Happy Thanksgiving!

We gather around our meal in long lines, like tentacles.

Father is there with sharp knife gleaming. He strikes downward, again and again, while grease and gore and tissue flies. Steam floats upward in the fecund air.

Mother stands next to father, her white apron dotted with deep maroon stains turning black as they dry.

My brother and his family creep on the floor. They whine and cry out. Some scratch the fur behind their ears with the claws on their toes. Others rub their bald skin against the walls, itching, endlessly itching. The youngest, just a pupae, writhes and yelps with hunger.

My sister steps on her youngest nephew. It bursts with a twist of her high heeled shoe. My brother, caring father that he is, laughs.

My wife, my kids, they stand back and wait quietly. This comes naturally to them. They are inflatable, after all.

Our family is larger this year, and growing. It includes you.

We gather around our meal in long lines, like tentacles.

You cry out as we slice off a chunk of your burnt thigh, and you close your eyes. Tears stream down your face.

I smile for you, knowing those are tears of joy.

We have so much to be thankful for.

Not Bad for a Dying Man

“How are you doing?” the doctor asked.

“Not bad for a dying man,” I said.


“This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” said the nurse.


I nodded. “Never seen this before?”


The doctor and nurse looked at each other and didn’t say a word. Neither of them looked at me.


I could decode an answer through their silence.


I looked down. My gown was off, the blankets were lowered, and I stared at my cleanly shaved chest. The mechanism was there: an antique watch, ticking. Folds of skin surrounded it as the second hand twirled round and round, tick-tick-tick. The minute hand moved, and I felt it to my core.


“Instead of a twelve, there’s a zero. I know what that means.”


“How can you be so sure?” the doctor asked. He did not look at me. He looked down at a tablet computer. His finger worked, taking notes. This was going to be a great case for him, the kind of thing that can make a doctor famous. Perhaps he could even give my condition, my illness, his name. He’d live on forever in medical text books and journals, thanks in no small part to my own novelty.


“I can be sure, because I know.”


“There’s a lot to be said for faith,” said the nurse. Her eyes were glassy with tears. She smiled but did not look happy. Her smile was genuine but it was just an empty gesture of kindness, a symbol of compassion. It still meant something to me.


“I feel it. I see it when I look in the mirror. I had a full head of hair this morning.” I patted a large and growing island of bare skin at the top of my skin. “These eyes had no wrinkles. How old do I look? Fifty? Sixty? Hell, I’m just barely thirty.”


“The aging is odd,” said the doctor.


“Is there anything about this that isn’t odd?” I placed my hand on the antique stop watch covering my heart. “Can’t you just get rid of the damn thing?”


The doctor shook his head. He walked over to the wall and turned on a light. “Look at your x-rays, son. See the watchband? It’s completely connected, tied completely in knots all around your aorta. See? If we remove the watch, you die. Simple as that. We‘ve got some great surgeons here, but no one‘s ever seen anything like this. There‘s no procedure. Hell, I bet your case manager‘s having a hell of a time with this one. You might want to contact your insurer to see if embedded watches are a covered diagnosis for hospital stays.”


I fingered the folds of skin surrounding the watch. I felt my ribs beneath it. They were curved around the metal frame. “But I can’t go home. I’m dying.”


“Maybe,” said the doctor. He looked down at his tablet. “I’m still researching. I’ve got some folks down at the medical library now. We will leave no stone unturned. We’re doing everything we can.”


“Which, in the end, is nothing.” I put my head back against my pillow and turned my head to the window. I watched a pair of pigeons fly by. The second hand continued to prance across the face of the watch, tick-tick-tick.


I felt a warm hand take mine. I looked over and saw the nurse was still smiling at me.


Maybe there was nothing they could do, nothing that anyone could do, but, in the end, that human touch was just enough.


“Thank you,” I said to the nurse, returning her smile.


Tick-tick-tick.

Rage

There’s something about the taste of blood in my mouth, when the pain grows numb, when the fists flying into my face, into my chest and stomach, no longer feel like anything at all. There’s something about that moment that causes me to feel invincible, to feel alive, and I don’t want anything else. This is ecstasy. This is right where I belong.

***

“Rage.”

I look up.  That’s my name. That’s who I am.  That’s all I am.

Who said my name?

It’s her. She’s there, looking angelic as always. She is looking down on me as I look up to her. There is light everywhere, it surrounds her, but I’m down in the depths, in the dark, and I spit out snot and blood. I laugh, or try to laugh, but it comes out as a cough, almost a whimper. I want to sound strong, but the body has its limitations.

I defy my limitations. This is who I am.

“Send more,” I say with a wheeze, and she obliges. The cell opens and I ball up my fists. I stand up, naked and strong. I raise my fists back. I push forward and connect with flesh and bone as the onslaught begins.

The whimpering cough disappears.

I can laugh once again.

***

Time slows in here. I walk in circles. I pace. I look down, and the cement is worn from my footfalls. Every step wears down the cement a little more. Little by little I reveal the impermanence of things, of all things, even steel and stone. No cell can last forever. No thing can last forever.

Perhaps not even me.

But I will try to hang on, a force of nature eroding and corroding. I fucking dance my way towards entropy, laughing the entire fucking time.

***

Don’t blame my mother. Don’t blame my father. Don’t blame the schools, the government, or even the damned universe. This is what I am here for, and I am happy enough, I guess, in my way.

***

“Rage.”

I look up, awake again, or mostly awake. My head throbs. My lips are swollen. My nose is crooked, and every shuddering breath stings my aching ribs. There’s a dull ache persisting throughout all that I know myself to be, all that I am, all that I ever have been, all that I ever will be.

She looks down at me, my angel, and smiles. She is peaceful, beautiful, and so very much above.

I smile at her. “Send more.”

She obliges. She always does.

***

It wasn’t always this way. Once it was different. I was loved. I still am loved by some on the outside, I guess. My mother loves me, I’m sure. Mothers never stop loving, even if they should. And then there’s my angel inside with me. I think she really loves me, even if I will never rise to her level.

But those days on the outside, when things held a different resonance, a different shade of truth, that was all before. Now I’m here, and I think I’ll always be here. I have no reason to think otherwise, to hope. Not that it matters, I no longer want out. I’ve found my place. In here, I am everything I was raised to be. Things are simpler, stripped down to the single most basic element: survival. Survival is the sound of pounding fists and raining blood and shouting and laughter.

“Thirty years,” said the judge once upon a time and long ago. That’s a long fucking time for stealing some shit that no one really cared about, pieces of paper with a promised value that probably doesn’t exist anyway in the first place besides to balance some ledger or database somewhere. It was an amount that, in the end, no one truly cared about and insurance fully covered for those fuckers at the bank anyway.

Thirty years was the initial sentence. That’s about as long as Christ lived his entire life, according to the Sunday sermons. Thirty years was not enough, could never be enough. My mission hardly begun, those thirty years turned to forty based on additional charges – aggravated assault, resisting – and those years keep growing. I will keep surviving. I will keep spreading my message.

Poor fucking guards. They hear stories, they should be prepared, but they never fucking know what’s about to hit them.

