Maybe Forever

The ghosts never speak. They just walk and moan.

I see them in the background, walking around in circles, going nowhere on invisible treadmills.

I point them out to my mom, but she never sees them. She looks at me funny and takes me to a doctor.

The doctor asks about the ghosts. I don't tell the doctor anything. I don't like her. She smells like mouthwash.

The ghosts walk behind the doctor. Their eyeballs drip like melted crayons, oozing green and red.

I smell the ghosts. They smell like Nanna's closet.

I told my mom about the ghosts at the doctor's office. She asked if I told the doctor about them. I lie and tell her that I did.

I like to lie. I don't know why, but I just do. I can make the world what I want it to be. I can use my imagination.

I can change the world and make it how I want it.

I need to change it soon.

There are too many ghosts. And none of them seem happy. They make me sad.

The ghosts have been around a while, maybe forever. They wear clothes from other times.

One day the doctor will be a ghost. My mom will be a ghost. I'll be a ghost, too.

I hope I'll be a happy ghost.

I hope I get to be a ghost. At least I'd still be around after I die, unlike Nanna.

I hope the ghosts are real, unlike the aliens. Those were just a lie.

Now I see fairies in the clouds. I know that if you eat their food you will turn into a fairy person, too, and be with them, become one of them.

They're much happier than ghosts, and they've been around a long time.

The fairies be around a long time. Maybe I'll be around a long time.

Maybe forever.

Nothing to See

Tory rolled her dump truck around the floor. Barbie sat in the back of the truck, her hair cut too short, bald in places. Barbie's hair would never grow back from several too many visits to Tory’s beauty parlor.

Tory stopped playing and looked up. “Mom, why can’t you open the blinds?”

“Because there’s nothing to see.”

Tory looked back down to the floor, to the stupid carpet. She was sick of this old carpet. She knew the designs by heart. They never changed. “But it’s so dark in here.”

“I’m sorry, honey.”

“Can Aunt Carrie and Chris come over to play?”

Mother looked up to the water stained ceiling and sucked in a shuddering breath. “Not today, honey. I’m so sorry.”

Mother looked towards the window as if looking directly through the blinds. She shook her head.

The little girl bit her lip and decided to play some more. She knew the answers would be final. They always were.

***

Dinnertime brought two servings of canned spam, cold from the can.

“Mom, can’t we have McDonald’s tonight?” Tory asked.


Mother didn’t even answer.

“We never go out anymore. I’m sick of this crap. I want McDonald’s!” Tory stood up and stomped her foot.

“I’m sorry, honey. Not tonight.”

“You always say ‘Not tonight.’”

Mother nodded her head. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Mommy, I want to go outside.”

“Not now.”

Tory moved a lump of Spam around with her fork. She looked at the trail of greasy fat it left on the plate. “It’s like eating a slug.”

Mother smiled and took a bite of Spam. She quoted the old DVD of The Lion King they used to watch together when Tory was younger. “Slimey yet satisfying.”

Tory smiled, pretended she was Pumba lapping up grubs and sucked up the processed meat.

***

“Why don’t you open the blinds?” Tory asked.

“Because there’s nothing to see.”

“Can we go outside today, Mom?”

She knew the answer before hearing it.

“Not today, honey.”

But today would be different. Tory had a plan.

She sat on the floor, played with her dump truck and Barbie and waited.

Eventually, Mother went to the restroom.

Tory stood up. She tiptoed. She felt the floor beneath her might creak with every step. She walked as lightly as possible, not wanting to give herself away. Mother could come out of the bathroom at any time.

Tory crept to the window. She moved back the blinds and looked out.

There was nothing to see.

Nothing.

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.

The Ship-Maker

Crispin Jones wasn’t a bad man, but he wasn’t a good man, either.

He was just a man.

*

“Crispin, can you hear me?”

Crispin ignored her voice. She always called to him when he was working. Her voice rose to a trill, shrill echo.

“Crispin, I’m talking to you.”

