Strangler to fiction

Evermore, a chapter and remembrance no edit first script

2014-07-10T09:29:00.001-07:00

Evermore

It has been Eight months

Yet the ashes from the fire still haunt corners of my life

I've passed the enemies a few times

They don't care about me

I've crawled back into the city with my son

Our space is small but secure

I have rented my services to multiple employers

I have maintained back up plans

I look to the woods and dark forest corners

I will rebuild the keep

In my own image, with my hands

For now I need resources and have them

This is not my life though

These are not my callings

I am surviving

It is what I do

stones from the keep, now keep my heart and soul

I dwell in the city of my enemies

stealing wages with as much labor as is needed

I have lost everything

I thought I lost everything before the keep fell

I was wrong, but by then I had lost enough that everything

was manageable

the past

I will find a way to be

who I am supposed to be

I will build a fortress

and protect my brethren blood and soul

No disrespect please

2014-04-23T16:12:00.003-07:00

This bit of verse is what came to me, when I read a few articles on the capsized ferry. Well the most recent, but I feel like that environment, that level of compartmentalized, oppressing, hell had a quality. I tried to describe it, and came up with this. It is a literal first draft raw and unedited...but I liked it, as dark as it is, and although very soon, it isn't meant to be disrespectful. It is trying to give something terrible the acknowledgement it deserves. These accidents are getting more common, and are horrific, in every sense of the word.

It is truly horrifying to continue, but I know it is my duty.

The world is turned wrong, slanted and atumble with debris.

I know there are bodies, they are not why I'm here.

I am here for hope, looking for survivors. An air pocket, or sealed room perhaps.

My lantern is harsh reality in a dark and malign world.

Modern materials look wrong,

everything is dark,

and pulled by invisible currents and shudders in the material of the giant capsized behemoth.

Where are the souls that had to endure this fate?

How could anyone survive in this, without going entirely mad?

The darkness, the water, the sounds...groaning, and sloshing, and thumping dully.

Echoes magnifying in the water.

There are places not even the living survive.

Just a spoonful

2014-04-22T20:00:00.000-07:00

I had to do laundry because I masturbated over all my clothes.

Then I cut my ear lobe off and mixed it in Macaroni and cheese.

I chickened out though, and ate around it.

I do the things that artists do.

I live my life as an artist.

I just wish I didn't suck at art.

My paintings really do just look like dog shit smeared on canvas.

They're not.

I wrote a book or two, I was told they would make great stories for the hopelessly illiterate.

Aspirations aside, both sculpture and metal work landed me on the no-fly list, so touring is out.

Photography and visual arts were both no-gos and I'm no longer allowed in cornfields.

For some crazy people the way they see the world is the only art that works.

Evermore has fallen

2014-04-09T21:10:00.002-07:00

A long absence

Nevermore...

Not deliberately quoting Poe.

There didn't need to be an enemy. In November, when the cold began to once again swirl about the walls, carelessness and still warm embers destroyed the keep. Everything was lost. I escaped. It wasn't hard I wasn't home. I left to scrounge money from the proper and regular channels, my son, who had taken refuge in the keep in true princely fashion arrived back at the gates, to find them burning. In the scramble for safe haven and refuge so much has been lost. We cling tediously to a found but temporary hiding place. All my efforts were indeed for naught.

The enemy was quick to strike once I was without my ramparts. Pouncing and laying me low. Wounds to my psyche were deep and cruel. The landscape became and continues to be bleak and unforgiving. Prospects are barren. Yet I persevere. Even fewer conventional opportunities are available in the aftermath, yet I somehow still stand. I owe it to the Prince. Without the need to protect a legacy, I would have succumbed to the landscape and given up, trying to hurt the enemy as much as possible as my life ebbs, and stains the ground.

Alas that is not and cannot be. So I soldier, I lie and cheat, trying to find a stable place to take shelter. A safe haven. It won't be another keep, can't be. It will be a borrowed corner, in a busy city. Hiding in plain site will be necessary. I have pushed away the barbarians, only the coy one remains. She will not abandon me, and yet, I find it hard to focus on anything other than the direness of the situation. My access to resources has been hampered at a time when I need them most.

Summertime thirteen (raw first copy)

2013-06-27T19:37:00.000-07:00

Somehow it felt like it had been raining for weeks.

The steady drone and driving wind were ever present.

It wasn’t always raining, there had been a few raw gray afternoons, then more rain, then a few brutally hot muggy days where breathing under the hot sun was a labor for the healthy.

So many different and strange things were coming together and falling apart.

It seemed like life was going to outlandish extremes to force change.

Using methods that defied credibility or believability, this shit didn’t happen to normal people.

By all rights it should have been a brutally stressful, terrifying chapter to any life it touched.

It was chaotic and uncertain, and difficult.

Yet it was here that the calm set in.

When there was nothing, the anger, and fear, and stress were overpowering.

Now with wisps of varied, eclectic, illicit, insane, and ridiculous opportunities pouring down.

The situation wasn’t much better, hell it was barely tenable at any given moment.

Yet it was amidst the chaos that everything felt right.

As fucked up as every possible moment was, there was a lot of gain among the chaos.

If the past had shown anything, it was that normalcy was not to be attainable.

If there were a lesson in the ether of days gone...

It was that if crazy was all there was… life was good, crazy was down pat.

Phoenix amongst the ashes evermore (draft)

2013-06-25T14:11:00.001-07:00

Late June, 2013.

The sky never seems as big as when you’re coming down a hill in the hazy hot afternoon days watching thunderheads boil upwards.

Returning to the keep…

It still stands. There has been no enemy. It is still a fairly spartan place… still bare bones and functionality. Provisions still aren’t plentiful but those who remain no longer want for basic necessities. The men are spending less time on the ramparts, and more time investing in the joys of normalcy.

There are blueprints, and ideas, and stockpiled provisions building up in dusty corners. It seems that the keep will be good for something eventually. There are flickers of hope everywhere I look.

I’ve been driving through the villages. I admit I am still envious of the villagers who have never known the desperation of destitution. I see the houses, and yards, the accumulation of scaled happiness. There are times when I envy it and want it. Then I shake free. I remember what I have to work with. I remember that I am not capable of maintaining that. I’m a barbarian with a castle. I use my resources to fullest advantage then move on. I only store what I will need. The concept of leisure and disposable assets is still far too foreign to be a realistic fantasy for me.

However I am hopeful, I am no longer willing to perish on ideals alone. The concept that I am going to survive this is becoming more and more comfortable to my bones. I continue to train and prepare as though death itself were coming to take me, and I still intend to fight. However I’m also planning for the day when I can have some normalcy, or as much as my broken soul can handle.

For now the keep is comfort, and the keep is secure. I work to keep life going, while my scars soften, and my hands callous from work, but it feels good to be pushing the plough again. It feels good to be investing in a future instead of spending to stop the bleeding, even if that future is still uncertain.

I will be standing long after my enemies have fallen. I may not have to be standing amid the ashes of everything though, victory may come better with patience and success off the battlefield.

-evermore.

Broken Glass (bad poetry)

2013-05-16T21:44:00.001-07:00

Over years

Soft Lights

Strange Beds

Warm Bodies

Kind Hearts

Lust and Love

Arms and mornings.

Yet here, alone

Sick, scared, lost

There is someone out there who loves me.

There have been others before.

I think at some point I thought I felt love.

I'm not sure, I've never known contentment.

Now Love is pain.

I want to be alone.

Yet I crave the warm body.

The soft lights.

The feels, senses.

I cause pain to everyone who loves me.

I feel pain for having caused it.

It is not my intention.

Yet my heart is still rolled in broken glass.

It all hurts.

{written with pen during a feverish insomniac night of chills, coughing fits, and what I was convinced would be pneumonia...}

Inspired by darkness a poem no edit

2013-05-10T19:19:00.000-07:00

I got my inner child stoned then abused it.

Somewhere along the way my perception had twisted itself up inside.

What I saw as normalcy, what I could and couldn’t deal with were badly askew.

Somewhere deep inside ideals that I thought I held wavered.

They shifted, turned into horrible mockeries of themselves.

Self reliance became a twisted lonely dependence.

I could feel it all slipping away.

Yet somehow I persevered.

I even somewhat maintained an illusion of normal.

Maybe the illusion of normal is what’s real and this is what you need to escape.

That makes no sense, the fact that there is THIS makes normal impossible. Right?

A statement and fact, a cause and effect.

Engineered to be the perfect breakdown.

**This is in character** (ie hyperbole!) An exaggeration, a dramatization, real thoughts and different stories all coming together with a voice of their own. I'm also writing this to a mid tempo club instrumental.....shit.

social ineptworked over (a poem, raw no edit)

2013-04-29T23:25:00.000-07:00

Life as we know it.

I’m telling you write now! This shit will not be edited, at all. What I right down will be exactly as I spit it.

It happened so fast. Somehow all of my porn accounts got synced up with my real social networking accounts.

At first there was a crushing fear as I saw a whole slew of familiar addresses strewn throughout my work and personal emails. A virus, sure I can cover it as a virus, I can laugh this shit off, after all this is the kind of shit viruses do, hell it probably REALLY WAS a virus! Shit. Damage control, delete accounts? Start over send out apology email explaining, what happened, awkward, time consuming, any better alternative….no….shit. Ok here goes.

Wait! What the fuck, why are there a whole mess of Facebook notifications mixed in with the porn mail?

Ohhhhh Shit! Facebook, DEAR GOD! It loaded my Facebook page and ad-stream with cross-referenced tag words. I had ads for sex acts that I only looked at to verify they were fucking possible. I had friend requests from 7 midget strippers. Jesus how the fuck do I fix this. Holy shit it has me tagged in sex pictures! Facial recognition software, helped Facebook personalize my page AND it Shared all my likes with my friends to encourage our finding of mutual interests, isn’t that nice…

FUCK….

I am so fucking fucked….

