Anthology Complex II by M.B. Julien - HTML preview
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M.B. Julien
Volume 1 - Composition 2
(1:2 / 2 / II)
Part 6
M.B. JULIEN
Chapter 51
WHITE LIGHTS
1:2:6:51
HOW did you get here? That's what you ask yourself as you lay wide awake on a hotel's bed. You look around the room and notice how poorly organized every aspect of the hotel room is, and then that's when you realize you haven't slept in three weeks. Ms.
Nosleep, sent by Mr. Nosleep to keep you company because he couldn't make the trip. It doesn't matter how far away you go, these kinds of things will always catch up with you.
You get up off the bed and stand there for a while wondering if life is simply just a joke. You can't fall asleep, so that kind of makes you mad, and when you can fall asleep, you don't like waking up. This makes you think of Newton's first law.
You walk into the bathroom and realize that this room is very well organized, unlike the other. You stand in front of the mirror, you've done this every morning that you've been here. You stare long enough until you convince yourself that the person in the mirror is actually someone else. For a moment it feels like you're actually looking at another person on the other side of that mirror, and then you realize that it's just you and you laugh. Some mornings the laugh lasts for a few seconds, others, a few minutes.
You go to the toilet and urinate, flushing the toilet while you are urinating so that you don't have to do it later. When you're done, you go to turn off the light and realize that flipping the switch up turns off the light. Some switches were weird like that, usually because there was another switch that controlled the same light somewhere nearby! A sneeze. Sometimes when you're thinking and you sneeze, you sneeze the word you are currently thinking right out of your mouth. In this case, you sneezed out "nearby."
You walk out of the bathroom and grab your coat, then you leave the room and nod at Sally as you exit the hotel. You realize you are staying at a hotel located in the downtown area of the city. Tall buildings, people, cars, noise, you could almost suffocate from it.
You look down and see snow on the ground. The year's first snow which must have came overnight which you would have seen falling had you looked out of the hotel window, but you didn't. It doesn't matter though, chances are the snow will melt in a few hours and it will be as if it never happened at all. The first snow never takes.
You walk a few yards up to one of those little news box things that house newspapers and take out a newspaper. You laugh because you're reading about a small town west of where you are now that has a high crime rate. Go to the ends of the Earth and nothing will change.
Where are you going? That's what you ask yourself as you walk away from the hotel.
You know that you're not lost or confused, yet you feel like it. Sometimes you feel like you can't find that starting and finishing point, and because of that you don't know where 1 | WHITE LIGHTS
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you are in the race. You probably don't even know if you're running in the correct direction. The one thing you do know and understand is that “joy can be shared with others while grief must be endured alone.”
On your walk, someone asks you if you know the time. You don't have any devices that tell you the current time, so you say no and apologize. If you liked to joke around with strangers, you would have said "No, but it must be seven o'clock somewhere." It's funny how the composition of a sentence can completely change its meaning. "Is it seven o'clock?" "It is seven o'clock." Alter one little thing and you get a different result. The world is a funny place.
Now you're walking down some stairs that lead to a subway. You pay the fare and begin to wait like everyone else who is standing on the platform. On the other side you can hear someone playing a guitar and singing, so you start to walk in that direction. You find that it is a young black male performing for loose change.
You stand there and listen for a while, and then you hear the subway coming. You put your hands in your pocket and take out a five dollar bill and place it in the man's hat. He thanks you, you nod, and you make your way to the subway car along with everyone else.
Who are you? That's what you ask yourself as you sit down. Not too long later you notice that your thumb is red. The superficial cut had healed but is being irritated once again.
You sit down and notice a fairly attractive male sitting across from you. As the subway car begins to move you start to think about the fallacy of composition. He may be attractive physically, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all aspects of this man will be attractive themselves. He may end up having a repulsive personality or some repulsive habits. Sometimes your mind makes that poor assumption and you end up spending the rest of your life with someone you don't really love.
That is to say, that philosophy infers that someone is not simply all bad because they steal from others. There may be other parts in the machine that are good.
The subject of composition makes you think of your notebooks and the way they are written and ordered. The way your dreams tell you a story but also how you have the dreams in no particular order. The randomness of it all causes you to challenge fate and when you lose control, you'll reap the harvest you have sown, and as the fear grows, the bad blood slows and turns to stone. The composition complex.
Eventually the subway reaches the end of the line and by this time there are only a few people left in the car. You allow a woman and her child to get off before you, and after you step onto the platform, you watch them as they walk away. You think about how that child knows nothing yet about violence, sex and drugs. Murder, masturbation and addiction. And as you're thinking these things, you wonder if there is an older person 2 | WHITE LIGHTS
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around somewhere looking at you, and if they're thinking about how you don't know about certain things, but will learn about them as you age.
On the other side of the platform is another subway car that is going in the direction you just came from, so you get on it to get back to the hotel.
Why are you doing this? That's what you ask yourself on the trip back. On this subway car there are new faces, but of course there are considering not too many people go about their day wasting it. This time, it's the female who is sitting next to you that is fairly attractive, but you know better than to assume that she is perfect.
Like you, she stares in front of her, occasionally looking out the window to see who is getting on the train. You start to wonder what she is thinking about, you pretty much do that with almost everyone. The anthropology complex.
Now you're beginning to wonder if it's what a person spends their entire day thinking about that defines them, or at least helps to define them. You start to wonder what Joe would think about if he was left in a small empty room with no light.
In your previous life you were a carpenter. You would help build things that people lived in, worked in, learned in. Your associates and friends told you that you were one of a kind, a great carpenter, and it was probably because you paid so much attention to detail. Because you lived and breathed carpentry. What you would later find out is that this did not only apply to carpentry, that you were easily passionate about anything you wanted to be passionate about. When others would call it a blessing, you called it a curse.
Before you realized it was a curse, you had many hopes and dreams and knew that you could excel in anything as long as you were to put your mind to it, but you would later learn that dreams were for children. It has been said that it is man's nature to confuse genius with insanity.
The attractive woman stands up and waits for the subway car to come to a complete stop, and then you watch her as she walks away. You assume that you'll never see her again, and your assumption is correct. A few stops later, a very unattractive couple of a male and a female board the other side of the subway car. You think about your thoughts, and then you ask yourself, "Who are you to deem them unattractive?" You've heard the phrase "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" many times before.
Eventually your stop comes and you must get off to return to your hotel room. You walk up the flight of stairs that lead back into the city and find that it has begun to snow again. You begin walking and pass by a newsstand and overhear one man talking with another man. One of the men is trying to purchase a newspaper but is about a quarter short, and the man who is selling the newspapers will not give him a break. If everyone was able to buy a newspaper from this man a quarter under the regular price, his entire profitable system would go under, so he understands that he has to be strict. It's like when 3 | WHITE LIGHTS
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people litter; it eventually adds up.
Where have you come from? That's what you ask yourself as you watch all these cars drive by you and pass under a green light. You stand there, waiting for the light on the other side of the street to tell you that you are now allowed to walk across.
You continue to walk, and with each step you find that darkness falls. Eventually the Moon comes out, but even though it is night, you notice that the night is not completely dark. You realize that because it has snowed, there will be a little bit more light in the night than usual.
After a while you think to yourself that there are too many people in the downtown area of the city. You start to think about how all these people are part of a system and how they have to play their role. You start to think about how the chair a person sits in will shape and mold them into who they need to be.
A man who has recently been elected to be the president of the United States has strong feelings about truly changing how the country works. That's partly why the people elected him. However, two years into his term, he finds that his ideas and beliefs have changed, not because of his own free will, but because the chair he has become accustomed to sitting in has shaped and molded him into the person he needs to be to do his job.
In many ways, this city and its people are the same. In this part of the city, things are always moving and people are always working. It might be safe to say that the people here will be the same way. That these people will always be in a hurry, scrambling around because this is what life is.
In the part of the city where crime rules the land, you might find that in order to survive, you must be able to think like a criminal. A woman, instead of carrying around a purse, adapts to her environment by purchasing a small wallet. These types of things are beyond good and evil.
These thoughts get you to think of a dream you had one time, where a man tells you a story about his life. How when he was younger he wanted to change the world and make it a better place, but in his attempts, he became more and more bitter and eventually realized why the world was the way it was. This same man, in the same dream, he tells you that somewhere along the way, you might find out who you truly are.
You get back to the hotel and find that Sally has gone home for the day. You go up to your hotel room and notice that it's more organized than the way you left it. It's not so bad living in a place where others do all the cleaning for you, even if it will cost you a lot of money. Seeing your hotel room look the way it looks gets you to believe that even if a person is fairly attractive but has a repulsive personality, that it is possible for that person to change and begin to develop an attractive personality. Of course, it's also possible for 4 | WHITE LIGHTS
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that same person to look more and more ugly each day.
When did you get here? That's what you ask yourself as you look out of your window to watch the snow fall. You've seen the seasons change so many times, but you can never tell at exactly which time it made the change.
People with low latent inhibition have a harder time ignoring useless information than others. There is a student in your class who is normally an indifferent individual. This student doesn't really have a strong opinion on anything and just wants to get through class.
Often times, your teacher has you proofread and critique the other students' essays before they are turned in for a final grade. The teacher assigns a new topic every two weeks; they are usually topics concerning social conflicts. Topics like racism and religion to name a couple.
The class isn't too populated, so many times you end up getting this student's essay to revise. Throughout the duration of the semester, you notice changes in this student's handwriting. You notice how the first essay you revised for this student had sloppy handwriting, and as the year progressed, the handwriting became slightly more and more neat. Mostly noticeable only if you are looking for it.
What may have caused this change you still do not know, but you assume a couple of ideas. The student perhaps became more differentiated and started to form opinions on certain subjects. Or, maybe some of the subjects were more sensitive to the student than others. Regardless of the answer, where you made this detection in change, many others would more than likely have ignored it. Being able to make these detections is the reason why you can see someone's suffering, no matter how slight it is. Seeing so much suffering in the world clots your blood.
You need to know why the world is the way it is, and why people are the way they are. How some people can just sit and watch as the world turns to shit. So now, after you've asked one of the hotel employees for a pen, you're writing on the back of some flyers you found.
You write down "good," "indifferent" and "bad," because you believe each person in the world, depending on their experiences in life, have a certain amount of percent in these three categories that add up to one hundred percent. That is to say, someone is fifty percent "good," twenty percent "indifferent" and thirty percent "bad," all depending on what they have gone through in life. You already know that the base of your formula is logically incorrect, but you continue any way to see where it will lead you.
Because "good" and "bad" experiences will essentially drive this formula, it's important to understand that different people react differently to a "good" or "bad"
experience. If someone is used to "bad" experiences, when a "good" experience comes 5 | WHITE LIGHTS
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along, its numerical value will be greater than that of a "bad" experience because it will have a bigger impact, the numerical value of the impact being calculated by finding the difference between "good" and "bad" experiences.
The question for this part of the formula is, if someone has one hundred "bad"
experiences and twenty-five "good" experiences, will that person in question generally have a pessimistic view on life? Is it possible, because this person has so few "good"
experiences and because the impact of the "good" experiences will overshadow the "bad"
experiences that this person's view on life could be optimistic and beyond something that mere numbers can explain? Or, is it logical to assume that because the difference between
"good" and "bad" experiences is so large, the "good" experiences will simply fall short to a dominant and greater numerical value, thus resulting in a personality that often sees a half-empty glass?
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Chapter 52
DICTUM MEUM PACTUM
1:2:6:52
WHY do people get so tired? That's what you ask yourself as you stand in front of a hotel mirror. When you can't sleep, you start to notice the smallest things. Every thing becomes magnified. You start to notice things like the bathroom door having no lock. If you weren't suffering from insomnia and you were getting regular sleep, you probably wouldn't give it a second thought.
You leave the bathroom and go to a window that overlooks the city to find that the snow is beginning to disappear. For a moment, you close your eyes, then you open them.
You look downwards towards the traffic, and then you close your eyes again, but this time for a longer amount of time. You can keep your eyes closed forever, but that doesn't mean you will eventually fall asleep.
After you open your eyes, you go to the bed and you start to look at a complex formula for determining or identifying who someone is. You're looking at all these numbers and equations and definitions and ideas, and while parts of it makes sense, as a whole, it seems like it was written by someone who was enduring mania.
Impact ratios, experience evaluators, inductive reasoning. Now you're starting to wonder how many hours of the night you spent working on all these pages. You look down at a certain page that expresses the idea of "Fisheye Mathematics," and then suddenly the door to your hotel room opens.
In walks an employee of the hotel, and the two of you stare at each other for a brief moment. You know that she can tell that you are tired and bothered. "I come back later,"
she says as she smiles and begins to leave. You tell her that it's okay, that it won't bother you. She pauses, and then she smiles as she enters the room with her cart to restock whatever it is that needs to be restocked. "I will be quick," she assures you.
What is it with people and smiling at strangers? It must be some psychological fragment. They probably don't even realize that they're doing it.
You look back down at your work as she enters the bathroom. All of this makes sense to you, but you can't help but feel that you are bias towards it considering you are the one who wrote it.
About a minute later she comes back out and she makes her way towards the door to leave. "Have a nice day," she says to you. "Let me ask you something," you reply. She looks back, and you tell her to come look at the page you were reading. She walks over and looks down at the page you point to. "Does it make sense to you? Can you determine someone's perceptual efficiency based on the levels of their open and close mindedness?"