“Send more.”

I hear them open the cell. Their boots clomp against cement. I ball my fists and smile.

Callisto's Tears

The men carried her off in chains. The boy wept. A crushing loneliness descended upon him, and he called out “Callisto!” but she did not hear him, did not look back.

The men did not notice the boy. They had their hands full with his wild friend. She roared and fought and shed massive tufts of hair. After the men carried Callisto away, he used her fallen fur to wipe away tears. He inhaled her musty scent and sat on the ground.

Time passed, and the world grew dark. The shadows lengthened as the lights went out until the world was engulfed in bitter darkness. The boy threw stones into the blackness of the ocean. The water splashed without any sound.

He watched the stars overhead shift and move and circle. He watched the lights in the sky change shapes and colors. He listened to the hum of the elevators reaching to the skies. He thought about walking to the elevators, but they were locked, always locked. Besides, the men might see him. He did not want that. He held clusters of Callisto's shed hair in his tight-fisted grip, swept the hair up into a small nest on the beach, laid down, and tried to sleep. Sleep did not come easy, but it did come. It always did.

The night went by without dreams. There was nothing to dream about.

When the lights came on, the boy saw tracks in the sand. There were the footprints of men and larger footprints with claws. He looked up the beach and found it deserted. The wind blew. The tracks faded but did not disappear. He inhaled a breath of air, coughed from the sulfuric scent of dead ocean, and began to run. His feet sunk into the sand. He struggled with every footstep. Soon, he gasped for air and ignored a pain shooting up the side of his chest.

He closed his eyes sometimes and pretended he was riding her: his Callisto. Without her, he was forced to use his own two feet, his own legs, and they were sore and weak from disuse.

The massive elevator cast a shadow. In that shadow there was a chill.

Men in uniforms wandered around the base of the elevator. The boy looked down and noticed he was naked. He had never noticed this before, but seeing the clothed men made him conscious of his differences. He felt something he had not known before. A man might have called it shame, but the boy only knew it as sickness.

Callisto was tied to a pole. The men poked her with sticks. Her brown coat was stained dark by blood and filth. She roared and spat. The men laughed.

The boy dropped to his knees.

The men saw him and came running. They brought water and food, a food sweeter than any he had ever known. He ate and drank and rose up to his feet.

The men cared for the boy until he grew strong. They gave him work. He climbed up and down the elevator with his massive wrench and twisted nuts to keep everything in working order. It was a dull job but important. He found solace in his own sense of importance. He worked by day. He ate and drank with the other men at night. They entertained themselves in their way.

Years passed and the boy – now a man – poked a bear with a sharp stick. The eyes of that bear disturbed the man. He saw himself reflected as a younger, weaker version of himself. He wanted to poke out those eyes, but the stick always slipped.

Those large eyes were slick from Callisto’s tears.

Hiding Out

I don’t know when it began, exactly, but I know that it happened. I know that it happened because it’s still happening. I peek through the blinds, past the nailed-up boards I put up to keep things out and look out into the yard. The yard is overgrown now, covered by tall clumps of crabgrass, mounds of kudzu covered with tiny purple buds just ready to burst, and creeping vines with stickers. But there are paths out there through all that vegetation. Those winding paths are clean and clear. They worry me more than anything.

I was ready for this. Shrinking stockpiles of canned food, MREs, and jugs of fresh water line my walls. I stocked up on iodine for water purification. I rigged up my gutters so that they drained into a large tub outside that I could drain through a spigot set in the kitchen wall. I always thought it’d be the government coming down on us, taking away all our basic freedoms and rights, but I never expected how the shit would eventually hit the fan.

I hear them at night. They call me out. Some of them sound like people I used to know. Sometimes I look outside, and I see them. Then I see through them. They are the ghosts of what came before, and that’s all they’ll ever be. What came before never will be again.

So, anyway, it wasn’t the government. It was us, all of us. We slept in one morning with a collective snore. We didn’t give enough of a flying cow turd to get our asses out of bed. And when I finally left my bed, the world had changed. It had moved on without me.

The borders of my lawn had already disappeared. The civilized lawn that used to be there, the one I kept mowed down nice and short so I wouldn’t have to mow it too often, was replaced by creeping bushes and tangles.

I make my own wine out of canned peaches. It tastes nasty, but it does the job all right, I guess. I grow a couple plants. I take care to keep some seeds to grow more plants, and the buds never cease growing. The world is overtaken by weeds. I take a toke, I sip my wine, and I look back outside and contemplate what once was and what is now and how the two are so very different.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m seeing things, spending too much time alone. I pick up the phone, but there’s no dial tone, of course. The lights won’t come on. I see my mailbox out there by the road is full to bursting, but I won’t go out there. That’s what they want.

I used to date a girl. She was a pretty thing. She took me out shopping all the time, and I hated it. She didn’t like hunting or fishing or shooting rats out at the dump. You know, she just wasn’t anything that was actually fun. She’d rather buy shoes. Now, I’ll admit those shoes looked good on her. Her clothes looked real nice. But they were impractical. Those heels got stuck in the mud of my driveway. Her dresses tore on briars if I took her out for a walk through the woods. So, I guess we didn’t have much in common. I guess it didn’t work out, and I guess I understand why. It only makes sense.

But one time I remember she took me to this mall, a big mall, all the way out in Atlanta. I hated those roads in that crazy ass town. To tell the truth, I tend to get nervous when things get paved and there’s more than one stoplight or intersection per square mile. But nothing could have prepared me for the mall. The thing was three stories and packed tight with people like an oversized sardine can. And what good are sardines without crackers and hot sauce? Anyway, I didn’t care for it, I guess. I sweated and felt sick. Those people pushed and pulled against me like waves. They made my stomach turn. People sprayed cologne on me in the department stores, and they choked me up even worse. It was just about the worst thing I ever did experience. The food court was a mass of dialogs I couldn’t follow. She talked to me and smiled sweetly. I didn’t hear a thing she said over all that ruckus. I never did hear what she said. And that was that, I guess. I never wanted to go shopping again, even if that meant I couldn’t be with that sweet girl.

And then, every time I went out afterwards – to the grocery store, the big hardware store, the head shop – it reminded me of that mall. I couldn’t go anywhere.

I never did call her or ask her out again after that day at the mall. Just the thought of being near her little modern Honda again was enough to give me the shivers.

So when we all slept in for the big sleep, I didn’t mind so much. I didn’t have much else to do.

Cars drive by sometimes, but I know that they are just a waking dream, an illusion. Probably something toxic in this peach wine making me hallucinate, I figure. But sometimes I do see them, and I sometimes wonder if the world ever did really sleep in. Or maybe it’s just me? Not that it matters none. I am here and there ain’t no going back.

Not even when I think I hear that pretty girl calling to me through my boarded up windows. When I feel weak and sad, I wonder if those paths winding through the overgrowth are hers. Those tiny holes in the wet dirt could be from a pair of high heels. That seems a reasonable enough speculation when I’m good and drunk. But if that’s her, she better be careful. She’s likely to break her ankle in them impractical things.

But I know that ain’t real. It’s just what they want me to think. I know better than to go back out there again. They’d tear me to pieces.