Oh look it recognized my face in that picture of me masturbating dressed as Luigi from Mario Brothers….I would’ve thought the giant mustache made that unlikely…awesome…

At least most of my friends will know all that sheep porn stuff was a joke…still can’t believe I found some…oh look THERE IT IS! Super…

Unrelated schism (first draft)

2013-03-24T13:05:00.002-07:00

Chapter Five

Separation Anxiety

The schism, Duality, yin and yang, light and dark, good and evil, the scales of justice we are all beings striving for balance.

It’s all real. In tiny little folds between tiny little spaces, every single thing is real. Not here. Not now. In different places and spaces at different times to different people, I can see that I’ve lost you. Good. You need to get lost, if you’re never lost you’ll never find anything.

He had memorized his three wishes when he was still a child. They were never trivial. They had been thought out in advance. A few subtle changes had been made to them, as a child’s brilliance gave way to seasoned wisdom. Now here before him sat a genie. It was almost sexless. Dark blue almost purple skin, with coal black eyes. Tiny flecks of red glistened within the black orb of its eyes. It had sharp teeth, it was wearing what looked like leather, and a cape. A fucking cape. If this was power why didn’t it look like it belonged in the modern world. It’s eyes roved up and down his body, it smiled at him.

“Three wishes.” A whisper, its mouth had moved but the sound came from the otherwise still air. The leather suit getup covered it from head to toe, and was form fitting but had so many extra layers, and scales, and rivets and extra decoration on it that it gave the genie a hard look despite its soft features.

“First, I wish my physical being to be altered in the following ways. That I be impervious to disease, injury, and any illness, and that I may choose my physical form, and capabilities at will.” The genie’s grin widened. It leaned forward on the easy chair it sat it. The apartment was empty, the windows and walls were covered with impossibly heavy drapes, and the room was dark save for a single candle burning on the floor between them. It nodded.

“Continue.” The whisper in the air, felt warm, like sunlight on a calm day.

“Secondly, I wish that my mental being be altered so that I may hear and understand the thoughts of peeple around me, and control them if I wish. I will be free to let them know or not know that they have been manipulated at will.” His mouth was a little dry, and he was trembling. To go from a childish belief in genies and dreaming of being free to do whatever he wanted to being in a dark room, looking across faded hardwood at a blue creature that uses the air to speak, and warms your skin with a look.

“More.” The genie hissed. He began to perspire slightly. The genie’s mouth curled, Its coal black hair rippled with a hint of deep burgundy, then receded without a trace as it breathed.

“Lastly I wish to be immortal free from the burden of age and natural lifespan. Free to die only when I choose.” He said this last part as calmly as he could. His mouth was no longer dry. The candle flame barely faltered, but the whisper in the air swirled around his head as though coming from different speakers with each syllable.

“You must agree, to a term.” It said. Its elbows on its knees leaning towards the candle making the light play havoc with its already unnatural features. “Before you sits a genie, something you once believed in even if only as a story or fantassssy of some kind.” The genie had dragged the S in fantasy like a story book snake, all the stories have a snake. It’s features softened and it leaned back in the chair. Compassion flashed in its eyes, it closed its mouth a little hiding the needle like teeth. “Once you accept your wishes you are forever bound to the knowledge that it’s all real. In tiny little folds between tiny little spaces, every single thing is real. Not here. Not now. It is true in different places and spaces at different times to different people. You can and will never be normal again, even beyond the scope of the most thought out wish I think I have ever heard.”

Fine print, it was the malevolent genie then. What had it said though? All real? It didn’t sound threatening, but there had to be a trade off…no good without bad. What could be bad about all real? His brow must have furrowed.

“You’re thinking too hard. I am neither evil nor good. I am not out to con or scam you. I have no agenda or personal stake in you, I cannot choose my mark. I am bound by history to grant you three wishes, but I must warn you, the moment you entered this room you opened a door between the rational world and the real world that will never be closed. You must accept this in order to go on. The world you live in now is filled with magic, and things that simply do not exist in the rational world and you can never go back. You entered a negotiation with a genie willingly.” The voice was calm and almost reassuring. Just the typical fine print, it said.

“So what if I refuse the wishes I go back to not knowing this world exists?” He said.

“No, that can’t happen. Once you’ve been exposed to reality you can’t go back, this is a daunting undertaking, it is perfectly acceptable to choose death over reality.” The genie was not smiling.

“So I either accept my wishes or die?” He asked.

“Exactly.” The genie said. “You can’t live knowing about the rest of the world once being exposed to it, and your exposure was this contract.”

“I accept the wishes and my contract.” He said.

“Be careful not to attract too much attention with your new self. At least until you’ve seen some of what this world has to offer.” The genie leaned forward the horns on its head were red and green, and blue. It blew out the candle.

___ ___ ___

Magic, is such a ridiculous word. Unexplained power? Our history, both religious and factual is littered with miracles, magic, and un natural references. Yet our day to day lives are droll and have not a hint of this power. Why is that? Children’s books and the mind of a child seem to have more than adult literature, but if art imitates life, somewhere out there, there is magic.

If magic were real, what would it be used for? I suppose it depends on how rare it was. If history and observation are any indicators it is pretty rare. So what has society done with rare, powerful things through history? Worked to overcome, marginalize, and normalize it. Or abused it to assert or reinforce superiority. That doesn’t seem to be the case either. So how can these stories continue to exist without some basis in reality? They aren’t real of course.

___ ___ ___

A tiny apartment above an Irish pub, in a mid-sized American City, he was aware the genie was gone. The room was dark but with a thought he could see. It was a little unnerving at first. He sat in the easy chair. He was able to look around the room in the dark. He shifted his focus and was able to see through the walls and drapes outside to the city below. He could also see through the floor to the Irish Pub. He shut his eyes and returned to the dark room after a moment of vertigo. He was in no hurry, he had plenty of time.

Character study:only convo (Raw no edit)

2013-03-21T20:36:00.000-07:00

“Jesus man what the fuck happened to you?”

“I got my ass kicked!”

“You ok, you need me to call someone? Damn, you look fuckin’ whooped.”

“Nah I’m good I started the fight. Worked out about how I expected.”

“You started a fight to get your ass kicked?”

“Yeah the guy was just being an asshole, didn’t think anyone would actually take him up on it.”

“So you fought him?”

“Yeah called him out, challenged him. He got up into my space trying to get me to back down and I just unloaded. I probably got ten or fifteen swings in before he pushed me back and started swinging, he was a big fucking dude. His face is gonna’ look like a fucking potato tomorrow.”

“Jesus Christ what’d he do?”

“Managed to trip me and I curled up ready for the kicks. Started laying into me, but every time he tried to angle for a stomp or a head shot, I’d hit him beside his knee cap, so he basically just kicked me in the ribs and back until he got tired. Then I got up and laughed at him and walked away.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I don’t know see I didn’t care about winning the fight, he was being an ass and having a good time at everyone around his expense. I enjoyed ruining his night, and making him all pissy and sore for the night and was willing to take some bruises to do it right, plus even though the fight ended with him basically shit stomping me, I know where and how I hit him, he’s hurt worse than I am. It was fun.”

“How can you even rationalize that fucking chain of events?”

“In literal terms, I rationed the give and take and found an acceptable outcome.”

“Fuck you.”

“Some people have issues, I have subscriptions.”

Narrative (Raw) Evermore and a verse

2013-03-21T19:41:00.001-07:00

A narrative:

There have been so many thoughts flying around in my head these past few weeks. It is utterly clear to me that I am floundering without direction. I even have a pretty good semblance of why. With that being said, I am still reluctant and unable to move forward. Someone said something today about people who have gone through something hard and getting to the point where they think the world owes them something for the shit they have been through. It resonated with me, and I had to stop and think if that was me, and what I was feeling. She wasn’t talking to me, I was third wheel on a breakroom conversation. She went on to say that they sit and wait for someone or something to come to them, and regardless of what they had gone through nothing was, unless they got it themselves. So I think that statement was more what got me thinking. I am definitely only marginally putting forth any effort, because I’m skeptical and mistrustful of progress being maintainable. I am in a state of decline because of it, and I can’t seem to find proper motivation to move forward. I think I’m almost content to let myself go.

These words and emotions are honest, and uncensored. This is what I’m feeling. I know I’m capable of more, but feel so defensive, angry, and bitter that I just can’t get myself to perform at a level I’m capable of.

There are other demons and chains, deeply personal and dark insidious things. Or just the same old boney skeletons everyone else has, and I’m painting myself a martyr. Sometimes I’m not sure, other times I am fairly convinced I’m going crazy. It seems like self control and the ability to deal with day to day stressors is getting more elusive. I ask the people around me so I can gauge if everyone else is feeling the way I am, a lot of them are, and I can’t be sure it’s not a common affliction in the place I live. Still they don’t get mad like I do. At night I wrestle the demons in the darkness, and wake weary for it.

You see the winter has grown long here in the keep. Madness has beset those confined within the walls. Scraping by on stale rations and thin hard scrabbled wood for heat has left everyone dry and haggard. Hungry and desperate we watch for an enemy that appears to have moved on. The days get warmer, even as snow and storms continue to pelt the walls and spirits of those within them. Soon it will be Spring and with no enemy, no siege, no desperate plight for survival…no blood. It would appear that for the foreseeable future there will not be a war.

Yet there has been a war fought all winter, a war of perseverance. In the Spring time, with peace in the air, a different kind of war will have to be fought. This will be a war of legitimacy. The keep in its forgotten corner of a bleak world isn’t built for peace or commerce. It’s been transformed into a fortress, every corner maximized to turn away an enemy, to minimize material usage during a siege. It is a shrine to defense and violence. If there is to be peace within the walls changes will have to be made. The tools of a civilized world will be necessary. The souls huddled in these walls have forgotten such comforts. They have been beaten to living for survival to the expense of any comfort. They have lived simply not to give in, many of the desperate within these walls have rationalized and accepted the prospect of dying within them. Come to terms with every possible outcome, including failure. As such they are not prepared for living a life where anything matters. Having had everything taken away most of the fighters in these walls don’t want any attachments, nothing that can be taken away they say. They know anything can be taken away.