She looks at you as she scratches her hair with what seems to be a smile that is broken 7 | DICTUM MEUM PACTUM
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into pieces. "I don't understand," she says. You give her an example, "Let's say a person who is 'x' race kills someone else who is 'y' race in a place where most murders are generally racially driven. Consider that the community knows who the killer is and who the victim is, most of them will probably assume that the murder was racially motivated, right?" She agrees.
You continue, "But aren't there so many more factors to consider besides just race?
Can we just assume the obvious without any real thought?" She pauses, she is trying to think of something to say. "Maybe answer is sometime that simple?," she proposes. In your mind, you can't help but notice her English and you laugh a little inside, but the fact of the matter is, she's right. A writer's greatest trick is inserting a random piece of useless information into their text and have scholars study and interpret the useless information in such high regard when in reality it's nothing.
They go around claiming to know the reason why the useless information was presented at that exact time in that exact location and they have no idea that their foundation is crooked. The simple minded individual cannot understand and perceive such things like the scholar can, but that simple minded individual has no idea that he or she had it right when they felt that the useless piece of information had no real substance.
Instead, they agree with the scholar to validate themselves.
You thank the employee and reach into your pocket to tip her for her time. You pull out a five dollar bill, but it drops as you go to hand it to her. You pick it up, and looking at the backside as you pick it up you notice a small figure in the Lincoln Memorial. You stare at it because this is the first time you've ever really noticed it.
Why do people want to remember everything? That's what you ask yourself as you stare at the bill. The employee attempts to gain your attention in a subtle way, and you apologize as you hand her the tip. "Thanks for your input." She smiles and then walks away. The world is an insightful place.
Time goes by and you find yourself sitting on the edge of a bed. You get up slowly and stare out of the window as you walk towards it. All of the snow is completely gone.
You start to admire the dark blue setting that occurs when day changes into night.
You hear a sound in the bathroom and your psychological reflex causes you to turn your head towards the bathroom door and as you're looking at the door, in the corner of your eye, you see a flash of someone sleeping on the bed. However, when you actually look at the bed, there is no one there. Your mind playing tricks on you with sounds and visions of illusion.
You hear people talking about daydreams all the time, but you've never heard anyone talk about daynightmares. After a while of being accompanied by Ms. Nosleep, you might find that your nightmares and reality will sometimes overlap. You start to have 8 | DICTUM MEUM PACTUM
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hallucinations and sometimes they'll drive you crazy.
There was a woman who stated that the problem with trying to touch someone who you suspect to be a hallucination is that whether the person is real or not, when you touch them, your hand won't simply go through them, they will simply respond to your touch because your distorted mind will make them respond that way.
After you turn your head away from looking at the bed you begin to stare out of the window once more. You start to remember a day where a therapist told you that the anthology complex was a very common psychological state. "In other words, it is a common complex," this is what he says to you.
He explains how many people throughout the entire world often see themselves in fictional thoughts, particularly fictional thoughts that seem as if they were impossible to ever collide with their own real world. "None of us will probably ever see world peace, so instead we make a movie about it," you remember these words that he has said to you clearly.
Why do people lie to themselves? That's what you ask yourself as you grab your coat and head for the door. On your way out you nod at Sallie and soon find your hand on a door handle to the door that allows you to exit the hotel. You walk a few yards to one of those little news box things and you pull out a newspaper. Soon after, you find yourself reading an article about a newly discovered planet that may be able to sustain life.
You zip up your coat as you notice how the wind is becoming stronger. You never did like getting sick. A few minutes into your journey to nowhere, you pass by a clothing store that has both male and female mannequins standing behind the front window.
You've never seen a fat mannequin. That's what you think to yourself.
The human mind can be so fragile at times. Marketing professionals know this and they take complete advantage of it. You see an extremely attractive person wearing an article of clothing and for a brief second you see yourself. You decide to purchase it.
What if you were to one day see an extremely unattractive person wearing the same article of clothing? Do you still make the purchase? You might start to wonder what the mainframe of the human mind is composed of.
On the other hand, there are times when the human mind is tough. So many people out there living shit lives, and even though they know this, they choose to endure the shitfilled life. They can kill themselves at any time, but instead they choose to continue living a life they don't want to because they know there are others around that need them.
In the end though, whether you have a fragile mind or a tough mind, the fact remains that you're just another brick in the wall.
As you stand there, observing the mannequins, you watch as three young females and three young males enter the store, giggling and talking as they enter. You think to 9 | DICTUM MEUM PACTUM
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yourself about how they are all just bricks in the wall. Shortly after you continue your journey.
About six or seven minutes later you come across a war veteran who asks the people who are passing by him for their loose change. You read his sign, then you walk over to him and place a five dollar bill in his cup. He looks up at you and he thanks you, a donation worthy of God's blessing which he quickly approves right after thanking you.
However, you're not done with him yet; you often find yourself giving money to the homeless and then engaging in discussion with them. This wasn't the first time and it won't be the last.
You ask the war veteran a few questions and you end up learning he had to make a choice when he was younger. When he was younger, he got into a bar fight with a few others and was jailed the same night. In order to avoid further jail time or possible prison time, which probably came under certain circumstances, they give him the option of joining the war and fighting for his country.
He avoids the little box and is sent off to war and he quickly learns about the trade.
He tells you about how his own military put their soldiers at risk in order to kill more of the enemies. They were basically, at times, decoys. The enemy reacts to their ground presence, upper management decides to drop gas on the entire area, both sides lose men.
He shows you how he can barely stand up because of the effect it had on him physically.
Sometime into the discussion you ask him if he's hungry and he says yes. You come back with food and you both sit and eat. There is a therapeutic silence for a while, one that actually touches your soul, rather than one that just kills time, but unfortunately it quickly fades away.
Why do people suffer? That's what you ask yourself as the silence ends and you find yourself shaking his hand and bidding him farewell. You can tell he enjoyed telling you about his life, and he tells you where he will be the next day just in case you want to drop by, but you know you will never see him again. You've found that creating friendships with the homeless is unacceptable to you personally because you cannot help them forever. You've tried before, you really did, but it only made things worse in the end.
You both head in separate directions, and as you turn a street corner you catch a glimpse of a couple arguing inside a car. You notice how they are both wearing the city's baseball team's jersey uniform. You wonder if they both recently came from a game in which the team they supported suffered a humiliating loss.
The windows are rolled up, so as you pass by you can't hear what exactly they are arguing about, but their actions make you think about Maria. There are some solutions that can eat through metal but can't eat through plastic. Certain solutions, when combined with each other, become corrosive, however, alone they are not.
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You look at this couple and you see corrosion. You see two people who are not meant to be together, but you have however heard of the stories of the couples who fight this corrosion and somehow make it out onto the other side. There are also those who are not meant to dwell within certain societies. Usually these people end up in little boxes we like to call prison cells.
We rid one solution of the other to make the corrosion go away, and at the end of the day, the solution of the prisoners will become isolated so that they may only meddle within themselves. A way to avoid societal corrosion. This is a common solution to crime.
These thoughts make you wonder about the early days of the prison systems. How the pioneers knew and understood the destructive nature of mankind and how they knew they would have to think of something to aid the situations that would arise.
What is the criminal's psychology? That's what you ask yourself as you take a street that will lead you back to the hotel. You start to remember the first time you descended into madness. How everyone looked like a mindless zombie to you, giving in to their most basic primal needs. How each and every one of them had no idea that they had an unidentified entity living inside of them that made them do the things they did and never becoming truly aware of this beast.
Now you're thinking about how after you ascended out of the madness, about a year later, you wanted it back. You start thinking about how even though it was one of the more darker moments of your life, it ironically shed the most light on the nouns of your life. It was the first time you ever actually felt alive, and all you wanted was to have it back again if it was even only for a day.
You enter the hotel and nod at Sally, then make your way to your room. You enter and notice it's been cleaned again. You take off your coat and lay down on the bed and close your eyes hoping that you'll eventually fall asleep, but you never do. Instead, you find yourself waving your right arm to knock a basketball out of the way. Sometimes when you have your eyes closed and you're trying to sleep you imagine things in your mind, and sometimes what you involuntarily imagine is a basketball coming straight at your head, and even though you're only imagining it, in real life, you move your arm up to protect yourself. Thoughts try to break through to reality so many times and in so many forms.
Hours go by and it's been long since you opened your eyes in defeat. You notice how you have been going from subject to subject in your mind to keep yourself entertained, and right now you're on the subject of knowledge awareness. You've found that the more you learn about something, the more there is to learn about it. Cavemen probably didn't know much about certain things, so in their minds they probably were never aware that 11 | DICTUM MEUM PACTUM
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there was, at an exponential amount, more to know than they already knew.
In contrast, if they continued to learn things about whatever it is they were learning about, as time progressed, they would realize the amount of information on this one subject was much larger than their initial assumptions. This is probably why technology increases more rapidly as time goes on.
When you were younger, you were raped by your father. Just kidding, no you weren't.
No offense to anyone who comes across these pages who was an actual victim to such a crime. Satan appears in front of you, but it's only his head and it's only an hallucination.
He doesn't say anything, he just looks at you. You stare into the eyes of Satan and then you ask him if he knows what sand tastes like. He doesn't reply and he simply continues to look at you. A big head floating in the middle of the room. You desperately need to sleep.
After Satan disappears, you remember the dream you had about him where he tells you about how religion started. How he was able to cause diversity within the project by manipulating it, by spreading false stories. One part of the project will believe one story, other parts will believe other stories, and when they find that their stories clash, there will be blood. They will fight amongst themselves, and when God sees this, he will become ashamed.
Going on from dream to dream, now you're remembering a similar dream you had of God telling you about his days as a middle-aged man, about how he had written a book of stories for the project. He has watched his project evolve for years and had been taking notes the entire time.
Eventually he began to record and document the lives of some of the lifeforms in the project. He recorded both the good and the bad things they did. In another dream, I saw that later on in his life when he and Satan are both old and dying, after not seeing each other for what may have been an entire lifetime, God gives Satan this book.
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Chapter 53
INSOMNIAC MANIAC
1:2:6:53
WHAT do bacteria dream about? That's what you ask yourself as you try to depress yourself to sleep. You lay there on a relatively unfamiliar bed in a familiar life trying to fulfill the one action that may save your life.
Your eyes are closed, they have been for hours, but you're still awake. Suddenly your hotel room door opens, but you don't get up. You don't even open your eyes. You hear the person walk in, and you soon realize it's the same woman from before with the funny English. You can tell because she is kind of short and you remember the sound of her short strides. The sound of distance.
As usual, she finishes quickly and makes her way out of the room. You start to think more about her and what she does outside of her employment; if she has a family, children, if she likes her job, what her hobbies are. What makes her get up in the morning. Things of the like.
Minutes later you find yourself sitting on the edge of a bed staring out of a window.
Another dark blue setting, except this time it occurs when night changes into day. The world is a beautiful place.
You get up and go to the bathroom to urinate. After you're done you stand in front of the mirror and begin talking to Ms. Nosleep. You ask her why she won't leave. Why she won't just let you sleep even if it's only for a few minutes. She doesn't ever reply.
The next thing you know you're putting on your coat and heading for the hotel's exit door. Of course, you don't forget to nod at Sally as you leave.
You're outside and it's a little bit windy. It's not too windy, but the wind itself is a bitter cold and you hate that. You pick a direction and begin walking towards it. You notice that not too many people have started their day yet. Guess no one ever told them about the early bird.
You walk by a sandwich shop and decide to go in. You look at the selection of sandwiches and you pick one, and the employee grabs the sandwich with a tool made for grabbing food so that the customer is not wary as if you just grabbed it with your bare hands. The thing is, while you don't know where his hands have been, you also don't know where this tool has been, which almost defeats its purpose.
You pay the employee and he gives you your change, then you walk out. As you're leaving you see a sign on the sandwich shop that tells you that it's open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You find that to be strange.
How does an idea put on paper influence so many people? That's what you ask yourself as you shove a couple of dollar bills into your pocket. After a few yards of 13 | INSOMNIAC MANIAC
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walking you see and hear an ambulance speed by. The good thing about sleep is that if you were in pain, or depressed or even just angry, it all goes away once you fall asleep.
It's all completely gone. That is unless those things come to you in your dreams.
They follow you every where you go and you just can't seem to shake them, so when the dream becomes a nightmare you wake up and those same damn feelings follow you back into reality. Knowing yourself, you'll find a pen and a composition notebook laying next to you on that bed so that you can write down the dream and nightmare you just had.
At that point the pen becomes your best friend and the only person who truly understands is the notebook that it writes on. Like the lure of the siren's song; never what it seems to be, yet who among us can resist?
After the ambulance passes by, across the street you see a woman sitting on a bench nearly half asleep. You wonder if she is perhaps homeless, and if so, how she got there.
These questions are then overshadowed by another question; how could she possibly completely fall asleep in these weather conditions?
You know that the path you walk on ends in self-destruction and is filled with tragedy, and in many ways it mirrors a woman trying to fall asleep outside in a bitter cold wind. Your life isn't tragic because you never had a chance or because you couldn't fight and conquer something that was bigger than you, it's tragic because you had the means to become anything or anyone you wanted to be, but instead you chose to be as useless as the homeless people you frequent.
Who watches over us? That's what you ask yourself as you cross the carless street.
When you get to the other side you begin to walk towards sleeping beauty, and as you walk pass her, you throw in a couple of dollar bills into a bag she is sleeping next to.
Robin Hood objected to high taxes and was declared an outlaw. He led a group of outlaws named “Merry Men,” and their motto was something along the lines of “to rob the rich to pay the poor.” To this day there are “Robin Hoods” and “Merry Men” and they come in many different forms. Some who do the traditional thievery, others who try to uncorrupt government systems, the few who try to better the world by technology. The one thing that all of these people have in common is the fact that they remember where they have come from because, in the words of a historical figure, a society is only as strong as its weakest blood cells, and in turn, can be defined by how the capable of this society treats its weak.
