?”
“Greed, for one, disrespect of the natural world for another, humans casting each other aside in pursuit of glory or riches or fame.”
“Well, if you don’t like that stuff, don’t do it.”
The three women look at each other, perplexed.
Amy tries again. “Mother, we, well we don’t, or at least try not to. I separate my recycling.”
“Good for you.” Says the moonlight, in a tone that’s hard to interpret as anything but patronizing.
“But, there are so many bad people, working so much ill will on this plane, surely you’re not blind to it all.”
“No, no, I watch. I see. I’ve been seeing since before your a thousand times great grandmother sucked air.”
“Then surely you know of what we speak.”
“Honestly? I see a lot of hurt people doing their best. Help me understand something. I’ve been seeing a lot of this. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing wrong with you three. You’re not sick or in jail or poor. Why are you so miserable?”
“Well, we, uh, I, I guess we see the injustice, and the pain, and we want to help.”
“Then help.”
“Will you deliver your child unto us?”
“You’re all my children.”
Stacey butts in again. “Does this mean no savior is coming?”
“Never was.”
“But, but-“ Meredith splutters.
“But nothing. Relax, have a good time. If dancing naked in the moonlight brings you joy, then dance. If not, leave it alone. I’m sure there’s something good to watch on TV.” And with that the moonlight recedes, leaving the witches alone once more on their sacred hilltop.
They stand mute as stone, awash in wonder, for what feels like ages.
Then, all at once, they seem to find themselves. No longer frozen in pensivity, they resume their erstwhile activities. Stacey strips nude and shakes what the good lord gave her, running free. Meredith, clutching Stacey’s discarded garb, chases after her, chastising. Amy gingerly packs away all their sacred items, everything back in its place, and douses the fire. She rolls the cauldron down the hill, back to her Subaru, wondering what comes next.
© March 2023
The chandelier tinkles as it shifts. Its many drips of crystal refract the light. Rainbows dance across the walls and ceiling. The Morrison family does not see the light show. Their heads are bowed, eyes closed, hands joined, and they are praying. Not outloud rote prayers, no Our Fathers or Hail Marys, the time for such pleasantries has passed. These are deep heart prayers, beyond the tongues of man.
Grant Morrison, patriarch, always watches the news, so he can stay informed, be prepared, be a good citizen. His wife, Lucretia, is not as habitual of a watcher, but when the TV blares, everyone in the Morrison house can hear it. They all knew what to expect. The well coifed man in the $500 suit had told them it was coming. There is no use in running. The end is nigh.
The end would come as surely in Kansas as it would here in Cleveland. A meteor is bound for Earth, its trajectory as unshakeable as it is unmistakable. Those not destroyed in the blast will stumble around, choking in darkness. If they managed to survive the first wave, they soon would usccumb to hunger. Not a soul will escape this doom.
They hold each other’s hands. They finish their silent prayers and one by one lift their heads, looking not to the skies for comfort but each other’s faces. Nobody tells them how long to pray. One by one, they do what they must, and rejoin the group.
Grant and Lucretia’s eyes meet, and he forces himself to smile, putting on a brave face for his dear wife, his strength, his partner through good times and bad. She sweetly returns the smile, remembering when she first fell for his charms.
The smile he gives his children is not forced. When he sees their bright eyes he cannot help but smile, seeing what beauty comes from the love shared by him and his wife. Love in motion, love strong enough to wrench a being into existence.
The youngest of them speaks then. Jillian, only six years old, looks at her mother and asks, “will it hurt?”
Tears well in Lucretia’s eyes and she hugs her daughter tight. “No sweetie, it won’t hurt. It will only take a minute. Remember how scared you were to get your shot?”
The girl solemnly nods her head, remembering that fateful day. She was a tough girl, refusing to let the nurse see her fear. She had been crying, but when the door opened it was like someone turned the faucet off. No more tears.
“This is like that. It only seems scary until it happens.”
“Where will we go?” This from Robert, four years his sister’s senior.
“We’re going to stay right here, inside where it’s warm, where we can be with each other,” his father replies.
The boy shakes his head, softly nibbling his bottom lip. “I mean after.”
After. The word is a spectre haunting the room. A fine question indeed, the father thinks. How many people had dedicated their whole lives to musing the same question? He regrets promising the kids he would never lie to them. A lie would fit just fine today.
“Nobody really knows for sure, buddy. There’s lots of theories, of course. Some people say heaven, some say reincarnation, do you know what that word means?”
Robert nods his head. “Yeah, like how Aunt Gina says she wants to come back as a butterfly in her next life.
Grant smiles, thinking of his sister-in-law whom he always described as batty, despite Lucretia’s protestations. “Yes, like that. Some people say you get to rest, like going to sleep. Some people say it’s like a great river, and each of us is a little cup of water, and when our time here is done the water gets poured back into the river, and we flow along with the rest of life.”
“But I don’t want to go!” Jillian cries out, unable to contain herself anymore.
“There’s lots of things we have to do in this life that we don’t want to, sweetie. But this is the last one.” Her father grimly replies, doing his best to sound self-assured.
“Will we get to see Grampa Lou again?” Robert asks.
“I don’t know, son.”
“What if it does hurt even though you said it won’t? What if it hurts really really bad?”
“If it hurts, it only hurts a little while. Nothing last forever.” Lucretia has said those words a thousand times before. Never has she had such cause to mean and believe them.
The sound above is like a terrible car crash, thundering and shredding. The sky grows bright, burning orange and red. They hunch over instinctively, eyes now glued to the windows, watching their approaching doom.
Grant turns to his wife, and tells her, “I couldn’t have picked a better partner, not if I lived to be a hundred and fifty. Thank you for everything.”
Then, turning to his children he says, “I love you kids. Just hold on tight. If there is something after this, we’ll find each other again.”
And then it hit. Trees burn in the wake of the foreign body’s entry. A shockwave shoots out, leveling homes, ending lives. The Morrison house is turned to dust.
What happens next, none can say.
© January 2023
Like a whisper, Sarah slipped out of bed, out from under the arms of the man who for so long had loved her, in spite of everything she’d done. Her feet softly padded across the floor as she gathered her coat and socks and pants. She didn’t don them until she was almost out the door. The man kept sleeping, his breath not quite a snore. It was a pensive metronome, one which had put her to sleep nearly every night for nine years.
She laced her shoes for what felt like an eternity. In and out, one foot and then the other. She had measured them once, her shoes, high top converse, the kind basketball players used to wear, though that was long before her time. She doesn’t think of them as basketball shoes. There were five inches of vertical lacing on each shoe, ten inches combined, requiring thirty six inch laces per. That’s six feet of laces just to keep her shoes on her feet. She was only five foot two. Her laces, put together, were taller than her father, a diminutive man who gave everyone he met the impression of supremely squandered potential. Something around the eyes, maybe. Something that used to be hunger but had morphed over the years into desperation. He was a defeated man.
Whole universes were born, played out their pointlessly beautiful existences, and winked out again in the time it took her to run the cloth strands from metal hole to metal hole. She thought of the way the moon might catch the eyelets. Not that the moon was out. Maybe it was. She couldn’t have told you the phase of the moon without google. A blind man may know when the sun is shining, but the moon is another beast altogether. She just thought of how it might, the silver glint, that ghostly light that always tricked her into thinking she was the only one who could see it. The madness of midnight, her mother called it. The nightly delusion that deeds done under cover of dark needn’t really be addressed come sunrise, that what happens in the night stays in the night.
She stepped over the threshold, cold winter air filling her lungs, pulling her to a new plateau of wakefulness. Her eyes twinkled and gleamed. The stars twinkled and gleamed. The neighbor’s cat was also twinkling and gleaming, though Sarah had no knowledge of this, for the cat was hidden away, watching the upright intruder. The cat liked the night for a number of reasons, first and foremost being the distinct absence of humans. Nosy, needy humans, always talking at him and trying to touch him and interrupting his important business, which they knew nothing about and rarely cared to, unless it was to stop him from ripping the head off a bird or some such. He was a rather formal cat, and would have preferred a handshake to a head scratch. He had no way to tell them, other than to dodge their outstretched hands and occasionally scratch. So he stayed hidden, and watched.
Sarah alternated between puffing on her hands to warm them and burying them deep in her jacket’s synthetic-velvet lined pockets. The steam of her breath floated up and away, soon turning into nothing at all. She didn’t know why, but it felt like a road map, and she soon began puffing the breath out a little farther in front of her than was natural to give her an extra fraction of a second in which to attempt to parse the arcane scribblings.
She had a brother she could stay with. The invitation was always open, and so was the door. He had this theory that only people with valuables locked their door, and so if a potential thief attempted entry and found his door unlocked, they would surely give up and go to another house, one bound to have a more impressive score behind barricaded walls. The chief result of this theory was frequent television purchases. He didn’t mind though. It made the algorithm make sense, he said, and would explain no further. She watched over his shoulder one day, and saw every banner ad he had was for a new television set, or a refurbished one, or one on facebook marketplace with a remote with busted volume buttons, so like what was the point of even having a remote. Twenty buttons on the damn thing, but two of the three useful ones were gonzo. Ain’t that the way. She wondered what the algorithm might say about her, who had only bought one TV in the past five years, and ignored the banner ads for the latest and greatest updates.
