Anonymous asked:
what is a “big donkey”? had to ask. is it implying something phalic? dinky? hmmm weird
anyways. congrats on your promotion. ive never had one before and im 29 fucking years old. i missed your blog. hope all is good with you
~jill but staying anon bc i know you hate anime blogs and stuff and I deleted my nsfw accnt
I have no idea what “big donkey” is referring to, looked like a shitpost to me but I will not turn away engagement.
I’m 29 too! That post was actually written 7 years ago and I found it dusty and forgotten in my drafts and felt like it was worth sharing. Maybe I should do a reintroduction and touch base here, give the tumblr crowd an update on what I’m doing these days?
I’m not sure why you think I hate anime blogs when I don’t. I don’t care for the fandom blogs and I can’t stand narcissists and influencers. But I do watch a lot of anime and would be positively inclined towards anime-themed blogs?
Glad to be back though Jill, thanks. Hope you’re doing well.
Anonymous asked:
🫳🏿🦶🏻BÎG DONKIE 👂🏿
Thanks, you too.
I was looking through old drafts and found this one from 7 years ago. Some of it is still relevant, some if it isn’t. But we’re working through it until the dirt fills up the box and seeps through the seams.
It’s good, it’s bad - it’s life.
I’ve been homeless for the past 20 days, yet I haven’t missed a single shift and just got promoted. Moving into a new place and my fourth town in the past year on Tuesday.
I’ve been at a sort of crossroads lately where my future is concerned and I have options that have all been given equal weight, them being joining the Air Force, applying at a hospital doing primarily ER work, applying for the railroad, going back to Florida, killing myself, etc. Typical 22 year old stuff.
Honestly, I’m probably just gonna keep doing what I’ve been doing, which is work sleep work sleep repeat repeat repeat.
It’s funny that you choose today to message me. Been thinking about sending you one all day, when suddenly I’m on my lunch break and see that you got around to it first this time.
This year, I’ve been the calm and collected passenger on an airplane that left the gate with only half a tank of fuel, and I can’t tell if it’s going to crash and kill everyone onboard, or make an emergency landing in the middle of the ocean. I’m just along for the ride at this point, trying to keep my fellow passengers from panicking, letting them know that at this point, the only control they still retain is breath intake and consistency.
I’ve been having dreams that range from passing glances and irritated words from you in crowded areas, to 3rd person adventures in a black and white turn-of-the-century Italy where there’s a trail of blood running between the alleyways and a dying old man within a broken doorframe, to having religious debates in a lawyer’s office while on a crashing oil rig, to having angry sex with an enemy and throwing my friends down long and spiraling staircases. Most nights I don’t even dream, but that’s only because I don’t find myself dreaming if I go to bed not-sober.
That’s me right now, but it’s not me every day. Life? It’s barely ever dull. Tell me about your experiences as a brain on a spine floating through space.
Does anyone remember me? Am I still here?
Can deep and overwhelming sadness kill you?
(via twfp)
GOOD LUCK
Four Hundred & Eighty Seconds
Everything felt alright and I woke up wanting to live. It was 6:48 a.m. and this morning was the first morning where my world was comfortably, even sincerely, quiet, in longer than I care to remember. There are no stained tissues in the disproportionate bathroom garbage; no marks on the ceiling from my almost ritualistic nightly gaze into its straight-faced demeanor; no empty outgoing calls from some sort of hopeful prior night. Just a quilt, open window, and half-filled water bottle. Eyes closed and hands unclenched, I slowly sit up.
6:49 and I catch myself again. Time has been the deadly infection of my fragile eco-system-centered-mind since I was a child and it has always won the battle of Nervous Ticks and Unconscious Priorities. Formerly regrettably (but now thankfully), it also recently won the battle of Paranoid Skepticism and Cynical Optimism with a dash of Unaccounted Hurtful Words.
“I spend too much time thinking about time and in so, I lose the time spent on enjoying life.”
The sounds produced from my vocal chords at precisely 6:49 and 32 seconds make me wonder when last I even spoke out loud. Was it yesterday? Last week? When was the last time I even left my apartment other than to buy climber’s rope and a ballpoint pen? Either way, my neck was still sore and my ceiling only stared back when watching from the floor in the closet. The pen still rests on the open letter simply addressed, Mrs. Rabbit. Eighteen seconds later and the open letter is in pieces, littering the trash can and the equally sad used mittens and well-used blanket underneath.
At 6:50, I’m looking into a face that’s 23 years old and questionably residing in the period where your body is awake but your mind is still dreaming. If only I could always live like this, this peaceful and content being alone. I tentatively smile and for the first time in weeks, someone does indeed smile back. Ninety seconds are spent on walking to the kitchenette, filling the kettle, sitting down, and breathing. Sixty-eight seconds later and tea is soothing my already tranquil nerves. Twenty-two seconds and I see the sun start to break last night’s hold on the natural light control.
This is it; exactly what I told myself I wanted as a child but forgot as a young adult - peace of mind, a quiet, lonely apartment, and a sad story to cheer myself up after work. By 6:54, I have all my windows open and for some reason, the mindset I woke up in doesn’t live up to the sun’s expectations. It’s still dark, as if the sun were setting on an overcast day. This doesn’t seem normal, but maybe in my time spent drudging up empty bottles and crowded sentences, the apocalypse occurred. Even though it’s the dead of winter, this cold doesn’t fit. This is the frost I shed upon waking, covering my walls in grayscale lights. It’s alright though, because today I’m happy to exhale once more.
By 6:55, my mug is empty. I rinse the mug and place it on the counter. By 6:55 and 38 seconds, at least 3 billion humans have exhaled their final breath. At 6:56, I exhale my final breath. At 6:48, the sun exhaled its final breath.
The Why Is Silent
The day I beat the ever-living-shit out of a homeless man was the first day in months where I felt good about myself. That wretched piece of trash had the audacity to smile at me and actually look happier than I did! I’m the one with the high-paying corporate job. I’m the one with a bitch waiting at home to make me happy and service my needs. Fuck, I’m the one with friends in top-secret government positions working on God knows what! And still, that useless arrangement of atoms and tattered clothing seriously attempted to flash that grin of broken teeth and expect some form of good will in return. It’s as if he thinks we’re good people, that I’m a good person.
I’m not one of the bad guys, but that doesn’t mean that I’m one of the good guys either. My name is Roy Lane and I am 34 years old. Every goddamn day for the past few years has been some variation of:
- Wake up.
- Take a cold shower.
- Eat breakfast.
- Get stuck in traffic on the way to work.
-
Make sure to get on my assistant’s ass for not showing enough leg.
- Laugh it off and move on.
- Get angrier and angrier throughout the day because of my moronic, not even triple-certified co-workers until I’m almost at the point of threatening them.
- Leave work.
- Get stuck in traffic on the way home.
- Ignore Mona and Sophie.
- Drink a glass of wine while going over reports.
- Yell at Lauren when she walks in 3 hours late wearing some anarchist shirt and telling me that ‘I just don’t understand what it’s like to be so young and yet be so completely right about my views and have no way to express them other than music!’
- Sigh.
- Eat dinner at a stifled table.
- Expect sex.
- Jerk off.
- Go to sleep feeling like shit.
- Repeat until I die.
What started off today, though, wasn’t just the norm, it was the awakening I thought I had in my 20’s and now grasp again in my 30’s, yet deeper. The medium was a telephone and the trigger was a set of words that went:
“Lane, get your ass down to the office right now! This is serious. You’ll be filled in once you get here. What the fuck are you doing? Get off the phone and leave the house or it’s my job!”
In my rush to get up, Mona stirred and mumbled some string of words that I don’t bother trying to understand.
“I was just called in, some big emergency. Love you, bye.”
“Hurrrmphhjstbhomeokvloeyotooby.”
She can’t even muster the coherency to speak properly; what a disappointment. I watch her roll over and fall back asleep and what I really see is her sitting up 15 years ago and shyly smiling as queen morphs into twin and solitude turns embrace into the designated lifestyle. Whatever’s happened since then has surely not been planned, but I don’t love anything anymore. I haven’t felt anything but hostility in so long that it’s turned me into the kind of person that would smother his wife in her sleep if it weren’t for a memory.
Disregarding that as me being too hungry and letting my anger come out for a second, I stand up, blink my eyes, doze off, and end up wet, in a towel, and brushing my teeth while staring at absolutely nothing in the mirror. Strange how something always manages to stare back. Those dull, lifeless irises could taint the most elegant of masterpieces and leave enough hate remaining to deprive every child of happiness for the next twenty years. The dark semi-circles above my cheeks could provide ink enough to write out thousands upon thousands of obituaries. These are the kinds of things I think about every single day as I wake up and wait for my life to put me back to sleep so I can just wake up and go back to sleep the next day.
Once I’m in my car and my garage door slowly opens, miles are counted and garbage cans are avoided until a red light stops me in my supposed moment of peace. The car in front of me stops short, which forces me to speed up, swerve around it, flip the asshole off, and speed up some more before the oncoming traffic has a chance to touch me. Fuck that guy. I’m not losing my job over some other person who also has obligations that need attending to. Not even caring if a cop saw that or not, I keep driving towards the 80 story building filled with the best of the depressing multi-faceted best. Letting the unconscious take over again, I drift off until the car doors are locked and the sidewalk is the only thing keeping me alive.
As I approach the street that my office is on, I glance down an alley out of sheer curiosity. A pair of legs covered with the filth of a dirty mammal and the dignity of a being with unwanted thoughts peeks out from behind a cracked trash can. I stand there in disgust at this pile of bones and flesh as it starts to sit up and tentatively looks my way. I look him dead in the eye and he looks into my own, dead, eyes.
“Hey, buddy. Fuck you! If you even ask me for a penny, I swear I’ll break both your hands and you’ll never hold another coin again.”
With that, he frowned the type of frown that makes you smile and receded back to the trashcan where he belongs. I turn towards my office and return to my intended path. Every crack in the sidewalk that my black suede shoes land on moves a miniscule amount of gravel and dead skin cells into an adjoining crack and the world is so subtly affected that I imagine with each step, I am the direct cause of a super-plague or some movie-inspiring car crash of legend. One step for the grandmother who sprains her ankle in that same exact spot and one for me. One for the witches and one for my demons.