He ignored her. He always ignored her. He built model ships in bottles. They were a world all their own. His favorite was inside a Mello Yellow bottle, a version of the titanic moments before hitting the iceberg.

*

Crispin remembered something: a sunny day and clouds. Within those drifting masses of vaporous hydrogen dioxide, he saw an armada of boats riding in bottles, and the work consumed him from that day forth.

She lay next to him, touching him, but he couldn’t feel her. He couldn’t feel the grass beneath the two of them on this afternoon picnic during the first day of their honeymoon. He could only see the cloud ships sailing across a never-ending expanse of blue sky.

*

“Crispin, I’m here. I’m real. Touch me.”

Crispin swore under his breath. With long metal skewers, he had just put up a mainsail inside a discarded Mickey’s malt liquor bottle he had found that morning on his daily walk beneath the interstate overpass. He paused but did not stop.

“Crispin!”

Her voice was unreal. The ship in his bottle was all that was real.

He ignored her.

*

One day she left him, and he finally looked around.

The room was full of bottles: Mountain Dew, Gatorade, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Sprite, Arizona Tea, Frappucino, Budweiser, Sam Adams, and countless others. Each glass and plastic bottle held a replica. He looked at his feet and saw the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

He looked for his sweetheart, but she was gone.

He looked around and tried to talk to the bottles, to get their opinions on things, but they never spoke back. His voice echoed in the empty, lonesome house.

He looked at an empty bottle he had collected that morning, a glass Bud Light Platinum bottle, and could not see the point of building another ship. He sighed and threw the glass bottle against a wall.

Glass shattered, and the wall crumbled.

Crispin found himself adrift on a roiling black sea. He floated on a dingy made up his bottled ships. Salty mist sprayed from white-capped waves and stung his eyes. He turned in circles, looked for someone or something, anything, but only saw clouds in every direction. The clouds crashed against one another and dissolved, taking on shape after shape, dream after dream. Without her, he realized, they didn’t mean a thing.

The Way Back Home

The trail rounds a bend, and I spy a granite wall. Inside that wall there is a cave. Inside that cave lies darkness. I have returned. I smell her. I smell him. I smell them. They call to me with the wind through the trees. Their voices sound from the gurgle of a small creek coursing downhill over mossy stones. They call me home.

Leaves fall around me from the tall maples, oaks, and hickories. Across the stream, a dervish of pine straw sweeps through the shady dark trunks of a patch of slash pines.

I don’t belong here.

I look at my hands. I see my wedding band. I shake the watch I received as a gift from my eldest daughter on my too-skinny wrist. I remember my girls. I remember their hair, their smell, and their laughter. I inevitably remember they are gone. I note my fingernails and how clean they are. I turn my hands over and touch the bumpy line running up my arms. That line is ugly and purple and seems to grow larger every year. I remember a crimson river collecting as a cloudy delta in the ocean of my bathtub.

I don’t belong here.

But it started here. I think. I don’t know because it was all so long ago. It seems a nice enough place for it to end, all the same.

I hear birds sing a song and know the words. Some people might say they are not words, but those people would be wrong. There is meaning. That’s all words are in the end. Songs convey meaning. Music carries emotions. The forest has a song all its own. That song is nothing if not meaningful.

A shock of cold creeps up my leg. I look down. I see myself walk into the stream. My pants grow dark with creeping moisture. Chill bumps rise on my arm. A shiver slinks down my spine. Overhead, a trio of crows caws as they leap from branch to branch to branch. A flurry of leaves, nuts, and pinecones shower down in their wake.

I hear a rustle and see something dark and large – A bear? A deer? A mountain lion? A wolf? A troll? A dragon? – creep through a patch of underbrush. Twigs rattle in the wake. There’s a growl or a cry or a laugh; it is hard to tell the difference. I think I see fresh hoof prints outlined in mud. Worms wriggle up and fill the dark indentations like anemones.

I don’t belong here.