Desperation can make comfort hard…we all feel it here.

I struggle to function in what should be a fairly low stress job. I have certainly had jobs that traditionally carry more stress…and yet I don’t know if my struggles are a sign of past trauma, a condition that has existed and fluctuated in severity throughout the recorded lifespan of my being, or a sign of the times. Not knowing what shortfall to address I am not sure how much opportunity there truly is for me.

Clear perspiration

A dollop of condensation

Collecting, swelling…

Spilling over, drawn by gravity down the cool side of the tank.

The rippling surface collects a skin

On the bowl itself a twisting path through the light dusty coating.

Something clean and fresh

Moisture from the air, pulled into the grime

Dragged down by gravity

Dragged though the muck

Eventually pooling at the bottom of the bowl…

Hanging over the void, swelling under its own weight before falling

To the floor exploding upon impact

Gone and soiled as its short life dragged it down

Oh water droplet running down the toilet…personification was not to be.

A one verse poem "Pining"

2013-03-15T17:53:00.002-07:00

So they say that we’re all pining

For the forest or the trees

Yet the pine is best known

For the needle knot the leaves

a brilliant mousetrap (raw unedited)

2013-03-13T22:13:00.000-07:00

Bureaucratic Oppression

And I without my soapbox!

Ladies and menfolk listen, and be WARNED!

A dire act is occurring…RIGHT in FRONT of YOU!

I don’t expect many of you to understand this, but those that do…

I implore you…

RISE UP!

I see a trend in the governments of the world…

Layers of perceived ineptitude, coupled with staggeringly illogical rules and regulations.

In the middle of it all, there’s a band that fully understands it.

This band keeps the wheels above and below turning.

Above opulence on celebrated stature, an orgy of ego and meddling.

Below a rat race of forms, licensure, laws, fines, forms, confusion, and debts…all

held down by financial insecurity and an impossible wave of regulatory nuance.

It seems as though it is reaching a breaking point, where the seemingly impossible level of inefficiency must at some point give…and yet deep down inside we know…it’s all a fucking bureaucracy…

Not everyone will get it.

exprosed

2013-03-07T19:02:00.003-08:00

Somehow following the reflection of a shadow, with a thousand mirrors and a single bulb
The self image of the non existent
proof of the foolishness
How many worlds?
Luminous and dark, reflection and real
Just one

first person prose + Depose first edit only

2013-02-28T08:00:00.002-08:00

“Did I want Revenge? Oh Christ! I wanted revenge in the worst way possible. I could imagine the look, when I pull their face to mine and stare into their eyes. Whether it was simmering resentment, or that regret that no matter why they thought they were hurting me, in that moment they realize and truly wish they could take it back; if they had known what I was going to do they would have compromised their own values.”

I try to shy away from blatant self gratification in my writing. I always say I can’t take emotionally charged moments from my life and write them into fiction. It’s crass, or in poor taste, or just too revealing. Then I started to think. Why shouldn’t I draw from some of these feelings, some of these dark times, and experiences. After all, nothing I perceive is EVER completely reality. I mistrust it, or over read it, or throw a hundred variable responses at it and try to surmise how it might react. I spin fiction into my real world all day every day. Why then should I not spin reality into my fiction?

“I needed a reason to live, or something worth dying for. Revenge by itself was neither of those.”

It was a cycle of malcontent that I seemed stuck in during those times. I was scraping by. I hated almost everything. Everything that didn’t work infuriated me. Everything I didn’t have. Everything that was on the verge of breaking down and needed repair, but wasn’t priority because it wasn’t actually broken. The cracked glasses I couldn’t afford to replace, the bald tires, no inspection sticker, driving scared and illegally. Just trying to work and eat and stay warm. Doing all three most of the time was getting old. Usually I was out of food by payday, or had exactly enough gas to get to the gas station on Friday. Sometimes I had to turn the heat down, because I had no wood and couldn’t risk running out of propane. Just wanting something to go somewhat easy…not getting stuck trying to get in the driveway, not getting pulled over without a sticker, finally being able to afford a real mattress so I could get off the double futon mattresses. It had been two years. Not much was better, not much was easier. I had reserved myself to try one more time. To try to get back on the horse and make another life that could work.

I hadn’t imagined it would be as hard as it was. It seemed like every break that could help went against me. Nothing would work out. I told myself to go to ground. Stick to the fundamentals, just find work, work it hard, and get a firm groundwork. I was having trouble getting that far. Set-backs that wouldn’t have existed before hitting bottom were maddeningly difficult to get around. Simple things like fees, and maintenance, and routing numbers made getting anywhere hard. It was as though I had dropped from the real world into some surreal obsolescence. I didn’t work in the real world anymore. I had been in jail, I no longer had a checking account, I didn’t have a reliable vehicle with an inspection sticker, for a while it wasn’t even registered. I got to work every day, on bald tires, with a loud broken exhaust.

It had taken a lot to move on. It had taken a lot to overcome the intense anger, and catastrophic regret. It was hope for something better. Gradually the better felt further and further away. The road looked too steep to travel. I began to wonder why I was bothering. Sure people loved me, I didn’t feel any of that, and I sure as hell didn’t love myself. I felt only loss and pain. Things continued not to get better. I asked myself if I could struggle my entire life. I found that I could not. I decided somewhat calmly and rationally that if I had to struggle in frustration for everything in my life, only to never get anything worth the struggle that I would end my life. I didn’t plan a date, or make a deadline; I had a good idea of how I would do it. I would use carbon monoxide, the car exhaust pipe and some flex pipe, exhaust tape near the pipe duct tape around the window. I had to make sure there was nothing I needed to do before I did it though. So I sort of waited. I was Treading water in my life. Still looking for a way to make headway, and still not getting anywhere. There in the darkness I felt the anger from so long ago, how could I let them beat me that severely without making them know they had done it?

At that moment I realized I was a suicidal nut job, with a message. This was not a way I was willing to die. I had to be exceptional. I am always the exception.

I was not alone. Lots of people I knew had it worse than I did, lots about the same. I don’t know why I thought I was better than a miserable existence, but I did. That being said, I felt a great deal of empathy for my fellow broke ass beat down compatriot.

I imagined winning the lottery. I pictured building a company. Hiring the people I trusted the people I empathized with, the people who I knew really deserved to have a few things go their way. Every one of the people I had in mind brought a different angle, talent, and innate intelligence to the mix. With time and money the ideas we could create would be astounding. I tried so hard not to make winning the lottery my only rational hope. Because I know intensely that it was virtually impossible to win the lottery. However I also realized and rationalized that upward mobility once you had fallen below a certain economic bracket is also statistically just as unlikely as the lottery. So from that angle the lottery made a lot of sense, and it only cost me four or five dollars a week.

Many nights I would stay up late trying to figure out a plan, an angle, SOMETHING…that would get me on a path that had options. It was daunting. I had barely kept the house and a reliable vehicle together when I was married. Now divorced, with obligations, with baggage, with a chipped shoulder that unsettled the world around me and made me apparent as some type of less than human monster I couldn’t find a path I could take, nothing I was confident I could walk. I thought ending it would be ultimately the more respectable thing to do.

In between I would daydream about winning the lottery, or making enough to buy a late model used car, a piece of land and enough materials to start building a little tiny house for myself. I was losing it without a fucking doubt.

The came the voice…I was angry and pissed and I suppose I was praying. Saying that I had had enough, and asking to be taken. I shut my eyes, curled up on the floor of a hot shower. I was completely done. There in the shower, I was trying to psych myself up. Picturing all the good I could do for these people trying to mentally bribe the Karmic bank if you know what I mean. The voice was dark and sinister. Somehow I felt myself telling it that I would do good. As though reading my extortion it confirmed that I was considering suicide in lieu of sudden wealth. I confirmed that I was indeed. It made me an offer. Would I take the lottery winnings if I had to kill myself on the year anniversary of winning? If I didn’t do it myself, I would be killed and everything that I had done over the past year would be ruined. I also could tell no one of the deal.

I accepted.

Alice In Chains was reminding me that they paid their debts on time. I looked around at the world I had created. In 340 days I had done a substantial amount of living. I had also built a company and a neighborhood, and linked them put good people in charge of them and carefully removed myself from the corporate roster for what was to come. I had taken a few of the people who had passed through my life and made both an impact and enough of a connection that I wanted to help them. They deserved better, just like I did, they were in fact…good people. The company was successful and I had created a sustainable budget that would keep everyone I cared about protected and financially solvent and safe. I underlined the words from the song on a piece of paper. ‘We pay our debts on time.’

There were tears in my eyes. I should have let go, I had certainly spread so much joy in the past year. I had modeled myself as an upstanding responsible citizen. There in the rain, on a cold February day, 3 years after the event that altered the course of my life I beat someone to death. I was a multi millionaire, who had built a successful company on his own terms and employed a select few friends and made something really amazing and great. It made no sense. Not long after I completed my vengeance. From there I drove, frantic, but away. I had a pretty good Idea how far I would have to go. Somehow by some virtue I made it, I pulled off the secluded road and got out, hastily setting up the hoses and tape. I climbed back into the car. I had left notes for my loved ones, not telling why, only apologizing in some way or another for something I did at some point. I set a block against the pedal for a steady 1100 rpms; I covered the dashboard with a heavy blanket so no one would be able to see lights from the road. I took a handful of over the counter sleeping pills and some wine and listened to music for a few minutes before I fell asleep. I was under a heavy blanket with the car seat reclined, as comfortable as I could be. I cried a little, I still had regrets. However somehow I had made life better for my children, even though I had taken myself from them. I had saved friends who were in similar situations to me from the frustration I had felt. I had built a house, a legacy to my quirkiness. I had also let the people who had hurt me know in a deeply personal way that I hadn’t forgiven them. No one would ever understand why I had done it…

I had to go out debt free. I also had to make sure I had collected what I was owed. My life had been taken, I would accept no less in return. I gave my life back to the world, I didn’t need it.