After a while of walking, more and more people come out to play and the streets become drenched in activity. You turn a corner and in the distance you see a group of people who you assume to be homeless or at least have complicated residential arrangements.
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of the men from the group a bag of some sort which you assume to be drugs because of the speed of the action and the low levels of emotion.
You've found that some of the people who dwell in the house of misery often use drugs and alcohol to rid or at least numb their pains. After a while, they build a tolerance to drugs and alcohol and when they no longer work the pain becomes so bad that they have to find other means to fight back. Sometimes the new means to fighting back either results in their redemption or their demise. It's a two-way street, really, and at the end of the day you can find yourself on either side.
You yourself are sure that if you should one day meet your demise, it will be because you suffered from years of anger. All that bad blood, black blood, boiled blood. All the people who make you physically sick, the people you can't stand, the people who if you were given the chance to, you'd kill. Maybe not for any righteous or moral reason, maybe simply because you need to let out some of that pressure from your skull. That rage. The problem is, even though you may be letting some of that anger out, as soon as you open that door, or that window, you'd be creating an opportunity for more of it to come in.
Now the man who was given the bag departs from his buddies and begins to walk towards you. After he passes you, you have an impulse to follow him, so you do. Mainly because, in general terms, all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.
It's not too long until you see him hand the bag over to a cop behind a store. The two talk for a minute or two, and then the bagman starts to walk towards the way he came from. You, on the other hand, do not decide to go back. You stand there in the distance watching the cop car, and wondering what the cop is doing inside of it. Time goes by and the cop car is still sitting there. Surely the cop wouldn't be doing illegal activities on company time inside a company vehicle.
More time goes by, and finally the cop starts the engine to his vehicle and begins to drive into a street. He puts on his sirens and makes a right turn, chances are he got a call for duty.
As you watch him drive away, someone comes up behind you and asks you what you are doing. Because you haven't gotten any sleep for almost about a month, and because you were sort of in a paranoid state because you were watching someone else, as soon as this person began to speak you received a surge of adrenaline throughout your circulatory system.
You look at this person angrily and then immediately begin to walk away. You look back a few times to make sure this person isn't following you. You walk far enough and your feet start to hurt so you decide to stop. The downtown area of the city is now packed with walking feet.
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vicinity. He takes off his backpack and reaches inside and takes out a bag of crumbled bread. He starts to walk near the street and that's when you realize he is walking towards a group of pigeons. When he finally gets to them, he empties the bag near them and they begin to feast. The actions of people can be so ironic.
In a world where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, probably because of something along the lines of a certain law of motion, it is intriguing to see that those who have nothing continue to give. You can only hope that when their well has dried up, there will be someone there to now give to them.
You reach into both pockets but can find nothing. You reach into both back pockets, still nothing. Now you're checking your coat pockets and you find a bill. You walk up to the birdman and hand him the bill. He takes the money, but he looks at you strangely. It reminds you that some people don't want to be helped, but it also makes you wonder if he is looking at you strangely because help is foreign to some. That they've gone through their entire life and no one has ever lifted a finger for them.
Why are you so physically unsubscribed? That's what you ask yourself as you begin to walk towards the hotel. There was a time when you struggled with the complex so horribly that you almost resorted to burning all of your composition notebooks. You didn't go through with it because the obsession was so strong, and sitting in that dark room all alone made you realize that none of us are as far away from sociopathy as we think.
You realized that burning all of that fiction meant destroying who you were. All the people you could have become. You realized that all these people were psychological fragments, bit and pieces, of a whole you, and to burn them all would mean giving up on your dreams. Literally and philosophically.
Even though it may seem like those who have nothing are at a disadvantage, they at least have nothing to lose, and those who have everything, well you get the idea. So you build up your hopes and dreams, where you want to go and what you want to do when you get there, but along the way, the hopes and the dreams you have that keep you going, they end up dragging you down until it gets to the point that you just want to be free of them.
What defines you? That's what you ask yourself as you turn the corner and walk down the street that will eventually lead you to your destination. Not too long later you catch a glimpse of a lady who was also looking at you. Strangers passing in the street, by chance two separate glances meet.
You simply walk past each other, maybe perhaps because it wasn't meant to be, or if you don't believe in fate, because it just didn't happen, but afterwards you start to wonder what the rest of your life would entail had either of you stopped and said “hello.” Maybe 16 | INSOMNIAC MANIAC
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we have free will because we have no choice.
You get to the hotel, and then you get to your hotel room. You take off your coat and lay on the bed, only to be defeated once more. “Ms. Nosleep, no matter how hard I try, I cannot die. It's only a matter of time, before I stop believing this lie.”
Slowly it becomes darker and darker outside. You pretty much suffer from jet lag everyday and often times, you find yourself sleeping with the other side of the world. Not at this moment, I guess. I being you.
You get up and instead of going to the window you go to the balcony. When you're outside, you look to your right; it's no longer a fisheye view. Not much to see but a few buildings. Now you're looking to your left, and in the distance you see a building with an electrical sign that says “25 OR 6 TO 4.”
Why do bad things happen to good people? That's what you ask yourself as you gaze at the city's lights. The answer to that question is probably the same answer to the question “Why do bad people sometimes do good things?”
You go back into the room and take out your answers to the human identity. If you can't sleep, you might as well do something to keep your mind off of the fact that you can't sleep. Reading some of your notes, you find an equation that is largely determined by a person's fears. Many people are afraid of death, but when you do the math and you really get down to the bottom of it, chances are, mathematically speaking, you will not die on any given day.
On another page, you find a few notes that deal with a person's writing. Their thoughts on paper. How one identified individual would use negative contractions but would never use positive contractions. In his writing, he might say “I am happy,” but he would never say “I'm happy.” He might say “Aren't you happy?,” but he would never say
“Are you not happy?” What would influence a person to write like that? Which criteria would you need to apply to figure it out? The idea behind holistic education, or at least one of the ideas, is that we can find identity and purpose in life through our interactions with society. Can you find out who you are and find your place in the world by comparing and contrasting yourself to others? Everyone knows that light needs to be casted to make a shadow.
You stand up and you gaze upon your work. Your theories on man. You think about how much you hate your mind, then you go to a drawer and open it. You take out a box of matches as if you had known they would be there waiting for you, then you set fire to all the papers that lay on the bed as if you had known this is what you planned to do.
A few seconds go by and the fire begins to build slowly as you watch over it, but you soon come to your senses and attempt to put it out. You find yourself striking the fire with a large piece of cloth, but it's not working as well as you thought it might. Maybe 17 | INSOMNIAC MANIAC
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that's what you wanted. Maybe you want the whole damn thing to burn down. You start to strike harder, and with each strike you let more and more anger out. You're getting good at this.
You manage to put out the fire before any kind of detectors can go off, but there are a couple of casualties; your work and the blankets you tried to sleep in. There are times when you think you've gone full circle but you're just not quite there yet. You sit on the edge of the bed, hoping that the smell of smoke would soon go away, and you laugh a little as you think about how much the bill for staying at this hotel for this long will amount to. You know that it won't be a problem though, because of your financial situation.
You get up and go back to the drawer and place the matchbox back where it had come from, and as you go to place it down, you notice that there are five little circle-brown things with a profile view of the sixteenth president of the Unites States of America. You laugh again, and then decide that it's time to go back home.
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Chapter 54
BASED ON A TRUE DREAM
1:2:6:54
LYNNE, who has just returned home and whose body is in the process of healing several bruises, leaves her apartment and goes down the hall to the door of the narrator slash storyteller. She knocks softly, but there is no answer. Then she knocks a bit harder, but there is still no answer, so she goes back home, hoping that the next time she knocks, there will be a reply. Unfortunately for her, there will not be a reply the next time because the storytelling narrator is staying at a hotel in the downtown area of the city.
After she gets home, she goes to her children's room to check on them and finds that they are both watching a television show in cooperation, a sight that is rare among the both of them. She then goes to her own room, sits on the edge of her bed, and then takes off her prosthetic foot. Not too long after, she lays down and feels a sort of satisfaction because she had recently put into motion a restraining order against her ex-husband.
Much credit should go to Emily, her mother, who convinced her to do such a thing.
Lynne eventually falls asleep, but only for a short while, and when she gets back up she makes lunch for Sarah and David. As they all eat, she thinks about how good it will be for them to finally go back to school in their usual manner, and not from a long ride from their grandmother's home.
As the two children begin to put their finishing bites into their sandwiches, their mother asks them both if they would like to go out and buy a new video game for their video game console. Before she can finish, however, the children begin shouting positively to her question.
The family prepares themselves and then goes out to the nearest department store and when they arrive they proceed to shop. Lynne buys a few things that she needs, and she buys both Sarah and David each a video game of their choosing. As the family finishes their shopping and exits the department store, they walk across a parking lot and there is a loss of light that occurs when day changes into night.
Finally, they get home and the children go immediately to their room to play their new video games. Lynne, on the other hand, leaves the apartment for a brief moment to check if the narrational storyteller had come back home. Again, there is no reply to her knocks, and she begins to wonder if the story narrator is staying at the home she was previously shown. As she starts to go towards her home, Lynne notices someone walking out of Joe's apartment. She does not know it yet, but it is her new neighbor.
Days go by, and each of those days, once or twice a day, Lynne checks to see if the narrative storyteller has return. Each time she is denied a reply, she grows more and more anxious because she misses this person and wants to tell this person about how she is in 19 | BASED ON A TRUE DREAM
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the process of winning the war with Sylvio.
More days go by, and right now it is morning. Lynne is getting her children ready for school. After they are done, the family goes outside and for the first time since winter had arrived, they see snow on the ground. Sarah and David run to their bus stop and after the bus picks them up, Lynne waves to them as they are taken away.
Lynne enters her apartment building and on her way home she knocks on her friend's door, but there is no answer. She wonders if they will ever see each other again.
Four days go by and we find the family grocery shopping. They buy what they need and promptly return. The three get out of the car and begin to walk towards their apartment building. At the door, Lynne stops, and so do her children. They all look down at a bunch of dead flowers that cannot survive through winter. How sad the story of lost.
Soonafter, in the corner of her eye, Sarah sees her mother's flower friend and begins to point.
Lynne and David look up and in the direction that she is pointing, and they too see this person. Lynne's eyes get wider and her heart begins to beat faster. She had smiled many times before, but you have never seen a smile this big. Of course, because of her smile, this other person begins to smile.
“Hi,” Lynne says, to which the narrator replies, “Hey.” After a short conversation about how tired a certain someone looks, the storyteller takes the grocery bags from the children and helps the family bring the groceries upstairs to their home. The narrator stays in their home for a short while and then leaves. Before the leave, Lynne and Sarah give the narrator a hug; at this time, David is in his room playing his recently acquired video game. As the door closes, Lynne decides that she will tell the narrator what had happened between her and Silvio the following day.
I'm standing in front of my door now, and I know that when I open it, it will look the same way I left it. As I open the door and peer inside, there is an entity that is full of darkness that roams inside the apartment. That is, until I turn the lights on. Then it goes away.
I go and sit down on my favorite couch, but moments later realize that I am still far away from being able to finally fall asleep. That's not surprising considering that my problem may be emotional and not geological.
I turn on the television that stands before me and I am immediately greeted with a film. Two guys fighting in a dark empty parking lot for fun.
The movie easily catches my interest, but seeing as how I am trying to fall asleep, it's not helping me achieve my goal. I've used television as a medium to fall asleep so many times before, but it seems every thing is against me right now. About thirty minutes later there is a knock on my door. Knowing it's Lynne, and because I don't want to get up, I 20 | BASED ON A TRUE DREAM
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simply shout “Come in.”
Lynne opens the door slowly and says “Hi” once more. She stands there in front of the door just smiling, and I'm wondering what she may want. “What's up?,” I ask her. She starts to tell me about how she is just glad that I'm here, and how much she missed me, and then she asks me what I'm watching.
I tell her what the movie is about so far and she asks me if I would mind if she sat down and watched with me. I probably love her, but I hate when people try to force their way in.
I tell her that I wouldn't mind, so now she's sitting down next to me, trying to enjoy a movie that probably makes no sense to her. We don't say much to each other, we just watch, and that's probably why she falls asleep towards the end of the movie. Lynne falling asleep on my couch, I know that I have been here before.
Instead of carrying her back to her apartment, I simply go check on her children and find that they are sleeping in their beds. I close the door behind me as I leave her apartment and go back to mine. I will let her stay here tonight because I know that with what's going on between her and Silvio, this is where she wants to be. Safe and protected.
I go to sit back down next to her so that I can continue watching television, and the moment I sit down, her head slides down the couch and lands on my shoulders. I swear to God that nothing can wake her up. For the next few minutes I find myself watching commercials, and when they start to get boring I begin to observe Lynne and the way she sleeps. It's not anything unusual, but watching her sleep is calming to my soul. That's when I start to think about what life would be like if we were to some day be together.
Enough time passes by, and I pull my head back and lay it on the couch so I can stare at the ceiling, and eventually, thoughts of Lynne and her bright spirited passion finally, after such a long time, put me to sleep.
Spider enters a building, takes a few turns and then walks up a flight of stairs until he is greeted by a door. On the other side of the door is a man who can only be identified as a ghost, at least through the eyes of Frank Mainor and Tim Ryan.