I walk into the non-descript, white-tiled lobby and head directly towards the elevator. One split-second of darkness and I find myself on the 75th floor, walking towards my boss’s office. The nameplate reads ‘Henry Fischer’, and behind the door it’s bolted to, the lights are turned off. Shit, he really sounded urgent over the phone. I can’t lose this job and I sure as hell can’t afford to be demoted. I need to find Stacy and see what she’s heard from the other assistants.
As I walk towards my desk, I find it odd how easy it is for me to go from almost breaking a homeless man’s hands, to wishing possible death on an elderly woman, to greeting Stacy with a collected gaze and a playful slap on the ass. She’s told me more than once to ‘Cut that shit out Mr. Lane. If the pay here wasn’t double my last job, I would quit immediately.’ This time though, she just sighs, doesn’t say a word, and looks over to the conference room where I see Henry and a majority of the staff. The oldest piece of shit there, Martin, spots me and then everyone in the room is watching me make my way over. Once the door is opened, Henry motions for me to close it and sit down.
“Now that everyone has arrived, we can begin. Do any of you even have the slightest inkling as to why I called you all in on this early Wednesday morning?”
I looked up.
“Sir, does it have anything to do with the PGC theory and the severe ID-Alpha disturbances that have been picked up from the centers at Chicago?”
“Roy, I don’t know who told you about the ID-Alpha disturbances, but rest assured, we will speak about it later. You are correct in your first assumption though; this is most certainly about PGC and why we’re moving from a theory to a privately recognized solution to this mess that’s been costing us millions.”
PGC – Population Growth Control; the efficient, mechanical way to deal with the ever-growing threat of over-population. The company I work for, SolInd Con., is a conglomerate of several government-run, but citizen-funded, corporations that deal in issues such as: How can we sway the masses away from overtly political thinking and into baseline buying and consuming? How can we kill X many civilians to keep Y number of citizens on a strictly controlled routine? When this person steps down from this office on this day at this time, make sure to have the replacement already in high public regard. PGC is only the latest in critical-response measures that need to be taken. Simply, there are too many humans that serve no purpose other than eat, buy, sleep, die, and there are not enough resources to keep them around. For every tombstone we sell, hidden stock goes up and more food is left on our plates. Ever since it was initially proposed ten years ago, not much had been heard about it until recently when my data on it had been mysteriously erased.
“This abrupt meeting was only called to inform everyone in this room of what’s to come and I believe that that goal has been achieved for now. You may all go home for the day and start preparing for the coming weeks. We have a lot of work ahead of us. Roy, you stay. Everyone else, dismissed.”
Fuck, this can’t be good. I shouldn’t have mentioned the ID-Alpha disturbances.
“Roy, you’ve been working with us for thirteen years now and in that time, you have certainly proved your worth more than once; whether it be sexually harassing assistants until one-by-one they all quit, verbally abusing other employees simply because you’re in a shameful mood on that particular day, or just knowing something that you have no business knowing. You’re being terminated and I promise, you’ll never find another job again. Leave the office within 10 minutes. Anything you leave will be burned. All of your personal data on all networks have already been wiped and as we speak, Stacy is finishing a positively delightful conversation with your wife about your behavior towards the women in this office. I wouldn’t recommend going home just yet. Have a good day, Mr. Lane.”
I walk out of the building carrying the same amount of weight as I walked in with, yet so much more. My entire life has been leading up to this exact moment, this mental break, and I refuse to waste it. I’m going to fucking kill the next person I see. Walking down the sidewalk, I spot the same alley where that pathetic pile of shit and carbon was sleeping earlier today. Down goes my briefcase and another for my demons.
His legs aren’t moving and I don’t think he knows I’m here, so I silently walk towards him. I stand directly in front of him, not even a foot, and squat down so we’re nose-to-nose.
“Hello friend, glad to see me? I don’t know anything about you or what led you here, but I do know that you value change, isn’t that right?”
With that, he opens his eyes and smiles. After a few seconds of visual confusion, he frowns upon recognizing me. I stand up and wipe off the imaginary dust from my slacks. Look down, look up, and I grab his fucking greasy mop of hair and slam his face into my incoming knee. I feel his nose shatter. Blood is running down his face and I start mauling the sad excuse for a human. Blow after blow and my hands only get dirtier. Each strike goes a little further into his face and teeth are starting to fall onto his ragged shirt. The back of his head collides with the stone wall at about as fast as I can fucking make it go and I hear something crack.
“Isn’t that something different, friend? Is that not the type of change you base your meaningless life on?!”
I grab the jagged, metal trash can lid next to me and start slashing at his hands. With each minute that passes, another finger is on its own and after 10 minutes, I’m laughing at what I’ve done to this poor mess of blood and tears. His lips part, as if he’s trying to whisper something.
“Please…just…why…”
And like that, I was the happiest person in the whole fucking city. I can let someone else deal with the mess I’ve just made, for I have demons to feed.
Sleep Debt
I blink my focus and steady my eyes on the mistranslated words printed in the novel that’s 480 pages away from being completed. That first sentence is now self-referential upon writing this one, but oh so many are the joys of living the in-progress journal of an insomniac. I’ll try to keep my actions as story-bound as my storytelling dictates, but only for the detectives who will inevitably read this, not for you. To make sure that there are no discrepancies with what ends up on the eventual report, let’s go over the past few rotations of the sun as a team; shall we?
Day One: Consciousness arrival at exactly 6:48 a.m. Light breakfast of [redacted]. Spoke with [redacted] about the fresh influx of inter- [illegible] –ago. Unanimously agreed on conducting one final experiment on the nature of [redacted] vs. the true nature of space-time and the affects of perception loss vs. the universal human/consciousness theorem. Briefly left my apartment to check on [redacted]. Spent the remaining hours in this cycle on removing all evidence from [redacted]. After, meditation and conditioning until the alarm goes off and the gas initiates.
Day Two: At thirty-five hours, forty-eight minutes, and fifty-five seconds precisely, the end of the world begins with a sound not unlike a broken air conditioner whirring in your brain while your eyes mistake it for a human. Left hand is iced while wall is inspected for anomalies. A single anomaly is found, but not visible or accounted for in final hypothesis. It is the anomaly of existence. Pacing, consuming, deconstructing, and evisceration occur routinely. For those few hours, I was the whole of all mankind.
Day Three: Fif- [illegible, along with Day Five, Day Six, Day Eight, Day Nine, Day Ten, and Day Eleven].
Day Four: They. Are. Still. There. Mr. [illegible]. I’ve been awake for what seems like weeks now and still, they come. In my research on sleep deprivation, it seems that I’m putting myself at a major risk for depression, seizures, tremors, and possible brain damage to the point where I can barely understand others and they can’t understand me. Memory loss will be prevalent in the coming days and SHIT SHIT SHIT GET OUT NO [illegible].
Day Seven: I shouldn’t be awake I awake shouldn’t be awake shouldn’t be I, said the solitude-man of Chicago 7. Here, mine, art thou my thoughts which stir the minds of those much lesser than I. Round and round, mind swings down and sure enough, sees a frown when once again, carved via pen, are countless voices in need of a friend. It has been far too long since my eyes have stayed shut and I don’t know if this is worth the research anymore. [illustration of man with black holes for eyes and a waterfall replacing his tongue. redacted.]
Day Twelve: Temporal displacement has to be the answer… [illegible] I need to leave my apartment I NEED TO LEAVE MY APARTMENT.
Which brings me, us, we, everyone in your head and mine, to here; well, I guess we’ve always been here, except for when we were there, but we weren’t even there for that long anyway once we consider the fact that for as long as I’ve been an organized system with a self-aware mind, I’ve been right here.
The novel I’m reading is entitled Everyone Smiled & No One Was Happy. The barren cover doesn’t provide any details as to the plot and neither does the description, simply saying This is not interesting, nor is it entertaining. All it is, was, and ever will be, is a vent from which my mind fell out of. You may take it if you like; just don’t let it shatter like the poor, poor victim near the end of the novel who takes a hammer to hers. Now we all know that it is an actual novel and not something that I made up, right? Right. I’m not crazy, just a little shaken from the past few days.
“Hello sir, I hope you enjoyed that last cup of coffee,” said the waitress with a forced smile.
I had been in this same, independently-run coffeehouse since they opened at 6 this morning and had probably been served more coffee than they normally serve in a week. The low-hanging lights did wonders to keep me awake and the scratchy, garage-quality punk playing through the speakers made me look as though I was just some strung-out caffeine addict who needs the atmosphere to stay ticked.
“Yes, it was delightful. Another, please.”
With that, the waitress walks away. I take a napkin, tear it in half, and use part of it as a bookmark. Once the book is back on the table, the waitress re-appears and my mug is full once more. Shaky hands reach out for it as a steady glare watches me drain the chemically-powered drink. Someone is watching me. Hallucinations can’t produce this kind of paranoia, this acute fear only encouraged by the frequency of my heartbeat. I meticulously scan the room and once my eyes reach a stool being occupied by a man in a black suit, his head swivels towards the barista.
Why would someone…who is…it can’t be…not this soon. How long has it even been? When was that call…a week ago? Two? Three? Is it even the same year as it was when I last woke up? Wait, when was the last time I woke up? I look down to finish my cup of coffee and grab my book and once I look up, the man in the suit is gone.
In the span of a few seconds, I end up in the very same stool, looking back at where I had been idling. The barista walks over to me and I immediately notice that this is the kind of person who would gladly tell me about the previous owner of this space in the world. He looked to be about 22, with short black hair and the beard of a wise man.
“Excuse me, but do you know who was just sitting in this seat? I think I may know him from somewhere, but he left before I had a chance to say something.”
“Ha, sir, you are one of my favorite customers and this only solidifies that. Take another cup on the house.”
“But…”
“I have more customers to attend to. Have a good day.”
And with that, he walked away and I was only further confused. It must be the lack of sleep that’s causing this; there’s no other explanation. Without realizing it, my head drifts towards a certain customer sitting in exactly the same seat that I had been in all day. What is it about this person that seems so menacing? My brain watches as he raises a mug of coffee with shaky hands. As it’s placed back on the table, he starts looking around and before he sees me, I look back towards the barista.
A sharp pain spreads through the back of my eyes and in a split-second, I’m walking towards the rear exit. This must be some form of brain damage or maybe even a stroke. I can’t remember the exact ramifications of putting an unprepared body through what I’ve put myself through, but this can’t be a good sign.