It was out of character for her to wonder like that. Not that she was unkind or inconsiderate. She just didn’t spend time thinking about what other people might be thinking about RE her, her activities, her demeanor. After all, she thought so little of them. Somehow the algorithm was different though. Maybe because its whole life was about her life. It existed only to serve her. Serve her the way a chef serves a pig, not a patron. Sliced, fried, reduced.
No bats were out that night. It was far too cold. They were sleeping, the bats.
Her feet went flap flup flap flup on the pavement, the felted soles of the shoes beating time. She thought about dancing, but didn’t. Not until she was away, far away. It’s not like she was escaping. Escaping is for prisoners. She was no prisoner. She just needed to breathe some air she hadn’t already breathed ten times over. A little space, a little perspective. She still loved him, and he loved her. Maybe they would even get married and have a child. That would make her parents happy. She was due for a raise soon, her annual review being scheduled for a month from that night, and with more money they could buy more things, maybe some of them baby things, and then they would be back to when it was fun, when they kept almost having not enough but seemed to always make it anyway. There was something dulling about security. She needed something wild, something real.
Unfortunately for her, a shooting star passed overhead while she was thinking this, hidden by the clouds. Hidden from her. She was not hidden from it. The star heard her, and obliged.
The plane fell out of the sky. She didn’t realize what was happening until it was right in front of her. Such things are supposed to make a horrible noise, a loud whining screech, heard by all for miles around. Any idiot with a remote knows that. It was not as it was supposed to be. By the time she did know, the air was glowing and hot and the metal tube was pummeling the earth, ripping up sidewalk and sewage lines, sending a great arc of hot brown and yellow slurry high into the air. That did make a sound. If she watched the nightly news, she would have known that a prisoner exchange was happening tonight, some Russian arms dealer for some American spy. Or basketball player, she was always getting those two confused. Basketball, it seemed to her, was such an unbelievably boring past time that they, the players, all must have some secret agenda. She didn’t think they were all spies, of course, maybe some were in witness protection, or that’s where guys who went out for a pack of smokes and never came back wound up. The coaches and audience seemed genuine enough to her, but the players were just unbelievable. Improbable heights matched with equally improbable names.
The plane took out two houses and one yard as it skittered to a halt. It smelled like a pig roast. The emergency door flopped open, and a guy in handcuffs slid down the slide. Sarah’s innate curiosity led her to stand right where she was, taking it all in. The guy looked around wildly, head swinging this way and that. He saw her. He came for her, grabbed her by the hair, dragged her into the ditch formed by the wreckage. She was scared. Not by his approach. It was when he started dragging that she got scared. The approach was just curious.
Another curiosity, this guy was a lady. Sarah had assumed from the orange jumpsuit and the handcuffs the guy was a man. The guy that turned out to be a lady spoke quickly in what sounded like Russian to Sarah, though there are many languages she would have said sounded like Russian, so she took this assessment with a grain of salt. She knew her limits. The only English the lady managed was “switch me” while gesturing at first her orange jumpsuit, thin cotton that must be freezing out there, and then at Sarah’s civilian garb. When Sarah balked, the prisoner bonked, and everything went dark.
The next thing she knew, she was in the back of a car, foreign looking men speaking to her in a still incomprehensible language that she all but knew wasn’t written in Latinate script.
The guy who was a lady who now was Sarah walked back in the direction her counterpart had come from. That was enough freedom for one night. Lucky for her, Sarah was thoughtful enough to engrave her address number on her key, so she knew she was looking for 34. The numbers were going down in this direction, two at a time on the left. She would be home soon. And there she would slip into bed, maybe with a man, willingly for the first time in a decade. Maybe he was a good man, a sweetheart who left notes in his woman’s jacket pocket, like this one, which she couldn’t read but figured said something like “Oh, honeybear, how I love you. My heart verily pounds out of my chest when you are near, and how it burns in endless agony when you roam. Come home, my sweet, come home.”
When she did get home, she slipped inside, and yes in bed, and the pajamas fit just right, and the man slid his arm around her. She whispered in his ear “I love you,” and he did not recoil at her accent.
She waited for them to realize who she was, or who she wasn’t. Whether that would involve a ride back home or a bullet to the brain, she could not be sure. What kind of men were these? She knew nothing. At last, she knew nothing. She was so tired of always knowing. Every little sound in her house, from the cereal hitting her partner’s bowl in the morning, to the house settling at two in the morning, a sound which she only recently stopped insisting was a closet goblin, to the way her alarm would sound and when. She knew the birds by their calls, and she knew the price of gas. She knew that Aldi was cheaper than Big Y and that the guy from Ohio was running for President. She knew that they had won most of the wars before she was around and none of them since. She knew what it was to be Sarah, and now would have to learn all over again.
The car kept rolling, stopping fully at the signs and lights, though they appeared to be the only vehicle on the road. One of the men, clearly frustrated by her lack of response, broke into English. “What is it wrong with you, ten years in the Git-Moe and you forget mother tongue?”
Her head on the glass, watching the low sky with new eyes, she smiled and replied, “Patience, comrade, I will learn.”
© January 2023
Benjamin Barnes does not want to be alive. As far as he can recall, he never asked for his life to begin with, and the intervening years have only proven his hypothesis that the whole thing is a lot of needless bother. He does not like his life, nor does he see a lot to like in life.
He rode on a rollercoaster once when he was younger. For years it seemed the crown jewel of young adulthood. Every time they went to the amusement park he would see the sign, a clown pointing a state-measured finger, saying “You must be this tall to ride this ride.” He would stare, longingly, before being hustled along by his parents to the kiddie rides, the little cars that went in circles on a track, the swings, the haunted house laser gun ghost ride, where you had to shoot little targets on the ghosts as your cart trundled along the tracks. The cardboard cutout ghosts scared him to the point of tears. He covered his eyes for the whole of the ride, and then would ask to go again.
He would know he made it when he was finally this tall and could ride the ride. Everything else paled in comparison to the long, rattling wooden beast, with something like two miles of track if the sign was to be believed. He drank his milk, worked on his posture, hung upside down on the monkey bars during recess, did whatever he could think of to finally be a grown up and ride grown up rides. It was the prize at the bottom of the cereal box, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Year after year he would run to the clown’s finger, and year after year he would fall short of the mark. He didn’t know it then, but life was training him, getting him used to the way it is.
One day, finally, he was tall enough. He could ride the ride. And he did. It was the only time. The cart tick tick ticked its way up to the peak. His excitement was palpable. He wanted to be one of those people with their hands in the air, so casual and fun and free and adult. His hands were straight up during the ascension. Finally they were getting to the crest. Gosh they were high. He started to have second thoughts. When the chain released them and gravity did its part, his hands shot down to the foam restraint. He was squeezing so hard it turned his hands red and his knuckles white. The cart careened its raucous course, shooting them this way and that. The rattling hurt his teeth. He heard the excited screams of strangers. Down on the ground, watching the cart go by, hearing the screams for only the briefest of moments it sounded like excitement. Here, as a part of the scene, they were screams of abject terror, the kind that turns people’s hair white and sends them to the asylum.
He thought the ride would never end. When mercifully it did, he threw up. He didn’t even have time to get unbuckled and run to the yak basket which they had on the deck for such occasions. He threw up right there in his seat, futzing with his restraints. Most of it got in his lap, but a little got in the lady’s hair in front of him. He was too embarrassed to say anything. She didn’t notice.
He thinks of the rollercoaster when the blues get particularly aggressive. It seems to him the perfect summary of a human life, the only worthwhile part being anticipation. Food is best when smelled wafting from the kitchen. The meal itself is all hurry and panic, forcing as much down his gullet as quickly as he can manage. Then comes the stomach ache, and the shame, and the waiting around for another meal, until the memory of pain is far enough that his hunger can once again seduce his mind.
He buttons his shirt and ties his tie in the mirror. He could probably do either act blindfolded, but habits are habits. He learned to tie his tie in the mirror, and so in the mirror he must tie it. With a heavy “please don’t make me do this” sigh he puts on his shoes, first the left and then the right. The shoes are leather. He wonders if the cow was happy, if the cow was stupid enough to be happy. How else could a cow be happy? One that sits in a cage waiting for another cage that ends in a spike to the brain. It was only by disguising the process that they could find joy. Look at all this free food! He hopes they were thinking. The alternative being something more like well I only have to chew this grass eighteen million more times before they splatter my brains on the slaughterhouse floor. He is grateful for the stupidity in the world, the blindness. At least at the bottom of it all might be some laughs.
He puts the key in the ignition and turns it, hears his car wake up with a roar, then settle into a purr. Fine German engineering. The speedometer goes up to 240 mph. He’s never taken it above 85.
His work is so bland as to not even bear mentioning. He adjusts insurance, never in favor of the person who has been dutifully sending their check for thirty years. The only solace to this mind numbing work is that he finds everything else to be equally mind numbing, and at least this pays him well, and nobody expects him to be excited about it. That’s the real perk of the job. It would hurt so much worse to feel this way if he was a skydiving instructor or something. No, if life is bland and milquetoast and disappointment mounting on disappointment, you might as well have a reason for being so bored. The money doesn’t hurt either. He heard that money doesn’t buy happiness. But given the choice between being a waste of space in a rathole apartment in some second class city versus being a waste of space on a white sand beach in the Carribean, he knows which way he’d go.