When the Doors Opened Wide

The light at the end of the tunnel was not what you expected it to be. Instead of bright and warm and comforting, you felt it burn. It felt tight in your chest. You turned your face, your eyes, or you tried to, but you were not you any longer. You just were what you were, whatever that was.

No pulse. No breath. No skin.

You cried out and thought of so many things: sins, dreams, loves, lusts, wishes, desires, faces, names, places, sights, and screams. Their screams.

You did not want to be here. You wanted to be back there.

The house was falling in on itself. The wallpaper peeled. The moldy ceilings dripped when it rained and sometimes when it was just damp outside. Breezes chilled you there with the lack of insulation, with the cracks in the walls. It was no mansion, but it had been home. You had been free to be yourself there. You could be anyone, do anything. And you did.

You believed in nothing. You read your philosophy books. You once wanted to believe, but you decided you Kant. Not after what happened to you. Not after all that suffering. Not after what she did to you.

So, you made do. You did what you felt needed to be done. You did it to person after person.

You never wanted to suffer alone. So the world suffered with you. The world feared you, and this excited you.

Bodies upon bodies and news clippings in a soiled scrapbook.

You took Polaroids, too. You wanted to capture every single agonized face, every engorged strangled visage.

But no one saw your face when it was your turn. No one called your name. No one ever knew it was you, so it was all wasted.

There won’t even be a Wikipedia article on you.

The light at the end of the tunnel turned off and you fell back into your skin.

The light was just a fridge light. The tunnel had just been your vision fading out as the oxygen left your brain. But you came back. Just long enough to see yourself one last time.

The pain in your chest tightened. You clutched your shirt.

Milk spilled all around you, and you drooled. You wet yourself.

You looked up to the rotting ceiling, at the black spreading mold. In that mold you saw yourself staring back at yourself and you laughed. Or you tried to.

There was no breath left in your lungs.

Then the mold opened. It became a door. You felt yourself lifted up by cold hands. You looked around you, and there were many doors. Inside the doors there was only darkness and screams. You recognized their voices.

They were happy to see you again.

You wished you could say the same.

You look backwards but there is nowhere to go.

They call your name.

You scream.

Everything Matters

Nothing matters, she said, but only it did. Everything mattered.

Fuck you, she said.

I love you, I said.

She took my hand in hers. She held it to her wet cheeks. I leaned down and tasted her tears. They were bitter.

She took my hand in hers. She held it to her breast. It was warm. It moved with her breaths, and I held my own breath, afraid to move, afraid that the feeling would stop.

I shouldn’t have worried. The feeling remains. Even all that came afterwards, even after what she did to me before, the feeling remained.

Even now, it doesn’t matter that she is no longer breathing.

*

I stared at the spot on the wall. I watched it grow. Maggots fell from rotting sheetrock. They squirmed on the ground without legs, just pale bodies grown fat and useless. I know what they feel like. It’s frustrating to sit around waiting for something that may never come, unable to feel like a grownup, being unable to fly.

*

She hid from me. Somewhere. I never found her. I cleaned my blades. I washed the floor with bleach.

*

Sometimes, she took my hands in hers without taking my hands. Her hands were so cold and stiff. The fingers hardly moved. I think her pinkie broke off.

*

One day her mother came by.

Where is she? she asked.

I don’t know, I said.

She finally up and left you, huh?

Yeah. I guess so.

*

I never liked her mother very much.

*

One night I lay in bed and stared at the stains and holes in the wall. I heard breathing. I held my own breath, but I could still hear the breathing. Almost like a heartbeat in another story but not quite. The sound didn’t disturb, it comforted.

She breathed in my ear and told me everything is going to be okay.

I believed her.

I always believed her.

Even when I knew better.

*

Time moves like a sick turtle. It crawls and lurches, and every now and then, it hides in its shell. I like my shell. It is covered in ancient faux wood siding. It hasn’t changed a lick since my parents died. Except there are holes in the wall and a lot more flies. Her scent pervades the house with the smell of the others.

*

Nothing matters, she said, but only it did. Everything mattered.

A (Kind of) Fairy Tale

Sheila clutched a Swiss army knife in her hand. She extracted a small blade to carve an opening in the cardboard box surrounding her. This released a blinding stream of light that poured down like a phosphorescent waterfall. She closed her eyes and then opened them slowly, allowing them to adjust to the new light. It had been a long time since she had looked outside. A very long time.

She peeked through the new opening and saw that the world had not changed. It was still the same as it was before. The river coursing over the rocks had straightened a little. It no longer curved the same way. The white water had calmed somewhat, but other than that, the world was no different. The leaves were still green. The sky remained blue. The birds still sang.

Then the leaves fell and then winter came and snow collected on her new window. Translucent stalactites of ice dripped over her opening and distorted her view. She shivered, decided it would be better to hibernate, and fell fast sleep.

The world was her bed and it was soft and comforting. It made sense when nothing else did. She woke as the snows began to thaw, and she tried to remember why she was here, where she obtained the Swiss army knife in her hand, why she was in a box, but decided that these were worthless questions. She was here because she was here and that was all. This is no different for anyone else, no matter how strange or sensible or senseless they might happen to be. People aren’t all that different, though they often like to think they are special. She had had time to think and no longer clung to false notions. Maybe she wasn’t special, she decided, but at least she was free. She said, “Freedom is in the mind, not a physical state of being,” and she chanted this over and over and over until she almost believed it, but not really, because she was a protagonist, and this, by default, made her special. At least it made her special in her own self-contained universe. Without a character there can be no story, after all, and without a story there is simply nothing to tell.

Then the box dissolved with the raging rains of spring and she emerged during a storm. Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, but then the winds swept the storm – and the dissolving remains of her box – away. As the clouds broke apart to reveal the sun, she outstretched her arms. Her joints popped. She ignored the pain and bloomed. Delicate and colorful petals flitted with a soft breeze. She was beautiful and fragile and, ultimately, meaningless.

Navel Gazing

Uno

I was born in a pickle jar. My first view was of the inside of a kitchen cabinet. Stubborn bits of label and glue that would not wash off the jar obscured my vision. It was dark, but my developing eyes didn’t mind. Enough light filtered through the cracks in the doors to see all I needed to see: a coffee cup hand-painted with a beach scene from Mexico City. It was paradise. I contently swam in circles.

Deux

I smoked my first cigarette at two years old. I was outside a Laundromat beside the dumpster I called home after being tossed out by my parent who was an inconsequential and slovenly short hunk of hairy man. I had been a mistake, apparently. My parent had tossed me out, jar and all, two years previously. The jar broke, and I was born, and now here I was contemplating. While toddling around, pondering my fate, I found a crumpled pack of cigarettes on the ground. There was one lonely crushed up cigarette inside. I lit it with a Zippo lighter I carried in the chest pocket of my dirty OshKosh overalls. The lighter was decorated with a Confederate Flag. It said: “The South Shall Rise Again!” I inhaled and coughed, inhaled and coughed, inhaled and coughed again. Yet, by my fourth toke, I found I was already used to the process. A thin blue trail of smoke wafted up from my chubby hand as I waved the cigarette in lazy arcs. I cleared my throat. “The contemplative life is often miserable.” This was from a book of Chamfort plays I had found beside the dumpster one pale afternoon. I decided to follow his advice then and there to “act more, think less, and watch oneself live.” I found a tattered beret and placed it on top of my head.