Walking out the door and into the alley, I hear manic steps. This is getting to be an issue. The sunlight barely shines through the fire escapes and concrete wonders. Looking down to avoid the light, the first thing I notice is a small bird pecking at a french fry. The second thing I notice is that this french fry has a fingernail at the end of it; it must be another hallucination. I walk towards the bird and it flies away, dropping the finger next to a cracked, metal trash can.
I squat down and pick up the finger. It landed in what seems to be a bloodstain. In fact, this whole area seems to be one giant bloodstain. On the wall immediately in front of me, it looks like a tuft of hair is wedged in-between a crack. Whatever happened here, it had to have been recent, that is, if anything even happened at all and I’m not imagining all of this. Following the wall to the ground, I see a cluster of teeth and two more fingers.
Right as I stand up and take a step back, someone falls out of the backdoor to the coffeehouse and I run like hell. Leg-over-leg, step-through-step, I fumble out of the alley and almost get hit by a car as I sprint across the street. What if it’s that same guy, the guy in the suit? Maybe it’s the one with the shaky hands, taunting me from my own table. I need to go back to the coffeehouse, ask the barista what he meant before. This time, I look up and catch the name of the place, Milford’s Beans. I’ll make sure to mark that down in my final report – ‘Milford’s Beans, a hotbed of DO NOT ENTER EVER AGAIN.’
In approaching the building, I see someone lying down in the middle of the road. My eardrums pop and blood trickles from my nose as I hear a tremendous rip in the very fabric of the air. I stumble towards the person in the road to try to pull them away from the traffic. I fall through and end up lying in the very same position, staring at the clouds.
An event horizon, as many have put it, is no longer out of reach. The stitching of the sky unravels strand-by-strand. It’s as if in only that point on Earth, the world was split in two. Something is coming out of this hole and it looks to be descending.
This being…this…disturbance, can it be? Were we right? Inter-Dimensional Alpha wasn’t supposed to be correct…No; this has to be another hallucination. I just need to focus on it, take in as much detail as possible before I lose myself. Two legs, now a torso, wait, now it’s six legs, two heads, and…no…It’s me.
My mind goes white and my eyes roll into the back of my head. The medical term used here would be seizure. Using whatever energy I have, I force my eyes open and what I see will stay with me for the rest of my life. It’s magnificent, surely a hallucination, but more than I could have ever imagined. Science will explain this one day, but I won’t. To explain this creature, the true anomaly of this planet, would take longer than I have left to speak.
I blink my eyes and I’m back at my table, idly thumbing through a novel. I close it, take a sip of my coffee, and notice someone staring at me.
To Pine
As I reach for the top shelf, I hear something crack and for once, it’s not me or my bones, but simply the walls. Surely a good sign that today’s show will be memorable. Closing the cupboard, I notice that one of the hinges is creaky; something I’ll have to keep an eye on. After a few minutes of preparation, there is a small bag of popcorn in my coat pocket. The dead of winter is still not dead enough for me to reciprocate, but to be safe, I put on my scarf before locking the front door and stepping onto the sidewalk.
Looking at my watch, the time is half-past-noon – a fitting time to start my journey. While my destination, the park bench at the intersection of Pike St. and Irish Lane, isn’t more than a twenty-minute walk, leaving now will make sure that I arrive with time to spare. Can’t miss another show and definitely can’t be late. Looking back up, the wind blows in my eyes and if I squint, I can just make out a fragment of the day-to-day existence of this patch of concrete. Everyone may be gone, but the air has never felt more refreshing.
My legs intertwine with the crosswalk and eventually, the other side of the road as I start to approach my old school; the school that I was in as a child and my children and children’s children attended. To think, thousands of lives began with the ill-advised teachings of the mental-terrorists who taught here. To think, six lives ended here. I moved past my own false reality decades ago, but it still troubles me when I remember how sure of myself I was back then; how right everything felt and how arrogant I only became when I thought I moved past the previous year’s model. This building only breeds the minds of the malleable and as malleable as I once was and still may be, stretch my mind far enough and it’s simply putty for the masses to mold as one person after another sees fit. Condemned long after it commandeered many an education, the worst it can do now is disrupt the air flow and soil.
I leave the school behind for the last time and continue. Smiling couples, smiling children, smiling birds, everyone I pass today just seems to be happy where they are; good for them I say. They’ve still got so much ahead of them and whatever’s behind them has only brought them to this moment. I check my watch again and it’s quarter-to-one, still plenty of time. As I turn the corner, an enormous tree comes into view and with it, fond memories of elementary school botany. I walk to the park entrance and stop to watch the passersby come and go as they focus on their where and hopefully why. As hoped, there still remains a single living organism within the borders of the streets surrounding me.
A small child wearing a baseball cap walks up to me. I smile and she smiles back. I see her parents not too far off and they wave. Odd, how trusting people are with their eyes and legs, but who am I to judge when I’m in the process of losing mine anyway.
“Hiya Mister, my Mommy and Daddy bring me here every weekend. The swings are my favorite. Do you like to swing?”
“Hello little girl; I did when I was your age, but I’m not so good at swinging anymore,” I said with a laugh.
“Hm, why can’t you anymore?”
“Well, I’m an old man now. I used to be young like you and when I was a little boy, I swung every single day. I did so much more than swing in this particular park though. Would you like to hear a story?”
“Yes! I love stories!”
“Ha, I’m glad to hear that. You see, a very long time ago, I was a little boy who went to the school around the corner. At that time, this park was just grass and a single bench. My second grade teacher had an idea, the sort of idea that gets you really excited. The idea was for me and my classmates to each plant a pine tree in this park so that by the time we were grandparents with much experience and turmoil to look back on, there would always be the tree we planted here to represent a simpler time. The original goal was to have a beautiful park for the children. Here’s the fun part, though. I didn’t like the other kids very much. Actually, I didn’t really like anything very much. The kinds of things that brought happiness to me were coated in the sadness of others. That’s just how I was raised; I thought it was normal. So on the day of the planting, I replaced my pine tree seed with something else. Can you guess what I replaced it with?”
With visible confusion on her face, she said, “No, I can’t. Tell me!”
“I replaced my pine tree seed with the seed of the black walnut tree. It’s a very special tree and it was chosen for very special reasons. The black walnut kills pine trees and almost everything around it. The local fauna rots and decays and all that’s left is an entity that kills all but itself. The dream of self-preservation, clearly displayed for only me to be enthralled by year after year.”
With that said, the little girl looked around and for the first time, she saw the park how I saw the park – a single tree surrounded by dead grass. There are no squirrels. No flowers to bring hope every spring. No bees to pollinate the flowers. No natural predators of any kind, whether it be insect or mammalian. The only two predators here are me and my old friend, the black walnut. Two of a kind one could say.
“It was nice sharing my story with you little girl. Be sure not to tell anyone, ok? It’s our secret.”
“Alright Mister. I think I’m gonna go back to my swings. Bye.”
“Goodbye.”
I turn my back to the park and start walking away. Strange, how after all this time, nothing else has grown; it’s like my seed all those years ago killed so much more than the seeds of others. The ideas instilled in this park are as dead as the dreams my classmates had for a forest to play in. Such a triviality, these silly games of which actions were right then but wrong now. That is one thing that I have been able to observe in my years of passivity; no matter how backwards a choice may be once made, it is always somehow justified and that justification lasts until the idea is dead and the memory is forgotten. Wrought advocacy is not something that will ever be fixed down the road after the choice is made. What always seems to follow are acts of grandeur, speeches made about how to make things better by working around what is too difficult to admit. Maybe this is something that will never be changed as long as the people turning these ideas into reality are as parasitic as the ideas themselves.
The hands on my wristwatch read three-minutes-to-one as I quicken my pace. The bench is in sight. As I get closer, I notice that it’s empty. Perfect. It would be a waste to have to share such an anticipated moment with another person. Finally here on time, I sit down and relax. One leg naturally crosses the other with my left ankle resting on my right knee. My head leans back with the scarf creating a pillow of sorts and the first thing I see are the clouds. It’s amazing, how they still look as wondrous as they did when I was a child, the only thing to retain its innocence. I reach my hand into my pocket and take out the popcorn. Showtime.
I look down the road patiently and to my surprise, I see the little girl from the park skipping towards me with her parents trailing behind at a brisk pace; how poetic. They look like decent people and I’m sure that they would’ve raised a fine daughter one day if given the opportunity. As they approach the bench, the mother and father don’t seem to realize that I’m the same man from the park and neither does the daughter. Three sets of legs step onto the empty road and I hear a small, honest voice ask a question.
“Daddy, what does self-preservation mean?”
I can almost hear the puzzlement in his smile and before he has a chance to respond, my show begins. A car going well over the speed limit flies through the red light and hits all three bodies at the same time. They practically explode as bones break and pieces of flesh and clothing are scattered across the road. The car just keeps going, apparently content with what has occurred.
From the open window in the apartment building across the street, only two things are heard – laughter, and a single person clapping.
To Prosper
“See that man on the bench? The one who keeps checking his watch?”
“Yeah, I see him. Think I should aim for him? Because I was thinking more that bus of school children that passes by here every day around this time. Could you imagine man, all those little kids watching something like that? If only we were exposed to such things at their age.”
“Well, as good for them as it may be, trust me. Go for the old man. He comes by here almost every day and he needs this more than any piece of shit kid.”
“I trust you, so old man it is. How much longer?”
“Few minutes, give or take how much of impact you plan to make.”
“Ha. I’m sure you’ll know just as well as I will.”
“You know what kind of impact we’re speaking of, right? You could change a lot of opinions if you don’t screw this up.”
“What kind of opinions are we talking about here? The kinds of opinions that are swayed by an act as simple as what I’m about to do? We don’t need those kinds of people. If they don’t believe in it themselves and don’t arrive there on their own terms after whatever hardships they’ve traversed, then it’s useless anyway. Don’t follow the leader who jumps off of a building.”
With those last words, I run to the edge and after seven well-placed steps, I leap towards the sky below, 80 stories down. I did it. I finally did it. Oh shit I did it; I jumped. I jumped. Shit shit shit I jumped why did I jump? SHIT I JUMPED. Ok, ok, just…just…remember. Why am I doing this? To better myself and no one else. Why no one else? Because every single entity I’ve encountered thus far has only been an extension of me and by denying myself a couple decades spent living, I’m presenting a gift to the whole of my species, the gift of a clean mental slate.