My daughter had been a little girl once. She sat on my knee. She held my hand and dragged me around everywhere as little girls are wont to do with their daddies. I let her carry me. I thought I was the parent. I thought I was in charge. I thought I was the protector. I thought I was keeping her safe and sound. I never dreamed she was the only thing keeping me from being lost. That’s what I am without her: lost. I need her hand in mine so I don’t slip away.

I trudge forward through the creek. I splash as I lose my footing. I slip on moss and algae. I scrape my hands. Loose moss sinks beneath my fingernails. My arms are slick and white with cold. My teeth chatter, but I hardly recognize this. I don’t feel the cold even though it eats at me and sends my pulse into a frenetic fury.

I come closer to the cliff I first saw when coming around the bend. The gurgle of water becomes a roar. I look up and see the waterfalls. They cascade down from above. Beneath the base of the falls, I can just make out the dark outline of the cave. The walls on either side of the opening appear soft and languorous, worn smooth by an eternity of erosion.

I don’t belong here.

I look back behind me and realize I am on a rise. This is a natural overlook. Below me, a river snakes through a valley. A city sits on the bank of that river. Cars drive on streets. Children play on playgrounds. Adults sit in offices or work construction. It is Halloween. Once the sun sets, the carved pumpkins will be alight with fire. Families will take to the streets with glow sticks and bags for candy. People will smile and visit and knock on each other’s doors. They might not knock on each other’s doors any other time during the year, but they will on that night. At least the children will. The adults will hang back and watch from the curb or sidewalk or simply stay at home while getting drunk and watching horror movies.

I always liked Halloween. But not this year. Not last year. Not the year before.

Every little girl, no matter the costume, looks just like my little girl. I find myself wondering if she might be underneath that wig? That make-up? That mask?

I belong here.

The cascading water slows and then stops. Lingering puddles in the rock drip. The birds stop their song. The crows land next to me. They stand silent and regard me with obsidian eyes.

A tree falls behind me, then another.

A dragon sweeps by blowing smoke and fire.

A troll rides on the dragon’s back. The troll picks its nose and laughs. It sings a song whose words are meaningless and untrue. I hate that troll.

The dragon knocks the cliff with a spiked tail. I’m not sure if the action was on accident or on purpose. I doubt that it matters. The impact of the beast against the cliff breaks the stone apart. Rocks fall around me. It grows dark. I am buried. Water seeps through cracks above me. I relent. The chill overtakes me until there is no chill, only numbness.

I touch the scars on my forearms. They vibrate and pulse. I dig in with my hands until I can feel myself. Pink light erupts from my torn skin and muscle. This blushing illumination lights my way. I dig and dig. My hands grow wet. I will keep digging until I find myself, until I find my way back home.

Last Hope

When the diamond fell into Brother Matthias’s hands, he worried it might burn. But there was no fire, no pain. All was well. He looked at the steaming diamond, held it to the sun, turned it, and stared through. Cloudy at first, it became clear. Another world on another side in another time looked back. Or at least her face did, and that was enough for him to smile and shed a tear. She summed up that other place: Beautiful.

He understood then that we are all outcasts here. We are all alone. Glimpsing her face renewed faith, reminded him there was more to our larger existence than hot asphalt and hazy air, than the buzz of fluorescent lighting, and sleeping on a bed of litter beneath the overpass. There was something and someplace better, and he had been there before. He would return.

The woman inside the diamond smiled at him, and then she grew smaller. She lifted away, carried by wings of glass. He heard the ethereal tinkle of her feathers and closed his eyes. It was the most beautiful song he knew.

He missed her already.

He opened his crying eyes, and the diamond was gone. In its place was a Steel Reserve tallboy. He looked at his palms. They were blistered and red and black. Bits of skin peeled away and blisters burst as he dropped the can from his tight-fisted hand. His hands smelled like the barbecue rib joint down the block. He looked up to the hot August sun. He fumbled with swollen fingers, gasped as he reached into his tattered jeans’ pocket for a crumpled pack of USA Golds, lit a cigarette, and inhaled the bitter blend. He watched the cloud of smoke drift away and disperse until it resembled her shadow.