Spider opens the door and walks in, and the ghost tells him to take a seat. In the background, Spider notices a couple of worker bees who excel in mathematics, proven by their competence in counting currency.
“You stayin' out of trouble, ain't killin' no cops?,” the ghost says in a friendly manner.
Spider had recently murdered a police officer while he was in the line of duty; the “he”
refers to both Spider and the police officer he killed. When they can, partners Frank and Tim sometimes try to solve the murder because the cop who was murdered was a dear friend. That's not to say, however, that the entire police department doesn't dedicate their time as well, and that's also not to say that Frank and Tim are the ones responsible for 21 | BASED ON A TRUE DREAM
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solving this murder. This murder belongs to a Clark Winston of the police force.
“Look I know it was bullshit havin' you sit on Jamaal's friend but you can't just be droppin' cops like that. You also can't be droppin' my name like that in the streets.” The ghost refers to the incident when Spider and his crew were being robbed at gun point, and in the process, Spider tells the thieves that Omar would get payback, Omar being the ghost.
Omar wouldn't care about anyone spilling out his name or his identity being revealed if he didn't have a lot of family living in the city, but he does, so it has always been an objective of his to not reveal who is peddling these drugs in this part of the city, especially at a time when the crime rate is so high and the people running the city are looking for the specific cause.
This event, the spilling of the ghost's name, will eventually come back around, but not in the way that Omar fears. Instead, the name will be discovered by Mya Jackson and she will be the reason why Frank and Tim will be able to make first contact with their ghost.
Back downstairs, Rock is sitting down at a table conversing with a few others, but at the same time thinking about how he is slipping away from this organization. Thinking about how he doesn't want to do this anymore. Thinking about Jamal's death and how it was an inside job.
For a second, Rock fights with the anger he feels towards the evil he sees in the people around him, and for even less time than that, he wonders if this place could ever change, but he knows that Heaven's walls are much too high to hear the trouble down below.
After a while of sleeping, I wake up because of a loud booming sound that comes from underneath. Tao's apartment. I notice that the clock reads six a.m., then notice that Lynne is still asleep at my side.
I get up, and while I'm getting up I can hear Tao yelling out profanity through the floor. I lay Lynne out flat on the couch and make my way to Tao's apartment. I knock on his door and when he answers I ask him what happened. He tells me that his fish tank fell and was now in several places. I ask him how it fell exactly, and he tells me about how the table it was on had weak legs. Something about this feels familiar.
I make my way in and see exactly what he's talking about. Water everywhere, creeping into the carpet and wooden floor. Broken pieces of glass finding residence in that same carpet, others lost out in the open on that wood. I don't see the fish though, but I'm sure that's because Tao has already put them in a safe place.
I ask Tao how he had been doing, considering I hadn't seen or talked to him in a while, and he gives me the answer that you get from most people. I offer to help, but he tells me he can handle it, so I leave soon afterwards.
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Making my way to the top of the stairs of the second floor, I look down the hallway and stare at Lynne's door. I decide to check on David and Sarah and find that like their mother, they are sound asleep. I get closer to them, walk up so that I am only a foot away from their bodies and I can't help but think that I may know these two people for the rest of my life. I'll watch them grow, watch them change, maybe even watch them decide who they want to become.
When they hit a rough time, people will tell them that everything will be all right, but that's a lie. People will tell them that everything happens for a reason, and that's another lie. The truth is none of us know if everything will really be okay, or if God or some higher power or the universe itself has a plan for us all. Someone I knew told me that we should never lie to children because when they get older, they will understand that peace is a dream that is impossible to obtain, and they will know that you lied to them years ago.
I open the door to my apartment and as I walk in I look over towards Lynne. She is still laying down, but she is awake, simply staring directly in front of her. I start to think about what she may have dreamed of. If she remembers what it was about.
“How are they?,” she asks me. “Your kids?,” I reply. She says yes, and I tell her that they are sleeping, then I ask her how she knew that I had gone to check on them. She smiles and says “I know what kind of person you are.” A lot of people think they do.
Some studies have investigated oxytocin's role in the behaviors of humans and it is often associated with “pair bonding,” and because of this it is often referred to as the
“love hormone.” Not being able to secrete oxytocin may be why some people don't feel things when the world tells them they should. Words like sociopathy and psychopathy may come to mind. I have to put on this mask for Lynne because she has no idea how misanthropic I am. How nihilistic.
After some time, Lynne leaves so that her children can wake up and find her at home making breakfast. As for me, I leave my apartment and walk up the stairs to the third floor and soon find myself standing in front of Mary's door, wanting to know how she and her newborn son are doing.
Her sister opens the door, and she remembers me just like I remember her. She invites me in and I immediately see Mary sitting down on her couch in the living room. It appears to be only the two of them.
It's hard to describe Mary's reaction when she realized I was there, maybe because we had both always been a little judgmental of the other and we both secretly knew it, but it felt like she was looking at an old friend when I saw her eyes.
Mary tells me about how she is doing okay, and how Anthony is doing even better.
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instead of her's, there would be a lot of notebooks, and we all stare down at a sleeping Anthony. Babies may not know a lot, but I suppose even they must dream. I wouldn't be surprised if theirs were more imaginative than an adult's.
After about a minute of standing over Anthony's body and talking about him, he wakes up and begins to stare right at me. I stare right back at him and we both feel the stranger in one another. Mary's sister notices this and hands me one of his toys, an airplane, so I fly it up right above him. I never knew that a toy airplane could be so amusing until I saw how hysterical Anthony became. Until I saw how he couldn't control his laughter.
Seeing him like this reminded me of the dream I had where Roach told me that all the things we do when we are not searching or waiting, all the little things that appear to be meaningless, how much they bring us closer to sharing a part of our soul with others.
Something about this makes me want to go see how Joe is doing, but I probably actually want to see Kathleen, to see if she is doing okay.
For the last few seconds that I will be seeing Anthony today, I wonder if He really has the little bitty baby in His hand. By the time I leave I realize that Mary's sister is at her house because Mary needed someone to help her, and I guess because it will make up for lost time.
As I'm walking down the flight of stairs I catch a glimpse of David walking down the other flight of stairs and I ask him how he's doing. “Fine, just going to check the mail,”
he tells me. This reminds me that I too need to check my mail, seeing as I've been away for so long. After a quick visit to my apartment I go downstairs and do the deed, and the only interesting piece of mail I find is a letter from Derek. I step outside and begin to read it.
“sup, whats goin on? i wrote a short story but i gotta admit i stole the idea from one of your stories. let me know what you think, what i should change or add or take out... as for me, i been okay, kinda moving up (not a look out anymore) and hopefully i can put together enough cash soon so i can get outta here. hit me back.”
I write often because of the complex, but very rarely do I ever read, however after reading Derek's short story, I immediately realized how gifted he is and why storytelling can be so important in our world.
In his story, there are a group of red turtles and a group of yellow turtles who live in the same proximity and normally get along. One day, one of the red turtles decides that the yellow turtles are inferior, and from this you can gather that Derek is developing a problematic racial theme, something he is all too familiar with.
That red turtle, it gets all the other red turtles to also agree that the yellow turtles are inferior and that they should either be killed off or put to work for them. The only thing 24 | BASED ON A TRUE DREAM
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the red turtle has to say to convince the other red turtles of the yellow turtles' inferiority is the fact that they are different.
So one day, there is a slaughter. The yellow turtles have all been killed and the red turtles now rule the land. A very long time passes by, and the red turtles who inhabited the yellow turtles' land slowly begin to turn yellow due to concerns of adaptation, and after an even longer period of time, once again there are red and yellow turtles who share a piece of land.
It sounds to me like Derek is trying to show the purposelessness in differentiating each other from one another, because in reality, we may all be the same.
There was a man who had a dream. In fact, he titled one of his speeches “I Have A Dream.” In his dream, he saw a world where people weren't judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. In his dream, he saw the equality of all men.
The question that begs to be asked is if we are all indeed actually equal. This debate must first define the scope of what “equal” means. We are not equal, in the sense that you may be more athletic than me. If you are more athletic than me, then I think it would be safe to say you are better than me in that department, and therefore we are not equal. We aren't the same.
However, on the flip side, we are all equal in the sense that I could have been born as you, and you could have been born as me. Because we all have the possibility to be each other, this makes us equal, or at least should make us equal. Throughout my life, I've found that there are parts of the people you know inside yourself, small or large.
I put the letter and story back in the envelope and begin to walk back inside, and that's when I notice that the winter had killed Lynne's flowers. How fast life goes by.
Something could be there for such a long time and when it's gone, no matter how long it had been there, you'll feel like it was taken away too quickly.
I return to my apartment and visit the room that houses the composition notebooks. I put Derek's short story inside a random notebook, and then I slide my hand across my small library. I think about how I've read them all so many times. Truth is, even though I'm the one who wrote them, I'm sure I've missed some things, just like you have. Maybe you are reading them a second or third time through, but even still, you will manage to miss some things. I know I always did.
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Chapter 55
CHILDREN OF THE FREE WORLD
1:2:6:55
MARIA leaves her desk and walks back outside through the harsh and bitter snowstorm to her car. She had forgotten a few papers that she would need to be able to complete some of the day's tasks. After she gets the papers, and as she is closing her car door, another car pulls up and out walks the narrator.
“Great weather,” the narrator says sarcastically to Maria. She laughs and asks this person if they work here. This person says yes, that they were just hired about a week ago. Maria, being the friendly person that she is, introduces herself and shows this person into Max's Carpentry and sacrifices some of her time to showing this person around.
Later that day, after the narrator's first day of work, the narrator drives back to a hospital to accompany a dying father who doesn't want company. There they both sit in silence, not one word ever being spoken. Seeing something like this might make you believe that there are places in the world where facial expression is the only language.
After a while, the storyteller gets up to leave and go home. A long drive home down a long stretch of highway cornered by darkness. “Once you completely deny any idea, it may be time to question your profession as a scientist.” Some words the storyteller's father had said long before.
After the drive home, the storyteller parks right in front of a home and sits there quietly in the car. Not too long goes by until the storyteller begins to nod off. Flashbacks are a lot like dreams.
Last night, I had a nightmare. A disturbingly ugly man named Sid sits on a chair before me. I feel like I'm going to kill him, but I'm not suppose to. “Okay, uncuff me,” he says softly. I go to uncuff him and he quickly says “You see, that's your first mistake.
You know me but you can never trust me.” Like me, Sid is a serial killer, and people like us can never be trusted because of the way we perceive things.
Sid has gone on for years killing people at random. “I've killed hundreds,” that's what he told me when I first met him. Now, he is trying to teach me.
“Defense is usually harder than offense. In a foot chase, I feel there is always more stress on the person who is trying to get away. So there is one solution, be the chaser, or don't get into a foot chase at all.” Sid always has something to say.
Through dream memory, while having that dream, I remembered the first time Sid and I actually murdered someone together. Windy night, sadly dancing trees. The door says open and we walk right in. I stay near the door and watch Sid as he walks towards the old man. Why Sid wants this particular man dead, there is no reason, and that is the true essence of random. No circumstances, no fate, just very bad fucking luck. Odds that 26 | CHILDREN OF THE FREE WORLD
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look down at you and laugh.
Sid's favorite method of murder is using a child-sized baseball bat. He is not a small person, nor does he like irony. I'm guessing one day he picked up the nearest weapon to him and killed someone in the heat of the moment, and from then on, he decided he would kill like that.
The old man doesn't really beg for his life much, maybe he wants to die, but it wouldn't have mattered how much or how little he begged, Sid doesn't like to waste much time.
I'm standing there, watching Sid go to work on this old man. With each hit, my mind and body becomes more and more calm. After a while, the hand that was shaking stops shaking, and the heart that was beating furiously almost stops beating altogether. I had killed before, but not the way Sid killed this man. Messy, bloody, seemingly full of passion, yet no emotion in his eyes. That is Sid's greatest talent, deception. There are many words that an unreliable narrator might use in a novel. “Seemingly,” “probably,”
“maybe.” Just like you have to watch out for these words, you have to watch out for Sid's deceit because the person you think he may be, he probably isn't.
After the old man is dead, Sid cuts off his fingers and uses each of them multiple times on the wall, causing many fingerprints. Finally, after many of the old man's fingerprints are on the wall, he chooses a spot at random to put his own left index finger fingerprint. I ask him why he did that, and he tells me that it's just for fun. Maybe to see if the detectives that will be here in the morning will actually check every single one of these thirty fingerprints. Even though Sid says you should never be the one doing the running away, apparently he had a hard time following his own advice.
The next morning, the detective in charge of the old-man slaying case will indeed have all thirty fingerprints checked. Not because she is a dedicated detective, but because she, along with another now retired detective, have been hunting the “Bat-man” for a very long time with no success.
Unfortunately for these two, Sid's profile is nowhere to be found on any government database because legally, he has never committed a crime, and this renders the one fingerprint that is different from the others useless when the detective searches for a match. Sid knows this, and that is the only reason why he put his fingerprint on the wall in the first place. A message to the police, telling them that they will never know who he truly is.
After we leave the old man, Sid says to me, “The definition of a serial killer is a person who murders two or more people, committing each murder as a separate event, so what do you call someone who has murdered over five hundred people, committing each of the murders as a separate event?” “I don't know, what?,” I ask. He looks at me and 27 | CHILDREN OF THE FREE WORLD
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laughs, then says, “A serial killer.” I always thought Sid had a very indefinable sense of humor.
After I wake up, I sit on the edge of the bed, remembering a time when I'm hitting a brick wall with a metal bat. Eventually the wall turns into a small animal, and I keep hitting it. It changes once more, into something I have never seen before, and then into a human head. All through the changing, there is one thing that stays constant, my desire for destruction, to let my anger out.