Trinity

By the time I reached my teens, I realized that everything came in threes. There was me, my beloved, and my beloved’s beloved. There was a fight. I won the fight but lost the war. My beloved’s beloved fell in love with my beloved as she nursed him back to health. They went away together. Then I was alone again: two and one, one and done.

Quattor

A priest gave me a copy of his Latin Primer. He said it had been his only book as a boy. He said this in Latin of course, so I did not understand what he said at the time. I loved that book. I was in my twenties and trying to find my place. I had left the dumpster behind and moved into the Laundromat. I liked the big glass windows. When I leaned my face up against the cool glass and looked out at the cold world, it felt something like being home. Domis dulcis domus.

Five

By the time I reached my thirties, the Laundromat had been torn down. I heard they were going to turn the shopping center into a Walmart. I wasn’t sure why they would do this – there were already three Walmarts within two miles – but sure enough, that’s what they did. So, I left for the woods. I found some people out there with long hair who were very nice at first. They welcomed me, called me “Brother.” It brought tears to my eyes. They said they were Rainbow People. I liked them. They asked me if I wanted to be one of them. They said according to Rainbow tradition, there is only one prerequisite for joining the Family: a belly button. Once they realized I had been born in a dirty pickle jar with no umbilical cord and therefore no belly button, they apologized and left me alone.

Sex

By the time I reached my forties, I was coughing constantly. After years of smoking, the air I breathed was a consistency more like razorblade-infused syrup than a gas. I knew it wouldn’t be long. I walked towards an apartment building. I snuck in through an open window. I moved straight towards the kitchen. There was an empty pickle jar. It stunk inside, but I was pleased by the organic funk. I filled it with my own urine and sloughed off tiny flakes of dry skin with my dirty fingernails. I blew in a puff of cigarette smoke before closing the lid. The conditions were perfect. I smiled and watched as the fragments of myself danced in the dirty water. They came together, one by one, and coalesced into a swirling fetus. I placed the jar inside a cabinet and turned it so it would face the coffee cups. There was a nice cup in there with a hand-painted beach scene from Mexico City. I looked in the mirror and realized that I had grown into an inconsequential and slovenly short hunk of hairy man. C’est la vie.

Bubbles*

Jelly watched the shadow orbs bounce around the room. They transformed her perceptions, changing the soft lighting and filtering it into a pale glimmer. She helped her mother paint the room a soft pink last summer. The pink resembled maroon in the half-light.

It looks like blood, she thought to herself.

The orbs continued their clumsy dance. Her bedroom resembled a life-sized lava lamp. She knew she should be afraid, but she wasn't.

It had grown familiar long ago.

She turned up the Lady Gaga playing on her IPod, laid back, and smiled.

***

"Momma got run over by a reindeer," Jelly would reply to any idiot dumb enough to ask about her mother. In reality, she had succumbed to cancer. For Jelly, however, the why didn't matter so much. All that really mattered was the finality of it.

At times she had felt sorry for Momma, seeing her pain as her cells degraded and her body wasted away. At other times she did not care so much that Momma had hurt. At least Momma had been there. In pain or not, Momma survived and was willing to hold Jelly's hand while she described her pre-pubescent soap opera tragedies. Momma would nod and smile and stroke her hand.

Aunt Grace had said it had been for the best, but Aunt Grace was a poop-for-brains, as Daddy would say. Except Daddy usually said that other word.

***

It was the night after the funeral that the shadow orbs had first appeared. Jelly was terrified. She screamed into the night for her mother, having forgotten that Momma had passed on.

Her father came in place of her mother. Wiping the sleep from his eyes, he asked what was wrong.

Jelly told him, but as the words came out, even at her young age, she felt ridiculous. The orbs bobbled through her room, soaking up the light of her Princess Barbie night light. It was clear her father couldn't see the dark bubbles.

Jelly had called Daddy in a few nights after that before she accepted he never would see them. The orbs – whatever they were – were hers and hers alone. A vision she could share with no one.

Over the years, she discovered they seemed to like music, or at least when she listened to music. Even while wearing the ear buds from her pink IPod, when no living soul other than her could hear the songs streaming through the wires, the bubbles seemed to be in tune. They pulsated, varying between differing shades of grey and black, soaking up the light in different frequencies.

***

The therapist asked her about the bubbles. Jelly felt anger towards her father for betraying this secret. She would never talk about the orbs to her therapist, she decided. He creeped her out, and the only emotions she dared to share with the bespectacled weirdo were imagined. Her reality was her secret. Besides, her fantasies and daydreams were realistic enough. The therapist never questioned her honesty.

Whenever the bubbles came up during their sessions, Jelly shifted the discussion. She would talk about the confusion caused by her budding sexuality. She fabricated stories of pillow fights with girlfriends that went too far. Her therapist didn't seem to mind. In fact, he always forgot all about the bubbles. He would blush and dab the sweat away from his forehead.

***

Night after night she looked up to the ceiling, listening to music, awaiting their arrival.

They bounced and danced for her. They soaked up the light. They vibrated and hummed. Sometimes she imagined words and symbols. Jelly felt the bubbles communicate, but meaning eluded her.

Accustomed to their presence, she grew bold. Listening to a mix tape of gothic dance music her friend Shanna had given her – mostly a collection of remixed Cure and Evanescence songs – the orbs grew around her.

Eyes wide and with a feeling she could not describe, almost a hunger, she reached out her hand.

The orb enveloped her flesh and caressed it. The orbs closed in around her. Invisible fingers stroked through hair. Nonexistent legs wrapped around her. She sucked in a deep draught of air as her lungs tightened. Something held her tight in a bear hug. She held her breath as an orb descended over her head. Inside looking out, everything wavered. Her hair billowed around her head as if she were underwater.

The grip around her, holding her down, relented. The urge to breathe took hold, and she relaxed. She sucked in a breath of…

Suddenly, the bubbles were gone. She was on her hands and knees, coughing, gasping for air. She knew what a fish out of water must feel like.

She purged out a thick puddle of black goo. It bounced and jiggled on the floor like Jell-O spilled from a mold. She shivered. Her body convulsed. She rolled around and felt the texture of the carpet pressing against her bare skin.

"Jelly? You okay in there honey?" she heard her father call from the other side of the door. His voice was muffled by the wood and the distance between them.

She tried to reply that she was fine, but couldn't gasp in enough air to say anything.

She attempted to breathe in but the air felt too thick to enter her lungs. She thrashed and crawled on the floor. Using a dresser, she managed to pull herself upright.

Looking back at her in the mirror was someone she did not recognize.

"Jelly, babe, I'm coming in!"

Thud after thud sounded out as the door shook in its frame.

Jelly was only dimly aware of the rattling door. She was transfixed by her reflection. After the initial shock, she was able to see herself in that stranger's face. Her face had aged fifteen years since she last saw it.