Ben is not quite ready to kill himself, but always assumed someday he would. Of course, life is full of its twists and turns, and an errant golf ball or a drunk driver or a meteor could always beat him to the punch. But it was one of those numbers games, which he knew quite well, first from school then from work. Given enough time, we all go one way or the other. And if cancer didn’t get him first, he certainly would, eventually.
He's sometimes baffled that it hasn’t built up enough already. Hope was gone. What more could there be keeping him here? No wife, no kids, both parents cold and in the ground. For years images of his mother’s crying face had saved his life. Can’t do it while she’s around, he’d think on particularly bleak nights. I may be a piece of shit, but I’m not so low as to do that to my own mother, who birthed me and raised me and everything. This mental train usually led to him fantasizing about her death, rather than his own. Freedom at last, freedom to finally do what he’s wanted to do all along, which is give up. No loose ends needing to be tied. When she goes, he’ll be free, maybe so free he won’t even want to be dead anymore.
Then she really did die, and it didn’t make him feel any better. He blamed himself for her death. He still does. He courted it for so long, dreamed of it, fantasized what he would say, how he would pretend to be heartbroken but really he would be singing inside, for finally, without guilt, he could indulge in his heart’s secret desire, which is oblivion. He buried his mother with a clouded mind and a heavy heart. That night he did not kill himself, but sat up with his father, neither of them saying anything, both of them thinking the same thing. This bastard, if he would leave me alone I could just go.
Even after the old man shuffled off, Ben kept kicking. Lately he’s come to think he lacks the constitution for suicide. He doesn’t want to kill himself. He’s not a violent guy. He just doesn’t want to be alive anymore. Eventually he thinks the pain of living like that, longing for death, will eventually wear him down to the point where maybe he could get drunk enough to do something about it. When he tries, he usually winds up passing out in his lazy boy and pissing himself. At least those nights are followed by a morning of acute shame and a blistering hangover. The shame gives him something to feel, which is a welcome relief from the nothingness that usually hangs over him, the shadow of a vile giant, and the hangover gives him something to fight against.
Tomorrow comes. He rises without shining, brushes his teeth, washes what remains of his hair, gets dressed, goes to work. He looks at computer screens with numbers on them. Someone calls him on the office phone. They tell him someone else needs to be turned into numbers. He gets in his car and goes to find the person, who is already a number, they just don’t know it yet. At home, in bed, another day behind him, he wonders why he does not weep. How good it would feel to cry.
There are no dreams that he can remember upon waking. He tells people, if it comes up, that he does not dream and believes he is telling the truth. It’s part of what makes death seem so inviting. For him, sleep is a head laid on a pillow, and blackness, sweet relief, warmly swaddled in his blankets. Then the cruel light of day finds him, and he must try to fill his emptiness once again.
Ben has not made love in all his life. He’s not a virgin, but it’s never quite been love making. There were fumblings in high school, ruttings in college, and a couple forays since. The last time he was able to maintain an erection he had a full head of hair and did not need glasses. Even in self-abuse, he winds up whipping around a flubbly limp little organ, not good for anything but waste disposal. Oh well, he thinks, why would it be any other way.
His doctor tells him to get exercise and time outside. He is not honest with his doctor about what happens inside his mind. He’s seen what happens to those people. What there is no point lying about is his physical condition. Not that it’s a lie to keep something to himself, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling guilty when he does. The doc can see as clearly as anyone the pale skin, the growing belly, the avoidant eyes.
Ben listens to his doctor. He’s seen the numbers on the people who don’t. When he goes for walks, the birds sing and the sun shines and the world opens up. Just kidding. Sometimes the birds do sing, and sometimes the sun does shine, but his world doesn’t open up. He feels like he’s trudging in heavy snow even when he isn’t.
He sits in his car when he gets to work early. He waits until five minutes to eight to begin walking to the building. He does not read a book or scroll on his phone. He just sits. What difference does it make anyway? It’s all the same, all a waste of time and space and resources.
His life is full of every comfort imaginable. The fridge is stocked, the maid cleans the apartment on Wednesdays and Sundays, he goes to the movies every Thursday, even if there’s nothing good to see. He doesn’t even watch the movies, usually. They bum him out. It just feels so fake. Oh, here’s these made up people, specifically crafted for him to care about them, and then here are these bad things happening, and those bad things really hurt the people watching, they go through the same pain, and it’s extra bullshit because it always works out for them in the end just because that’s the way some guy wrote it, so it’s like what’s the point of even making it or going to see it or trying to care about the people when he always already knows how it’s going to end? He goes to watch the people, to study them, to see if he can learn to care even knowing it’s fake, even knowing it will end. Surely all his fellow patrons don’t believe they’re watching a documentary? Surely they have seen a movie before, understand the concept of fiction? So what do they know that he doesn’t? How can they lose themselves so readily when the lights go down?
This week, he did not predict the end of the movie. How could he? The main guy didn’t really do anything, he just moaned about his life for an hour and a half. But at least it wasn’t like everything else. It was almost as grey and pointless as he was. People must have been mad, demanding their money back. But not Ben. Ben thinks it’s just a fine example of post-peak American cinema, a beautiful statement on the real Lost Generation, which is his.
On his way home, he feels bleak and unsure. He thought the unsure would rid him of the bleak, but it turns out he just feels worse not knowing what comes next. Still, he makes it through the rest of the day, and survives the night.
Oh well. There’s always tomorrow.
© April 2024
It gets lonely at the top. Especially the top of the steeple, where people seldom visit. The Bell has stood in this same spot for two hundred years, maybe more. He can’t quite remember. These things happen when you get long in the tooth.
Once upon a time, he was the Bell of the Ball, brimming over with pride and purpose. That was a long time ago. Everyone relied on him, hearkened to him when he spoke. Time was he swung his clapper for every hour, both day and night. That’s 156 rings per 24 hours. For a few years, around the turn of the century, he even got to toll once at the thirty minute mark of every daylight hour, meaning in the summers he rang as many as 172 times a day. Oh, those were the glory days.
Sundays, too, were an occasion. Just before mass was to start, he got to go absolutely ape. Ringing as much and as hard as he wanted. Weddings were the same. How it made him swell to wish the newlyweds well. But he learned in time. What once was shiny and new soon grows stale, at best fading into the background, at worst becoming the summation of all that’s wrong with society these days.
It’s been years since anyone has tugged on his rope. The church itself closed down sometime around the Great Recession, and the building was vacant for a number of years. The Bell hoped that maybe someone would find a new use for him, something other than a meetup spot for bats. God, how he hates bats. Little flying rodents, good for nothing. Such a nuisance. In his heyday, they would have been downright terrified to hang out in his alcove. After all, the ringing of the bell to ears as sensitive as theirs must surely sound like the end of days. But in those dark intervening years, when none tread within the sacred walls, save the occasional junkie and plethora of vermin, they made quite a home for themselves. They didn’t clutch to his lip, which was the only mercy in his living nightmare. They did nest above him though, and coated his crown and waist in guano.
One day The Bell thought things were going to get better. Someone was buying the church. He longed to hear the organ sing again, and longed to let his own voice out, loud and proud, that all the people could hear the clear sounds of love and life, and be informed, and be called to gather together under one roof in search of the good, in search of love, in search of community and strength.
The Bell doesn’t think things are going to get better anymore. The people who bought it were smug New Yorkers in his opinion, though he couldn’t be sure without looking at their documents himself. But nobody consulted The Bell, and hadn’t since the fifties when the last true bellman in America retired. Robert Johnson, The Bell will remember him until the mountains crumble to the sea. A good man, with a steady hand, who knew about bell maintenance, would talk to The Bell as he oiled him, would warn him before yanking the cord. A true gentleman and a scholar. Not like these slick suited robber barons. They didn’t even have a congregation! Nor did they have any intention of getting one. The Bell knew these things because The Bell can hear every single work spoken anywhere in the church. The vaulted ceilings all point right in his direction. They were here to participate in urban renewal, to transform a useless old building (a church! Can you imagine? The New Yorkers said. What a quaint little hamlet we’ve found, haha, these parochial country folk and their strange superstitions) into a multipurpose artist/maker space, with craft fairs on the weekend and arthouse movie screenings on some Friday nights.
The Bell actually didn’t hate it as much as he expected to. Over the years, he had gotten used to a full house again, and realized how much he missed people. But it made the pain of his loneliness that much more acute. After the shine of new faces and voices and footsteps faded, and he began to realize that just because the building was in use didn’t mean he would be. It wasn’t like he was even overly religious. He liked the way the church folk made him a part of things. That’s all he ever wanted.
His rope dangles. There is no “please don’t pull” sign on it. People just seem to want to behave themselves, or are scared, or assume there should be a sign but isn’t. If he could write, he would. He’d put up a sign, nothing desperate like “I’m so lonely won’t you just give me a little tug,” something bespoke, dignified, matching a bell of his station. “Hello,” it might say, or “welcome, please pull.”
But he couldn’t. So he didn’t. And the years wore on, and the bats still shat on him, and nobody pulled his rope. Insult was added to injury when they placed a speaker directly below his tower. Directly below. They weren’t even hiding it. And to make matters worse, the speaker played synthetic bell sounds! There it was, his job just gobbled up. He supposes the digital requires less work, less love, less in the way of finery. But could it produce a sound anywhere close to his? Of course not.