How I got there, I don't know, but it makes you wonder if an evil entity waits for safe passage and opportunity to enter the human soul. Maybe at second fifty-four, bat swing eighty-nine, with an angle of thirty-two degrees, evil enters my composition and has an influence on who I am.
Or, maybe it's not evil. Maybe it's goodwill. There is someone who will tell you that the triumph of evil is due to the inaction of good men, but the good man who decides to act, what if his action gets him killed. Is the halt of evil worth your existence? It's a free world and it's up to all of us individually to decide whether action or inaction is the correct response. Regardless, however, the rich will get richer, people will buy and sell goods, and there will never be communism here.
I get up and find my way to the kitchen where I find something to drink, and then I visit the room. I think you know which one.
Like so many times before, I choose a notebook at random and take it down, and then I flip to a random page, a page that tells me about old friends. Friends that some of us are better off not knowing, but it has been said before, that the devil you know is better than the devil you don't.
In this dream, I am standing in front of God and Satan's tombstones. Messages engraved on both of them. “In the light, you will find the road.” “In the darkness, can you hear me call.” I probably don't have to tell you which message belongs to which. Many times I've found the two to be very definable, to carry a static demeanor.
In the same dream, but at a later time, I am shown by Child God and Child Satan a blueprint for the make up of all life, something they had been working on for God knows how long.
After they show me their work, they leave. Sometime later, God comes back, but he is older and not nearly as excited about the project as he used to be when he was younger.
I ask him where Satan is, and he tells me that he is no longer a part of this project.
God then begins to explain to me about how he had decided to give the life in his project free will. He tells me because of this decision, he had to develop a filter system; when a life had ended, if it was good, it would go to Heaven, and if it was bad, it would go to Hell. In Heaven, God would welcome those who were good, and he would explain 28 | CHILDREN OF THE FREE WORLD
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every thing to them. Every thing about the project. In Hell, Satan would welcome those who were bad, and he too would explain these things that such a life form could not understand without guidance.
Before Satan was removed from the project, he asked God, now that the life forms would have free will, if God would send those who did not live as he wished to his kingdom down below for correction, and God agreed, for even God knew that such a project would have errors.
Each time I wake up after having a dream about God and Satan and the beginnings of the universe, I sit up and ask myself if any of this could be true. If this is how it all started. Of course it probably isn't, but seeing God and Satan can be fact when it is contained within the dream world, just as things of our world are fact when contained within its own.
As I walk towards the door to leave the room I catch a glimpse of the metal baseball bat, the single entity that has kept me from becoming one of the many things I was suppose to be. I pick it up and hold it, and then ask myself, “When does passion become obsession?” Because of some of the things I've seen in both my dreams and in reality, I cannot simply go back to where I came from, who I used to be when I was younger and when my mind was normal. I'm in Stasis.
Kathleen sits among eleven other individuals as she listens to them speak about their trials with diabetes. She's been coming to this support group for weeks now and it may truly be the only thing that is keeping her together.
Loneliness, one of the major themes of her life, it has no place here. It is not welcomed and it is discouraged. That's why a few minutes from now Kathleen will be given the chance to speak and she will take it. She will tell the others about how she, much like most of the people in the room and even the world, is afraid of dying alone.
She'll tell them about how she has no one left. No one to love and no one to love her.
Then she'll go home to her cold and empty house. She'll do what is required of her to manage her diabetes, and then maybe she'll turn on the radio, or perhaps the television.
She'll lie down on her bed, listening to the voices, or maybe the music. Eventually she'll fall asleep, and probably, in her dreams, she'll find her son.
While I'm still in Stasis, just before I leave, above me I start to hear faint crying. The crying rises exponentially and now Anthony is crying like a real baby. I look up at the ceiling, and I can hear Mary opening the door, on her way to comfort her newborn, but nothing she tries works. The crying goes on and on and eventually I find myself looking through kitchen cabinets for a spray that is designed to kill roaches and ants.
As I'm looking for this spray, I hear a knock on my door, and I also realize that Anthony has finally stopped crying. The knock is soft, so I immediately know that it's 29 | CHILDREN OF THE FREE WORLD
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Lynne. I look through the peephole. Unobtainable fisheye logic. My assumption was wrong, sort of. On the other side, it is Sarah, and she stands there waiting for an answer.
I open the door and look down at her and smile, and then she begins to speak. She asks me if I would like to come over for dinner later today, and it quickly becomes obvious to me who is pulling the strings.
After I tell her that I would like to come over for dinner, she hands me a list of items that Lynne says she will need for the dinner. I laugh a little inside, and I feel like the two of them made me set up my own trap and lured me into it. Sarah also tells me that all the items on the list are at the Chase Mart, so it shouldn't be too big of a bother. Before Sarah goes back home, I tell her to tell her mother that she is very clever.
I go to the Chase Mart, a place where I thought I may never have the pleasure of returning to, and I gather all the needed items on the list, and then I go to checkout. When I get to the register I ask the clerk if I've ever met him before, a joke that only you and I would ever understand, and he responds with a confused “no.”
I get back to the apartment building and knock on the door of the Parkers' residence, and it is Lynne who eventually answers. I hold up the bag to her and we both laugh as she takes it from me. “Thank you,” she says softly. She begins to reach into her pocket and she takes out some money and hands it to me. I tell her that since I will be eating her food later, that she can keep the money and call it even. She agrees and I then ask her what time she wants me over, and she says “at six o'clock.” I tell her that I'll see her then and she closes the door. By the smell of her apartment I can tell she has already started the cooking.
On my way back, as I go to open my door, I see a face I've never seen before coming up the stairs. Rudely, I continue to stare at him as he walks towards me. “Hi, I just moved in... Haven't seen you around.” I tell him that I was staying in the city for a few weeks.
Somehow, the two of us end up talking about the city's football team, and I can already tell that I like him. It's not until the conversation ends that I learn that his name is Jack Booth and that he now lives right across the hall from me.
I go back home and go back into the kitchen, and after about a minute I find the bug spray. If you go too long without any sleep, chances are your mind will begin to create fictional matter; it's happen to me too many times before. You're up one night trying to figure out when you last had any decent sleep, and then all of a sudden you see a company of ants coming out of your wall. They aren't real, but that doesn't matter, contained within your mind, they are.
So now, because of past fictional matter, whenever I see bugs in my apartment, these ideas run through my mind for a second. Of course since I've been getting decent sleep, the fly that I am about to kill is definitely real. It's definitely alive, and it can definitely 30 | CHILDREN OF THE FREE WORLD
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die. It definitely has parents and I'm sure it's been through some rough times. Kind of sounds like a person. I almost feel sorry for it.
I start to walk towards the bathroom, where the fly is hiding out, and on my way there I glance at the instructions on the spray can. Julia would always say that writing is never about just putting words down, even if they are just instructions placed on the back of a bottle of shampoo. Sometimes you will have to debate whether to use “you'll” or “you will” because your decision may affect the composition of the rest of the sentence.
Around the same time she told me this, she got me to agree to watch her favorite movie with her, and at the end of it all, she looks at me and tells me that this movie is why she loves writing. “How can you watch this and not want to create something yourself?,” she says. Julia Dream. Her tone suggested that it was more of a statement than a question. Either way, I didn't answer.
I look back up to see where I'm walking towards and now I'm in front of the bathroom door. I seem to remember a lot of the things I did with Julia now. This memory would have been a lot more useful had I had it before I ran into her after all those years.
I open the door and I wait a few seconds, waiting for the fly to make the first move, but it never does. I look all around the bathroom. This goes on for maybe two minutes, and it starts to get frustrating. I look for a little bit more, but I can't find it. When I finally give up, I look out of the bathroom window, and sitting on the ledge is the fly. What I don't understand is how it got outside when the window was down.
I stand there, and I just stare at the fly. It sits on the edge of the ledge, as if it was some sort of superhero towering over the location it was meant to protect. It's dressed in all black and the only thing that makes it feel is all of the injustice in the world. Seeing things like this gets you to believe that out of one thousand flies, one fly will be important to you in your life. I can tell you that I stood there for at least fifteen minutes, and in all that time, it only made one movement, which was a slight twitch. After I can take no more, I leave, and I let it be, for I know it has a city to protect.
Time. Minutes turn into hours and hours turn into dinnertime. Just before I leave my apartment to go to Lynne's, I go back to the bathroom to see if mister or misses fly is still there. He or she is not, but I am however greeted with a beautiful window view. The return of the dark blue setting, clean white snow falling from the Heavens. For some reason it makes you think of love. Peace and goodwill. Maybe that's why the fly isn't still here. One glance at something like this and he or she will forget what he or she is fighting for. All that trouble that forces its way into the world.
I knock on Lynne's door and Sarah lets me in. Of course Lynne is still working frantically to get every thing set up, but she tells me to sit down with the kids. Makes sense, sometimes I am a child.
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I sit down with Sarah and David. Dawid is playing one of his games, so I ask him which game he is playing. “It's an adventure game, you wouldn't know it,” he says. He's probably right. A few seconds later a sound comes from his game and Sarah asks him if he finally beat it. “Yeah, but for some reason it still said 'Game Over,'” he responds.
Things like this happen all the time in the free world. You work hard, you play all the right cards, follow all the instructions, and then you actually win, yet somehow still manage to lose. You still manage to get game over.
I look at Lynne who looks like she is trying so hard to impress me, and I think about how if I were a parent, one of the hardest decisions I would probably have to make is deciding whether to encourage my children to live in the free world or in a world of their own.
Because I can't stand to watch her do it alone, I get up and go to the kitchen to help her out. She smiles at me and says “thanks,” and eventually we bring out all the plates and eating utensils and last, but not least, the food. Finally, we are all seated, and then Lynne asks Sarah to say grace. To thank God for all the food we are about to eat.
At dinner's end we are all laughing and telling stories. The most memorable one being the time Sarah learned how to swim and how deeply afraid she was of being underwater.
The laughing and the storytelling ends, and I figure it's about time to head home.
Time to travel about twenty feet back into my living room so I can watch some television. So at the right moment, I introduce the idea of my leaving, then I bid them fairly well. Not in those words. While I'm at the door, Lynne walks up to me and asks me if she can come over to talk about something with me later, and I say it's fine.
So now, you can picture me sitting on my couch watching television but not really watching television, instead, I'm thinking of all the things Lynne could possibly want to
“talk” about. I get to ponder for exactly seventeen minutes, and then the inevitable knocking begins. I don't answer it at first, then because of fictional sound waves, the knocking becomes louder and closer.
I get up and walk slowly towards the door and look through the peephole. Fictional matter would be useful right now, but instead it's Lynne on the other side. I open the door and she walks in. She walks past me and then asks me what I'm watching. I actually have no idea what I was watching, but if I had to take a guess, I'd say Seventeen Minutes.
I tell her I had no idea what I was watching and she laughs, and then I ask her what she wanted to talk about. She turns away from the television and looks at me and says
“Oh yeah,” remembering why she came here in the first place. It must be important.
She starts asking about my house, the home my parents left for me. I had forgotten I took her there before I went down to stay in the city. I tell her it was just some property I owned, that it was left for me after my father had passed. Of course, she says “I'm sorry,”
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but it was something that happened a long time ago.
After a few more questions, she starts drifting off in conversation to about how she has never lived in an actual home. That as a child, it was all apartments for her. Her family would move all the time, from apartment to apartment, and during each move, she would always wonder what it would be like to stay in one home. One real house. Of course you and I both know where she is going with this psychologically, even if she doesn't know herself.
Surprisingly she changes the subject and tells me that what she really came here to talk about was how she was filing a restraining order against Silvio. She starts telling me about how her mother convinced her to finally do it, and how she finally realized that her association with Silvio was affecting the lives of other people around her, including me.
Her words.
“That's very thoughtful of you,” the narrator says sarcastically to Lynne. Lynne laughs at my reply then looks down at the ground. She says my name softly, and I reply,
“Yes?” “Can I tell you something?,” she says still looking at the ground, but in a voice that is not as soft. “You can,” I reply.
“I love you.” That's what she tells me. I can honestly say at first I wasn't sure if I heard her right, but as much as I wish she hadn't said it, she did. I know Lynne, and I know she doesn't expect me to say it back, but she has still put me in a tough spot. How do I respond? The only way I know how.
“Are you sure you don't just like me?,” I say trying to make her laugh, but she doesn't. Not even a smile. “I don't know what to say Lynne.” She starts to speak, “Do you love me?” I pause, and then I say no. The Sun in her eyes quickly becomes Moon, and after seeing that, I don't know why but the blood in my body begins to boil.
“Do you feel anything at all for me?,” she asks. This time I don't pause and I tell her to get out. “What?,” she says with a confused look on her face. I open the door. She looks at me one last time, and with her facial expression and her eyes, she asks me if she really has to leave, and eventually she does and I close the door behind her.
I sit down on my couch and by now I am completely angry. I get back up and turn off the television and then I go to my bedroom. I turn off the light as I enter the room and then walk towards my bed and turn on the radio. I put it on a radio station and then I lay down. I've heard this song before when I was younger.
I stare blankly at the ceiling, but I never really think about anything. Just pure nothingness. Time passes by, then more time passes by, then I come to the conclusion that I can't stay here anymore. “How could I live here now?” I need to move out.
At the end of that thought, there is a knock at my door and I already know who it is.
What could possibly happen in round two.
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I walk through the living room and try to prepare, but you can't really prepare for things like this. You may find that any preparation was simply a waste of time. I open the door, and it is definitely Lynne. Immediately, she begins to speak.