The above short tale of woe is a composed piece of fiction. It is written from a deeply personal place, but is not a threat, nor should it be taken as such, it is parody, it is sarcasm, it is the black and white that only exists in political strife and satire. I want people to feel unsettled in the way that only getting dragged through the mire of someone losing their minds can. However even under stress and pressure, and losing my faculties, I seek a way out. Tracing through things, I know this sounds like insanity, it is...I assure you it is, it is insanity getting played with by a controlling mind. You see I recognize my own frailty, but am such a micromanaging self control freak that I am torturing myself. I was letting my anger seethe and my rage lash out in its own futility. Somehow the more outlandish and crazy it got the better it felt… (i.e. Then I’m gonna blow up the fucking continent!) If someone feels threatened by this all they need to say is this…

“So let me get this straight. This person says they’re going to make a deal with the devil to win the lottery under the stipulation that one year later they have to commit suicide. However before they commit suicide a year later they decide to take vengeance upon you for a perceived wrong, prior to winning the lottery.” That is the premise of this work of fiction only, and bears no resemblance to real life intent. I have a voice; it is frustrated, but perhaps in that frustration and sharing someone out there might find kismet, understanding, or solace.

“I have to find something to live for, or something worth dying for.” Relax the fuck out, I’m not going to hurt anyone, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be gratifying if I somehow could. Alas that isn’t how the world works.

Sir, Reality. (Raw no edit) prose

2013-02-27T08:44:00.002-08:00

I shuffle the cards in my hand…

It’s an exercise in futility.

There are a limited number of options available with each combination of cards.

I look around me…

This isn’t a safe place.

Yet if I don’t play through this, my options are worse.

Upward mobility…

Such a bitter morsel!

I dreamt last night of trying to get my old job back.

AGAIN! It’s been over 2 years, since I worked there.

Two years and a week to be exact…

Two years ago I woke up in a jail cell for the first time in my life.

Two years ago and a week, right around this time I was opening and closing all the doors for a different jail.

Last night I dreamt I was trying to get my old job back.

Trying to regain a respectable job, trying to get a job with affordable benefits back…

I rise from my make shift bed.

The cobwebs of another night trail back into the warmth of discarded blankets.

The room is still sparse. It’s a big room…a bed, a desk, a television…

I don’t have a couch, I only entertain one person.

A few hours until I have to be at work, there’s going to be another storm tonight.

My front tires are bad, one is dangerously bald. I got a ticket yesterday for not having an inspection sticker.

Another 133 dollars I don’t have. I can afford one tire this week, and am probably going to replace the bad one.

The realization that respectability might be out of my reach is maddening.

The notion that I might not be able to do it right is sobering.

I could have a bachelor’s degree in about a year.

If my credits are still valid…

Not that I was learning anything towards the end.

Vitriol…my perception is skewed.

I am living a simple existence. Existential minimalism by necessity…

I want a new couch, my computer is beginning to get noticeably slow in certain areas.

My car needs new tires and will not realistically ever see another inspection sticker.

I’m sleeping on two futon mattresses with a two inch memory foam sponge on top…and lots of pillows.

I surround myself with inexpensive trinkets. Personalization for the poor…

It is 1134 AM

I have a vision of what I want. It isn’t much. I want a small piece of land. I bought a house at 22, It shouldn’t be unattainable. On the land I want to build a thoughtful, handcrafted, whimsy structure to spend my days in. I want my children to one day bring their children to play and it will be a funhouse.

I need to make more money.

I am intelligent.

I am unstable.

I have had some very demanding jobs and excelled at them.

I’ve served 30 days in jail, and most of my credible experience is law enforcement.

I can build houses.

I haven’t stepped on a job site for more than a day or two in a decade, and the industry is soft.

I have an Associates degree.

Big fucking deal, you’re a 210 pound, bald, angry, former prison guard with a Civil Contempt Conviction.

I shuffle the cards in my hand…

It’s an exercise in futility.

There are a limited number of options available with each combination of cards.

I look around me…

This isn’t a safe place.

Yet if I don’t play through this, my options are worse.

Lost Souls RAW NO EDIT AT ALL

2013-02-20T21:35:00.000-08:00

Graveyard whispers:

I’m living in a ghost town.

It’s in these hours. This still time indeed. I had never felt as alone as I did at that moment.

I could actually hear the faucet drip.

The hotel room was dark. Lit slightly from a streetlight escaping the periphery of the heavy drape.

The hour was late, and the world was silent.

Yet even in that deepest darkest most alone moment, the recognition came that you were hardly alone.

Laying on a hotel bed, a thousand faded souls passed through you, how many in your very spot had reached these lows. All around you, the very walls of the hotel seething with detached loss. Thousands of people had stayed in these cheap rooms, alone or not, how many misdeeds, how much loneliness, how much furtive, divertiveness had gone on here. I’m not talking about ghosts in the truest sense. These people were not dead, well likely some had passed, but not here, not in direct connection with this low cost mid town hotel. These were the ghosts of the living. These were the remnants and traces of their darkest and rawest emotions. The painful, lustful, lost, even a few hopeful or expectant, out of their element and staying in a nameless bland cheap hotel. They were so strong they lingered…seeping into the walls and oozing forth in a muted sense of wrongness. In that moment as I slipped into restless, helpless, sadness…I felt them. They were all around me. They knew my shame, they knew my desires, they knew my inner most thoughts because I had just joined them. Quiet in the dark, looking back over an emotionally draining event, alone and despondent…they weren’t consoling me. I drew no solace from their presence.

And yet…

There in the dark, I suddenly felt a little less scared. I knew after all that I was far from alone. I had an army of lost souls, adrift in the past…

I wore them around me.

They were oblivious…You see they weren’t real anymore.

If another few minutes had passed I would have been asleep and all they had to show me would have been forgotten.

You see they had lessons to teach about the dark side of my fellow man.

A dark side I like all men and women am capable of succumbing to.

Everyone has it inside them, a balance between lust and sense…but the scales tip from time to time don’t they.

Alas that night was a long time ago.

Today I find that I have lost huge portions of my soul to the darkness bred by pain and loss.

It’s here and now that I find myself…

living in a graveyard. Not a place of the dead, but rather a place of the past, and ghosts and visions of things that yet live on, but cast adrift amid their memories. Haunted by the corpse of the past, and the memory of a happier time.

The above poem makes reference to a poem I wrote on a notepad sized square of paper, in a room at the La Quinta Inn in downtown Portland...It was quite some time ago...

Pulp continued 1st edit only

2013-02-16T19:21:00.001-08:00

___ ___ ___

The airport was very quiet this early in the morning. Dino traveled light and was a seasoned traveler. She kept her guard up throughout the airport, something about this project felt wrong. The funding was too deep, and the trail had been easy to pick up. It felt more like she was giving a second opinion, and no one spent this kind of money on second opinions. The Director had driven her to the airport himself. He was driving a midsize four dour. It had no emblems on it, and looked like it may be mostly a Corolla, but the trunk, lights, and grill were different. It was somewhere between Champagne and light gray. The car was almost indescribably plain.

From the airport in Tulsa it was a two hour drive through a mix of morning commuters and delivery traffic. Dino, thought the building was nice, if a little understated, but it was basically a map museum. The lobby had a bunch of maps hanging on the walls, the floor was a tiled mosaic of a compass, and longitude latitude lines. Tasteful Dino thought. She made sure she came off a little nerdy. The staffer that brought her to an inspection room didn’t seem at all familiar with what she was looking for. Most of her previous stops she couldn’t help but feel like the person she was talking to had just been looking at what she wanted. Dino was wearing loose fitting black slacks, and a gray blouse with a light suit jacket over it. It made her look a little stocky, but her legs just didn’t fit well into any kind of business attire, she also had a pair of glasses on even though she didn’t need them.

“Thank you so much sir.” She said a little awkwardly. She was playing as a late grad student finishing a big project. The man closed the door barely paying her a glance. This was good. If anything sketchy came out of this project, other than the dreadlocks she wasn’t very memorable, that was hard to do with her physique. She’d be described as medium build, and mousy with dread locks. Anyone asking about it would take one look at Dino and say there’s no way anyone would use medium build or mousy to describe her. That was the thought anyway.

She spent three hours looking at maps and re-reading jpegs of notes and literature she had amassed on a tablet. Finally she sent Antler six GPS coordinates, and a handful of notes on speculative travel times. Antler would use the handful of landmarks, current maps and a few equations figuring travel distance based on those landmarks and narrow down a few possible locations in a sea of sand. With nothing left to do but wait for Antler to do the math she checked out of the museum and went back to the hotel, asking how late they were open in case she needed to double check any data.

She headed back to the hotel. It was outside the city, and fairly convenient to the Topographical Society. Once she checked in she headed to her room. She opted to take the stairs. Her room was on the fifth floor. She was halfway up the last flight when the door on the fifth floor opened. The man was dressed in jeans and a button down shirt. Dino knew he was going to attack her before he even let go of the door. As she reached the top of the stairs, the gun came out, it had a silencer. She grabbed it and pulled it and him past her. She managed to wrench the gun out of the guy’s hand and he pulled up to hit her. She brought her elbows out in front of her chest and grabbed his head with both hands. It put both of his hands outside the pyramid of her shoulders and she brought a knee explosively up into his side. As she did her grip on his head ensured that the entire impact rocked through his midsection, ribs and collar bone and neck. He winced painfully she pushed him back and let go, as he crumpled towards the wall she hit him on the temple with her right elbow knocking the back of his head against the cement stairwell wall. He was out cold.

Dino hastily rifled through his pocket, found a slip of paper with her room number on it, 3 photos of her, and a cell phone. There were four texts on the phone detailing her progress towards first the hotel then the stairwell. So there was at least one more threat in her immediate area, probably in the lobby. She took a picture of the man’s face, blood dripping from his left nostril, the asbestos tile mashing his face and sent it to the number that had been texting him. Then she retrieved the gun, there were only 3 bullets in it. She tucked it in the back of the ridiculous slacks she was wearing, realizing she had ripped the shoulder of the blouse throwing the elbow. She grabbed her own cell phone and went up to the eighth and topmost floor.