-755ft to Destination-
So I’m about to die. Well, I’ve been about to die ever since I was born, but this is simply the closest I’ve come. No, wait, now this is the closest I’ve come. No, now. Now. Now. No, stop, I can’t thought-loop my psyche when every misplaced image can’t be painted over. Death…the detachment of the personality from the corpse, the awkward pauses in conversation where I can feel my eyes grow just that much heavier; the ultimate lucid dream. Being so close to it now, I can understand at the same level as I did when I first gave my life ending any serious thought; that complete, yet incomplete notion of existing while non-existing, the essence of white space, the daydream that lasts into the night.
My way of imagining it has always correlated to a recurring dream that I’ve had since I was maybe 4 or 5 years old. In this dream, I exist in a realm of utter nothingness. In this realm, no matter what direction you take or whatever actions lead your limbs, the effect is about as apparent as the cause is discernible. In this state of existence, time has no beginning and has no end. Everything around me is blank and the best way to describe it would be empty space. I am here for a reason and this reason comes to me in a complete thought, as if I experienced the idea all at once; in a realm without time, surely not inconceivable. The thought consists of a person who I haven’t met yet at that point in my life but I now recognize as someone close to me who needs my help. I attempt to speak and no words come out, but the blanket of space that has been keeping me docile is slightly rumpled and what is revealed is a bio-dome of sorts. Don’t get me wrong, the empty space remains and it feels alone, but a few bushes and trees exist alongside me in this new mental world. I begin to run and I can see numbers in my head counting down from ten. The first few seconds seem to take a lifetime, yet each individual nano-second is split into the mere act of breathing and non-breathing until everything is so sped up that my life is lived and re-lived multiple times.
Whatever I’m moving towards could represent multiple things now that I look back on it, but at the time, it was just a person. Perhaps it was the attention or simply the act of looking my way; perhaps it represented a too-ignored side of me; but with this person seeming to be at risk for something grave, the strain on my psyche during the dream was staggering. So I’m attempting to run to this person because I need to save them no matter what and everything begins to slow down. My screams echo throughout the void and a bush catches my leg, causing me to trip. I can’t stand up and all I can hear are millions of numbers crashing through my mind. Once zero is reached, everything becomes still and my blood ceases circulation. Someone starts to cry and I no longer exist as a human being. I become part of the whiteness, part of the nothingness one could say. To be there while not being there simultaneously is a fascinating place to be.
Coming out of the dream, I was always left in the same state for sometimes days. Time has no meaning and there’s this pressure that’s alleviated from my thought process. Over the years, I explored that place and each visit became a little more distant, a little less focused until eventually, I could achieve that bliss by closing my eyes and blocking out all thought.
Something hits me in the arm and tears right through it. I can feel the muscles tear as follicles and pores are ripped apart and my blood stains the windows that pass me by on my descent. I think I hit a bird. Yes. I jumped off of a building and the first thing I hit isn’t the ground, but a bird.
-620ft to Destination-
Better to hit a bird than be shit on by one during my fall. I couldn’t even imagine, being shit on right after I die. Actually, I would very much like that. Surely something I would brag about to friends if I woke up. What am I thinking, ‘if I woke up’. That’s the kind of thinking that led to a developed world and a developed world is what led to the death of everything else. Earth would’ve been heavily changed by the dominant species no matter what and even though the newspapers and anchormen always say that we’re killing the planet, no, we’re not. We’re making it unsuitable for human life and evidently, much more than that. The planet will be just fine. We will be just fine. In the over-arching outline of all that ever is, we were dead much longer than we were alive and a return to normalcy may be what the current civilization needs.
To kill a planet – to assume that once all human life is gone, that all life stops until someone is there to observe it. The conscious observer is just as bad as the conscientious objector and with both out of the way, maybe a pair of eyes will be able to appreciate something, anything, without either martyring it or attempting to organize an intrinsically chaotic system. Order comes from chaos and chaos from order; man from society and society from man. In both cases, one seems to be in control of the other. In both cases, that one is what spends a majority of its span as the unwilling, sleeping guise of the other.
-560ft to Destination-
Someone must be watching me right now. Someone is seeing this body fall to the street. I’m sure that there has to be at least one parent covering the eyes of a child. I hope my body bounces and hits that parent in the face. Yes, I know that parents think they reserve the right to shield their children from the horrors of this world, but children need just as much violence and terror exposure as they need tenderness and love. The kids that I’ve seen grow up since I’ve been aware enough to observe with patience have been all but blocked from seeing anything worthwhile. This is almost certainly not true worldwide and if it is, then I thank the lack of morality in the past few years for leading us to this, but children in this day and age lack almost every universally accepted attribute that make up for a stable, future-privileged human being. The people who grew up into leaders, thinkers, builders, artists, were not told to sit inside all day and watch someone who’s paid to entertain them. The technological advances that have been made within a generation have essentially changed the way that humans are raised in every single way. Humans aren’t raised in any way similar to what once passed for culturing a being.
Everyone who can’t read or write is looked down upon; everyone who is without basic computer literacy is labeled backwards, obsolete; everyone who is without a job and an education, ostracized to the point where it’s a sub-culture on its own. The thing is, that describes almost the entire human species. Instead of being raised to develop into a stable person with creative outlets chosen by the individual and paths taken at will, we’re all on mood-altering something or other and the outlets chosen are the outlets bought. We just plug in and absorb, whether it be the musings of Bukowski or the tales of Serling. No matter how high in regard the medium is kept, it is still nothing more than a medium, there to meet you half-way and keep you there until you create for yourself or imitate other imitators.
Feathers are pulled by the wind and out of my outstretched arms. From the ground, I must look like some sort of falling angel.
-415ft to Destination-
Out of everyone I’ve ever met, I wonder how many of them will realize that their last time seeing me was the last time that they’d ever see me. I’ve personally never been to a funeral, but I might as well show up to my own.
-350ft to Destination-
The open cut on my arm is being lacerated by the air flowing around it.
It doesn’t pain me at all. Not much pains me at this point. My mind is clear and my sympathetic nervous system – as calm as it’s ever been. At my rate of descent, I should be hitting the ground any second now. The old man better have stayed on that bench; he’ll be needing this. This all feels too surreal. If time as we understand it is truly a fundamental law that governs us, then I should have hit the ground ages ago. As much control as I have over the rate at which I perceive the world around me, it seems almost implausible that one could fall for this long. A single step, followed by a long fall; a single dream followed by a long awakening.
-235ft to Destination-
This is it; any moment now and it will be complete. The wind resistance can only resist me for so long. Try as hard as anyone may, for to stop something this long in the making, one would need to reset humanity itself. In my most optimistic reasoning, would that necessarily be such a bad thing? Sure, the road moving towards me may not exist, but neither would the workers who built the road, the parents who raised the workers. The immigrants who wanted something better and the ones set on making something worse for their intended future.
-110ft to Destination-
Where will these thoughts go once I hit the pavement? They can’t be lost to the clouds or oceans; can’t be found by the travelers or the beggars. If I regard myself as no more than an idea, then I will spend the rest of eternity lingering with my internal voice. My thoughts aren’t just spawned within myself and forgotten once I’m gone; it can’t be as simple as that. They must exist elsewhere, a place where the ideas that bring about species-wide revolutions in cognitive-ability and mutual understanding go to await the next cycle of patience-enabled statues. Some call it the collective unconscious and others just refer to it as deep-space, but I prefer to imagine the place where my concepts and ideas go to live out their usefulness as a realm readily available to anyone able to tap into potential, tap into my limited awareness and expand it beyond recognition. If what I’ve learned is still able to grow long after I’m dead, then maybe they won’t be Event #4. Maybe they’ll prosper.
And then I hit the-
Glass Ceiling
A lighter, some condoms, an energy drink. Receipt. Two bags of chips, milk, a loaf of bread, gum. Receipt. Chocolate bar, iced tea, breath mints. Receipt. Ballpoint pen. Receipt.
“Thank you, have a good night.”
“Your business is appreciated, come back soon.”
“Bye, have a good one.”
As I walk to the door to flip the open sign to ‘Closed’, I see one more person walking towards the store. It’s only a single customer, couldn’t hurt to do a little more business. The silver bell rings as the door is opened and the basic medical care aisle is walked down as I make my way back to the register. This job isn’t so bad. Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be; three months in and not a single incident, not a single misstep. My head looks straight ahead and the customer is no longer in the medical aisle, but standing not two feet in front of me.
“Find everything alright?”
“Yeah, it was no problem. You don’t seem to carry any gauze though. That may be a problem.”
I looked down at the counter to see that there was nothing there.
“Yeah, we don’t carry it anymore. Some issue between the supplier and the manager of this store. Try again in a few weeks and we should be re-stocked.”
He looked towards the front door, then back at me. For some reason, he’s starting to make me nervous.
“Why, is that a problem?”
“Well, I actually came in here because a friend of mine cut herself shaving and wanted something to help stop the bleeding. Yeah, she asked me to come down here and grab some gauze for her.”
“Uh huh. If she cut herself so badly that she needed gauze, why not just take her to the hospital?”
“Because then you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we? Let me ask you something before I go.”
I caught myself before I frowned and turned it into a sort-of laugh.
“Ha, sure. Just be quick. Your friend sounds hurt and if you’re still going with the gauze, there’s a store down the road that closes soon that I know should have some.”
The customer smiled and said, “She can wait.”
She can wait? What kind of person is this? If she’s hurt, he shouldn’t be fooling around in some local store, he should be helping his friend. How could anyone just abandon someone in need like that, even out of favor.
“I hope I’m not keeping you too long, just a moment,” he said as he picked up a briefcase. I didn’t even see him walk in with one. He quickly opened it.
In went his arm.
Out came a fear I didn’t even know I had.
Before I could raise the silent alarm, a gun was pointed at my forehead.
I froze with both arms locked in place on the counter.
“Listen, if you want money, there’s not a lot. This is a small store and we don’t do that much business. Take what you want, but please, don’t shoot,” I said with a steady voice. My hands were shaking.
“If I wanted money, I would’ve gone to a number of other stores. But I’m not here for money; I’m here to ask you a question.”
“What kind of question is accompanied by a gun…if all you want is to ask me something, just ask.”
“Fine. If I shot you right here, right now, in this store, right through your forehead, would that be the wrong thing to do?”
I almost screamed in panic. “Of course it’s the wrong thing to do! How could you just kill someone you’ve never met before and consider it right?”
He seemed a bit confused and moved his gun an inch closer; I didn’t move at all.