Therapy

Shanna, a therapist, goes down on one knee next to her client. “Hey sweetie, I see you’re playing with some toys. Is there a story behind your game? Why don’t you tell me a story?”

The little girl looks up to the therapist with shining eyes. She smiles. She always seems to smile. “Okay. Diddy Pop is a happy little dog. He wags his tail. He likes to eat treats. Camantha is Diddy Pop’s mommy. Diddy Pop could be a naughty dog sometimes. One time he barked too loud. Camantha slapped him until he cried. Diddy Pop died that one time. But Doctor Potato made him better. Camantha said she was sorry, but she still hits Diddy Pop if he barks too loud or too much. Diddy Pop still wags his tail. He stays happy. He doesn’t know any better.“

“So, do you think it’s right that Camantha slaps Diddy Pop? How’s that make you feel, sweetie?”

The little girl does not look up to the adult. She stares at her toys. She makes the little girl doll, the one called Camantha, slap a little stuffed puppy. The stuffed puppy’s ears fly forward with the force of the impact. Camantha’s tangled yellow braids fly in violent circles as the little hand thrashes the toy around. The doll bumps into the stuffed puppy again and again and again, each time a little harder than the time before.

Shanna goes from a kneeling position down to a sitting position. She looks over the toys and into the little girl’s face. The little girl doesn’t look up. She smiles, lost in her game. “Did you hear me?” the therapist asks.

The little girl nods. “Yes. Diddy Pop is a bad doggie.”

“What makes him so bad?”

“He’s loud. Camantha doesn’t like it when he’s loud.”

“Are you loud?”

“Sometimes.”

“Does your mother like it when you’re loud?”

The little girl does not answer.

“Did you hear me, sweetie?”

The little girl puts down her toys and looks up at the therapist. A slant of sunlight comes through the window. Her brown eyes shimmer in the light. The little girl smiles. She squishes up her face so that one eye looks smaller than the other. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

“Oh, I know. I know, sweetie.”

“Don’t call me sweetie. I don’t like it. It makes me think you’re talking to me like I’m a dummy. I’m not.”

“I never said you were. I’d never say that.”

“Not with words. But actions are louder. That’s what Daddy says.”

“Daddy?” The therapist scratches her head. “You see your daddy often?”

“Every day.”

“Can you excuse me a moment?”

The little girl shrugs.

The therapist walks out of her office and into the waiting room. She strides over to the little girl’s mother. “Can I ask a question?”

The mother is looking down at a cell phone, her thumbs are moving furiously on the touch screen.

The therapist waits a moment. She grows impatient. “Excuse me, Mrs. Carlisle, I have a question.”

Mrs. Carlisle raises one finger.

“Our time is almost up. Chelsea just said something interesting. She said she sees her father every day. My admission paperwork shows you listed as single with nothing listed about a father. Is this a boyfriend or an ex or something?”

Mrs. Carlisle looks up. “That’s impossible.” Her eyes are bloodshot. Her face is too pale. The therapist sees tiny blue veins outlined in Mrs. Carlisle’s face. The tiny blue veins spread out like miniscule river deltas.

“I know this may be a personal question. It might be unimportant and stuff, but would you like to come back to my office and discuss this?” The therapist looks around the waiting room and sees other parents looking at her and Mrs. Carlisle. She wants to respect Mrs. Carlisle’s privacy, and worries she said too much in public already.

“No. I’d rather stay out here.” Mrs. Carlisle holds up her phone. “I’m in the middle of something here.”

The therapist hides the exasperation she feels. She controls the tone of her voice, her breathing. “Well, who is this Daddy that she says she sees every day?’

“You got me. There’s no dad. I’ve no idea who the father even is. Maybe some dude in Panama City, but I’ve never really worried about it. There’s no guy in my house, that’s for sure. Well there is sometimes, but I don’t like to let them get too attached, and usually only when Chelsea’s over at my mom’s for the night. I have no idea what she’s talking about. You’re the therapist, right? Why don’t you ask the little princess, okay?” She holds the phone up and blocks the therapist from her sight.