“Yes.” It was the Director.

“I have trouble sir.” Dino said. “Bad trouble.”

“I know. Head for your rental car now, take the elevator, I have an eye on you. There’s a parking garage at the mall across the road from the hotel. You will be able to see it when you step out the lobby door. Go there. Get a ticket, and park on the second floor. Act natural while you walk.”

Dino got into the elevator, pressed the ground floor and loosened up as it descended. It touched down and there were a handful of people milling about. She spotted the professional immediately. He was waiting by the front entrance. She headed straight for the door, and forced herself to walk with a relaxed swagger. The man headed out the door ahead of her. He began walking towards her rental. As soon as she stepped out the door, a splash of red erupted from the man’s midsection by his hip. He spun to the ground in a heap with a gasp. She looked and saw that where he fell was perfectly out of line of sight for the hotel lobby, and the street beyond. She closed and knelt beside him, quickly frisking him she took the cell phone, wad of hundred dollar bills, and pistol. He was wincing and forcing shallow breaths to stay conscious.

“Who the fuck are you?” She hissed leaning down into his face. His eyes locked on hers but were succumbing to shock and defeat. She looked around and saw a car about to turn into the lot. She got up and went to the rental backing out and heading for the garage. She looked back once to see the man’s head erupt in a second burst of spray. Her heart was pumping. She took a ticket forcing a smile and pretending to be dancing to music even though the radio was off. On the second floor she parked far away from the side of the building where the shots had come from and headed for the mall. As she passed into the interior a wiry man in a tweed suit complete with elbow patches sauntered up beside her. His face was plain and calm.

“Hey sweety.” He said with a big grin, as two mothers with strollers walked by.

“Hi dad.” Dino replied. They walked across the mall and out the other exit. There they crossed a street and as sirens started wailing they got into a parked taxi and headed for the airport. It wasn’t until they were in the airport bar waiting for the private charter to be fueled up that Dino was able to ask questions.

“Val, what the fuck happened?” Dino whispered.

“Dudley picked them up a week ago.” Vallium answered, he smiled, and nodded and shook his head like the conversation were about something entirely different, he was much better at it than Dino was, it was almost creepy. “They hacked our system so we fed them a line of garbage, and they almost bought it all. Six people were killed at a geography lab in a university in Montana. We figured they’d stake it out, they didn’t have time to beat you to Tulsa once they realized we’d snowed them. Dudley also screwed up their computers hopefully for weeks, and is in the process of tracking the money. The problem is there’s a lot of it, and it comes from big places. We don’t think the people coming after you now are the same people paying us, but they’re in the same circle, and we are beginning to doubt the sincerity of the job. Whatever they have you looking for is worth something more than just money, because they have spent several million dollars looking for it. We’ve only racked up a six hundred thousand dollar bill so far, but we’ve come closer faster than the other two groups that were sent on the goose chase. Sarge is bringing us in and circling the wagons for a day or so while we sort and try to deal ourselves out square with the Principal interest. In the meantime I just secured us unauthorized transport to Morocco, and some equipment if we can’t peaceably deal out.”

“Is that where we’re going now?” Dino asked.

“No office first. There are fires to be put out.” Vallium said and nodded to the janitor who was motioning for them to follow him. The private plane was a two seater, and Vallium took controls.

“How long have you been here?” Dino asked as they taxied out.

“Your room faces the parking garage. There are two more bodies in it. I didn’t know about the one on the stairwell.” Vallium said. It was an apology. Dino nodded. “We’ve been screwed with a little on this one.” He finished, it was a threat. The rest of the flight was silent as Dino slept.

Vallium

“So what is this item’s value?” The voice was firm, a hint of anger in it. The Director stood behind his desk, his shoulders rolled forward his giant hands curled into meaty fists on the desk. Behind him the shutters were closed looking like an unbroken wall of dark wood panels, to his left there were two open panels, one was a liquor cabinet, the other a gun safe. In one chair Doc Evelyn sat. She was in her late fifties. Had a Dominican cigar in her hand and a snifter with a finger of brandy left. Her hair had once been blonde, but was fading to a lighter sandy shade. She was dressed impeccably in an expensive suit. The other chair was Vallium. He had ditched the tweed nutty professor look and was wearing black rip stop BDU pants and a gray knit sweater with a pocket on the bicep. His hair was black and short, not quite military. He was just short of six feet tall and sat leaning forward. He was drinking water.

“Whatever it is has been under sand for a long time. If it is valuable it would have to be historically significant, or precious in nature. Diamonds, and gold, and ingots, and rare stuff is nice, but the people paying bills on this one are the type that can have old shiny trinkets all day, so this has to be more than that.” Doc’s brow was creased. The phone rang.

“Yes?” The director said hitting the speaker button.

“Mr. Thrask on the line for you.” Matisse said from the front room. Her furniture was being moved in which had them a little edgy given the circumstances, but she hadn’t been told anything was amiss yet.

“Excellent I’ll take it.” The director tipped a silencing nod to Evelyn and Vallium.

“Mr. Thrask.” The director said calmly. Vallium could hear the ice in his voice.

“Chauncy, I’m returning your call.” The voice on the other end said. “I understand you have some questions, concerning closure of our arrangement.”

“I do.” The director said. “We’ve encountered another party, a hostile party. We have a fair amount of information to you, which is still intact and priviledged. However the other party has killed people. Attempted to kill members of my team, and I have had to spend considerable funds and resources on track covering. The funds are inconsequential and have already been added to your expense table as discussed. The reason for my call is simple. I would like to know who is fucking with me, and why. I also need validation that I can pass this information along without becoming a loose end to either your interests or this other party. So I have the project completed as you have requested, however until I’m certain that the closure of our contract will be as agreed upon. Your forthcomingness will be appreciated in this matter.”

“I see.” The voice was noticeably cooler. “I had heard of some of the problems, and was worried that the information had been compromised. As time is of the essence I will call you back within an hour with the information you require, please keep my information safe until then and you will be well compensated for your time. As for closing our arrangement your reputation for discretion proceeds you and you will not face a threat from my interests.”

Late night prophecy (RAW one take)

2013-02-02T21:22:00.001-08:00

I can feel it.

Something bad is coming.

Everything is violence...

Every article, every news clip, every breath...

Seething with violence.

I like everyone else am lusty for it.

I feed on the brutality of it all.

It is pounding from every pore...

It is about to reach a breaking point.

There are too many potential factors that could tip the scale for something not too.

Guns, protests, civil wars, shootings, rapes and gang rapes blasted across the headlines.

The civilization that exists hearing that they are surrounded by violence becomes violent.

Violence saturates everything around us...

The news, the TV, fuck movies, art mirrors life, we make violent movies because it comforts us, and because it's what we know.

Now comes the start of the knee jerk, resources and the values of them are shifting. It takes less work to exist so everyone can do more, but fewer are needed so fewer are working. As such turmoil is brewing, society needs a value system to exist, and it needs to work or Anarchy ensues. Gov't isn't the mechanism of control it's resource management. Right now the value of work, products, healthcare, retirement, having ANY job, are all in a dangerous state of flux. A lot of the jobs that have disappeared aren't coming back...and haven't for a long time, and the tipping point where the value system doesn't work is coming...

At that time society will drastically reset it. Empires don't crumble in wars, empires crumble under the weight of their success. Upon achieving certain levels of sophistication the lack of upward mobility causes stagnation and then decay. Typically during that decay wars, civil or otherwise ensue, and the wars take the blame. War is a product of humanity.

There's bad shit coming. 2 to 10 years.

Evermore winter (draft)

2013-01-22T10:47:00.003-08:00

The winter months have indeed descended. Although not with the fury we have sometimes known.

These walls shiver with silence and cold hearths during the day. We lay low during the day. Sometimes we forage food, or trade labor with neighboring towns for minor services. By night we burn wood and anything we can find to keep warm and drive back the frigid night temperatures. The equipment we have to keep ourselves going is old and badly maintained. Resources are lean and time is precious. The food stores are to the bone, we manage to eat, but there’s nothing to fall back on.

The enemy never came…

They may never have to. We retreated into the hollow walls of this tired house, and tried to make it a bastion. We steeled ourselves for a struggle, we expected an enemy to drive us from our home. That enemy never came. We began to doubt the enemy was ever there. It was madness that drove us into survival mode! Wasn’t it?

Then we realized…the keep was barely there. We were barely there. We existed on a shoestring, hiding in the bleak walls of a forebodingly empty manor. Everything we kept could be swept out in a matter of hours. Everything else was a resource, something that kept us warm, something that kept us fed, something that kept us moving, or provided a resource later.

The madness crawled in the dark empty places. It was a brilliant dark force. It whispered. It crept. It laughed. Some of us what it wanted, why it was here? The truth was; it didn’t have a reason. It didn’t care what the outcome was. It would still be there. It enjoyed the show.

I took a few days to take stock. I had been unable to work on the keep, everything was in disrepair. I had to keep on it. I had to push back against the decline. I had been sliding. The enemy was smarter than I had thought. They didn’t have to attack you to win. They knew how lean the landscape was, they could wait.

They don’t need anything you have. They will take whatever is left and throw it on the pile. They don’t worry about how much food there is in the fridge, they refill it when it gets low. The heat that goes into their home is a pre planned debit against a running balance. The date they have to renew a vehicle, or license or insurance policy isn’t a future date they have to save up for, it’s something that they don’t want to forget.