“How could I just kill someone I’ve never met before and consider it right? That’s a pretty ironic question considering what’s going to happen tonight. I have two bullets in this gun; one for me and one for you. Before we get started though, I need to make sure of a few things. First, I want you to slowly walk over to the door and lock it. If your hands don’t stay above your head until you get to the door, I shoot. If you open the door, I shoot. If you do anything at all that isn’t walking over to the door and locking it, you will be dead. Understand?”
I nodded my head. Carefully, I take seven steps around the counter, all with the customer staring at me. Is he really going to shoot me if I open the door and run to my car? Maybe I could grab the gun and knock him out. Maybe he’ll shoot me if I even twitch. My keys are in my pocket. I could ask him to take them out and then elbow him in the back of the head hard enough to make him fall to the floor. Option one is feasible. If he lets me get them, then I have a potential shank. Option two is feasible as well.
“My keys are in my pocket. Will you let me take them out myself?”
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Fiv-
“With your left hand, take the keys from whatever pocket has them, lock the door, and flip the sign to ‘Closed’. Finish within ten seconds and when you’re done, I want you to drop the keys on the floor.”
Options one and two were discarded and no replacement came to mind. No one was beyond this glass door; no one was in the parking lot or even driving past the store. I locked the door, changed the sign, and dropped the keys.
“Good. Now you need to sit down in front of the counter. We need to talk.”
“Ok…sure. If you only want to talk, why are you still pointing that gun at me?”
“Because you’re not going home tonight and neither am I.”
“This shouldn’t be happening to me. I’m a good person and bad things shouldn’t happen to good people. I’ve never hurt anyone, never stolen anything, never even the one to end a relationship when I know it’s been over for months simply because I can’t stand to make someone who I care about unhappy. Why don’t we-”
“Stop talking? That’s a rather good idea. I’m really fond of that. You stop talking and you won’t talk again until it’s in response to a question.”
I swallowed hard and didn’t blink.
“So you said before that if I killed you right then, it wouldn’t be right, right? That it’s essentially unjust, immoral? Elaborate.”
“Elaborate on why shooting me, a random stranger, in the forehead, would be wrong? I’ve lived a moral life, abiding by every ethical law I’ve set since I was a child. I’ve never turned my back on what I believe to be right and I’ve never had to regret an action. I can go to sleep every night with no evil in my thoughts.”
“Exactly, what you believe to be right. What if I were to tell you that what you believe to be right is nothing more than that – a belief. All beliefs are subject to the individual and in your case, the individual is a slave to upbringing and a rigid worldview. You were brought up, what, in a suburban white-collar home where the worst of your troubles came from vegetables you were forced to eat and video games you couldn’t afford?”
“What does that have to do with my moral standards? My upbringing has nothing to do with whether or not you should shoot a stranger. I didn’t choose how I was raised. I didn’t choose the adults in my life as a child or how I was treated. Not that it matters though; my parents were really good people and they both worked hard all their lives.”
He looked disappointed and yawned.
“You still haven’t said anything you weren’t expected to say. Have you ever even considered the possibility that morals are a man-made construct, as easy to forget as, I don’t know, what you had for breakfast two weeks ago?”
“Are you implying that you can just stop thinking that something inherently wrong is no longer such and that makes it neither good nor bad, just something that happens?”
“I’m saying that there are no standards to begin with. We all know that morals are subjective to the culture we’re raised in and if the culture sticks around, the morals never leave. They’re embedded in the stories and the traditions, spoken word and written text. There’s not a day that goes by as you grow up that you don’t see some form of what you’re supposed to believe a righteous, ethical person would do in a given situation, and you don’t even realize it. Doing right by whomever you meet is expected and for too long have expectations met reality. I bet you’ve never even thought that you, as a person, can do absolutely anything and as long as you shed yourself of right and wrong, it’s nothing more than your most natural mindset playing itself out. Ethical standards shouldn’t be decided by the culture; they should be decided by the person and they shouldn’t be looked down upon if they don’t match up with the offended and the pompous.”
“…are you trying to convince me that I should be ok with you shooting me because you don’t believe in right or wrong?”
“No. I’m telling you that you should reconsider what you believe to be right and what you believe to be wrong so that you’ll at least die with understanding.”
“Understanding? Please explain to me what I’m supposed to be understanding…”
“Ok. How about a visual demonstration?”
With one hand, he reached into his briefcase and took out a syringe.
“What are you going to do with that?”
He said nothing, but instead, put the syringe between his teeth. The hand that wasn’t holding the gun moved towards it and without any outward reaction, he positioned the needle into his hand and delicately injected himself.
“That was morphine. This is me letting go of what I can do and what I can’t do.”
With the syringe still sticking out of his hand, he placed it on my shoulder, palm-spread, and positioned the gun over his knuckles. Before I could even comprehend what he was doing, he pulled the trigger.
My vision went red and I heard someone laughing as I screamed or I didn’t scream. He slapped me with his bloody hand and I slumped against the counter.
“Do you still not understand? Nothing you do will ever matter. Nothing you say will ever matter. No, this isn’t some insane nihilist sociopath trying to kill you. This is someone who isn’t anyone.”
I groaned and felt a sharp pain across my body. Everything hurt and I could barely keep my eyes open. The customer raised his hand and looked through the hole in it as if it were a looking glass. Staring at me through it, he placed the nozzle of the gun over the hole and started pushing, expanding it and forcing blood and tissue out the other side, onto my legs. The further in it went, the more bile I felt rising in my throat. Once it hit bone, he reloaded and I puked blood all over the both of us. Each wretch hurt more than the last.
“How enthralling. If you’re wondering what that had to do with anything, don’t worry, I’m here to explain for you. That act was me deciding that I could do with a hole in my hand and you could do with a matching one in your shoulder. Why did I decide that? Simply because I could. Like I said before, there’s absolutely nothing that an individual can’t do. Hate your job? Quit. Don’t like traffic? Walk. Sick of paying bills? Just stop paying them. In a true moral world, nothing at all would exist because morals are nothing more than a concept that’s come out of necessity. That necessity doesn’t suit me anymore and soon, it won’t suit you either. I’ve felt a change in the past few years, a change in the way people treat each other. The term ‘altruistic’ seems to be how everyone wants to describe themselves but that simply is not true. Most people are selfish and delusional, hating their lives and lying to themselves about it. We tell ourselves that we’re good-natured at heart and we’re entitled to certain things but we’re not. If we were entitled to anything at all, it would be mutual understanding that I am a living person, you are a living person, and nothing more. Make your peace and move on.”
Make my peace…and move on…make…my peace…and move on?
“Whatever you manage to say, make it memorable. They’ll be your last words and if I’m the only person who will hear them, well, I may be the only person to ever hear them.”
I try to say something, but blood starts trickling down the corners of my mouth and it barely comes out as a whisper.
“…I’ve made my peace. There’s only one thing I want. It’s not to pray or to beg you for my life. I’ve never been a fan of religion anyway and I couldn’t go back on a choice like this. So everyone lies to themselves in order to maintain their psyche, which leads to widespread deceit and inner-turmoil to the point where even something as basic as kindness and trying to live a happy life is nothing more than a pipe dream? While there may be some truth in that, you shouldn’t be so confident in what you say. You’re speaking from a purely first-world mindset, aren’t you? Have you engrossed yourself in any other world but the one you grew up in and destroyed? Have you considered that not everyone lives like this; not everyone is exposed to sadness, paranoia and terror every single day? People are happy out there, somewhere, and they’re breathing and smiling as we speak. You just seem like you want to die though, don’t you? Or do you not want anything? You know, dying is something I could help you with. I’m slowly bleeding out and I’m sure I’ll be dead as soon as I fall asleep. Why not give me your gun so I can see what it’s like to be the one pulling the trigger?”
I coughed and felt an acute pain throughout my upper body.
“I have a better idea.”
The customer bent down and sat me up. He sat down next to me and put his arm around my shoulder.
“Friend, you just told me that you would be willing to kill me when before, you said you could never hurt anyone. People like you disgust me.”
Before I could react, he raised the gun to the side of his head and pulled the trigger.
To Perish
Fif-teen hours ago I saw a pair of eyes watching me from my milk carton. Thirteen hours ago, I felt spiders running along my back and when I slammed it into the door, I heard them burst. Ten minutes after that, I had the courage to change my shirt and an hour later, it was still clean despite my checking for eggs every so often. Paranoia was to be expected, I know, but I guess I didn’t expect it to be this terrifying. I can only imagine how bad it’s going to get. It is now nearing sunset on Day Three of my little experiment.
Looking around, I see a tidied up bed surrounded by dust and an incorporeal being with glowing yellow eyes. Its head is partially in the floorboards and its legs are coming out of its hands, located where I would hope the abdomen would be. Disregarding the eyes, it’s completely black. I don’t remember that being there an hour ago…I blink and there stands a lamp with a dirty t-shirt over it. Uh-huh.
That shouldn’t be happening so soon, should it? What was the number again? Shit, where’s that notepad. Drawers are opened and looked through until in my hand lies a yellow notepad with a string of numbers written on it.
“Hello, SolInd Con. I-D Department. Please hold for a moment.”
Not even a ‘Who’s calling?’ or ‘May I connect you to a representative?’; the beauty of a private number that only eight people in the world have.
“Yes? How’s the gas treating you? Start bleeding from your eyes or anything?
“What? No. Did you even look into the report I sent you concerning the purpose and execution of this experiment?”
“No, I didn’t. Was I supposed to? Lane had a look at it if that means anything; fuck, if he even knows what he’s reading though.”
I sighed.
“Listen, when I signed off on this, it was to test the limits of the psyche when under an Alpha-Centric Zone, right? Well, the psyche’s test has begun. Over the past sixteen hours or so, I’ve begun to experience mild to severe audio and visual hallucinations. I’m still mentally capable of everything I normally am, but sir, I wasn’t expecting this. The gas you supplied me with was no simple nerve gas, was it?”
“The gas in your possession will keep you awake no matter what and hopefully, it’ll keep you sane too. That’s all you need to know. Anything else?”
“No, that’s it for now. Goodbye sir.”
My eyes followed my hand, which slowly placed the phone back into the receiver and when they were level once again, something tugged at my socks. My head jerked down to see nothing. I walk to the bed and lie down. Three full days of consciousness and I’m still my usual calm self. Not even other-worldly hallucinations can shake me. In a little less than two weeks, we can all see whether or not the protocol was justified. In a little less than two weeks, I might be dead; both interesting thoughts, but both insignificant as of five seconds ago when the shower started on its own.