Her hair hung sticky and wet around her. The face was covered with wrinkles. Deep frown lines marred her lower face. She was bruised and battered. A tourniquet was tied around her arm, and a half-plunged syringe stuck out of a vein. She looked into her eyes. They were lined by wrinkles. The pupils looking back at her were black holes on a bloodshot canvas. She was naked and withered. Loose skin hung from her skinny frame in places. Smallish breasts drooped over an exposed ribcage.

The door crashed open and a man she did not recognize entered. He was tall and lanky. Blond dreadlocks hung around a yellowed and acne-covered face. The man's build was nearly as withered as hers.

"Jelly? Baby? You okay?"

Jelly felt the man rush up and embrace her as she fell.

She saw the orbs again and smiled. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she felt her heartbeat shudder. Death embraced her with the stranger.

*Originally appeared in Sand: A Journal of Strange Tales, Issue #2, Fall/Winter 2008.

Directions

I understand how the person I used to be shaped the person I am today. I see it now as I look at myself in a distant time. I’m awkward. My hair cut is terrible. I reek of cigarette smoke and other kinds of smoke. My breath stinks from cheap malt liquor. I hear the words coming out of my mouth and cringe at their crudity and sometimes downright idiocy, and I remember self-righteously believing that I was absolutely correct about all that crap and venom spewing off my wagging tongue at the time. Obviously, I was wrong. I know that now that I am looking at myself through the clarifying filter of time.

Is it wisdom that changed me? I would argue this, or would like to, but I know that it would be untrue. I am no wiser. I understand that now. The only truth I’ve learned since then is that I don’t know it all. I can never know it all. There is simply too much to know.

So, I sat down and asked him (myself) questions. He (I) was sullen. I remember this day and know I did not want to talk to a creepy old guy in a stained white polo shirt with long curly hair and a beard full of potato chip crumbs, not when Tansy was there with me, halfway drunk and emotionally vacant.

I had lusted after her then. I could not see the bloated burn-out of an alcoholic she would soon become. I could not know the regrets she would feel daily because of her misspent youth that I myself helped misspend. Could there have been something like love there? I like to think so sometimes, but I know better. My vision was limited then as it still is now. Maybe when I get back I should call her? See how she’s doing. Last I heard, she was three months sober. I clapped for her at that meeting, but it was my last meeting before figuring out time travel. Not that I could go back to the meetings now. I’m not exactly sober these days.

I called him (myself) over again, offered him (me) a pack of cigarettes – I knew his (my) weakness – and finally he (I) came over. I sat down on a fallen log on the stinking exposed bank of the riverside. It was fall and the river was at its lowest point thanks to the hydroelectric dam upriver. The air was full of the scent of falling leaves and rotting fish: a pleasant and nostalgic mix for me, even if the city folk back home would find it offensive. He (I) snatched the cigarettes from my hand and moved a couple feet away from me. He (I) lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and exhaled. He (I) nodded his (my) thanks. I motioned for him (myself) to sit down. We had a lot to talk about.

I asked, “What do you plan on doing for the rest of your life?”

He (I) released a bitter laugh. “What the fuck do you mean? I don’t even know what I’m doing this afternoon, man.”

“Trust me. I know exactly what you mean. I still don’t know what I’m doing myself. We’ll never know, will we? Not unless we find direction.” I sighed. I placed my hands on my knees and pushed myself up to a standing position. I looked down on him (myself). “Remember this moment. It will happen again.”

He (I) shook his (my) head and tossed his (my) cigarette butt into the river. Together, we watched it wash away with the current until we could see it no longer.

I turned and found myself gone. Tansy walked over with a lit joint in her hands. “Who was that guy?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

“What did he want?”

“Directions, I think.”

I thought of the cigarette rolling downriver. It would eventually wash up against a distant shore with the flame long extinguished never to be lit again. There was a sudden burning in my eyes, the threat of tears, and I turned away. I wasn’t sure where I would go, but I knew it was time to leave the riverside.

A Letter Found Near The End

Dear Them,

In the beginning, we believed the fairy tales, the myths, the legends. We took all of the stories, processed them, embraced them, and savored them as Truth. This was in the days when The Light seemed to go on forever, when the sun stood overhead as a silent sentry watching over us and protecting us from the darkness on the edges of our enchanted places. Those were the days when we did not know any better.

But those days ended (as we always knew they must), and we were cast outwards into the unknown, to places where not even moonlight could break through to light the shadows in the underbrush all around, where unseen things crept ever closer. We jumped at the sound of breaking branches and shuffling leaves. We turned in circles, blind. We entered the night without dreams where stark reality ruled and cast away our visions and pleasantries, where nightmares replaced dreams, and horrors replaced fantasies.

We learned of murder, rape, and thievery. We committed necessary acts hoping to survive in this new world, the real world, where we never smiled. We missed those days of before when this present was the only thing we were incapable of imagining.

We despaired over the loss of daylight, the lack of kindness and happy endings. That was what led us here into this place beyond the fringe, to the land where stories are never told, and where books are used as kindling.

Our legends faded. The myths dissolved like vapors. The stories … We missed them. Once forgotten, we buried them in the mulch. Worms ate them, and we tasted rot in the air. We found it a sweet stench: earthy, real.

In the end, we lay down with our fading stories as our memories drowned. We fell down onto a mound of water-stained pages and inkblots. We closed our eyes and went to sleep, knowing that our sleep would be dreamless.

We stared upwards, watching, as clouds hid constellations whose names we could no longer remember.

And when The End came, we embraced it.

Sincerely,

Us

Socrates at the Strip Mall

A class of children sat in a circle at the back of a parking lot. In the center of this circle, a man stood and talked to his young congregation. The man swept his arms behind him with a dramatic flourish. “You see, our story is indelible, written into the very fabric of this world. Look at this cliff. Look here at the layers of stone in this spot revealed when they blasted away a hill to make room for this shopping center. You can see our history. It is written in fossils, obviously, yet also in languages more subtle, if not downright obscure. Notice the striations in the rock, the shifts of color in various layers of soil. Yes, there is writing here. There are stories. You just have to look.”

“I see,” said a broken prepubescent squeal.

“You do? What do you see, Tye?”

“Uhm. What you told me to see.”

“Ah. What if I told you the earth was flat? Would you believe me then?”

Ginger Farrell raised her hand. The teacher lifted his head and pointed his thin chin in her direction. “Yes, Ms. Farrell?”

She swished her head and moved a lock of blonde hair away from her eyes. She held her pen in her hand. The pen sat poised and ready over the colorful notebook in her lap. “Is the world flat, Mr. Jenkins?" She asked the question without a smile. Her face wore the vacant look of sincerity.

Mr. Jenkins slapped his forehead with his palm in an overtly dramatic gesture of frustration.

The children laughed uneasily.

Mr. Jenkins wondered if they even understood the joke? He doubted it. If so, they wouldn’t laugh. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t funny at all.

Mirror Image

The first time I saw him, his face was pounded in. It was nothing more than bits of bone and flesh and a pool of blood. He was beautiful in his way, a masterpiece of the grotesque, but he wasn’t my type, so I ignored him. He croaked like a toad and gargled fluids.