The therapist wants to grab this woman by the shoulders and scream at her in the face. Instead, the therapist apologizes for disturbing Ms. Carlisle. Ms. Carlisle does not acknowledge the apology.

The therapist returns to the room. Chelsea isn’t there.

The toys are on the floor. They are standing in place. The stuffed puppy begins to bark and wag its fluffy tail. The yellow braids of the little girl doll fly around as the dolly begins slapping the puppy. The barking turns into pained yelps. The little girl doll keeps slapping. Soon the puppy is nothing but torn fabric and fluff. Tufts of the fluff float up and fall down slowly. The doll turns her head towards the therapist. The button eyes gleam in the slant of sunlight coming through the window.

The therapist walks towards the doll. It crumples to the floor as if lifeless, as it should be. The therapist looks out the window and sees Chelsea in the clouds. The child’s hair is on fire and she carries a flaming sword. The sword’s name is TRUTH.

The therapist reaches out the open window and falls three stories. The concrete stops everything.

The Sitcom

Ted fought against the metal mountain as he climbed. The thick cloths and leather straps wound around his hands and feet grew snagged and tattered and worn as the level ground – covered only by a thinning blanket of dead grass and glittering permafrost – fell away beneath him. As he climbed upwards, the smoldering heap of rusting steel smoked in places. Red lines stained crags and eddies. Ted was unsure if the stains marring the mountain were rusted iron or ancient blood. Both had been offered over the years to appease The Monster. Yet, The Monster was never appeased, not fully. The Monster looked down on what was left of the world with a toothy smirk. The Monster’s giant lips frothed with blood. Tremors rising from deep inside the core of the earth told Ted that The Monster hungered. Wings creaked overhead and blocked the pale light of a dying sun as The Monster stretched.

*

“Why must you do it?” his mother asked him. She ran around the kitchen. The spotlights overhead and the yellow flowers on her wallpaper kept her cheerful, kept her smiling. She whisked something in a bowl. Scrambled eggs maybe? The beginnings of a cake? Cookies?

Ted did not know. He stared down at his hands. They were caked with dried blood.

His mother tsked. “Ted, you tell me right now, what is it you want to prove?”

He looked up to his mother and saw her. Really saw her. She was beautiful, radiant. Light streaked out of her eyes and warmed the chill in his soul, but he still felt cold. His brother was gone. His mother tried to remain happy, wore a permanent smile, but even as young as Ted was he understood this was her front, an act. He knew she was lonely. Since The Censors invaded she had been forced to sleep in a tiny twin bed. She no longer knew the embrace of her husband. She no longer knew what it felt like to be kissed with the exception of chaste brushes of indifferent lips against her cheek. The Censors wanted her pure. The Censors did not care if that false purity killed her soul.

“Mom, I just killed my brother. Dad made me do it. He said it was in the damn script!” Ted tugged at his crew cut hair. “I need answers!”

The laugh track erupted into a joyful cacophony of canned emotion.

*

“Why do you climb, boy?” The Monster asked. He had no name. He was simply The Monster. That was enough.

Ted lay sprawled out on a small metal platform. His hands and feet pulsed and wept with blisters and blood. “Because I have to know.”

“What do you want to know? How do you know I have the answers? How do you know, if I do have the answers, I will give them to you? What makes you think I can be trusted?”

Ted laughed. “It’s not about trust. It’s about truth.”

*

His father never came home from work. No “Honey, I’m home!” or tumble over furniture, no canned applause for his clumsy, over-stylized entrance. Instead, the house grew silent.

Ted looked at the fourth wall. The cameras had stopped rolling. The studio audience had been left deserted. A tumbleweed from the western that was filming on the set next door rolled across the linoleum kitchen floor.

“Why do you do it?” his mother asked again, softer this time. She fell over and shivered.