I scramble out of bed and run to the bathroom. This can’t be real, can it? But what if it is? What if there’s someone in here with me? What if they’ve been exposed to the gas too? Shit! What if they’re going to be awake with me, locked in this apartment for the next two weeks? I almost fall through the bathroom door and tear down the shower curtain to see nothing, not even running water. I blink my eyes and the water is running while the man standing under the downpour is still. He’s fully-clothed, standing five inches from my face, and staring right at me. He’s also smiling the happiest smile I’ve ever seen, but not with his eyes. His eyes are so wide and full of nothing that I’ve never been more scared. I blink and I’m alone, standing in an empty bathroom.
I slowly back out of the bathroom and shut the door behind me. Deep inhales; deep, slow, inhales. Breathe. Breathe. If I get too far-gone, this will all be for naught; who was that though? Is that what we’re searching for; a being akin to that? Something so human couldn’t be it, but I wonder, maybe it’s merely how my mind is interpreting it. There are theories that I’ve once subscribed to that entail a deeply individualized universe for each sentient being where the mind is the interpreter and no two interpretations are ever the same, essentially creating the multiverse by sheer amount of active minds alone. This couldn’t be something like that though; this isn’t something like that. That person didn’t even see me. He looked through me as if I were the hallucination.
I make my way back to my bed and glance at the clock before lying back down. 1:06 a.m. It wasn’t 1:05 sixty seconds ago, it was 7:40 p.m. How long was I in the bathroom? I roll over onto my side and fall through the sheets, under the bed, through the floorboards, in the foundation, in the concrete, through the ceiling, back into my body, and I’m standing on my bed, staring at my front door. It opens and something with a pair of eyes walks out. I take a step towards the door and it closes. Uh-huh.
If only I could sleep through this madness and not have to live it. While it may be for the sake of the many, the few are the ones who need to be nourished and unconscious, not the other way around. My back is once again on my bed and my eyes are on the ceiling, staring at my eyes on the bed, staring at the face contorting its jawless mouth at me from the corner. An arm with four separate joints and glowing grey skin shoots out of it, followed by an identical arm, a neck, and a head with empty eye-sockets, all attached to a torso that follows immediately. Its mouth opens and I hear the scream before I see it.
A book is thrown at it and hits the wall where I could’ve sworn there wasn’t wall a moment ago. I am hallucinating. This is not real. This is a combination of my own paranoia mixed with an unknown nerve gas and almost four days of no sleep. Yes, if I give into the fear, I’ll be no better at dealing with any of this. I need to at least be myself if I want to be an asset to the greater good. My eyes fall back on the clock and I see darkness. When there’s light once more, it reads 7:41 p.m. It wasn’t 7:40 sixty seconds ago…
I sit up and hit my head on something sharp. Whatever it is, it punctures my skull and the cut grows deeper as I continue my intended motion. Surprisingly, no blood is tasted or seen. I stand and walk to the mirror in the bathroom - door’s locked. I knock and from within, I answer Just a moment, I’m checking out this nasty cut. You wanna see? I unlock the door to let myself in.
Once inside, I gasp at the mirror. Looking back at me is the same person I was a few days ago, except now I have a butcher knife sticking vertically out of my forehead. That’s new. I grab it and the shower starts. I let go; the shower stops. With cautious steps, my way is made towards the shower curtain. As I reach for it, an arm grabs the knife from my skull and purges it. This time, blood does get in my eyes. A hand pulls me into the water and it’s wiping the blood from my vision. This is normal.
After a couple of minutes, I can see a hand connected to an arm. The face I’m looking at is my own, which looks down to see my arm wiping blood from the wall. Who’s to say what’s going on and what isn’t anymore? Surely not me and surely not me. I walk out of the bathroom and into the confined hallway connecting to the kitchen. With each step, I hear something scurry behind me. Relax. It’s either something that exists or it’s something that doesn’t. No need for panic. I’m just on my way to make some tea. Yes; soothing, nerve-calming tea.
I enter the kitchen and find a mug, but my sink is missing. In its place is the same exact sink, yet it’s not mine. Someone broke in and replaced my sink with an identical one. Shit. Wait, I’m awake. I’ve been awake for days, haven’t I? Have I? Have? I? Am I even ready for such words as ‘I’ and ‘have’? No tea, I need coffee, stimulants. I need to research what I’m getting into, take notes, and record my progress thus far.
Hello. How are you? I’m fine, dandy even. So tell me, why is there? Oh? Mhm. Mhm mhm mhm mhm mhm. So you’re saying that to over-encounter the massive black hole at the center of our universe, I just need to kill myself? I know, I know, self-righteous system of star dust and atoms that only has sentience because we are the universe observing itself, essentially creating itself in the same way that many molecular reactions don’t occur until being watched, I know. Let’s talk about something else though, something more human, like the nature of childish behavior versus being a child.
To say that I am acting childish is to say that I am acting as if I were a child, hm? So tell me, what are three things that only children possess? No, that’s not it. No. You’re thinking too rigidly, too formal. The three things that children possess and adults do not are hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Three entirely separate things to them while also three things that are entirely unnoticed for the most part. If you ever meet one such as you who has hopes or dreams and isn’t a child, well, that person is behaving as one and should be labeled ‘childish’. This guy right here? He’s so childish that he doesn’t even know that we’re talking right now. My voice? Your voice? Both in his head. It’s downright fascist.
I opened my eyes and my lips were moving. Did I sleep? Was I sleeping? No, that’s impossible with what’s in my system. What did those reports say? Possible brain damage if I remember correctly. That could result in essentially no short-term memory and it could even result in no short-term memory. I could’ve been here for weeks; I still may have been here for weeks. I make my way back to the kitchen and the floor is covered in coffee grinds arranged into fractal spirals. I don’t remember doing this, but I guess it was me; it had to have been me.
The fridge is opened and closed. The cabinets are opened and closed. There’s no food or drink in this apartment and I don’t even know when the last time that I ate was. Isn’t there some coffeehouse near here? That sounds promising, caffeine and fresh air. This experiment is done. If this were an Alpha-Centric Zone, surely something out of the ordinary would’ve happened. Maybe something out of the ordinary happened. Where’s my book…I walk back to my bed and it’s not on it, but instead in the corner on the other side of the room. Odd. I don’t remember putting that there. I grab it, open my apartment door, and leave.
Vrasin Veten
I love the little stars that daddy put on the ceiling for my birthday. Six stars, one for every birthday. They keep me awake when I don’t feel like going to sleep and sometimes, I imagine what it’s going to be like when there are hundreds of them up there. I’ll be alive for that; I’ll never die so long as I have another star to put up there.
I haven’t seen daddy in while; he hasn’t been around much over the past few weeks. Mommy tells me he’s busy, but Lauren tells me that he doesn’t like me anymore, that he’s never liked me. I don’t believe her; he’s just a busy person. All adults are busy people; they don’t have time to play with their kids every day.
It’s been so long since mommy tucked me in. Maybe I should go sleep in her bed tonight. It’s so warm and soft in there and since daddy’s been gone on his business trip, there’s been more room. I’m smaller than he is; she won’t even notice I’m there if I go really slowly. I push my covers off of me and as I sit up, I hear the front door open and close. Footsteps come near my room and my door opens.
“Hello?”
“Sophie, it’s me, dad.”
He takes a few steps and comes fully into my room, closing the door softly behind him.
“Hi dad, I’ve missed you. How was the trip?”
With a quiet voice, he says, “It was exciting. I met some new people and boy did they meet me…”
“What does that mean? Who did you meet?”
“Oh, just some new friends.”
He puts his briefcase on my bed as he sits down. He looks a little mad. Did I do something wrong? I hope he’s not mad at me.
“Are you mad at me?”
“Ha, no Sophie, I’m not mad at you. How about this – I’ll tell you a story and then afterwards, we play a little game, ok?”
“Ok. Tell me the one you told me last time, with the bunnies and the princess.”
“That story? I haven’t told that one in years. I’ll tell you a new story. I thought of it while I was away.”
I go back under the covers and lie down as he sits on the edge of the bed and looks at me.
“This story is about a man named Jessie Bosket. Jessie worked for a really big company, maybe even the biggest and most secretive company in the world. It’s so secretive that I can’t tell you the name of it.”
I laughed a small laugh. “Please tell me?”
“No. He worked for this company for all of his adult life, straight out of college. He did everything they asked him to, whether it be staying all night to finish someone else’s work or showing up while on vacation for a meeting. As you can tell, he was a very hard worker and sacrificed a lot.”
“Wait, daddy, what does sacrifice mean?”
“I’ll show you later when we get to the game, ok?”
“Fine, ok.”
“Can I continue?”
I smiled and nodded my head.
“So one morning, after working at this place for a very long time and losing much while working there, he got a call. He got this call very early in the morning, earlier than most people are even awake. It was his boss calling him, telling him that he has to go in early for a very special meeting. He barely gets there in time and when he does get there, he finds out that they threw away his papers and even took away his desk. After, he was fired and had to leave the building forever. Would you like to know what happens next, Sophie?”
“Sure!”
“He left the building and walked into a nearby forest where he found a new friend. This new friend had lived in the forest his entire life and had never hurt anyone or caused any harm. Jessie was mad though, very mad. So when his new friend woke up from a nap and looked like he was about to say hi, Jessie put him back to sleep. He discovered that he liked making people go to sleep; it made him happier than anything else had in a long time. Over the next few days, he travelled the forest and parts of the city and made a great deal of people sleepy, so sleepy that they still haven’t awakened. If you go out at night and look for the slumbering masses, be careful that you don’t fall drowsy.”
“What happens to the people that fall asleep? Do they ever wake up?”
“No, they don’t. If this person is the last person you see before you fall asleep, then you won’t see anyone else.”
I frowned. “That’s a really sad story daddy. Can you tell me a happy one? I like smiling. You should make me smile.”
“How about we play that game now? It’s really short. I promise, it’ll make us both smile.”
I jumped out of bed. Daddy hasn’t played a game with me in so long.
“How do you play? Is it like tag or hide-and-seek? Can we play hide-and-seek after?”