The next time I saw him, he looked much better. His face had mostly healed. Scars crisscrossed his cheeks and forehead. Yet, his skin was a bit too pale and swollen, unnaturally so, almost like a mushroom. I thought if I touched his face that my hand would sink right in, leaving an impression, like a mushy foam pillow or something. He smiled at me, and I shuddered. I didn’t like the way he looked. Not at all.

The last time I saw him. He was immobile. He was still. He was dead, or at the least, he was dying. A pool of blood originating from a slit neck spread outwards around his head like a strange, gory halo.

My mirror fell forward and shattered into a million reflections. I never knew his name, but at that moment, I knew he meant everything.

The Caveman in the Flowerbed

I found the first of the cavemen in the loose ground behind Momma's flowers. All around me, the roses bloomed in hues of red, white, yellow, and pink. Between the blooms, between the thorns, I saw his hand sticking out of the dirt. I only got scratched a little as I crawled on my hands and knees to make the discovery. A line of ants crossed his skin. A few bit me on my knees and ankles before I swatted them away. I touched the grey skin of the hand and it felt cold and hard. That's how I knew it must be a frozen caveman.

I went inside to get my shovel. Momma was upset.

"What's that dirt on your new dress?"

"I'm digging up a caveman, Momma."

She made her eyes look big and said, "Really? A caveman?"

"Yes, Momma."

She smiled at me and patted my head. "In that case, you go on up to the bedroom and change into some play clothes, okay? You don't need to be getting your school clothes all dirty."

I nodded my head and ran up to my room where I changed into my pink shorts and a cranberry juice stained i-Carly t-shirt. I grabbed the small plastic shovel Daddy had bought me last summer at the beach and rushed back downstairs.

"Be careful of black widows!" my mother yelled to me as the screen door pulled shut behind me with a hiss.

Digging in the dirt, I was able to reveal an arm. Parts of the skin moved a little, and when I touched those parts they felt gooey. I worked my way up the arm and revealed his body. The caveman wore a t-shirt with a black Metallica logo. Then I dusted off the dirt from his face, and open eye sockets looked back at me. There were no eyeballs. Curious, I poked an empty socket with a stick, and little white bugs were on the stick when I pulled it back out of the hole. Despite his lack of eyeballs, he looked kind of like one of the older guys in my school. Like one of the kids who had moved on to the middle school last year. I think his name was Trent.

I looked at the throat and it looked funny. There was a black line across it, and more of the little white bugs were inside that line. They seemed to have found a home there. I started feeling sick. But I was excited about my discovery and ran inside to tell Mommy.

She did not react the way I expected her to. She came out smiling, letting me lead her by the hand. "I have revealed the caveman!" I yelled while moving my arms around with a dramatic flourish like that magician at school did during his show that one time. Then I stood back and noticed her face.

It turned white, really pale, almost green, and then she fell to her knees and began throwing up all over her flowers.

"Don't dirty your dress, Momma," I told her.

She waved me away. She wiped the spit trails falling off her nose and mouth and pointed to the house. "Get inside, baby! And don't look back out here."

She stood up and grabbed the upper part of my arm. I tried to wiggle away, but she grabbed me tighter. "C'mon! Get inside!"

"Don't you like my caveman, Momma?" I asked her. I looked up to her face. She didn't look back at me. Her eyes were wet with tears and focused on my caveman.

"I've got to make a phone call. Now! C'mon!"

She jerked me so hard tears formed in my eyes. I had a bruise from that yank for a few days afterwards.

She sent me up to my room. I heard her make a phone call. A few minutes later there were sirens. I looked outside and watched policemen talk to Mommy. I saw some men in orange suits take my caveman. They put him in a black plastic bag which they loaded into an ambulance. Mommy signed a piece of paper, and some people in white suits began digging at other places in the flower bed. More cavemen were revealed. All of them looked like boys I knew from school.

When Daddy pulled into the driveway, he started shouting. A policeman grabbed him, leaned him over his Buick, put a bracelet on his wrists, and took him away. I asked Momma that night where they took my caveman and where they took Daddy.

She never answered me. Anytime I brought it up, all she could do was cry.

Maya

Despite the significance of her name in the Hindu religion, dreams never really sat well with Maya. In fact, the more she attempted to ingest, the more frequently she choked. Her throat burned and blistered every time she tried to swallow another new idea.

Yet this never stopped her father from trying to force another dream down her throat. He would make her stay at the table until she cleaned her plate. He took no excuses. Never mind she just really wanted to watch her favorite cartoon show on television, read her story book (she liked that one about Disney Princesses), or perhaps even work on her homework – anything was preferable to trying to swallow down yet another dry and lifeless dream, and all dreams are lifeless, or at least it seemed that way.

But on this night, her father promised something different. He brought her a dish of greenery. Out of this sea of green, a lotus flower bloomed. A man walked towards her. He stepped lightly across the soft petals.

This man was tan and well-muscled. When he looked at her, a shy dimpled smile cut across his face. A glimpse of white teeth and pink gums. She was hungry. She pinched him. She lifted him. She opened her mouth.

He screamed, and she salivated. She began to chew. She chomped and chomped until his screaming ceased. A line of reddish spittle and blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth.

“Delicious!” she said with a smile. Then she tried to swallow. “Water!” she cried with her cheeks puffed out. The lump of dream lodged itself against her hard palate.

Her father smiled and poured her a glass of water. It was clean and clear. She took the glass eagerly and poured the contents into her mouth. She could not swallow.

She gagged and coughed. A tiny arm landed on the white table cloth and left dots of blood as it bounced. She coughed again, and a small leg landed in her mother’s dinner glass. It swirled in the pinkish hues of her plum wine. Her mother scowled at her.

Maya wanted to say she was sorry, but all she could manage was another cough. A tiny head struck the tabletop with a small thud and rolled away like a misshapen marble.

Maya’s face turned red. She broke out in hives. It became impossible to breath.

“I’ll get the Benadryl,” her mother said with a sigh. “Seriously, honey, why do you keep trying?”

Maya’s father shook his head and sat down heavily in the massive wooden chair at the head of his family’s table. “Because we are what we are.”

“But just because we are what we are doesn’t mean that she has to be.”

He nodded his head. “But we’ve been this way for so long.”

“Times change. People change.” Maya’s mother stole a glance in her daughter’s direction.

Maya grabbed her napkin and began spitting up the gory mess inside her mouth. She dared not look at either of her parents.

Maya’s mother looked back to the father. “Everything changes. Roles change.”

“But we are the unchanging.”

“Nothing is unchanging.”

“Then, who will destroy the dreams?”

Maya’s mother left the room and returned with a cup full of Benadryl. Maya hated the way the medicine tasted. It burned her already sore throat on the way down.

Once the hives receded, once her breathing was easier, Maya asked, “Can I be excused now?”

Her mother gave her a sad smile. “Sure, dear. Clean up your room before bed, okay?”

“Yes, mother. And father?”

He looked up at her. “Hmm?” A forkful of naked young women were impaled on the tines of his fork. They screamed.