The enemy is a line in the sand. The line snakes between the haves, and the have nots. All have nots are not created equal. Some don’t know what they don’t have. Others do, some are able to through fate and circumstance, and preparedness make the jump. Others have run the numbers and know that successfully reaching comfort and safety isn’t rationally feasible. What do you do if you realize that achieving success is highly unlikely? Do you change course, take steps to improve your lot perhaps? Surely you must, but in a world of measured resources, negotiating any improvement is twice as hard and takes twice as long. If you’re working poor you don’t qualify for much. Time is a resource measured in minutes. Money is measured in individual dollars. Anyone who has ever had to split their last 20.00 bill between gas and food to get to payday from 3 days out understands this. Where do you begin?

All I want is to work hard and not worry about how I’m going to eat, sleep, or keep warm. Right now I work 40 hours a week, and am regularly having a tough time accounting for those three bills, without even touching gas, car insurance, registration, enough repairs to get a legit inspection sticker, and the fear that one of my dangerously bald tires goes. Life on a tightrope. Security seems unattainable.

So I work to breath. I work to eat. This is the stand…this house, these walls, to the end, the last. Eventually I will find a way to stand firm again.

Pulp (minor edits, draft)

2013-01-17T20:14:00.000-08:00

Antler

“You wouldn’t know it by looking, but these people are some of the smartest people in the world. Just ask them.” The one who had introduced himself as Antler was narrating a tour of the humble office space. “Problem is, these are the people that teachers always said weren’t living up to potential. These are the people you always knew were smart, but their social lives and habits made them hapless messes. Although smarter, they are doomed to watch people far less intelligent than they be more successful than they could ever manage. It vexes them, just look at their tortured faces.” One of them, a middle aged man wearing khakis and a hooded sweatshirt flipped Antler off.

The office space was a mess. Over all there was a large typical middle office room, it was divided into 6 very large cubicles with high 6’ walls made of some kind of black plastic material. It looked as if each cubicle had been decorated to look like a different genius twelve year old’s room. Except one which was meticulously arranged to look like an English study. Off the main room were two offices and four bathrooms. One office had a brass plaque over the door that said “The Director” in pleasant flowing script. The other ‘office’ was all wrestling mats wall to wall and up to a height of 6’ up the wall. It had a sign above the door as well. This one said “interpersonal conflict resolution chamber” It was written in crayon, on posterboard. Another sign beside the door said “Romper Room”. This sign was airbrushed on a piece of wood.

“Which brings me to why you are here, Miss Whispers?” Antler said. Stopping and turning to face the woman he had been giving the tour to. He stood about a foot taller than the woman. He was a little over six feet tall. He was bony thin, but had a warm face, and shoulder length blond hair that stuck out crazily in an uncombed wiry mess.
“Because I’m a genius with a dead end job and I deserve better?” Matisse Whispers said, forcing a half smile and raised eye brow.

“How should I know, you only filled out an application.” Antler said. “You’re here because you seem well organized, and have a cool name. We desperately need someone organized to work in an administrative assistant slash overseer role. Your application was better than most of the other applicants, and we have already ordered a plaque that says, ‘Miss. Whispers’, which we are going to put up whether you get the job or not, just because it sounds cool. So if you are interested, the job is yours, your office will be up at the front of the hall where you came in, across from the weight and reading room.”

Matisse wanted to laugh. It was ridiculous, but no doubt completely true. The job had a much better pay scale than she had now, she didn’t mind receptionist duties on the whole, and this also seemed to have some supervisory parts to it, which would help her resume. She also had to admit that there was something very intriguing about the whole situation.

“What do you do here?” Matisse asked. The ad she had answered had read…

Receptionist/office manager needed for moderately paced local business. Applicants should be able to work with little supervision, and should be comfortable handling multiple scheduling roles as well as keeping tabs on a sometimes disorganized workforce. 35-40 based on experience.

“We are one part think tank, one part detective agency, and one part security firm. We take on eclectic problems from clients in a whole bunch of different fields and either solve them or screw them up so bad the clients thank us anyway.” Antler said.

“I think I’ll take it, if you’re offering.” Matisse said.

“Awesome.” Antler said with a sort of half nod, bounce that Matisse would learn accompanied anything assenting Antler said while standing. “Boss, she said she wants it.” Antler said knocking on the heavy hardwood door that read “The Director”

“Send her in!” A gruff stern sounding voice barked from behind the door. Antler opened the door and Matisse turned towards a bleakly empty office. It consisted of four walls of solid wood recessed panels. The pattern was busy, and repeated often. On the hardwood floor was a perfectly centered oriental rug, and upon it was a heavy wooden desk with two chairs facing it, the chairs arranged in line with the corners of the rug, the desk centered between them and the other edge. Behind the desk sat an older ruddy looking man. He had a great grey bushy beard, and an uncombed but short ring of tough gray hair circling the bald crown of his head. He was average height, but so broad he appeared squat.

“Come in Miss Whispers.” He said. His voice exuded clarity and intent. What he said seemed exactly what he meant.

“Thank you.” Matisse said. She walked in and stood against one of the two chairs.

“Please sit down.” The Director said. Matisse sat, again saying thank you.

“Perfect you’re hired.” The Director said. “I like you already. Your position is really for the crew. They need a baby sitter, and I need them. I don’t want that to sound like I’m marginalizing your job. Believe me I’m not. Saying you’re a babysitter is more belittling to them. You’ll need to take on the receptionist duties. Not secretarial we have a file person that handles everything paper related. His name is Evan you’ll see him eventually I’m sure. However other than the fact that you’ll answer the phone and arrange meetings, you will run the office. You’ll have all the buying power, arrange for copier maintenance and all that stuff, and arrange these clowns’ schedules and remind them when they need to be places. For all intents and purposes you’re in charge. You are also the voice of the organization. You are the one who calls the customers, and arranges meetings. You have a fair amount of scheduling experience, from what your application said.”

“Yes.” Matisse said. “I had to arrange schedules for two stores working with less than two crews. I also scheduled maintenance appointments so they never interfered with open times. That was the highlight of my job. I don’t think the bosses ever got that before they moved me into the scheduling job we would have to close a location for half a day as often as twice a month, but after I took the job it was only once in a year and a half.”

“You’re absolutely right Miss Whispers. They did not realize it. I have thoroughly read their financial files, and they’ve actually made a five percent increase in profits per month for being open an additional seventeen half days, over the previous fiscal year. I also cross referenced the average sales for each relative day, with the large green book you used for scheduling, you are very meticulous.” The Director said smiling. Matisse did use a large green book to keep track of the schedule. “When can you start?”

“I should give my two weeks’ notice.” Matisse said still puzzling over the director’s knowledge of her previous job performance, thinking back she hadn’t really mentioned scheduling on her application. Her forehead must have betrayed her thoughts wrinkled as it was.

“Are you going to call me on it or let it slide Miss Whispers?” The Director said. Matisse realized he was offering to tell her, what she was wondering.

“How do you know about my other job?” Matisse said after an awkward pause.

“We broke in to the office and reviewed your performance ourselves before we called you in for an interview. No one noticed, it was four days ago. We are an information resources company. We use the innate intelligence of our staff, combined with their psychological barriers which serve to give them a uniquely intelligent, but very different perspective to every problem they approach. As such it makes perfect sense from that standpoint to run the office from the reception desk. To them you are the anchor, you’re normal so it needs to be you talking to the outside world. However I think you have some pretty unique life outlooks yourself which will allow you to fit in and be accepted by the oddballs outside my office. I respect your loyalty in wanting to give two weeks’ notice, I took the liberty of hiring a temp to do your work there for your last two weeks, she is waiting in your office. Tell her what she needs to know to finish your job gracefully and then order yourself some office furniture and have it delivered and arranged, don’t spend more than twelve thousand dollars, don’t buy any electronics, we have our own. Have the furniture sent overnight if you can or as soon as possible, decorations can come normal ship time.” The Director had stood at some point during the speech. He now stuck a short muscular arm out towards Matisse.

“I accept.” Matisse said as she rose to her feet. She extended her hand. The Director shook it firmly. It was a huge mitt that fully engulfed her small hand. She also vaguely registered that the way in which he had stood was an illusion of sorts. She had been sitting so engrossed in what he was saying, that she hadn’t noticed that he had gently leaned back, and rose to a standing position while remaining partially stooped at the knees and moving away from her. His relative size and posture hadn’t changed until he had leaned forward to shake her hand, and he had instantly seemed enormous.

“Antler! Come show Miss Whispers around.” The director said loudly. The outer door opened and as Matisse turned she realized that the outer door had blended seamlessly into the wall behind her. A moment later she felt warm sun on her back. She turned and the Director had opened a wooden panel and behind it was a large window overlooking the ramshackle houses between the office and the river. In the distance the river was pretty even amidst the somewhat lousy area that this office building sat at the edge of. The sun was hitting it and a glittering haze of sun dappled light was dancing across the ceiling, which Matisse now noticed was also wood paneled, except for a single wood trimmed void, inside of which shone two fluorescent bulbs and a mirrored background.

Antler led her back out towards the main door, where she found a large, probably twenty by twenty area hemmed in by a counter immediately inside the main door. The counter area only encompassed about half the separate area, which extended back behind a wall. Across from the counter there was another bathroom and a door labeled “physical and mental conditioning”. The sign was carved wood, and fairly ornate. There were also three chairs across from the counter, between the bathroom and ‘conditioning’ room, and a large fake plant. Sitting in the center chair was a woman in a three piece skirt suit.

“You must be the temp?” Matisse said realizing she was working, and had to talk to this woman. “I’m Matisse.” The woman nodded and after introductions and a ten minute conversation the woman left. Antler had gone off and found a large bean bag chair, which he had dragged back to the counter, and sat in. He was now waiting patiently for the conversation to be over. He was so tall his bony knees were up by his ears. After three minutes he produced a book about Rasputin and began reading.

Matisse finished her conversation and confirming that Antler was still sitting in the hallway on the oversized beanbag reading about Rasputin began to tour the area that would be her office. There was a ten by twenty area behind the wall in the hallway. The other area seemed to be the same size and was open to the hall via the counter. At the back of the area was a single door. The door was small. It was too short for anyone to fit through without squatting, probably only four feet tall. The only furniture in the area was a pair of large industrial looking green sheet metal desks. They were askew in the center of the room. There was a ream of copier paper on one, and a phone on the other. She headed towards the small door, now curious. It had to be a maintenance access of some kind, but was in an odd place for that, in the middle of the wall in the front reception area.