“When I'm with you I feel like I'm in a dream, you're gentle and caring and I feel safe, I've never felt like this with anyone else, please don't ask me to leave.” This is what she says to me, and the one thing I find particularly interesting is how she said it all in one breath.
Now I'm standing here, looking down at her, both of us without any expression on our faces. What she doesn't know is that the only thing that is stopping me from closing the door on her is the fact that she said she feels like she's in a dream when she's with me. It's mostly in my dreams that I feel alive, so perhaps when she is with me, or around me, she feels alive.
I tell her to come in and after she passes, I close the door behind her. “How do you know?,” I ask her. “That I love you?,” she replies. “Yeah.”
She tells me a story, “After you left to go wherever you went, I checked to see if you were home every single day. After a few weeks I thought you had left and weren't coming back. When I found myself coming up with ideas on how to find you, that's when I knew.”
A new song comes on from the radio and the both of us can hear it. I don't say anything for a while, I just look around, and then she begins to speak again. “It's okay, I understand, but I would like it if you at least stayed in my life.”
I look at her and say, “Okay.” Don't you love that sentence. Most of my life I have made it a priority to help others, but I can never help those who get to close. A question from my dreams asks me if I would rather casually help millions around the world, and focus all of my energy on them in division, or if I would rather dedicate my life to a single person and make them happy. I have always been a fan of the former, and I always will be, but right now, tonight, I feel that this person standing in front of me is in need of help more than any other person in the world, so I guess I will dedicate this night to her well-being.
I walk up to Lynne and I ask her if she's ever heard the song that is playing on the radio. She listens for a moment, and then says yes, that her parents used to listen to it all the time when she was younger. I take her arm and soon we are sadly dancing. As we sway slowly, I let her know that I don't love her, and that I never will, and in a soft voice, she says “Okay.”
As we dance, looking out of my living room window I can see a full Moon. I subtly move the both of us towards the window, then I start to turn the both of us so she can have the view instead. I stop the turning as soon as I feel her heart beat louder because 34 | CHILDREN OF THE FREE WORLD
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that's when I know she sees it. You don't see the Sun much around this time of year, but even in winter, the Moon is always there.
Some time into the dance I begin to ask myself what I'm doing. Who is the mask I've put on for this lady. I pull my head back and look at Lynne, she's crying. I never did like tears, but I can't help but wonder why this salty discharge is discharging. Is it because her entire life she had only dreamed of moments like these? Question mark. Looking at her tears, I start thinking about the two of us meeting each other as children, maybe so she didn't have to cry. Playing, singing, dancing, as children, in a world that was free.
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Chapter 56
INSPIRED BY A TRUE NIGHTMARE
1:2:6:56
MARIA picks out a tie that she likes for the narrator to wear to an upcoming event.
They had now been together for about two years, and tonight was a celebratory night for the company she had been working for for the past year.
“How come you still don't know how to tie a tie?,” she asks the storyteller. “I've maybe worn a suit two times in my short adult life,” the storyteller replies.
After they are ready, they both get into the narrator's car and they travel to where they need to go. When they get there, they are greeted by a young man who takes the keys to the narrator's car so that he may park it for them.
Maria and the narrator then walk into the building and a woman shows them to the theater hall. The woman opens double doors that have a happy and sad theater mask on either sides, and inside, Maria sees her co-workers and introduces them to the narrator.
After a few minutes of talking, the show begins and the actors and actresses appear on-stage. For the next certain amount of time, the narrator has to sit here and watch a show that only a wealthy individual could even pretend to enjoy.
After the show is over, they all retire to the banquet hall to begin the real celebration.
Maria and the narrator sit at a table with her boss and her boss's wife. As well as the married couple could hide it, the narrator sees through them and quickly realizes their true arrogance. Observations of the way they eat, the way they sit, facial expressions, tones of certain words, the way they read and write. Most importantly, the way Maria acts around them.
Soon after, the arrogance is confirmed, at least on the husband's side, when a person in the service of Maria's boss brings him food, but for a trivial reason has the food brought back to be redone.
After the food is redone and then brought back to Maria's boss, he is once again dissatisfied and he promptly has the process repeated once again.
Once again, the food is redone, re-brought back, and once again, Maria's boss is re-dissatisfied. This is when the narrator begins to take notice, not because of the current situation of poor food, but because the person servicing the husband has the same exact tie as the narrator.
As the narrator is examining the tie duplication, the husband tells the person servicing him to throw out the food and to have the cook come out, and the narrator can't help but overhear.
In a sarcastic manner, the narrator begins to speak, “You know, I'm not sure, but I think there are children starving somewhere out there.” Maria looks at the narrator. The 36 | INSPIRED BY A TRUE NIGHTMARE
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look she gives indicates that she knows that she has lost her job.
“Pardon?,” the husband asks because he cannot understand the sarcasm of today's youth. “Nothing it was a joke,” the narrator replies.
The husband begins to speak again, “Do you mean to imply that I am arrogant because I refuse to eat a poorly cooked meal while there are children in other countries staving?” The facial expression of the narrator quickly changes to reflect that of a reply that was not expected. “You took the words right out of my mind,” the narrator thinks within the narrator's mind.
Maria grabs the narrator's arms in an attempt to leave the table, but it fails. “I'm simply saying that all things considered, under most circumstances, you shouldn't really throw out food.” The person servicing the husband cheers inside of his youthful head.
The husband replies, “And what if as a child I starved myself? Do I now have the right to pick and choose what I eat?” “If you truly starved as a child you should know better,” the narrator quickly responds.
Maria apologizes on behalf of the narrator and then firmly grabs the narrator's arm.
The narrator rises to the narrator's feet and both the narrator and Maria begin to walk away, now the narrator's blood is boiling. The narrator looks back at the young service man and asks, “Why are you being his bitch?” The expletive causes Maria to walk faster, still tugging onto the narrator's arm.
Outside, Maria begins to yell. “We're through, I can't take this anymore.” “Okay,” the narrator says calmly, as if the narrator knew this conclusion was inevitable.
“Okay? Just okay? What do you mean 'Okay?'” The narrator doesn't reply, instead the narrator looks at a parking lot full of expensive cars.
Maria begins talking again, “If you don't want to open up to me then fine, you can find someone else other than me or your therapist to deal with your bullshit.”
Many days go by, and the apartment that both the narrator and Maria lived in was now only inhabited by one person. The narrator hadn't known it yet, but that night full of dancing and music would be the last time the narrator would see Maria.
Now it's been weeks since the narrator has last seen or heard from Maria. The narrator looks down at a bunch of legal pads; yellow pads meant to keep your notes. The narrator picks one at random and begins to read it. A dream about a junkyard.
Later in that same day, the narrator goes to visit a dying father, something that had become routine. The father and narrator sit in the same room but do not talk. It is only when the narrator gets up to leave that the father, for the first time in a long time, begins to speak.
“Do you have dreams?,” he asks the narrator, to which the narrator replies, “Sure dad, everyone has dreams.” When the father asks the narrator, “Then why do you let your 37 | INSPIRED BY A TRUE NIGHTMARE
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dreams get in the way of your dreams,” the narrator becomes confused, but begins to suspect that Maria had told this man about a room that had not yet existed.
“What do you mean?,” the narrator asks in uncertain confusion. “Maria visited me, told me a few things I didn't know about you.” “What did she say?”
“She told me that you kept a strange collection of dreams you've had. She says you write them down on yellow pads of paper.” The narrator doesn't respond, and the father continues to speak. “She says that keeping track of your dreams isn't the problem, the problem is that you're more concerned with your dreams than actual reality.”
The narrator continues to listen. “She says that you told her it feels like these dreams you have, they're your other lives, and that if you can put them in order you'll find a story, or a life you never had. Something like that.”
The father begins to laugh, then says, “It sounds like you have an anthology disorder.” “Anthology disorder?,” the narrator asks. The father answers, “An anthology is a compilation of stuff, in your case these stories and dreams you have written down. If I know anything about dreams, yours aren't in order, so you must feel lost. Am I right?”
“Sometimes I do, yeah,” the narrator responds. “Writing them down on legal pads won't do you any good.” “What else can I do besides write them down?,” the narrator asks in search of wisdom.
The father begins to tell a story of his own, “When I was younger, in Africa, doing my studies on deoxyribonucleic acid, I wrote down a lot of notes. A lot. I used a spiral notebook, but I found that after a while they became unreliable. A friend of mine told me to start using composition books so I took her suggestion. The pages in a composition book aren't as easily torn out. After a while I felt they were more useful to write down my findings and record my journey. There's really only one flaw with them, though, if you force out one page, because of the way it's bound by string, the entire book may fall apart. That's not a metaphor, I know from experience.”
A month later, the narrator's father passes away and a funeral is held. The narrator says goodbye to the last remaining relative, and a few weeks later, continues to indulge a newly found addiction and ends up meeting a person named Jamal.
Sometimes I wake up to find that my dreams are only dreams. Feelings of complete peace left behind. Many times I'll dream about the stories I've heard of, some of the bizarre things I've seen. Even a simple little quote that had me thinking for days. “Come to the edge,” she tells me. “I can't, I'm afraid,” I reply. “Just come to the edge,” she says once more. “I can't, I'll fall,” I reply. One last time, she asks me to come to the edge, and after a long pause, I do. I go to the edge, and then I look down into a very long and fatal fall. That's when she pushes me, and before I fall, I fly.
Two-hundred and eighty six days ago, I had a dream. I'm in a complex named “Purple 38 | INSPIRED BY A TRUE NIGHTMARE
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Forbidden City.” There are nine-hundred and eighty buildings in this complex, and all but one of them are filled with composition notebooks. They are filled so tight that you can't even open the doors.
So I checked them all for what they had inside, and like I said, there was that one that was different, the one that seemingly had nothing inside.
I open the door and I look inside. There is nothing. Just an empty room; white walls brown floor. There is however, of course, another door, and when I open that door, it's not so empty. Inside I find an obsession that is worse than mine.
Four noses, whole human bones and fragments, nine masks of human skin, bowls made from human skulls, ten female heads with the tops sawn off, human skin covering several chair seats, a woman's head in a paper bag, another woman's head in a burlap sack, nine vulvae in a shoe box, a belt made from female human nipples, skulls on a bedpost, organs in the refrigerator, a pair of lips on a draw string for a window shade and a lampshade made from the skin from a human face.
Seeing something like this makes you wonder if there are fires in a place where it's always raining. The person who did this understands that imagination is the only instrument you can use to reach things that you cannot reach physically.
Disgusted yet intrigued by this collection, I decide that I have to leave, and on my way out I see one more thing. A brain sitting on a desk next to the door. Beside it there is a pen. I pick up the pen with the intention of poking the brain with it. At first, I gently tap it, and when nothing happens, I stab it. The pen is in about halfway, and it feels like every thing has frozen in time, and when I remove the pen, everything turns dark and I wake up.
Thinking about it now, walls can be very metaphorical and a complex always has a lot of them. Nine-hundred and eighty buildings and if you can think long and hard enough you'll find a metaphor for each one. Personal barrier. Form of protection.
Stopping point. Division of property. One of my personal favorite walls, the wall that causes the storyteller to not be aware of the storyhearer.
Because this storyteller wall has been crumbling for quite some time now, you might ask me why I'm thinking of walls, and I might answer you and say because I'm in my old room. The room I resided in as a child in my parents' home.
I'm standing here staring at these walls in this empty room and it reminds me of Joe and his apartment. His former apartment.
We are surrounded by walls, literally and metaphorically, and each of us have our own different walls we build. We may not all have carpentry as a profession, but we are all definitely carpenters of ourselves. We decide which walls to put up and why. How thick they will be and what type of material they will be made out of. The problem is, 39 | INSPIRED BY A TRUE NIGHTMARE
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similar to a story about three pigs, is that we are not all good carpenters. Some of us are inexperienced, some of us are lost. Scariest of all, some of us don't even know that we're carpenters to begin with, and we are the ones who have no structure.
Thinking of Joe, I have to ask myself if it's the type of walls we build that define us as people. Does a thief build a dummy wall to throw off other thieves? Does a rambling narrator who sometimes loses all logic build hundreds of walls to keep the mind interested?
I leave my empty little past room and walk back down the stairs to the living room.
Such an old home that has gone to waste. In a more recent past, there were times when I used to think that the entire real world was just fragments from my dreams and nightmares. That would of course mean I was a bit crazy because I'd believe the dream world was more real than the real world. That the real world could only exist because of the dream world.
So this old home, it would be somewhere in the dream world, but maybe it wouldn't look exactly like this. Maybe instead of being a home it would be a toy that made me feel safe, so when it transfers to the real world, it's a huge house with four huge walls that no one can penetrate. There can be fictional matter in the real world, but can there be non-fictional matter in the dream world? Maybe things like emotion?
These questions suffocate you because it's absolutely absurd to wonder if you will ever know the concrete truth, but these questions are also what drive you. They help you to remember that you are still very much alive and that there is still much to know, that to learn and to discover may be the only real purpose to your existence. Mostly everyone has this psychological fragment. The thing they think about all the time, the one thing that hits them so “hard and true.” That keeps them “south of normal.” It's one of the few things that gets you out of bed after you've had a nightmare in Hell.
I leave the home and close the door behind me then walk down the steps. I make a left and I am eventually greeted by a crosswalk. I watch the traffic lights; red, then green.
No Sun will shine in my day today.
Willson, the detective in charge of solving the thirteen abandoned building murders, calls his partner, Rouseau, who of course would be the secondary on the case.