Maya had to shout to be heard over their screams. “Father, I think I know the answer.”

“The answer to what, dear?” Her mother smiled at her from across the table.

“You know, his question. About who will destroy the dreams.” She paused and looked at the lavish dishes spread out across the table. “If you just give them time, dreams have a way of destroying themselves, don’t they?”

Her father shrugged, said “Maybe,” and stuck his fork back into the bloody rose on his plate. A chorus of tiny young women screamed. “Who knows?” he said over their terrified cries. He looked off into the distance and started to chew. The screams soon ceased.

Feeling ashamed, knowing she could never meet her father’s lofty expectations, Maya turned away.

Why?

Why?

Sadie looked around for the source of the voice. She looked under the bed, in the closet, leaned her head out the bedroom door, and peered down the narrow hallway of her trailer towards the small kitchenette and living room. She was alone. She was always alone. His crap still filled the closet, his tools still cluttered the back porch, but he had been gone for a long time. He never entered the trailer anymore. He knew his place.

She unscrewed the top of her Wild Irish Rose, tipped it up, and tried to forget.

*

Morning struck her like a sledgehammer. She opened one eye and then another and found herself looking sideways at the dirty orange shag rug. The world seemed to have tilted on its axis. She put her hands beneath her to try to sit up, but a wave of nausea rolled through her. She fell back to the ground and breathed in the scent of dirt, of dust, and mold.

The thought of mold sent an erotic shiver up her spine, but she lay still and resigned herself to rest a little longer. A sharp pulsing pain which matched the erratic beat of her heart threatened to split open her head. She closed her eyes again and tried to sleep. It wasn’t as if she had anywhere to go anyway. The bills were paid. The state made sure of that.

*

Hours later, an eager knock echoed across fiberboard walls and flooring.

She sat up and looked at the clock: 3:15. He used to get off at 3.

“Crap.”

She ignored the pain in her head, ignored the sour taste of bile as it rose in the back of her throat, and wrapped her stained robe around herself. She stumbled down the hallway, using her arms against the walls to hold herself upright.

Why?

It was a whisper in her ear.

“Not now. You’re at the door. Hear that knocking? It’s real this time.”

She thought something grabbed her around the ankle. She tumbled forward and nearly tripped and lost her balance. She looked down, expecting to see she had tangled herself in the belt of her robe, but the robe was untied. The belt was not there.

Why?

She waved her hands around her head as if trying to knock away flies.

The knocking on the door became louder, more insistent.

She rounded the corner. She opened the door. No one was there. A shaft of sunlight poured through the clouds overhead. It lit the stretch of clumped, overgrown crabgrass that served as her front lawn. The gravel driveway was empty.

She stepped outside. “Hello? Wayne? Baby?”

The wind rustled the weeping willow on the corner of the lot. Silvery green leaves danced in the bright sunlight.

Sadie fell to her knees and cried. She yelled out a string of curses which echoed back to her. There was no one to hear. There had been no one to hear her for a very long time.

She walked back inside and looked at the clock on the microwave. It flashed 12:00.

*

She tried to find something to eat. Her supply dwindled. There was a can of corn, sweet peas, an unopened bag of saffron rice, two cans of turkey SPAM, flour, and cornmeal. She took out a can of SPAM, the peas, and the bag of rice.

“How about a nice little casserole?”

Why?

She dropped the can of SPAM. It burst open. The contents bounced, leaving spots of grease like a slug’s trail on her dirty faux linoleum vinyl flooring.

“I had my reasons, Wayne!”

She felt a hand touch the back of her neck. Fingers moved upwards and caressed the back of her head. She leaned into the touch and felt him comb out her tangles. She turned around to face him, wanted to embrace him, but he wasn’t there.

She didn’t cry this time. She expected it. This wasn’t the first time; it wouldn’t be the last time.

Why? Why? Why?

The soft voice was a relentless echoing whisper in her ears.

She looked down at the floor. She saw a rectangular outline in the floor. She thought about mold and fungus and worms and maggots. She looked out the window, checked to make sure there were no cars on the long mud lane leading to her house. She lifted back the thin vinyl flooring, pulled up a hidden door cut into the fiberboard floor, and dropped down into the crawl space below the trailer. She lay down next to him. She smelled mold. She kissed his dry bones.

Why?

She whispered her replies between delicate kisses. “So you won’t never leave me baby. So you won’t never go.”

The Beautiful Visitor

Jeremy stared at the scene through the grime coating his small hospital window. Beyond a gravel rooftop he spied a speck of blue sky breaking through grey clouds. He breathed in the antiseptic aromas of soap and laundry detergent. He tried to lift himself up, but found it awkward because of the plastic leads trailing down his arm. He thought about The Bionic Man and about what he once thought the future might be like and resigned himself to his present. He looked at the speck of blue and watched as a Jacob’s Ladder of sunlight descended.

The door opened.

A woman stepped inside his room. She was tall and lean and young. She was shapely and perfect. Tresses of golden hair framed a fine face with high cheekbones and large emerald eyes and full lips.

Jeremy worried a moment about his appearance. He wished he had a mirror, but then, considering his present position, he decided it was better he did not have a mirror. This way he could at least imagine he looked like something resembling okay. He ignored the pain in his back as he sat up to face his visitor.

“Oh, it’s you.” Jeremy thought for a moment and then blinked. “Wait. Who the hell are you?”

She smiled and sat down next to him on the hospital bed. She was so light, the flimsy mattress barely moved. The scents of jasmine and honeysuckle washed over him. He breathed her in.

“You remember me? You know me?"

He nodded his head. “I have no idea who you are.”

She smiled. “Confused, huh?”

He thought about the drip lines coursing down from above into his arms. “Maybe it’s the morphine.”

She nodded her head. “Probably. Maybe. What do you think?”

He tried to focus on her question but it filtered in and out of consciousness. “What are you doing here?” He finally managed to spit out. He could not answer her question. His head filled itself with more questions the more he looked at her. The more he looked at her, the more he longed for her. He thought of his wife, his loyal wife who visited him every day, and before he was hospitalized had taken care of his every need, no matter how embarrassing, no matter how undignified. He was ashamed of the amount of dirty bed pans he had made for her, but at the same time was resigned to this. What choice did he have? Age and prostate cancer had led to very little in the way of choice. Life was what it was, and mostly he had found it disappointing. But now, looking at his visitor, he felt an adolescent irresponsibility rising inside of him overtaking all feelings of guilt (and that wasn’t all that was rising – he hoped and prayed his visitor did not notice the rise in his bed sheets).

“I’m here because you wanted me.”

And he knew this was true.

“I’m here because I’m everything you’ve ever desired.”

And he knew this was true, too.

He regarded her and thought of his first kiss, of his first time with a girl, of the first time he had smoked marijuana with some buddies at a KISS concert. “You look so familiar. You look like something I remember from when I was younger, like someone perhaps, but for some reason the word something feels more right.”

She smiled at him and gave a nearly imperceptible nod.