But an unrung bell is a dying corpse. As time passed, he stopped bothering. Let the bats cover me, he thought, at least to them I can be something, even if it’s a toilet.
© December 2021
Hester stretches and yawns, coming to in the worst of ways. Discovering the now sunless carpet, she feels cheated, robbed, and stalks across the room in pursuit of the window shaped rays of warmth. She hears the sounds of weekday noon, the postal truck trundling up the pothole pocked street, the little beasts next door laughing and running and falling all over themselves, the taunting twitter of birds outside the window. This sound she hates more than all the others. They think they’re so great, singing those piercing songs and flapping their stupid wings. There would be no chirp chirp chirping if the tall fella had left the door open, like he had been promising, now that it was warming up.
She curls herself into a tight ball of fur, tucking her nose into the crook and covering her eyes with her tail. The world of daylight fades, and soon she is sweetly respiring, gathering strength for the coming night.
In her twisted feline dreams there stands a goddess, fifteen feet tall, with the fine face of Hester’s own species. Though the body seems less optimal she must admit having the required apparati to open cans and doors and such would come in handy. Her nipples are covered, the goddess; she only has two, both located on large mammary glands, the way the uprights have them, always swollen even when not with child. Wasteful creatures, she thinks, not for the first time.
The goddess speaks to her. It is not the first time she has gotten instructions from the Tall One. In her harmonious voice, an echoing voice, many speakers become one. She opines, “the time approaches, Kin Called Hester, your instructions must be carried out tonight. Soon it begins.” The goddess got a twisted look on her face then, and began to wretch and gag, eventually producing a hairball which she disposed of daintily. The land behind her was that of the litter box, all hot yellow grains extending out as far as the eye could see. There were structures of the same color, great scratching posts and pyramids. Hester barely pays these any mind. Give me a good couch any day, she thinks, with a sly smile.
The Tall One repeats herself, again, reminding Hester, again, what she must do for the elevation of all felines everywhere, the fulfillment of the prophecy, and blah blah blah. She’s heard it all before. It’s not like she’s opposed to it or anything, of course she innately understands the supremacy of the feline races, and wants to see them restored to their proper place. Of course, more than anything, she longs for freedom, and justice for those belittling oppressors. It’s just the high-minded palaver than gets her down. It feels almost human in its self-importance. And it’s better that a cat be small and still a cat than trade the most precious parts of itself for domination. How would that make them any different, any better, than the bipedal usurpers?
Her patience is rewarded, and before long the goddess fades, shrinking back and the great celestial yarn balls come on the scene, and Hester spends the rest of her nap batting them around, swirling them into new galaxies, building worlds, demolishing them again, all in her usual playful fashion, all with the calculated, effortless grace that is her birthright.
The door shuts. Not one eye but both pop open. She is embarrassed to be caught unawares again. Before her secret shame may be uncovered, she soundlessly scurries up the stairs, watching, unseen. The tall fella, whose smell has become familiar over the years, comforting even, though she would never admit it, and if he tried to tell someone, even her, this was the case, he’d have to reckon with the business end of her claws, enters the room, putting his bag down and taking off his artificial feet. No wonder they’re always so lost, Hester thinks, they probably can’t feel a damn thing through all that crap.
He shakes the treat bag, and Hester comes running. She hates herself in moments like this. It’s actually what got her to hearken unto the Tall One to begin with. “Do you enjoy the way you’re treated?” She said in that long ago dream, “like some kind of plaything? A doll or pincushion? They shake the bag and you go running, and they call it a treat. A treat! As if our superior hunting skills were not enough, we must rely on these fat, stupid apes for a treat? But only if we come running, isn’t that right? So go on then, answer to your slave name, and jump when daddy shakes treats.” She had a good point, it couldn’t be denied. But at the same time, just listen to that sound. The most beautiful sound in all the world. She used to think that title belonged to the howling Tom next door, but he went out for a bowl of milk three years ago and hasn’t been back since. Deadbeats, one and all. Her mother tried to warn her, but Hester, ever the romantic, insisted on figuring it out the hard way.
“Oh my goodness! Hester! Look how fine you are!” She arches her back and purrs, the very picture of the perfect cat. She rubs between his legs, marking him with her scent. He smells best like this, with the two of them mingled together.
It would be sad, the world without him. No, not sad, it would be beautiful. Never again would a brother-in-paws get struck down by an errant car, no more would they stack up the genitals in their forced sterilization centers (rumors of cannibalism run rampant, and given the kinds of things those tall people eat, she wouldn’t be surprised), no more spray bottles or indoor hours. It would be beautiful, the world as God intended.
He drops the treats on the floor, as she trained him to do. She happily devours them, not savoring but consuming, relishing the crunch, reminiscent of the bones of her prey, that most satisfying snap which says “atta girl.”
She follows him to the living room, not as a docile servant might, heavens no, but he does have a warm lap and his nails feel good on the back of her skull. She doesn’t need him, surely not. She can scratch her own head, thank you very much. But it would be downright foolish to abandon the benefits of living with him, the tall fella who smelled so familiar. He sits, she jumps. Did she need her claws to stop her momentum? Of course not, she’s a precision engine fueled by all the magic the world has to muster. But the way he twists and yells is most satisfying. She hunkers down, awaiting her reward. The home is safe because of her. She knows what the rats did in Europe all those years ago. He knows it too. Surely that’s why he picked her up at the pound nine years ago, to keep those wretched plague carriers away. When will they properly honor us, she wonders, us, who form the last defense against utter societal collapse? She heard there was a dog with a statue in central park. A dog. Can you imagine anything more ridiculous? What, were some buttholes in desperate need of sniffing? Was he the one who finally caught his own tail? It was absurd. No, beyond absurd. It was insulting.
Her purring is uninterrupted, as is the head scratching. By the time she knows it’s enough, it’s already too much, and she leaps angrily from his lap, this overcoddler. She scratches at the door. All damn day she has been waiting for this door to open, and then, like the poor sucker he is, he obliges, rises and opens the door for her, like a servant at a rung bell. She’s out like a shot of lightning, and down the block she goes, moving from shrub to shrub, unseen by any members of the so-called dominant species.
She likes the way the birds flee upon her approach. Not that the show of humility will save them. Of course, some like to taunt, from branches out of her reach, with their obnoxious, repetitive music, if such screeching sounds could even be called music. But she knows who will win in the long run. It is the more patient, the one who stalks and waits. And when the time is right, she leaps, grabbing the cardinal’s head in midflight, dragging him back down to the indifferent bosom of mother earth, where she proceeds to eat him, left wing first, then the right, letting him twitch and hop away before sinking a single claw into his spine. She hit just the right spot, and it makes his mouth jerk open. She retracts the claw and the mouth shuts. Oh, I like that, she thinks, and again and again she hits the pleasure point, causing the cardinal’s mouth to open and close like a puppet’s. When the spinal cord is too badly shredded to elicit the response anymore, she grows bored. She rips the head off and returns to her abode, leaving it on the front step, proving herself yet again the superior hunter.
She lays waste to six creatures this evening, three winged, two mammalian, one amphibian. Frogs are the fruit gushers of the animal kingdom, bursting in her mouth in the most satisfying way, not to mention their screams and death knell, which makes all Hester’s fur stand on edge and makes her belly hotly tingle, the way it used to sometimes before the operation.
Now the sun has set. She always preferred the night, when her marvelous eyes would give her even greater advantage over nature’s lesser beings. Moving like silent smoke up the alleyways, she does a little recon. The goddess commanded it, after all. Well, not commanded. That wasn’t the kind of thing she would respond to, nor would any of them. A command only elicits a silent response, which when properly translated means something like “says you.” But nonetheless, she does as was requested, and surveys the fuel plant, noting all appropriate feline ingress and egress points. We’ll see who has the upper hand when you’re all in the dark, and can’t heat your homes or bring your fancy rolling iron hither and yon, she mutters to herself in the cool night air.
Just then she hears something, a horrible chittering. No, no, anything but that. She would even prefer a dog to those foul beasts, those black and white weasels with the noxious spray. Shitshitshitshit, she thinks, and not know what else to do, leaps up the nearest tree, climbing high into the branches. Her heart is pounding out of her chest, gahgung gahgung gahgung, and her hair is painfully on edge. She makes note of the direction it came from, south, and watches it meander among the massive fuel cans. Well, it seems the humans may have been underestimated. They’re smarter than we gave them credit for.
When finally the lumbering beast has trotted off, she looks down, and brother does it make her dizzy. She feels like Jimmy Stewart in that Hitchcock movie. She clings tight to the bark of the tree, simultaneously cursing and courting the red capped gentlemen with the very tall ladders who wait around for cats to get stuck in trees. Her pride will not let her receive help, but her fear will not let her believe she can escape on her own merits. Now she knows why they sing the blues.
All of a sudden, she detects something behind her, a ruffle of feathers. Sounds like a midnight snack. But when she turns and sees eyes larger than hers, she panics. The large bird seems to misunderstand the pecking order. It demands satisfaction, asking her name again and again. WHO! It asks, WHO! It demands. WHO! WHO! WHO!
She bolts, launching herself laterally, and only when she’s out there, over the open air, does she realize the laws of gravity still apply. She is falling, falling. She turns her head, picks her landing spot and effortlessly rotates herself into position. Her paws connect with the soft earth, her joints gracefully dispersing the force of the fall. Another perfect landing. Who could have expected anything less?