“Me and Patty were just going to bed, so this better be important,” Rousseau threatens. Wilson tells Rousseau that the eighth of the thirteen bodies had just been identified as Rondo Mac, Dante Mac's brother. Wilson begins to explain to Rousseau that most of the already identified bodies were members from a crew on the west side, while Rondo and his brother were known affiliates of Raheim Johnson, who did most of his business on the east side. “So you're saying Rondo's body has no business being there?,”
Rousseau asks. “Exactly,” Wilson answers. Wilson continues, “I thought these murders 40 | INSPIRED BY A TRUE NIGHTMARE
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were fully drug related, maybe Raheim cleaning out the competition and hiding the bodies so we wouldn't find them and so they wouldn't catch heat, but it doesn't make sense for Rondo to be part of the cleaning.”
“You think maybe Rondo got caught doing something he wasn't suppose to be doing?,” Rousseau asks. Wilson answers, “Maybe but I don't know. What's bothering me though is that when I questioned Raheim, he obviously said he knew nothing about it, but he also said that some of his crew was missing, and that he wouldn't be surprised if some of those bodies are his people.”
There is silence, and then Rousseau asks Wilson if he thinks that maybe there are new players in town. “Maybe,” Wilson replies, “but because of what's happening in this city every day, I would not be surprised if there is a vigilante killer who did these deeds.”
Rousseau replies, “Vigilante killer? It's a lot more simple than that, Wilson. We don't have serial killers here and we definitely don't have vigilante killers; we just have guns, drugs and innocent bystanders.” Wilson then asks, “Do you know how many people die from drugs a year? Out of all those affected families, you will eventually get someone who starts to build a hatred for drugs.” “So?,” Rousseau replies. “What do you mean so?
You wait long enough and one of the victims' relatives is going to go after the person who sold the drugs to the victim in the first place.”
The next day, Frank Mainor and Tim Ryan are driving down a street they have driven down many times before and come across the same three young men they had seen previously. The same three young men in which one of the three had been the cause of death of two sisters, however Mainor and Ryan do not know this, and they will not be the ones who find out.
Frank pulls the car up to the three young men and then both Frank and Tim exit the vehicle. “Hello officer,” one of the young men says sarcastically as he smiles. “Up against the wall,” Tim replies. Frank and Tim force all three men onto the wall and it is apparent they have not come back to talk about sports.
After a mild check which yields no guns or drugs or anything illegal, Frank and Tim kick the young men off of the sidewalk they had been talking on. “Go do whatever you're doing somewhere else,” Frank demands. These actions make it obvious that the two cops are frustrated that they can't even find out the name of the man they are after.
As the three young men walk away, one of them says to the killer, “You lucky you ain't had that shit on you.” While he does not have the murder weapon on his person, he is still in possession of it, and this possession will be a dominant factor in his demise.
Later on, inside the police department, Lieutenant Scott Merils speaks to his shift about his upcoming retirement. Further on into the day, detective Fields gets a break on the Samantha and Brittney Morrison case, they are known to you as “the sisters,” when a 41 | INSPIRED BY A TRUE NIGHTMARE
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civilian calls and says she saw the people who did the shooting. The old lady, she tells Fields that she saw two dark colored males that she didn't know firing at a boy named Malcolm Carson. Fields finds Malcolm, but he is hesitant to cooperate.
After much persuasion, Malcolm tells Fields that he was there, but that he wasn't the one who killed them. That it was three others from the west side who came to their territory and started shooting at him, intentionally leaving out Marcus's name.
Because of a moral compass that is still partially intact even under Malcolm's living conditions and because of a certain amount of guilt of the sisters' deaths, when Fields asks him if he could identify the other three shooters, Malcolm says yes, and a couple of days later Fields brings him down to the station.
Based on the description of the old lady who came foreword, Fields shows Malcolm dozens of suspects, and while Malcolm identifies Triggerfinger, the crazy peer who continues to shoot even after hitting one of the sisters and also the one who is too stubborn to dispose of his gun, Rock and Travis are not in the gallery and are therefore, for the time being, free.
During the walk back home it begins to snow heavily, and I find out why very soon.
When I get to the front of my apartment building I see four kids having a snowball fight.
Two of the kids are David and Sarah, but I'm not sure who the other two are. Regardless, that's the great thing about snow. It can be a Cupid for friendship.
As I walk pass the kids, waving my neutrality flag, David thinks it would be funny to throw a snowball at me. I always got the feeling that David was nothing like his sister.
That he has problems opening up to people freely unlike his sister. However, there seems to be something magical in this snow that erases his ability to stay closed off. After I'm hit, he starts to laugh, as do all the other kids, and I have no choice but to strike back.
After a few minutes of my dominance by massive military knowledge, I leave the children and retire to my apartment where I sit on my couch. A bit tired, yet still full of energy, my mind begins to remember a dream I had a couple years ago where I'm in the military traveling through a broken down urban area with about four other soldiers.
What I'll never forget about the dream is that Tao was one of the soldiers I was walking with, and I'll never forget his helmet because I could never figure out what it meant. On his helmet, he has “born to kill” written on it with all of the letters capitalized except for the “i.” Right next to it there is an oxymoronic peace symbol. Si vis pacem, para bellum. I guess even in the dream world, if you want peace, you will have to prepare for war.
As usual, Tao is talking nonstop, jumping from subject to subject without pause.
Sometimes he'll even seamlessly begin to talk about himself in the third or second person, but I don't think he ever realizes it.
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Finally I tell him to shut up, and he just stares at me. I ask him if he's ever just stopped to hear the silence around him, if he's ever witnessed its beauty and calmness.
For the first time he has nothing to say, and then I tell him he hasn't because he spends all of his time talking. Tao stops talking, but the irony is that we are then attacked and any potential silence is lost.
We all find cover in foxholes, and I can see the legitimate fear in Tao's eyes, and I'm sure he can see the fear in mine. For that moment, I feel as if I'm looking at a mirror.
Some people will tell you that the people in your dreams represent versions of yourself.
Tao's fear is my own, the people attacking us is my anger towards myself, our comrades who are fighting back, they are parts of me that fight back and seek redemption; some kind of victory even if it causes my own demise.
One thing I constantly wonder is if the same idea applies to the real world. Can you find aspects of yourself in real people. Is there a piece of you in all others?
Possibly because of the Cassandra complex, you tell few people, including myself, about your suffering, but their only response is that you are depressed. That you need to go out and truly see the world instead of just writing about your experiences from dreams. My advice to you is to live before you die. These are the words of a therapist I was suggested to see many years ago. “The meager satisfaction that man can extract from reality leaves him starving.” Those are the supposed last words of a psychologist.
Remembering how the therapist told me that I needed to live before I died prompted me to do just that. Go and live. I walk to the room and I select a random composition notebook to relive a dream. Like one of Lynne's flowers in full blossom, I feel something as I read about a dream that concerns both Jesus Christ and the Antichrist.
I'm walking on the surface of the Sun, and while I do feel intense heat, it does not burn. After some time, in the distance I can see another person walking, and as I get closer, I realize that it is Jesus Christ.
Eventually we reach each other, and he asks me, “Where are the shoes that I had given you?” Thoughts of a metaphorical salvation. I look down at my feet and see that I am wearing no shoes, but I do not answer, instead, I ask, “Why are you walking on the Sun?” He replies, “I am the son of God.” “The son of God?,” I ask.
He starts telling me about how his father and a friend created the Sun from clouds of gas, and that its purpose was to give light to all it touched. I look at him for a second, and he puts his hand on my shoulder, and he says to me, “I am not walking on the Sun. I, am the son.”
Suddenly I find myself alone again, but this time I am walking on the Moon. I search around, expecting to eventually find Jesus again, and after a while I see a man walking in the distance. When we reach each other, I see that it is Jesus Christ.
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“Where are the shoes that I had given you?,” he asks me. Even though I know that I have no shoes on, I still look down, and I still do not answer. “Because you are the son of God, I can understand the pun of you walking on the Sun, but why are you walking on the Moon?,” I ask. “I am not the son of God,” he replies. “You are not Jesus Christ?”
“No, I am not.” “Then who are you?” “I am whoever you decide I am.”
I pause, and then I ask him why he's walking on the Moon again, and he answers,
“The same reason you are. The Moon often appeals to those who are lost.” “What do you mean 'those who are lost,'”, I ask.
He starts telling me about how his father and a friend accidentally created a large piece of rock, which would later become the Moon, and had no way of removing it, so they simply pushed it away. Out of sight, out of mind. The Moon wondered through the universe with no purpose or place, moving only because it was already moving.
Eventually, this large piece of rock, large piece of mistake and purposelessness, it crashes into Earth and begins to orbit around it, effectively ending a long period of idleness.
The Moon begins to believe that it has finally found its purpose. Perhaps it is to protect the Earth, or perhaps it is to watch over it, but enough time passes by and nothing ever happens. The Moon finds itself in a state of idleness again, simply orbiting around a planet, never really doing anything, so once again, it begins to believe it has no purpose.
Sometimes I wonder if Jesus really is the savior of man, or if he was just a crazy guy with a messiah complex. Is it possible that he was just a man. A man who truly believed he was the son of God, and that he was truly sent to die for all of our sins, but in reality simply just a man nonetheless? Imagine the psychological make-up of such a mind, its perception on the world and the people in it. Even if Jesus was just a man and not the son of God as he said, he accomplished more things than men dream of.
Adolf Hitler and his followers, it's not hard to see that they truly believed they were a superior race and that other races belonged at the bottom of their heels. Because of this strong belief, when murdering all those men women and children, they truly believed they were doing nothing wrong, or in other words, they were doing what was meant to be done.
So now you really have to ask yourself, what is real? If an individual or a group of people believe in something so firmly, but you and I agree that it is not real, can we really say that it isn't? You put a child into a dark room alone and tell them that there is a monster in there with them, it doesn't matter if this monster is real or not because the fear of the child is, and there is no one that can tell this child that they aren't really afraid because only the child can feel this fear. Once you put an idea in someone's head, it enters reality, it now exists, and that alone can make it real.
If you go to Mars in real life, and then begin to have dreams about your visit to the 44 | INSPIRED BY A TRUE NIGHTMARE
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extent that you can't tell which memories came from the real visit and which came from the dream visit, do both types of visits become equal? I'd say yes, until you are told which memories were real and which memories were dreams, then by human nature the dream memories aren't as significant anymore.
The past and the future seem to be the exact same thing, and it feels like the only thing that sets them apart is memory. In a life without memory, not even the present can help you divide.
The dream ends and I flip the page to the next dream, but before I could start reading about a helicopter, the phone begins to ring. I put the composition notebook back in its place and make my way to the living room.
When I get to the living room, someone begins to knock on the door. I stop, and suddenly I'm in a place that many of us have been before. Singing phones and yelling doors.
“Who is it?” “Lynne.” I hadn't recognized her knock. “Hold on.” I go and pick up the phone, “Hello?” “Hi, I found this number in Jamal's room, may I ask who this is?” “I'm a friend of his. He and his brother stayed here for a few days not too long ago, but before that I hadn't seen him in years.” “Do you mean Derek?” “Yes, Derek.” “Do you by chance know where Derek is now?” “No, the last time I saw him was when he was staying here. Is he missing?”
I had forgotten that Lynne was waiting at the door, so as this woman answers my question I walk over to the door to open it and wave Lynne to come in. Lynne walks into my apartment, obviously smiling, and she is also holding a single purple rose.
The woman on the phone tells me that she was Jamal's longtime girlfriend and that Derek's family hadn't seen Derek himself for a day or two. I wanted to tell her about the mail I received from Derek, but because they were only letters it would be pointless. The woman gives me a number to call her back at should anything come up and then she hopes that I have a nice day. Such a proper individual.
I hang up the phone and when I turn around I see Lynne sitting on my couch with the purple rose in her hand. As into thes.
She holds out her hand and says, “It's for you.” She'd told me the significance of the colors of many roses but I had forgotten what a purple rose meant. I walk up to her and take the rose and I look at it for a second. “Thanks,” I say, “I know you told me what a purple rose meant but I can't quite remember.”
She laughs and says, “It's alright, because I never told you what purple meant.” We both laugh, and when the laughter dies out, she tells me that purple roses represented enchantment. That the person who gives them usually wants to convey the message that they had fallen in love with the recipient at the very first sight. In other words, “love at 45 | INSPIRED BY A TRUE NIGHTMARE
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first sight,” something I didn't want to hear.
“So are you ready?,” she asks. I'm not sure what she's talking about. “Ready for what?” “You said you'd go with me to the library today to pick up some books.” I'd forgotten about that. “Oh yeah,” I reply. It's funny how you can remember every detail of most of your dreams, but when it comes to real world things, you are very forgetful. The question I had to ask myself was which world was my reality.
I grab my coat and we walk out the front door. I lock the door behind me and as I'm locking it Lynne and I both hear Mary and her second-floor friend coming out of an apartment as well. I turn around and see Mary holding Anthony, the other woman who is at her side, while I do not know who she is, I had seen many times before.
Mary waves at us, and then she walks over. “Hey Lynne,” more signs of a transformation. Lynne smiles back at her and then at Anthony. “Is he feeling better today,” Lynne asks. I wasn't aware of the developing friendship between Mary and Lynne, but some people say the world is a better place when there is more love than there is hate.
The other woman, after locking her respective door, comes over to join us and I'm now asking myself how I got caught in the middle of this. I am introduced to Mary's friend and in turn the proper nounless character is no longer proper nounless. Her name is Deana and she lives in the apartment right across from Lynne with her boyfriend Mike.