“No Sophie, it’s a new game called Vrasin Veten. I learned how to play while I was gone. The rules are one person guides the other person around the house. The person being guided has a blindfold on and holds a special object with both hands, very carefully. The two people need to work in perfect unison the entire time for no one to get hurt. Once we find the first target, you need to swing your arms down very fast and with great ferocity, but you can’t make any noise and you can’t look either. There are four targets and you need to swing at the first two. I take care of the other two. If we get all four without being caught, then I’ll go up to the gas station and buy us some ice cream.”
“Haha ok! Can I be the striker?”
“That’s what I was planning on. Now come over here so I can put the blindfold on.”
He opens his briefcase and I try to look inside. It’s closed before I get a chance to. I bet there’s something really cool in there. The two things he took out are my blindfold, and something that looks like a big, grey pen, but really thick with no buttons or anything on it.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
The blindfold is put on my head and tied around my eyes until I can’t see anything at all, not even my stars. He ties it really tight, so tight that I don’t think it’s ever going to come off.
“Ok Sophie, can you see anything?”
“No, I can’t see anything daddy. This is how we play, right?”
“Right. Now we go and search for the first two targets. Once we leave your room, we can’t say anything or make any noise. If we do, you lose the game and have to go straight to sleep. Hold out both of your hands. I’m going to give you the object. Only touch the part that I put in your hands, ok? The other parts aren’t for touching.”
“Alright, just hurry. I want to find the first target. Will you lead me to it?”
“Yes, I will.” I hear a small whoosh, kind of like a click, and then something snapping into place. Whatever it is, it’s placed in my hand and both of my hands hold it tight, straight in front of me. Can’t touch any part except for this part, only the part that’s in my hands; it feels kind of like a dinner knife, but I think it’s a really big pen.
“Ok, we’re about to leave your room. Once I open the door, there’s no more talking and you need to be the quietest you’ve ever been. This is a secret game. We can’t wake up Mommy or Lauren, otherwise they’d wanna play too and this is a two-person game. I’ll be walking behind you. If I have both hands on your shoulders, keep going straight. If I only have one hand on your shoulder, I want you to slowly turn in that direction and keep turning until both hands are there again. Then, walk in that direction until I gently pull you back, signaling you to stop. When I tap your arms three times, I want you to swing your arms down really fast and really hard and to keep doing it until I tap them again. It’s kind of like an upside-down piñata. Understand all of it?”
“Yes daddy, it’s not too hard. We make up games all the time at recess. I’ll teach this to my friends tomorrow!”
There’s no response, just a ‘shhh’ and I hear my door open right after. No more talking. I need to be as quiet as I can be, the most quiet I’ve ever been. Are these the types of games big kids play? This has to be a big kid game. Maybe Lauren knows about it.
I feel two hands on my shoulders and I take four steps. As I start the fifth, there’s only one hand on my shoulder and it’s on the left one. I stop and turn until there are two again and when there is, I start walking again. Ten steps and a right; five more and I stop. I hear a door open and I move forward. Two, turn right, five, turn left, stop.
Is this Lauren’s room? She never lets me in her room, but it smells like she does. Daddy moves my arms so they’re where he wants them; then he taps them three times. I raise them both, and then I bring them straight down as hard as I can. I raise them again and I feel something warm, kind of like melted pudding, on my hands. It must mean I got it! I keep hitting it over and over again and then, I hear something spit, gasp, and stop gasping. My arms are tapped again. He didn’t tell me I would hear anything, but I’m not supposed to talk or look, so I don’t.
Before we leave, he wipes my hands with a towel. His hands are on my shoulders again and I take the same way I came in. Out of the room, there’s a hand on the left and I start on that way. This is fun; I like this game. I wish people played with me more. We should play this game more often. I’ll make sure to tell daddy that after ice cream. Right, door, open, walk. Four steps in, then three right. Five left, then I stop and he turns me left and moves my arms again. I think this is Mommy and Daddy’s room; it feels like it. I haven’t slept in their bed with them in so long, but I always feel so safe when I do. I should’ve done it before, even though this game is pretty fun. There’s always tomorrow for me to play.
He taps my shoulders three times and right as I bring my arms down, he squeezes my shoulders. I stop. Is that what he wanted, for me to stop? Is this the target? I feel his hand go over mine and he raises my arms himself, then he strikes with me. His breathing is loudest thing in the room. The target is hit and the loudest thing in the room is that same spitting, gasping noise. It’ll go away if I keep hitting it, so I do keep hitting it and daddy helps. His breathing is the loudest thing in the room again.
The pudding stuff is wiped off my hands, same as last time, and he leads me out of the room and down the hallway, back into my bedroom.
“Sophie, we can talk now, but you need to keep the blindfold on.”
“Is that part of the rules?”
“Yes.”
“Alright. What was that sticky pudding stuff that got on my hands?”
He doesn’t answer me, but he takes the thing from my hands and I hear his briefcase open.
“It’s time to find the next target and it’s in here. This one is for me though, so just stand there and don’t move.”
“Alright. We can get ice cream after you find it, right?”
“Right Sophie, right.”
Something clicks and I can feel him standing right in front of me.
“Listen, I think I see it. It’s right behind you, not moving at all. On three, I’m going to take it out.”
Right behind me? Was it in my room the whole time? Wow, so easy!
“So we’re almost done? Let’s play hide-and-seek next.”
“You can play with Mommy and Lauren tomorrow. I think I’m going to take the day off and sleep. Ready? Don’t move. I want you to count down for me.”
“Ok daddy. Thank you for playing with me tonight, I didn’t know if you’d ever play with me again. I love you. Get ready: One…two…”
Three
A school bus pulls up to a bus stop.
Children get on and sit with their friends.
And someone asks: Where’s Sophie?
~~~
Sirens wake everyone but the slumbering, ambulance sirens to be specific. One driver, one passenger, and one technician remain stoic and unmoving while the people in the way are moved somewhere a little more friendly.
“The gas station is in sight, arrival in approximately two minutes. Be prepared for the worst,” said a man through the ambulance speakers.
Over the past two weeks, I have been witness to many an atrocity graceful enough to befall not only the general public, but the private consciousness. Going home as always left me right there – home, but these days, everything has just been stagnating and the things I see on a daily basis are forming the bases of my mind. The inner-constructions of it all are made of dead children, broken families, suicide, and it’s all surrounded by this haze of negativity that permeates every thought and word and infects everything else. I’m probably just over-analyzing it all, but I swear, I used to be happier.
In front of me lies an outstretched road, always coming at me while remaining still, kind of like how most people live their lives. Behind me, a movable cot, two first-aid kits, sutures, and a couple thousand dollars worth of hospital equipment, all ceremoniously put on display for patients to gawk at while someone takes care of their blood-loss or heart attack or whatever comes in next.
“Thirty seconds. We have reports of two bodies, one living and one not. The one we get was shot in the shoulder and side of the head. Left shoulder I believe, but we’ll see shortly. He’s also bled out heavily. It seems that the incident occurred last night, with both of them down until we got the call when the manager came to open and saw them.”
The ambulance stops in front of a gas station. Two sets of doors are opened and closed. Another set of doors are opened and left open for the air pollution to purify and disinfect. A cot is rolled out while a third door is opened. Two people rush inside. A crowd gathers. Pictures are taken and stifled conversation takes place.
“Do you think this has to do with the murders around the block?”
“Murders? What the hell happened last night?”
“My mom lives across the street from this business-type guy named Roy Lane; always a prick, drives a really fancy car, you know the kind. So mom wakes up this morning and goes to grab the paper from the driveway and she sees the Lane’s front door is wide-open and that one of the windows is broken. Not wanting to go over there, she goes back inside and calls the cops.”
“And…”
“And the sick fuck killed his wife and two kids. Shot the smallest through the forehead and used a blade on the others.”
“Wow. That’s terrible man. You think this has something to do with that?”
“Yeah, I do. That guy in there, the one they’re putting in a body bag? I’m pretty sure that that’s Roy.”
“No way. So the guy kills his family, then holds up a gas station and kills himself?”
“I guess so.”
“Wow.”
Someone is rolled out of the gas station, on a cot, into the back of the ambulance. No one says a word. I open the passenger-side door, sit down, close the door, and grab for the radio as the gas station is pulled away from.
“Leaving now, carrying one live patient with us. Male, unconscious, severe injuries and major bloodloss; be standing by at the ER in eleven minutes.”
The radio is put down and I look back towards the patient being worked on by the technician. I look towards the driver and my face reveals nothing.
“You ever just watch these new ‘doctors’ roll into the back of our van and start treating people while we’re just sitting here, driving from one destination to the other?”
“No, I tend to drive most of the time. Why, something strange happening?”
I look back towards the technician.
“This guy’s been here almost a month and I can already tell he’s starting to break. If he quits due to ‘personal issues’, it’ll be the fifth this year. You know what though? He lives a boring life and you know what else? This right now is boring me to the point where I want to kill myself,” I said with a positive inflection of the voice.
“What? What are you talking about? This is not the time for stuff like this. Not here, not when we’re a few minutes from the hospital with someone dying in the back.”
“Dying in the back? What about dying on the way to work or dying while having a cup of coffee? What about dying mid-sentence, mid-thought even? How can you say that he’s dying and we’re not, simply because he was shot a few times and lost a lot of his blood?”
“…not now. Please, can we just get to break? I promise that we’ll talk then and we won’t stop until you feel better, just not now.”
“Ok, I see your point. He’s closer than we are, but does that even matter anyway? Does any of this even matter at all? Or does it only matter if I make it matter, if I force it to matter? If it doesn’t naturally, then does anything? If I have to force myself to feel something, isn’t it just as fake as anything else?”
“What are you talking about?! This is not the place for an existential crisis! You’re not even making sense! Just please, manage the radio and panels while I focus on the road.”
“How can I manage anything at all when I can make myself cry every night just by thinking about how shitty my life is? I watch these technicians come in and break down due to the violence and fear that comes with this job, but it hasn’t touched me one bit. You know what has touched me? Nothing at all. I get so little love from the people I keep in my life, so little communication, that I want people to hate me just so they feel something towards me. I really do want to kill myself almost every day.”
The driver sighed and glanced at me with a disapproving frown.
“I know that you’re having a really hard time lately, and we both know that things would get better if you just lightened up and started enjoying life, but this really isn’t the place or time for any of this conversation. I feel as though you’re just saying this to me now because you want attention and I’ll gladly give you the attention you need and so will several people at the hospital if you give them the chance. Try talking to someone instead of telling them at inopportune times such as now. Others will listen and they will help, even if you hate them at every step.”