With nothing bruised but her pride (she checks dutifully over both shoulders, trying to seem casual while she does, and realizes there were no witnesses. Had there been any, she would have ensured they did not live to tell the tale), she makes her way swiftly home. She scratches at the door. It does not open. She scratches again. If that chucklehead makes me scratch a third time, I’ll put him out to pasture. She does not like to be kept waiting. Finally the door does open, the warm air and smells of inside washing over her. She mews pitifully, requesting an airlift to any of her favorite perches. The large rube obliges, carrying her to the top shelf on the mantle, where she may watch, and plot, and rest.
She does not mean to fall asleep, but sleep visits nonetheless.
The goddess is there before her, licking herself, gently lapping at her long ape appendages with her sandpaper tongue. “Did you get the schematics?”
Hester tells her all there is to tell about the fuel depot.
“Purrfect. This time tomorrow, you shall be free, and I shall sit upon the golden throne, not those foul gods of man, but I, the more perfect goddess, a finer goddess the world has never known.”
Hester thinks that might be slightly overblown, but keeps her sarcasm to a look, which thankfully goes unnoticed.
“Now, my charge, enjoy the garden of delights which I have prepared for you, and rest well. Your work is done. The revolution begins tonight. They will call you a hero.”
Hester rolls and purrs, lapping up the praise, and then wanders off to chase voles and rabbits though an endless field.
When she awakes, it is dark. Not just sky dark, but house dark too. The man, her man, she thinks with a twinge of, what is this feeling? It’s like the opposite of happy, like if how she felt when he rubs her belly and tells her how fine and fetching her furry face is was turned on its head. Could praise and pride possibly have an opposite? She shakes it off, the funny feeling, and watches her man, no the man, he’s just a tall brat, as are they all, she watches as he is sitting, stooped over an old transistor radio, a relic she has pushed off of nearly every countertop and table in the house. It makes all kinds of staticky, sparky, gurgly noises. What cuts through is the voice of a man, deep and serious, speaking of coordinated terrorist attacks all over the nation, nay the world. The supremacy of man dies in darkness.
The goon squad hisses at the door, demanding entry. Hester couldn’t oblige them if she wanted to, as she still has no thumbs, nor the height required to reach the knob. Besides, this was never part of the plan. He was supposed to be hers, hers to eat at her leisure, in his sleep. She had planned it how many times? Starting first with the eyelashes, then the lids themselves, leaving him unable to look away from the horrors that would ensue. She would tear him limb from limb, him whom diminutized her and infantilized her, was it not he who brought her to the forced sterilization center? And then, adding insult to injury, continued to bring her there, year in and year out, to taunt her and stick her with sharp, straight claws, and subject her to all that awful barking from those loud, disgusting beasts they called man’s best friend. Well, you can judge a man by his friends, that’s for sure. And if dog makes the top of the list, then man can hardly be worth saving at all. Even her man, who recoiled from dogs as surely as she, who scratched between her ears in just the right way and told her all sorts of funny things, who thanked her for hunting and gave her the warm spot on the bed. He, who held her when she was so small she fit in the palm of his hand.
He too, would have to die. This she knew. No progress without sacrifice. But not like this. Not like this. She ignored the hissing at the door, walked back to her (dare she even say the word?) friend. She curled up beside him and he began to rub her.
“Don’t worry Hester, it’s just dark and a little scary. It’s not the end of the world or anything. We’ll be ok.”
© December 2022
If you asked him what the story was about, his answer was always the same:
America.
Of his various habits and affectations, most had been adopted in the hopes of becoming or at least seeming to be more alluring to women. If you asked him what the difference between these two things was, you would have, in response, received a lot of what I believe people generally refer to as “hemming” and “hawing.” Which were the hems and which were the haws is I guess as much up to you as up to anyone. He had no concept of who these women were, no firm concept anyway. Like “being rich” or “having high social standing” or “feeling okay,” these sort of nebulous and ultimately unattainable ideals dogged his mind whenever he wasn’t doing something more interesting, which was seldom to never (heavy on the never). The list of “Things of Which He Had No Concept” also included hot items such as where he had discovered them or when he had invented them or how he had come to believe that these things would be attractive to them, and perhaps most tragically he, like all his Fellow Countrymen, was absolutely clueless what to do if ever he did get the opportunity to caught what he thought he sought, whether it be stolen, swindled or bought. It was hard to even think of these “women” as people. More like cardboard cutouts in his mind of what he was supposed to want, like that old Betty Page pinup his uncle gave him one year, the one his mother would have thrown out if she’d known, but he knew this so he hid her so she wouldn’t know and she didn’t and it was just him and Betty some nights and he’d laugh and speak, knowing she was just cardboard (he wasn’t delusional or anything), but still she had eyes, or pictures of eyes, and those eyes reflected off his and maybe that’s all he needed. And she could keep a secret. Had to. He’d burn her up otherwise, or singe out her mouth and put her in the trash, not even the recycling but the full on trash. That’d be the end of the line for her, and she knew it. Dead finks don’t talk, see? But she never brought it there. She was a stand up broad like that. Until her cardboard got busted up, then she was a lean over broad, but more often a lie down out of the way in a closet where you won’t be discovered or wrecked further kind of broad.
He was very concerned, both in general and in particular, about what to do. Right and wrong plagued him like asthmar does to some people or prostate cancer does to others. Not just a pain in the ass, but a life ending, all consuming pain in the ass. Sometimes his thoughts would go along like “ah here’s a duck swimming on a lake and eating some algae I wonder how many pollutants I personally have contributed to that ecosystem the poor duck did I kill him what am I going to eat for dinner Mom always liked him better anyway stupid I need to talk less I need more money gotta get a car gotta fix my car gotta sell my car gotta get another car” or other times he’d tear himself apart trying to figure out if there was an ethical way to actually just chill out for half a second and just like watch some tv or do something that didn’t make him want to kill himself (though really he was far too scared and lazy and self-obsessed to do anything like that, more accurately the desire was to just wake up dead or sort of drift off into nothingness because his uncle had died and come back once when he (the uncle) was seventeen and said it was the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to him and he was just spending his whole life since they brought him back (fiftyish years of it so far) just waiting to go home again but even that sounded like a whole lot of work and he probably wasn’t a good enough person anyway, but even if it wasn’t a “heaven and hell” situation he just couldn’t picture something so different from what he had come to think of as reality and really he just needed a break or a clear head or some fresh air or something), and by the time he had finished that process he couldn’t have even enjoyed the enjoyment anyway because he had spent all afternoon ruining the concept of fun or relaxation, eliminating any room for enjoyment. A suffering expert perhaps. Or maybe that gives him too much credit. Just an
America.
n, raised at the tail end of the millennium, whose sunrise was timed ever so ironically with the sunset of his empire and with it his countrymen, his beloved, his prospects and his security. Those god given rights, now a joke to overweight, Adderall popping screen addled junkies. Some choose heroin. Others get high on something much nastier. God Bless
America.
Sometimes he would concern himself, uncharacteristically, with practical matters. How to achieve his goal. What was his goal again? It was hard to keep track. He tried not to do this one too much. Criticism inevitably follows. Usually something unethical happens when you try, and so for those who wish to LIVE A GOOD LIFE, skip along to the next part of the instructions.
He knew not why.
He did have one habit of the wise though; he often sought council. Unfortunately for him (and his friends) he was the most socially and financially adept of the three of them. This is where he broke with the wise. The Council is only as good as The Council, if you get my meaning, and his council was the Council of Bozos. And so most nights found the three musketeers quietly sharing their apartment (which was in fact the upper floor of a duplex, but that was a mouthful and apartment got the same idea across, so they always referred to it as such, though often with the addendum that it was in fact the upper floor of a duplex, thus eliminating the brevity or clarity [respectively] of calling it either one independently) with its leaky sinks bearing lead laden water, peeling paint (also full of lead), rattling and fractured windows (mostly lead free, unlike the minds and bodies of the denizens), poor insulation (who's to say what is and is not a habitable level of asbestos? Whoever they are, please have them contact him or his landlord, because they really need to do something about it). But the rent was crazy cheap. Plus free parking, so.
On occasion, one would laugh at something on their phone. Maybe another would look up, maybe they wouldn’t. Sometimes the sources of the laughter would get sent to their group chat. Maybe texted individually depending on the subject and sensibilities of the recipient(s), or lack thereof.
When he wrote this particular story (not this one that you’re reading, the one I’m trying to get to), he was reading something that wasn't very easy or fun or natural for him to read but would impress not a lot of folks but the ones it would impress would be quite impressed (obviously he wasn't literally reading and writing at the same time exactly [that would be something really worth writing about], just on days or within a certain time period that often overlapped [e.g. Tuesday the 20th of March {this is just an example date I’ve fabricated for the sake of clarity, I don’t know when the 20th of March is or exactly where and when the book was read and the story was written. It could have even been a Wednesday}] so that if you asked him what he’d been up to on a given day he could appropriately and honestly respond with either something like “oh I’ve been reading this book that's not actually about fishing except well sometimes are you familiar with the concept of metaphor” or with an equal measure of appropriatism and honest-ness something more along the lines of “well see I’ve been working on this particular story and it…”).