He looked into her emerald eyes and saw things there, everything, all he ever wanted, all he ever desired: that CEO position that had passed him by twenty years ago, the fancy cars, the cabin nestled in the Smokies, the beach house, a model wife followed by another model wife and then another and on and on and on knowing that when one woman grows old and saggy he could always trade her in for another (if Larry King could pull it off, why couldn’t he?), the comfortable retirement (opposed to his current existence where he was bound to leave his wife with nothing, nothing at all, except a pile of medical bills to sort through once he passed without the benefit of his meager pension which no longer offered a survivor’s benefit due to the recession), the kids who grew up to become famous athletes and rock stars (instead of the truck driver and the idiot in jail for possession charges with intent to sell). These green-tinted dreams swirled through his mind and heart and body until he felt a longing more powerful than any he had ever known before. He wanted to embrace his beautiful visitor. He wanted to lose himself insider her. He wanted to rip her apart and take all that was good out of her so that he could devour it and take it all for himself. He wanted more. He always wanted more. Nothing had worked out the way he had once hoped, the way he had once dreamed.

She smiled at him and leaned down. Her bosoms heaved (simply because that’s just what bosoms like hers were supposed to do), and she breathed on him. “You want me? You can have me.” Her breath was soft and warm against his face.

But there was an undercurrent on her breath – the slightest hint of sulfur. The jasmine and honeysuckle fragrance that had once seemed sweet became cloying and suffocating. He coughed.

Jeremy thought of his wife, he saw her washing his bed pans without ever complaining, and saw her for what she was: beautiful. He saw himself for what he was: silly and vain and ungrateful, always ungrateful – no wonder his kids hated him. He looked back to his visitor. She grew pale. Her hair lightened to a brittle grey and then fell out leaving a scabbed and rotted scalp. Her eyeballs began to sink into her decaying flesh leaving black holes in their place. A maggot fell from a nostril and took a chunk of her nose with it.

“What’s wrong? I’m everything you ever wanted, aren’t I?” she asked with a teasing voice.

She embraced him. Her touch chilled him to the bone. He recoiled, fell back against his hospital bed, and watched the sky through the dingy window over the exposed bone jutting through the moldy flesh on her shoulders with unblinking eyes. Clouds came and went. A rain storm passed. Eventually the sun returned. The clouds marched across the blue sky of yet another day. He smiled and found himself able to ignore the cold touch of his visitor. He watched the sun set over the gravel strewn rooftop. The blinking lights of airplanes from the nearby airport swept through the darkening sky.

The door opened. His wife stepped inside the hospital room. He wanted to get up, to embrace her, to tell her how much he loved her, to tell her he was sorry for all he had done, for all those affairs she had ignored (he knew she knew) for the sake of creating an illusion of happiness for their children, and that she had mattered to him and that she had always mattered to him, that she was good enough, and that she was better than he deserved. Only it was too late.

He heard his wife’s cry and understood the only tears she shed were tears of relief.

Context

… and the beach fell away …

When Charlie woke up, the room spun around him. He held his hand to his head and looked to the window. A shadow crossed the light – it was in the shape of a child, then a woman, and then it was gone. He heard something that sounded like laughter.

… the ocean receded …

The tractor whirred across a field of cotton. Charlie steered the machine forward and watched a column of dust rise in his wake. Something ran in front of him. His heart skipped a beat. He tried to steer the machine away from the object. He could almost hear a voice over the roar of engine. Something like a scream. He became aware of the scent of exhaust and felt suddenly ill.

… the stars fell to the earth and burned …

It was impossible to see through a veil of tissues and gauze. He hurt all over. The pain became all he knew. The never-ending aches overwhelmed his perception of the world. Every now and then he heard a voice, a whisper in his ear. More often than not, the voice sounded accusing and cold.

… but the stars were not real, the sea was not real, not even the beach was real …

Charlie sat in the wheelchair and looked out his window. The world rolled by as a parade of pickup trucks and automobiles. Sometimes he would see families pull up and park outside his window. It was never his family. They never visited. Not once.

… “It’s all about context. Without it, you mean nothing.” …

There were words on his page. He wrote them, he knew. They were in his handwriting, but he didn’t remember writing them. Charlie read them again and again and wondered what they meant? In the end, he gave up. They could mean anything. Or nothing. Images invoke feelings, sensations, and the impressions sometimes tell stories. Sometimes. Not this time. Or maybe he just didn’t like the story they told?

… the ocean, the beach, and the stars disappeared leaving behind a parade of cars which were pulled and pushed by endless unseen tides while circling a void …

Charlie can still smell the exhaust. He can still see blood stains splattered across white flecks of cotton. He almost remembers, but knows he will never understand. He touches his head where it hurts and notes the circular scars on his temples.

… “It’s all about context.” …

“I mean nothing,” he said.

… and the beach fell away …

The Empty Road

A man lay splayed out against the asphalt. A thin but widening circle of pooling blood crowned his head. His face was pale and white. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead and trailed down his grizzled face. His breathing came quick and fast. He spoke, and I leaned down to hear his broken whispers.

“The sky is a ball and I am bouncing it on my knee. We play four square with the sun and dodgeball, too. I love dodgeball. If I catch the ball you’re out. You’re out. But who are you?

“And where’s Goldie? She was around here somewhere. Oh, yeah, she chased a squirrel across the road. That car hit her Momma, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You told me I should never let her off the leash.”

He wept and sobbed.

I tried to calm him. “Shh. It’s okay.”

His wild eyes turned in frantic circles. Lids fluttered.

“What’s that? Not the dark. I’m scared of the dark. Can’t you leave the door open, Dad?”

At this point, he shuddered. Tears fell down my face as I listened to him ramble. I just wanted to comfort him any way I could. This was all my fault. “It’s okay. Shh. I’ll leave the door open. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” I hoped he didn’t hear the emotional uncertainty in my breaking voice.

“Tell Brian that I forgive him. It’s okay. I never loved her anyway.

“Ooh. What’s that? There’s so much here. So much light. So much of everything. So much. Too much, almost. There is beauty in the not here, and the not here is there, it is really there. Whatever it is.”

He stopped and looked at me with a sudden and forceful clarity. “I forgive you.”

I thought about the dull thud when I hit him, and how quickly I had sobered up as I pulled my car over. I knew the police would be here soon, but I would not run. Tears streamed down my face, and I sobbed. “Thank you,“ I told him. “Thank you.” And for the first time in a long time I knew something close to peace, but it hovered beneath an oppressive veil of grief and guilt, yet he forgave me again.

“I forgive you.”

“Thank you.”

His eyes glazed over.

“Where’s the train? Where’s the train? I hold out the butter and it melts.”

I reached down to him and felt his burning wet forehead. He looked at me one more time, one last time – there was clarity in his eyes for just the briefest of moments – and then he looked through me towards the hills and the rising sun behind them. It may have just been his muscles finally relaxing once he gave up, but I thought I saw him smile.

I also thought I heard the faintest of whispers: “Beautiful.”

Distant sirens echoed through the hills. They sounded empty. They sounded unreal, as if from another world.

I reached out a trembling hand to close the dead man’s eyes. I closed my own eyes and prayed while his cooling blood congealed.

... Beautiful ....