Ted wanted to rush over to her, to hold her, to cry over her. Instead, he sat at the kitchen table and ate his cereal, trapped by an unforgiving and unyielding script. His mother died as she slept: alone.

*

Ted spoke between clenched teeth. “I just want you to answer one question, you sick bastard. Who are you?”

The Monster smiled. “I think you know.”

“Why do you do this?”

“Just to see if it works.”

A shock of lava and smoke erupted near Ted. Some of it splashed down against his outstretched arm and left instant whelps and burns. “Well? Did it work?”

Sheets of typed paper were crumpled into a ball before being tossed into a trashcan littered by empty beer cans.

“Nope.”

That Cold, Dark Womb of Stars

Davis stared up at the sky. Lying on his back, his shadowed form resembled a pincushion in the gloom of twilight. The fading light from the disappearing day reflected off glassy eyes. He reached up a bloody hand – he wondered how much of that blood was his own and how much had once belonged to others?—and grasped the protruding shaft of an arrow. He grimaced as he pulled it free.

He pulled out arrow after arrow. The notched heads tugged and ripped at flesh and fiber. He ignored the pain. He held his breath as he yanked out each arrow, gasping with pain with each gush of fresh blood. He knew no sorrow. Each revealed seeping wound brought him one step closer to something resembling freedom.

His open wounds bloomed upwards into roses of red. They unfurled above him and rained down blood-soaked tears. Their scent reminded him of love, of something not quite but almost forgotten: another time, another place, a much more comfortable bed, soft skin like rose petals.

He gasped and felt his heart shudder. It shook like a frightened bird unable to extend her wings because the cage was much too small. Those unfurled wings ached and grew stiff from lack of use until the bird found itself paralyzed. He sucked in a draught of air and tasted the roses blooming above him in the sky. Unlike the wings of the bird in his chest, the roses growing from his seeping red wounds could unfurl. There was no cage up in the sky above him. It was wide open.

The night grew dark and stars emerged. He watched the stars dance across the horizon and tried to remember the names of forgotten constellations and saw revelations: glimpses and hints of the now lost stories the images in the sky above him represented once upon a time for another race of man. He smiled and listened to the stars sing a song that only the dying get to hear – a small consolation to offset the fear.

The sky tugged him upwards, and he felt free. The sky was open. There were no cages, but there was a chill. Stars shined, increased in size, and then receded.

Davis blinked, found himself back in his body, and tears rolled down his cheek. His breathing resumed. A sudden awareness of pain shook him to his core, and he cried out. He prayed he might soon return to that cold, dark womb of stars. The shell of his body seemed much too constricting. His roses withered and joined the dust of the desert surrounding him. The wings of his heart cracked as they were bent back and broken. A medic called out his name.

The Jogger & The End of Everything &

I. The Jogger

Leaving the red and heat-scorched road behind, he veered down the trail into the shadows of the forest, grateful for the respite from the sun’s relentless burn. Tall, slender pines swayed with a breeze. Cicadas sang. Off in the distance, he heard the ancient warning of the rattlesnake, but he ignored the primal fear rising on the periphery of his senses. The bulk of his focus placed on his pulsating heart and the steady beat of his feet hitting earth as he jogged. The wilderness was just a passing landscape: a fading entity less real than the internal thrum of blood pumping through veins.

The humidity pressed down upon him. His sweat-stained shirt stuck to his chest and back. He felt movement all around, but shrugged it off, assuming it was the flock of wild turkeys he knew frequented this forest. There was a rustle in the wild blackberry bushes lining the path, but he left it behind without giving it any thought.

The kudzu laughed as it entwined itself along the trunks and branches, an exotic import dominating a new home. Dragonflies gathered together, forming thick clouds which hummed with the beat of millions of lacy and translucent wings. The ghosts of empires long gone – hidden beneath centuries of ancient hard-wood forests which preceded the current pines – whispered riddles in languages lost and forgotten.

And he jogged, oblivious to it all.