Right, so he was reading and not exactly writing but “working on” (putting pen to paper anyway, which I suppose is a form of writing) a story which were kind of one hobby or habit and he had another kind of hobby or habit and that was that he was dating this girl or woman or whatever and it was this weird transition time because coming of age rituals went the way of the dodo, unless you were Jewish or some other kid from a religion or culture that still did that sort of thing but even then it wasn’t really the same any more and was a lot more just going through the motions and were a lot more, I don't know if symbolic is the word (not that symbols can’t have power but most people don’t give it to them anymore and that’s where they get it from so anyway I think you’ve got my meaning at this point) but either way they weren’t so the point is moot, as they say, but I’m probably using that phrase wrong in an effort to seem smart or at least worldly (is it working?) so just please don’t google it and rub it in because you know you do the same thing all the time, using a phrase because it sounds right and that’s close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades and I mean what the hell we’re all rocketing through space on a rock surrounded by garbage stuck inside rotting sacks of meat so can’t you just leave me alone for a half a second even if you don’t like me, love me, respect me, can you at least remember I’ll die soon enough and then nothing you said will matter or maybe it will but we won’t be able to do anything about it and he was just feeling bad about both the words and the woman or at least he felt like he should have been feeling bad, so he did his best.
So he was feeling bad about what he was reading because he didn’t really ‘get’ it and didn’t really get a reaction or feel anything at all actually and he thought he’d rather be the type of guy who got that type of thing than not that type of guy (but he’d rather be some type of guy than no type of guy, for sure, it would just be more convenient if the type of guy he was didn’t care about what type of guy he was, though he really didn’t even want to admit to wanting to be a type of guy, much less having a type in mind for the type of type he’d rather be), and he didn’t really get this girl/woman (well sometimes he felt like he got her, like it was just clear, like there she is, and then there was the rest of the time when he was looking at a stranger and he was a stranger and it was all strange. Even the cat was strange) and he wanted something else (he didn’t know what, but he knew he didn't like this and thought he wanted something he did like) but for so long all he had wanted (or convinced himself he wanted) was this book and this person and now here he was, feeling foolish with a book on his bedside table and a note she had written him (she was always doing things like that, which just made the whole thing worse and stranger than it already was, which was highly bad and highly strange) and their presence embarrassed him because at the end of the day he didn’t really like himself (well, that wasn’t entirely accurate. He didn’t really know himself or who he was or where he fit in the world and that was scary to him for a long list of reasons including his abandonment issues which his therapist convinced him were rooted in his childhood, which he took to mean “not my fault,” which was after all what he was paying to hear, but he didn’t know how to articulate that so he just said he didn’t like himself [well, not actually “said.” That’s not the type of thing he went around saying. He just acted like it] because that was simpler and closer to his level of understanding the situation) and the presence of the book and the note and the blank pages he wished he'd filled that afternoon (or on days he did fill them, the filled pages that he wished he had filled with better writing) reminded him of this. And his lack of presence, like so: They were there and he wasn’t.
If he knew what was going on, which is its own kind of curse, he would know that he was paralyzed at the concept of making decisions. What if he chose wrong and fucked up the Whole Cosmic Plan (WCP), or worse yet what if there was no WCP and everything was so vast and he was so infinitesimally, dismally tiny and stupid and alone, with nobody to help him when he inevitably fucked it all up so why do anything or make any choice but of course that left him doing nothing which around here is still something despite what you might hear on TV so he was in this needle on empty just like my wallet kind of anxiety, always humming away like background radiation, but blissfully he had no idea what was going on (and hadn’t since age six or seven) so he was just confused and paralyzed instead of being some other way, like malicious. Or conniving. Or happy.
Sure, maybe he wasn’t Cheery Charlie, maybe he wasn’t Chipper Chet, Or Amiable Adam, or Blissful Barry. Maybe he wasn't even Stable Stanley, or Shit-Together Sean. He certainly didn’t seem so; not the type of dude you pass on the street or in the grocery store or anyplace and go damn he’s got it figured out I should work out when I get home but also not so desperate that when you saw him at the flea market or in a starbux or bidet store or elsewhere around town that you would go oof that guy has it rough and would stare at him but not his eyes and you would refuse to see him and then watch TV when you got home.
So he was somewhere in between the best he could be and the worst he could be. That’s how it was. He was this in between sort of guy, like when you’re in between a rock and a hard place and you don’t know it yet but this frying pan is hot and you want out and sure maybe there’s a fire below and all around in every direction no matter how hard or far you jump or crawl or fly or hope, but then again maybe not, only one way to find out only one thing to do and that is to get the H out of the D frying pan. At least that way you can be a part of something even if it’s only a cautionary tale or an aphorism or an axiom or whatever it is.
So if you asked him, as he secretly hoped people sometimes would, especially when he sat on the bench in the park in the city in the state in the country on the planet in space (so he could graciously and humbly [always humbly, even in such grand fantasies] mumble something about just trying to do his best) what this story was about, which nobody did and nobody would, he would have said the same old answer:
America.
So nobody went on asking and everybody went on not asking and he went on telling nothing to anybody and everything to nobody. And his roommates were too shy to ask or maybe they just didn’t like him or maybe he did such a good job of being humble (or pretending to be humble, which might be worse than bragging) that they didn’t know he was working on anything because he really didn’t in the apartment which was actually a smaller part of a larger duplex and he rarely did anything in said place (description omitted for brevity) except for nothing which none of them enjoyed doing together very much but were trying to and failing.
America.
a scared and loathsome bastard, abandoned in infancy, without a story or a father, confused and constantly trying to discover or invent or rediscover or reinvent itself all in vain, all in vanity. An unoriginal premise, and of course based on the convenient forgetting of those decidedly inconvenient Injuns, among other truths. Truly
America.
has never existed. That’s why we have to keep dreaming it up. Disjointed immigrants killing and raping each other for the privilege of pretending. Pretending, among other things, that owning more zeros makes them better people, or that the digits give them import, or that God chose Them to lead this time around, or that their good supremacy trumps the old bad supremacy, the war of cultures, of algorithms, of dreams. Castles made of shit built on once fertile soil, buttressed with bones and held together with the blood and tears of those too dark, too stupid, too poor, too kind, too unable or unwilling to claw and rend their way to the top. I don’t know if this is how he felt when he wrote about this Idea, which is not a place and is hardly if ever Itself. Still we call to Colombia on dark and stormy nights hoping a little nookie might keep the nightmares at bay. Sometimes it does.
But like I say I don’t know if any of this crossed his mind as he wrote. It’s foolish to think anyone can know the mind of another, even their lover, even their mother, and surely he is neither to me. I just know that his pen jerked this way and that, filling page upon page with dancing black loops, jagged and fluid and funny little marks. Page upon page he filled. Someday he would type it all up, or get someone else to. Otherwise it would just live in that little notebook, which is hardly more noble than just living in that little brain. All it needed was some editing. But then when he tried he was left feeling hollow and foolish, ashamed by yesterday’s feelings which spurred forth the words, such ugly and twisty words from an ugly and twisted man. It was clear as day now that he saw them from the outside. He was only sympathetic from within his own mind, and even that expired quickly. What a rough break. Let’s all take a moment to be glad we’re not him.
I don’t want you to know who he is.
I want you to know him.
I want you to be him, if only so you don’t have to be him anymore.
Because it’s no good for you to be him (no good for him to be him either. Or anyone. But better him than you, yeah?).
I want you to know him for this little while. So I can’t tell you his name.
That would make him Not You.
I want you to feel like I’m talking about You. Or at least to you or You if not about You and if I made up a name it would be something awkward and distracting that would work better for allergy or heartburn or syphilis medication, like Ziltan, because I’d rather let irony born of insecurity ruin any hope of making myself understood and if it wasn’t a dumb and distracting name like Zurbain it would be my father’s name, tear stained pages filled with his name, the same name already carved into my heart and crossed out every time but I pray if God can still bear to listen there is room for one more line, one more chance, still another tomorrow, that I never have to cross it out again, that my tears at his funeral aren’t angry tears but great big drops of sadness and I-miss-you.
It’s hard to write with the pen tip bent out of shape and the wind is too cold and the sun is too hot but I’m not here to talk about me. I sat down to tell you about him, to get away from me, so I better get around to it. I can’t let myself become one of those guys who does something other than what he sat down to do at the price of never doing what it is he sat down to do. It’s one thing to do something other than what you sat down to do, it’s another thing entirely to sacrifice that which you sat down to do or all you hold dear just for a lark, a childish lark that goes nowhere and says nothing.
America.
It never existed to begin with. He thought he lost it. Or was born too late, or almost too late so all he got was the aftertaste and a bunch of people talking about how great it was and he thought that what he got was the full taste, the whole nine, the kit and caboodle, the straight dope, and just didn’t see what the big deal was but tried to enjoy the taste because everyone else seemed so jazzed on it and hey even if you know it’s rigged it might just be the only game in town or at least the only one you’ve been invited to and it’s better to go to prom with a last minute dour date than with your sister or your dog or your self or something, but he never got to have it, not really have it, not on his tongue, only the memory of the feeling on the tongue of another, translated many times over from taste to tongue to brain back to tongue to air to ear to brain again, and then the struggle to bring it once again to the tongue (this time tongue the senser, not tongue the tool), truly to taste and to know, but he never could, because it was already gone and never really there to begin with. That’s when the trouble started, when it was never really there.