“Miss Whispers.” Antler said. He was at her side, and had evidently decided to pause in his reading. Let me show you the exercise room, then we’ll scrounge you some catalogs to order stuff for your office. She followed him to the door with the “Physical and Mental Conditioning” sign on it. Inside was a two story room. The walls were lined floor to ceiling with books interspersed with authentic looking tapestries and hangings, some of them appeared very old. The room was large. Spread around the middle of the space, were all kinds of weight machines. The books were separated from the weight area by tables, with study lamps on them. The lighting was dim, and the floors were covered with ornate rugs. The weight equipment looked very out of place, but otherwise looked modern and well kept. Sitting upon one of the tables was a girl, probably in her mid twenties. She was wearing a snug sports top, and loose sweatpants. She was sitting on the table reading a huge leather bound book, the book itself looked ancient and the writing didn’t look English. Her hair was a mousy brown mass of dread locks. The girl’s body was chiseled, as though there wasn’t an ounce of fat anywhere on her, she was in fact very muscular, almost masculine.

“That’s Dino.” Antler said. “Like on the Flintstones.” Dino nodded something akin to a greeting.

Off the gym behind the outer bathroom, there was a small locker room, with a washer and dryer, and two small shower/changing rooms. Matisse had her own locker. She had never really worked out before, but might consider it when she got more comfortable. They emerged from the dim room, back into the main office area. On the desk in her office, beside the paper, was a large stack of catalogs, a handful of pens with no caps, and a twenty five foot measuring tape.

“Have fun decorating your office, make it however you want. It’s your space.” Antler said and shuffled off down the hall. He left the beanbag in the middle of the hallway.

“Aren’t you going to take your seat?” Matisse said. Antler turned, seemed to notice the beanbag. Cocked his head to one side and smiled.

“Oh yeah thanks!” He said, and did the head nodding shoulder bounce move again. He scooped up the seat and walked off down the hall to whichever cubicle was his. Matisse looked down at the catalogs, there had to be twenty of them. Everything from sophisticated to whimsical was there, along with decorating books, and joke item catalogs. She looked around the space and tried to get a feel for what she wanted an office she had decorated to look like. She thought of the cubicles down the hall and didn’t imagine there was much she couldn’t do, but she wanted to show some professionalism.

‘Twelve thousand dollars!’ Matisse thought to herself. ‘I wonder if there’s a calculator around here.’ She began opening desk drawers. The first drawer which was naturally the top right drawer of the large metal desk contained a calculator, a stack of purchase orders, and a stapler. The second drawer she opened was the center drawer, in it was a brand new large green notebook, leather bound and sturdy, below that were pens in green, red, black, and orange. It was just like she had used at her other office. She set the book on the desk and opened to today, a single sticky note was there. The front was blank. She peeled the yellow square off the page and turned it over.

Welcome Aboard

Was all it said, the words had been typed. Those items were the only things in either desk.

Matisse

Aka Miss Whispers

Considering that she had gone on the interview during her lunch break, and was now employed and tasked with ordering her own office furniture, Matisse thought she was doing ok. Then after she had taken some measurements and ordered two desks. One to go under the counter that would have plenty of space for receptionist things, the other was what she planned to be her desk, it was an L shaped monstrosity that would go a little ways in behind the hallway wall. She also ordered some furniture for something of an impromptu break room. She ordered a table, six chairs, and a cart for a small fridge, microwave, and toaster oven. She had filled out 3 purchase orders and only spent around 4500 dollars. Next she ordered 2 chairs that looked amazing. A few minutes later the man in the khaki’s and sweatshirt appeared at her counter.

Matisse smiled as she tried to size him up a bit. He had flipped Antler off, but it had seemed in jest. The khakis were loose as was the sweatshirt. He looked to be in his late thirties or early forties, but not necessarily in bad shape. His face was fairly non-descript and he was wearing a pair of glasses with medium thickness frames, his hair was neat and bland. His forearms were crossed on her counter and he was patiently waiting for Matisse to initiate conversation.

“Hi.” Matisse said, as she walked over. “I’m Matisse Whispers. I’m new.” She extended a hand walking to the opening in the counter.

“Dave.” The man said. He shook her hand. From the center pocket of the hooded sweatshirt he produced a well worn sandwich shop menu. “Papa Bear said to order lunch, and also told me to tell you to go ahead and order the microwave and toaster and stuff, the little break room is a great idea. We wrote our orders on the piece of paper. Nice to meet you! This place is good and they deliver. Here’s some cash to pay tip good, they love us.” Dave handed her four crisp twenty dollar bills also from the center pocket of his hoodie. “You should knock on the door and see if Evan wants anything.” Dave motioned to the little door in the wall and then turned and went into the bathroom beside the library/weight room.

Matisse was left perplexed and confused holding the menu and the money. She had forgotten about the little door. She vaguely remembered the director mentioning an ‘Evan’. She unfolded the menu inside was a piece of graph paper…the writing on it was very neat and small, and square, she realized each letter was in its own block. Between the letters were little arrows drawn almost absent mindedly, and interspersed with symbols and random letters along the margins. Matisse began to read while walking towards the small door in the wall. Apparently there were at least five other people in the office today, not counting Evan.

Boss-Roast beef large American cheese plain

Antler-Ham and Swiss, mayo, lettuce, tomatoes

Dave-Steak and Cheese, peppers, and raw onions

Dino- Roast chicken on Pita, extra tomatoes, lettuce, also raw onions

-> (yay Dave)

Dudley-Large roni, bacon, and hamburger pizza deep dish.

Please also get two Cokes and a Sprite two liter.

Matisse now stood before the mini door. Should she knock? She wondered then decided that it wouldn’t hurt. She knocked twice and tried the knob. It was awkward as the knob was low. The door opened out. Matisse ducked slightly and peered in. The room was shallow, probably only eight feet in to the back wall. As she ducked inside she realized that the room was two stories high and extended the length of her space. Inside were dozens of file cabinets, stacked on top of one another, and there were several sets of stairs, and little platforms. She stepped inside. It was a claustrophobic space. There were bookshelves and cabinets intermingled with the file cabinets.

“Be right down!” A voice called from above and somewhere behind her, the voice had a small tinny quality to it. She turned and realized that a set of stairs led up above what she now assumed was a drop ceiling above her office space. She now realized there were also wires running along the walls and up over the ceiling. They were all different colors and each was fastened down in neat straight tracks all over the backside of the wall. She wondered if the stairs and what now appeared to be catwalks were over every room of the office, except the weight room. It certainly appeared they were. A moment later a dwarf appeared at the top of a ladder off To Matisse’s right. He slid deftly down the ladder and turned to face her.

“I’m Evan. I keep track of everything.” The Dwarf said. He looked slightly Olive perhaps Italian, or Latin. His hair was black and slicked and he had a goatee and three earrings in his left ear, she noticed one was gold, one was silver, and the other was a black dull metal color. He could not have been four feet tall. In fact he was probably a few inches light of that particular mark.

“Matisse.” She said. “Matisse Whispers.” It was not said in the suave manner of an international spy, but rather in a halting quasi stuttered manner. She tried hard not to sound as taken aback as she was, both by this strange space, and by its strange occupant. “I’m ordering lunch.” She managed to instill some normalcy into the lunch statement.

“Sweet!” Evan said glancing at the dog eared menu. “Will you get me a children’s spaghetti platter?” Matisse visibly started. “I’m fucking with you Miss Whispers. It’s cool. I’d like a Hot Pastrami, small with peppers and onions. I’m not joking about the small though, their larges are enormous.” He smiled and it was warm and genuine. Matisse couldn’t help but smile and snicker a little.

“You got it.” She said. He had called her Miss Whispers. She had been Matisse Whispers all her life, and there had been a lot of jokes, and some people thought it was cool, and she had heard WAY too many raunchy and inappropriate lines around it. For the first time though, she found really liked it, and thought amongst this crew of misfits, it fit perfectly.

“Do you have enough catalogs to outfit your office?” Evan asked.

“Definitely thank you so much.” Matisse said.

“Excellent. As soon as your desk arrives I’ll set up your computer. I’ll also show you how our intercom works.” Evan extended his hand, and when Matisse moved to shake it he grasped just the ends of her fingers and lightly kissed the back of her hand. “Men shake hands Miss Whispers, you are a lady. Give me a shout when the food arrives!” With that he spun and walked in his little person gait, off between some file cabinets.

Dino

Dino closed the massive book. It was mostly in ancient Greek. There were two chapters in Latin, but Dino could read both. She wasn’t sure how to interpret what she had read so far. It wasn’t a positive lead to say the least, but could be very accurate. She went back to the weight bench, lay back under the bar, and arched her back rolling her shoulders flat onto the bench. When she reached up and grabbed the bar lowering it to her chest then pushing it aggressively back up, she lowered it three more times. When she got to four raises she dropped the weight back into the cradle and immediately rolled off the bench and moved to another bench set at an angle where she began doing flys with dumb bells. Her shoulders and forearms were trembling with the effort. Finally her grip faltered and she dropped first one then the second weight.

She had showered and changed into a pair of jeans and oversized sweatshirt just as lunch arrived. Most of what she had read pointed to whatever the client was looking for having been brought some distance into the Sahara Desert and buried, very deeply and very deliberately. However the sands in the Sahara had shifted considerably countless times since the time that would have happened, and the borders of the Desert had grown with basic desertification. So she would need some data to even begin to predict a possible location with which to begin an exploratory expedition.