The mystery surrounded him, shimmering like heat waves on asphalt. There are windows into other worlds and realities that all too often go unnoticed as we run past them at a relentless pace. He left his past to find a temporary present sparing no thoughts for the darkness ahead.


II. The End of Everything


“We are nearing the end,” she said. Her hair shimmered beneath the sun as it waved, wind-swept and disheveled. I had never seen her look more beautiful.

“The end of what?” I asked as I pushed the throttle forward. The boat sped up and I squinted despite my sunglasses because the sun was magnified and fractured by the ripples all around us.

“The end of everything.” She smiled at me, her teeth fell from her mouth, and her beauty melted. She aged and degraded from beauty queen to corpse to dust, and then she blew away.

The lake became primordial ooze, and it stunk. It stunk with the rot of life, the stench of reproduction, a hint of honeysuckle beneath it all. With the stench there was beauty, the promise of spring, the rebirth from the wreckage. Roses fertilized by manure.

The vision passed quickly like a summer storm and I saw her again. Smiling and beautiful, she rubbed a swelling and exposed belly pulsating with new life as she lounged on the padded seat next to me in her maternity bathing suit.

“Or is it the beginning?” I asked.

III.

Beneath open skies, flowers bloom and sway with a delicate breeze while casting shadows in silence.

Indefinable

Her pain tore through her insides like a serrated blade, yet she smiled. She refused to cry out. She refused to be bowed down by that which she could not see. If it was unobservable, it could not possibly exist. To admit the pain was there, that it was real, would be to accept that unseen things were possible. It would mean the unseen could be real, even if unquantifiable or otherwise indefinable. This opened up too many possibilities she shuddered at internally. She remembered believing in ghosts and curses, but that was long ago, in a time much less rational than today.

Every test had been performed. Every sonogram and ultrasound came back clean. Various probes entered her through various orifices. There was no physically identifiable reason for the pain per her lab results and multiple examinations. They called it fibromyalgia. She accepted this diagnosis. It seemed to fit, but she held her doubts. She understood her doctors were simply classifying the unclassifiable. The doctors’ little checklists best matched up with this diagnosis based on questionnaires and spoken (if intangible and unseen) symptoms. The symptoms pointed towards a diagnosis, and the doctors prescribed treatment.

Yet, none of the therapies helped. None of the medicines worked, not even nerve blocks. The pain refused to retreat. It clung tight to her joints and abdomen like “white on rice” as her mother liked to say. Her sick days – once so plentiful – began shrinking away.

She wanted to know so much. She had so many questions. What was the pain? Where did it come from? Why was it here? And, most importantly of all, how could she make it go away? The doctors provided no answers. The medicines offered no solutions.

So she kept smiling as she lay in bed and stared at the ceiling fan. The blades twirled in cycles. She thought there might be meaning there, but could not fully decipher what it might represent. It could mean so many things. Her thoughts twirled with the fan.

The days grew long and the nights longer. The pain increased until it hurt her too much to move at all.

Her sick days disappeared. She stopped answering her phone.

She lay still. She refused to move. Movement only made things worse. So she remained motionless.

The fan spun above her in an endless loop.

She thought again that it might have meaning, but then decided that this, too, must be meaningless.

She lay still and grew stiff. Her smile remained as she turned to stone.

When the landlord eventually found her, he was moved to tears. He wanted to pay his respects. He wished he had thought of her sooner, but last time he saw her she smiled. He assumed she was okay.

To assuage his guilt and pay his respects, he put her on display in the playground in the center of the apartment complex. It seemed the only sensible thing to do. Now, she smiles throughout the day as children play. The kids twirl on a multicolored steel merry-go-round in cycles while tight clusters of their laughter crowd upwards towards an open blue sky. At night the stars cycle above her. Inside the statue, her ghost imagines it all means something, all these cycles, even if these hints at meaning sometimes grow confused and indefinable. Yet, she learns to accept these hints as something resembling meaning.

She smiles now, not to hide the pain, but because the pain is going away, replaced by mystery.

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.

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 …