Lynne needed no introduction as the two had already been well acquainted.
The party ends and we all leave through the front door of the apartment building, then we go our separate ways. The library was only a few miles away, so because Lynne's car was being repaired and the weather hadn't been particularly harsh, we decided to walk instead of waiting for the bus.
As we are walking I see Boris drive by with a woman in his car, probably his wife.
For some reason seeing Boris made me laugh. I'm not sure why.
“David had a night terror the other night.” I look at Lynne for a second and then ask if that's the same thing as a nightmare. “No, well kinda, except it's more severe. He was screaming and when I got to him he was sitting up and sweating a lot.”
From what she said, I can say that I've had nightmares, but never night terrors. “That's one of the reasons why I wanted to go to the library. He's had them before and this time I want to know more about it.”
I start thinking about David, then Sarah, and wonder what they may be learning about in school right now. Suddenly a helicopter flies overhead, then another, and another.
“Wonder what happened,” I say.
A bit further into the walk Lynne begins to giggle and says, “I know I fell asleep on your couch.” Why is that funny? “I'm sure you did considering you woke up on it,” I 46 | INSPIRED BY A TRUE NIGHTMARE
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reply. “Twice,” she replies. Her saying twice could only mean she was actually awake the first time it happened. The first time when I had to carry her to her own apartment.
“Well why didn't you say anything?,” I ask. She laughs and tells me it was because she was too tired. She says that she did actually try to say “thank you,” but that it only came out as mumbles. “So you were awake when I touched your foot?,” I ask. “You touched my foot?,” she asks surprisingly. It makes sense that she didn't know that I touched her foot. That cold plastic. “No I was kidding.” She looks at me, confused yet interested.
Moments later I find myself standing in one of the many aisles of a public library.
Lynne had already found a book on sleeping disorders and was now looking for a book for Sarah, who like her mother, loved to read. Just standing there, waiting for her to find her book, I watch her and admire her personality, but then I am struck by the room. I look at the shelf in front of me, and I get the urge to select a book at random, and then open it to a random page.
After doing so, I read about an author who continues to insist that the world is a pretty place. I close the book then look at Lynne once more, who is still trying to find a book for her daughter. The world may be full of pretty people, but it is not a pretty place. The author persistently told me that “the world is a pretty place” with no real message other than that it simply was, but I had always believed that storytelling was meant to tap into that part of the reader's mind that lingers. The part of you that reacts to the lost of a loved one, how you have nothing to say. Like seeing the Moon in daytime.
Lynne walks over to me with Sarah's new book in hand, “Are you going to get anything?” “Trust me, I have plenty to read at home.”
Finally we leave the library and go back home. On the walk home I find myself subconsciously picking at a cut on my thumb which had been trying to heal itself but had been failing. Like a society trying to plan and make up rules for the people to follow. A society that taught self-creation rather than self-destruction. My father had always told me that any meaning in life had no objective value, that meaning could only have subjective value, but these subjective values were not universal to all.
The snowfall gets heavier and I can't help but think about how I cannot be the person Lynne wants me to be. That's when she slips and falls with the help of black ice. I laugh.
She laughs even harder. A musician once said that a dream you dream alone is only a dream, but that a dream you dream together is reality.
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Chapter 57
NEW YORK MINUTE
1:2:6:57
LAST month, I had a dream. There are six of us in total in the back of a moving van, one driver, no one sitting in the passenger's seat. We all have our ski-masks sitting at the top of our heads as we organize and load our guns. “We're almost there,” the driver says, telling the thieves that they aren't too far away from the bank.
Five of us have black ski-masks, but there is one individual sitting across from me who has a ski-mask that almost represents the face of a clown. Blues and whites and reds all over. My partner, who is sitting to the left of me, he begins to speak to the clownface, and he says “What's so special about you?”
Clownface looks up and expresses his confusion. “Your ski-mask, you couldn't follow proper clothing codes?,” my partner says jokingly, except Clownface doesn't interpret the joke aspect of the sentence. Instead he is now expressing annoyance and then looks back down at his gun. “It's homage to whadu the clown,” Clownface says.
“Who?,” my partner asks. “You've never heard of whadu the clown?,” the driver says, inserting himself into the conversation. “No. What was he, some sort of clown bank robber?,” my partner asks. That's what every one else also assumed, but we were all wrong.
The driver begins to tell us about a clown who could make any child laugh. It didn't matter how gray the clouds were, if this clown was around, with just his sound laughter was bound.
So this clown, he clowns around for ten years, and then something happens to the environment of Earth, and women can no longer procreate. “Procreate?,” one of the thieves asks. “Have children,” I reply.
For ten more years, he clowns around, but he knows that his profession as a clown will soon come to end. On some of his final days, he finds himself searching for work, but there are no children to be found, and of course, adults do not find the same amusement in clowns as children do. With the death of children comes the death of his long-loved profession.
A couple of years go by and the clown goes mad, lost in his anger. Not because there are no children around, but because he has to grow up. He has to endure the loss of childhood as he enters adulthood. The clown symbolically washes the paint off of his face and later on finds employment at a bank as a bank teller, but he is eventually killed by a lone bank robber while working. The question is, in a dying world where every single thing is trivial except life itself, where everyone will soon be forgotten, why do 48 | NEW YORK MINUTE
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people still kill each other over money?
“Story's over,” the driver says, “we're home.” We pull down our ski-masks and grab our guns. “Remember, you have to get this done in a New York minute,” the driver stresses.
We exit the van and walk into the bank. As soon as the people realize who we are and what our intentions entail, one of the robbers, I'm not sure what his name is, begins to speak. “Hello world, we're here for a very small portion of this country's wealth.”
He then grabs the most beautiful woman you've ever seen; black hair, brown eyes, fair skin. “The philosophy of composition.” He pauses. “It was written by an American writer who claims that the most poetic topic in the world is the death of a beautiful woman.” He raises his gun to the side of her head and kills her. I feel my stomach turn, and I know my partner feels the same thing. Probably because we believe we aren't criminals, because we believe we are simply good people who do bad things.
After he kills her, the bank employees then give us full cooperation with no hassle. It makes me wonder, had he killed an unattractive homeless man who smelled like he was dead, would the kill have the same effect?
After we gather as much money as we can, we run back outside and into the van and we begin to make our getaway. “Was that fast enough?,” one of the robbers asks the driver. “Well, there are no cops in sight and that's all that matters,” the driver replies. I'm not a very superstitious person, but I almost wish they hadn't said those words because not a second later, three police vehicles show up and begin chasing us.
This is a bit worse than it seems because my partner and I had originally planned to kill all five of these men. Not for the money, but because like the people they worked for, they took advantage of the weak and the poor and sometimes killed them just to get a message out.
We were all hired to steal from this particular bank by a rival bank owner and were instructed to kill at least one person in the process. These two bank owners, they had been tormenting each other for a long time and this robbery was just another bad joke in a long history of rivalry.
About twenty seconds into the chase, the driver panics, maybe from a lack of experience, and we find ourselves combating on-coming traffic. A moment later we crash into a parked car and the car chase is effectively over. Our driver is knocked out, and we each know that our only shot in staying free is to initiate a foot chase.
Clownface opens the van door and jumps out, and because he hadn't looked both ways first, he is smashed by a speeding car and flies directly upwards. Due to physics, he comes directly back down and lands right in front of me. I look down at his body as I 49 | NEW YORK MINUTE
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stand next in line to jump out of the van. He lays there, his eyes wide open, blood leaking out of his mouth.
My partner is behind me and he pushes me as he says my name, and he tells me to jump. A common mistake by masked thieves, to reveal the identity of another. I look both ways and I see that there are no cars coming, so I jump over Clownface, and after I land, after I start running for my freedom, I can hear him begin to laugh with the sound of more and more blood seeping out of his mouth.
My partner catches up to me and we make our way into an alley and after a while we notice that none of the other robbers are following us, that they had gone their own way.
Still, in the distance, we can hear Clownface laughing, a sort of laughing sickness that echoes in eternity, and no matter how far we run, it's still there.
As we are running, and as the laughter persists, all I can think about is how it is illogical to work with other thieves. As a thief, your main priority is to take from others, so it's not a bad idea to think that the thieves you are working with, after it's all said and done, will steal from you as well. It's just the nature of the profession. If, however, two or more thieves are bound by an idea greater than themselves, greater than mere possession, trust may not become an issue.
The running and the laughter eventually wake me up in the middle of the night. I get up and go to the kitchen to get a glass of water and then I go back to sleep.
Sometimes we'll have dreams that we really enjoy. Maybe in the dream we're happy, maybe we're living the life we always wanted, or maybe we're just having a very exciting dream. Then we wake up, and we try to go back to sleep immediately afterwards in hopes that we can continue having that dream, but it never works. Even though I wasn't particularly trying to continue the dream I had just woken up from, when I went back to sleep, I found myself not too far from where I left off.
In the dream, my partner and I, along with three others who jumped out of the van, had been apprehended by the local police under the suspicion of participating in a robbery that left one person dead. The driver and Clownface had already been caught and charged.
They line us all up, and one by one, they have us each say “Hand me the keys, you fuckin' cocksucker!” You fuckin' socialite, that's what I wanted to say. In fact, that's what I had said some time before when me and my partner interrupted a dinner party that was put together by a bunch of socialites. Ego-driven sheep. The things I've had to do to stop myself from becoming a serial killer.
No, we didn't kill them all, but we did take all of their clothes. We left them there standing in their embarrassment and freezing from their own air conditioning.
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After the police line up, they let us go. My partner and I had decided not to kill the other three robbers, instead we traveled to a country on the other side of the globe, but I can't remember which. There we bought food and medicine with the money we had stolen, and like always, we distributed the food and medicine among the less fortunate population.
There is a book that often implies that the path of a righteous person is determined by those who do evil. For a long time I had wondered if my partner and I were simply good people who did bad things, or if we were bad people who did good things.
It is morning now and I can hear the school bus drive up as I sit on my couch. I get up and look out of the window to see David and Sarah getting on the school bus and their mother waving them goodbye. All dressed up for the cold that is winter.
As the school bus drives off, I think about how we teach these children to be the best.
At any age, competition surrounds us all, but when we are small and fragile, competition can be all we see. Our instructors of life unintentionally throw us into a pit where we fight with others for whatever prize is set. Places with competitive colleges, capitalist markets. School will prepare you for many things, and right now Sarah and David are being guided to the pit.
Even if Sarah or David fight for their life and make it out of the pit, crushing those who could not compete, leaving them in the shadows to be criticized as “those who didn't try hard enough,” it will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to clearly identify whether Sarah or David really won the game of life or if they lost.
It seems like sport is one of the few things in our world where there is a clear winner and a clear loser. That may be why it's so important to so many of us. Social debatable issues like the topic of the death penalty and abortion will never have a clear-cut winner, and these are the things we have to live with. One concern of mine is after Sarah and David have lived a long life, after they've beaten other competitors to attend that college or to have that job, how will they know if they won in life or not? If only life kept score.
After the thought, I go to The Room and take a composition notebook that has many stories about the thieves from New York. In it I find the dream that takes place after the dream about robbing a bank with Clownface. After the getaway, but before being apprehended by the police, my partner and I find out where our boss lives by fooling the man who brokered the plan to rob the bank.
Instead of visiting this man's estate with our theater masks, we borrow the creativity of Clownface and use ski-masks that depict either a frown or a smile.
We make sure to interrupt an entire family that consists of a husband, a wife and three children while they are eating dinner. The husband tells us that we can take anything we 51 | NEW YORK MINUTE
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want, but we let him know we aren't here for possessions. We tie them up along with their security and then have them sit in their ridiculously large backyard.
My partner and I go back into the mansion and begin dumping gasoline on every thing we see. After a few minutes my partner stops and stares at the family's dinner table.
I ask him what he's doing, and it takes him a while, but he says “I remember one day when my entire town had little to eat, my family especially, so my older brother stole some bread from a local bakery.” “Nice story, but we have a lot of mansion to cover,” I respond, but he goes on, “My father made him return the bread.” “Was the bakery owner a family friend?,” I ask. “No, but I assume my father made him return the bread because his family too had little to eat,” he responds.
The both of us think about what he had said for a few seconds, and then my partner begins to pour gasoline on all of the food as well as the dinner table itself, and as he's doing this, he says, “It's not what we're stealing, it's who we're stealing it from.”
At the end of it all, we left behind a burning mansion and this husband and his family watched as all of the things that were dear to them burned to the ground. Everything except their loved ones. We'd hoped that a catastrophic event such as this would stay with the three children forever, and that they would understand that everything they worked so hard for in their coming life could be taken away by a thief in the night.
The criminal mind has always fascinated me. What makes a criminal a criminal? The common person sees a bank and may think “a place to store my money,” whereas the common criminal sees a bank and the first thought that enters their mind is “society has made it easier for me by putting it all in one spot.”
Are criminals the way they are because they are lazy? Because they lack the work ethic that the working man has? I'd find that hard to believe considering many criminals spend days on their criminal plans. Maybe they're just a different breed altogether, like a mathematician is to an artist. A mathematician looks at a bank and probably sees how much money the bank steals from its customers, an artist looks at a bank and probably sees an unfortunate iconic representation of modern civilization.
Tim Ryan's eyes open. He can hear the high school students speaking outside and waiting for their bus as he rises from his bed. He completes his morning routine and leaves his apartment to go to work. Every day he is reminded of his failed marriage by the closing of the door behind him. No kiss goodbye, no “I love you.” Just memories of a relationship that he didn't want to end.