When lunch arrived she ate with The Director. She was going to need some data, and a handful of really old maps and surveys. Thankfully the Egyptians kept rather detailed survey maps of a lot of the African Mediterranean. However she would need access to those maps and they didn’t ever leave the places where they were lovingly cared for. So that meant travel expenses, and she’d need Antler to crunch numbers. She also had to pitch her thoughts to the big guy and see what if anything he thought…

“So what you’re saying is that what the client is looking for was deliberately hidden over twenty three hundred years ago?” The Director said. Dino nodded, she had pitched her case completely and would now have to watch the director absorb it for a few minutes. “The client doesn’t want us to arrange a contract for pick-up, just locate approximately where the item ended up. It was an oracles underling that told the story of walking into a great desert?” Again Dino nodded. “Do you have a leaning on the oracle?” Dino shook her head. As far as known sacred ‘oracles’ in Ancient times in Greece not all were given the same historical weight, some were known swindlers, other had darker purpose, but still no real ability, a few were thought to have actually had a slightly greater than likely mathematical accuracy rating. This is to say some were right more often than they, in theory should have been. A few were significantly more knowledgeable than others. This was Dino’s expertise, but the Director knew enough to know there was acceptance of what Dino was saying. Based on the way the Oracle’s lackey had told the story, and the time and location of the telling, it could have been one of three oracles that had the piece hidden. A hack, a somewhat reliable source, and one of the scary ones, Dino didn’t know which though.

“Well the client has authorized considerable funds for this endeavor, so you’ve got travel and lodging covered. Have Miss Whispers book whatever you need. Let her know where you will be, and she’ll keep me appraised of how things are going. Will you need Antler to go with you, or can you feed him info and have him get back to you? He works better here.” The Director had a bit of concern in his eye. Dino nodded assent.

Once she had finished eating Dino went to talk to Matisse. On the way out she passed by Dudley and Dave who were both done eating and hunched over one of Dudley’s computers. She would need to be there tomorrow. She would also need a car rented, and a hotel. Tulsa International, a cheap car, and a hotel with a gym, she went over the list in her head. She was already trying to figure out how to gain access to the archive.

“Hi Matisse?” Dino said, Matisse looked up from the catalog she was looking through. She looked ridiculous hovering over the big green desks. Matisse hadn’t really heard her speak yet; she had a hint of an accent, maybe South American, but it only appeared on certain words. She looked far less extreme in the sweatshirt.

“Oh, Hi Dino.” Matisse said, standing and coming over to the counter and Dino. “What’s up?”

“I need a round trip plane ticket for Tulsa, Arizona. I’ll need a car rental and a return flight for Friday.” It was just after lunch on Wednesday. Dino seemed tense although Matisse didn’t know the woman enough to be sure. “Tomorrow I need a hotel room with a weight room.” Dino finished. “Also I need an in at the Topographical history society in Arizona. I don’t remember the town it’s in, but there’s only one.” This time she spoke more to the air than to Matisse.

“Ok, I got, the flight, the car, and the hotel.” Matisse said. “You also need me to call a society and get you an appointment?”

“I actually wasn’t talking to you at the last part, but that might do the trick.” Dino said cryptically she then walked off towards the book weight room. “I gotta’ catch some sleep. Wake me in an hour or so?”

Matisse picked up her phone and really wished she had a computer. After calling two of the big airlines, and the local branch of a car rental chain, there were tickets and claim numbers being run over by courier. A moment later the small door opened, and Evan trotted out with a post it note in one hand. He walked right by Matisse and stuck the post it to the outside of the weight room door. The front of it was blank. On the way back to his small door he nodded to Matisse.

“I have the whole place bugged and hear everything that’s said over a whisper. It helps me keep track of paper work.” Evan said. “Tomorrow when your computer is up and running I’ll fill you in on how our intercom works. Do you have a time for furniture yet?”

“My desk should be here by ten, and the front desk and break room stuff will be here right after lunch.” Matisse said. “Both desk chairs will be here with my desk.”

“Perfect. Dino has a room above the locker room there’s a ladder beside the bookshelf to the right. Wake her up before you go home at five, she’s gonna need the rest. What time’s her flight?” Evan asked.

“She flies out at three AM, should arrive by Seven, I got her an early check in, and late check out Friday. Her return flight takes off at noon.” Matisse had already written all of this in her file book.

Evan

Shuttling along the catwalks that criss-crossed above the office ceilings Evan made his way to one of several platforms built into the frame work. He sat at his type writer and tapped out a quick note. Beside the typewriter was a full size bed covered with pillows. A moment later he pulled the post it note from the type writer and continued back along the catwalk. He reached a platform with a large rack of various firearms. He placed the post it on the stainless steel counter that ran along the bottom of the gun rack. Then he shuttled away. He momentarily cocked his head Dave had asked for a foreign money order. A moment later the ear piece Evan always wore chimed softly. It was the front door.

“It’s Doc, Evan.” A woman’s voice said. Then a moment later, “Oh you must be Matisse? I’m Evelyn. Everyone calls me Doc. I’m the voice of reason among these parts.” Evan smiled. Doc was the mother hen of the office. She was probably one of the most educated people in the world.

Dave

Dave watched the stock ticker on his computer. He was excited to say the least. Dudley had predicted a stock swing that was proving extraordinarily profitable. He was looking over a motley collection of outdated looking government manuals, notes handwritten in Korean, and bad photocopies of receipts. There was a necessity by a wealthy North Korean defector, to figure out which particular North Korean higher up was responsible for a certain decision about five years prior. Dave’s specialty was government agencies. Foreign or domestic, past or present, Dave had an uncanny knack of piecing together how they operated. Dave also had a nose for where the real power lay if it wasn’t evident from the basic political structure. He often posed as a nut case political conspiracy buff to talk government employees out of inane information, citing everything from journalistic integrity, to freedom of information, to the chance to ‘BE a part of history!’ It was an elaborate crock rooted in reality.

He filled out and put postage on an envelope and left it for Evan to add a money order to. It was a ‘thank you’ note. Then he quickly sold off the stocks he had been watching and transferred the funds through several banks and spent the last half hour of the day deleting almost everything he had done on the computer before powering down and unplugging all the cables from the machine and leaving the office for the night. Matisse had been gone about an hour. Dave could hear Dino on the treadmill, from the weight room. He left the office and hopped on his mountain bike to ride home.

The End!! (A Mayan inspired story raw 1st draft)

2012-12-20T14:33:00.001-08:00

Decline raw first draft

2012-12-20T11:42:00.003-08:00

A state of decline.

Complacency is paramount to decline

Life by nature is either improving or declining.

If you don’t spend every minute working for something more you begin the downward slide. Yet there are times when striving and pushing get to be too taxing. It is at these times that you look around and say ‘you’ve made it!’ You are where you want to be. You stop and enjoy it, you spend less energy on improving and more on enjoyment. You then realize that it is harder to maintain those things you are enjoying. You begin not being able to afford them, you either panic and frantically try to maintain the enjoyment of what you surmised you had earned. Or you grit your teeth, give up the pleasures, and time to enjoy them and work more. You earn them back! Only to realize that as soon as you stop to enjoy them they begin to slip away.

Characterised by what?

2012-11-28T14:33:00.002-08:00

Character study

This couldn’t be happening. The convenient store was being robbed. All I wanted was a pint of ice cream. The guy was nervous, late thirties, and looked indignant. It was a fairly dangerous combination. The clerk was cowering near the window in the corner of the little clerk bunker. The guy wheeled on me…pointed the gun right at me. It was trembling, he was shaking, I made I contact.

“Hey what do you need?” I said giving a compliant little shrug. On my face I tried to show competent reservation, and scared, but helpful. In my mind I was racing out what I knew. If he wanted to shoot anyone he would’ve. Which meant he was either just robbing, or he was robbing but had something to say. I gave him the opportunity to tell me which he was by showing that I was cooperative and would help facilitate his demands. Then I waited…

“I n-.” He began, however as soon as he started to talk I stepped inside the barrel of the pistol grabbing his pistol hand while rolling so my back was pressing into his should. I had both hands on his forearm, and he could get his other hand around to help. The gun went off. Everything started ringing. There was smoke. I wrenched the gun towards his thumb rolling it out of his hand, his finger was stuck in the trigger guard, I felt him tense up and felt the crunch when the finger broke. If the damn gunshot hadn’t left me hearing nothing but a steady buzz I probably would have heard it. I rolled back out facing him, holding the gun by the top back, it was warming from being fired. He started to look up, his face contorted in pain. I stepped off my left foot and drove my right foot into his midsection just below his ribs like I was kicking a door in. He folded over even as his hips shot out from under him, flopping and landing square on his tail bone, but still having enough momentum that his body rolled back hard and he smacked the back of his head hard on the cement. His whole body contorted for the fetal position causing him to start to sit up and I stepped up and kicked him again just as hard with a downward motion square in the face, right between his nose and his forehead. Again his head flew back and struck the floor, but this time it bounced a little and rolled to the side, he was completely out.

The police would have a lot of questions. I really didn’t have any good answers. I just reacted. This is how I’ve always thought. So naturally when it happened I reacted exactly how I intended to.

These keys…I’m hunched over them fiendishly spelling out my very thoughts. We’re wrestling you see. These thoughts and I, We are embattled.

The tales, the twists, the ideas, these things overwhelm me. At times I have to stop, to hide to get myself centered. Only then can they come to me. Only then in the silence can I understand them, and spend enough time with them to understand them. Some of them are sweet…I cherish their innocence. Others are dark, violent seething vestiges. They frighten me in their primal simplicity, but awe me in their pragmatic and stark view of life. Some of them are inspired, showing me the truth behind the world and seeing that anger and rage are futile as everything that happens; happens exactly as it must. Therefore we can only respect the path and be better prepared to emotionally deal with the inevitableness and futility of bad things. Then there are others that are darker still. Not violent, but dark, sweaty, hidden things. Things that breathe hard and whisper and shake, but feel so very gratifying…

These keys…they demand so much, I forget to record half the stories that pound through my skull. I am but human, and frail at that, there is too much to record it all…I can only hope to put enough to paper that it doesn’t destroy me.