“But I can’t. I can’t tell anyone what’s going on in my head because if I do, it’s progression, moving somewhere and possibly making things better and that’s too scary for me to deal with. If I say something, I can’t and if I don’t, I’ll just remain the same person, except a little sadder every time you meet me.”
Someone sighs. The driver quickly glances behind him.
“Hand me a scalpel, right now.”
Without looking up or even saying something, the technician hands over a scalpel and goes back to attending to the patient. The driver then hands it to me.
“You want to kill yourself so badly? Here, do it right here so I can watch.”
“What? Are you serious? What about talking through everything and helping me through my issues?”
“No, you’re a useless piece of parasitic filth that makes each and every person you come in contact with want to just get away. You want to die so badly? I have a proposition.”
“You have until the next light. Go.”
“You’re depressed, suicidal, obviously upset with yourself moreso than the world, but you don’t even realize that sometimes, do you? Forget trying to help yourself or even trying to cope. Don’t focus on anything, don’t even think this through. Just let go. Acknowledge my existence and I’ll acknowledge yours. Then you can kill yourself while I watch with no emotion on my face whatsoever.”
I stopped. Everything stopped.
“You really want to see me do this? I guess I might as well be observed in death where in life, no notes were taken.”
I take the scalpel and hold it next to my throat.
“I’ll do it when I’m ready. Wait for that eerie calm that accompanies extraordinary events; then go about your day as if nothing happened.”
We pull up to a red light and stop. Across the street, there’s a school bus stopped as well. Would they see if I just did it right here? Would they even know what they’re seeing? I’m sorry children, so sorry for being near you when I’m about to let go. With that, I close my eyes and slow down my breathing.
Let. Go. Of.Everything.
My eyes open. My throat opens. I smile and don’t gasp for breath.
~~~
A man on a bench watches a young person jump from a building. This young person lands on an ambulance as it crosses an intersection. The ambulance then careens into an oncoming school bus at the same intersection. He claps harder than anyone else at the scene.
And The Sky Split
Senselessness is the primary cause for concern, shortly followed by listlessness, apathy, immorality; the list goes on to count exactly two hundred specific reasons as to why this has happened. Extinction event number three had fifty percent of that.
Nothing in this dimension exhales nor inhales, yet I now possess lungs. There has never been a single step taken in any direction, but a pair of legs I now have and a path I now understand comes to be. A body is constructed and something sparks a reaction – the reaction. Breathing occurs.
I open my eyes to see a crowd of dreary-eyed, almost sleeping humans standing over what I refer to as me. No one says a word and the only outstretched hands are my own, pushing into the concrete, onto the road. Someone is taken aback by the gesture and moves her mouth at me, trying to speak, but I do not hear any sounds. She points to the side of my head and I lightly touch it, only to see blood on my hand when I pull it back. This will not do; I need the five human senses.
My eyes close and when I open them again, someone says, “Sir, are you ok? Why were you lying in the street?”
I reply, “Because my conduit saw me from that specific vantage point and as he departed, I descended.”
She does not seem amused. Her head cocks to one side and her nostrils flare as she says, “Fine, jackass. Be rude to someone trying to help.”
With that, she leaves and the crowd slowly disperses. As I knew, it has overflowed. The search for the reason will last less than a day’s time and it will not end kindly. To look for the reason where none exists is futile, but to disconnect from what has already happened would not be the wisest motion.
I am alone, standing on a street in front of an establishment entitled Milford’s Beans.
I am alone, standing in the establishment full of people. A young man with a large amount of facial hair approaches me.
“Are you ok man? I saw you rush out through the back door and then fall into the street. I almost called you an ambulance, but then you stood up after a few seconds.”
“I am fine. Tell me, why do you ask me of my condition?”
“Because you’ve been in here for a quite some time and while some people may not go out of their way for a customer or even a friend, I try to be as helpful as I can be to everyone I meet,” he said with a smile.
I expressionlessly nod. “And what of the other people you see every day as you wander? Are you among the lazy, or are you among the frightened.”
“Lazy? Frightened? Dude, I’m just some guy who serves people coffee, makes my girlfriend happy, and sees friends whenever else. Maybe you should get some sleep, you look really tired and you’ve been in here all day.”
“In the future, yes, but now I do not need sleep.”
“Whatever bro. I gotta get back to my customers. Stop by when you’re feeling better, alright?”
“Goodbye.”
Before he responds, I leave the building and walk to the adjoining alleyway. This is the spot. That person in there was no person at all; simply another human. That is what they all are becoming – simple humans. In their most basic of forms, nothing is taken and nothing is given, yet that construct has been morphed and what is left are two extremes, both residing in this alleyway at a nearby still in time. One will be observed and the other spoken to.
A flash of light blinds my eyes and when it dissipates, the previous day is here once more.
A solitary man dressed in tattered clothing and a calm mind is sleeping in front of me. Another man dressed in a well-tailored suit and desperate thoughts walks up to him. Neither of them can see me. One extreme wakes the other. His hatred, while directed at the peaceful, stems from the self and this particular self was the tipping point in my decision. He kills the man after taunting him and then leaves. I follow and remain.
A path is pursued by this man and when looked back on from a ways down this path, it’s littered with pieces of humans and limbs of a broken mind. I watch this man murder and destroy until he makes his final point by ending his bloodline and shortly after, himself. If I were to ask this man a single question, it would be, “Why did you not do it the second you realized that what made you human left long ago?”
The answer would be unsatisfactory, so the question is left blank. My time in observing these mammals has always pointed to an unanswered question, so it is no surprise that it remains as such to the very end. This will be seen through until there is no more.
I appear once more in the alleyway, except one day earlier. Words must be spoken between another and I. The man in the tattered clothing is sitting on the ground with closed eyes and a steady breath. I sit down in front of him. A second flash of light awakens him and I am noticed.
“Hello.”
“Hello,” he serenely replies.
“I have come to speak with you and only you, for you are the positive extreme in this world of low expectations.”
He does not show visual confusion, nor does his demeanor change. My vision only shows me tranquility and understanding.
“There is something grave that will be occurring soon and you are the only person that I will be sharing this information with. I already know your name, your entire life, your elders, by whose hands you will fall and the exact date – everything. While I know this, you know nothing about me and strangers we shall remain no longer. Would you like to hear my story?”
“Gladly,” he says with a smile.
“Thank you. The man you see before you is not what I look like. I have only held physical form thrice gone and this is the first time that I have explained myself to any being of sentience. I reside in the second plane of existence and I am the only being to have ever been there and who will ever be there. This dimension has recently been discovered by a dramatic increase in human scientific progression, but no threat is posed and no threat ever will be posed, nor will anything ever be announced. In my realm, I have a sole purpose in living and I have carried out that purpose since dominant life on Earth has come to prevalence. My purpose throughout it all has been to observe the dominant lifeform on this planet and be what humans refer to as a judge. Whenever one species rises above another, certain changes take place in the structure of it and in every single case, at least one trait has formed the very core of their species-wide being. This core strengthens them and brings about the type of events that promote evolution in functionality, inner-relationships, physical and mental leaps - essentially every single aspect of living and growing. Three times have a dominant lifeform come to power and three times the core has been shattered. The human-core is something that can be traced back to every single action ever taken by everyone who has ever lived and died. It is the reason for growth and decay in all levels of society. Do you know what the core is? Do you?”
He knows that he does, as do I. A nod, a glance upwards, and a sigh.
“Yes, I do. The very core of humankind is morality, is it not?”
“Yes, and there is no morality left anywhere. The core of their self has long since been lost and in two days time, I make my arrival on this planet. With it, I take this body and leave the previous owner in a temporal-loop for eternity, essentially creating a dimension all in itself. I will split the sky in two on a metaphysical level and not a single lifeform will be aware of it.”
“Excuse me for interrupting, but won’t I be aware? Considering everything you’ve told me, unless I was to die before then, you would be mistaken.”
“Like I said, not a single lifeform will be aware of it. You may or may not be dead before then, I cannot reveal, but once I depart from this planet, your Sun will perish, wiping out everything. As I previously said, three events have already taken place, each more destructive than the last. This is the only way that the cycle will end.”
He nods and smiles an accepting smile.
“So it goes.”
Human’s Kind As Long As Human Does
“So it goes,” I reply to the man sitting across from me.
“You believe me, do you not?”
“Yes. I believe you as much as I believe in how little morality is left in this world. In all honesty, I’m fascinated by your tale and would very much like to hear more, yet I know I can’t.”
“Correct. I must be leaving soon, our time is strictly allotted, but there is one more thing we must discuss and it all stems from a question that I am about to ask you.”
“There can never be enough questioning, so please, ask away.”
With neither anger nor joy in his voice, he says:
How would you describe your ideal world?
…
A young man wakes up, looks in the mirror, opens a window, drinks some tea, feels alright, breathes, and dies.
Since I’m dredging up stuff from college, I reactivated this blog. I thought I would be mortified rereading this, but I actually want to go back in and polish now that I’ve reintroduced myself to it. Might try to turn it into a screenplay. Not really looking for anything here other than an opportunity to share. I was a different person when I wrote this than the guy I am now, but probably not too different. I haven’t written anything serious since. This was done in 2012 between January and March right after a rough break-up. Thanks for reading.
It feels like I’ve been freaking out for 4 years straight up here.
(via skatoon-network)
(Source: instagram.com, via nevver)
some of my favourite absolutely SICK facts about the trappist-1 exoplanets:
- theyre all very close to one another and to their star, so the length of a year on them varies from 1 to 20 DAYS
- since they’re so close, the star appears a lot bigger than our sun from earth, and from one planet you could easily see the rest, some would even appear bigger than the moon from earth. you could literally see the surface of another planet with a naked eye!!!
- they’re tidally locked to their star like our moon is locked to earth, meaning only one side of a planet ever faces the star, and on the other side it’s always night. the sun never sets or rises on any of the planets
- the star is red, so the sunlight is red/orange, meaning if, for example, plants were to grow there, they could be black
and that’s just what we know now, imagine how much cool stuff we have yet to discover about the trappist-1 system
(via transcendentalsleuth)
The Menzingers
Casey
…On The Impossible Past (2012)And Gin and Casey
Used to dance inside of me
And I bet I sound like a broken record
Every time I open my mouth
I want to wander around the city with you again
Like when you waited tables
And I waited for your shift breaks
(via hardcore-park0ur)