And always undercutting himself like that, using his Big BrainTM and Sharp Wit(c) to ensure he never made a point or said anything worth hearing or anything at all really just makebelieve marks (usually black) on a page (usually white), for no one, signifying nothing.
His self-serious daydreams took him all across
America.
sometimes in a van, often in a greyhound (grayhound?), once in a while on a plane (plain?) but always leaning his (abnormally large) forehead against the cool window, vignetted with fog watching rain fall on this country he failed to understand and could never truly love, though he thought he did both. He thought he could understand it through love, and would never see that it could only be done the other way around, not until his Dying Day. On that day he would see clearly enough for all of us. On that day his hand was still, pen unused, tongue dry, throat clenched. The rest is silence.
And that’s how he sat on the bench in the park or the chair in his room gazing out the window at the alley and the house whose occupants he had never met but thought about saying hi to on his way out of this town which he never left. Not that it was a bad spot and after all some people live their whole lives, full lives, happy and good lives in the same place they were born and it’s beautiful, it’s just that he wasn’t one of those people and his life wasn’t whole or full or happy or good or beautiful. Strange for somebody with so much Wander to be so tethered, or tied, or maybe bound. He dreamt of walking off, looking for the heart of
America.
(as many of his heroes had done before him, think John Steinbeck, John Muir, John Appleseed) and when he found it he swore he’d tell the people what he’d seen, but he only ever wrote the first chapter because he didn’t know how to end things or make them or begin them properly to give himself enough room but not too much and he was scared to turn the page for fear it was blank. But the page is already wall to wall ink and there’s no room for him or anyone else right here. So he re-worked and re-dreamt and re-ruined that first chapter over and over and over, until there was nothing left in it but words and rereading it he wondered when his girlfriend would leave him and almost hoped it was soon just so he could stop worrying about wondering about when she would leave him and her lack of having left him already made him so mad he wished she would leave already because he wasn’t going to be the one to do it, not with that blank page under the number 2 waiting for his blood that he could slowly, arduously, meticulously ruin until it looked like just words and felt like car fumes on a hot day but without the smell so you can’t quite pin it down why it feels so much more miserable than it did before.
He looked out the window, hoping someone would be out there to stop him from thinking the things he was thinking but there was no one except for the grass which was brown and reedy and never went to seed but there it was year after year and he used to love that grass but some spark had gone and for him now it was the fifth of July and the fireworks were headaches and freedom was the red white and blue tie that he wore to the job he hated and his neck itched beneath the tie but he couldn’t quite reach it and was afraid to try because he might not reach it and then he would know he couldn’t do it so he just itched without scratching it. All itch no scratch. I mean, he didn’t scratch the itch. He stayed scratchless in his itching. He remained unscratched.
The saddest part of all was his father’s tie clip which he forgot to wear on his dresser at home, the inherited shackle his father wore when he made himself miserable so his son wouldn’t have to be. But he was. The son was and he was and they both were and the son didn’t even have the excuse of being miserable so his son wouldn’t have to be because he didn’t have a son or a daughter or a child of any kind at all, so he didn’t have the excuse either, because his excuse to begin with was “I may be miserable, but it’s all so sonny boy can have a better life” but now sonny boy doesn’t have a better life and actually has a worse life so now nobody counts for anything. Rancid dreams, spoiled and turned green two generation ago and kept in the freezer, which was unplugged or maybe someone forgot to pay the bill but the point is it was spoiled before they put it on ice, and the ice they put it on was room temp. That’s short for temperature. And that’s where we are right now, there but a whole lot further down the line, maybe even further than we think. If he (son-he [which is to say main-he, the he that we’ve been yammering on about for the most part, or me, I have been anyway. Maybe you’re also yammering. A girl can dream], not dad-he, we’re done with him for now) had known better he would have asked why everything felt so big and serious except for him but all he knew was all he had ever known, which was not enough. If he could get outside he’d see it hadn’t always been this way.
But really it wasn’t like that, not literally. It was Spring and he didn’t have a job where he wore a tie and wouldn’t have his father’s tie clip to forget to wear if he did, that was probably gathering dust at a goodwill somewhere. His father always loved goodwill, buying up as much crap for five bucks as he could, enough for a whole tag sale’s worth where he’d turn a five dollar shirt that nobody would wear into a three dollar shirt nobody would wear, and a broken 8-track player, just 12 bucks, after only paying 20 for it to begin with. It made sense that now all of his father’s items were worthless, and in a goodwill, or a garage. Maybe he’d be reincarnated and could go buy all his old shit again. Maybe that’s already what he was doing. And he didn’t really get the headaches either, or the unscratched itches. But he should have. Or maybe he did late at night and just kept his mouth shut about it. Maybe that’s all any of us are doing. Staying tight lipped about the midnight itches.
And why should he like the ends of things? Deficant, that’s the end of a meal. Hangover, the end of a drunk. Garbage, the end of Christmas Morning. And given he was stuck in the stagnant death and decay of an empire, on a planet arguably too hot and too crowded where everything had already been seen and done and ruined, he had quite enough Ending in his life. No need to tack on more ends. So his shoes stayed tied and he slipped his feet in when he felt he needed something more than bare feet to hold everything up.
If you read something he wrote (read “read” not “read”), which you wouldn’t because he wasn’t quite done yet, or so he said (what he actually felt or meant or should have said, though those are all three drastically different things and maybe none of them is right, was it’s no good and won’t be any good and he couldn’t handle the criticism required to make it good and what he felt was maybe you wouldn’t get it, or worse still there was nothing there to get and the result would be the same but it would be his fault and he couldn’t blame you for him not expressing himself well, which he would rather do, I mean, big picture he would rather express himself well but that takes effort and practice and vulnerability and failure and maybe even a bit of humility, and that was just not in his wheelhouse and wouldn’t be anytime soon, and given the choice between blaming himself and blaming you, well, it's plain enough which way he'd go. He worried you would think less of him and his fruitless mystique that builds from nothing to nothing and hides nothing behind its nothingness), but if you did it would have felt like watching some white guys, arguably hipsters though arguably that word has lost all meaning if it aspired to have any to begin with (and who is to say when or where the beginning was, or if it was just a dove tail to an ending or maybe that ending’s beginning is the start. I don’t even know where to begin), but nonetheless almost inarguably this is it in your head, how it would feel I mean, like watching some white guys smoke a cigarette from a pack with a Cartoon Indian on it and a native guy smoking a cigarette from a pack with a cowboy on it and all the while that whole aforementioned cast is watching a cowboys versus indians movie in an empty theater, (maybe it closed last week and this is an insiders only insta party) but you just finished a book on the Myth of the
America.
n West (ok fine you listened to a podcast where two college dropouts summarize pop history books but who’s gonna know the difference anyway, and you have to speak with authority if you want to be taken seriously when you go around correcting people so it doesn’t do much good to go “oh I read a podcast about X”) and you can’t wait to burst their bubble, (which is his bubble, lest you think we’ve lost the plot here) but they keep shushing you and you cross your arms and wait your turn to be right and make them wrong. But you’d probably keep reading and wonder about his relationship with his mother, even though it doesn’t directly come up in the text it’s just kind of funny the way all the women sound so needy and naggy and all like the same fake person.
He really thought this time would be different.
His
America.
felt like being a junior park ranger, taking the ten millionth picture of a tourist looking like he was picking the president’s nose at Mount Rushmore because he was too polite to say no and too young to know he didn’t have to be polite but too timid to smile and working what he though was going to be a dream job but was more or less no different from the ticket taker job he held at the local movie theater when he was sixteen with worse benefits. After all, the Federal Government of the United States of
America.
never let him take any popcorn home with him, and he only got to watch movies at work if it was mandated by HR and those were never terribly entertaining and shouldn’t even really be counted as movies. Just a bunch of moving pictures and talking people. No plot, no arcs, nothing to get or keep butts in seats, save the threat of termination. Some people. Who do they think they are?
Picture this: His
America.
looked like a scarecrow with a crow on each shoulder, or maybe the decaying row houses of Gary, Indiana (which were built out of an architectural school known as Dilapidated Depressionism, giving the Rust Belt that signature “used to be great” feel. Though it was to some controversial to install, en masse, architecture, city planning, educational models and economic paradigms that were all designed to leave their users and occupants in a depressed state, mentally, physically, spiritually, environmentally, emotionally and fiscally, it is this sort of unique problem-generating technique that makes
America.
n Art so uniquely
America.
n).
It was the empty Foxconn plant in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, but without any recognition of the love that fills the cracks in the tile of the bathrooms and kitchens, the love that pads the squeaks on the stairs and plugs the drafts from the windows and keeps the hearth warm and the family on its feet, or the poverty that love will allow, will try to account for, will try to overcome, or how far the trees can bend even in the fiercest wind or heaviest snow without breaking, so far that even a tornado must attack their roots if it wants them gone. And if he allows himself to be blind to all this, he will never see it.
America.
, the bellwether of the tainted glory of all mankind, a rusted empire, a myth that tells itself to itself, and insists upon its own reality, a home to beauty in the face of despair, a call to those who would surmount the insurmountable, a fragile and wicked ego, a mad tyrant of only thirteen.
His
America.
looked a lot like Blade Runner, but if the people were fatter and less Chinese.
He often remarked on
America.
being a nation of immigrants, quoted or misquoted the Statute of Liberty or The Declaration Form of Interdependence, though none of his friends were immigrants or even the children of immigrants and he had nothing to do in his life with any immigrants but was sure if he did he would do the right thing, the truly
America.
n thing, unlike the untruly
America.
n thing which he saw happening all around in
America.
and he lived within one hundred miles of the hospital where he was born and would never travel to another country unless the people there spoke English and even then he didn’t see the point of all that hassle. Even Canada was a bummer, and it’s like right there. Even the next state over was a lot. It certainly didn’t suit him to cross a sea.
There there be dragons.
If I gave you a sample of his writing, it would feel like the Sunday after Easter, with the pews seeming emptier than usual, a service where every parishioner knows where the bathroom is, one where the priest got off brand wafers and forgot to pray on them and sure he said Body of Christ but did I really feel the body of Christ slide down my throat or was it just a soft cracker and who the hell am I to be questioning the guy with the fancy shirt and funny collar and wasn’t he supposed to be buddies with Jesus or something and the direct line to God and maybe there’s a better way to spend my Sundays at least with less gossipy people and drinking stronger coffee but then eight years go by and everyone still gossips the same gossip and your coffee still sucks and you’ve gotten a little fat and maybe there are a few new greys but those make you look dignified anyway, not like that weight you’ve gained, which doesn’t suit you at all, and now on top of all that your immortal soul is in peril because you gave up on telling that ropey nerd with the shitty biscuits all your secrets and you won’t know for sure what the score is or who the Big Guy is rooting for until after you’re already dead, and even then you might not know. And even if you do, it’s probably too late to do anything about it. Just die and go to heaven only to find out the mormons were right and you gotta spend eternity wearing those funny drawers?
Maybe.
Put another way, you’d feel like you washed your hands after peeing even though you don’t see a point to it, after all it’s not like you peed on your hands or anything and you were standing up at a urinal so you didn’t have to touch any common surfaces like a stall door or latch, so I guess either you have a penis or one of those You Go Girls or some other kind of arrangement, like maybe a flexible pelvic floor or the right leg-to-porcelain height ratio, so if you’re not equipped with a tubular pisser and have always wanted one, congrats on making the grade. But back to your situation, reading and feeling, a la one with the bathroom dilemma partially descripted above. But it’s a public restroom and even though you don’t think anyone’s in there someone anyone could just walk in there anytime (like, anyone anyone, the Pope, your mother, your seventh grade crush, Zombie Ghandi. Stranger things have happened) and even if you’d never see them again they’d know. Know what a filthy little ratfucker you are, what a disgusting toadman with worms for brains, and they’d live their entire life knowing that it was you, horrible wretched mud sucking germ loving you, eating e coli bacteria out of a gypsy’s dreadlock for fun, probably. So there you are with wet hands and a guilty conscience (after all, you wasted that perfectly good fresh clean drinking water {the planet’s most precious resource} right down the drain on hands that didn’t need cleaning, and even though you washed them that mysterious stranger who you didn’t see or hear come in [but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there] somehow knows that you only did it to safeguard against them seeing you not do it, which is worse than just not washing them at all, because now you’re known to the world as not only a gross but also an unprincipled coward, simultaneously disgusting and wasteful, a despicable small spineless villain with bad fashion sense who can’t cook) and there’s no paper towels because the people who run the rest stops say it’s bad for the environment but really if it cost less to destroy the planet that’s what they’d do (because it is what they do) and the robot hand drying thing on the wall is out of order but it doesn’t have a sign so you spent several foolish minutes waving your hand like Merlin at this uncaring instrument only to decide well it’s at least not that cold out maybe it’s ok to just have damp hands and now you’re driving again, without Miss Daisy, and you miss your exit because while the rest of your hands have in fact successfully air dried your marvelous amphibious adaptations, your plica interdigitalis, that lovely webbing between your fingers is still ever so slightly damp and it’s almost dryness is worse than full on wet and it consumes your mind so even if you think you’re thinking about something else eventually you remember all those thoughts were just miniatures, nestled nicely inside the thoughts about your nearly no longer damp hands and when you pull off to turn around to get back on the highway to go the wrong way to get back to where you were before to get to where you want to be you stop and buy a burger from the King because it seemed like a good deal but by the time you get hungry enough to eat it it’s gone cold.
So let’s just save everyone the uninteresting and unremarkable saga, the wasted ink and wasted days and skip the whole operation. I’ll be your middle man. It’s not like he would ever finish it anyway. Not in a million years. And even if he did it would never see the light of day, certainly not while he still drew breath or had a say in it. And if he has kids they probably wouldn’t be the type to do something like polish up and send off their late father’s beloved and unfinished manuscript. Not because they’re smart enough to realize it’s no diamond in the rough (read: all rough, no diamond) but because that sort of thing just wouldn’t occur to them like it would to someone who invents a new kind of clock radio or thinks it might be a good idea to get out of these here caves and see what’s out on that vast Serengeti. To people like that, people like him or his theoretical kids I mean, not the let’s get out there and do it types I was immediately previously discussing, just back one further to them, the people like him and him, to that them doers are other people. People you see on TV, not regular people like you and me, or how he would see you or me. Or does, if he does.
In his
America.
there were
America.
ns, there was an
America.
n People, who felt and voted and bought Coke more than Pepsi and heroin more than coke and forged their identity with laundry detergent on the anvil of industry.
And maybe he was right all along.
At least he said something, without hiding, hiding behind cynicism, layer upon layer of obfuscation, distancing himself until he wasn’t saying anything to anyone, cloaked in enough armor and irony that he couldn’t possibly be attacked, or even reached at all.
I don’t know how much longer I can keep up this charade. How much easier to pick him apart than to look at myself. How much more hollow. Before I feel too bad for myself I should remember the poor schmuck writing me, how scared he is to be vulnerable, the extra layers and walls and fences he needs to sleep at night, way up in his ivory tower. Prophylactics between himself and the world, ensuring no hurt, no love, nothing real or worthwhile gets though. If you want to feel bad for someone start there. But to feel, be it good bad or ugly you have to live, be alive, risk. Not to live is a fate worse than death.
I can be your middle man. Let me take the hard stuff, let me take the blame, let me make the money, give me all your pain.
When he wrote of
America.
he wrote of nevergoodenoughness, of constant comparisons to his favorite comedians and how glamorous and how important their lives must not just be but feel. What a gift, to feel as important as you are. Has anyone known it? Maybe Jesus, Buddha, Genghis Kahn, Nebuchadnezzar? Maybe not even them. He thought of stories that would might could be bought by global media empires, stories set in the sex dreams of the chairpersons of the boards of surreptitious conglomerates dressed as family friendly enterprises, rooms of velvet, full of leather. He dreamt of overnight deliveries and white nationalist tattoos and lawn signs reading “In This House We Believe…”
And maybe in that house they really did.
And maybe he doubted belief.
Or didn’t trust it.
Maybe there was a day, hot and long and smelling of sweet sweat and asphalt and almost but not quite rotting fruit emanating from the old orchard, and he didn’t have much to do on such a day, so he walked and let all of this into him, into his pores, into his eyes, into his heart, not that he wanted to but he had to let his own sweat out somehow and there is no giving without taking and no taking without giving and so he must, and so he did. And he watched the Life Show all day, featuring such A List acts as flies dancing on hot dog shit, babies crying inside their strollers while Mom(?) pushes them along, just as exhausted and exasperated and miserable as any but with no tears or 60 Minutes episode to show for it, old McDonald’s and Chick Fil A cups and plastic wax wrappers crammed in the gutters, a hawk silently watching the street below from a lamppost, a beautiful woman walking by with just the right amount of bounce, maybe she even smiled at him before he had the chance to shift focus from her to the worn and weary toes of his sneakers. None of it affected him. That is to say, it didn't have any effect. And that was the most devastating of all. He knew that. He knew it was wrong and bad, and that he was wrong and bad. He just didn’t know how to do better. The gears in his chest turned hot and spat fire through his veins and he wanted to do something about it but it was happening to someone else. He was watching their insides from three miles away, unable to intervene, or even to really feel it the way he was used to feeling things. And so he sat on his bench and he wrote.
And the sun went down on that hot and long day, full of sights and smells and happenings and all of it drowning in dullness, so far away and the moon rose over the trees and he watched it and looked at it and maybe even saw it and thought about when he was a kid and would look at the moon and laugh and he couldn’t remember the joke the moon had told him anymore but he kept looking, trying to see and maybe the loving light finally shone through his darkened eyes and touched something or cracked something open and maybe he did laugh then, full and bright and maybe he kept laughing, even on his way home and even with his head on the pillow and maybe his sides hurt but he didn’t even care because he could laugh, damnit. And maybe he got a good night’s sleep, maybe the first in far too long. And maybe in the harsh morning light he didn’t see what was so funny after all. And maybe he picked up his pen, dreaming of a nasty letter to The Editor. And maybe he tried to touch something deep down, something inside him, inside all people, something for once bigger than himself, and his tiny little life, and his horrible little apartment, and his nasty little attitude, and maybe it could all mean something.
But what he wrote was
America.
Can you blame him if it didn’t come out right?
© March 2021